Left 4 Dead Story - Opened Shell
ACT I
Marla felt chilled. Pulling her legs up closer to her in the queen sized bed, she struggled to keep her feet warm.
'Why am I so cold?' She thought to herself. Tightening her grip on her thin comforter, her only comforter, Marla pulled up it over shoulder, tucking it under her chin. Glancing at the electric clock on the short mantle beside her bed, she noted sullenly that it read 3:45 AM. Glaring exhausted at the blaring red figures seemed to distract her from her cold bed. She looked around the room, trying to gauge the conditions outside. Marla's bed was placed with it's headboard against the wall, a night stand supporting a lamp and the Bible on each side. Marla lay curled on the right side of the bed, closest to the wall opposite the door. The window itself was boarded up, large 2 x 4's nailed across the frame, and a steel bar over that. To Marla's right was a walk in closet, though the clothes were mostly fallen off the hangers, as she didn't have time anymore for sprucing the house up. At the opposite end of the room on the same wall as the walk in closet was the door to the hallway, which hung open a few inches, though no light crept in from the hallway. Against the wall directly opposite Marla was her dresser with a now useless Television perched on top. Listening with a practiced ear, she heard no abnormal sounds from inside the house. She had already begun to analyze and put the horrid noise from the streets out of her mind, and so disregarded the sounds of light rain peppering the roof of her apartment building, an occasional crack of thunder. She didn't notice the distant sullen bursts of automatic fire and explosions either. As Marla wakened more as the moments went by, her mind began to grow sharper. She looked over to where her husband should be laying beside her, finding only an empty bed and a shifted comforter.
She had sat up by now, pulling her knees close to her chest to keep warm. She pulled the comforter up higher around her shoulders. "At least you aren't wearing a night gown." She said to herself. "You had enough sense to wear something warmer than that." Sliding her hand out from under the cover, she felt where her husband had been laying. Still feeling relatively warm, she concluded he had just jumped up to grab something to drink or eat, though it saddened her to have him so far away.
'Which is ridiculous.' She scolded herself. 'He's just in the next room! Ever sense the infection broke out you've been afraid to be alone even for a few minutes!' She frowned slightly, sulking deeper into her blanket. It was old, and smelled like the storage closet she had pilfered it from. After she and her husband Tom had bordered up the apartment, they had little to no supplies. They had risked a trip to multiple stores, though most of it was already raided and stripped of supplies. She had finally settled for the old comforter in a box in a gas station storage room, finding no other blankets around. They had only recently moved into the apartment complex, and had little of their own belongings when the infection broke. Marla remembered the wedding, a week before Hell broke loose onto the populace. We had been so happy, she pondered, a small smile spreading across her face. Not a care in the world, nothing between us and happiness. She remembered vaguely walking down the aisle, her arm linked with her fathers, she was blushing and Tom stood there at the alter grinning so widely. She had felt like crying, seeing him reach for her hand with that ring of his, that beautiful wedding band. She felt warmer on the inside for a moment, running her finger over the gold ring on her finger. Then she remembered the out break, watching as her parents were torn apart trying to save her. She felt so small, screaming and pounding angrily on Tom's hard back as he threw her over his shoulder and sprinted for her parents mini van out front. Her parents had stayed behind to hold the door shut as long as they could while the two escaped. She had watched, wailing from the van as they began to pull away. She had screamed at Tom, called him a murderer and that he never cared about her parents, until in her blind fury she noticed that he was sobbing uncontrollably as they sped back towards the city to their new apartment.
