Please note that this is Mature content. Coarse language will appear, gore and blood will be apparent and other mature events may occur. This is a fair warning to all of what is lying ahead. However, I hope to convey the fact that this is done solely to maintain the characters and the current situation. I frown upon gratuitous swearing and other such language. Thank you for understanding.
I do not have much to say. Read, Review, Critque. If enough people like this, I will continue this. If no one reviews, I might still write it out, but it will be a lot slower. Thank you.
Disclaimer: I do not own Left 4 Dead. Once I am not lazy enough to actually look up who do get the cudos for this superb game, I will create a much better disclaimer. Until that day comes, bear with me. I DO NOT OWN LEFT 4 DEAD. Thank you.
A Day on Earth
The night was warm and sickly, like a body fighting disease. Thunder rumbled in the distant corners of the city, a skipping rain already spitting down at the deserted streets. Lightning flashed here and there in the night, telling of the approaching storm, unaware that the tempest was already loose.
It started slowly, at least at first. The change was slow, and often painful. But as the mind lost track of all but the hunger, the pain faded too. So did the memory. The memory of speech, of home, of family.
Of morality.
Then Hell broke loose.
Bill had to say that it was not wise to wish for things. He had retired from the Army Rangers after Vietnam. The retired life had not been his place though. He was a man of action and war. A killer, like all soldiers were. He had nightmares about friends dying, over and over, and a part of him wished for the action again, if only to try and repay those he had failed to save, who had died so that he might live.
So he had wished for some action. Not on a shooting star or anything, just a little thought that grew and grew and eventually mumbled around his cigarette after a can of baked beans while sitting on his couch cleaning his old military pistol.
He knew that is was impossible for him to have started the whole thing. But that did not mean he now found retirement very appeasing.
The old veteran now sat on a new couch, cleaning a more reliable, modern, M16. He glanced at the pistol on his leg and nodded in satisfaction. Clean and ready to go.
He stood and looked at the young man sitting by the door. The man — Louis — was African American, average height with the build that told of athletics in his younger days. He wore what had been a crisp business suit, blazer and all. Now it was a dirty shirt and tie, the blazer cast aside with blood stains covering it. Thankfully, the blood was not Louis'.
"Up and at 'em, boy," Bill said, chewing on his cigarette. "This place is better than Hell, but it'll be coming soon enough."
Louis blinked a few times at Bill, not really seeing him. Survivor's guilt coupled with shock and adrenaline. Bill had seen it more than a few times.
Bill had heard it from the news stations, as he was prone to watch TV in the evening now. The rash of colds and stomach bugs. A new disease that made you perpetually hungry, coupled with loss of memory and numerous other problems. All mundane though. The news anchors had a good laugh about it, joking about how the medical field was going downhill. That had been four days ago. No one was laughing now.
"Bill?" Louis asked, his voice faint.
"Yeah, boy?"
"Do you get used to it?"
Bill knew what he meant. Killing was something you never got used to; unless you were insane from the get go. "No. But you stomach it because you have to. Don't get soft on me now, Louis. It's them or us, just remember that."
"Yeah… I guess."
Bill knew what Louis was struggling with. He had been holed up in an apartment with his friends, all terrified by the death howling outside. Bill had been moving from room to room in the apartment block, looking for others when he heard them. The screams.
Louis and his friend had been the only ones not Infected when Bill got there. The girl — Bill didn't want to ask the name — had been torn apart. Bill had to support a horrified Louis. Horror is a great motivator, though, as is terror.
Louis turned out to be a pretty natural shot with a pistol.
The thunder rumbled again and a low moan rose from the streets in answer. Bill walked over to the window and looked out. "They're gathering."
"What?" Louis ran to the window and looked out, too.
Bill wondered for a moment what the Infected thought, how they thought. Because he had noted something in just the first few days. He'd never been one for psychology, but he remembered a young Private talking about it. Something about how humans were social creatures, that they had to have others to remain sane.
Bill wondered if the Infected were the same. They gathered at times, running, shambling, jogging, crawling, but always toward a certain point. He didn't know why, and he didn't care, except that they congregated in the hundreds. And while the Infected were not the most resilient enemies, their sheer numbers were threatening.
The thunder came again, louder than before, and the mob below began growling and moaning.
"They're getting agitated," Bill muttered. "Come on, Louis. We better get going."
"Going where?" Louis followed Bill out of the apartment and across the way, entering another home and exiting via the fire escape the other side. "Where can we go?"
"Right now I am working short term." Bill pointed to a small island just off the coast in the bay of the city, connected by a single bridge. "That's as safe as anything for the moment."
"A prison?"
"You got a better idea?"
"But they're convicts," Louis protested. "They won't help us."
