(Book 3) Left 4 Dead 3: Dry County

Prologue

[T.W.]: Genocide

[CAMPAIGN: Dry County]

~ 0047 hours, Sat.

~ "The Grim Hollow"

~ Severance Road, Flaming Gorge

~ Utah, U.S.A.

At first, there was nothing but pure darkness. And then, faint hums resonated. They seemed to come from a distance. The sound was slowly rising, and was followed by a feeble light gradually amplifying along with those rumbles. A sign of an inbound company. The hums eventually turned out to be engine rumbles, and the world trembled upon their passing.

The convoy was led by a squad of Humvees with machine guns mounted on top. Following behind them were a couple of Strykers. Those were also armed with a higher caliber, unmanned turret. And next to them was a line of massive military trucks carrying support troops.

Between those sets of mobile defenses are buses with hundreds of civilians on board. The Marines are set to escort them to the Air Force Base located in the state, in which they are to be evacuated via planes. And in one of those buses is where Dwain and his team are aboard, along with other survivors, and Detective Clyde, who's still in the state of grieving after losing her partner, Detective Hotch, in the battle against the infected.

Dwain let out a sigh as he drew his weary eyes from the redhead woman and brought them to the window. He stared through it blankly and watched the sight of the bleak landscape of sand, snow, and rubble, where nothing stirred or grew, moving in an opposite direction. His mind was drifting to another time and place. A time when he had a family, a home, a life. A place where the sun still shone and the grass still grew. He hadn't thought about them all day. He couldn't afford to. Not when those things were after them. Those things that had turned the world into a nightmare. He had spent the last 14 hours running, fighting, surviving. He had no time to cry, no time to grieve. He had to push it all down, lock it all away. He clenched his jaw and swallowed hard, refusing to let anyone see how much he's hurt. He was too proud to break down in front of complete strangers. Strangers who shared his fate, but not his pain.

But then Dwain would be dragged out of his depressive pondering when he felt a subtle force pulled him from across. The bus had stopped, and the people were clamoring. He tried to see through the tight crowd to investigate, but his sights couldn't pass through that thick crowd wall.

He looked up to Isla standing beside them and asked "Why'd we stop? We there already?"

The redhead turned to him and responded, "I don't know, I think I heard there was something blocking the way."

Meanwhile in the convoy's front, a pair of soldiers had gotten out of the Humvees, shining their flashlights around. A huge pileup was blocking their way, so they were compelled to pull up and investigate.

"Is there a way around??" The machine gunner yelled at the soldier.

The marine scanned the whole area and found no way through. The road they were on was sitting between tall, long rock formations that did not allow them to go around the obstruction. His partner turned to the gunner and made a dismissive wave. Then went back to checking the place.

Right then, the gunner's radio acted up and emitted a voice bearing the question "Wolf team Alpha, Fox team, what's the sitrep out there?"

He clutched his radio and replied, "Fox team Alpha, there's an obstruction on the road, we don't have a way through, over."

"Wolf Alpha, is there a way to circle around? Acknowledge."

"Fox Alpha, negative, no way to circle around, copy?"