Okay, for those of you who have already read "Coda", this story may give you a clue there are a lot of games I love, not just "Mass Effect". Another I'm a fan of is the "Left 4 Dead" series. Like most fanboys, I love Zoey...she may not be real, but with voice actress Jen Taylor's help, she's still earned a place in the hearts of a lot of gamers. Fans were hit hard when another much-loved character in the games, Bill, was killed off by Valve in the DLC "The Sacrifice". Boo, Valve!

They wouldn't kill off someone else, especially Zoey. They just wouldn't! Uh, right?

Hey, we didn't think Valve would arbitrarily off Bill.

So for better or worse, I thought of what most "L4D" fans would call an unthinkable scenario, and I couldn't help but write it. This story is both a tribute and a (hypothetical!) farewell to a fan favorite. If you've ever watched "The Twilight Zone", you might notice some aspects of this story I can only hope the great Rod Serling would appreciate.

"Left 4 Dead" and its characters owned by Valve...and we're still waiting for the next installment of "Half-Life", by the way!

"LEFT 4 DEAD: ZOEY'S REQUIEM"

by Charles Spencer

One dark and terrible night in a dead city.

Zoey was alone, her .45-caliber pistols in her hands clenched tight and ready, as she moved quietly along one side of an avenue. She'd been separated from Francis and Louis because of an attack by two Tanks. They had to separate in order to escape the monsters...it was minutes later, and Zoey was retracing her steps to find her friends. She prayed they were still alive.

One glance at Zoey, outside of her practiced, sweeping aim of her .45s, didn't exactly scream out that she was a seasoned, haunted survivor. For one thing the beautiful yet petite, raven-haired girl hardly looked like she was old enough to drive. Her beauty was barely concealed by a modest choice of clothes...a red jacket and modest shirt underneath, jeans and simple sneakers. She was better dressed for a jog than for killing zombies, a skill at which she had become highly proficient.

Even after so long since the First Infection, since everything she knew and cared for literally went to Hell, life became an unending nightmare for Zoey, and she feared more and more that death might be the only reprieve. Once a college student, the girl lost her family, home and most everything else to the virus that transformed most of the population of her country into Infected freaks. Because of an innate instinct to adapt and endure that came from watching many, many horror movies - she inherited that love for such movies from her late father - she became a survivor. Out of sheer luck, Zoey met three more survivors...straight-laced Louis...Francis, who hated every damned thing...and Bill. Tough-as-nails, gruff, amazing Bill, the crusty old Vietnam War vet. He took the rest of them under his wing. Taught them how to solider. How to live by any means in the valley of the shadow of death.

Zoey felt the nagging, damning guilt in her heart for the last words she said to Bill months before, not long after they discovered with no doubt they were carriers, immune from the virus that created the Infected, but damned with the ability to spread it further. The girl had felt so much anger toward the old soldier because he only gave a damn about the survival of their group. Everyone else could hang, especially considering the group could no longer live among 'normal' people. The old man cared for her so much, and she all but condemned him. Despair clutched around Zoey's heart again, in spite of her present fear, remembering how Bill sacrificed everything to give her, Louis and Francis the breathing room they needed to escape. The wrenching loss of the old soldier nearly made her lose all hope...even meeting those survivors from further South - annoying Nick, friendly Coach, gutsy Rochelle and lovable Ellis - didn't do much to raise her spirits.

And here she was, Zoey thought, moving through a part of town that was probably already dangerous when folks were still alive. She wanted to scream out, fire off a few rounds from her pistols, in case the guys were close enough to hear her. Unfortunately, chances were excellent she would have also drawn the kind of attention she didn't want from the zombies. She thought, Yeah, this night is going great. Bill would be impressed with you right now, no doubt! She absently brushed away an errant lock of black hair from her pale, lovely face.

As she crossed the open entrance to a foreboding warehouse, Zoey saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Inside. She hissed quietly, "Francis? Louis?" It didn't feel like an Infected...the moment they saw you, heard you, smelled you, whatever, they were on you. They weren't clever in any way. They didn't know how to ambush or set traps, they just rushed. She frowned, prayed, and moved inside. There was a light coming from the back of the warehouse...she moved to it carefully. Zoey chanced calling out cautiously, "Louis! Francis! That had better be you, or - !"

CRACKKK! Zoey barely heard the sound at the same time she felt the tremendous impact nearly shatter the back of her skull, and she lost all consciousness as she fell into a heap. A shadow among the shadows dropped the baseball bat and fell upon her...it suddenly had a thick leather belt in its hands, and it slipped the belt around Zoey's throat from behind her. The belt was pulled taut and constricted around the unconscious girl's throat until her windpipe was crushed.

