Disclaimer: Don't own Left 4 Dead, but love it.
Author Notes: This is just my take on how the survivors met, how this thing got started, and a little more background on the characters since we've got nothing. It's nothing fancy, and only gonna be about four chapters long, so yeah. Take it for what it is.
For as long as Zoey Edgeworth could remember, she'd loved horror movies. Classics, newer stuff; vampires, werewolves, mummies, zombies; especially zombies. Dull witted creatures, they might have been creepy as hell, but their slow movements made them easy to outrun. Besides that, these days, zombies movies were the only ones that could still scare the shit out of her. After awhile, scary movies began to lose their fear factor, and that's exactly why she loved them. Horror movies always had the same basic plot: people are happy, laughing, something spooky happens, people die, and one, maybe two, survive. Always. The predictability made it familiar. Familiarity made it secure. Security makes anyone feel better.
Not that Zoey needed to feel better. If anyone, she was prime for feeling fantastic; that was just the by product of being the daughter of three generations of heart surgeons. It wasn't so bad, the 'always eat your veggies and not too much Halloween candy' gig, and, when asked, the 'sorry dad isn't here for your birthday, there was an emergency at the hospital' thing didn't suck as hard as it did in reality. No, Zoey Edgeworth did not need to feel better. If anything, she needed her father to understand.
"They're going to kick you out?" Her father demanded, phone propped on his left shoulder. His left hand was covering the speaker, pulling it a few inches away from his lips. In his right hand he held a letter from the dean of her school, indentical, she assumed, to the one he'd sent her; hit the books or hit the road. Too many B movies, too little A papers. A little less Lugosi, a little more Poe. "Your grades are dropping?" He father said next, his eyes scanning the letter further down. "Why?"
Zoey shrugged. "I don't want to be a doctor."
"Zoey - yes, I'm still here," He stopped midway, speaking into the phone as whomever it was came back from being away. Zoey wasn't sure who it was, nor did she care. Her father swiveled in his chair to continue his conversation, turning his back to her briefly and Zoey just sighed; typical. These Friday visits weren't as pleasant as they should have been, and it was all the harder when it was always at Mercy Hospital. Legacy or not, Zoey had never really wanted to be a heart surgeon. Film making was quickly becoming her passion and she knew her father wasn't going to be too thrilled about that. She couldn't imagine her mother would be too thrilled, either, though her parents had long since been divorced. Zoey glanced at the picture of the three of them still sitting on her father's desk, growing bored. She wasn't entirely why he kept it there, but if anything, she figured he'd been too busy to notice, especially of late. She knew there'd been reports of people coming in incredibly sick, and from the bits and pieces she picked up from hanging around the hospital, the doctors didn't know what it was.
"Right, right." Her father said into the phone and Zoey just grabbed her book bag and left. Screw this. She could hear her dad calling after her, but she ignored him. She was going to go crash at her boyfriend's for the night. He was out of town, but she had keys, and it beat the hell out of her dorm room. Her room mate had a date, and she didn't need one more night of trying to sleep in the hallway as the bed went knock, knock, against the wall.
"See you again tomorrow, Miss Edgeworth?" The head nurse asked Zoey as she passed and Zoey just threw over her shoulder, "Not if I can help it!"
The Crystal Creek apartments were a hop, skip, and a jump from the hospital, and within no time, Zoey was there. There hadn't been much scenery along the way, just the classic view of the city, complete with office buildings, one or two houses, and lots of cars and streets. On these walks, Zoey liked to have her ipod out and just chill. It was the simplest way to go, and if no one messed with her because she seemed preoccupied, it was all the same to her. The Crystal Creek apartments were kind a dump, but Zoey liked them. It had a more homier feel than the large houses she'd grown up in, and the people were always really friendly. One in particular was her boyfriend's Hell's Angel's neighbor; Francis Abernathy. The guy hated everything except vests it seemed, but Zoey kind of had a soft spot for him; he'd always been nice to her.
The lobby was pretty deserted, just a guy at one of the machines kind of hovering awkwardly, his arms slack, his knees bent. He was probably higher than the moon so Zoey chose to take the stairs instead of wait for the slow ass elevator. She began the long ascent, jogging them two at a time. Halfway up to her boyfriend's apartment on the 8th floor, she found someone cowering in the corner. It wasn't entirely unusual to find people hanging out in the stairwell and drug deals were made in these apartments almost constantly. She frowned; with one druggie downstairs already, she wasn't entirely surprised to see someone else, but something about this one caused her to stop. They were coughing heavily, one hand on the wall for support, another on their chest.
"Are you all right?" She asked cautiously. The person didn't respond, just coughed again. Since the lobby had been pretty much deserted downstairs, there was no one to call for help. The person coughed yet again, this time the coughs wracking their whole body and causing them to fall to their knees. They were wearing a hoodie, the hood pulled up and covering their face, so she had no idea if this was even a male or a female. Zoey looked around; she couldn't just leave, but this looked like some nasty cold - or some really good dope - and she sure as hell didn't want to catch it, or, as the case may be, get involved. She sighed, taking off her headphones. Someone in a nearby apartment seemed to be watching a horror movie, because Zoey could make out the all too familiar sounds of zombie moans followed by a gunshot.
"Do you live around here? We should probably call 911..." She told the person on the ground, crouching down near them. They pushed her away immediately, causing her to fall backwards onto her back pockets, likely causing her to crush the MP3 player stored there. "Dude, what the hell?" She pulled herself to her feet again, wondering why she was spending so much time trying to help someone who clearly didn't want it. Maybe it was all the doctor's she'd grown up around her: see a sick person, heal them. Simple. She didn't realize it would be so hard, though, what with whomever was watching the horror movie having turned it up so that the moans and gunshots followed by "run!" were so loud she could hardly think.
"Hold still, I can help you." She told the person, trying once again. She decided not to check and see if her player was broken, figuring that would probabley make her cause this person more pain instead of helping them - she didn't want to be counterproductive, after all. She was focused on trying to help this person she didn't even know, concentrating so hard on blocking out what she thought was a movie, that when the person suddenly wasn't a person, she didn't know how to react. The thing let out a bloodcurdling screech, shoving her back once again, and this time all she did was scream as wall, watching as it leapt into the air and -
And suddenly, was landing in a heap next to her, blood seeping from a hole in his it's chest. "Holy shit!" She scrambled to her feet, her mind reeling. She looked from the thing lying on the floor next to her, to Francis, standing a few steps below her, the gunshots still ringing in her ears and the-not-quite-a-horror-movie-so-much-as-reality sounds coming from outside.
He grinned at her, a shotgun propped on his shoulder. "Yeah, I'm pretty awesome."