The hunter and his Pray, a left 4 Dead short story.

some old story I may, or may not continue.

The night was perfectly calm; the full moon shone brightly in the sky high above, casting a soft glow upon the streets below. The street lamps long had been rendered useless, flickering in and out whenever a short burst of energy decided to pulse through them. Abandoned cars and trucks littered the streets; some overturned and some smashed into the sides of the buildings, aflame. Various figures between them stumbled aimlessly around in the murky blackness, the only thing disturbing the stillness.

 

Perched on the top of a building was a crouched figure, who sat perfectly still; a pair of deep, pupil-less white eyes peered out beneath the hood that shaded his face. A deep, guttural growl emanated from deep within his chest as his eyes focused on the four humans currently dashing through the city. He could smell them from here, even though they were seven or eight blocks away.

As they ran closer, he continued on to watch them, a malicious grin pulling at the corners of his blood-stained lips. He could hear them now: their breathing frantic as they ran for their lives, their thudding hearts, which sounded like they would burst at any given moment from the merciless pounding, and the splashing of their fresh, untainted blood as it coursed through their veins. Oh, how he longed to feel the hot, crimson liquid slide down his throat...

 

He crouched lower and let out a piercing scream as he lunged from his perch, the smell of his newly found prey driving him, and landed on the street several stories below. The few of his lesser brethren in the immediate vicinity were startled and began lunging at him in retaliation. He swung his clawed hand, succeeding in throwing the lot to the side and spilling some of their blood in the process. Stupid, mindless imbeciles; they knew nothing but attack whatever moved.

 

The hooded man darted with inhuman speed through the streets, occasionally hopping up to bounce between the tall, brick walls of the buildings on either side of him to avoid contact with large packs of the other infected. He followed the humans' scents and leaped up to perch upon a semi-truck that was turned on its side. An open intersection laid before him. He sniffed the air and pressed his form close to the metal; the humans came into his sight not a second later. He was starving and the knowledge that there were still living drove him near insane, but he was smarter than to lunge at them directly. The few humans he had seen before had weapons... and he had watched many of his brothers get ripped apart by the small lead projectiles that were launched from them.

 

There was a disturbance above, and the humans glanced up. His eyes followed as a large metal machine flew nearby, making a deafening, pulsing roar as it sped off towards the opposite end of town. He hissed; the 'bird' had been circling the city for fourteen days now, wailing something in a voice that sounded extremely loud and deranged. If he were ever close enough to pounce on it, he would be sure to get rid of the annoyance.

 

The being shifted forward a bit to get a better view of his prey, who were currently communicating to one another in words. He recognized some and deciphered their meanings, though he hadn't been able to practice speech for quite a while now. He caught the gist of their conversation; meet up at where ever the flying machine had gone. Almost instantly after, the four began running down the alleyway adjacent to where they had come.

 

He grinned, exposing his pointed, blood stained teeth. This hunt was definitely going to be fun.

 

The hooded man growled gently and hopped off from his seat on the truck to land in the center of the intersection, exactly in the spot the humans had been standing mere moments before. He bent his head low and flared his nostrils as he sniffed the ground, being sure to memorize each of their individual scents. He growled in approval as he separated the mixed smells from each other and began his stalk at a safe distance; there was no reason to attack now. He wanted to pick them off one by one when they were least expecting it.

 

He once again took to the rooftops, leaping between the massive gap between each side of the road with ease as he made his climb. Once at the top, he followed the humans still, watching with bittersweet amusement as they blew through hundreds of his lesser brothers with ease. Oh, how grateful he was to be able to know what he was doing...

 

A shrill scream broke through the onslaught of rapid gun fire as the female human was yanked backwards, kicking and flailing. The pink rope bound around her person pulled her down the dirty alley and up into the open, second story window of the warehouse across the street from where the hooded figure sat. His grin widened as her comrades turned to watch, helpless, as she was dragged off; the sheer number of his lesser brethren keeping them occupied at the moment. “No! Noooooo!”

 

The pink rope, he knew, was actually the tongue of his brother, who, like himself, had special abilities compared to their lesser counterparts. 'Smoker', he had heard the humans call him, though in actuality, the infected didn't have names... not anymore, anyway. The girl's attacker had a disfigured face and a noxious, green mist emanating from his body; he was ugly and terrifying to gaze upon. The girl continued to fight. “HELP!”