Within moments, the girl was dead.

The shadow moved and took hold of the body's thin wrists, and then pulled it into the light.

Oh! Zoey knew awareness again, and sudden, elemental disorientation. Oh...oh, what the hell just happened...? She was looking up at a street lamp high above, its light shining down. She quickly stood and lifted her hands to rub her face. I-I think I'm all right...what the heck...! Zoey had opened her eyes to look down, and she immediately realized with a jolt she was nude, and she no longer had her guns. Her need for modesty briefly overriding her survival instinct, she asked aloud, "W-where'd my clothes go?"

"They weren't part of you, Zoey." The gruff voice spoke from a short distance away...it came from a figure wearing worn green combat fatigues she recognized instantly, just as Zoey knew and remembered the voice she was hearing. He was mostly concealed by shadow, especially his face, but his voice was unmistakable as he said, "When your time's done, when you're separated from your body, you're as naked as the day you're born." He even had an M-16 military assault rifle on a sling resting behind his back, its barrel harmlessly pointing skyward.

Zoey smiled brightly as she felt her emotions swell, not registering his words yet. "B-Bill?! BILL!" She charged to the figure and glomped him in a big hug, in spite of her nakeness. She was so happy to see the grizzled old vet...she looked up at his face... "Oh!" Close enough to see his face, Zoey was stunned to see a skull's visage looking down upon her, yet wearing that familiar beret Zoey remembered. Haltingly, the girl tried to speak as she looked at the spectre she held with eyes as wide as saucers... "Bill...what happened to you...?!"

Bill's bone hands gently rested on her slender bare shoulders. He looked upon her and said matter-of-factly from his whitened skull, "I'm dead, kid. Remember? You're seeing me like this because I was assigned to be your Reaper. I'm here to take you away cause you're dead, too."

"M-my...?" Zoey felt terrible dread, but not so much because of the unexpected, supernatural sight of Bill...she knew without a doubt this was the old vet she learned so much from and grew to love as a father figure...but she had to take a step back from him as she absorbed the enormity of what he just said...! "Wait a minute...take me away?" Zoey felt a jolting cold as she almost whispered, "Y-you're saying...I-I'm dead?" She looked down, and saw her hands were paler than just before. As if there was no blood flowing under the skin to give it color. As if...she was no longer alive. "No...no, that's not right..."

Bill was a spectral sight...but there was a gentleness in that no-nonsense voice as he said quietly, "No, it isn't right...but it still happened, Zoey."

"I'm dead." Zoey suddenly knew it was a perfect, unchangeable truth. Anger and denial flared within her along with confusion. "But how?! What...!" The pale beauty looked around, and she only had to look behind her to have her questions answered. When she saw, Zoey breathed, "Oh, Jesus."

Zoey saw...herself.

Under the sole street lamp in the loading dock area, Zoey saw her dead body lying in an unnatural postion, her right hand still holding one of her .45's. Looming over her mortal form nervously as he put the gun that was in her left hand into the waistband of his pants, with ferret's eyes and a drooling grin, was a tall, dirty freak in rumpled clothes. She heard Bill say, "That's the son of a bitch who killed you. He hit you from behind like a damn coward, and now..." Bill didn't finish...he didn't have to as the freak lowered to his knees next to the dead body. One of his trembling hands reached out and unzipped her red jacket...and then he drew closer to lift up her shirt...

"Oh." At first, Zoey could only feel shock. But as the freak continued, as he pulled her shirt up to expose her body's naked breasts, she could only feel rage mixed with total revulsion. "Oh, no...no you DON'T, you motherfucker!" She tried to charge to him, but she was held back gently by Bill's bony hands as they gripped her pale arms. Zoey cried, "Bill, let me go!"

Bill grunted, "It won't do any good, kid!"

"I don't care!" With growing horror that mixed terribly with her rage, Zoey saw the freak caress her dead body's breasts as it laid at his knees. With a strangled voice, Zoey implored, "Please...let me go..." Reluctantly, Bill did...and she sprinted to the sight of the monstrous bastard violating her mortal body and raised her hands, her nails ready to claw the fucker's face off. Zoey screamed, "Son of a BITCH - !"

But Zoey's scream was cut short when she saw her clawing hands moved through the predator's face and head...to him, she was less immaterial than smoke.

