Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story.
Four
For the night, citizens slept in the stands while personnel slept indoors and the military force stationed themselves in the field. Some people slept in the seats, some wrapped themselves in their blankets and laid across the grimy cement ground. Zoey was one of these individuals. The only difference between her and the rest of the refugees was that they got their rest while she lay awake.
Naturally, her three companions were nearby. Lying on the ground a few feet away was Louis. He fell into a seemingly restful sleep with his mouth partly open as he snored silently. Francis, on the other hand, sat in the seat closest to him with a blanket draped over his torso. He had an empty can of soda in his hand (it was the closest to beer they had, he'd said) and his head tilted back over the seat while he snored loudly. Closest to her was Bill.
When the three of them emerged from the locker room and met with her in the hall, Zoey didn't meet their eyes. They didn't try to catch hers, either. She couldn't imagine going anywhere without them; she had been fighting alongside them for so long that separation felt alien and dangerous. After she had been cracked open and stripped of her dignity in front of them, though, she felt slightly ashamed to be seen by them.
What was more strange was how they looked; she started to see their clothes as their bodies and their guns as their limbs. Now that they had neither and donned scrubs with recyclable slippers, it was as if they were totally different people. Despite that, she did not want to be without them in this place again.
That was why when they picked their place to rest in the stands, Zoey laid herself down at Bill's feet. If it bothered him, he didn't show it. She thought of Bill as she might her father, or her brother, or some other patriarchal figure in a young woman's life. Zoey was nineteen years old, but she felt she had lived most of her life in the past two and a half weeks of infection, ever since she had met the trio on the streets. In those two weeks, Bill had shown her how to live in this new life, how to adapt and survive. He had been the one to show her the coldest, harshest truths, yet she felt safest and most comforted nearest to him.
Zoey looked up inconspicuously to try and see if he in fact was still awake. The men and women in the quarantine had taken away his cigarettes, so he had nothing to occupy his hands with. Instead, he rubbed his thumb along his fingertips, looking out with watchful, wary eyes into the field. Zoey recognized that look; he'd often scan the horizon in the city with those eyes, watching for any infected, any threats to their lives.
Can't call a man safe until you've killed him, Zoey thought to herself.
She lowered her head back down on her blanket. Just a week before, she slept in a safe house easily while infected pounded at the flimsy doors. Now, as a light breeze blew through her hair and a serene silence surrounded them, she could not for the life of her find rest.
Then she heard it. It was far off, but she knew those growls and roars all too well to forget them so soon. Her body stiffened, a lump formed in her stomach, and her body went cold.
She heard it again, and so did the soldiers in the field. A few of them call out to each other quietly before they ran across the grass. Loud snapping noises filled the stadium as the searchlights were turned off. Francis jolted and mumbled as he jolted out of sleep, and Louis groaned a bit, shifting on the floor.
"Wha's goin' on?" Francis mumbled, and Bill sharply shushed him.
Despite being at a safe distance, hidden behind a barricade of protection, Zoey laid so very still, paralysed by fear, as if her motionlessness was her only source of cover from the thing that loomed in the distance. We don't have any weapons, she kept repeating to herself. We don't have any weapons!
She felt Bill's hand on her shoulder, but she couldn't bring herself to look up. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. "Zoey."
She couldn't speak.
"Don't move until they tell us to, Zoey," Bill warned. She'd have no problem doing that. "We have to stay still."
"Hey, what's—" Francis whispered, and then he heard it, too.
"Shit," he hissed. "It's fucking galloping, man!"
Zoey's bladder threatened to go.
"What's up?"
"Keep it down, Louis," Bill said with a growl.
They stayed in silence, listening to the creature howl in the night. A few more people in the stands began to stir and panic quietly amongst themselves. Zoey managed to squeeze her eyes shut.
Stay quiet and it'll pass us by—
"FUCK!"
The soldier's yell echoed throughout the stadium before the thundering crash of the breaking wall below broke any reserve the people in the stands had left.
"RUN!" Bill shouted, and the three men leapt from their places toward the entrance indoors. Zoey tried to stand, but her body refused to respond.
"Come on, Zoey!" Louis shouted from above her. When she didn't move, he shook her by the shoulder. "C'mon!"
As the beast roared again, Zoey's legs jolted free of their petrification, and Francis leaned down, grabbed Zoey by the arm, and whipped her up to her feet like a rag doll.
"Move that ass, honey!"
