A/N: My first L4D fic, be nice! My brother got this game for Christmas, and only recently did he actually let me play. I absolutely adore the whole 'zombie apocalypse' thing, but it always leaves me wondering – where are the zombie children?I understand it is a touchy subject for some, however.
And yes, just a warning: there is the concept of Infected children in here. Obviously. If the thought of dead children bothers you as much as it does me, don't read this.
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There are many things Rochelle has brought herself to do in her life. A few weeks ago she would have never thought herself to be so mindlessly blowing off the heads of zombie-like Infected people. At first all she could think of was who these people were – did they have spouses, children, jobs? Had their pets starved slowly in the constraints of their backyard? She would lie awake each night at the safe houses, tears silently streaming down her face, her body racked with sobs as she thought about all the people she had killed that day. Now it was just the daily grind, something she had to forget about. It's just the way the cookie crumbles.
But there was nothing that had affected her the way this had.
They were walking through another small town, another unnamed place crawling with the Infected when they passed a tall fence. Tiny hands grasped at the metal as small, rasping voices hissed and moaned at them. Rochelle paused, horrified as the little uniformed hand clung to the fence so close to her, pigtails matted with blood and uniform hanging loosely of her bony frame.
She was one of the many schoolchildren trapped in the abandoned schoolyard.
"Oh shit, man." Ellis said, pulling out his shotgun and backing up. Coach shook his head, mumbling prayers.
"Come on, guys. The safe house is barely a mile away." Nick called, and Rochelle ripped her gaze away from the tiny horde and over to the suited figure some distance ahead. Ellis jogged forward and Coach threw an arm over Rochelle's shoulder, slowly dragging her away.
"They were only kids. Just… 10 at the most… and, and they never…" Rochelle mumbled on and off, sitting at the safe house table. She was out of it. She couldn't even imagine… she didn't want to imagine what it must have been like. Did the children turn before or after their parents? And now they would never know old age, they would never know love or marriage or children of their own… It was horrible.
And then when they had to go at the next day – because they just had to, you know, they couldn't stop there – they ran into them again. Figures they would finally find out how to climb the fence, and Nick was just blowing them all away and all Rochelle could do was stand there. And then later than night she lay awake, listening as Ellis mumbled prayers of forgiveness about shooting little children, and she remembered stories of how his momma raised him to be a good Catholic boy.
There's a lot Rochelle has had to do in this whole zombie apocalypse thing. But she would never, ever shoot a child.
Not even the bloody, bite-your-face-off kind.