Chapter 50: The Construction Site

12.25 HOURS UNTIL FAILSAFE

Darkness surrounded the group as they carefully made their way down the stairwell just outside the safe-room. The four flashlights were unable to penetrate the inky blackness very far, and the team was very much on edge despite the slight reprieve they had in the panic room.

It probably did not help matters that they had been ambushed by the Infected in the hallway, and then learned that the heart of the city they were in was set to be levelled in just over twelve hours.

No pressure, right?

In addition to the total darkness and threat of attack that filled the atmosphere, Louis had not been enjoying the oppressive silence that hung over the hotel when they set out. But after they passed what must have been the third floor down, another more haunting sound drifted from somewhere above, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.

Horrible and grief-stricken crying could be heard echoing off the walls.

The young man gulped and glanced upward, his gun-hand trembling in spite of himself. "Jesus. Let's get the hell out of here."

"Agreed," Francis grunted.

Zoey, however, stood irresolute for a few moments, blocking Bill's way forward as he brought up the rear. "This isn't right," she finally said.

"What do you mean?" Francis asked, glancing back up at her over his shoulder.

"What if it isn't one of those… Witches up there? What if it's someone who's hurt? Or if there's a little girl who's all alone?"

"Zoey, we can't afford to have a bleeding heart," Bill said, irritation in his tone.

"But what if there's someone up there who needs our help?" she protested, her voice rising slightly. "We're abandoning them without a second thought!"

"We don't have time for this horseshit," he said gruffly. He planted himself squarely in the middle of the winding staircase, blocking the former college girl's way back up the stairs. "I'm not about to let you go up there and investigate a sound which has a ninety percent chance of leading you to a monster which would tear you limb from limb!"

"A fifty percent chance!"

"How many crying girls have we encountered in the past few weeks that are still human?! It's a ninety percent chance! Probably more!"

"Yeah…" Louis interjected quietly. "Have you forgotten about the claws on those Witches, Zoey?"

The woman in question was frankly quite surprised and appalled. Was this what they had come to? Abandoning what could be a person in dire need of help without hesitation?

"Let me go up," she said, her tone determined. "I'll check it out myself."

"No," the old man replied.

"Let me up, Bill!"

"The answer is no. You're not going to go and risk your life on some noble crusade. Not on my watch." When Zoey refused to back down, so did he. "Start moving. I won't ask again."

Aside from the lonely sobs in the air, the stairwell was silent. After what seemed like an eternity, the young woman clenched her teeth and tightened her grip on the butt of her pistol as she whirled and marched away down the stairs. She pushed her way past Francis to take point, wanting nothing more at that moment than to be as far away from Bill as humanly possible.

No more words were exchanged within the group for the rest of the way down. Unbeknown to the others, Bill cast a longing glance back up the stairs, before he sighed and turned to follow the others.

No more words were exchanged between him and Zoey for quite some time after that.

12 HOURS UNTIL FAILSAFE

Newburg was well into the evening by the time the survivors left the hotel, emerging from the stairwell into a narrow alleyway lined by tall and ugly buildings. The sky was dark, although sinister orange glows could be seen in the distance in several directions, from what could no doubt be huge fires.

Zoey started off down the alleyway toward the street in front of the hotel, but was pulled back by Francis' beefy hand.

"You're way too pissed off to be taking point at the moment," he said. "Let me."

She frowned at him, but stood aside and allowed him to take the lead nevertheless. The burly biker carefully led the way to the edge of the hotel, where he paused and peered around the corner, before waving Bill over.

"Shitloads of Infected all over the street," he reported. "What should we do?"

The war veteran frowned, before looking the other way. "If we circle back around the block, we'll be able to cross the road further up. Since they were all drawn toward the hotel by the Boomer stink on us, there should be less for us to deal with the further away we get."

"That's assuming they haven't already dispersed in the time we took inside the safe-room," the younger man argued.

"You got a better idea?" Bill said, bristling slightly.

Unfortunately for Francis' pride, he did not. Without a word, he hefted his submachine gun, turned and moved down the alleyway in the opposite direction, shoulders hunched forward. The others followed suit, moving silently as a single unit past bullet-riddled dumpsters and corpses, in various states of decay. The acrid smell assaulted everyone's sinuses, although they were too much on edge to comment. Partly because of the overwhelming presence of the Infected very nearby. Partly because of the twelve hour deadline they now knew of.

And partly because of the tension in the group.

They presently rounded the far corner of the hotel and turned north, following a narrow laneway of sorts behind the hotel. Dark loading docks lined both sides of the path, and a storm-drain ran parallel to the narrow single-lane road.

Straggling Common Infected stood here and there, facing the walls in silent contemplation of god-knows-what. Their thoughts were suddenly and permanently ceased by Bill's rough hands brutally twisting their heads sideways before releasing them to fall to the ground, their necks broken.

The ones that did notice them coming were too out of it to even cry out in surprise before they caught a bullet to the head, courtesy of Francis' Beretta 92. Whenever this happened, he looked around warily, as if he was afraid that the occasional gunshot would draw in a horde that would sweep over them like an unstoppable wave.

Louis stole a glance upward every now and then, as though he expected bombs to begin raining from the dark sky at any minute.

Fortunately, neither of these things happened.

Zoey and Bill's faces were unreadable, except for whenever he glanced back and caught her eye. Whenever this happened, she scowled and looked away.