The entire stadium was filled with screams and the roars of the infected below. Whoever was left in the stands was running for the exits, and the soldiers below rushed into formation to take on the sizable foe that crashed into their walls. They had prepared the stadium to withstand attacks from infected, but not from this.
They ran across the aisle to the double doors leading into the inner halls of the stadium, but as they got closer, the doors were pushed closed after a few civilians squeezed through its opening.
"Fuck!" Louis shouted, sprinting forward. "Hold the goddamn doors!"
He pounded up against the side with his shoulder, but the doors were locked. There was a loud crash mingling with the gunfire, and the four of them looked below with the other stranded men and women to see the large creature crashing through the helicopter. It rolled over itself a few times, crumpled in its side like an injured animal. Men in uniform dove to the side, trying to avoid the helicopter and the raging infected. As it threw its arms around, batting men around like blades of grass, Zoey could scarcely see the man that used to live under the mutated muscle and frame.
"There's one of him and enough of them," Bill shouted over the disaster. "If it keeps clear of the stands, we'll be fine."
Something caught her eye in the distance. She had seen such things before, but this time safety was inaccessible at an arm's length away, and there was no gun in her hand. She felt like a slab of meat being served in the midst of a hungry crowd.
"They're fucking everywhere!" Louis shouted. Zoey looked around wildly to see if she could find anything that could be used defensively against the coming onslaught of infected, but before she set eyes on anything, a brief quake shook the stadium. She looked back to the field to see the oversized monster crash to the ground.
The gunfire ceased shortly, the gap filled with the shouts of other shoulders. "Regroup, they're comin' in fast!"
Without any weapons, without any way to defend themselves, they were powerless. Zoey felt her sense of strength and heroism that had built up over the previous weeks slipping from her fast. She was cornered and threatened, and she was pushed back to square one again.
"D'you hear that?"
Zoey looked up from her place on the ground, focusing her senses on her surroundings. The soldiers below began firing again, but it was drowned out by what she heard nearby. Unlike the distant howl of the large beast before, this sound was quiet and close—a sob mixed with a growl. It was far more terrifying.
To the right along the stands, perched on top of a chair, was a woman with hair matted to her skull with sharp, bony limbs and eyes circled with blood. From a distance, she could see its sharp teeth bared like a feral dog, blood dripping from the corners. Its eyes had a frightening glint to them, and they were locked onto Zoey.
"Run!" Zoey called, turning on her heel and darting across the walkway. The gunfire from below was almost deafening, but she could still hear the mind-shattering shriek pierce the air behind her before she was tackled to the ground. She was pinned on her stomach by the surprisingly powerful creature, and a searing white-hot pain spread across her back.
"Get it off!" Zoey screamed, trying to turn over and defend herself from the painful strikes. "Get it off me!"
The slicing stopped and sounds of struggle were all that were left. Zoey tried to collect herself and turn over, and she watched as Francis held the infected by its wrists, struggling to keep it at bay as it snapped at him with its jaws.
"Francis, you got her?"
"Do I need to fucking answer?"
Zoey tried to scramble away weakly, but everything felt numb with shock and adrenaline from the attack. She looked at her arms; they were scraped and bleeding. She reached behind her and felt her back. It was wet.
"Get the extinguisher!" Bill shouted, pointing towards the doors. Louis rushed over and tore it from the wall, then moved behind Francis.
"Move!"
"Fuck you!"
"Let go of its wrists and dodge to the side!"
Francis glanced briefly over his shoulder, saw Louis standing with the butt end of the extinguisher held at eye level, then complied.
The infected stumbled forward with surprising speed, and Louis rammed the extinguisher into its face. Its body snapped backwards and it struck the floor. Without any moment of hesitation, Louis raised the extinguisher over his head, then pounded it into the monster repeatedly. Zoey couldn't watch.
She didn't know when he stopped, nor did she realize when the shooting had ceased below, but everything had gone relatively silent. Perhaps it was the ringing in her ears that drowned everything out. Her forehead felt tender and slick where she'd landed on the concrete floor, but she could scarcely feel the sharp pain she knew would plague her later. She knew she was badly injured, but her head swooned and she couldn't concentrate on anything to feel concerned about it.
"Zoey," someone said. She slowly looked to the side. Bill was there. She'd forgotten briefly that he didn't have his old veteran clothes anymore. He looked strange without his hat.
"Bill?"
"You're gonna be okay," he said, but his voice sounded funnelled, like it came from far away. Zoey closed her eyes. She found it comforting to be wherever she was; along with half her face, she couldn't feel the fear that plagued her so easily before. Then she was robbed of any thought as she fell unconscious.