Rated M: for language and violence

I don't own Left 4 Dead; it's too epic 4 me.

Chapter 3: The Silent City

"Alright! Then its time to kick some Zombie ass!" Sam said before flinging open the safe room door.

They exited out onto the street, which was littered with abandoned cars, debris, bodies, and the occasional zombie.

"That's where we should be headed." Sam pointed towards one of the largest high rise buildings. "It's like, several blocks over, but we should make it before nightfall."

As Clark nodded in agreement, Taylor spoke up "We should find a way through the buildings rather then the streets."

When Sam looked at her she explained "Many of the streets are blocked for some reason or another, and the zombies are harder to defend against in wide areas, We would be better off through the houses as it's easier for us to defend, and we are less likely to run into some of the larger ones."

"Sounds good." Clark agreed "also keep an eye out for anything we can use."

The three headed out, towards an apartment block that hadn't been boarded up.

Taylor found herself on the tail end of the group as they entered the building. They headed up several flights of stairs, before entering a hallway which led to many of the apartment houses.

As they navigated their way through the wreckage left behind by the previous inhabitancies, Taylor heard the familiar growl of a hunter, emanating from one of the rooms they had just passed. She motioned quietly for Clark and Sam to wait, but just as she did, Sam tripped over some debris on the floor, causing him to crash into a trolley. The resulting noise was so loud that a large group of zombies raced out of their rooms to find the source of the noise.

All three of them open fire on the pack, dropping most of them before they had even reached them; unfortunately the hunter had used the chaos to leap at Clark before he had time to react. Knocking him to the ground, Clark yelled.

"GET OFF ME YOU LITTLE BITCH!"

Giving the zombie in front of her a shove, Taylor knocked it off balance into the zombies behind, giving her enough time to turn, grab the hunter, and forcefully throw it into the wall, before filling it with bullets.

By that time Clark had gotten to his feet, pulled out his axe, and started hacking his way through the zombies that were trying to rip him a new one.

Taylor turned back to her zombies with a scowl before opening fire. She was sure that she could have avoided the entire mess if she hadn't decided to work with Clark in the first place. On that matter, she was still trying to figure out why she had decided to team up with him. It certainly wasn't because of his attempt to reason with her common sense. After Kelly, Josh, and Andrew had died fighting that tank, she had decided to stay away from other people, and just search for her kid brother and a way out on her own. Then, just when she had finally tracked the Tank that had killed her old friends to the warehouse, she ended up finding someone else. She had only leapt in to save him out of instinct, so why hadn't she just ditched him?

She shook her head and finished off the last few zombie stragglers.

"Yea, sorry 'bout' that." Sam apologised, slightly embarrassed

"Whatever." Taylor replied "Let's just check the rooms then since we just cleared them out."

They quickly searched as many rooms as they dared; Taylor's search had found nothing, as she saw Sam, the look on his face told her that he had found the same. Clark on the other hand came running up to them with a while capsule bottle in his hand.

"Hey guys, I found some drugs that could come in useful." He told them, throwing the pills at Sam.

"Pain pills huh?" He said, looking at the label. "Where did you find them?"

"Funnily enough, in the toilet." Clark replied with a grin.

"Eugh!" Sam yelled before throwing them back to Clark like they were suddenly red hot.

"I did wash the bottle first stupid." Clark told him, throwing it back.

"Oh, uh never mind then." Sam said, before shoving it into his pocket.

Taylor shook her head again. She knew what Sam was like, she had met many people like him in the army, Rash, impulsive, tough as nails, but ultimately trustworthy, and the kind of person you would want guarding you back. But she found Clark odd, when she looked at him, she couldn't tell if he was actually was actually a light-hearted joker who didn't get affected by anything, or if it was just a cover.

"Anyway, we should get moving again, these guys seem to be able to sniff you out if you stay too long." Clark told them, interrupting Taylor's train of though while kicking one of the zombie's corpses for good measure.

They left the apartment block through one of the windows, and jumped from the balcony to a bus that had been abandoned on the street. That, along with several cars, blocked up the street, making driving close to impossible without a monster truck, or a bulldozer.

They jumped down, and began looking for another path to help reach the office block. Taylor spotted out an alley that looked like it was heading in the right direction, pointing it out to the others, they headed over, but as Clark poked his head around the corner into the alley, a loud roar echoed from the alleyway, and a tank came roaring from around the corner, whacking Clark as it went, sending him over the cars that blocked the street.

Taylor and Sam started 'advancing' backwards to the cars while shooting at the tank, which had picked them as its new target.

As they ran back, Taylor heard a cry, and saw in the corner of her eye, a large pink tongue wrap around Sam, pulling him off his feet and towards the bus, where a smoker was standing. Unfortunately for Sam, Taylor was unable to shoot at the smoker due to the large pound of muscle that was charging at her.

Then she heard gunfire, and heard the tell-tail gasp of the smoker exploding, freeing Sam from its tongue. She found out later that Clark had managed to get back to his feet after the Tank had knocked him sky high over the cars, He had then found a M4 rifle on the ground, next to a dead soldier. Grabbing it, and the ammo belt, he had then ran, ignoring the pain of being hit by 50kg of solid muscle, up the car, climbed onto the bus, and shot the smoker.

