They Left Four Dying - Chapter 2
The quartet of makeshift zombie killers slowly but steadily made their way across the town, making as little noise as possible so as not to alert the undead to their location. Once in a while, a lone zombie would stand in their way, disorientated and not yet aware of their presence. Said zombie would be quickly dispatched with a single shot to the head, usually courtesy of Kenny's handgun. Cartman had insisted on some close range target practice (a notion that Stan shuddered at as he pictured a bloodthirsty fatass mowing down hordes of zombies and thoroughly enjoying himself), but Kenny had thankfully dismissed his inner demon by stating very logically that a handgun would be much more quiet than a shotgun, and it would be in the best of their interests to not attract the deceased to themselves.
As they walked through the town, Kenny would occasionally offer to allow Kyle to practice with his own pistol (Cartman protested very vehemently and called Kenny names for allowing the Jew to have fun while shutting his desires away), but Kyle would always merely shudder before turning away quietly whenever Kenny urged him to take a shot. After a few painfully awkward attempts on Kenny's part to get their resident redhead to release the safety on his Desert Eagle, Stan decided to step in.
"That's enough, Kenny. Don't make him do something he doesn't want to do."
There was zero snideness in Stan's tone and speech, but Kyle visibly cringed at the underlying meaning of his best friend's words. Beneath the desire to protect him, there lay obvious doubt in Kyle's abilities as a killer. As much as the group wanted to trust each other, it was clear that all of them, Stan included, treated him as the weakest link. It appeared that his earlier panic attack had the others dismissing his ability to be useful in their current situation. Kenny didn't sense anything in Stan's words, or he simply didn't care, when he turned to him and frowned.
"He'll have to do it at some point, Stan. Might as well let him get used to it."
"You're making him and everyone else uncomfortable."
"I'm just trying to think about what needs to be done in the future. If something attacks him, I don't want him to freeze up and not be able to protect himself-"
"You don't need to worry about me."
All eyes turned to Kyle, including Cartman, though he tried hard to appear not to care about Stan and Kenny's little argument.
"You don't need to worry about me, and you don't need to worry about yourselves, either. I'll step up and protect you guys too, if need be. You guys might doubt me now, and I might even doubt myself a little, but as gay as this sounds, I really do love you guys. If something happens and we're in danger, I'll do everything in my power to make sure all of us make it out alive. I might not be that comfortable with a gun in my hand, but I'll fire at anything that tries to touch you all."
Kenny looked quietly back at Kyle, waiting for him to continue.
"I don't like killing things even if they're already dead, Kenny. I know it might sound ridiculous to you, but that's how I am. I see these things walking around, and I can't help but think...these were people we used to pass by on the streets when we were playing, people we used to greet and talk to. And now, because of some wacko scientist's craziness, so many of the people we used to know are dead but walking. It's sick, Ken. I really hate it, but I can't do anything about it. The least I can do for them is to walk past them and not hurt them if they don't hurt us. You might think differently, but that's how I see it."
Kyle then gritted his teeth resolutely, his grip on his weapon tightening.
"I need you to trust me, Kenny. We won't be able to work together properly if you don't believe that I'm capable."
Kenny appeared to stand stock still for a moment as he pondered Kyle's words, Stan looking between him and Kyle, appearing considerably happier at hearing Kyle's little speech than he had been before. Before Cartman could interject with one of his snide remarks, he slapped a hand on his mouth and ignored his indignant grunt of protest. Kenny continued staring at Kyle, the two not breaking eye contact for a second. Finally, a small smile appeared on Kenny's face before he firmly patted Kyle on his shoulder.
"You're right about me thinking differently, but still...I trust you, Kyle."
It was about an hour before they reached the Blacks' household. The sun set early on South Park even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, and the home of their childhood friend Token Black had been the first planned stop in their journey towards Denver. Cartman had been the one who had voiced his opinion that Token, with his affluence, would undoubtedly leave behind the best place for them to rest in for the night and refuel before they continued walking the streets. The other three had found little to contradict in his words, and though they knew that Cartman merely wanted to sleep amidst luxury in Token's huge house, there was a small part of them all that wanted to enjoy the exact same thing.
