Left 4 Dead: Dead in Joburg
Campaign 1 - Pretoria
Part 1 – The Flats
Note: This is my first story posted up here, so if it's not good, my apologies. Still, leave your reviews, be they praise or criticism. I'm always looking to improve!
There was no sign of life in the city of Pretoria, save for the occasional spat of gunfire from some isolated corner of the city, or perhaps an inhuman howl marking that the Infected had found their prey. The city, for all intents and purposes, seemed like a wasteland where life was snuffed out without thought or mercy. This was not the case, however, in a suburb in the northeastern part of the city. Four survivors, armed to the teeth, were slowly making their way down the street, their eyes peeled and alert for any signs of the "Infected" or supplies vital to their escape.
The person in front, a middle-aged man in a torn windbreaker jacket and jeans, stopped suddenly. "Hold on. We should check this building and see if there are any supplies," he said in a voice peppered with a Sotho accent. He pointed to a two story building
"Sounds like a good idea, David," the man behind him said, a tall Afrikaner with a black raincoat said. He moved ahead, aiming the assault rifle he'd taken from a dead soldier at the open doorway. The entry hall was a complete mess, with dried blood splattering the walls and a number of corpses littering the place. It appeared to be a of some kind, likely middle-class from the way the carpet and walls looked (before they had been covered in blood, of course).
"Hey, I think this is the flat building where the next safehouse is!" the Afrikaner exclaimed cheerfully, jogging further into the building, moving away from the group. Just as he rounded the corner, however, he heard a familiar growl, and only had time to turn before he was pounced by a Hunter. "Oh fuck, get him off me!" he yelled, just barely holding the Hunter back with both hands. The Infected looked barely human, it's lips curled back over rotten teeth into an angry snarl, spittle flying from its mouth onto the unfortunate man underneath it.
"Hendrick! Shit, a Hunter has him!" David growled, charging into the building to rescue his friend, who the Hunter was trying its best to tear apart. A quick burst from his police-issue submachine gun knocked the Infected off of Hendrick, and another burst finished it off. With a sigh of relief, David walked over to Hendrick and offered a hand. "You run off like that, you're likely to get killed," he said, cracking a soft grin.
Hendrick looked up and took the older man's hand, climbing to his feet. "Well, I gotta give you something to do, old man," he cracked back. It was then that the other two members of the party managed to find them.
"Are you two alright?" one asked, a short-haired woman who held a shotgun tightly in her hands, showing the comfort of someone who was used to guns and fired them often.
"Fine and dandy, Mandi," Hendrick said, still sporting his trademark grin. The woman rolled her eyes, hating the way her shortened name rhymed with 'dandy'.
"Alright, come on you all, we're almost to the next safehouse on the map," the fourth of the survivors said, a Zulu man, apparently in his thirties, with a hard gaze and a distinctive, if long-healed, scar on the left side of his face.
David pointed behind him, towards a nearby staircase. "It won't hurt to search the building for ammunition or medical supplies." He was softspoken, the leader of the group and the one best at quelling any argument that broke out between the other three.
Tau nodded. "Okay. Well, we should stick together nonetheless. The hunters always seem to pick off anyone who leaves the group." He had learned this very early on, after he'd watched one go after a fleeing man who'd straggled behind the crowd; it had been difficult recognizing him after the Infected had finished with him. Without another word, Tau leveled his handgun and moved towards the stairs at a careful, calculated walk. The staircase was wide and carpeted, with the luxury of a handrail and even stairwell lights. Once he came to the second floor, he found that the power had gone out, and with the rain outside there was no light coming in. With a grunt, he flicked his pistol's flashlight on and moved forward.
The hallway was relatively free of the carnage that marked the foyer downstairs, though most of the doors were marked with yellow police tape, as if they'd been trying to quarantine the infected inside. This neighborhood was one of the last ones hit with the infection, so that was a very real possibility. Still, Tau noticed no sounds coming from the rooms. Had the infect simply died? Word of mouth (or pencil, since all information came from writing they'd found on the walls) said that the rage disease was a form of rabies, always fatal and causing those infected to try their best to kill everything around them before they died. He shook his head, banishing anymore speculation from his mind, and pressed on, with the other three right behind him.
"So where's the next safehouse at? After this one, I mean," Mandisa, or 'Mandi' as she was called by her three comrades, asked. Like Tau, she flipped her flashlight on, though this one was taped underneath the barrel of her shotgun.
"I don't know. The writing at the last one said there would be more information here. I guess we can hope whoever wrote that made it here," David replied. "It looks like there's a park up ahead, though. We should probably go through it; I bet it's safer than the streets are." The aging man shook his head sadly. It was hard getting used to the idea of people behaving like monsters, attacking and killing their friends and families in the streets for no reason other than sickness-induced rage.
Hendrick held up the rear, looking behind them to make sure something like a Smoker, Boomer, Spitter, or Jockey didn't sneak up behind them. "The evac station is at the National Zoo, isn't it?" He'd seen some writing on the walls of their last hideout that the military was holding out for a couple days more so that survivors could attempt to get out of the city alive. They'd said that people were gathering at the zoo, waiting to be airlifted out by helicopter. None of the four knew if it was true or not, but there didn't seem to be any better way to get out short of walking that they knew about.
