(Book 3) Left 4 Dead 3: Dry County

2.5

As if the rogue bikers were not enough, the situation they caught themselves in couldn't be any worse. Hordes of zombies came out of thin air. For a moment, they forgot there even was a zombie apocalypse, and the horde became a grim reminder of it.

The hostile scramblers had scattered all over the town either on their boots or bikes. They, too, have faced the infected, some prevailed, and some were unfortunate. Their numbers dwindled as they fell one after another.

The sting of his wound drove Brenan's guts in overdrive. He spun the .50 cal on the side-parallel to where the humvee was faced-and brought down the rain of fire unto the feisty mob. He was lucky his wound didn't require sutures, otherwise the kick from the machine gun would've shattered it.

The horde wave was torn into bits like a big paper into a shredder as it flowed towards the intersection. The barren ground the infected stood on was filled by their blood and pieces of their rotten flesh.

But then, he was hampered by a hail of shots that hammered onto the turret's armor. Those were the bikers, eager to wipe him out despite the gravity of the incoming ferocious wave. Brenan grimaced as they took a shot at him, the armor plates granted him protection. He got back up then swiveled the turret towards the bikers and fired. Then again, hot, lethal beams poured onto the gang's flank. One of the bikers caught one and dropped dead, while the others took cover.

It rendered him perplexed at the moment. Between the two adversaries, the man didn't know whom to be honed on. He stopped firing and his eyes fluctuated between the two cohorts, glancing at them with indecision. The horde or the bikers? Which one should he focus on? But those reveries were shattered as lead rained on the turret.

Brenan quickly hid himself down. "Oh gimme a break!" He rasped.

He gasped in exasperation, he knitted his eyes and looked up at the sky. The growls of incoming infected and the clangors of bullets ricocheting against the armor plates disrupted his thinking. Yet so, he tried again. He did his best to filter out the noises and think. The bikers are already down a few. And now that the zombies are here, perhaps they're gonna be focusing on them too. But no, there's still somebody shooting at him. A weary growl escaped him as he scoured his face aggressively, and made a quick, aimless decision.

The medic arose and fired at the approaching horde. He had his back hunched, an effort to try and not to expose himself. He was firing almost blindly; the tracers on the bullets and the narrow gaps between the plate armors and the machine gun's barrel allowed him partial view. He can see the huge, fiery storm going down on the cohort, filling the road with manganese and blood.

Dwain joined Brenan in his deadly charge towards the horde. He fired his rifle until it wore out. The man took cover and reloaded. And all of a sudden, a flash of memory struck him. He was hiding behind the trunk, and so he popped it easily, blindly reaching for something. It took him a few seconds, but he finally grasped it. A bag.

The man slung his rifle and fumbled through the fabric pack. It was storing several cans of MIST grenades he got from the marines from the convoy. He took one and slung the bag around him. His finger hooked on the pin, his eyes darted at the horde as Brenan annihilated them. He was thinking of deploying the MIST onto the zombies. But then, he was drawn by the enemy flank-the main street. And right there, a moment of understanding washed over him.

A smirk formed on his face as he pulled the pin and launched the MIST onto the bikers. The handheld canister emitted a green fog as it bounced on the ground. Olive mist filled the atmosphere and forced the bikers to come out of their lair, immediately ravaging their lungs and searingly burning their eyes.

Momentarily, the horde flowed in a curved drift and joined the bikers into the cloud of torment. Dwain watched in awe as their foes burned and rot in the eye of the deadly haze. The bikers' agonizing wails mingled with the zombies' dying screams. He never thought that the effect of MIST in people was that severe, albeit somewhat conventional when it comes to the infected.