What's this? Another update? So soon! Is this some sick joke? No, it's not! I got the idea for this chapter right after I posted the last one, and I spent all day writing. So here you are, chapter 9 so soon. Enjoy folks!

Disclaimer: I do not own L4D. Just my characters.

Notes: The first part of this chapter is a memory, just to let you know ahead of time.

The Survivor's Guide to Surviving the Infection

Chapter 9: I is for Infected

The Infected are a strange bunch. Yes, they're zombies that have an appetite for healthy, human guts and skin, but some of them are unique in their own way. Most shamble around in a daze. Some become fat and have a tendency to throw up on their victims. Some take to the shadows to hunt their prey, pouncing them at the last second. Others take to the rooftops to snare them with their tongues. And a few…become something entirely different.

But one thing remains the same: They were someone once. It's just a matter of remembering who they were exactly.

One month, two weeks, one day after first infection

He watched her buzz around the kitchen, grabbing things from cabinets and the refrigerator, dumping them into various pans on the stove. He was leaning in the doorway to the room, a morning cigarette dangling from his fingers. He didn't call out to her, didn't do anything to alert her of his presence. He was quite content with just watching her go about making breakfast, she always made a crapload on days like this, when her sudden urge to cook had reached his peak. She was so adorable sometimes.

"You know, you could come sit down or something instead of watching me like a perv" she said, glancing over her shoulder to smile at him.

"Oh, so you could tell I was looking at your ass?" he replied, grinning. She rolled her big, chocolate brown eyes at him and went on with her preparations.

"Ryan, stop being such a horndog" she scolded, but she wasn't angry, her smile told him otherwise.

"You know you love it" Ryan said before taking a drag from his cigarette. He fully entered the kitchen, moving over to her to hover as she worked like mad over the stovetop. "'Sides, what's cookin Mia?"

"Everything. I have eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, and I'm gonna make pancakes soon" Mia explained, looking up at him, her nose crinkling. "Do you have to smoke that now? This close to my food?"

"Yes, I do" the blonde shot back, taking another drag.

"Those sticks are gonna be the death of you one day"

"Maybe. I'm not too worried"

"Whatever. Put it out" Mia ordered, resuming her work. As much as he hated to waste a fresh cig, Ryan did as he was told, heading to the kitchen table and dropping it inside an ashtray. "Now sit your ass down so I can feed you!" she ordered next, and the blonde happily obliged. He knew he did good when he started dating her a few years ago. Short brunettes were the best damn cooks ever, and Mia never failed to please.

He couldn't help but grin like an idiot as a plate of food was placed before him, couldn't help but moan like a doofus when he took his first bite, watch his girl bounce back over to the stove to ladle more food onto a plate of her own. She was perfect, just fucking perfect for him. Didn't matter that he had to bend down to kiss her, didn't matter that he towered over her like a giant, he just didn't fucking care. Girls like Mia just didn't get any better.

"What are you thinking about?"

Ryan was snapped out of his thoughts.

"What do you mean?"

"You're thinking about something. I know you are, that stupid look is on your face" she teased, sticking her tongue out at him.

"Oh…well yeah I was. Wanna know about?"

"Sure why not"

"You"

"Creeper"

And they both laughed.

His eye snapped open, and Ryan stared up at the ceiling. His head hurt. Really, really hurt. Coughing made it hurt worse. So much pain. Painpainpainpain. But he…he felt like he needed to do something. Something…something important. What was important? Something was….Suddenly something popped into his head, an image. A live-thing, female live-thing. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Divine? No, not Divine. Too solid to be Divine. Who was this live-thing then? Something else sprang into his mind: Mia. MiaMiaMiaMiaMia.

Find Mia. He had to find Mia. Who was Mia? He didn't know, but he had to find her. But his head still hurt, so much painpainpain. Find Mia. Had to find her. Before it even registered in his disease-ridden mind, he was shoving his skinny frame off the bed and getting to his feet. His body sagged to the left, his vision swam for a moment, the room spun around him. Had to find her. He lurched towards the door, had to get out of here. Findfindfindfindfi-

Bonk!

