"Dammit, Ellis!" Nick yelled. "Where are you?"
"I'm right here, Nick," Ellis answered.
"I need you on my left! There are zombies all over me!"
Ellis continued shooting at the horde of zombies running down the alley toward him. "I am on your left, Nick."
"Other left!"
"Help! Jockey!" Rochelle cried. Ellis turned and emptied most of a clip in the general direction of the Jockey. Coach fired a few shots, and the zombie tumbled to the ground.
"Watch where you point that thing, kid. You almost shot me," Coach said.
"You were standing in the way," Ellis told him.
"You weren't going to hit that Jockey anyway, the way you were shooting," Nick chimed in.
"Help! Spitter!" Ellis yelled.
"Help! Charger!" Nick yelled.
Several hundred yards behind: "Come on, Coach, get up," Rochelle said. "We've gotta go rescue those two."
"Hey! A Witch!" Nick said. "I'm gonna startle her."
"One second," Ellis said. "There's a gas can over here you can use to set her on fire."
"Do either of you remember what happened the last time you pissed off a Witch?" Coach asked.
"Should I shoot at her from the top of this dumpster, or can I climb up onto that truck?" Nick asked.
"That's it. I'm not helping you this time," Rochelle said. "I'm going to save my ammo, and there is no way either of you are going to see my health pack or adrenaline."
Ten seconds later, Nick was lying on the ground groaning and bleeding. Rochelle was hacking at the Witch with a machete. Ellis was running around on the far side of the street, behind the semi-truck he'd climbed on top of to shoot at the Witch. He'd fallen off and was trapped in a corner until the flames from the gas can burnt out.
"Don't shoot that car," Coach warned.
"Seriously, don't," Rochelle agreed. "I'm barely have enough ammo to make it to the next safe room."
"Woo! A car alarm!" Ellis yelled gleefully. He jumped up onto the hood of the car and shot at the windshield.
Zombies started pouring in from all directions, as Rochelle sighed and reached for her katana.
"Hey, a health pack," Nick said. "Everybody hold up, I'm gonna heal."
"Wait!" Rochelle said. "How badly hurt are you?"
"I'm doin' all right, but there's no reason to leave a health pack lying around."
"Dude. I am bleeding all over everything. And nobody else has a health pack."
"Whoops, sorry," Nick said. "I didn't notice."
Rochelle took a deep breath and steeled herself to go on resisting the temptation to bludgeon her teammate.
"I saved these for you," Coach said as he handed her a bottle of pills.
"Thanks, Coach."
"Wait for a second!" Rochelle said as she ducked into small garage next to the street. "I have to heal."
Down the street, "Help!" Ellis shrieked as a Hunter pounced him. "Somebody help me!"
Rochelle dropped the health pack, crouched on the sidewalk, and fired at the Hunter. It cart-wheeled backward when the bullets from Rochelle's rifle struck it.
She went back into the garage and finished patching herself together, as Ellis hopped up and ran down a side alley looking for a Molotov or something.
"Smo-!" Nick started to shout. The Smoker disappeared in a greenish-gray cloud. Nick turned to Rochelle, who had been shooting at zombies scattered across an open field. "How are you so fast?" he asked.
Rochelle shrugged. "Aim."
"The boat's here, people! Let's go!" Coach announced. He grabbed a last load of ammo and started across the plantation house's yard toward the docks. Rochelle flung a bile jar to one side of the porch and sprinted after Coach as a Tank appeared on the roof of the mansion.
"Let's see how long we can hold!" Ellis said.
"Right next to you, buddy," Nick said.
"If you two don't get your asses down here right now, you are gonna get left behind!" Rochelle screamed.
"What are those crazy fools doing now?" Coach asked.
"I don't know," Rochelle said, "but there's no way I'm going back up there. Look, there's two Tanks."
Ellis and Nick started running for the docks, fending off zombies at every step. Luckily, they reached the boat two steps ahead of one of the Tanks.
"That was so cool," Nick said.
"That was so much fun! High-five, brother!" Ellis shouted.
"That was not fun," Coach said.
"Those two are not right in the head," Rochelle declared.
So I play L4D a lot. I've spent over 400 hours in-game (both games). I flatter myself that I'm a pretty good player: experienced, certainly. I'm also a careful player: good aim, never startle the Witches, rarely need to heal, and always watching out for my team.
My dad and brother are just the opposite. Whenever I play with them, I'm always rescuing them from something or yelling at them to stick with the team. So when they played a co-op game together without me, it served them right.
Some of the dialogue is lifted from what I heard them shouting at each other during this game. Everything else is basically a distillation of the stupid things they do when I'm in-game.