A/N: Shhh. So this is a sneaky update, that I don't intend on "officially announcing" until Chapter 23 is out, but for those of you who have stopped by from the beginning in that meantime, you get an early surprise: As you can see, Chapter 1 has been rewritten! The original was written back in 2016 and I was less-than-satisfied with how it meshes with my current writing level, and the original original, "The Sound of Madness", was way back in 2011. 5 years between each draft, and we've come a long way, folks. Look forward to more.

Dark. Wet. Stench. Waiting.

Sheets of grey, drenching slush brutally lashed every exposed surface but didn't manage to quench the flickering, chaotically dancing light casting eerie shadows up the bleak scape of stony building faces and overhangs.

A lone figure. Whipped by the wind. His own diseased blood hitting his tongue as sharp teeth bit into his lower lip. Waiting was torture that made him writhe in place, killing him with the white-hot pangs of adrenaline rocketing through his nerves and the hunger gripping his gut but he was silent, oh so silent as his filthy claws gripped the edge of the high place where he perched. Because he knew. It wasn't time yet. Still more waiting.

The near-unbearable blended reek of sleet and charred flesh and sick blood was thick in his nostrils. Fire was everywhere, spitting and resisting being extinguished as it consumed the slain corpse of the Big One stopped in its rampage, twisted up into the ruins of some large, growling but unliving object that had been moving not long before. Skin crisped, and fat ran in thick streams to pool on the ground beneath and mingle with blood oozing from its fresh wounds.

Blood. Blood everywhere. From the fallen Weak Others that had flocked to the noise and chaos, cut down in their tracks or broken in the Big One's wake.

From... them.

That was the scent that cut clear through everything else, warm and clean and delicious, singing in his ears so sweetly and so infuriatingly. Prey. Food. Speaking in its secret language to the unending need, making him unable to leave. It had been a group of them, inside and on top of the moving... thing, striking down the Weak Others in their path in a thunderous hail. Though the sound had lured him, enraged him, it had been too dangerous to strike; but that had been before the Big One had found them. Now, most of them had been reduced to a pulp that would soon be descended upon by a swarm of teeth, desperate and hungry. So hungry.

An arm wrapped briefly around his midsection in a vain attempt to comfort his stomach. Times had been too lean. He could barely remember a time when the hunger had been only gnawing and constant instead of agonizing, or if that time was even real.

But it wasn't all death. No, his senses told him otherwise. Keen ears alert, he leaned over the edge of the roof and tilted his head, baring teeth. Something was still down there, and it had to be his. He wanted this. Needed it.

Below, something moved. The Hunter flattened himself back and out of view.

She was baking alive; done for if she couldn't get the hell out quickly. The remains of the cab in the wreckage of their Humvee was the only thing keeping her from being flattened underneath the broiling Tank, but it also trapped her with the medium-rare corpse between her and fresh oxygen. The woman coughed and gagged, slipping the neck of her already sweat-soaked top over her nose in an attempt to keep out lungfuls of smoke and the sickly-sweet odor of burning flesh and gasoline.

Really, dousing the thing with her homebrewed Molotov and watching it go up like a bonfire had seemed like the best idea at the time, and she did suppose it had done its job. The problem had been her assumption that climbing back into the vehicle for security while she fired was also a good idea. Better than her chances out in the open, maybe, but being cooked wasn't on her list of goals, either.

"Come on!" she panted raggedly, shoving the weight of her body into the freakishly huge limb and shoulder pinning her inside the upturned vehicle. It just barely budged. FUCK. She let out a yell of frustration that was probably muffled by the wall of muscle. For all of her training these past couple of months and working out prior to that, she was still five-foot zilch and 110 pounds against a whole lot of literal dead weight. She shook her head furiously and, with another grunt, put all of her might into moving the damned thing. This time, she got enough leverage to create a gap large enough to wedge herself between the Tank's limp arm and the overheated metal. Blackened, flaking chunks of skin rubbed off disgustingly against her uniform until she managed to free herself at last.