The laneway soon emerged into a large construction site, neatly concentrated around a network of steel beams that would never be continued, bags of cement that would never be mixed and equipment that would never be used again, all overlooked by a wooden foreman's tower. Various floodlights that somehow still had power lit up the area, although shadowy recesses were still present everywhere.

Francis grimaced. He hated construction sites – they offered too many possible hiding places for the Infected.

Wordlessly, Zoey holstered her pistol, pulled the Winchester 70 from its strap on her shoulder, and had it loaded in less than five seconds. She raised her eyebrows questioningly, and the others nodded in approval, taking up positions behind makeshift barricades of aggregate bags and concrete barriers to cover her.

The fiery young woman recalled the hunting trips her father had taken her on years ago, and she was starting to feel just as comfortable with the rifle now as she did back then. She centred the crosshairs of the scope on the head of one unfortunate individual milling back and forth on the far side of the area.

BLAM!

The gunshot sounded deafening in the quiet. As the infected man tumbled to the ground, never to move again, the group waited in anticipation for the noise to draw other threats out of hiding. However, after a full minute, nothing and no one appeared.

"Alright, let's go through this construction yard, and then we can cross the street to the power station on the other side," Bill said as he stalked forward, leading with Colt M4.

However, no sooner had they made their way into the middle of the site that the silence was again suddenly shattered by a chorus of enraged shrieks as a score of people appeared from shadowy corners (and goddamn it, Louis could have sworn that he heard the cry of a Hunter as well). Hammering staccato rose up in answer, and flashes of light filled the construction site as the combined pulse of hot lead from the assault carbine, HK MP5 and Glock 18 slammed into heads and chests, sending blood and brain-matter spraying into the air.

Bill adamantly refused to believe that the Common Infected could have set a trap, even though the ambushers had clearly waited until their prey was out of cover before revealing themselves, and attacking from multiple directions. They could not have possibly retained such a high brain function.

And if they had… well, that was a very upsetting thought.

Sweat beaded Zoey's brow as she fired off several more shots from the Winchester. Three infected people went down in a row as a single one of her high-calibre bullets penetrated their bodies, one after another. The Infected were closing in fast. She cast down the rifle and drew her SIG-Sauer, the pistol barking as she aimed and fired in quick succession, dropping a multitude of attackers.

Something detached itself from the shadows and flung itself at them with a bloodthirsty scream. A round of automatic gunfire stopped it in its tracks and a body crumpled to the ground, dark blood pooling around it.

"Nice shot, old man!" Francis yelled over the gunfire.

"Shut up and shoot!" he shouted back.

It was not a huge crowd which attacked them by any means, but the Common Infected ducked and weaved masterfully behind cover, causing many of their bullets to slam harmlessly into steel girders and bags of aggregate, sending puffs of grey dust billowing into the air.

"I'm low on ammo!" Francis bellowed.

At that moment, a trio of bloodthirsty assailants leapt over a pile of forgotten construction equipment and made a beeline for him, screaming bloody murder. His ensuing burst of gunfire consumed his third-to-last clip. Fortunately, the last of the bodies slumped to the ground around him, and the construction site fell silent once more.

"Fuck me…" Louis breathed.

"If you ask me, they'll be doin' the country a favour when they bomb this city," Bill muttered, reloading his assault rifle. He glanced at his watch: six-thirty in the evening. Still over eleven hours until the F-16 fighters arrived. "C'mon," he said, starting toward the far side of the construction-made-massacre site. "We've wasted a lot of time, and the army isn't gonna wait for us forever."

Louis shifted his weight slightly in a vain attempt to make the heavy load on his back more comfortable. The backpack was positively-laden with food, weapon supplies, and now some spare clothes scavenged from the couple's suitcases back in the hotel. It was a major pain in the ass, although he supposed he would much rather be wishing that the bag was lighter instead of wishing it was heavier.

Zoey slung the Winchester rifle back over her shoulder and begrudgingly started after Bill. She gazed over the multitude of slumped and stricken bodies – a host of sick and out-of-mind people, murdered by their hand. She was still angry with the way the old man had so callously refused to even check to see if it was indeed a person who needed help back in the Harbour View Hotel. The young woman liked to think that if she could help to save someone – anyone – in this mess, it could help her to atone for the atrocities she committed down the barrel of a gun.

She could not help but remember what the old man had said before, back in that little convenience store in Fairfield a week ago: "You'll have to do some bad things before this is all over… We'll all have to, if we want to stay alive."

What were they willing to sacrifice, just to survive?

"I'm sorry," she said slowly to the graveyard that surrounded her. "I really am."

Unbeknown to the team of survivors, a pair of gleaming white eyes watched them from nearby, just outside of the range of the floodlights in the construction site. Genetic mutation in a person's body due to the Green Flu causes, among other things, an additional muscle to develop in each eye to help control the dilation and contraction of the pupil.

At this moment in time, the observer's pupils were fully open, casting the world in a hazy orange hue. However, four organisms held their attention. The calculating brain analysed and determined three tall figures, one of which was rather stocky. The fourth, however, was shorter than the others and more petite – a lighter and easier target.

A savage hiss escaped from the predator's lips as it vanished into the darkness.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

If I was directing the Left 4 Dead movie, there would have to be a scene where Francis says, "Same shit, different verse." This would then be followed by a montage of the survivors making their way through the streets, picking off zombies while Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra plays over the top.

…It's probably a good thing I'm not in charge of making the L4D movie.