Why Witches Cry: A Left 4 Dead Love Story

Chapter 1: Just me and the Flu

Author's Note: Alright! My first public fan fic! I'm so excited! This right here is just as it says, a love story within the world of the very awesome zombie apocalyptic game that is Left 4 Dead. Don't be worried by the love story part. This isn't some twisted hentai involving a Witch and a Hunter or anything like that. I'm not going to spoil anything so you'll just have to wait till I get there! ^_~ Here's the first chapter, I hope you like it!

I should have been dead. Or worse: one of them. Everyone knew your best chances for survival during the Infection was in a group. Didn't matter who you were, or how different you were from each other. If you stuck together no matter what, you were a zombie-killing unit that could rival the army. It didn't matter who you were as long as you had a team to watch your back. I didn't. You know how that one old song says one is the loneliest number? Well it's a hell of a lot lonelier in a zombie apocalypse. I had no one. No one to cover me when I patched my wounds, no one to help me up if I was immobilized, no one to cover my ass if a Boomer vomited on me, NO ONE. Just wasn't lucky enough to find anyone human.

I know what you're thinking:"What about your friends and family?" The truth is, I didn't really have friends. I was too much of a hopeless nerd to have any. A lot of kids thought I was a loser and wouldn't come within two feet of me. So I said fuck 'em and just gave up on friendships entirely. As for my family, I'd abandoned them a long time ago. Long fuckin' story, please don't ask. In the years leading up to the Infection I had somehow deluded myself into thinking that my "lone wolf" status was my greatest strength. No one to look after but number one. Nobody to nag me or mooch off of me. Just me, myself and I. But in the wasteland formerly known as planet Earth, being alone was the worst thing to be. I would have killed to have at least one other person as my partner. But nope. Just me, myself and I to look after me. Just like I wanted it. God I was so fuckin' stupid! But anyway, nothing I can do about that now. All that matters is that I survived somehow. Against all odds I made it out alive. I was given a break by God or fate or whatever. And that break's name was Sabrina. Yeah, I know I said I was alone, and I was...until I met her.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning. I'll start by telling you a little about myself. My name is Tyler Smith. Before the Infection I was a clerk at a local game stop at the Long Beach Towne Center. I lived in an apartment nearby, and at the time my story starts, I was nineteen. Naturally I was around for pretty much the whole thing. The first signs of attacks by "crazed persons unknown" on the news, the flu announcements, the "wash your hands to stay safe" campaign, CEDA, the quarantine zones, and eventually the big attack.

I came into work the day it happened. I had been sick for about a week and stayed home from work. At first I was sure that it might be that flu that was going around. But after a week I got better. Unfortunately I didn't watch the news, so I had no idea what was going on. I did hear a lot of helicopters and what I could have sworn were gunshots, but I was so sick I didn't care. I just wanted to stay in bed all day, fuck the world. When I finally got better I tried calling in to let the boss know I'd be coming in today. No body picked up. In fact I didn't even get a dial tone. Did I forget to pay the bill again? Ah, I'd worry about that later. I'd just get over there and see if they needed me. On my way to work, I noticed that the streets were surprisingly empty. I just assumed the sickness had gotten so bad that everyone was just staying in. I thought about the quarantine zones and wondered how much more of them there must be by now. When I got there I found the place locked tighter than Fort Knox. A sign taped to the inside read, "closed due to the flu epidemic". The Center had been getting less and less crowded as the "flu" outbreak spread.

I knew about just as much about the "flu" as the rest of the world did. Some people said it more resembled rabies, what with the crazed attitude and spontaneous violence toward others. I tried to ignore it, saying everything would be fine, today's technology in medicine was a lot more advanced. But I knew that was a crock of shit. When I found the store locked I looked around and do you know what I saw? Nothing. Nobody. Besides some CEDA trucks I was the only one there. It was really eerie. Like something out of I am Legend.

I shook my head and walked to my car, a beat up Volkswagen bus. I had just unlocked the door when I heard a scream behind me. I whipped around thinking someone was hurt, when I saw a woman running straight for me. She looked to be in her early twenties, wearing a tweed dress. She had dark hair, and her skin was a deathly white. And her eyes were hungry. Locked onto me as if I was Thanksgiving dinner. She ran at me like a bullet, and slammed me into my bus. That knocked the wind right out of me, and that allowed her to start beating on me while shrieking and jabbering. What the Hell was this lady's problem? What had I done to her? As she beat on me I pushed her as hard as I could onto the concrete and dove into my bus, slamming the door behind me and locking the door. I reached into my pocket for my keys only to find that I had dropped them on the ground outside. She was now hammering on the door of my car, and she wasn't alone. Someone was now banging on the passenger side door, a man in a Lowe's uniform with the same ghostly white skin as the woman.

