Cadenza

Extended Summary (As of Nov 27, 2009 and subject to change): Society is like an orchestra, and its strict rules the score of a concerto. In a concerto, the cadenza is where the player has the freedom to do whatever he likes and make whatever impression he chooses. Then, the orchestra picks up again, leaving the audience in awe of the display. Nowadays, cadenzas tend to be written by a third party and the soloist would practice it and play it as ordained by someone else, like how we dance to society's rules. The Infection broke down these rules. Free of these constraints, what would these estranged friends play when they could play from their heart?

Disclaimer: Left 4 Dead belongs to Valve, though I've taken the liberty to change certain elements of the game and setting to my liking and/or convenience. The characters and the story itself belong to me.

Line Breaks: Line breaks indicate a change in point of view. It is set up so that you, the reader, would eventually find out the name and identity of the characters without a blatant "I am Bob" at the top. If it is still too hard to follow, tell me so and I will try to make it more obvious in the future.

Warnings: Corny jokes, as I tend to write in the wee hours of morning. I ASSUMED that since you, the reader, played L4D, you will be okay with some references to blood, mild violence, and suggestive themes.

Work In Progress: I have everything in ONE Word document, so I am always reading and rereading what I wrote, and thus rewriting and editing and the works. The point: I might change minor things like wording, adding detail, etc. as I see fit to 'finished' chapters. Sorry. I will try to keep a change log.

Reviews (12/1/09): I encourage reviews! I'm always seeking to improve. Recently I realized I had anonymous reviews disabled, but now it is enabled. My mistake.

Cadenza: Cadenza often refers to a portion of a concerto in which the orchestra stops playing, leaving the soloist to play alone in free time (without a strict, regular pulse) and can be written or improvised, depending on what the composer specifies. This normally occurs near the end of the first movement, though it can be at any point in a concerto... It usually is the most elaborate and virtuosic part that the solo instrument plays during the whole piece. At the end of the cadenza, the orchestra re-enters, and generally finishes off the movement on their own, or, less often, with the solo instrument.

(From Wikipedia)

Part I:

I woke up reluctantly to the sound of my beeper going off. The thing was promptly silenced and tossed back into the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. I didn't have to check it; the hospital was calling me again. It was only a month into the job and I was already sick of it—the assumption that I was always available. But that was something I agreed to when I signed the contract with the three full pages of tiny text that basically said when I was on call, I was fair game, so I dragged myself out of bed and pulled on fresh clothes. A dim red glow in on the nightstand slowly focused into something that resembled 4:03 AM.

The television was still on; I had forgotten to turn it off before I passed out. I vaguely recalled turning it on to catch the news before my headache decided for me that my day was over. Now it was going on about the infection. It had been going on about little else for a good week. The information barely seeped into my brain as I lurched towards the bathroom and made myself presentable. I discerned something about quarantine. Everyone was advised to increase sanitary habits…yadda yadda.

I tried not to crash into anything as I sleep-drove towards the hospital. For self preservation reasons, I whittled an entire cigarette down to the base. It cleared my head a little, so I made it to the hospital in one piece. Walking out to the doors, I took one last drag and prayed it would help drown out the headache I was in for when I entered the building and all these nurses would babble information and statistics at me…and I'd have to process all of it…at four in the morning.

However, a whole pack of cigarettes would not have prepared me for what awaited me behind those double doors. The ER was a mess. There were nurses getting wrapped up in bandages and patients getting restrained and strapped to the cots. Security guards were running around everywhere; I didn't even realize we hired that many. The fluorescent lights made my vision blur, and I felt my focus slipping again.

"What's going on?" I asked no one in particular, expecting someone to reply. As it were, no one bothered to tell me. I felt as though I were walking in a hectic dream, with bright lights and echoes of people shouting, and people ignoring me in general. The situation looked like a job for riot police, not doctors, but I deduced that the guys upstairs must have pulled me from bed at four in the morning for a good reason.

One patient suddenly broke away from his captor and lunged at me. I instinctively evaded him and let a security guard protect me. As the scratched up security guard rescued me from my assailant, I pulled out another cigarette despite the large NO SMOKING sign near the door; I would probably need the smoke. The one who tried to pounce on me was starting to foam at the mouth. Diagnosis on the go wasn't my specialty, but I assumed he had some sort of rabies. That was all fine, except the number of people here with similar looks on their face at varying degrees of progression worried me just a little.

"WHAT IS GOING ON?" I tried again at the top of my voice. I coughed a little; smoking and shouting don't always work well together. This time I got a little attention. I didn't like what I heard.

The military shut down my city pretty quickly. The infection wasn't even news at the time. We werethe news. Hordes of rabid people terrorized the streets, and it wasn't long before the military was called out to rescue the rest of us. That's what they said. Rescue.