The first sign that there might be some trouble brewing ahead within the guarded compounds of the Blacks' household was the fact that the gate, which was usually locked to protect against intruders, was left completely astrewn and ajar, as though waiting for their arrival. Stan pointed out that the Blacks might have left the gate open when they were hastening to flee the city, but the bloodstains on the iron bars put a massive damper in his optimism. The compound surrounding Token's home was surprisingly deserted, void of both the dead and the undead. As they approached the house, Kenny cocked his improvised rifle, raising the tension in the air significantly. He led the way to the house and quietly spoke to the three standing behind him.
"Stan, take the left. Kyle, the right. Cartman, look after the back and make sure we don't get sneaked up on."
"You're acting all military-ish, Ken."
"It's a little ridiculous, but if it saves our lives, I don't give a crap about that."
"True."
Placing a slightly shaking hand on the doorknob, Kenny applied pressure, and was surprised when he actually managed to get the door open. It appeared that Stan might have been right about the Blacks fleeing their home in a hurry. The door creaked a little as Kenny slowly pushed it open, causing the three behind him to cringe. The sound wasn't even loud enough to wake a sleeping person, but in their anxiety, all sounds appeared to be multiplied tenfold.
"You'd think Token's family would be rich enough to get someone to oil their hinges."
"Shh."
As they made their way across the living room, they took in the scene in front of them. All four boys remembered the gorgeous house that their black minority friend lived in, and though the house was still standing and the furniture still mostly intact, the place was in utter disarray. Papers and glass were scattered all over the floor, and though Kyle tried his best to ignore it, he couldn't help but be a little disgusted by the faint smell of old blood that appeared to permeate throughout the large home. It was a terribly unsettling thing, to see their old friend's home thrown into such a horrible state, and it made them a little worried about what they might find on the second floor.
The feeling of trepidation that the quartet felt at that point of time was nearly indescribable. They had admittedly lost the friendly closeness that they had with Token and some of their other friends by the time elementary school had ended, and though they were now once again in their old friend's home, they were here for the express purpose for survival, not for junk food and video games. It was a horrible thing, to be thrown into such a morbid and treacherous situation in the midst of something so familiar, and though they knew they had to do whatever they could to survive, there was something about being in Token Black's home uninvited that made their entire venture feel more wrong than it felt before.
"I guess...this isn't such a nice place to spend the night in after all, huh?"
It took about fifty seconds for the little group to make their way to the stairs, and five more for Cartman to step heavily onto a creaky floorboard and cause the other three to jump out of their skins before glaring angrily at him, Kyle cuffing the fatass on his head for good measure. Stan broke up the fight before it could even get started, and they steadily progressed past the shattered chandelier on the floor and the broken potted plants that littered the ground with soil. As they reached the first door, which they recalled belonged to Token's bedroom, Kenny once again placed his hand on the doorknob. Just as he was about to turn it, he hesitated, a blank expression on his face. Stan placed a concerned hand on his friend's shoulder.
"Kenny?"
Kenny shook his head before turning to his friends with worried eyes.
"I know you guys know what we signed up for, and we're all alive and we really need to clear this place out of everything dangerous before we can start preparing to rest in it, but..."
He appeared to lose track of his words, but Kyle finished his sentence, knowing exactly what he wanted to say.
"But we might encounter some of our old friends, and they might have died...or turned."
Cartman and Stan both shared a look of disgust and horror as Kenny nodded to Kyle. Before anyone could protest, he spoke up again, effectively silencing all discussion.
"We don't know if what we found out was true. Mephesto somehow designed the disease to only affect those below the age of eighteen, but we don't know if what he really did was accurate enough. We're all lucky to be just below eighteen, but I can't remember when everyone's birthdays are, and its very possible that if they were already eighteen they might be amongst the zombies. If we open this door right now, and somebody we know really is inside, we'll have to do it. It's the only logical thing for us to do. Whoever's inside would be dead, and will immediately try to kill us once they notice us. We just have to remember that they're already dead, and we'd actually be doing them a favor by killing them again to make sure that their corpse doesn't continue to roam South Park lifelessly looking for fresh meat. We have to keep that in mind."
