Many A Damned Soul.

*Hey there, you can call me Daelron. Awhile ago, before Left 4 Dead 2 was released, me and some friends of mine toyed around with some ideas for Special Infected, and boy, did we create some pretty cool ones. But we never did anything, and the ideas have been sitting in my head for awhile, and I chose to make a story based around each. Each one will be about a chapter long, and will show there strengths, their weaknesses, and how they react to the survivors and their new shaped world. There will be many, some even I created on my own, and I imagined them to make the world of Left 4 Dead an even scarier place then it is, with many more horrors then just a Tank, or a Witch, or Hunter. I see it as the "Green Flu" would have made many, MANY, Mutated Zombies. And if you think that your story could be spiced up with an addition of some of these creatures, please, please ask me for permission to use them. Also, if any of the infected I made are some that have already been used before, let me know, with proof of course, and I will remove them, any similarities are merely coincidence. Anyways, Enjoy the first Infected my friends and I created… The Flamer! OooOOOOoooo.

(Oh, and I do not own L4D, L4D2, or anything else in the world of L4D, only the infected and any reoccurring characters.)*

Chapter 1: The Flamer

I am not supposed to remember who I am, what I once was before. They told us they would never remember being human, way before all the world went to hell, and Zombies, or "Infected Individuals" as the fancy people would say, took over everything. But here I am, a shell of my former self. Man, Karma and Irony had a child and sent it after me. I was just a small town boy, living in a small town apartment, with a jerk wad of a father, and a coward of a mother. My "Father", loved to sit on his ass and watch TV. And the times he wasn't, he was beating me, Mom, the neighbours, the cops, everyone. But mom had connections, and got him out of trouble all the time. I still don't understand why she let him off the hook all the time. As for me, well, all that abuse turned me into a real pyromaniac. I would burn shit for fun, light up a tree or two, burn down a car, ignite an old warehouse, you name it. But like I said, Karma and Ironies child came down on my head like a piano.

It was about four or five in the evening, and I was just finishing up on my final touches for the biggest pyrotechnic event in history of Me. A trucks worth of gas cans, several allowances worth of firecrackers, and as much combustible material I could get my hands on. All lovingly pact into some warehouse in the middle of nowhere. With lighter flicked, I approached the soon to be crater with maddened glee, but my nerdgasm of a forth of July explosion would not be, yet. A scream echoed from down the alley way, and I saw some creepy looking businessman tearing ass towards this lady. Good thing I always kept a combat knife on me at all times, I pulled it out and ran to help, but I was too late, and the guy jumped her and starting tearing her apart. Yeah, that's right, a guy in a suit tearing a woman apart with his bare hands. At least she stopped screaming, I think, I could still hear screaming. I think it was me. Shit. It was me.

This, thing, looked up at me, and ran towards me, screaming bloody murder as it sprinted. So I went the other way, running as fast as my legs could carry me. I didn't even bother to look behind me, bastard was making so much noise, yet he still grabbed my arm, and chomped down. Hurt like nothing ever in my life, and I shook him off and slammed him to a wall, stabbing my knife into this guys stomach. He just kept going, ignoring the six inch blade in his gut.

"What the hell man! What are you!" I screamed at him, to no avail.

He kept coming, so I grabbed the first thing I could, which happened to be a piece of rebar, and stabbed him straight into the wall of the warehouse. He didn't even flinch, just kept flailing around as his blood pooled on the ground. I hated this guy with a passion, he ruined what was to be my debut of awesomeness, and bit me like some crazy homeless guy, but the show must go on. Being the pyromaniac I am, and the old saying ringing in my head, "Vengeance is like a raging inferno", I pulled out my spare lighter, and flicked it on.

"I don't give a rats ass who you are, your gunna burn!"

