4 Weeks after First Infection

"I hate islands."

Louis chuckled to himself as Francis grunted his infamous catchphrase. The afternoon sun shone down on them and warmed the two with a late autumn heat as waves peacefully rolled up on the sand shores of their new home. Dipping his feet into the surf as it flowed toward him, Louis sighed with content and relief. Just yesterday they had finished unloading the supplies from the boat and had nothing to do but, for the first time in ages, relax. He took his sunglasses off and smirked at Francis as he stood beside him, still wearing his dirt encrusted leather jacket. The biker was, as usual, refusing to have any part in what normal people would consider "fun."

"I know you do," Louis chuckled again. "But this is our home now. A fresh start, safety, and plenty of supplies. We've got everything."

"Until it gets taken away from us," he complained. "It always does. Just you watch."

"Come on, man, give the cynicism a rest already. Things are finally looking up. Enjoy it."

"Things were looking up when the chopper saved us from the hospital, remember?" Francis grunted. "And when we found that couple with the boat in Riverside. And when we got on the plane at the airport-"

Louis sighed, standing up from the beach chair he had drawn close to the water. "I get it. We had some bad luck in the past."

"Yeah, 'Bad luck,'" Francis said, mimicking his upbeat tone. "Getting captured by the army and almost cut up like science experiments was just 'Bad luck.' Jesus, isn't there anything that makes you sad? You're like a permanent ray of sunshine."

"Well, I'm just trying to stay optimistic," Louis informed him with a small grin.

"I hate optimism."

Louis looked out over their new home. The island was around a mile long with a moderately sized hotel near the southern end where he, Francis, and Zoey had taken up living in. It was easy enough to barricade, surprisingly, and in the few days they had been here they had turned it into an imposing, if somewhat ramshackle, fortress. Various maintenance sheds across the island had been stocked with fishing equipment and emergency supplies, giving them everything they needed to make a go of it for the long haul. They even still had the boat.

It was good. It was safe. It was paradise, even. But there was something missing.

"Well," Louis, mumbled without his usual positivity, "I guess there is something wrong with this place." He stood and looked out over the ocean waves.

Francis' look of smug triumph vanished after a few contemplative seconds and he grasped the meaning of what Louis was saying. "I think I know what you mean." Louis began fidgeting uncomfortably where he stood. He could feel the wound in his leg again as the sounds of the tropical island around him began to vanish from his senses. Paradise faded away until he could almost feel himself back on that bridge.

"Let's go find Zoey," he said, eager to return to the present.

"Yeah," Francis agreed, dropping his bluster and pessimism. "Think she'll be there again?"

"Probably. She took it even harder than we did." The weather hadn't changed but Louis could no longer feel the warmth of the sun's rays brushing his skin.

"I still sometimes can't believe it," Francis admitted as the two began to make their way to where Zoey would be. "Like, out of all of us, I never thought it'd be him."

Louis fell into step beside him. "Tell me about it. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for Bill. I wouldn't have even made it out of Philadelphia."

"I still remember when I met him," Francis said. "It feels like, shit, years ago. Not a month. I was lucky that old man came along when he did, too…"


2 Days After First Infection

The jukebox blared. "ONE BAD MAN!"

"Shit, Francis, this ain't good!"

Francis fired his shotgun again, bellowing a deep laugh as the blast cut down two more zombies. "What's the matter, Duke?" the biker cackled as he beat in the head of another zombie with a single downward strike with the stock of his weapon. "Stub your toe on this mountain of corpses we've been making?" He snatched a bottle from under the bar and took a long drink before shooting again.

"Nah, man. I just lost count of how many of these bastards I've taken down!"

Francis finished off the bottle and swung it at a charging zombie. It shattered across the creatures face and sent it hurtling toward the wooden floor. Francis stomped the back of its head as he yelled over the chaos toward his friend. "Don't worry, because it ain't as many as me!"

The infected were clawing their way into the building by way of a shattered window. The main doors had so far held the brunt of the horde out, to Francis' dismay.

