Left 4 Dead: Clemency (© Bryan Way)
Page 1 13 Days After First Infection A spiral bound notebook lies
motionless a few feet away from the sidewalk on the corner of a quiet
metropolitan street. In the distant night, a police siren quietly drones, not
getting any closer or farther away as it saves the air from an otherwise
unsettling silence. Staggering footsteps inch closer to the street corner,
accompanied only by an indecipherable mumbling. The feet stop at the edge of
the notebook as a soft breeze flips up the top page to reveal a message: READ
ME. A middle-aged man falls to his
knees and holds up the notebook, his chapped lips twitching as he reads. He
turns the page and squints after a few seconds. "What the fuck…" He slowly
rises to his feet looking left and right before dropping the notebook and frantically
looking at the rooftops around him. "Who’s out there?" He asks quietly. He
pulls a snub nose .38 from the front of his pants and holds it up. "WHO’S OUT
THERE?!" A high pitched, blood curdling scream rips through the still air
before a dark figure slams into the man’s upper body, causing him to instantly
topple over. The creature digs its fingers
into the man’s chest, instantly tearing through his shirt and reaming the thick
skin of his stomach as a quick, fat splatter of blood shoots up. The man screams
until the blood bubbling in his throat causes him to choke moments before the
creature wraps its fingers around his windpipe, jerks out a pulpy, muscular
mound of flesh and stuffs it in its mouth. The man’s weak, sinewy fingers
awkwardly writhe about as a few more jets of blood fire from the arteries in
his neck. Once the man stops squirming, the
creature seems to lose interest, growling softly as it crawls on all fours across
the intersection towards a dark, distant alley. Two of the blinds in a ground
level window immediately adjacent to the notebook spread apart no more than an
inch, revealing a darkness that wraps around the faint glint of a pair of eyes.
A full minute passes before the two blinds snap back together, followed quickly
by a door slowly opening a few feet away. A young woman duck walks out of the
stoop holding a crowbar behind her head. Slowly, she edges herself towards
the nearly unrecognizable corpse, her head snapping back and forth before
peeking over at the alley. She kneels down a bit further and lifts the revolver
out of a puddle of blood. Just as slowly as she came out, she goes back inside
the doorway, leaving the notebook on the ground: LIST THE MEMBERS OF YOUR
FAMILY BY NAME, GENDER, AGE, AND RELATIONSHIP. Once inside she pulls up an
oily rag and starts cleaning the blood off of the revolver, and once the gun is
clean she swings out the pivot and pushes up the extractor rod, freeing two
empty shells. "Fuck." She whispers to herself. She sighs, looking at several
bags of potato chips, granola bars, and cans of soda. She quickly stands and
walks towards the window, poking two fingers between the blinds to see the
street again. She paces away from the window only to return seconds later. "Oh,
fuck it…" She says softly, unzipping a book bag and inserting a few granola
bars and cans of soda into it. Leaving the backpack hanging open, she pulls out
a plastic swimming clip and fixes it over her nose. The name ZOEY is
embroidered on the backpack. She opens the door slowly and slides herself
through. Once outside, she goes right back
to the corpse and checks his pockets, but they are empty. Scanning up and down
the block, she puts the notepad into her backpack and quietly zips it before
slinking along the darkest parts of the open, suburban-esque street. Every few
feet she stops on a dark stoop or indentation to look around, eventually making
it to the end of the block without a sound. She freezes near a massive, open
intersection, staring at the other side intently for a moment before quickly
standing and quietly rolling her feet as she traverses the crosswalk. Once at
the other side, she kneels with her back against a wall and points her revolver
to the left and right. She takes a moment to breathe. Zoey pauses at the edge of a
relatively well lit strip of road with rows of houses on either side. Her eyes
turn towards all the dark spots before she stands and quietly glides along the
buildings. She stops in a shadowed doorway, disappearing from the light. For a
moment, the street is completely motionless and silent, and then she hustles to
the next dark spot behind a trash bin. When she stands up and starts moving
again, a pair of heavy feet can be heard quickly dragging across the asphalt
behind her. Zoey quickly and soundlessly glides into another doorway and
freezes. The footsteps are joined by another pair along with an excited
wheezing sound. Remaining in the shadow, Zoey only moves her eyes back and
forth, keeping the revolver perched a few inches in front of her face. [ Continue to page 2 ] |