With that accomplished, she gasped in greedy breaths of comparatively fresh air, blinking hard and rubbing tears out of her stinging eyes. Once she could see, she whipped around in a semicircle with her assault rifle drawn to scope out the vicinity, for all the good it would have done considering she'd emptied the clip into the Tank and hadn't gotten the chance to reload. At least everything still seemed, well, dead. Unfortunately, that also included the three people who had made up the rest of her evacuation team, which was about as bad as it got. It had been drilled into her and just about everyone else left on the planet's heads that sticking together was the key to surviving and not getting snared by a Smoker and dangling like a pinata until you strangled to death or some shit. That whole lone survivor thing you saw in movies didn't work out; she'd seen it.

"Jesus fuck," she muttered aloud under the surrounding hiss of sleet hitting burning gasoline, rubbing a bruised hip and sidestepping what was left of their medic, Carlin. It wasn't as though she hadn't seen people die plenty of times before, and not always this quickly, but hell. She'd trained with these people for the past months, even if she hadn't spent much time around them besides, and that was enough to form at least some kind of attachment.

Grimacing somberly, she yanked the radio off of her belt, raised it to hit transmit, and spoke quickly. "This is Theodora Skyler, First Refugee Militia extraction team calling Midway, I've got a real shitshow over here, is anyone hearing-" She was cut off by a loud burst of static, a clear sound of the device being fucked. With more than a little displeasure, she realized that it had been on her side that had taken the hardest landing when the Humvee flipped and was now a good deal flatter and more broken than before. A bitter curse left her mouth as she chucked the garbage to the pavement. Why couldn't it have been her hip to break instead? That was probably the better scenario here.

Move on. No time to stew over shitty luck. The first order of business had to be shelter. After the godawful commotion, the infected that she and her team had gunned down had to be only the first wave to come, especially now that big man on the block wasn't in their way. A saferoom up to CEDA code, one of the few fucking useful things they'd managed to do, maybe stocked with some ammunition would be the greatest thing in the world right now, but a sturdy spot with a locked door would do if she didn't piss off any more Witches or Tanks. No promises.

After reloading a clip into her rifle, Skyler shook her head once more in a silent acknowledgment of the three lost. Bye, guys. They'd be missed, and it sure was going to suck ass going it without them. With that, she set out on the move.

Up until she was snapped into attention by the distinct sound of a growl from above.

Stop!

The Hunter jerked back hard, biting back the snarl that had escaped him and digging his claws into the rooftop. A mess of saliva and blood from his wounded lip dribbled onto his chin. Quiet. He had to be so, so quiet, even if he could hear his own heartbeat hammering. That had almost been bad; the dizzy excitement and blurriness of his thoughts had nearly gotten him spotted. It felt like an eternity of laying there stiff and belly down before finally the prey eased up and started moving again.

Follow. Keeping to all fours and low to the ground, he shifted to watch them while he held off briefly to allow for the alert to pass somewhat. Even in this state, he instinctively used that time to assess them intently, for how much threat they would pose and for weaknesses. They were small, smaller than him, but battle-scarred and reasonably muscled. Woman, maybe, part of him thought, not that it was important. Her scent carried up to him, layered with sweat and burn and blood not her own, oddly entrancing in combination with the maddening smell of Clean One.

The confidence and certainty she carried herself with were unusual to him for her kind; prey was usually hurried, scared, anxious. This was different. Dangerous, maybe. He was going to have to work for his kill. The thought made him cautious, but also shake with anticipation. That thrill, that challenge, was what he lived for. The hunt.

Her turned back gave him the opportunity to take a silent run for the edge of the roof. At the last second, he tensed, crouched, and then took the climactic leap into the air. During these precious moments of weightlessness, he was filled with a rare sort of enjoyment. It was amazing; the contraction and release of his muscles, the breathlessness, the feeling of control. Soothing, familiar. He couldn't forget, but it helped him to tune down the pulsating headache and the bone-deep ache settled into his body, for just those seconds. The next roof rose up rapidly to meet him and he rolled into it, hardly breaking his stride.

