Greetings my readers. Soooooooooooooooo sorry about the long wait, but between finals, graduating high school, moving back home to Tennessee from North Dakota, settling in, my computer going on the fritz and having to have the hard drive completely wiped, and general writers block I just haven't been able to work on it. But here it is FINALY chapter three is here.

Same usual disclaimer applies I do not own Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, or any of the characters in them. They all belong to Valve and their respective owners. Blah Blah Blah

I only own my OC and the plot line.

Now on to the story.

I felt its rotting hand latch onto my forearm in an inescapable death grip. I don't know if it was my human instincts, the hunter part of my brain, or maybe it was a part of both that flooded me with an almost animalistic fury and sense of self preservation. I grabbed its throat with my free hand and smashed its head into the wall. So hard it left an inch deep dent in the wall, along with a trail of blood as its now lifeless body crumpled beneath it. Turning I saw the other one was still about fifteen feet away. It never made it past ten. I crouched down, feeling my muscles in my legs tense, ready to release and send me toward what was soon to be my prey. In one fluid motion I leapt, flying through the air, and landed on the monsters chest. The force behind my momentum drove it to the floor where I pinned its arms with my knees, and began to claw into it. My hands turned claws tore into the soft rotting flesh of its chest while I resisted the urge to bite it as well. Its foul odor was already assaulting my senses, I did not want its tainted blood attacking another. After just a few seconds the thing below me stopped moving. Its head ceased to try and take a bite out of my arm and hit the floor with a dull thud. After a few moments of mental struggle I managed to regain complete control of my body. I stood and leaned against the wall, staring at the two monstrosities that I had just destroyed with my bare hands. Could they be some of the common infected that were mentioned in that folder I had found? A sudden blast of cool air snapped me back out of deep thought. It was coming from the room that the second common had broken out of. I walked back down the hallway and looked through what remained of the door.

Turns out it was just another office, or what was left of one. The desk had been pushed up against the door, which was what had stopped me from opening it the first time. Most of the outside facing wall was strewn across the floor leaving a gaping hole that was open to the world outside. I walked over to the hole thinking that I could escape through it, but that was not going to happen. The room was on the second floor of a three storied building. I looked up and saw that the edge of the roof was far out of my reach. I was about to turn back and look for a better way down when my hunter half pulled a "sneak attack" on me. Before I knew what was happening I was scaling the side of the building, finding hand and foot holds where no human would, a piece of chipped cement here, a sliver of a window sill there. After only a few seconds I was standing on the rooftop looking for a good vantage point from which I could view my surroundings. A communications tower caught my eye. Not only was it a good thirty feet high, but it also had a flat top where I could stand up and gain an extra few feet. In a few leaps and bounds I was at the top and was met with a breath taking view.

The lab was set on the side of a mountain about a mile and a half below the tree line. At the foot of the mountain was a decent sized city. I knew that if I was going to find any kind of help it was going to be in that city, not in the lab. While getting to the city was going to be the easy part, the hard part was going to be getting there alive and in one piece. From my vantage point I could tell that the land between me and the city was crawling with infected. If I was going to survive I needed some kind of weapon, but to find one I had to get off the roof and onto ground level. My plan was to climb down from the tower and find a way back inside the lab from the roof. My hunter self however had a different and more direct approach. Before I knew what was happening I was soaring through the air, over the edge of the building, towards the ground over seventy feet below. I knew that if the fall didn't kill me it was certainly going to break something. I tried to brace myself for impact while trying to find a way to land and cause the least amount of damage, but Hunter, like so many times before, had another plan. I hit the ground feet first and fell into a crouch causing the most of the shock of the impact to travel up my compressed body and be released into the air. My momentum was taken care of with an instantaneous forward roll. Another mental battle ensued with me fighting for control of my once again hijacked body.

After I was again back in the driver's seat, I stood up and took a look around me. The scene was one of complete and total destruction. To my left was a rather large sized stump, its ragged and splintered edge evidence that the substantially large tree it had once supported had quite literally been ripped off. The trunk of said tree could be seen sticking out of a wall almost forty feet away. There were also several vehicles scattered about. Some were sitting on their side, and others were upside down all together. After searching a few that were not on fire I managed to find a tactical assault knife, complete with belt sheath, from a body I had found that was shredded beyond all recognition. So equipped I turned my back on the lab that had been "home" all my life, and started to make my way down the mountain to the city nestled at its base.

According to my best guess it took me almost five hours to reach the city. I would have made it there in a fraction of the time if it had not been for all of the infected, both common and special alike. And the Witch. At least I'm pretty sure that's what it was; it matched everything that was mentioned in the folder. Long snow white hair, sits in one location rocking back and forth, and the crying. The first time I heard it a shiver went up my spine. How could something like that make a sound that was so … human? I saw her when I rounded a tree and there she was, sitting in the middle of the path not ten feet in front of me. Thankfully she was facing the other way with her back to me. Slowly, making sure not to make any noise what so ever, I started to back away planning on finding another way down the mountain.