I was one of the earlier people rescued from the city. We were airlifted to a nearby camp, where the medics gave us a checkup and patched up our scratches. Even then I felt something was wrong with the way they acted, but I didn't know what it was until I overheard one telling his superior that it was too late. Next thing I know, we were lined up against the wall, facing the business end of bunch of assault rifles.

The others were afraid; I could smell their fear. They huddled together as the soldiers recited to them that they were already infected and they had to satisfy the quarantine. To worsen the mood, it started to drizzle. I looked out at the firing squad from under my hood. It made me angry, and I guess that was when the adrenaline started pumping. Right before they pulled the trigger, I leapt out of the line of fire, making it farther than I thought I would. I broke into a run, not looking back as the sound of gunfire and screams pursued.

The soldiers were surprised too. By the time they figured out to point their gun at me, I had already dashed to the adjacent fence and cleared it. I was quite amazed to have jumped it so easily, but I credited the accomplishment to adrenaline.

Outside of the camp, I found myself alone on the abandoned streets. The military was chasing me, but they took the lengthy path around the fences that I sailed over. It didn't take me long to decide where I wanted to go. I made my way towards the suburbs, after losing my pursuers in the alleys where they didn't know their way around nearly as well as I did.

As corporate buildings gave way to suburban neighborhoods, I marveled at how I wasn't tired yet. Cross country was never my forte, yet the only complication I suffered was thirst. This wasn't too much of a problem. There were many convenience stores along the way. I eagerly turned the corner where I knew my favorite one would be.

To my surprise, I was not alone. There were a good twenty or so people there, smashing through the doors and windows. The interior was empty. I knew it was a bad idea to join rioters, but I did anyways, and the crowd largely ignored me. When they broke in, I snagged a drink from the fridge and was back on my way, chugging down the bottle of—I looked at the label—Fanta as I went. The rain steadily worsened, but I barely noticed and cared even less.

That was when things started to go wrong. The Fanta didn't satisfy my thirst at all; in fact it may have intensified it. My entire body started to ache, but it was a dull enough pain that failed to stop me from reaching the house I was looking for. Gasping more from thirst than fatigue, I threw myself at the large white house on the corner of its block, with the clear, bay windows and tall trees in the yard.

No one answered. I hammered at the door desperately. The abuse put a dent on the wood, so I promptly stopped and resorted to shouting at the upper stairs windows. A rather rude expletive replied, but from the wrong house.

"Cain!" I snarled, rattling the doorknob. The door opened unexpectedly, leaving me to blink like an idiot at the interior. Cain doesn't usually leave his door unlocked. The bewilderment passed quickly though, and I leapt through the house towards the only room he was likely to be in at this hour, nevermind that I ran across the grand piano in my hurry and made all sorts of racket. Another rude expletive hailed from the adjacent house.

"Cain?" I pounced into the master bedroom. The bed was empty but unmade, and it looked like someone had rolled out of it in a hurry. There were clothes on the floor and the closet was left open with garments spilling out. The mess contrasted with the orderliness in the rest of the house. The television was still on, depicting the rescue of citizens in the nearby city—my city. They left out the firing squad part. Despite my hurry, the television caught my attention. I stuck my face in front of it and turned up the volume. Footage of infected people flashed across the screen. As I scrutinized their faces, I thought of the people I passed on my way here, on the streets as well as at the convenience store. Could they have been infected? If so, why didn't they attack me?

I arrived at the conclusion that the doctor would have a better conclusion than me. All the evidence indicated he was summoned to the hospital, so I bolted down the stairs with my new destination in mind. I ended up collapsing and falling down the last couple stairs. The grinding pain in my bones attacked again, and I was getting a headache too. Deciding that I wasn't even going to find my way in this state, I navigated my way back up and located the aspirin. Maybe I knew the house a little better than I should.

I popped two pills into my mouth. That turned out to be a mistake, but I didn't know why, and it was too late.

I managed to avoid any injuries, major or minor, in the long hours I labored in the hospital trying to figure out what happened. Whatever the problem was, I didn't want to risk catching it, so I carefully avoided possibilities of skin abrasions. I survived the tedious meetings over the information the doctors had gathered in the course of the night as well as the data compiled by hospitals in the main city which had been hit earlier. It wasn't long before the government came in and ordered everyone back to his or her homes and to avoid contact with anyone else.

Right, the quarantine. I had almost forgotten about it. Apparently we were to be airlifted the next day. By we, they meant the people who had yet to be scratched, bitten, or otherwise maimed by the rabies-infected patients. They ordered us to be discreet, since many people have been bitten and they probably would not like to be told that their rescue would be delayed by checkups.