The Smoker grunted as his head smacked into the top of the doorframe, he forgot to duck down under it. He reeled back, losing his footing and tumbling to the floor with a crash. Pain, pain everywhere. Had to find Mia. Where was she? Where…where…where….

His head still hurt, but now it hurt more. It hurt so much, the pain was blinding. He choked on his coughs, seizing up. Everything hurt, it hurt so much, oh the pain. Breathing, he couldn't breathe. He couldn't do anything at all. His eye squeezed shut, his throat constricted on him. So much pain, it was like he was saying. Makeitstopmakeitstopmakitstop.

As suddenly as it happened, the pain vanish. He could breathe again, and he lay wheezing on the floor, gasping for air. His eye creaked back open to stare at the ceiling again. The ground beneath was hard. Ground? When did he get on the ground? Wasn't he in bed before? What was he doing here? Did he fall out of bed? How odd.

"I'yan?"

The Smoker turned his head to look up at the Hunter peering at him from on the bed. He could smell fear from the smaller infected. Fear? Why fear? What was there to be afraid of? Did something happen? What was going on? Groaning, Ryan picked himself off the floor and crawled back onto the bed.

"Hey Zach…what happened?"

"You fall down. You hit head. You….you acted funny"

"Funny? Funny how?"

The Hunter looked nervous, wringing his hands and keeping his head bowed.

"You were..just…funny…not haha funny…bad funny…not good funny…scary" Zachary said quietly. Ryan didn't know what he meant. He didn't care. His head hurt again, the room was spinning again. He slumped over, head hitting the pillow and he was out like a light.

Toni sat by the door, tugging at the odd coverings the prey made him wear. She called it "snow gear", whatever that meant. It was awkward to move and he felt stiff and restricted. The prey finally joined him by the door, dressed similarly to him and loading her death-stick. Without saying anything, she tugged the door open. Outside everything was blindingly white. His iris contracted to a mere slit, there was so much light being reflected.

He hissed at the white, his breath coming out in a fog. Despite his fever heated body and all the coverings, he could feel cold nipping at his hands and face. And that was just with the door open.

"Come on, let's go" the prey said, venturing out the door, the whiteness crunching beneath her boots. Toni was hesitant to follow, he did not want to touch the whiteness, and it felt cold outside. He did not like the cold. "Come on, or else I'll just leave you here with Zachary"

At the mention of the other Hunter's name, he reluctantly scuttled out the door, and the prey closed it behind him. The whiteness was hard but crunchy, and very very cold. Coldcoldcoldcoldcold. He shivered in place, teeth clacking together. He did not like this crunchy whiteness.

"Keep moving, you'll stay warm that way" the prey instructed, trudging through the whiteness and away from the house. He could only follow her, despising every step he took, every single contact his hands made with the whiteness. The pair worked their way out of the small neighborhood and into the town. Whiteness covered everything, metal-noisy-boxes were just covered in it, looking like small hills on the streets.

But something was off. Aside from the sound of walking, all was quiet. None of his lesser brothers and sisters were shambling about. There was no sound of them groaning, coughing, screeching, retching. Nothing at all. It was if they had all disappeared, like the whiteness had dropped out of the sky and covered them. It was unnerving. He strained his ears to something aside from his own breathing, anything at all.

Nothing. Nothing at all. Where did everyone go?

"Toni"

He jumped a bit when the prey said his name. She said it quietly, but compared to the silence around them, it was loud and clear. "Toni…can you sense anything? At all?" the prey continued, walking with some sort of purpose, clutching the death-stick tightly. That was a good question, could he? He couldn't hear or see anything, but what about smell? The Hunter lifted his nose into the air and sniffed a few times. All he got was cold and wet, not blood or skin or disease like normal. The whiteness masked most scents, save for their own.