"What the fuck do you want?!" I screamed at them. They didn't answer. They only screamed and continued to beat on my car. At this point I was scared out of my mind and didn't know what to do. What was going on!? Were these the victims of this so called "flu" I'd been hearing about? A few of the infected people came to the store every now and then. They were deathly pale and always coughing. They looked like they barely had enough strength to stand. I always had to turn them away, boss's orders. Hard to believe the same people who were coughing their lungs out and who could barely walk were now screaming at me and running at full speed as if the ice cream man was down the street. Just what kind of virus was this?

The Lowe's man had started banging on the passenger window now, and it was starting to crack. The woman on my side seemed to pick up on this and did the same. I heard more screaming and two more pale people, a cop and a man in a HazMat suit, came running at the front of my bus. If I stayed here any longer my car would be completely surrounded and I'd be stuck here until they finally broke in. The passenger window smashed open and Lowe's reached in, trying to grab me by the hood of my sweatshirt. The driver side window started to crack in a spiderweb pattern, and soon the woman in the tweed dress would be in too. Taking a deep breath I unlocked the door and pushed it open as hard as I could, knocking the woman to the ground for the second time and making a mad dash for it.

I had no idea where I was going, but anywhere was better than with these crazies. I dashed across the empty parking lot with the four Infected chasing after me. First thing was first, I needed a weapon. Seemingly sent as a sign from above I saw a lone cop car parked on the sidewalk and half inside Barnes and Noble, books scattered every which way and glass sprinkled all over the car's hood. A gun. Please lord tell me there's a gun in there! I ran as fast as I could, my pursuers not far behind. By their screams I could tell they were at least a couple yards behind me. After what seemed like miles I finally reached the police car and found not only the door wide open, but a semi automatic shotgun sitting between the two front seats. Please be loaded please be loaded please be loaded. I'd never shot a gun off before, but right now I had no choice but to try. I dove into the car, grabbed the gun, and spun around while I sat in the driver's seat.

The first to reach me was Lowe's. I brought the gun up, aimed, and fired. The impact blew me all the way back into the passenger seat. Lowe's had a large hole in his chest and was blown back into his buddies. After taking a few seconds to recover I fired three more times, blowing the heads off of Tweed and the Cop as well as the legs off of HazMat. I took a short breather and looked through the glove compartment to find two boxes of shells for the weapon I held. I stuffed them into my sweatshirt pockets and got out of the car. HazMat was crawling on the asphalt toward me, but I emptied a shot into his face plate. I should have been mortified at killing four people right now, but I wasn't. It was self defense, it was either me or them. I had no choice. I was just about to walk away when Lowe's ran into me like a freight train.

What the hell?! Didn't I kill him!? He knocked me to the ground and started beating the hell out of me, the hole in his chest allowing me to see the gray sky above. I gritted my teeth through the pain and aimed for his head. Pulling the trigger completely erased his face, and he fell to the ground. I was completely bewildered. I used the cop car's open door to pull myself up, still staring at Lowe's finally dead carcass. I blew a hole through him. He should have been dead. Flu my ass. The flu didn't make you an almost invincible mad man. Violent grey people that were hard to kill except for the head? This so stunk of zombie apocalypse.

I looked around the Towne Center and saw a few other zombies in the distance. They hadn't noticed me yet, and I wanted to keep it that way. I thought about what I was going to do next. Maybe go home and try to hold the fort until help arrived? No. Doing that might have been a good idea if I had more time to prepare. Plus, these weren't normal zombies. If they could run, did that mean they could climb too? What about the fact that they broke my car window open by slamming on it? They would try that with my window at home, possibly my door if they had too.

Guess my only option was to run. But where? I had no idea where the evacuation zones were. It would be stupid to just wander around aimlessly, that could get me killed. I needed a goal. I thought of places they could be using as evac points that were close by, when it hit me. Disneyland. There was what looked like a helipad on Space Mountain. I passed by it every time I waited in line for that ride. It was longshot, but it was better than sitting here with my thumb up my ass waiting for these things to finish me. Plus, if there was no evac, there would be plenty of restaurants with kitchens loaded with food. Not to mention Disneyland had a gate around it. If I got rid of every zombie in there and locked those gates tight I'd have a pretty decent fortress. Alright, I had a plan. Now I just needed some gear. The road was probably going to be cluttered with cars, and these bastards would probably be attracted to the din of my Volkswagen's rickety engine, so driving was out of the question. It was going to be a long walk to the Happiest Place on Earth, so I'd need some food to hold me over, which also meant something to carry it in. Without any hesitation I ran to the Sports Chalet, careful not to make too much noise that would alert those things of my presence.

To be continued.......