Soon, Tau came across a room with the door ajar. "Hey, there's something up here," he announced, before moving inside. The room was the typical flat, with a sitting area, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. None of that was worth any interest, but in the kitchen there were a couple bottles of pills. Most of them were emptied, but two looked like they hadn't been opened yet. "Here, catch," he said, picking up one bottle and tossing it to Mandi with a grin on his face. He kept the other for himself.
The bedroom door was also open, and inside there was a dead body, lying on the bed with a gun still in his hand. From the looks of things, he had decided to take his own life, rather than become one of the undead. "Well… That's just depressing…" Hendrick mumbled, moving into the bedroom. He picked up the pistol, a SIG P220, and stuffed it into the belt of his khakis. A quick search underneath the bed revealed a stash of ammunition to him, too. "Hey, we got some pistol ammo down here, and some shotgun ammo. Nothing else, though." He grabbed a few clips for himself, and made way for Mandi to get some shells for her shotgun and for Tau to get some pistol clips himself.
About that time, what sounded like the howl of the damned erupted throughout the apartment. "Oh shit, how did they find us?" David growled, readying his submachine gun. Already he could hear footsteps pounding down the hallway, moving in their direction. "Everyone get back!" he yelled, slamming the door shut and locking it. He knew from experience that a wooden door wouldn't hold back the inhuman fury of the infected, but it would slow them down and the doorway would create a chokepoint for the four of them to concentrate their fire at.
One of the infected slammed into the door, and soon after several more followed. Suddenly, the wooden center of the door broke, and a gray-skinned armor shot through, clawing back and forth for something to grab hold of. Tau opened fire at that instant, letting of a couple of shots with his pistol. They hit home both times, spraying more blood onto the door. Whoever the arm belonged to screamed incoherently, but didn't stop. More slams came, and then the door fell off the hinges.
The four survivors opened fire in that instant, Tau with his pistol, Mandi with her shotgun, David with his submachine gun, and Hendrick with his assault rifle. They created a hail of lead, cutting down the briefly-stunned horde before it could rush inside to kill them. "I'm reloading!" Tau reported, pulling one of the pistol clips he'd got from the bedroom out and slipping it into his handgun with the deftness of someone who'd gotten used to guns very quickly. He cocked the gun and leveled it within a second, then started shooting again.
Another couple seconds and the tide slowed to a trickle of just one or two zombies, and they were picked up easily enough. The corpses of the horde lay in a pile by the door, none of them having made it more than a couple feet into the flat. "Stupid bastards. You'd think they would realize that was suicide," Mandi said, pushing shells into her shotgun to replace those she'd spent.
"That's implying that they think at all," Hendrick replied, slinging the assault rifle over his shoulder and stepping over their corpses. "I heard they have a… what do you call it? A hive mind. They all think together. That's why they move in hordes." He'd heard it over the television, some 'expert' who'd developed this theory back when the infection was spreading across America like wildfire. It had only hit Africa after it hit America, which had got it from Asia, or so he'd heard.
Tau rolled his eyes, falling behind the younger man. "That's ridiculous. How would they communicate? No, they're just running on instinct. They can hear us or smell us, I think. Somehow they know we are not one of them."
David moved up to the front, his preferred position in their formation. "We can discuss how they act when we get to the safehouse," he said in his typical grandfatherly way, neither sound too soft nor too hard on the two. He smiled softly and pressed on. The group made their way through the flats, picking off lone zombies as they went. The building was packed with the infected, just as one would expect it to be, but luckily they didn't come across any large groups like the last horde they'd killed.
The flats proved to have more in the way of supplies than their initial find. The military had used the foyer on the opposite side as a strong point, and though it hadn't helped them at all, the supplies they left behind were more than useful to the four survivors. There was ammunition and even a handful of medical kits that hadn't seen any use. David and Hendrick both took one for themselves, while everyone grabbed more ammunition. There were even a couple of vending machines, and even though they didn't work, a couple of whacks with a shotgun stock cracked them open, spilling their contents.
Hendricks, after grabbing a couple more clips for his rifle and a medkit, headed over to a corkboard with notices and even a map posted on it. "Oh look, it says that there's another safehouse in the hospital. Mark that down on our map, Mandi." Mandi had the best eye for maps, and they all trusted her skill in reading one. She did as told, then stuffed the map back down into her backpack.
"I'll go ahead and shut the door. We can rest for one hour, and then we have to keep moving," David announced, shutting the steel door behind them and sealing it with a bolt. "Hey Tau, give me a package of noodles and a bottle of water." Tau tossed him what he wanted, and then he sat down on a nearby couch, eating the noodles raw. Looking around, he saw Hendrick huddle up in a corner, cradling his rifle like it was a child. Tau, rather than relax, only paced back and forth, an expression of worry on his hard face. Mandi was the only one beside himself who bothered eating anything, and she had raw noodles and water just like he did. With a sad shake of his head, the old man closed his eyes and took a quick nap.
Author's note: I know little about South Africa, so chances are I'm getting so many things wrong here, from names to… everything!. I just got the idea after playing Left 4 Dead 2 and watching District 9 within ten minutes of each other, so yeah. Note, this is strictly a Left 4 Dead story, and doesn't crossover with District 9. The name came from District 9's spiritual predecessor, Alive in Joburg.