(Book 3) Left 4 Dead 3: Dry County

Chapter 1: School

It has been half an hour since the surprise attack. Those thundering gunshots have ceased. And the screams and cries for help faded. The weight of that eerie silence once again hung in the desolate atmosphere, where just a few minutes ago, a nonsense, inhumane atrocity had taken place.

The survivors felt they had entered a whole new world upon walking through that place. A world of destruction, death, and agony, basically Hell on Earth. Little tongues of flame licking the darkness. Ashes were breaching their eyelids. And the array of dead bodies scattered on the entire road. The breeze of the winter air stressed the thought of itself being the ghosts of the dead space.

"Good Lord...It's Avery all over again," Dwain uttered.

"Yeah," Brenan chimed in. "Although, without the zombies."

"Yeah it doesn't really make it any better, doc," The athletic man responded.

Once again, chills ran through Daeshim's spine upon seeing the dead bodies. His knees wobbled as they passed through the death street. He kept from looking at their faces as much as possible. But those were as though calling up his barely innocent eyes. His eyelids fluttered. He couldn't get their dead faces off his mind. And that brings a heavy weight within his chest.

As they proceeded walking, a corpse of one of the bandits caught Dwain's attention. The dead biker, lying by his bike engulfed in flames. Dwain observed more, and spotted a crossbow resting by the corpse.

The athletic man approached the weapon and picked it up, inspecting it. It was missing the arrow, indicating it had been spent.

"Who the hell were those guys?" Brenan wondered.

"If I had a damn nickel everytime I know every motherfuckers who was tryna' kill us, we would've been mowing down zombies with a fuckin' limo," Dwain replied as he began to search for arrows.

Brenan's eyes roamed the butchery stead when he came across a strange object. The glowing green compound inside the bottle made it stand out. The paramedic yanked the item from the ground. He squinted and held the grotesque cocktail distantly as he inspected it.

"Guys?" He called up. "Check this out."

Dwain, Daeshim, and Jess responded to his plea and approached him. Together, they beheld the uncanny material Brenan was grasping.

"Is that?..." Dwain trailed off.

"Spitter Acid," Brenan chimed in.

Dwain shook his head. "Shit, they must've squeezed the shit out of them Spitters real good."

"I'm starting to like these guys," Jess chipped in.

Brenan held the bottle down and gave her a sarcastic deadpan. "Should we be concerned?"

The nun responded with narrow, judgemental glares and a sassy neck roll, and then walked away.

After that short banter, Dwain noticed that Daeshim had not said a single word ever since the unanticipated attack broke out. He approached the Korean. Terror couldn't be clearer in his eyes.

"Kid, you tight?" Dwain immediately thought that question didn't make any sense. "Look at me," he implored.

Daeshim dragged his trembling eyes to the athletic man. His face glistened of sheer horror, the lasting impression the surroundings had embedded.

"You've already cheated death a hundred times and faced thousands of zombies out there. Hell you even killed a fuckin' Thug single-handedly. You can do this, kid. Trust me, okay?" Dwain cooed.

Eyes welled up, his jaw shaking, Daeshim's nod was almost invisible within his tremor. But Dwain got it.

"Good," he uttered and gave him a few gentle taps on the back. "Let's take your Korean eyes off this place and focus on our goal." Dwain kept his palm behind the Korean male and led him through the passage. "Alright, you're doing great," he cheered.