Gradually creeping in closer bit by bit, the urges swelled into a louder and louder insistence. She was on her guard, but seemingly unaware of his presence after all. Unsuspecting prey. Good. Good good good. His teeth involuntary bared, as he was simultaneously lulled and driven by the voice-not-voice of the impulses. Rend. Kill. Eat.

Now. It had to be now. His pulse raced. Every muscle tensed, ready to spring. He got back into his low stance. He could feel it already; the momentum carrying him down and onto his kill. Slightly, just barely, he sidled up to the edge-

It happened so suddenly and he'd been so taken by fevered visions of the slaughter that was to come that he struggled for some moments to process exactly what happened. The silence of the night was shattered by a few explosive bangs. Unable to help a stunned yelp, he yanked himself back once again and pressed his belly to the ground. Hyperaware as he was, though, those couple of seconds were all that he'd needed to see.

She'd been looking right at him.

Satisfaction curled Skyler's face into a smirk. That might not have solved the problem entirely, but hopefully sent the message to her stalker that she knew they were there.

"Fucker."

Of course, it was a damn Hunter. Didn't that figure? Definitely one of the worse things to run into while she was on her own. She'd seen what they'd do if there was no one to get them the hell off; it would shred her and throw her innards around like gory confetti. Well. Guessed that just meant she was going to have to not get jumped on. At least it was only the one, or so she hoped, considering there'd been stories floating around that it wasn't always the case.

For a good minute, she stood her ground, staring daggers at the corner where she'd watched it disappear. No further sign, although she knew she hadn't hit it. Shit. Not surprising, the Hunters seemed to be clever enough to lay low. She couldn't stand around waiting for it to pop back out so she could finish the job though, so eventually, she had to just grimace and move on. Hopefully, the scare would put it off of pursuing her for a while.

Skyler kept to a steady clip down the street, sticking to the center of the road to avoid the bulk of the hazards that something could be hiding in or under. Nothing jumped out, but she did notice a handful of recently-dead commons strewn about with their bodies broken in ways that suggested having been hit by, you know, a truck but made out of meat. So this was the way that the Tank had come from, and it had more or less cleared the way for her. At least something had worked out in her favor. Along the way, she kept an eye out for any promising red arrows pointing her towards safety. Nothing yet, but this was a decently sized city. If she could make it far enough, there had to be something; the town may have been dead, but at one point there'd been more than one evac station and plenty of saferooms.

The entire time, she was certain the Hunter was watching her. Worse yet, as she continued, she became increasingly sure that it was from somewhere entirely too close for comfort, if her survival instincts that had only gotten sharper after the outbreak served her well. Of course, every time she looked up, she saw nothing. Typical, although this one was a bit more patient than average. Whatever. If that was the game it wanted to play, she could play it. She'd taken on bigger and badder than a lone Hunter and managed to come out alive, even if she came out beaten to hell and back. Rifle kept at the ready, she began humming a few bars out loud just to show it how much she couldn't care, as if it would know the difference.

About a mile passed in that way. Occasionally she would hear something like the patter of gravel off of a rooftop or noises that may or may not have been a growl, and each time she'd make sure to aim her sights in exactly that direction. The thing still didn't risk ducking its head out, but she'd be good if she could just ward it off until she got herself secure.

As if summoned by her thinking, there. Her eyes caught on a beautiful splotch of red paint in the middle of the road. A simple "house" image with an arrow underneath directing her towards a narrow alleyway. Skyler let out a short bark of relieved laughter. Fucking finally. She was almost home free, for now at least. Time to lock herself in for the night without having to worry about hordes or goddamn stalker Hunters, so she could start to figure out how she was going to get the hell out of this city. She ducked into the alleyway, seeing that there was a car wedged firmly between two buildings, some poor bastard obviously having misjudged whether they could make it through. Lacking in the height department, she couldn't see much past that, aside from that the passage was long and intersected with several other side streets, but the way looked clear. The important thing was that way down there at the end of it stood a sturdy steel door, still standing against the infected outside.

