2 comments/ 18479 views/ 6 favorites Virtual Reality: Left 4 Dead By: Sean Renaud Sean smiled as he shut the door to his car and dashed up the driveway with his Gamespot bag. His newest purchase was going straight to work. After a drink or two. Actually it was too much work to pour drinks he just grabbed the entire bottle and set it beside him as he put the game in his Xbox 360 and turned the system on. "Damn this game is great!" Sean shouted as he started playing. "Get me out of here!" Sean shouted, he wasn't normally claustrophobic but something about the closet just seemed to be closing in around him. It wasn't helping that it was completely pitch black in the room, there wasn't even a light creeping in from beneath the door. He couldn't even see his hands or tell with any certainty if his eyes were even open. The complete blackness combined with the sounds outside were slowly driving him into fits of terror. "Help! I'm trapped!" Worse since waking in his tiny prison he couldn't figure out where he was or how he'd gotten there. The last thing he could remember with any clarity was picking up his reserved copy of Left 4 Dead 2 from the local Gamestop but he hadn't even gotten to play for some reason. His mind simply wouldn't given him a more recent memory, he was pretty sure he'd been drinking and gotten on the internet to check his mail but there was a haze over the memories that just wouldn't lift away. "Please." He whimpered. The darkness was enough to keep him freaked out and being locked up was even worse but what was truly beginning to terrify him were the sounds just outside the door and through the walls. There were screams and snarls that didn't sound like any person or animal he'd ever heard. There was gurgling noise and sometimes gibbering laughter would pass right the door never taking so much as a second to brush up against the wall. Once something had plodded through the room grunting, whatever it had been was so large the room had shook. Sean had done his best to search the tiny closet for something he could use to escape his prison but there hadn't been much of anything. At least nothing that he could use blind to MacGyver his way past the door. There were paint cans, at least he thought they were paint cans but they could have been giant coffee cans for all he could tell. There was a shotgun but not enough room to point it at the door. There wasn't even enough room to sit down without crossing his legs. "Help!" He had a three foot length of metal piping but not the room to swing it. He'd tried propping it against the wall and jumping on it and hit his head on the ceiling that was just high enough that he didn't need to stoop. "Why am I here?" Sean was close to tears when the situation changed slightly and he heard something new. They screams were heading away from him but better than that was he could hear shouting, intelligible shouting, and gunfire. "Help! Help!" The gun screams, shouts and shots were over in just thirty seconds and then there was silence again. The silence was somehow more maddening than the gibbering had been only seconds before. It was over but it didn't sound like anybody had won, it sounded like somehow they'd killed each other, there was no gibbering, but there wasn't any shouting anymore either and no matter how hard he strained Sean didn't hear people walking either. "Help." He whispered so softly that he didn't even hear himself. He just slumped down in his tiny prison and whimpered. A gruff voice broke the silence, "damnit, they got Bill. We got guns here." It was a human being, someone had survived and it was a human being! For a moment Sean was so elated that he completely forgot to call for help. He just smiled. He was so relieved he could actually feel the tension flowing out of his body. "Hey get me outta here!" He shouted once more at the top of his lungs. When there wasn't an immediate response he shouted again. "Keep your panties on I'm comin." The voice responded. The lights in the room suddenly clicked on and then the door swung open. "How'd you end up trapped in there anyway?" "I don't know. Where am I?" Sean was nearly blinded by the light and couldn't seem to blink it away. "Shit you got amnesia? Look as long as you know how to use that thing and you don't slow us down you can come with us." The voice had nodded towards the shotgun Sean was clutching in one hand not that Sean saw anything more than a fuzzy outline move. "We gotta go though; they'll find us pretty quick if we stay here." "Another survivor?" Sean managed to blink away the last of his light blindness in time to see a shapely young woman. She was wearing a pink coat over a black tee and tight blue jeans. If she wasn't covered in a crude mixture of blood and something Sean could only describe as ooze she would have been gorgeous and honestly she was still pretty. "Man finding survivors trapped in closets, this is just like Zombie Wars, its nuts. I'm Zoey and this clichéd biker boy is Francis, don't laugh he will hit you and yes it is a terribly girly name for a six foot three tattooed biker in a leather vest. We have another guy with us; he's currently trying to find a way through this office building. We figure out best bet for getting out of here to get to the river and steal a boat." "Survivor?" Sean rumbled clearly confused but rather than answer Zoey took him by the hand and lead him to the window so he could see the bodies strewn all across the opening. "Zombie apocalypse?" Sean's shoulders slumped. He'd always known that this was going to happen one day. "Fuck. So what's the plan?" "The plan young brother is to head through the rest of this building and keep heading east. I've been