The bit that Taylor saw came after that, as she had just hit the bus herself, with the tank right in front of her. Clark had then jumped off the bus, onto the tank, grabbed its head so he didn't fall off, and unloaded the entire clip into the beasts head. And 45 5.56mm NATO rounds to the head cannot and will not be ignored. It roared in pain, then grabbed Clark, and flung him to the ground. Taylor and Sam had then opened fire again on the tank, which was just about to finish Clark off; it took several more hits before falling backwards on its own weight, lying motionless in the middle of the road.

After a few more rounds, they were satisfied that it was dead, they then went to Clark, who as still stunned from being thrown to the ground by the tank.

"Are you insane?" Taylor half yelled at him, her icy exterior suddenly cracking as they helped him to his feet. "What were you thinking, jumping the Tank like that?"

"Well it worked didn't it?" Clark replied weakly to his defence.

"And the thing could have turned you into a pancake; it would have if we hadn't stopped it!" Taylor shot at him.

"It would have turned you into one if I hadn't distracted it." Clark responded. "Anyway, we should get out of here before anything else shows up; we're getting close to the office buildings anyway."

Just as quick as it had broken, Taylor's icy shell was back.

"Fine, then lets get going." She told them before heading through the alleyway.

"Clark, do you want some pain killers?" Sam asked him as they followed her.

"Nah, I've had worse, I can deal." He told him.

The group headed off through the alleyway, which led to another street that was littered with lots of debris, and unsurprisingly Zombies. With Taylor leading the way, they shot their way across the street, fighting off the zombies that tried to rush them.

While Taylor's familiar burst fire from her TMP rang through the air, it was accompanied by dull thuds as Clarks Axe since it turned out that the belt of ammo he grabbed, didn't actually have any ammo in it. Sam had decided to follow Clark's example and was using his cricket bat to knock heads.

58 zombies, 1 boomer, 2 hunters, 1 spitter, 2 Jockeys, 258 shots, and a small fridge later, the three were standing outside The Muldoven Office building.

"Great, so what, only 30 flights of stairs to go?" Clark said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"And a couple hundred offices." Sam added.

"Not helping guys." Taylor cut in, looking at the huge building.

With the elevators inside the building out of power, the group was forced to take the stairs, and oddly enough, found the first few floors deserted. When they reached the 4th floor, they found out why. It was filled, absolutely packed, with zombies. The group quickly retreated back to the staircase.

"Uh, ok, what do we do about that?" Clark asked

"Don't suppose any of you have a pipe bomb on you?" Sam asked

"We haven't even found a grenade, let alone a pipe bomb." Taylor told him.

Sam was about to suggest something else when they heard a familiar roar.

"Shit, Charger!" Sam yelled before they all ploughed out of its path, causing it to hit the wall behind them with a thud. All three of them opened fire on it before it could recover. Unfortunately, if the thud of its impact didn't get the hordes attention, the gun shots just did.

The entire horde charged at them, because both Sam and Clark had shotguns, they crouched in front, causing them to be able to deal with the horde at close range, while Taylor shot over them.

They mowed their way through the zombies, and the corpses were starting to form a wall as the zombies were trying to climb over it only to get shot.

But the group couldn't keep that strategy up for long, and then both Sam and Clark found themselves needing to reload at the same time, which meant that only Taylor's TMP was holding the horde back, and it didn't work so well at controlling large groups.

As Clark hurriedly tried to reload his gun, Sam just slung his over his shoulder and pulled out his cricket bat. He then charged into the remaining zombies, whacking anything he could reach.

As Sam had bought him enough time, Clark finished reloading and added the deep boom of his shotgun to the constant crack of the TMP. As they continued to mop up the horde, a Jockey snuck up from behind and Jumped Sam. Both Taylor and Clark hesitated as their view of Sam was blocked by zombies, they had a shot anyway, aiming at head height to try and avoid possible friendly fire. Luckily, one of their bullets must have hit it as they heard Sam yell

"YEA! Eat that you crazy back humper!"

They mowed down the remaining zombies, which were thankfully, void of anymore special infected.

"Ahh!" Sam sighed as he sat back into an office chair "Getting humped by a spindle legged freak really takes it out of you."

"Yea." Clark replied, not really listening "I wonder why there were all gathered here, rather then spread out like they usually do?"

"Maybe a boomer exploded their after eating some bad pizza." Sam suggested, not really caring by that point.

"Or maybe…" Clark began, when they heard something hit the ground with a clatter. "There's someone else here." He finished.

The three crept silently towards the door that the sound had originated from.

With flashlights on due to the lack of lighting, Taylor signalled for Sam and Clark to take places on the opposite side of the door. Hiding on the other side, she put her hand on the handle and counted down from 3 with her fingers.

As soon as she got to one, she flung open the door, then hid in case the person tried to shoot them.

It was a smart move as several gunshots resonated from inside the room as soon as the door opened.

"Hey!" Clark called out to the person in the room. "We're not infected here, so you don't need to shoot us."

He then stuck his head around to face the person and prove his point.

"Wait! You are human!"

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