"Oh, shit…" He heard Danny swear from behind. Francis turned to see him push a zombie away and shoot it through the head with his pistol, clutching his arm and stumbling backward a few steps.

"What's the matter, Danny boy? Get an 'Owie' from the big bad zombie?"

"It just… bit me, man… oh crap…"

"Forget it," Francis ordered with a hearty slap on the back. "These bites, man, they don't do shit. Just look at me."

"I…I don't…dunno…hey, is the room spinning for anyone else?"

"That's just the booze," Francis told him. "The party ain't over yet, we still got a street of deadheads that demand our attention! Duke, how's that door holding up?"

"Pretty good," his friend called, clubbing a zombie over the head with the butt of his pistol. "But we got a newcomer to the party. You'll wanna see him."

Francis pushed himself away from Danny as the smaller man gave a choked cough and looked toward the door. He didn't turn to see Danny give out and hit the floor with a quiet thump.

He subdued the bout of laughter rising from within, silently guffawing under his breath. "You're…shitting me… oh Christ, that is just…" He doubled over as he broke into a full fit of laughter, aching sides and all. "Oh my God… what kind of a joke is this?"

The horde beating in the door had given way. They still stood outside, framed from behind by flickering streetlights, but a new creature was standing in front of the doors now. It was a bloated corpse covered in boils and lesions. Fat beyond humanly possible it was cartoonishly overweight and helpless as it stood there staring into the building. It was so pathetic it wasn't even attempting to bring the doors down.

"Duke, my man, you can have the honors," Francis laughed. "Pop that tubby bastard."

"With pleasure." Duke fired.

The creature exploded in a tsunami of reeking green bile. The main doors flew off their hinges and splintered against the bar as the windows shook from the force as the substance splattered Francis' vest like a thunderstorm. He fell backward against the bar as the shower of gore painted the interior of the building.

"Shit…" Breathing was difficult as he pulled himself up by the bar counter with one hand while grasping fruitlessly for his shotgun with the other. He could feel the bruises already forming from where he impacted the bar and the pain bludgeoning him intensified with every second. "Duke…"

Duke made a lunge for Francis as the infected began to pour in. A few feet away and he stopped in his tracks, staring wide eyed at something beyond Francis. "Danny? Is that you?"

His answer was a snarl straight from a nightmare. Duke turned away and made a dash for the stairs, leaving Francis behind, as a figure leaped through the air with inhuman speed and accuracy. Duke made it to the first step before the monster tackled him to the ground. It was Danny. Francis saw him raise his new, razor-like claws through his hazy vision and, hesitating for the briefest of seconds before plunging them downward into Duke's chest. He was one of them.

Francis gasped for air as the infected swarmed him, completely ignoring Duke and Danny. They surrounded him and battered his torso with their fists in a combined assault outmatching any pain he'd felt before. One bit him in the shoulder at the same moment he felt a fist collide with his face, then again, and again until he couldn't feel anything anymore.

He slumped back down and their punches turned into kicks. He tasted blood as the edges of his vision began crawling with darkness. A burst of gunfire was the last thing his senses registered. "Mama…"

Everything went black.


"Oh… what happened?" The darkness retreated when he forced his eyes open, only to clench them shut again as a wave of pain wracked his body. With a grimace he opened them again. "I'm… never drinking… again…" A hangover. Yeah, that's what it was. It had to be.

"Hey, dude," came a soft voice, almost a whisper. "Are you okay?" Francis turned his head with a wince toward the speaker.

"Well… hello…" A young woman was seated next to him, her brunette hair brought up in a messy ponytail. Her piercing green eyes seemed to shine. Her clean red jacket was spotless, save for a small spatter of blood on one of her sleeves. "If I were dead, I wouldn't be seeing angels. I guess I'm alive?"

The woman rolled her eyes at the comment but chose not to comment on it. "Yeah, we pulled you out of there," she told him. "I'm Zoey."

"I'm Francis…" he coughed. "You are one hell of a sight."