Toni shook his head; there was no way of telling. The prey nodded and they continued on. She led him to a building a lot like the one he tracked her to yesterday. Except, this one had foodsmells coming from it. Old, rotted foodsmells. Icky foodsmells. But that didn't stop the prey. She flicked on the light on her death-stick and began rummaging through the building. He padded after her, his nose crinkling at the multitude of scents washing over him.

There was the foosmells, there was the scents of prey long gone but still lingered in the air, of his lesser brothers and sisters, of metal and dust. It was enough to make his head spin, but somehow he managed to stay focused and he continued to follow the prey around. She had found a holder-thing and she was shoving crinkly colored things into it, walking up and down the isles to find more. The search was short lived, and eventually they exited the building.

It had grown slightly darker when they got outside, and slightly colder as well. They needed to hurry back to the den before visibility was completely gone. Luckily their scent trails were still there, and Toni took the lead in re-tracing their steps. Their trek back was as silent as the trek there, and his nerves shot up again.

Then his ears pricked, he heard shuffling through the whiteness. A feral cry sounded, and a lesser suddenly popped out of the shadows and threw itself at his prey. Toni snarled, but before he could even pounce, the prey took the lesser out with a short boom from her death-stick. Another cry, and another lesser followed the first, a few more joining it.

The duo made quick work of them each. The last one started all the trouble though. Toni had slashed at it, it stumbled back, and the prey ended it with another boom. The body flew back and hit a very large mound of whiteness. A loud, horrible screeching noise came from the mound and it made his ears burn. He covered them and squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could block out the pain.

"Cállate!" he screeched at the mound. His reply did not come in the form of the mound silencing itself, but the chilling howls and caterwauls of many, many lessers.

"Run like hell!" the prey shouted over the noise, and they both took off running down the street. It was like the area had come alive, the screams and snarls of lessers advancing upon them, as if they had awoken from a slumber to seek out the very thing that caused them to wake. The whiteness hindered their process, they were constantly slipping and sliding along it.

Luckily, his lesser brothers and sisters were having a just as difficult time catching up to them. However, there were those who bypassed the problem and caught up with them, grunting and hissing all the way. Now was the time to fight and not flee. With no other choice, Hunter and prey faced their attackers, fighting tooth, nail, and death-stick.

Divine tiredly pushed the door open to the house, her shotgun depleted of shells, her grocery bag in tatters, and everything she wore was covered in blood. It was terrible luck that she shot the stupid zombie that would bump into a car, a live car at that! She would have thought the battery would have been dead by now! But oh no, the odds were not in their favor, and they had to fight a fucking horde. Dear. Fucking. God.

As Toni waddled in through the door, the survivor weakly slammed it shut, tossing her empty shotgun aside and trudging to the bathroom. She doubted she'd be able to get another bath going, let alone trying to to wash herself and the small Hunter, so that option was out. Sink baths were okay too, nothing wrong with those.

Divine wrestled off her bloodied snow wear, examining all the tears and snags in it. There was a long scratch down her arm, someone managed to get a claw down it. Several more scratches and bites dotted her arms and upper body. Looking herself over in the mirror, the survivor looked like she had gone through the paper shredder wrong. Just an utter mess. As she turned the sink on to start washing herself off, a yelp sounded from the living room.

Panicking, the female dashed away to see what fresh horror was commencing now. But it wasn't horror, it was…cute, in some sense. Zachary must have smelled the blood they carried on, because the larger Hunter had Toni pinned again, but instead of trying to end his life, Zach was licking the blood off the other's skin. Toni's face was twisted in displeasure, but it looked like he wasn't about to push the larger Hunter off him either.

Rolling her eyes, Divine went back to the bathroom. They were fine.

The Infected are truly an odd group of people.

Welp, I never said it was gonna be good. Enjoy it anyway! Later folks! Oh, one more thing. This month (April) on the 10th will be the first year anniversary of the Survivor's Guide. Meaning on that day in the U.S.A, this story was published. Nine chapters in one year. God fuck, I am lazy.

Bless your face.

RS94, out!