through Riverside before and I have a vague idea of where we can get a boat. I figure at the very least if we can get on the water these things won't be able to swim, and maybe we can find some place where these things haven't gotten. My name is Louis and you are?" A black man wearing a white button shirt and black tie said. The top button was undone and the tie was loose and the sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. He looked like his car had broken down on the way home from work and he was just changing a tire. "Sean, I'm Sean Renaud and. . ." "He's got amnesia." Francis cut in. "Can we get going?" Louis led the way through the rest of the building stopping at the door and peaking out. "How bad is it?" Francis said chambering a round into his M16. "I've seen worse. On three?" Louis responded. Zoey and Francis both nodded in response. "Three!" They all shouted and leapt out of the door way firing into a thick crowd of zombies. Sean's eyes lit up but he did dashed out but there was nothing close enough for a shotgun. The three of them were amazing, even after being in the military, and being a pretty good shot it was amazing to watch the three in action. Every time they pulled the trigger another zombie fell and they were running at nearly top speed the whole way. Then an in human scream tore through the night. Sean had heard that sound before when he was locked in the closet and it had filled him with dread then. Now out in the open it was louder and seemed to becoming from all directions at once. He saw something leap overhead and then it was a blur of claws trying to rip his face off. He only barely got the shotgun between himself and the zombie in time to keep his eyes intact. "Help!" Zoey was the one who saved him, shoulder checking the zombie and then firing from two pistols until it was dead. Sean couldn't help but stop to stare at it. When he was alive the man had been black, now he was an ashen brown color. He was wearing a black hooded sweater pulled tight around his desiccated face but the detail that really stood out about him was his hands. Somehow his fingers had already mostly rotted away leaving behind sharpened bone tips that he used like claws. "C'mon lets go!" Frances grabbed Sean by the back of the collar and sent him stumbling toward a bus that had crashed into a wall. "Through here!" It was a tight alley way but that actually made the shooting even easier. "I think I see a safe room up there, we just have to get over this fence." Zoey shouted. Francis, Louis and Zoey suddenly ran up a flight of stairs but Sean leapt at the fence easily grabbing the top and pulling himself over. He heard someone coughing overhead and looked up just in time to see some kind of pink tentacle wrap around his neck and half way down his torso pinning his arms in place. He could barely breathe let alone call for help. The others had run into something because they were shouting and something was roaring. Then the building they'd gone was suddenly engulfed in flames. Sean watched in horror as three of them ran out of the building being chased by what could only be described as a Hulk. It looked more like a gorilla than anything remotely human, the muscles of its chest and shoulders were so overdeveloped that its head was difficult to pinpoint. Every time it swung its arms something went flying. Trash cans, dumpsters even it tore a huge chunk of the brick wall out and didn't even seemed to notice what it had done much less break stride. Sean's lungs were beginning to burn as the Hulk chased Zoey and the others back the way that they had came and out of sight. He stopped struggling almost entirely, it was pointless and worse it wasted what little air and energy he had left. Sean closed his eyes and hung limply knowing from when he'd wrestled his friends how long it might take for him to die. Things were starting to go dim around him when he heard a single round fired and he dropped to the pavement gasping for air. "Here, let me help you up." Zoey was already pulling Sean's arm over her shoulder and helping him back to his feet when Francis walked up and drove his fist into Sean's stomach. "Francis!" "No he needs to hear this. Hey fuck stain. I don't know if you've noticed or not but there aren't a lot of us here. We can't go off by ourselves, you could have gotten killed. Truth is." He grabbed Sean by the collar and slammed him against the fence. "I don't give a shit if you die, but that thing back there, that Tank? If you'd been there with your shot gun it might not have gotten me, I think I broke a rib cus you went off by yourself. You understand? We stay together, the government, the military, hell even my old gang might have left us for dead but we don't do that to each other. The only way out of this hell hole is together." Rattling the fence one last time Francis turned and ran into what looked like a panic room. It was probably a hold over from a bomb shelter complete with heavy steel door. Louis was already inside. "You know he's right." Zoey said. "Now let's get inside, we'll be safe." The idea of being safe in a place that was overrun by zombies seemed laughable to Sean but he wasn't about to argue with them. Whoever had used, or had meant to use this place as a shelter had stocked it for every possibility. There sleeping bags, dried food, water, first aid kits, enough bullets to wage a war on a small country and best of all guns. Combat shotguns like the ones the SWAT teams used and M16s. Only the hunting rifle really looked out of place. For Sean the M16 was a little like going home. He actually missed the way it felt in his arms after getting out of the Marines a few years