"Whatever." She grabbed a bottle from the nightstand and twisted the cap open as Francis looked around. He wasn't in the bar anymore. He was laying on a couch in what looked like somebody's apartment. In contrast to the rest of the city it was neatly ordered without so much as a bloodstain to mar the well kept condition. The owners must have abandoned it. If zombies had come through the place would have had a little more character to it. Outside gunfire sounded in the distance, somewhere far away. "Take these."

Zoey dropped two pills in his hand and he swallowed them. "Those were painkillers, right?"

"No, they were for male enhancement. You really needed it."

"Wait, what?!"

"Of course they were pain pills. We remembered to read the label before we started handing pills out, you know, like normal people."

Relief sank in alongside annoyance. "Wait…" Francis commanded, realizing something. "You keep saying 'We.' Who else is here?"

"The man who saved your life. If it weren't for him you would have died back there."

"Him?"

"Yeah, him." Zoey repeated. "He should back in a second. He just went to check the entrances."

"So, no group of traveling supermodels with a thing for scruffy guys in leather?"

She rolled her eyes again. "I don't care how much brain trauma those zombies gave you, I will punch you if you keeping saying stupid things."

"Alright, alright, calm down." Francis looked back up and his eyes caught movement in the doorway. "I think your friend is here."

Zoey turned and, with a smile, stood from where she was seated. "Hey, Bill. He's awake."

Wait… no… "You're name's… Bill?" Francis sputtered. "For real?" He pulled himself up as far as he could in the bed and defensively tensed up.

"That's right, Francis," came the gruff reply, though not without a small hint of mockery. "It's me."

"I take it back," Francis declared, sitting up on the couch. "I am dead. This has to be Hell."

Zoey looked back to Francis, then back again to Bill. "Wait, am I missing something?"

"I met Francis here a couple times before all this started," Bill informed her, pulling a cigarette from his pocket. "Ain't that right?"

"Yeah," Francis sighed. He looked at Zoey, despondent. "This old man gave me a ride into Philly a few years back. It was December. There was a blizzard."

Bill nodded and took out his lighter. "Yeah, and the same time next year I woke up in the middle of the night to see this moron trying to make off with my television set. Hell of a way to say 'Thanks.'"

"I told you," Francis deflected with a groan, "I didn't know it was your place! Jesus, it's not like you had me arrested or nothin'!"

Bill shrugged it off, ignoring the man's excuses. "None of that matters now," he stated. "Can you walk?" He lit his cigarette and took a relaxing puff.

"Yeah." Francis pulled himself to his feet. The pain was dull and far away now thanks to the painkillers. "Good thing I'm indestructible, huh?"

"First off, can that attitude," the old man ordered, checking the magazine in his assault rifle. "Cockiness'll get ya killed. Zoey, take point. The gun store should be just a block or two to the south."

She nodded and stepped out the door. Bill handed Francis his shotgun. "Here ya go."

Before Francis could mutter an insincere thanks, Bill grabbed him by the vest and pulled him in close. His voice transformed to a gravelly hiss as he drew Francis close, protective and filled with venom. "And second. If you lay a hand on that girl, if you try anything with her, then you'll wish I'd left you back in that bar to die with your friends." The veteran let go with a small push and followed Zoey.

Francis, for the first time in his life, felt himself shrink back as he watched the old man limp out the door into the apocalyptic streets behind Zoey. With no witty rejoinder or shield of bravado to be found he quietly slunk along, falling in behind Bill with little more than a discontent grumble.


AN: I based Francis' backstory on an old headcanon I've had since the early days of Left 4 Dead 1. The way he and Bill constantly insulted each other just gave me a feeling that they knew each other prior to the events of the apocalypse, though not very well. It seemed like it would be one or two stand out encounters (Getting a ride and stealing a TV) and a few more less notable ones, like passing each other on the street or some such. Part of it was also based on an unfinished fic laying around where I planned on seeing how the survivors would react to each other before the apocalypse, and pulled the "Hitched a ride with Bill" thing straight out of that.