Not far behind her, Bill said sadly, "You can't stop him, kid...you're dead." He took a few steps closer to her and said, "You've got no place in this world anymore. I'm sorry."

The pale, nude beauty trembled as she slowly shook her head...she stared at her nearly-whitened hands...Zoey whispered softly, "Oh, fuck..." She couldn't look at her dead body and the freak anymore, because he'd moved on to taking off her shoes and socks. He was suckling her toes. Zoey moved slowly to Bill again, her expression full of cheated sadness. "After all the shit I've been through because of the zombies...for this sick motherf - !" Then the girl realized what she was saying, and she looked at Bill with jolting shame. She managed, "I must sound so damned selfish...you died, too...!"

Bill's skull had a permanent grin as his voice reassured. "Hey, you're not being selfish. Who the hell wants to be dead?"

Zoey looked down and shook her head, her shame compounded as she immediately thought back to the last time she saw the old soldier. "I...I said so many stupid things...the last time I saw you. I'm so sorry."

She felt Bill's warmth as he said, "Water under the bridge, kid. Hell, I couldn't fault you for being angry at the time."

Bill's forgiveness didn't hold back Zoey's sadness. She looked down and quietly lamented, "After...after everything...this bastard comes along, and...!" It was the worst kind of irony. To barely escape things she called 'zombies' time and again, only to be killed by an uninfected freak. She looked back to her body, and the freak was pulling her jeans and panties from her mortal form. Her body was becoming as naked as her true self was. Zoey asked with disgust, "Shit, he's going to rape me, isn't he?"

She felt Bill draw close behind her as he answered, "Even if you're dead? Yeah. That's the kind of predator he is."

Zoey felt overwhelming hatred and loathing for the freak. He paused and stared down at her mortal form. Zoey couldn't help but do the same from her truly unique perspective. Fascinated, she looked at her petite, nude dead body, and mused, "I...I never saw myself like this before." She was only disquieted by the slackened expression on her mortal face, her eyes half-open and staring at nothing.

Bill said quietly, "You are a true beauty, Zoey, alive or dead. Any man would want to be with you. I know I still do."

Zoey turned to him, her eyes wide. "You...? Y-you never told me..."

The skull's face looked down and grunted, "I never told you because I was old enough to be your goddamn grandfather!" Bill turned away out of his own shame as he said much quieter, "You would've laughed at me."

Zoey looked at Bill solemnly...had she seen signs before that the old soldier desired her? With so much regret...she wished he'd said something. She turned back to her dead mortal form, and saw something a thousand times more troubling. The freak was positioning himself between the girl's dead legs, and he began to spread them. Zoey quickly looked back to Bill and asked needfully, "C-can you get me out of here? It's strange enough seeing myself dead. I don't want to watch this piece of shit do things to me...!"

Looking away from Zoey, Bill's voice changed as he laughed. "Heh...have you taken a look around you?" He looked back at the girl and informed her, "He's about to get interrupted."

This earned a strange look from Zoey, who then turned back to the freak...just in time to see him snared around the throat by something long and thin from above as he began to shrug out of his dirty coat...he tried to scream, but he was quickly being strangled: "GHAGK!" It was a Smoker's tongue that drew tight around the bastard's neck and pulled him out of the light that bathed Zoey's dead body. The freak tried to scream again, and sounded even more pathetic...he pulled one of Zoey's guns from his pants and fired upward at the Special Infected a few times. Not only did he miss, he only succeeded in drawing the attention of others...a pack of almost two dozen Infected shambled in from the adjoining alley and spotted him as he began to hang from the Smoker's tongue. He dropped the gun and tried to wriggle from the tongue as his hands groped at it desperately. He heard the growls of the other Infected then.

The misbegotten creatures flooded all over the freak in a heartbeat as he was suspended over the pavement; they pulled him from the grasp of the Smoker's tongue, and the monster retreated amongst the rooftops. At street level, the uninfected freak's brief, pathetic screams of incredible pain were muffled by the mob of zombies as they literally tore him to pieces. Blood, gore, gristle and more flew everywhere in the darkness.

Zoey had a ringside seat, and she laughed at the sight of her killer being destroyed. "Oh! Oh, that is sick! I shouldn't like what they're doing to the bastard, but - !" She looked back at Bill...

...the old vet shrugged good-naturedly. "Even God wouldn't blame you for the way you feel, kid." After only a minute or so, it became quiet again. Bill observed, "Looks like they're done..."

