This disclaimer applies to the whole story:

The Left 4 Dead universe and all special infected belong to Valve.

All original characters belong to me.

Hello, readers.

Some of you might remember me as the author of Familiarity, some of you might not. I'm not even sure this fandom is still active, but I've decided to quasi-rewrite Familiarity. It will not be the same story, the characters won't be the same, but I'm borrowing heavily from my first fanfic (at least for the first couple of chapters). I'm rewriting it into what it should have been, in my opinion.

Why am I doing this?

I still like Left 4 Dead, though I fell out of the fandom a few years ago. I haven't played L4D in a year or so, and I haven't read any L4D fics in far longer than that.

I know Familiarity had something of a (small) regular following, and I know I disappointed a few people when I discontinued it, but... being 100% honest here, it was probably one of the most shit-awful fics on this site. It was my first multi-chaptered story, my first fanfic, and I was flying by the seat of my pants on the whole thing.

Guess what? I'm still flying by the seat of my pants. Still have no beta reader. Still have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. But that's okay, because I've (hopefully) come a long way with my writing.

There won't be as many characters. The Hunter won't suddenly remember the entire English language overnight. It won't be so choppy. The prison won't happen in this version – I got the original idea from The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, but since I've gotten into The Walking Dead, I can see why I got a couple reviews on Familiarity about me ripping that off. So no prison. It was difficult for me to write, anyway.

There also won't be so many character POV changes, because how I didn't give my poor readers a splitting migraine with that particular tactic, I'll never know.

Oh, and there's a good chance that this is going to end up romance. Because whoops there goes my sanity.

This will still be set in Savannah, though it's more or less in the Left 4 Dead 1 universe. I am more comfortable writing the setting of Savannah because I've lived here for five years.

Reviews are more than welcome, though please keep it civil. If you think my story sucks, feel free to tell me – just please give me some sort of constructive reasoning so that I can learn from any writing or plot mistakes I may make.

I will try my hardest to avoid any Mary Sue cliches, and I hope you enjoy the story.

I make no guarantees that this story won't suck as much as Familiarity did, but by God, I will try to make it worth your while.

No author's note past this will be quite so long.

i can see myself, i look peaceful and pale

but underneath, i can barely inhale

[ sarah bettens – all of this past ]

I had lost them.

I'd. Lost. Them.

I'd fucking lost them. The only people keeping me alive, and they were gone.

We'd been exploring the hotel, that one big fancy one overlooking River Street, the one that all the tourists used the elevator to get down to street level, even though they weren't supposed to. And... and...

How the fuck did a Tank fit in that tiny little hallway?

Maria had gone down with a Smoker's tongue wrapped around her neck – I'd heard the snap of bone as it yanked her back and off her feet, she was dead before the creature ever finished reeling her in. The Tank had gotten Michael and Russ. It had picked Michael up and slammed him – had slam... had... I could still see the smear of blood and thicker things sliding down the wall, all that was left of my friend's head. Russ... The monster had picked him up and smashed out a plate glass window with the same fist, sending him through the glass and down six stories to the street below.

I clamped a hand over my mouth as I slid down the door I'd just shut behind me. The Tank couldn't fit up the stairwell, and the angry thing was serving as a barricade to keep the rest of the Infected out.

I will not puke. I will not puke. I will not puke. Please, God, don't let me puke. I can do this. I can... I can... oh god I can't do this oh god oh god oh god.

It took me a minute to realize the high-pitched keening noise was coming out of my mouth as I crouched there, rocking back and forth. They had kept me from the worst of it, they'd kept me alive. I was weak, I wasn't cut out for this world. I was never meant to survive the end of the fucking world.

I hunched into myself and finally let myself give in to the shaking, clawing terror – I broke down, sobbing and screaming and rocking and giving no thought whatsoever to the amount of noise I was making, what I could have possibly attracted.

Somehow, through my breakdown, I wasn't eaten by any particularly adventurous infected – being up on the top floor had its perks, I guess. I'd had to climb over enough furniture getting up the stairs that those things probably couldn't follow me. Maybe.

Maybe I shouldn't have tried so hard. Falling down the stairwell might've ended all my problems.

I eventually peeled myself up off the floor and took stock of the room I was in. The only reason I'd made it in was the door had been left open, otherwise I would've been screwed – electronic card locks, like any self-respecting hotel. In this case, it worked out for me. The door was locked behind me and I don't think any of the Infected had enough brain power to work the card reader, despite the power somehow still being on in the hotel. Backup generators, maybe?

My foot caught something as I stood up, and I looked down at the rolled up sweatshirt – no, hoodie – that had wrapped its way around my ankle. That's what had kept the door from latching. I knelt and picked it up, shaking the fabric out. It was a man's hoodie, and if I wore it, it'd likely come to my knees, but it was clean, if not a little dusty. Probably came from the upended suitcase a few feet away from me.

Time to take stock.

First order of business: moving the chest of drawers in front of the door. Easier said than done, considering how small I am, but I managed. The TV got unceremoniously dumped on the floor – thankfully, the screen didn't break. Last thing I needed was to be picking glass out of my feet.

Second order of business: raid the clothes the room's previous residents had so kindly left behind. That was interesting, apparently these were the type of people who's interests leaned heavily towards leather and PVC, and there was a collection of straps that I didn't even want to contemplate the use of. The woman's clothes were small, though. She'd been taller than me, but if I could find a belt, I could make her clothes work.

A further success was finding a small sewing kit, including a standard-size set of scissors, a small blessing, because who could ever use those tiny ones that came in the kits?

I cut a good six inches off the legs of a pair of charcoal-gray skinny jeans I'd found in the woman's suitcase, pilfered a snug-fitting black top, underwear and a pair of socks, and then I wandered into the room's attached bathroom.

Third order of business: praise all things holy that the hotel still had running water – ice cold, but it was water – and then scrub the accumulated filth of the Infected and your friends' blood off of your body.

Before I washed, I stared at myself in the mirror. Grey eyes, and hair that indeterminate shade best described as 'old dishwater'. It might've been one of the less attractive colors, but I was proud of my hair. It was long, what they called 'classic' length – rather, just past my butt, and I had a head full of it. Thick, and before the world had ended, shiny and well tended. Now it was... well, I still kept it brushed out, but it was usually greasy and held back in a ponytail. Who had time for things like that? But some vestige of vanity kept me from doing what I should have, what I was about to. I don't know how many times I'd nearly ended up eaten because one of the Infected had grabbed hold of my hair.

I sighed, then picked up the scissors.

It took a good hour or so, but by the time I was done, my hair was barely longer than the average military cut. Short, impossible to grab, and probably a good deal less prone to collecting gore.

The shower was an exercise in both misery and bliss – bliss, because it let me get the hair, blood, grime, and general filth of the past two weeks off of me... misery because it was colder than a witch's tit.

That done, I wandered back into the main area of the room, looking around. Beyond the clothes I'd strewn on the floor, it was actually very clean, albeit dusty. The prevalent smell of decay was less, here – though there was a sort of moldy, dank smell courtesy of the open window, where rain could pour in. That window.

I went over to it and discovered it wasn't open, exactly. More... smashed. From the inside. Though I didn't let it bother me, because the fire escape connected a room over, leaving my window with nothing but a six story drop, so there was no way something was getting in – except maybe if it was a gecko.

I sat there and watched the sun set over the river, almost able to pretend that everything was normal, that people hadn't lost their goddamn minds, just for a minute.

It wasn't long after that that I wound up passing the fuck out in the bed. I was as safe as I was going to get, so... why not sleep while I could?

Word to the wise: don't ever let yourself sleep deeply if there's no one keeping watch.