earlier. "We'll rest here; head out first thing in the morning. They're usually less of em during the day anyway. At any rate their easier to see." Frances said putting his back against the smooth concrete wall and sliding down to his butt. Louis did the same in a separate corner. It was only Zoey who bothered undressing and sliding into one of the sleeping bags. Sean didn't mean to stare but he couldn't really help himself. She seemed larger than life the way she fought off the zombies. When she stripped down it was so obvious that she was so small. She had tiny feet and was only barely over six feet tall. Even though she was in her mid twenties she could easily have passed for a teen, especially with her hair up in that ponytail. "You like what you see?" Zoey teased leaning over slightly so he could get a better look at her ass. "Sorry, I didn't." "It's okay; sometimes a girl likes to feel sexy. One of those times is when she's up to her eyeballs in guts and goo. Now get to sleep." She crawled into her sleeping bag and was out almost instantly. Sean couldn't sleep a wink though. He spent the entire night dashing from door to the next staring through the grating for the things out there. Occasionally a zombie or two would come to the door and reach through the grating screaming. The others didn't even wake up, except for Francis who woke up twice and fired almost blind at the door putting a bullet through its head. "How can they sleep? What if one of those tentacle things comes and reaches through the door! Or what if one of those Hulks, I mean Tanks show up? It could rip the door of the hinges and kill us all before we even saw it coming." Sean muttered. It was around three in the morning when Zoey woke up to use the bathroom and found Sean still vigilant at the door. "You know that isn't going to help. You need sleep." "But." "No buts, you need to sleep. You don't know how long it will be before the next time you get a chance to sleep. Just like you need to eat, I see most of your portion is untouched. You have to keep your strength up or you'll fall behind and we can't wait." Zoey wrapped an arm around Sean pulling him over to her sleeping bag. "Look just be quiet, I can tell you're nervous and I know what always relaxes me." Quietly she eased his pants down to his knees and his boxers along with them and wrapped her lips around his still flaccid cock. Her eyes moved up to his smiling slightly as she silently sucked him off. Her smiled widened as she felt his girth growing in her mouth until it reached its full eight inch length and she was forced to resort to stroking him off while taking about half of him on each down stroke. "No moaning." She whispered just after his first moan parted his lips. He managed to bite down on his lip just enough to keep any more sounds from escaping to wake the others. Zoey kept sucking for another five minutes before Sean started to tremble. The combination of his life having flashed before his eyes twice in the last twelve hours, combine with the risk of being caught combined with how sexy Zoey looked to bring him to an orgasm he didn't even know he was capable of nearly choking her on the massive load he shot down her throat. She sputtered slightly as a second and third blast landed against the back of her throat before he finally stopped. "Relaxed?" Sean nodded, he nearly collapsed. Pulling his pants back up he dragged two of the sleeping bags, one for a pillow and the other for a blanket to a corner beneath one of the tables and passed out. Sean grumbled awake as several voices started talking around him. Most of the conversation was between Louis and Francis about the best way to get to the boats. "What is it?" Sean asked crawling out between them. "Look the river is just past those rows of houses. You can smell it from here. We can go around this way." The two of them were pointing out points on a map that was built into one of the desks to keep it from being stolen. If we go around we'll be out in the open longer, if there is a Tank we'll see it coming, in fact we'll anything coming. Plus we'll be able to see more of the water when we get there." Louis pointed out. Francis slammed his hand down on the map. "Yeah sure, stay out side where we have to keep shooting until we're out of bullets and then I've got a pencil dick paper pusher, little college girl and a fuck stain at my back as we try to fight hand to hand." He pointed at the map. "This is the most direct way, we run across the street, find away through one of these yards or houses, and there is a boat house right fucking here. If there is a boat on this goddamned river it's at the boathouse. So that's the way we're going." "Sorry Louis, I agree with Francis. The less time we're out in the open the better our chances are." Zoey said looking at the map. "What do you think Sean?" Sean paused for a moment looking the map over. "Francis is right, and this house the third from the left is probably our best bet. At any rate it has a backyard that opens directly into that field and from there it's just a straight dash." "Fuck stain ain't so stupid after all. So that's three to one. Let's get this shit on the road." Francis said chambering a round into his newly acquired shotgun. "Allow me." Sean said pushing past Francis to open the heavy steel door snapping up a 9mm on the way over. Kicking the door open sent a pair of zombies stumbling backwards and a three bullets center mass dropped each of them. "Just cover me for a minute." "Alright young brother show us what you got." Sean moved to the garage door dropped to one knee and took aim at the closest zombie. One after another zombies collapsed as he one fired round after