No one appeared to want to comment on Kenny addressing who was obviously Token in the third-person, and instead settled with nodding and readying their weapons. Even Kyle, with his unpracticed hand in firearms, looked determined.
"Let's go."
Taking in a deep breath to steel himself, Kenny turned the doorknob and, applying pressure onto the wooden door with his body weight, pushed his way into Token's room. There was a sudden collective intake of breath from all four boys as the tension in the air grew thick enough to almost see, and when their eyes settled on the messy but otherwise unoccupied room, it felt as though the sky had opened up and whatever ethereal being up there had decided to release oxygen back onto the earth again.
"Thank fucking God."
They continued their systematic check of the rooms on the upper floor. It seemed wrong, Stan couldn't help thinking, using the word "systematic" to describe their task at hand. It almost made the job seem clinical, mindless. The thought of them getting rid of the undead emotionlessly somehow brought a queasy feeling to Stan's stomach. It was true that he had played his part in eliminating a significant number of zombies already, but he realised to his abject horror that he had felt nearly nothing as he pulled triggers and blew out brains. In some sense, Kyle was right. Those...things used to be living people. The last thing Stan wanted was to lose even himself in the midst of the death that had covered South Park like a massive coroner's sheet.
Little did he know that that very notion, that small moment where Stan was caught off-guard by his own thoughts, would be the first metaphorical blade between the group's shoulderblades.
Stan pushed open the door to the upstairs bathroom carelessly, completely forgetting what Kenny had said about being discreet and noticing too late when a loud screech coming from the friction between the door and its badly maintained hinge shook him from his stupor. Darting his eyes into the tiny bathroom, Stan felt his mind immediately freeze up at the sight of a single female zombie standing within it. It didn't occur to him that this particular zombie was different from the rest, or that she appeared to wear an aura of impending doom, or that her hands were somehow mutated into massive, finger-length claws, mere vestiges of what they once were. It didn't occur to him that she was staring right at him with deadly, red eyes and shaking violently like a mad woman, or that Kyle was tugging at his arm in absolute terror and urgently whispering something into his ear, or that Cartman and Kenny's guns were already erect and ready to fire.
The thing that woke Stan up from his trance was the scream.
It was a scream that the four had never imagined to possibly come out of something that looked that human, or possibly coming out of any other living being present on earth. If demons from hell screamed, it wouldn't have been ridiculous to compare what they possibly could sound like with the ghastly, blood curdling, hair-raising shriek that was emitted from within the female zombie's throat. Stan felt his throat seize up with a feeling of fear that he had never felt before in his life, and before Kyle could stop him in time, he had already raised his AK-47 and instinctively fired a few rounds right into the zombie's chest.
The zombie stumbled back, and Stan thought for a miraculous moment that he had finished the job. Then, the zombie looked up into his eyes yet again with her own blood red orbs of living death, and Stan almost literally felt his soul tearing from his body in an attempt to escape from her gaze.
"Shit, shit shit shit shit..."
The first crack the quartet heard as the witch flung her claws outwards with superhuman strength and ripped the sink off the wall was another indication that what they were dealing which was something not just undead, but downright demonic.
"Run...RUN!"
The other three didn't even need Kenny's warning to know what they had to do. All four took flight, running in whatever direction their internal compasses saw fit, all the while looking back and praying that the she-demon was not chasing them. That was the second mistake that the group made. In the midst of any dangerous situation, splitting up was a bad, a very bad idea. However, their internal flight signals were shutting off their mental faculties, the only sole instruction in all their brains being the immediate need to flee and save their own hides.
On a biological standpoint, it made good sense. On a group survival standpoint, not so much.