Triumphantly, she turned her face up at the rooftops and freed up one of her hands to flip up a middle finger. "Yyyeah!" she crowed with a cocky grin spread all the way across her face, "How's that, you sneaky little shit? In your creepy goddamn hood face! Good luck getting your dinner tonight!"

All she had to do was get over this stupid car. Like a pro vaulter, she put her hands onto the trunk and swung herself up, weight of her gear and all...

And as soon as her boots hit the back of the beat-up old station wagon she was near-deafened by a series of loud, keening beeps piercing the otherwise silent city and echoing through the streets for probably a mile around, surely alerting every infected in the radius to her presence. Her expression went blank, and for a moment she couldn't do much more than stand dumbly atop the hood, stunned into amazement that after several months of sitting derelict the car alarm was still working. Then the sound of furious screaming coming from seemingly every direction in the near distance nearly drowned out the wail of the alarm, snapping her back into action. Okay! Time to go!

Skyler leaped off the car on the alley side, gearing up to take the rest of the distance in a dead sprint. Seemingly within seconds, the possibility of that being a viable option took a nosedive, as from the intersections the passage became choked by a mob of lesser infected that was pretty damn sizable for after the winter freeze. Fuck! Not happening. Back over it was. As if things weren't already bad enough, even over the cacophony, her pursuer finally made himself known, in the wild, unmistakable screech of a Hunter about to pounce.

Yep! She sure had fucked this one! Time to run!

Screaming. He was screaming, the weak Others in every direction were screaming, and the noise. It was fury and it was agony, put him in total certainty that something sharp was physically being driven into his already-throbbing brain, staggered him so that all he could do for a moment was desperately cover his ears with his hands. He had to stop it. Had to destroy it, eliminate any trace of the source until nothing was left, kill it kill it killitkillitkillit-

Piloted by unthinking imperative, the Hunter was a single second away from throwing himself down to beat and kick and claw the noisemaking thing with his sibling Others. Choppy, confused, and maddened as his thoughts were though, a realization still managed to break through; the prey. She was still below, running but distracted by having to fight off those Weak Others that abandoned their assault on the bad noise with her bangstick. Her attention and her weapon's killing power were focused everywhere but on him.

His chance.

That was enough to refocus him onto her. He let the pain and adrenaline fully wash over him again as he bounced and sprinted and rolled across the few rooftops worth of distance she'd fled from the scene, boiling over into more snarling, slavering rage. It was going to burst out of him, explode.

There she was. Backed against a wall now, holding her own, but oh, she didn't know. But she was going to, she'd done this to him, her fault-

No more waiting. The Hunter threw his head back into an extended shriek, all of his pain and his fury and his need to kill made into one sound: chilling; unending; release. Hear him. The scream didn't stop while he too finally released the unbearable tension built up in his body and his legs pushed him off the roof, into the embrace of the air, and down toward his prey below.

Time seemed to hover in the brief moment before the figure screaming down from atop the roof overhead hit, and in that moment, Skyler forgot entirely about the horde stragglers she'd mostly dispatched. There was time for a single thought, oddly calm and almost unimpressed from shock:

Shit. I'm going to die.

However quickly she reacted, knee-jerk response wasn't fast enough to move or get her rifle up. And then the Hunter was on her. Regardless of size, from that height, it was like a ton of bricks slamming into her and sending her violently crashing to the ground underneath. The impact knocked every bit of wind out of her, compounded by a welling blossom of pain through her ribcage. From the sickening way she could feel her chest cave slightly and the black spots that overtook her vision, it'd cracked or at the very least bruised a few ribs in the process.

Enough consciousness returned to her to process what was happening as the Hunter splayed its claws to tear into her.

No. NO, FUCK YOU, she wasn't going down like this!

The feral glee of the moment poised before a kill was like nothing else. It coursed through the Hunter's body, flooding his brain and washing down his spine to light up all of his nerves. Every other meaningless thing was taken away except for him and his prey under him; her heartbeat so frantic it nearly kept time with his own, the way she thrashed and bucked and shouted, the delicious scent of her panic and adrenaline. Somewhere in it, there was a closeness of sorts, in being the only two things in the world.