And with a vengeance, like in the movies, I tossed the lighter on the ground on some spilt gasoline, and ran like I was running from the four horsemen, which would have made sense to me. I got to the end of the alleyway, and whooped and cheered as the sky was lighted up with colours galore. Best show of my life. That is, until I turned around, and saw the streets dead. Cars were crashed, bodies littered the ground, papers and random debris were everywhere. I was in there for not even ten minutes, and the apocalypse started without me.

I traveled, gathered supplies, and was fine for awhile. I met some people, they were cool, taught me things. I learnt that I should have paid attention to the news, and that this "Green Flu" turned into the "Zombie Flu". One of the dudes in our group was a CEDA employee, and he told us this infection mutated people into rabid monsters, devoid of pain, emotion, and anything else human. They were like the zombies from the movies, except they still were humaish, just with no limits to their pain tolerance, and they had endurance to outrun the fastest runner, simply by just never stopping. Gone was the ways of the old, welcome to the endgame, the final time of humanity.

Everything would have been fine, had it not been until the guy told us how the virus was transmitted. Bites were the usual cause, but if the blood got in your open wounds, or their saliva got inside your bloodstream, you had a high chance of infection. It all depended on your immune system to see how long you will last. Some people were lucky, they were immune completely. Others, well, it was all an inevitability for them. If you forgot to eat your fruits and veggies, well, you were gunna turn soon, otherwise, it could take awhile. Man, I started to hate CEDA Guy after that, because the next day, I felt it.

At first, it was fine, just a slight warmth in my chest. Then it spread, fast, a burning pain everywhere. I started to sweat as if I had run a marathon in under five seconds. I think the others might have noticed something was off, so I made an excuse, and ran to the nearest house, and hid in the bathroom. It got worse from there. My arms started to develop boils, that popped almost immediately. My skin paled drastically, and my neck seemed to elongate forward, so I stood in a hunched over position. But the worst part was the burning pain in my chest, felt like my lungs were on fire. I had always wondered what it would be like to burn, but never wanted to be committed to an asylum for attempted suicide. Now I knew, and I wish I didn't.

After that, I don't know much, just woke up on the floor. The fire was still there, but less. What took me back the most was the hunger. It was like a hole in me, demanding me to fill it. The next odd thing was the room was burnt to a crisp. The walls, the floor everything was burnt. And myself? Well I was not spared either. My skin was charred, but it seemed leathery and tough. I stood up, hunched over, my sense of sight seemed to have darkened. And the hunger pressed on me, I needed to feed. Whoever I was in the past, I was someone new.

The door was not a problem, it was hanging there by just a few screws in crispy wood, so I managed to claw it off fine. Yeah, claw it off, I had short claws now, forgot to mention that. My strength seemed good, but I was a little top heavy, as my neck and shoulders were bigger, and my legs were not as strong as before. With persistence, I learnt how to walk in my new form, the hunger, who I called Ralph, urging me on.

"Feed", Ralph seemed to say. "Kill. Eat. Maim. BURN!"

The last thought took me by surprise, but it was not in any way different from before, just stronger. So I kept going, moving through the town, killing the smaller ones that I suppose were like me, but they were weaker. Easily killed. I grabbed on one and decided to try to eat it, maybe this might appease Ralph. The meal was less then satisfactory, but Ralph was content. For now.

With nothing else to do but stay there and kill the Unburnt Ones as I liked to call them, as they hadn't been burnt as I had been, I kept walking. Ralph decided to pipe up again, demanding food. I realized that something was different this time I killed one of the Unburnt Ones, I needed better meat. And like the charm of lady luck playing in my ear, I heard the sounds of people. Honest to god, uninfected, people. I started to wheeze. Wait a minute, I didn't have asthma before. Ralph decided, in his own way, to give some advice.

"Burn!"

I guess that helped, maybe, as the fire in my lungs seemed to pick up again. Know, I was ready, I could kill the Uninfected, and get Ralph the good meat he wants. They were not too far away, only two of them had guns, the rest had various tools to bash in skulls, or slice apart bodies. It was rather gory, blood and guts everywhere. Two of them seemed hurt, with gash wounds on one, and the other seemed like he had gotten in a fight with a sledgehammer, and lost. This would be easy.