The cigarette pack was empty by the time I made it back to my house. No doubt some of the other doctors resented my habits, but given the situation, enforcing smoking rules was the last thing on their minds. I worked out the facts in my head. The infected only feel the urge to attack the uninfected. The virus enhances a few physical abilities while the mind regresses. Advanced cases of the infection include horde mentality and behavior. It was also observed that the infection manifests a bit differently from individual to individual. Most become crazy but change very little physically. In some cases the infected would even mutate and change their appearance.

My train of thought derailed when I reached the door. It was open. There was an intruder in my house in the middle of quarantine! I cursed under my breath and armed myself with a candlestick off the dining table. I kept a handgun upstairs in my nightstand drawer, but it felt unwise to rush up there at the moment. Hopefully this intruder was not infected, lest I expose myself to this odd disease.

It was raining quite hard now. I could barely hear my own footsteps over the sound of rain colliding with the windows. Still, I carefully searched my house from the bottom up, mindful to check all the possible hiding spaces. The longer I waited, the harder my heart pounded against my chest. I resisted the urge to light another cig. Not that smoking is ever healthy, but the professional side of me decided I had consumed enough carcinogens at the hospital.

The intruder was passed out next to my nightstand. A bottle of aspirin lay near him, with half its contents spilt over the floor. I prodded him with the candlestick, but got no reaction. Satisfied, I proceeded to drag him away so I could retrieve my gun.

That woke him up. I barely made three feet when he sprang out of my grasp and behind the sofa where I couldn't see him. This scared me out of half my lifespan and I instantly snatched the candlestick again. I could hear him growling and snarling to himself, and tried to follow the sound so I could attempt to knock him out. When I saw him again, he was leaping through the air reaching for my face. My reflexes swung the candlestick at him, knocking him out of the air.

He landed on his feet and pounced again before I finished my swing. The momentum brought the two of crashing into the wall, and he lost his footing. I saw the opening to quickly switch the candlestick for the gun, but he disappeared again. I decided he had the advantage in close quarters so I bolted down the stairs and out the front door into the rain, not knowing where the heck I was going to run after that but wanting as much distance as possible between the creature and myself. I turned around and leveled the gun at the door; I'm a pretty good shot, so said my time at the shooting range.

He didn't disappoint. A blurred shadow leapt out of the darkness, straight out the door at me and the barrel of my gun. I had a clear shot at his head…

...And a clear view of his face.

"Alex!" I exclaimed, for no good reason. The finger on the trigger froze. In that split second I did not shoot, he had me on the floor and pinned. The gun was knocked out of my hand and lost in the rain somewhere. The impact from my back hitting the ground stunned me while he wasted no time clawing at my torso. "Alex, stop it! It's me!" I screamed as I struggled to push him off. His claws ripped past my shirt into my flesh, leaving me to wonder why he had claws in the first place. "Get the hell off of me Alex! ARGH!" The gashes burned, and the creature brushed aside all attempts at removing him. He was screaming in his frenzy, and so was I. Somewhere in the distance there was shouting too. When all the noise started to become indistinguishable to me and I was reduced to only protecting my face from the onslaught of rain and nails, Alex—or the creature I called Alex—suddenly decided to relent. He turned his hooded face around, as though he was lost. Then he looked at me in all my misery, soaked in rain and blood and shreds of what used to be my shirt. "Alex," I pleaded, assuming through the excellent logic of desperate optimism that he had finally recognized who I was.

Desperate optimism was simply another way of saying wishful thinking. A feral roar rolled over us from the distance, and like a wolf answering his brethren's call, Alex promptly forgot about me and took off in that direction. He went towards the military encampment, and in his wake, a huge horde of infected citizens followed suit. Some of them broke into the houses nearby, attacking the residents. I could only watch motionlessly from the cement, paralyzed by the pain and shock from what Alex did to me. I didn't want to be one of them. I willed with all my heart that I was one of the few immune ones, even though it was obvious the military stationed here was doomed already and there would be no airlift to take me out of here. In my heart I knew it was futile, such wishful thinking, but it is always hard to accept that you can't change the inevitable.

As if to confirm my fate, the mass of infected lurched past me without sparing me as much as a glance, uninterested in someone just like them.

A/N: [11-27-09]

- I tend not to write in first person, so bear with me as I learn the art. It is not as flexible as I would like, but I do find it fun and enlightening. Constructive criticism is always welcome, either through PMs or reviews.

- I don't have this all carefully planned out; it comes to me as I write. The direction of the plot is at the mercy of my whims and mood swings...and maybe other people's suggestions. I may or may not have a few chapters finished in advance, but that's as far as "planning" will ever go.

- Line breaks = different point of view.