KILL! KILL! KILLKILLKILL!

With each pulse of the command through his overworked brain, his claws raked over her chest over and over, shredding through layer after layer of an unusually tough upper covering before managing to send the first shallow arc of blood into the air. The sight and smell only fueled his bloodlust and drove him further into his manic frenzy. With the infliction of the wounds, her screaming grew nearly loud enough to match his own, but it was sharper and angrier than the total, desperate fear he was used to in the sounds the Clean Ones made at him.

Something else, too. It was so good, but something wasn't letting him sink fully into the euphoria of the kill as he wanted. He growled in frustration directly into her face, struggling to understand what it was with his scattered fragments of reason.

Her eyes? Was that it? She was staring directly up at him, no, no, he hated when they looked at him! The sharp heat of her gaze pierced like the bite of a weapon, so unwavering she hardly cringed with the pain, and she was furious. She was using her eyes to tear him into pieces, accuse, hate, bad-

A confused spike of panic shot through his gut to muddle with all of the excitement and agitation he was wrapped up in, sending his head reeling. All he knew was that he had to make this go away. Had to stop it. Stop, stop looking at him!

Head throbbing and enraged that she could do this to him in the middle of his kill, could threaten the only thing that felt good, the Hunter seethed. This prey was going to pay for doing this.

Skyler's entire body by now burned with the ferocity of her fight to throw this thing off of her. Her blood pounded through her at a million miles an hour; a good deal, unfortunately, soaking into what remained of her armored vest. The military-grade kevlar was also the only reason she hadn't been disemboweled yet, but if the Hunter kept getting in swipes the way it was, she could definitely count on more than the nasty scratches she'd gotten on her chest. For all she was worth, she bucked and kicked and pushed, but the creature was both determined and freakishly strong enough that it accomplished little more than maybe working it up further.

"FUCK YOU!" she spat, doing her damnedest to drive a knee up under the Hunter, but it matched her efforts to keep her pinned against the ground. Her nails scraped and chipped on the pavement in her futile but impassioned effort. She was not laying down and taking this! This thing didn't know who it was fucking with! "Get the hell OFF OF ME!"

To her great surprise, as if in response, the Hunter abruptly broke off its clawing attack. It did, however, lean in close enough to growl inches away from her face, forcing her to smell and feel its breath; reeking of disease and stale blood, fevered in her own face and down her neck while the hot condensation escaped into the air. Both of them were drenched with sleet, but aside from that, she could also see blood-tainted saliva dripping from its bared teeth, and noted with disgust that at least some of the blood splattered onto its face was her own. She caught the barest glimpse under the hood of its sweatshirt and saw gleaming, yellowed eyes burning out from the shadows, oddly locked onto her own with unnerving intensity. All the while, quivering with unknown intent.

Oh Christ. What was it even doing?

It turned out that she really, really didn't want the answer. Hardly a second later agony, unbearable and quite literally blinding, raked down the right side of her face down her brow and right through her eyelid. Skyler shrieked in pain like none she'd known before, blood and viscous substance pouring down her face in a hot torrent. Her vision, not just in that eye, blacked out. She was about to vomit. Wholly unaware of what she was actually doing, she did the one thing her body knew how to do on autopilot and fought...

And then, amazingly, she was rewarded with a sharp yelp as she managed to solidly kick the Hunter right off of her. Obviously, it hadn't counted on its meal having the kind of strength that she did in a moment of sheer adrenaline, because it looked exactly as shocked as she was. Barely able to see, Skyler rolled off to the side, frantically searching for her assault rifle through the tears and darkness, only to find that it had skidded away under a car and out of reach. No time. Panting like an animal, she unsheathed her combat knife.