While they were distracted by the hordes of Unburnt Ones, I snuck up, hoping to do whatever Ralph had cooked up to its greatest effect. Yet, my wheezing was just too loud, and they noticed me. One of them, who seemed familiar, pointed and shouted. It was strange, his words were all garbled, but they showed anger, surprise, and better yet, fear. Ralph was screaming at me, to kill them, light them up, make a bonfire too roast. With a big gulp of air, and a clack of my teeth, I let loose a torrent of flame, engulfing almost everyone of them. The raging inferno I had been carrying all this time shot out like a missile, and exploded in a gush of fire I have never in my life imagined. It just kept coming out, Ralph was screaming in maddened glee as these Survivors were roasted alive. It was like a dream come true, I was now like all those dragons I had read about as a kid. I was invincible, nothing could stop my wrath!

Finally, I was spent, and the flames from my mouth guttered out. The force of the blast knocked me back a bit, and I was still for a moment trying to catch my breath. Everything was quiet at first, then I heard the screaming. It was like a symphony composed by Mozart to me. Only three of the seven that were there were left alive, the rest, dead or dying by my flames. Ralph, well, if he were real, he would be spinning around like a kid in a candy store at all the food for him, and me. I grinned, I was now a fiery god. With a wheezy laugh of a roar, the other survivors scrambled to their feet. With no Unburnt Ones left, they had an easy time running away, not knowing that they could have killed me then and there, had they known I was out of juice. I was not even sure if I could have run away in the first place. One of them, the familiar looking one, lagged behind, glaring at me, before running off with the others. A snort escaped my mouth, letting out a little woosh of fire.

Settling down, I began to feast on the remains of one of the survivors, chomping down on the well roasted bits. Some Unburnt Ones came, and joined my feast, but I cared not, there was plenty to go around. Ralph was more then pleased to share, as he was kept fed, and happy. Now my life had began anew, through the fire and the flames, I hade been reborn. Like a phoenix of legends old.

Welcome to the Apocalypse, Enjoy a nice roast by the bonfire… Or don't.

P.O.V Shift, CEDA Dude.

I could not believe what I had seen. One moment my little band of survivors was running for our lives, the next, almost all of us were killed, by god knows what that thing was. He looked like that twitchy kid, Mike, who ran off, but horribly disfigured. We had guessed how far the mutations would go, but we never thought this far. It was tall, with skinny legs, covered by the tattered remnants of jeans. The chest was bare, and showed massive growth in the chest, shoulders, and neck. Skin completely burnt, it had a dark tinge to it, like a very bad suntan, the arms seemed to have elongated out, and had miniature claws on them. Its face, if you could call it that, was even more disfigured. What was left of its mouth was just few shreds of cheek, while the teeth seemed to have formed some sort of hard surface, that might have been the ignition source for the jet of flame it spewed out. It must have been some sort of natural occurring gas, accounting for the wheezing sound I noticed before its arrival. Other then that, it had no nose left, either burnt or scratched off, and the hair of the creature was gone, scalp showing signs of massive burns. Whatever it was, I had to remember everything about it, in case I ran into to other survivors, or god grant, a CEDA outpost. I decided to call this new creature, The Flamer. Before I left, it glared at me, with almost a look of recognition. That was the most startling thing about it, the look it gave me seemed of smug, well, victory, almost human like. I shock my head and ran off. No point staying to get burnt to death, and my new companions were already ahead of me, and there was no way in hell I was going alone.

*Thanks for reading everyone, I hope you enjoyed the story of, The Flamer. Leave a review, favourite, or whatever you want. I will be doing more stories soon… also, if anyone wants to give CEDA Guy a name, let me know, and I just might make him a reoccurring character. ;D

The next story will be up sometime soon, I hope, and it will detail….. *DUH DUH DUHN!* The Listener! OH GAWD LAWRDY LAWRDY HELP US!

Till then, good times!*