They were, but Zoey realized her dead, naked body in the light got their attention...the pack of Infected slowly began to move toward it. With dismay, she groaned, "Aw, shit...! I-I know that's not me...I mean, it's not really me, but..." They moved closer...they considered the sight of the dead body that still held a gun in its right fist. Then...

...the Infected disregarded Zoey's body and began to leave. She was surprised and couldn't help but ask, "What the hell...?"

Behind her, Bill offered, "Well, it's a cold night, Zoey. And those damn Infected only like warm, living bodies."

It really hit Zoey then, once and for all, and she knew a sudden cold inside that came with acceptance. It was a cold that almost made the girl's soul shiver as she moved into the light to her mortal form as it laid sprawling on the concrete. Zoey felt so much sadness looking at herself...she looked back upon her short life, punctuated by a nightmare apocalypse, and finally ended by some random freak who couldn't give her the chance to survive and perhaps one day know happiness again in the mortal world.

Zoey knelt next to her body, and she saw how her true self had become so much more pale than her mortal shell, recently killed yet still warm and with the soft tones that came with life. She saw her own beautiful face slackened as if from sleep, a couple of locks of her black hair still astray, her eyes staring into the darkness forever. Zoey wanted so much to recover her body's modesty, but...it began to sink into her how much that didn't matter anymore. Not just because the true her was naked now too, but...she said softly, "It...it's what I have to leave behind. I know that, but...this was me." Solemnly, the girl lifted her right hand to her lips and kissed two of her fingers...she reached down then, and was blessed to feel her fingers brush her cooling mortal cheek. A kiss goodbye. Zoey stood above her own body and almost whispered, "I'm going to miss being alive so much."

Bill's voice reassured her, "That'll change, Zoey. It'll change in only the best ways."

The girl smiled as she felt the warmth of his words...and their truth. "I know." Zoey turned from her own body then...and moved into the darkness, where Bill stood waiting. Her pale, nude beauty was luminous in the shadow. She asked thoughtfully, "Will the guys find me before, uh...before some rats do?"

Bill nodded gently. "The shots that bastard fired got their attention. You know em...they'll put you to rest."

Zoey smiled a bit more as she felt a welcoming calm...she felt like her old self again as her strength returned, as she felt nothing but comfort with the old vet. "So you're taking me to the other side, huh. Am I gonna see a bright light on the way, old timer?"

Bill's head cocked to the side curiously. "Yeah, and a few other things besides, kid. You'll see."

Zoey then grinned as she crossed her arms under her pretty breasts. "What about that Stairway to Heaven? I know how much you loooove stairs..."

The old soldier gruffily barked with sarcasm, "Ha-ha, very funny!"

The girl's grin gently faded as she stood before Bill. "I still don't get one thing. You said you were assigned to be my Reaper. What does that mean?" She already figured out that living concepts of Reapers, grim or otherwise, were way off.

The vet answered fondly, "It just means when a person's taken to the Afterlife, the one who loved them the most who's already dead has the chance to be their Reaper...the one who'll take them to eternal peace. I wasn't allowed to bring all of myself here, which is why I've got this permanent grin right now. Don't ask, it's complicated!"

Something shifted in Zoey's expression then. Her eyes were soft as she repeated, "The one who loves me the most."

Bill's posture shifted uncomfortably. "Y-yeah, that's right. You got twenty questions for me or something? Or are we gonna go?"

Zoey's voice reached out cautiously as she said, "Bill...I remember what you told me before, about wanting to...be with me."

Downcast, Bill replied, "Yeah, and if I told you while I was alive, you woulda laughed. And?"

The beautiful girl smiled warmly. "Do you hear me laughing now?" They looked at each other for a long, quiet moment. She brushed an errant black lock of hair from her pale visage and finally said, with all of her heart, "I want to be with you, too."

"Uh..." The girl smiled a bit more because she knew if Bill had a face at the moment, it would be bright red from embarrassment. With adorable nervousness, Bill managed, "Er, how about we wait until we get where we're going, kid? I need to put some meat back on these bones!"

"Then what are you waiting for?" Then Zoey drew close and embraced Bill, and she felt so warm being with him. She wondered how it would feel to be with him forever, and she knew it would be wonderful. Zoey's lips curled a bit more and her smile became needful as she closed her eyes and whispered, "Take me away, Bill."

Bill's comforting arms held the nude girl in return as he felt warm, as well. The old vet said quietly, "We're gone, darlin."

And just like that, they were gone, leaving the mortal world behind...

THE END