 

The Smoker tightened his tongue around the woman and reached out, gripping her with his grimy, equally-disfigured hands. She writhed and screamed again, knowing that he was preparing to dine on her flesh. Just as his brother went in to take a bite out of her, the male's primal instinct kicked in; he let out a cry and lunged across the street at him.

With a swipe of his claw, he severed the Smoker's tongue, releasing the girl from his hold. The deformed infected let out an agonized yowl as he stumbled backwards. The female unbound herself, watching with wide eyes and the hooded man slashed at the other infected man's neck, his decapitated body flopping forward in a pool of fresh blood and a puff green smoke"his head rolled to a stop at his feet.

 

The special infected turned his head, his milky eyes meeting the hazel of the fear-stricken girl. She was unarmed and helpless. He grinned and pounced, pinning her lithe form beneath him. She was too dumbfounded to do anything... like a cat, cornered by a pack of ravenous dogs. He felt powerful and he LOVED it. Savoring her fear was like drinking the finest chardonnay in the entire world.

 

“Help! A Hunter!” The female yelled, panicking again after a few moments, startling the male. His grin faded as he tilted his head to the side in confusion. Was she referring to him and his kind? The humans had given nicknames to the other kinds of his empowered brethren; it more than likely was...

 

He squinted his eyes as he furrowed his brow with thought. 'Hunter...'

 

His devilish grin reformed on his face, larger than any time before, as he recalled the meaning of the word. Oh boy, did it ever describe him perfectly. He stalked his targets and attacked at just the right time... If it was what the humans were calling him, he accepted it.

 

The Hunter tore away from his thoughts and gazed down at the woman for a second more. He slowly raised his right hand; his claws glistened in the moonlight like bloodstained razors. The woman winced and curled up instinctively, her eyes squeezing shut as if it would help save her. The hooded man brought his claw down toward the woman...

 

Then froze.

 

He instead ran a gentle hand along the side of her face and along her jaw. The brunette's eyes flashed open, gazing up into his blank ones. She was scared and confused; she was expecting to die, yet the killing blow hadn't been delivered. The Hunter couldn't help but chuckle huskily. He adored toying with his prey...

 

The hooded man dragged only his index claw against her soft flesh, causing a deep scratch to form along her face. She winced and began fighting again, as if the small amount of pain had brought her back to reality. He moved his finger a bit more, carving a shape in her cheek before he lifted his claw to his lips to taste. Man, she was GOOD. It took all of his strength not to plunge into her at that moment.

 

The sound of the male's voices entering the building downstairs roused him from his taunting. He could have killed her off right then and there, take a few bites to go and return later to eat his fill, but he decided against it. He loved toying with this human more than he had his last for some reason; he had no problem with letting her live a little while longer.

He wrapped his hand around her neck as he leaned down, holding his lips less than a centimeter away from her ear. Her breath hitched as he rasped out two little words that scared her out of her mind:

“You're mine...”

 

Immediately after he had forced the human words from his lips was the door leading into the room kicked in. The Hunter grinned and leaped from atop the woman and out the window, easily dodging the string of gunshots following him. He landed on the ground below before mad dashing down the street, zig-zagging as his prey's male counterparts continued to fire after him. Once he was a safe distance away, he launched himself onto the closest roof to flee to his refuge.

 

---

 

“S**t!” Francis cursed as he sighed and stepped away from the window. The Hunter had gotten well out of range of his shotgun. At least he was gone and they didn't have to worry about him for the moment. “You okay, Zoey?”

Zoey sat up. She felt lightheaded and unable to form words. She nodded dumbly as Louis knelt beside her, a first-aid kit in hand. As he went to work patching her up, Bill spoke; he was still watching the direction the Hunter had vanished, as if waiting its return, “I bet that Hunter will be back.”

“Oh, he'll be back alright,” Zoey stated, getting her wits about her, “He... whispered to me.”

 

“Hah!” Francis scoffed, “Talking vampires... Now I've seen everything. Come on Zoey, quit pulling our legs and get serious!” Zoey opened her mouth to speak but was cut off by another voice.