Thinking of all the pain she had endured made the tears start again, she quietly sobbed in her tight ball of comforter until she had no more tears. Feeling tense and wanting her lover's strong arms stretched around her trembling body, Marla slid out of bed and walked to her dresser. Opening a drawer, she pulled out a pair of wool socks and put them over her white ones to keep warm. She had on a light grey long sleeved shirt (which was actually Tom's, though she wore it for it's heat even though it was a dozen sizes too big.) which fell down loosely to her mid thigh. The sleeves stretched six inches past her hands when she allowed her slender arms to hang down. Her lower half was completely covered with a matching light grey sweat pant style type of night pants that also retained heat quite well. Even with her warm clothes she was still cold, used to Tom's arm around her waist as they slept, keeping each other warm. Marla was a smaller woman, only about five foot five and one hundred and twenty-five pounds. She had shoulder length brown hair and deep green eyes. She turned to the mahogany door and opened it to it's full length, stepping out into the hallway cautiously. The wall was painted a dull yellow color, pictures absent from their hastily erected entrance into their home. Reaching the end of the hallway she turned left down a shorter hallway in the same repair with a door against the left corner to the bathroom, and a turn into the living room to the right. Noting that the bathroom was empty and the door ajar, she turned to the living room instead. She put her arms across her breasts and under the other arm to keep her hands warm against the cold, rubbing her sides gently. The living room was quite spacious, with two couches and another television on a home theatre box against the wall to her immediate right. The wall straight ahead sported two boarded up windows, the white blinds hanging across in an attempt to relieve the stress at looking at them. Against the opposite wall hung the one picture they had time to hang, a large blown up picture of Tom, Marla, her father Jeremy and mother Teresa, Tom's sister Melody and Marla's brother Jonathon all standing smiling warmly at the camera, each with their arms across the other's shoulders. Marla had always loved that photograph, as both Tom's family (His parents had died when he was eighteen) and Marla's got along as though they had always been related. She had always been thankful and proud of the close relationship between their families. A sky blue couch had been pushed against the wall under the picture, two small plushy toys in each back corner of the cushions, something that Tom had giggled about and teased her with. She began feeling a bit warmer inside thinking of when she had bought the cute little toys at a toy store searching for a gift for her niece's fifth birthday. Absolutely adoring them, she had brought back the soft frogs home to Tom as a gift to help 'unlock your feminine side' as she had put it. He had laughed and replied, 'If my feminine side were still locked I'd be a bachelor!'
A small wooden coffee table sat at the foot of the couch, a broken blue lamp in the corner by the windows and a smaller night stand beside the arm of the second couch against the divider wall. She turned towards the kitchen to continue her search. The living room had a small divider wall between it and the dining room, a small area with an oak table and chairs, a simple but cute chandelier hanging smartly above it. There was another dividing wall that ran half way across the dining room to separate it from the kitchen.
'Back when we would have had company, this would have been a nice place.' She reminded herself confidently. The soft brown carpet of the bedroom and similarly themed wood flooring of the hallway ended abruptly with the switch to the kitchen, tiled with a nice orange ceramic. A pantry was against the wall straight ahead, the door closed. Next and to the left of the pantry was another boarded up window. The wall to her left was taken up by the cupboards, fridge, stove and sink. She noted that the door to the roof (as their apartment took up the top floor) was hanging open, a cool damp breeze blowing through. The building creaked as she walked quietly over to the door. Peeking around, she looked up the steps to see the roof access was also opened wide. A chill went down her spine. Could one of them had come during the night? Had they taken Tom without noticing her? A dull sense of panic set in. Had Tom … maybe left her?
'No!' She yelled at herself in her mind. 'Don't you dare say that! He would never leave you like that, and you know it! Don't degrade him because you're scared!' She paused none the less. 'I'm not scared, I'm terrified.' She thought. She looked through the doorway. The hot water heater sat in the corner of the roof access against an unfinished wall. Tom had paid someone to remodel the roof access, but it was never finished for obvious reasons. The walls leading up to the roof were bare and unpainted, the floor un-tiled and roughly placed down hardware was set instead. Gathering up her courage, Marla went back to the bedroom and grabbed her warm slippers, something she neglected to do in the first place because she had expected Tom to be in the living room reading, not on the roof doing …. Whatever. Slipping on her tan slippers she walked back to the roof access hallway and stepped inside. She was freezing, and knew that if she went back for her jacket she would lose the will to head up to the roof. She would sit on the couch and curl into a ball, bawling, terrified until Tom came back down to comfort her.
She began down the hallway, slower than when she had walked through her apartment, watching up the short steps at the door intensely. The cold air blowing through the hallway chilled her, and despite herself she blushed intensely as she began to get goose skin from the cold. Through the open doorway she could see the telephone lines that stretched across the street (completely out of sight) to the telephone pole.
It was useless, all phone lines had been severed in some way or form when the infection first broke out. Rain was coming down slowly, not even a light shower but a small sprinkle to go along with the thunder. Lightening flashed, causing Marla to jump backwards with a squeak of terror. Her squeak was covered up with the crash of thunder that shook her up even more. She had been scared witless, and found herself starting to get hysterical. Curling up slowly, Marla leaned against the wall and slid down, sobbing quietly. Pulling her legs to her chest again, wrapping her arms around them tight and burying her face in her knees, Marla sobbed uncontrollably. 'No!' She thought. 'It was only lightening honey, you're fine! You're fine! You're scaring yourself into unconsciousness, stop!' Marla raised her head slightly, looking out at the dark grey blue sky, feeling disgusted with herself. Using the wall for support, Marla, stood shakily and wrapped her arms even tighter across herself. 'Tom would want you to be strong!' Her inner courage applauded her. 'Especially with something as simple as this!' Marla nodded, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her shirt, Tom's shirt, and beginning up the stairs uneasily. She felt glad for the rain, if Tom didn't notice her at first, the rain and damp cold would mask that she had been crying. She made the last step up and looked out at the world solemnly, leaning against the door frame.
