Author's Note: New story, tells the perspectives of all your favorite characters living out their lives two weeks before 1st infection and tracks them all the way until two weeks after. It allows you to see the lives of the Special Infected before they were infected, the city before it was engulfed by the pandemic, and the individual journey of the survivors before their paths crossed, before they were engulfed in a world of chaos, before they were…

Left 4 Dead.

Chapter One

The Smoker

Two Weeks before First Infection…

….

Bet she's tight.

Bet you she's tight and slick down there. That's what I bet. Hot too. Hot and tight and slick. Yeah. Like a rich guy's wallet. Like an ironed leather glove. I bet that's what it feels like.

Sleek.

Hot.

Oh, and she wants me. I can tell. I can smell it on her. She wants me down there just as much I want her.

Randy R. Wick was smiling when the fist connected a ninth time, sinking in just below his left eye socket, throwing his world into a vibrating pulse of hot fuzzy colors. He wheezed, gagging on something hot and runny in the back of his throat as his head whip-lashed from the blow. Blood had smeared black and sticky across the entire right half of his face, flaking and peeling under the swollen blue swells of bruised skin from beneath. But he didn't look away. Randy's mismatching eyes never drifted from her, his yellow and red grin never fading even as he wheezed again and spat out a chipped tooth in a rose-petal of blood. When he was on his knees so none of the men around him noticed his listing gaze. None of them could see him staring. He liked that. They were talking but he couldn't hear them anymore. Their murmurs were lost in the vast movie theatre of Randy's mind, murmuring voices in the nosebleed seats, taking nothing away from the screen. From the secret angle Randy enjoying right now as he watched silently in the booth. Right next to the rattling projector itself.

On his knees.

Cowering.

Wheezing.

And….secretly….peeking up. Peeking up between the punches at her shiny, leather boots. Her winding black and purple tights that roamed all the way up her candy-cane legs…all the way to that secret darkness hidden in the shadow of her Minnie-skirt. Making him guess. Making him wonder.

Bet you it's hot. Bet's you it's blazing right now. Just wait till I get done with it baby. Just wait until I get my hands on it…

He didn't know her real name, or how she came to become the arm-candy for such a South-side prick as Paulie 'the Wall' Briggs who was beating the shit out of him right now. She'd been with him for the past three months now. Quiet, shy, and always there to watch Paulie work. Sometimes the Wall called her Candy.

Candy.

Randy liked it.

Candy Candy Candy.

Made him ponder. Made him think.

Y'know, I bet you she's sweet there too. Like melted skittles on a car seat. Like sugar water in a spoon. Just a bit more…just gotta lean in a bit more…

Something in his cheek gave way. His left eye clouded over red and began to drool. The Wall was saying something, his booming voice ripping through his mental motion picture like lightning down the screen.

"Little sugar prick, little tootsie-scuz! You still the big man now, huh? You still the big man? You still think you can steal from me?" His voice began to fade, overwhelmed by a shell-shock ringing as another blow cracked the side of his head. The Wall was a rightie and was standing on Wick's left the entire beating. All his punches had primarily targeted that half of his face. His left ear had swelled shut two minutes ago. Maybe permanently this time.

Randy used this blow to inch forward, skidding in his faded baby blue-jeans. He rocked forward further, craned his neck. Grinned.

Hello, hello Randy's Candy…

Candy didn't notice. She was on her phone, standing just three feet away. Her guazy purple-lined eyes never once meeting his. Never once in the 14 separate occasions she'd seen him in these circumstances had she ever looked at him. Randy didn't mind. He would have found it distracting.

"You still awake you lanky shit-stain, huh? You fallin' over cuz you're tired? Cuz you needin' a nap now?"

Randy spared his gaze for a second to glance over at the Wall, standing in front of the sun like the Colossus of Rhodes, a marble body of gym-inflated muscle pressing against the second-skin of a dirty wife-beater. He glanced up just in time to catch one final punch to his already weeping left eye. It made a sounded like meat on pavement and felt like it too. His world fogged over again, obscuring his view and wheeling his vision to that of the ghastly November sky as he landed hard on his back.

The Wall squatted down, leered into his good ear. "Maybe now you'll remember to get that two-grand you owe me under my apartment door. Maybe know you'll realize just who you're messing with when you mess with The Wall. You tussle with me, you tussle with the best. You hear that Wick? The best!"

Randy began wheezing again, but he was smiling inside. Laughing. Wiggling. The world grew fuzzy, he began to black out in the middle of the basketball court.

The Wall gave Randy two more kicks to the stomach before someone in his circle of buddies glanced over his shoulder at the distant howl of police sirens. "Hey, Paulie, let's get moivin' already, huh? I think old man Hills called the cops on us again."

The Wall dragged a greased forearm across his forehead, panting and grinned. "Yeah, Wheezing Wick here's learned his lesson for today, haven't yah?" He kicked Randy in the side again with enough force to roll him onto his stomach. He began dry heaving, head sideways on the asphalt. The Wall turned to Candy. "Hey babe, hang up. We're bouncing."

Candy's eyes lolled over for a moment, closed briefly in the slightest of sighs, then complied, her long black nails tossing some of her hair behind her ear as she soundlessly snapped her phone shut. She stepped quickly through the impressive sunrise of Randy's spit and blood, the stilettos of her high-heel boots making a series of crimson ellipses on the pavement as she strolled off.

In the corner of his pariff, Randy caught one last hazy glimpse up her skirt in his peripheral before she vanished into the murk and darkness of his shattered left eye.

And Randy R. Wick smiled.

Betcha one day I'll have it. He wheezed before drifting into unconsciousness. Betcha one day I'll take it. Like Candy from a baby, I'll have it…

Randy's Candy

…

…

…

"Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die."

-Pompey the Great