Summary: After a botched rescue attempt, an injured Eden Price is separated from the rest of her survivors to fight a ruthless battle in the city gone to hell. But she's not quite alone. While fighting for her life and her dwindling sanity, she meets an Infected, a Hunter, who's not what he seems. Are they exactly what each other needs in order to retain the last of their sanity, or will their unconventional companionship simply drive the both of them further down the road to hell?

In a world where blood and terror runs freely through the streets and insanity is the plague, the difference between life and death may just depend on how human you really are. But what makes a person human anyway? And how, when the world has gone to hell, can people retain the thing that makes them the most human — their sanity?

Rated for mild language.

I do not claim to own Left 4 Dead or any of its related ideas, themes, and canon characters, which belong to Valve.

Prologue

The Outbreak

The katana shook in my hands. I took a step back, staring in numb disbelief at what I had done. Blood seeped from the decapitated body, spilling unchecked across the ugly brown carpet I hated. Sightless eyes stared into nothingness, utterly void of the maddened life that had been in them mere seconds before. The lifeless limbs lay splayed out at odd angles, the body twisted in the grotesque position it had collapsed in upon being separated from its controlling brain.

It was a sight that I knew would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.

My breathing was harsh in my throat. Something warm trickled down the side of my face, matching similar sensations on my forearms and hands. I had been speckled in blood during the fight. The blood of a classmate. The blood of Anne Wilkinson.

The blood of a friend.

I had just killed my friend.

The silent words sent my mind reeling and careening into a black void. It felt like a part of me had died, and a ferocious, callous, invigorated part surged to take its place. Blood pounded in my ears. My fingers and other extremities tingled with a sickened sense of elation that thrilled me as much as it terrified. My brain was exploding in a million different pieces, only to suddenly settle and come to a horrendous, grinding halt.

I had just killed my friend.

The sound of someone running up the end-hall stairway sent the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Instinctively, I turned and raised the katana in the direction of the sound, intuition taking over my actions while my brain tried to comprehend what was going on.

A large, burly figure dressed in one of the university's football jerseys charged through the door. Upon seeing me, he stopped dead in his tracks, a bloody baseball bat raised up defensively. He was heaving for breath, as if he had just finished running a marathon. Slick sweat poured down his dark face and around narrowed, sorrowful eyes.

"Are you normal?"

The deep voice jarred my senses. "Normal?"

His makeshift weapon lowered slightly, and I saw his eyes glance down to the body at my feet before returning to stare at me. A wave of guilt swept through to fill the numbness.

Oh my hell.

"She just came after me," I tried to explain, my voice strangely steady and calm. I may as well have just been describing the weather. "I had no other choice. She killed her roommate. She was going to kill me."

I tilted my head in the direction of the open apartment door to my right. My eyes remained on the living person in front of me, unwilling to review the gruesome scene I had indicated. The football athlete nodded, accepting my unnecessary explanation with no resentment or accusation in his gaze. "It is happening everywhere."

"I know. I saw out the window." I hesitated. "What's going on?"

The athlete lowered his weapon and wiped a bloody hand across his forehead. "I do not know."

"It's the flu, isn't it? The one that the news warned about. The one that they said made people crazy. They shut down a bunch of the cities in the east because of it. Quarantined."

He shook his head slowly, speaking the same skepticism my tone of voice held. "This is no flu."

We stared at each other for a silent moment. My dazed mind registered the distant sounds of screams. But neither of us said anything to acknowledge them. I lowered my katana, realizing that I had been pointing it at him. "My name is Eden."

His eyebrows rose in surprise, but he nodded. "I am Akamu." He paused. "Where did you get the sword?"

"My grandfather gave it to me last Christmas. I know it's illegal to have weapons in this apartment building, but I snuck it in anyway."

There was a faint glimmer of a smile. "It is a good thing you did."

A sudden shriek, closer than comfortable, erupted through the still air. It sounded like it had come from below us. We both raised our weapons.

Akamu looked at me with his steady gaze and set jaw. I looked back. Instead of the fear I should have felt, there was nothing but a cold, determined sense of fortitude.

"We should get to the roof. It'll be safer up there."

He nodded, following as I turned and raced down the hallway. I stopped at an open commons are and started dragging one of the pieces of furniture into the middle.

"What are you doing?" he asked, most likely wondering if the madness had gotten to my head regardless of how I acted.

I pointed over his head at the thin outline of a rectangle raised up against the white ceiling. "That's the only way to the roof of this building. I figured it out last semester when they were doing maintenance work."

Understanding and a shard of relief lit up his gaze. He joined me, easily dragging the chair directly below the indicated space. There were more screams now coming from downstairs. Closer, shriller.

I sized him up. "I'm too short. You're going to have to go up first."