"We're all in this together. It's not Black or White, American or Iraqi, poor or rich. This is Humanity versus them, the Infected. I, for one, want to be on the winning side." Bill arranged his beret and chewed on a cigarette. "And ten to one, so do they."
Zoey had to say that she had not expected this when she woke up. She had not expected the campus security to be having a gunfight in the grounds. She had not expected hordes of zombies to be the targets. She had not expected running through blood soaked halls, dragging her roommate, Alexia, behind her, to get out of the building with more zombies swarming the dorms.
Zoey had definitely not expected to be saved by two men who looked like they'd just got out of prison.
"Come on," yelled one — a tough looking biker with a shaved head and dark goatee, tattoos on his arms, and a shotgun in his hands. "Hurry it up, ladies."
"Francis," the other yelled, a little worry in his voice as his own shotgun blasted down ten of the zombies. "There are an awful lot of them."
"I know. Hurry it up, Girly."
"Like a hundred."
"I know, Cutter."
"Maybe two hundred… no pressure though."
"Shut it, Cutter!"
Zoey and Alexia skidded to a stop next to the jeep the men occupied. Zoey threw Alexia in the back seat and jumped into the driver's seat.
"Hey," Francis shouted. "This is my car."
"Shut up and shoot them," Zoey ordered. "This is no time to get picky over who drives."
"She has a point, Francis."
"I thought I told you to shut it, Cutter," Francis yelled, aiming at the other man.
Cutter didn't even wince as the shotgun blasted a zombie into its component parts behind him. "Thanks, Frankie."
"Cutter…"
"Shut it, I know."
There was not a lot of time for talking after that as Zoey stepped on the gas, making Francis and Cutter fall backward into their seats. Zoey plowed through a swarm of the things — men and women from the campus and the rest of the city — and then they were on the freeway, the howls and moans fading behind them.
Francis struggled into a sitting position and settled into the seat. "Hey, you planning to let off of the lead foot anytime soon?"
Zoey glanced from the road to him and then at the speedometer. She was doing eighty miles an hour in a thirty zone. Of course, there was no one else on the road.
"Why?" she asked belligerently. "I think it's a good idea to put as much distance between them and us as possible."
"Yeah, it is, but the other cars — keep an eye on the road!" Francis lunged for the wheel, threw them around a crashed truck and back around the other side in time to avoid another stalled car. "That's why."
Zoey released the gas pedal from the crushing force of her foot and slammed on the brake instead. Alexia squealed as she was thrown into the back of Zoey's seat. Cutter swore as he flipped over the trunk space into the back seats — he'd been sitting on the divider looking for pursuit. Francis was more eloquent, swearing profusely as he slammed into the windshield.
"Shit, girl! What the hell was that for?"
Zoey ignored him and turned to Alexia. "Alex? You alright?"
"Is she alright?" Francis spluttered, sniffing through the blood on his face. He'd smashed his nose on the glass. "What about me?"
Zoey looked at him. "I don't know your name, you call me 'hey, girl,' and you think it is smart to take the wheel from a forty-five degree angle. Answer that and I might start caring about what happened to your nose."
Francis bolted to his feet, promptly lost his balance and fell out of the jeep. Zoey ignored the swearing and looked back at Alexia. "You okay?" she asked.
Alexia nodded, but her eyes were wide and her lips trembled. Zoey put it down to shock. She took off her raincoat and wrapped it around Alexia's shoulders — leaving Zoey in her pink sweater — and then she turned back to the two men. She jumped.
Cutter smirked two inches away from her face. "Hell-o." Then he snickered.
"You're lucky I didn't punch you in the face."
"And you two are lucky me and Francis were passing by."
"With a pair of shotguns?"
"Tough neighborhood," Cutter said. "Nowadays a least. Guy tried to rob me yesterday."
"Really?" Zoey asked, thinking that anyone crazy enough to try and rob a pair like this had to have a death wish. Of course, she was currently conversing with one and nowhere near any possible help, so what did that make her?
"Yeah. Tried to eat my arm."
Zoey felt her eyes widen. She had not expected that.
"I think Frankie needs your help, girly." Cutter grinned again.
"My name is Zoey."
"Nice to meet you, Zoey."
"Yeah, just fucking great," Francis muttered dabbing at his nose. "Okay, Zoey, in the back. I'm driving. You've proved that women suck at driving."
"I was doing fine."
"No. No, you were not."
Cutter grabbed Zoey's arm and hoisted her into the back. He jumped into the driver's seat and shoved Francis down into the passenger seat. "Frankie… be a good boy and get your nose clean. Then you can have a sweetie."
"Cutter, I am seriously this close to punching you in the face and leaving you for the zombies."
"I'm, like, this close to, like, punching you in the, ya know, like, the face," Cutter said, gunning the engine.