Another apartment building loomed across the street eerily, all the windows were black, most broken out. A satellite dish sat at the top right corner of the brownish grey brick building, telephone lines streaked across the street four levels below. Marla stepped out of the cover of the roof access door way, slowly approached the roof edge. An old tin water tower stood erect eerily in the foggy dampness of the night, buildings in terrible disrepair stretched both ways down the street, windows shattered, occasionally a wall smashed from a car wreck, vehicles sat abandoned in the street, windows rolled up or smashed out, doors ajar, debris scattered across the street, covering the sidewalks. A Mercedes sat in the middle of the road, a fire burning brightly from it's engine block. A mound sat next to it, a mound of decaying flesh and clothes. Marla gagged, she didn't remember that there was a body there. It had been months since she had even entered the roof access hallway. That was why, she hadn't looked at the outside world for months accept for the DVD's that she and Tom would watch, maybe and an occasional VCR tape if they were bored of watching Christmas specials they had raided from the apartments below. Marla still felt terrible about going into their neighbor's homes and sorting through their belongings, she was apprehensive about even going through their cupboards for food, let alone Tom pilfering their books, clothes and movies. She realized that the owners were most likely dead or infected, but the upside down feeling she got in her stomach never did cease to make her nauseous. To either side of their apartment building, brown red brick apartments and hotels stretched down the linear streets. She glanced around quietly. The roof was spacious, with vents for the appliances, air conditioners for the summer, electric boxes for the entire building, even a few white painted wooden tables for a roof garden spaced around the tar floor. She looked left, and noticed Tom sitting on a fold up chair under a blue tarp, gazing out at the sky. Tom Shell stood six foot four and weighed two hundred and ten pounds of muscle. Tom was a manager of a marginally successful banking company, athletic in the terms of keeping in shape by working out at home, and smart as a whip. He had a thick neck, and long face, dark brown hair and blue grey eyes, clean shaven and fresh. He was handsome, masculine, but kind and caring. Marla loved him more than she could ever express, and knew that he loved her the same, if not more. She blushed and gazed at him with her head tilted down a bit. She coughed a little, and Tom looked over at her surprised.
"Marla? What are you doing out here? It's almost four in the morning." He asked coolly. She blushed even deeper, walking towards him with a gulp. He remained seated in the chair, but held up his arms for her as she approached, taking them and turning towards the street, she sat down easily into his lap, pushing close to him as he put his arms around her stomach, leaning into her lovingly. She felt his warmth and was momentarily lost by the wave of comfort that washed over her like a wave. Leaning back against him, she joined him in gazing out at the sky as the rain came down.
"Well?" He whispered into her ear.
She looked up and over her shoulder her shoulder at him. He was looking at her warmly.
"I got cold." She replied innocently. 'Partly true.' She scolded herself. 'You were scared brainless doll.' She looked back out the clouds to keep her terrified eyes from betraying her. Tom knew she was frightened, but acted as if he didn't.
"Alright, just stay here and get warm." She lost her mind. Everything had slowed down, the infection hadn't come and everything was as it should be now that he's holding me like this. Marla thought. She knew she was lying, but for now she would believe herself until the next time she was scared, until the next time Tom held her tight. Then she would believe her dream world. Her memories. Only then.
