Instead of making people choose between the flashlight or a gun as a way of adding tension what if id had made the flashlight crappy/unreliable? Say you lose your real flashlight during the intro and grab some old piece of junk you find lying around the base at the start. You can use it simultaneously with a weapon but it casts a poor beam, flickers, and occassionally goes dead until you give it a whack to get it working again.
I think that would be pretty friggin' tense, stalking along with an unreliable flashlight, hitting the "whack flashlight" button every now and then to get it shining again.
-Will