...And The Things That Followed

Summary: The sound of the Hunter started not long after you entered the city. You had run into his kind before, but there was no way you could possibly be prepared for what lay ahead of you, with this Hunter. There was something scary and almost exciting about being loved by a monster… (ReaderxHunter)

A/N: Hey folks! I wanted to try my hand at a L4D/L4D2 story. So here I am. For now, this is just a one-shot, but if you want, I could make it into a full length story. I only need one or two people to ask, and it shall be done haha

After all, who wouldn’t like to be followed around by a hunter that won’t kill you? He’s uber sexy xD

Also, I started this story over on Luna (which is down right now...T.T), but I like it enough that I looked for other grounds to plant it in haha. Hope you guys enjoy it here on AFF!!

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You had bared witness to an apocalypse. And of all things, you had bared witness to a zombie apocalypse. Who would have guessed that your life would have been turned upside down by the very creature you were so fascinated by [1].

You groaned lightly as you pushed the heavy door open. Coming out of a safe room was always a hairy prospect, but you couldn’t waste your time dawdling in a room, waiting for the rescue that was never going to come. CEDA had long since evacuated what humans they could and left the rest to rot in their concrete and paved tomb. So you pushed forward, this time opening the door to the subway that ran under the city. A large hole in the floor seemed to be your best bet at actually getting down to the tracks.

You took one last look at the warm safety of the safe house, seeing all the words on the wall and all the discarded guns and ammo; you could see life in that room. Life of the survivors who used that room before you. It was how you comforted yourself; by telling yourself that it could have been only hours before that another human had used that room and you might have run across them.

But it was not to be. You had awoken alone in this apocalypse, after the accident that had killed your family, and you were alone still, weeks into this hellish nightmare. You weren’t too heartbroken about it though. Even before the world went to hell, you had preferred solitude to large groups of people. Large groups of people were unpredictable, easily set into a panic, and easily given the idea of power in numbers. Large groups of people couldn’t be trusted.

You sighed. Still, it would be nice if you could find even one person to travel with. You had resorted to talking to yourself for entertainment, and you knew that was the fast road to insanity in this kind of situation.

That’s when it started again. That low rumbling growl that echoed in the subway around you; a Hunter. You looked around cautiously, but nothing stirred. This sound had become increasingly familiar to you. Ever since you had entered this city, via tunnels much like the one you’re about to walk deeper into, that low growl had accompanied you.

Never attacking, but always watching, your imagination placed this deadly killer just outside your vision in the dark. Considering how dark it was, it could have been three feet in front of you, and you probably wouldn’t have noticed it until you walked straight into it.

You didn’t know why it didn’t attack. Many times, while you slept in safe rooms, your dreams included the hunter entering the safe room, its growls going silent as his claws reached forward to dig themselves into the soft flesh of your throat…

That thought sent a shiver down your spine. You didn’t want to die. You didn’t even want to think about death, even though it was surrounding you.

You approached the ticket booth in front of you, glancing inside. Your heart lifted as you saw a familiar red box, sitting on the floor of the booth. It was your lucky day! Med-kits were hard to come by out in the city, and you thanked the poor soul who dropped it as you used the clip on it to clip it to your belt.

You searched the other ticket booth, finding nothing, before you moved on. You stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looking you at the opening above you. There was a lot of ways you could be ambushed by special infected if you went up these stairs.

The thought didn’t scare you as much as it should have. It really didn’t. It’s not that the special infected didn’t scare you, because they did. They were the only cause of your nightmares now. But you hadn’t seen a special infected in literally days now. They stopped attacking after your first night in the city, and you had yet to even so much as hear one nearby.

The low growling coming from behind you corrected your last thought. You had heard one special infected. And you were positive that it was the same hunter, after so many days here in the city. As hard as it was to believe, that gave you a small comfort.

Not that you were ready to let your guard down, but knowing that the special infected were still around helped you know that even though the world had went to hell, this hell wasn’t changing much. Sure, you had pissed yourself when you ran across your first tank, and that last witch almost tore your head off, and even though the other three types, more common than the first two, had done their fare share of damage to you, It was the consistency you were looking to.

Call it insanity, maybe you’ve been alone for too long, or maybe it’s just your own strange way of keeping sane, but knowing that when you hear a growl, it’s a hunter, knowing that when you hear that raunchy coughing, it’s a smoker, and knowing that the gurgling mass of groaning was a boomer gave you a sick kind of peace. It was the only peace you could have in this twisted and sick world that was full of death.

The growling got a little louder and you glanced behind you, if only to make sure it wasn’t standing right behind you. It wasn’t and so you moved on.

The subway cars, what was left of them, were stained with blood and littered with bodies. You had seen so many bodies at this point; they simply became background props to you. It was a little heartless, but you couldn’t sit down at cry for every poor soul lying dead around you. That would only get you killed.

No supplies were in your line of sight, and the idea of searching every subway car you came across just boded ill to you. Perhaps it was the idea of peaking your head into one and finally finding that Hunter that was following you. Even though it had yet to show its hooded face, the creature itself still scared the shit out of you.

You had been trapped underneath a Hunter before, and you never wanted to feel that helpless again.

You shook your head. You couldn’t just sit here, thinking. What had come over you? You were never this sloppy; daydreaming like this could get you killed!

You switched your gun to your other hand, just so you could wipe the sweat that was forming on your right hand, before switching back. This handgun was nowhere near powerful enough to stop special infected, but the shotgun you had been toting until recently had stopped working after your last horde attack, before the last safe room. It might have been the fact that you had panicked and had used every inch of the gun like a bat, but you knew jack-shit about guns.