round their skulls clearing a reasonable path to the house. "Hunter." Louis said pointing out another of the screaming zombies leaping through the air. It was midair when Sean fired his round spinning the corpse. A second shot when it hit the ground finished it off. "Let's go." This time Sean was with them sprinting and shooting. He wasn't nearly as good as any of them, firing while running meant firing from the hip for him and that meant point and shoot not aim and shoot. He could hardly fire his handgun accurately one handed so he only bothered twice but they made it to the house almost easily. The house was empty but there was a girl wailing just out on the backyard. "Another survivor!" Sean shouted and started towards the back door. Just before he could swing it open the door Louis grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back. "That's no survivor that's a witch." The wailing changed to an angry growling. "And she's pissed. We can sneak past her, just wait and turn off your flashlights." After a few seconds the growling stopped and returned to wailing. Zoey went first silently inching the door open and creeping past the woman on the porch and well out into yard. Sean went next only risking a quick look at the nude anorexic looking woman. He could almost hear what she was saying. Something about how she didn't want to be a monster and she'd killed her family but couldn't help it. Francis was next motioning angrily for Sean to get farther away. Sean was already at the fence crouched down and preparing to start killing the scattered zombies in the yard when he heard a sort of gurgling noise behind him. Turning his head he saw a fat zombie charging out of doorway right about to attack Louis. For something that ridiculously bloated it was startling how quickly it was moving. Reflexes took over and Sean spun in place drawing taking aim at its head. Just before he pulled the trigger it spit up all over Louis, then when Sean's bullet impacted everything from the waist up exploded covering both Louis and Francis in the goop. Down in the open field in front of them it was like someone had rang the dinner bell. Zombies seemed to have been running out of the trees and it was all Sean could do to keep shooting them as fast as he could. "Frag out!" Zoey shouted throwing some beeping thing out into the field drawing off a large chunk of the zombies before exploding. Sean couldn't even reload fast enough to deal with the flood charging at him. After waiting as long as he could he ducked out of the way hoping to get at least a few of them before he was overwhelmed but they ran right past him to get at Louis and Francis. It didn't make sense but at the moment he didn't care. Out of ammo he tossed slung the M16 and picked up a crowbar and started wading through the mass of zombies. It was surprisingly easy, their diseased flesh offered little resistance and their bones were so brittle that the crowbar was almost more effective than the guns had been, just far more exhausting. It took nearly a minute to kill the last of them. "Damn I want this fucker at my back. Did you see that shit Louis he just beat the shit out of em with a goddamn crowbar. Still let's get the hell outta here right goddamn now." Virtual Reality: Left 4 Dead The four of them ran across the open field and from there to a small two story building right against the lake. Sean didn't even bother looking for anything in the house, there was only one thing he wanted and as soon as he got to the back door he saw that it wasn't there. "No fucking boat." Sean grumbled. "No boat?" Zoey responded equally despondent. "Where to now?" "Hello, hello? Is there anybody there?" A tiny static filled voice called from someplace in the house. "Can anybody hear me? This is John and Amanda Slater we are on our way to Marine Corps Extraction point Delta. If you have guns and ammunition we can pick you up. Is anybody there?" Sean followed the voice until he found and old style radio. It didn't matter at the moment how absurd the placement of this was, he wasn't questioning that do gooders were leaving radios behind, after all he was going to leave this one behind too. "This is Sean Renaud. I have three survivors, we are all armed. If you head out now things look pretty clear." "Okay we're heading out now. It will take us approximately ten minutes to get to your location." There was an audible click as John set his radio off. As soon as Sean sat down the microphone he heard a foghorn go off and it was answered by what must have been several hundred screams. "That stupid son of a bitch." Sean grumbled. "We're making a stand here!" Francis roared just pick a spot and don't stop killing till that fucking boat gets us!" "We got some kind of machine gun up here but I don't know how to use it. If only we had Bill." Louis lamented. "Hey I might not have seen action like Bill but I'm a Marine, which makes me better than the army. Let me look at it. Sean shouted running towards Louis. "Damn it's a GAU-17. It'll do but if this thing jams I got nothing. I worked on one of these in school like eight years ago and I hated the damned thing then, there is less than no chance that I can fix this in the middle of a fight. To bad we didn't get an XM-218. That's a thing of beauty, less bullet per second than this thing but bigger bullets and more importantly more reliable." "Less talking more shooting Fucker." Francis shouted slapping Sean on the shoulder as the first wave started running over the hills. It looked like a real wave, just hundreds of them charging in a tight group with stragglers behind them. Sean focused on taking out the thickest packets of them. He didn't bother to aim