It took ten seconds for Kenny to realise that he was in relative safety. It took another ten for him to catch his breath. By the time twenty crucial seconds had past, Kenny finally realised that he had foolishly separated himself from the group in the middle of the largest house in the entirety of South Park.
Fuck...this isn't good...
Perhaps it was because he had been the one to startle her in the first place, or maybe it was because he was the one who had fired at her, but all reasons were lost on Stan as he ran as quickly as his legs could carry him through what felt like the longest corridor he had ever set foot in in his life. A quick glance backwards indicated that the witch was right on his tail, frighteningly fast, and looking like she wanted to eat him alive, and when Stan realised that his friends were nowhere in sight and that he had been left to face the witch alone, there was no time left to curse them for ditching him or curse himself for splitting up with them in the first place.
The first blow that struck Stan hit him with the force of a bulldozer straight in his back, and the athletic but inadequately built young man found himself flying, striking a nearby wall with incredible force before falling down onto the ground. The hot, searing pain hit him a second later, and as his hand ran over the point where the witch had hit him, he felt warm, runny liquid and cringed whilst trying to raise himself back onto his feet. The witch didn't leave even a small opening for mercy as she lashed out yet again, slamming Stan back into the wall with inhuman force, his head striking the wall first, causing blood to gush downwards from a freshly opened wound before blurring his vision.
The witch screamed again.
The first instinct that Cartman had when fleeing from the witch had been to immediately high-tail it downstairs, in the faint hope that if she was chasing him, she would stumble on the stairs and leave Cartman with a valid opening to finish her off. It was an admirably clear-minded thought whilst Cartman's brain was simultaneously experiencing wild panic, and when Cartman finally reached the bottom of the stairs and looked up, there was no sight of the screaming bitch that had started chasing them. Mild relief was quickly overcome by the feeling of fear at the thought of being isolated from everyone else, and Cartman decided to make his way back upstairs to find the rest of his group.
A blubbering sound from behind him made him instinctively turn around and fire a single burst from his shotgun. Cartman's vision barely even caught a sight of the massive, obese zombie standing right behind him before his shotgun pellets tore it apart, but not before showering its immediate vicinity, Cartman included, with a foul smelling, viscous yellow liquid that smelt like it could wake the dead alone. Cartman yelled as his eyes were covered with the yellow gunk, blinding him momentarily. He cursed inwardly as he attempted to rub the smelly liquid off himself, thanking the heavens that it didn't feel corrosive, at the very least.
Then he heard the sound of windows breaking and what sounded like a hundred feet on carpeted floors, and he knew that he was screwed.
Kyle had never been a particularly lucky person, but he certainly felt like one when he darted into a random room on the second floor and shut the door tightly behind him, breathing heavily and trying to listen out for the sound of clawing and footsteps. Not hearing either, he allowed himself a short reprieve as he shut his eyes and relaxed himself against the wooden door, trying to erase the sight and sound of the witch screaming from his head.
Kyle hardly had time to react to the sudden guttural growl that he heard from within the room. His eyelids flying open, Kyle barely leapt out of the way in time as another hunter, looking remarkably similar to the one that had attacked Cartman back at Mephesto's laboratory, sprung at him from behind a table and smashed onto the wooden door. Kyle immediately raised his Desert Eagle in the direction of the zombie, but before he could fire, his eyes fell upon the shirt that the zombie was wearing; a light purple, somewhat torn up Armani Exchange shirt with a large letter "T" spelled out on the front in light orange. Kyle had never felt worse as he stared gapingly back at the zombie, who was already crouching and preparing for a second pounce, its eyes dead to the world.
"...T-Token?"
Author's Note - This is probably the most intense cliffhanger that I've written, and I've written a lot of stuff. I present to you all...the four-way cliffhanger. I would take a bow, but I'd look absolutely ridiculous to everyone sitting around me right now.
I hope you all enjoyed the chapter. Of course, you'd understand what was happening better if you've played L4D2 before, but I tried to make the descriptions of the zombies quite vivid for the sake of those of you who don't.
Reviews Appreciated.
~SUITELIFEFAN