Francis flattened into his seat. "Next chance I get, I am so kicking your ass."
"Good luck with that."
Zoey glanced at Alexia — who seemed alright if a bit scared — and then leaned between the front seats. "Here, let me see."
"What?" Francis asked, sniffing.
"Not broken," Zoey said, taking his face and gently touching his nose. He swore. "But it will hurt for the next day or two. Just a burst blood vessel."
"Thank you, Doctor PhD," Francis snarled, jerking away from Zoey's careful fingers.
Zoey ignored him and looked at Cutter. It had been so hectic a minute or so ago, and while she knew it was only adrenaline keeping her going at this point, Cutter and Francis looked like they were actually having fun.
"Where are we going?" Zoey asked, noting they were heading deeper into the city.
"Where we set up a base camp," Cutter said and then cocked a thumb toward the back. "We didn't come for survivors, you know."
Zoey looked in the back. Bags of canned food, boxes of what looked like ammo and a couple of odds and ends like rags, PVC pipe and…
"Smoke detectors?"
"Hey," Francis said, turning in his seat to look at her. "Those zombies or whatever they are, love noise. Real loud annoying noises. Smoke detectors make great diversions. We all carry one or two."
"'We all?'" Zoey echoed. "Who?"
"Our ex-inmates," Cutter supplied.
Zoey froze. "You're convicts?"
"Ex-convicts," Cutter said, shaking a finger at her. "I got parole last week and Francis a month ago. We shared a cell and became the best of friends." Cutter looped an arm around Francis' shoulder.
"Get off," Francis snarled, shrugging the arm away.
Zoey backed up in her seat a bit, wondering if she would survive a jump out of a moving vehicle. Cutter unnerved her again by voicing her thoughts.
"You might survive jumping, Zoey, but you would not last long without a gun. A firearm is probably the only language they understand anymore." He turned around and smirked. "Besides, I killed those guys four years ago. I'm not a psycho."
"Hey, Psycho," Francis bellowed. "Eyes on the road."
Cutter turned back in time to skid around a corner. "And Frankie is even better than me. He's only an arsonist. Never killed anyone."
"Stop calling me Frankie!"
"Of course, if grouchiness was a crime, Francis would get life."
"Shut your fucking mouth, Cutter, before I make you."
"Oh, language, Francis. There are ladies present."
Zoey kept a firm grip on Alexia's arm as they walked through the parking lot of the prison, Cutter and Francis flanking them, shotguns still held tight in hands.
"So," Zoey asked, quietly. "The inmates are now the jailors?"
"What? No," Francis growled. "But don't touch anyone."
"Why?"
"Sometimes they change. Its always fast, the change," Cutter murmured. "Friends turn into arm chewing enemies faster than you can say Deoxyribonucleic Acid."
Francis raised an eyebrow.
"What? A murderer can't have a good vocabulary?"
"Why the hell would you need a good vocabulary?"
"Impress the ladies."
Francis didn't bother to hide his laugh in a cough or sneeze. He broke down laughing, clutching his side. "You are one crazy son of a —"
A sudden scream drowned Francis out. Alexia squeaked, too scared to even scream herself. Zoey slid in front of her friend and faced the shriek. Cutter was already running toward a pair of struggling bodies.
"Hey," he yelled, bringing the gun's butt into one man's rib, launching him off. "Human's off the menu."
Zoey clenched her eyes shut as the shotgun went off, but she still heard the sickly splatter.
She opened her eyes to see Cutter aim a pistol at the downed man's face and pull the trigger. She couldn't turn away in time to miss seeing the head come apart like a melon.
She felt her bile rise and forced it down.
Alexia turned and threw up.
"Oh, nice," Cutter said, humorously. "Come on," he said, slipping the pistol into its makeshift holster and slinging the shotgun onto his back. He wrapped an arm around Alexia and practically carried her across the yard.
Zoey was forced to stay with Francis — who had gripped her arm — and watched her friend go with a murderer.
"What do you want?" she snarled at Francis.
"She's fine with him," the man said, sober. "Better to stay together." He dragged her over to the two dead men.
"You're scared?" Zoey asked, incredulous.
"No. Just a precaution." Francis kicked the body of the one who had been on top. "We've been getting more of these. Jump and scream then claw your throat out."
"Was killing the other guy necessary?"
"Yeah." Francis turned away and took her arm, leading her into the prison hall. "Don't know how they get in. The ones they attack have a high chance of changing so killing them sooner puts us out of danger." He glanced at her. "And puts them out of their misery."
"So if you get cut by the… the infected, you are going to change?"
"No. I don't think so. Some of us have immunity to it, I think. Before we knew what they could do, I got cut up bad. You don't see me going for your throat."
"So it's like rabies."
Francis snorted. "Yeah. A really, really bad case of rabies."
