Prologue: The Helicopter. It's Coming.

The voice came over the radio, but the sound of shooting was louder, and Louis was probably just being optimistic in assuming that the voice was saying the helicopter was coming. His hands were beginning to shake, which didn't precisely matter, because the things he was aiming at were everywhere, and he would hit them whether he tried or not.

Surprisingly, aside from a few cuts and bruises, he seemed to be fine. And the helicopter was coming.

"Francis!" He screamed, pausing to eject the spent cartridge and plug in a fresh one. "The helicopter!"

"Nnh 'aye ht…" The other man snarled back through grit teeth, sagging against a wall, somehow managing to shoot a rapid fire shot gun of some kind (Louis, having never been interested in guns before, was still unable to distinguish much difference other than size and firing speed) with one hand, the other arm hanging uselessly at his side. There were still dark marks on his chest from where the hunter's knees had dug in, and blood running from his mouth. Still, Louis knew exactly what he was trying to say, and grinned in spite of himself.

"Man, you hate everything!" he said, and was heartened when the white man grinned back at him through bloody teeth. So he was a little fucked up. He would make it. The helicopter was coming.

It was definitely coming, too; now he could hear the heavy thwop thwop thwop of the blades beating the air. Francis evidently heard it too; first he looked up and around, as if the sound might represent another threat, and then he lurched away from the wall and gestured Louis to proceed out the door. Francis, he knew, would watch his back and come along behind.

He had to jump to make it into the helicopter, since it couldn't land with the infected swarming the roof.

"You're the only one left?" One of the soldiers asked, clapping him on the arm, and he nodded, panting, before he realized that the term was singular. The only one, not ones. He turned on his heel, almost falling back out of the helicopter, to see the other man surrounded, still shooting. There's something like panic that rears up in him, bubbling like nausea, and he hardly realizes what he's doing when he jumps back out of the copter, yelling, 'wait a minute, just a fuckin' minute, okay?'

There's so much noise between the guns and the helicopter and the incessant screaming of the infected, and he's not sure who's voice is raised in a charge. Judging by the blood streaming from Francis's mouth, he'd have to assume it's coming from him.

So many infected and only a limited amount of ammo; there's terror but also a beautiful exhilaration when he reaches Francis's side. A dozen moments just like this; the safe room within sight but so many infected in the way that's it's still a gamble as to whether or not they'll make it. He gets an arm under Francis's, supporting him and leading him as they move toward the edge of the building in the slow, lurching creep of the wounded and out-numbered, and he think that if they die now, if they have to die like this, well, that's alright because at least they fucking tried. At least he went back for the honky bastard, at least they'll go down like men. Then one of the soldiers starts shooting from the chopper, mowing down infected ghouls with such efficiency that its almost startling, and Louis finds himself handing Francis up to another soldier, passing him into stronger arms than his under a shower of blood and then making the short jump to safety for the second time.

Whether out of simple exhaustion or from blood loss, Francis is unconscious when Louis takes a seat beside him on the floor of the helicopter. Someone says something about a medical tent on the ground and Louis simply nods wearily, closing his eyes and thanking whatever god has time to listen. Thanking Him for his own survival, and for Francis's; trying and failing to ignore the surprisingly sharp loss of Zoey and Bill.

Tired, he lets his head loll on his shoulder to the left, opening his eyes enough to see Francis beside him. The other man is in bad shape, his face swollen and bruised and set in a hard grimace; streaked with blood and dirt and creased with pain, the biker is as unattractive as anyone could be. But they've been through a great deal of hell together, and so Louis looks at him with absent fondness and tired camaraderie. Without considering it in any depth, he mentally swears to see the other through the rest of this, whatever that may be.

Now that they're safe, there's no way in hell he's letting the other die.

---

The start to a slow-going and likely short multi-chapter Left For Dead fan-fiction. The events in the prologue were, hilariously in my opinion, inspired by the events occurring in the last few moments of a round of No Mercy Senko and I were playing. She's the Francis to my Louis, and I couldn't just leave her to digital death- the whole thing played out so hilariously dramatic and made the two of them look so cutely couple-ish that we decided someone had to write a story. Senko being very busy with school and other obligations to other fan-doms, the fun fell to me.

I notice a disturbing lack of Louis/Francis fan-fiction, so this will be my contribution. Like the game, it is, of course, rated M for mature.