Akamu nodded and handed me the bloody bat, climbing up onto the chair, balancing his weight with one leg on the armrest and the other on the headrest. I sat on the seat cushions, using all of my meager weight as an anchor. Above my head, the athlete shoved bodily against the rectangle. The heavy slab of wood shifted bit by bit until it looked like there would be enough room to pull us through.

Satisfied, he held his hand out to me. "You first."

I nodded, allowing him to pull me up to stand on the cushion below him. I handed him the two weapons and he slid them up first. Then he adjusted his footing and interlaced his fingers, cupping his hands to give me a foothold. A moment and a dizzying boost later, I scrambled through the hole, nearly propelled into the dusty attack by his immense strength.

He made to follow me. His hands were on either side of the opening, ready to heave himself in. And then I saw him stop, staring down the hallway towards the far end, towards the door.

I couldn't see it, but I heard the stairwell door bang open and the harsh breathing as someone burst out into the stairwell.

"Help me!"

The woman's voice sounded strangled, wild. It sent every nerve on edge.

Without looking at me, Akamu nodded, beckoning the newcomer towards him. She stumbled into view, a tall blonde young woman in her mid-twenties. Her entire frame shook like house in an earthquake as she reached for Akamu's steady hands and climbed up clumsily next to him. It was all she could do to perform the same action I had in order to get up into the attic.

I could hear banging now, the sounds of furious hands and fingernails scratching against metal and glass, accompanied by frenzied howls and yells.

"Oh god, they're coming, they're coming!" screamed the woman beside me, curling up into a ball and sobbing.

"Akamu, hurry, get up here!"

He rested his hands on the edge and heaved himself up into the opening. Not a second too soon. Somehow, the door at the end of the hallway opened. The hallway rumbled as more people thundered down the hallway, the howling and animalistic yelling growing louder and more frenzied.

I snatched Akamu's belt and yanked with all my strength boosted by adrenalin, pulling him the rest of the way up to the perch beside me. Movement in the now open space below us drew my eyes downwards. A group of fellow residents reached the spot he had been mere moments before.

Their fronts were covered in splattered, dripping blood from their mouths and some from their eyes. They tore at the cushions, swarming over the discarded furniture like flies to a carcass, gazing up towards us with maddened expressions, trying to reach and follow suite. Snatching up my katana, I lashed down, cutting at arms and hands and keeping them at bay while Akamu slid the board into place. I recognized a classmate in the thrashing mass below, saw as he turned his face towards me, eyes wide with a hunger I could not understand, bloodied teeth bared in an act of bestial hate.

I looked into his eyes. There was nothing human there. Nothing but the enraged, feral look of a monster.

Akamu gave one last powerful heave and the board slid into place. The scene disappeared, but it had been branded into the crevices of my brain alongside the bleeding body of my former friend. My mind accepted it without fighting this time, embracing it, bearing it forward and filing it into easy access as a testament to the realization that many more similar memories would soon come.

I handed Akamu the bat, which he took with a grim expression.

"The roof," I heard myself speak in the same calm, collected voice as before. Katana in hand, I dashed through the crisscrossing rafter beams towards the iron ladder at the far end. A moment later, Akamu joined me, supporting the blubbering, tear-soaked girl. Again, I sent Akamu up first in order to deal with the closed trapdoor, and then all three of us spilled out onto the graveled roof, stumbling blindly, confused in the bright afternoon.

We made it to the edge of the building and gazed down at the horror scene below us.

As I watched, a man burst out from the nearest side street and ran straight for a terrified looking girl. He lunged at her, arms outstretched, mouth hanging open, and…

The blonde beside me give a strangled scream and turn away, heaving and coughing as she retched all over the roof. I had no such reaction. Feeling had left me. All I could do was stare as the deranged man took the shrieking, pleading victim to the ground, biting at her neck and arms as she struggled and screamed and blood filled the street. Beyond them, the same scene repeated itself with few variations. Over and over. Flailing limbs. High-pitched voices. Screams. Pleads.

It was insanity.

Some of the still sane bystanders tried to help. I saw one of them charge at an attacker, shoving him off and trying to kick him in the face, only to be overwhelmed in moments and taken to the ground to be torn and bitten like the victim he had tried to save. Up the street a little farther, a small gaggle of retreating high school kids most likely on their lunch break were cornered by a rushing mob of flailing, stiff-moving people that grabbed, ripped, tore…

"What is this?" I heard Akamu breathe, his otherwise calm voice shaking with an edge of horror and disgust.

"It's a nightmare," groaned the girl, now sitting on the ground with her arms wrapped around her trembling body.

"It's the end," I said, my own mind laughing at how overtly dramatic my words sounded.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Akamu nod. "The end."

Breathing heavily, my body and sword dripping with blood, I stood with my new companions and stared out into the city to watch in unfeeling horror as our world disappeared in a frenzied flurry of blood and screams.