There wasn't a single thought left in the Hunter's head. Whatever fragments had been there blended into a deafening, incomprehensible scream that demanded blood as he was knocked backward off of his prey. He felt, though, every maddening feeling possible with an immensity his body could never hope to contain and that the screeching wearing his throat raw failed to release in any way that mattered. The anger was unbearable; worse even than the starvation rioting in his stomach.

Already righting himself to throw himself at her again, he was barely aware of the prey also readied to strike, but even if he did, he was far beyond caring. Giving her as little of a chance as possible to counter, he lunged back in at her, snapping teeth at anything he could in an attempt to latch onto something. She brought up her arms to protect herself, but couldn't block the force of him slamming into her and knocking her back to the ground. Made clumsy with near-mindlessness, he hadn't sufficiently trapped her arms by her sides, allowing her to shove at him fiercely. No. Couldn't let her escape. He let out a guttural snarl and gnashed at her again, this time savagely connecting with her hand.

With the taste of her blood, clean and so right, his senses were overcome and the hunger wrested control. The anger was more than certainly still churning inside of him, but right now, it hardly mattered as feeding became a matter of need as simple and as urgent as air in his lungs. Excited screams welled up, but he suppressed them out of fear of releasing the bite. Claws dug into her shoulders to prevent her from twisting away and his teeth sank deeper into the flesh, drawing out another wonderful gasp of pain. There was still that something, though, that the look underneath the glaze of pain in her eye he hadn't ruined was rousing in him. He would have to take care of that next, and then everything would be okay-

Only the feeling of something hard and sharp pressed up against his belly returned him to any sort of reality. Immediately, his instinct lit up with danger signals screaming for him to pull back, but he was too lost in it to release her even if he wanted to. He did drop her hand from his mouth, though, worn enough from the battle that he was compelled to fix her into a long, threatening hiss in a hazy desire for her to let this be over as his ability to delay the gratification any longer ran out.

Her response in the moment before he went for the throat was low and trembling, and equally the most menacing sound he'd ever heard from a Clean One under him. She sat up hard to meet him halfway so that they nearly bashed heads together, rolled her uninjured shoulder and arm into a mighty thrust...

In the next instant, his breath was knocked out of him by an impact to his stomach so forceful that it had him seeing white, buckling at the waist. Strangely, it chased some of the aggression out of him, replaced by creeping confusion. She... she'd punched him in the stomach. Aggravating prey. Had to hurt her back. When had she managed to slip out from his grasp and escape being pinned? The Hunter raised his head in a dulled snarl at where she was somehow now crouching, very slowly comprehending the pieces of what had happened. The stabbing object that she still gripped in slick, shaky hands; hot, sticky dampness soaking through his torn coverings, draining his energy bit by bit with it.

Blood? His blood.

There was no time for retaliation; before he could finish a stunned, delayed yelp, she plunged the thing for a second time into his side. Having caught up to the injuries, reflex took over.

Hurt. Hurt badly. Had to get away. Had to run.

Overriding terror and panic blinded him as he screeched, making a swat for the weapon which he neither knew nor found out if he actually knocked away because he gathered his legs to kick off and as far away as he could get. The strength and coordination that had bled out left him coming up alarmingly short, catching himself unevenly on the ground. It hurt so badly he didn't know how his body managed to just keep going. Couldn't stop. Not safe.

Eventually, though, it simply became too much to continue. That couldn't be happening; he and the Others didn't stop for pain. Nonetheless, the last push he had in him only dragged him crawling underneath the upturned ledge of a large metal box, the barest amount of shelter possible from both the weather and Others. With a series of pitiful whines past his chapped lips, he collapsed into a sodden, bleeding heap. On the hard ground, his stomach convulsed, but empty as it was, nothing came up and the soreness was so great that he had to stuff an arm over his mouth to muffle another yowl.

All he could do was lay there, enveloped in hurt and exhaustion and pounding fury that he could feel gradually shifting into something much worse. No, no. Please let him stay angry. He tried desperately to nurse the constant feeling but was too bleary to resist what snuck into the edges of his brain to surround him; more fear.

Dark. Blood. Pain.

Alone.