even at the Hunters or the ones with the tentacles or the fat ones. There were three others backing him who could take out specific targets, his only job was to keep the masses back. "Goddamn it." Francis grunted pointing towards a nearby patch of trees. For a moment Sean didn't even see what Francis was pointing at. All he saw were trees being knocked over and broken logs flying through the air. It was interesting but he had a job to focus on and that was the herds of zombies racing to see who got first dibs on his liver. "Taaaaaaaaaaaaaank!" Sean shouted when the facts all congealed in his mind. He tried to swivel his gun to face it but brackets set wouldn't turn that far. If it had been a weapon he was more familiar with he could easily have turned it but he didn't understand most of what he was looking at. "Goddamnit. If you've got one of those zombie magnet bombs use it!" "What are you gonna do?" Zoey asked a hint of genuine concern in her voice. Sean smiled and snatched Francis's shotgun. "He's gonna get on the minigun and keep you safe. Me I'm about to hero up." Sean didn't stick around to negotiate because somehow he'd come to an epiphany and this was just something he had to do. The first part was that he was drunk, high or dreaming and nothing he did here would matter anyway. The second was that if he wasn't then the most important thing he could do was make sure they got to the boat and that meant stopping the Hulk, Tank, whatever. Sean charged down the steps taking them two at a time until he was out in the field and Francis was firing just over his head at the zombies who were oddly enough seeming to thin out as the Tank drew closer. Charging this thing was utter insanity and Sean knew it but it didn't stop him from rushing towards it firing rounds from his pistol until he was close enough to use the shotgun and then that became his weapon of choice. "Die you big motherfucker!" Instead of falling to its knees like Sean wished it swung one of its barrel like arms and sent a boulder hurdling towards him that only narrowly missed ending him. It followed that by digging its hands into the dirt and pulling up a giant dirt clod and hurling it towards Sean who again narrowly avoided being crushed. Face to face with the brute Sean threw his shotgun aside and hefted the crowbar with both hands neatly ducking beneath a wild swing and slicing with his crowbar. He'd hoped the Tank would be like the other zombies and rip like rice paper but the thick muscles of its stomach didn't give as much as he'd hoped. The Tank grunted as it officially took notice of its opponent and tried to spin to face it. Sean had already decided that speed was his only hope and started ducking and darting around the trees forcing the tank to knock them down or go around while slashing with his crowbar every chance he got. The Tank roared in frustration as its tiny opponent ducked and dodged around it and slowly the wounds started adding up and slowing the monster. Sean started growing confident that he was going to be okay here and slipped into the Tank's reach and slashed it again and again. The beast was clearly starting to slow down when it roared angrily and rushed towards Sean simply bowling him over with its shoulder. Once Sean was off his feet it locked its massive hand around his torso and started slamming him against the earth shattering two ribs with the first blow and bruising a few more. Blood and screams erupted from Sean's mouth as he felt his life passing before his eyes once more. He knew that the next blow was going to be the one that finished him but the tank didn't bother to lift him a third time. It was bleeding badly from all of the cuts Sean had given it. Instead it lifted another fist, easily the size of Sean's torso and aimed it for his skull. Sean surrendered letting his head fall slack and by chance spotted his shotgun just within reach. Faster than he thought he could move Sean snatched his shotgun in one hand and pressed the barrel directly against the Tank's jaw and pulled the trigger. After that epic struggle all it took was one bullet to the skull to end the conflict. The top of the Tank's skull exploded and the rest collapsed. Sean pushed the Tank's massive hand off him and got back to his feet in time to see a boat docking at a tiny pier. "Run." He hissed at himself trying to will his aching muscles to carry him the rest of the way. "Run!" He growled more insistently but his body still refused to do more than limp and that wasn't going to get him more than half way with the new wave of zombies screaming for his intestines. "Run!" He shouted at himself but self motivation wasn't enough and he was going to die here. "RUN!" This time the voice wasn't his though it was Zoey who at the same time slapped a pill bottle against his chest. "Take em!" Sean had always hated pills but this wasn't the time to stop and measure. He upended the bottle swallowing several pills at once and instantly he could feel them. More accurately he couldn't feel anything as his entire body went partially numb and suddenly he was running at full speed and the shotgun didn't feel heavy any longer. He leapt onto the boat with a smile and glanced around. "Where's Francis?" Louis didn't speak but the way his head sank was enough of an answer for Sean. The boat pulled away from the pier. "I'm sorry." "It wasn't your fault you saved us all." Zoey said pulling Sean below decks. "And you know you deserve a reward." She started stripping down. Sean smiled and closed his eyes. Then he opened them and found himself on a familiar black leather couch with the credits for Left 4 Dead playing and a bottle of vodka on its side a few feet away.