That train of thought was derailed when I stepped on that damn twig. The crack sounded like an explosion in the total silence. I froze, hoping that whatever luck I had so far was still with me. It wasn't. The witch's head snapped up and slowly turned to face me. "Ah hell," was all I could say before I turned around and started to run back up the same path I had just been following; The Witch was hot on my heels, her seven-inch blood stained claws held out and she was screaming like a banshee. She was starting to catch up to me when I spotted a large tree off to my right. I figured it would be safer up above than down here on the ground with Bloody Mary. So I turned and leapt up, grabbing onto one of the lower branches that was around twenty feet off the ground, and started to climb. I guess I was about forty feet up when I looked back down and almost fell out of the tree in shock. The b***h was climbing up the tree right behind me, her talons digging into the trunk like hooks! "Oh, s**t!" I cried is surprise. Having nowhere else to go I took off running down one of the branches. When the branch started to bend I leapt, grabbing onto an overhanging branch, and swung to a branch on the next tree over. I turned to see the witch, her infected mind unable to comprehend what I had just done and unable to duplicate it, continue to rundown the branch until it grew to thin and weak to support her weight.

With a loud snap the twigs gave way and sent the witch plummeting down to the ground. When she hit she sprang right back up and started to climb the tree I was currently in. "Oh COME ON," I cried in frustration, "Give me a f*****g break!" I turned and started to leap from tree to tree via the branches. After crossing a few trees like this I noticed that the witch was becoming more and more frustrated. This gave me an idea that could possibly get me out of this encounter alive. I leapt to a branch and waited for the witch to start climbing. When she was almost to my limb I moved to about three trees away. The witch would rundown the limb, fall to the ground, scream, and start to climb my new tree. I was hoping that she would get frustrated enough to just give up and leave. This method was working fine until I hit that forked branch. It wasn't till I was in the air that I saw the split in the branches, the gap yawning wide open like a mouth ready to trap my foot. And trap my foot it did.

I tried to land in a way so that my foot would straddle the gap, but that plan, like every other damn plan I've had today, didn't work. My foot slipped clean through the opening, but my forward momentum kept me going forward over the edge of the limb. I felt a searing pain as my ankle was bent in a direction it was never meant to go. After the world stopped spinning I found myself hanging upside down, by my ankle, forty feet in the air, with a crazed witch still trying to kill me. I watched as she fell to the ground, knowing that I had only seconds before she got to me. Looking up I saw that the two branches that held me were only three or four inches in diameter each. I pulled the knife out of its sheath and clamped down on the blade with my teeth to free up both my hands. With a grunt that was partially effort and mostly pain, I doubled up on myself and grabbed one of the limbs with both my hands. Once I was sure that I had a firm grip with my left hand, I let go with my right and, grabbing the handle of the knife, began to hack away at the base of one of the limbs that my ankle was stuck between. Four strokes in I looked up and almost dropped my knife, the witch was already up the trunk and was at the base of the branch. I redoubled my efforts but it was too late.

Before I could make my fifth stroke the witch covered the remaining distance between us. I watched, almost as if in slow motion, as she raised her claws to deliver what was surely going to be a killing stroke. The blow, however, never came. As she began her downward stroke I heard a loud bang and watched as her head disappeared in a mist of blood and bits of skull. Her body slumped and fell off the limb to land on the ground below. Somewhere below me I heard a low gritty voice exclaim, "Boom, head shot!". I looked down and saw a man with his rifle still aimed in my direction. I could almost read what he was planning as if it was written bold black letters across his forehead. "No, No, No! Wait I can-".

!BANG!

The bullet hit the limb only an inch or two from my foot. The impact shattered most of the remaining portion of the limb and, with a loud snap, it gave way and sent me plummeting to the ground. I fell the forty feet and landed flat on my back. I really should consider myself lucky that is how I landed, because somewhere in my fall the back of my right ankle hit a limb and caused me to start spinning. The impact forced all the air out of my lungs, and as I lay there heaving and trying to get some air back I opened my eyes and found myself looking up the barrel of the mystery man's hunting rifle. So, confronted with this situation, I said the only thing I could think of at the time.

"Um, Hi."

Well there you go chapter 3.

Now on to the usual pleading and begging. Please rate and review. No flamers please. All comments are read and sometimes even answered. If its good you might even get a shout out at the start in the next chapter.

It might take a little while for the next chapter to get here cause now I have to start writing in conversations between characters, and I was never very good at writing dialog in English class. *shudders in fear*

Until then this is Seed245445 signing off.