********
Marla hadn't realized she had drifted off in Tom's lap until the sound of an engine coming closer shook her from her dream. She had been sitting in a long chair on the beach of one of the Bahaman Islands, taking ethical sips from an iced Margarita that would last all day. The sun had been beating down brightly on her body, she was dressed in a comfortable tropical out fit, a bathing suit with a see through frilly piece of clothe wrapped around her waist for a skirt. A bamboo private resort had sat behind her in the tree line, Tom had walked out relaxed, dressed in an unbuttoned T-shirt and swimming trunks. He had sat beside her in another sand chair with a glass of iced tea and a book. He had begun to read, Marla and he holding hands as the crystal clear waves of the ocean lapped sheepishly against the warm white sand. And then the sound of a heavy diesel engine blared through her dream and she awoke to find herself sitting in Tom's lap, the rain still coming down, a bit harder now, and Tom sitting up straight. She slid off of him, not even close to being sleepy. Marla huddled under the tarp against the wall of the roof, looking over the side at the streets below with Tom right beside her. She was numb, she couldn't decide whether to feel scared that someone was making that much noise, excited that they had found someone else alive, a survivor, or confused as to why they were making such a poor attempt at not being caught. Her breath caught in her throat as around the corner, at the far right side of the apartment building at an intersection, a green, black and brown camouflaged military Hum-vee came tearing around the corner at, at least, sixty miles an hour. The turret on top of the truck was gone, though a blur of a man sat with a rifle firing behind the vehicle down out of view. The Hum-Vee flipped around the corner, heading straight past Tom and Marla's apartment building. Tom gasped as well, said more to himself than to Marla,
"It's gon'na crash! It's too heavy to make that turn and keep going!" Marla only began to get worried when a wave of infected rounded the corner behind the truck. As Tom had said, the Hum-Vee fishtailed with it's worn tires and obviously novice driver in the rain soaked streets of New Hire City. The Hummer turned completely sideways, flipped over and rolled twice, the gunner slipping inside moments before. The roof crumpled slightly, the truck sliding forty feet on it's side before hitting an abandoned Mercedes and flipping back on it's wheels. The horde of infected behind it, at least two hundred or so, seemed to double in speed at seeing the wreck. Rifle and automatic fire erupted from the Hummer, the leading ten lines of infected stumbled and tripped, blood spattering from their bodies as they fell, only to be trampled by the next lines coming in. Marla squealed quietly, turning her head away from the gory mess and burying it into Tom's chest. She began to sob quietly. Tom stood stunned, staring in shock as wave after wave of infected approached, only to be cut down under a wave of fire from the inhabitants of the Hum-Vee. He put his arm around Marla affectionately. Through sobs of terror, Marla looked up at him, tears and rain drops dripping off strips of wet hair that clung to her neck and shoulders. She coughed out in her sweet but horrified voice,
"What are we going to do Tom!?" She looked at him terrified. He gazed down at her face after a few moments of silence. His eyes were hard and determined, a look he gets only when he's made up his mind and can't be stopped. That look scared her. She squeaked and gripped him as tight as she could around his stomach. He gave her a tight squeeze back. 'He can't do this to me!' She screamed in her mind. 'It's not his problem those idiots decided to flip their truck and screw themselves over! He shouldn't have to make up for them!' She began to bawl hysterically, slowly loosening her grip and sliding down towards the wet roof. He slid with her, until they sat there leaning against the apartment wall, Marla bawling her eyes out, Tom choking back his own tears. 'He's going to die! He's going to get himself killed!' She screamed in her mind. 'He's going to leave you!' Marla looked up at her husband. He wouldn't do that. He couldn't do that. He'd lose his own mind as well. He looked at her lovingly, and said,
"I'm going to help them. I'm going to get your father's M16 out of the bedroom closet, and help them." At hearing this, Marla broke down into sobs, not of fear or anger, but of understanding. She loved him, and he loved her, but Tom Shell had a heart for anyone. He would tear himself apart if he didn't help those people, as stupid as they were. Marla looked up at him, still crying, but put on her best encouraging smile she could muster.
"Go, before it's too late." She whispered. Tom grinned, his own tears dripping off of his face, he kissed her once before jumping up in his long black sweatpants and plain white T-shirt and running back into the house to pull her father's M16 rifle out of their bedroom closet and charge down the stairs to help the survivors in the truck.
Marla stayed there for a few moments before finally finding the strength to rise and go back inside. She closed and locked the roof access door, then the door to the hallway in the kitchen as well. She picked out a metal bar from in the pantry, placing it across the door on to metal hooks to keep it from shattering more easily. Marla Shell strolled over to the kitchen counter, a look of courage and hope on her face, opened a drawer and pulled a handgun out. Sliding the magazine into the well, she racked the slide with a clack, though making sure it was on safety before letting herself lower her arm. Marla Shell went and stood by the door downstairs between the hallway to the bedroom and the living room, raised her .45 pistol and waited for her husband to return. She would make sure nothing was living behind him and the survivors when they returned.
AFTERWARDS: Hey all, I'm new to the site and love to write, but I don't want to put anything original up here, for obvious reasons. This is something new I just typed up today and want to see if it gets any good reviews. I'll continue if you want me, and please, if you have something negative to say, make it reasonable and smart. Any text talk or foul languaged reviews will be erased. And note: This isn't a love story. I needed a compassionate first ACT to start off the drama and give an in depth view of the main characters so far, Marla and Tom. Have a good one ^_^