The growling got louder again and you glanced behind you. Your heart skipped a beat when you saw movement behind one of the subway cars you had already passed. Had it always been following so close? You moved forward, away from the thing behind the car, but you kept one eye in that direction, your heart hammering in your chest as you put as much space between you and the Hunter.

You stopped dead when you heard a terrible wheezing cough come from behind you. You froze, barely aware that the Hunter’s growl getting louder. You moved slowly, moving your head to look. The Smoker looked at you, seemingly aware that you were watching him. The standoff lasted only a second longer before his lightening –like tongue darted forward, its slimy grasp reaching for you.

You let out a startled cry, throwing yourself out of the way of the overly long appendage. The smoker gave a cry of detest, preparing to attack again. You didn’t want to give it the chance. You opened fire, shooting only half-blind as you tried running back the way you came.

That’s when the Hunter’s loud growling made you stop. You were trapped by two special infected; one on each side of you. A Smoker ahead of you, a Hunter behind [2]. You almost felt like crying. You didn’t want to die; you had worked so hard to stay alive for this long! You didn’t want it to end like this!

You backed into the side of the subway tunnel. You looked from one side to the other as both the Smoker and the Hunter got closer.

Suddenly, the Smoker gave a loud cry, shooting his tongue toward you. The Hunter shouted out his cry as well and you close your eyes tightly. You didn’t want to see who would get to you first. Your body tensed, knowing that pain and death were coming…

Except that it never came. You could hear the Hunter attacking something. I mean, what else could those snarls mean? You peaked an eye open and then opened your eyes wide with shock.

The Hunter was on top of the Smoker. Clawing him to death, ripping the Smoker’s rotted flesh from its body. You shuddered at the scene, feeling ready to throw up as you watched the infected murder its own kind. The gun in your hand was nothing but useless weight as you watched the scene.

Suddenly the Hunter stopped its attack. It backed away from the body, watching it for any signs of unnatural life. There was none. Then the hunter turned to you, its clothes and claws freshly stained with its recent kill.

You pressed yourself against the wall as hard as you could. Apparently, this Hunter didn’t want competition in its search for a meal. Your breath hitched in your throat as the Hunter crawled toward you. You could hear his nose working, taking in your scent and the smells of the subway [3].

You couldn’t breathe properly as he moved even closer, stopping when his face was only a foot away from your knees. You shivered, unable to move, unable to even raise your gun to defend yourself. For the first time, you watched as the Hunter stood on his back legs, hunching like so sort of strange toddler who isn’t used to balancing in such a way.

Even hunched like that, he was still taller than you. You couldn’t see under his hood, but his mouth was closed in a firm line as he leaned closer, his clawed hands finding the wall on either side of your head. Your heart sped up, your breath finally coming, but in short, shallow gasps.

What was this thing doing?

It leans forward, its face only inches from yours. Your body tensed. Suddenly its nose started to work away at you again. It surprised you. It did more than that, but how could you explain the massive shock going through your body as his nose sniffed around your face and hair.

You swallowed hard, not daring to move for fear it would cause this Hunter to grow anger and strike. At this distance, it could tear your throat out before you could even think to scream. Your body tensed even harder as its nose led it to lean close to your neck. Why, oh why did you have to think about ripped-out-throats the exact moment before its mouth was mere centimeters away from said body part?

Your body trembled slightly, the idea of dying hanging so closely in your mind that you couldn’t hold the action back. The Hunter paid the action no mind, however. It was intent on its little mission, whatever that was.

After a few tense moments, he seemed satisfied with his search and dropped back down to his crawling stance. You watched him, trying to calm your breathing down as he began crawling away.

Was that it? He wasn’t going to attack and eat you?

You watched him closely, nonetheless. A hunter was the fastest moving of the special infected, bar none. It could easily whip around and jump you before you could raise your gun. You blinked, looking down at the said object in your right hand. With the Hunter’s back turned, it would be little trouble to shoot it in the back of the head. It would end that growling that was following you, you were sure of that now. You raised your gun, shaking only a little.

This thing, for whatever reason, had followed you for days in this city. And for whatever reason, he never attacked. That thought stopped your trigger finger. But why? Why had it followed your? Why wouldn’t it attack? You couldn’t even begin to fathom any sort of reason for it. A sudden thought crossed your mind.

Maybe it’s a vegetarian…

The thought surprised a small giggle out of you. The giggled turned into a small laugh and you were gone. You slid down the wall, trying to hold back the foreign sound of your own laughter. You couldn’t help it. Those last few moments had been so tense and utterly filled with hopeless prayers that if you didn’t laugh right now, you’d probably go insane.

Not that laughing during such a moment wasn’t crazy.

You took a deep breath to calm yourself. You shook your head lightly and pushed yourself to stand shakily. The echoing growl had begun again, and you knew this strange Hunter had taken its place in the shadows again, ready to stalk you in the background again. You shook your head lightly, if only to rid yourself of the strange smile that was on your face.

This Hunter was probably going to kill you soon. He probably just wanted to follow you around, to hunt you, as it were. You were fine with that, for now.

After all, now you knew why you had yet to run across any other special infected.

~*~*~
[1] This is me. In a nutshell. Haha, I’m such a zombie nerd, you could probably quiz me about anything zombie and I would be able to answer you xD
[2] This once happened while I was playing online with my friends. The smoker and hunter (who had also been friends of mine, but I had no idea since the teams were mixed) just stared me down for the longest time before my friend messeged me and said, “Choose your destiny…The smoker shall lead you to salvation, the hunter to ruin…but he’s hell of a lot more fun lol”. Of course I chose the hunter and he followed me around the rest of the level xD
[3] I’ve always thought of Hunters as like Lone wolves (or maybe puppies…sometimes…heehee) ^^ it’s probably why I love them so much haha