 

“Quiet, Francis!” Bill snapped, flicking his cigarette at the biker. “Leave the kid alone.”  The tension in the air quadrupled as they exchanged darkened glares.

Desperate to calm the situation, Louis climbed to his feet, pulling Zoey up alongside him, “We'd better get moving,” he voiced as he changed the cartridge of the machine gun in his hands. “We're bound to be attacked if we stay in once place for too long.” He breathed a subtle sigh of relief as the other two men eased up.

 

“Right,” Francis spat before cocking his gun and heading out the door, “Its best we do.”

 

Zoey watched as her friends exited the room. Why didn't they believe her?  They've always believed her... why not now? Sure, one of the seemingly unintelligent zombies actually talking did seem kind of bizarre, but not unbelievable, right? “Oh, hell..” She murmured, brushing a few stray strands of hair from her face.

 

“Zoey,”  Louis appeared in the doorway, looking generally concerned, “Come on, girl. We gotta go.”

 
“Right behind you.” She replied as she headed for the door. She hesitated for a moment and turned to gaze out the shattered window behind her. 'I just hope that thing doesn't come back...' Zoey heaved a sigh before running out of the room to meet her male counterparts.

Author's Note

May or may not continue, Just posted it because profile looked rather empty.

Reviews

[Jonas Turdsmith]

...AWKWARD BONER.

Nah, I'm just kidding. In all seriousness though. I don't know how qualified I am to review this story, I've never played L4D or L4D2. I've played Half-Life, though. Anyone remember Half-Life?

But back to the story. A lot of your spelling and grammar look very good. There's not much I can comment on there. Of course, I'm not a grammar or spelling expert. Some of the sentences could be re-written or re-arranged. Some of them come across as awkward. That opening paragraph felt a little weird, but the awkwardness got progressively better as the story progressed.

My personal take on the intro:
The night was deathly still; the full moon cast a soft glow on the streets below. The street lamps had long been rendered useless. They flickered on and off with small surges of electricity. Abandoned vehicles littered the streets; some overturned and some driven into buildings. Others were aflame.
Strange, hunched figures stumbled aimlessly between them as they wandered the streets. In the darkness beyond, nothing disturbed the silence.

FORGIVE ME FOR TAMPERING WITH YOUR WORK. I intended it is just a recommendation, nothing else.

I assume you're planning for this to be the first part in a much longer story. That makes it kind of difficult evaluate. I would say the one thing a beginning really needs is to grab the reader's attention. You've done that quite suitably. When you're at this stage, just introducing characters and elements, you don't have to do much. You can just throw them around randomly. In fact, the beginning is the part where you can be the most creatively free. Being erratic and surprising or shocking would even HELP you here. It's not until your wrapping the story up that things become difficult. A lot of stories (media, movies, Tv shows) have face-planted because of an awful, sub-par or mediocre ending.

Look at Lost for instance, the first season compared to the later ones. It gets just terrible.

That being said, I don't feel it would be appropriate to be overly critical of this chapter right now in relation to how it fits in to the whole story. If you plan on continuing this I'd recommend figuring your ending out as early as possible. (Don't rush it though) Make sure it's a good one though. The ending is the aftertaste your story will leave in the reader's mouth. It will define the rest of the story for them. I usually like my stories to have little morals or at least sentiments.

Anyhow, The Hunter could really become an interesting protagonist. Is he going to grow more personality (I mean literally grow, as he becomes more self-aware) as the plot progresses? It might be could to define his pre-zombie life and still have it effect his undead life. A little tradgety is also good when dealing with the undead. Or if you wanted him to remain a complete monster, you could do that to. A little back-story doesn't hurt either way.

Summary: Solid writing, keep up the good work!

[Warrior]

Great story telling. This did justice in the realm of getting the message across. Great message. There's lot of times where a story can have a great message to aim for, and have a lot of under lining things but then no one gets it, and if no one gets it, then the point has failed. But in my opinion this did well to get the message across. You made it clear, which is why I think it's good. Keep up the good work.

[WriterSki7]

Most unique. I am slightly dissappointed that I have read the only story you currently have to offer to writerscafe. so far this was very good. I persoanlly liked how you touched up the hunter and let us into his minds. Well done.