Left 4 Dead: The Mercy Diaries – The Streets Part 1

The Streets Part 1

The sound of gunfire, crunching bone and falling bodies filled the air as wave after wave of infected swarmed into the room. Footsteps and screams alerted nearby foes, tripping over the corpses soon lining the floor. One by one, we took down the relentless line of rotting attacks with almost military precision. Finally, we got a chance to breathe.

“For Christ’s sake won’t they give us a bit of peace?” grunted Francis, lighting up a scavenged cigarette from a small table as we walked into what used to be someone’s living room. The TV had long since broadcast anything; only static graced the screen now, illuminating the four of us in an eerie evanescent glow.

“How many times do I have to tell you, keep your Goddamn voice down?” Bill scolded through gritted teeth.

“This ain’t Vietnam now, Bill! This is hell on earth and you damn well know it” Francis replied spitefully.

“Same rules still apply if you want to get out of here alive, buddy”. Bill managed to repel any attempted chink of his emotional armour. He had taught us all how to refine our skills; we all knew it too.

Louis and I glanced at each other as Bill led us down the corridor. He and I were very much the lesser pair of the group, similar in our lack of acceptance of what was happening, and the least prepared members of the quartet in experience. Bill and Francis however, were two generations of alpha males competing, albeit subconsciously, to become leader of our pack.

We started to pick up pace, walking our way through rooms, broken down walls and corridors slowly looping our way down to the ground levels. Trawling through the empty homes felt like an out of body experience, witnessing the scenes of violent deaths and crimes, with the echoes of what used to be still ringing from the walls. I shuddered and tried to focus.

We had been surviving the green flu outbreak for nearly two weeks now, and trust me, hundreds of flesh hunting, dead people was pretty much enough crazy for me. I could never settle for the life we had, but it was certainly better than what we now knew to be coming. Over the past day,  Bill had been noticing something odd about the bodies lining the ground. They were starting to show different signs of mutilation; deep cuts, strangulation, being covered in bile and more breaks, bruising and crushing possible for your average size horde, even with their psycho-strength.

It started when we thought we’d found another survivor while inspecting the bodies; I’d heard a woman crying coming in a small warehouse in the block nearby. We went to find her, but before we could get a real chance to see what was wrong a wave came. Before we knew it, she was charging at us. Louis slammed the door just in time to escape the long talon fingers and piercing red eyes that were closing in on us, but I doubt it would have held her for long if we’d stuck around long enough to find out. In what felt like a very short space of time we got attacks from all angles. We were lucky to escape with the group intact from the knocks and hits we took as we ran.

I stupidly thought we had enough time to make it to the roof when something came from behind. The sound of a gigantic thud of flesh hitting metal rang through the air. I turned around to see a parked car spinning and whistling in our direction, sending shards of broken glass and twisted metal everywhere. Behind the heads of the infected swarming in around us, I saw the bulbous, deformed shoulders of something more like the size of a rhino than the body of an infected human, charging our way.
It was enough to make me realise that I really didn’t want to find out what it was attached to, and barely made it onto the roof in time. By the time we looked back, the horde had moved on, but we knew that the game had changed.

What was happening to the infected?


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