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The lighter side of the Left 4 Dead zompocalypse

Left 4 Dead- Prologue: Louis

Hello fellow L4D fanatics. I write this in absence of a real “story” for L4D beyond small snippets uttered from the survivors mouths in game. Now, this will be a series, explaining the back story of each of the survivors, BEFORE they were running for their lives as one cohesive unit.

Another boring day…

Louis was a  man that most would define as “normal.” He wore a tie, and went to work like the rest of humanity. But when a man is put in a extraordinary circumstances, things become….interesting.

“Sigh, another day at work… this is getting boring…” Louis thought as he drove to he electronics store where he worked. He clocked in, and went to the front desk, where he could sit, and double check service reports, and other such matters.

“Louis, You’ve got red on you.” said one of his co-workers as he sat down.

Louis looked at his shirt, and yes there was a small, red stain from where he left his pen.

“Go help that costumer with his shit!” Louis said in a quiet, angry tone to the co-worker.

As he worked on the service reports on a Beefy computer that a customer insisted was not working when he had bought it, he heard  small noise in the background, emanating from the TV’s in the back.

“In other news, a new strain of what appears to be rabies has spread rapidly among the residents of-”

“Man turn that shit off, change it to a channel that ain’t the news!” Louis yelled at the 16-year old newbie.

After many hours of boring, tedious work, it was time for lunch. He drove down to the rifle range, thinking that it would be a pleasant break. He walked up to the front desk, carrying his scoped rifle in its case and asked, “How much for thirty minuets of shooting dawg?”

The clerk replied with a bored face, “Five bucks…”

Louis laid down the money on the counter, and suddenly experienced a chill as he walked to his station, a chill, that some would say felt as if the world was about to end. Pulling out his rifle, he set it up, attaching the scope, and inserting the clip. When that was done, holding the gun, he rested his elbow on the table, and took aim. The target was close enough so he would not have to adjust his aim. He held his breath, saying to himself, “The first shot is always the worst…,” and pulled the trigger. “Bullseye” he thought silently, as the first bullet whizzed into the center of the target.

Many clips of ammo later, he returned to work, prepared for his co-workers jokes and jests.

“Is the world gonna end Louis? Could you please tell me?”

“Crazy bastard.”

“What, you in a gang? Why would you need to know how to shoot!”

All of these comments rang out as Louis walked in, and each was followed by a small murmur of laughter. And, just like any other day, his reply was, “Get yo’ asses back to work!”

Many hours of reports, filing, restocking, and annoying customers later, Louis was finally able to go home for the day. As he drove, he experienced the same chill he had experienced at the shooting range, but once again, he shook it off as being a odd thought. As he booted up his computer to pwn n00bs at Counter-Strike he was unaware that his phone, cellphone, and pager were ringing off the hook with calls from friends and family.

“Weird, all of the servers are pinging with 0 players.”

Since it seemed that noone on the planet was playing CS at this moment, he decided to go to bed, thinking that tomorrow would be the same as any other day.

Oh how wrong he was.

The Beginning of the End of the World

Louis woke up the next morning, took his shower, got dressed, and ate breakfast, in the same manner he did every day. As he sat on the couch, he got he same chill as yesterday, and actually gave it thought.

“Lets see whats on the news…,” he thought nervously.

The TV flicked on and as-

This is an emergency broadcast to all residents of Southern California, please head to your nearest evacuation center immediately.

As Louis watched in disbelief, another message popped on screen:

Public carrying of firearms is no longer prohibited.

Louis, realizing that this was most certainly NOT a drill, ran to his closet, and took out his rifle. He ran to the door, and as he was reaching for the handle, he heard what sounded like a knock. He peered through the hole, and saw a man banging his fists on the door, as if to punch his way through. He opened the door, and suddenly the man rushed in, and started hitting Louis as hard as he could. Louis smacked him off with the butt of his gun and yelled, “MAN, why you hitting me!” The man rushed at Louis again, and Louis, sensing that this man wouldnt listen to him, or anyone else, he smacked him back, and as the man was on the ground, Louis, thinking quickly, shot him.

“Oh my god, I killed him!” Louis thought, ” The rule now is shoot first, ask questions later…”

Louis ran out the door, and charged headlong into a battle to survive, and find others that had survived the end of the world.

No Mercy, The Road

Louis, being a man with a very small measure of common sense, decided to walk to a residential district, which was a mile or two away. Since the only way there was to follow city streets, he decided to go that way. As he walked along Oak Lane, he saw the state the world had been reduced to in the span of a few short hours. Cars, piled to gether in crashes, houses with doors cast ajar, or no doors at all. Hearing a moaning sound, he saw a zombie, as he called them, that wasnt aware of him, so he shot it before it could do anything to him, uttering “The first shot is always the worst…”

He walked down into what appeared to be a community center. moving closer, he saw that a great deal of zombies were gathered around the door, and along the street, blocking his path. He looked around for any way to get by them, and noticed a body against a wall, with “They are attracted to noise!!” scribbled above it, and what appeared to be a pipe. Being careful not to disturb the zombies, he snuck over to the pipe, and saw that it had a light and wires on it, and a switch.

“Wonder what this switch does…” he uttered as he flicked it.

The pipe suddenly started beeping, and suddenly all of the zombies ran  twoards him, hearing the noise. Frantically, he threw it into the towards them, and to his suprise, they all clustered around it. suddenly, the pipe exploded, killing all the zombies in a cloud of blood.

“Holy Shit!!!” Louis screamed after the mist of blood had settled.

Seeing no more of the zombies, he walked into the community center and saw that there was a stash of ammo against the wall, and people had written above it.

“GET OUT NOW!”

“What the hell is happening?”

“It’s the rabies infection, its changed them.”

Louis read all of this and was shocked, and wrote on the wall “Is there anyone left?”

He grabbed ammo for his rifle and walked out a back door on to an adjacent street. he started runnin for reasons unknown to himself, until he hit a barbed wire fence that he couldnt cross over, leading into the city.  Seeing a car nearby, that appeared to be working, he got in and rammed the fence with the car. As he rammmed it, he lost control for a split second and accidentaly hit the horn.

Suddenly, the cries of many people rang out in the air as one high pitched scream, and Louis quickly jumped out of the car and started running. as he started running, he heard many footsteps behind him and knew that he may not survive. All of the sudden, he was dragged into a house by a old man wearing an army outfit.

“Here they come!” the old man said as he pulled out a shotgun.

Louis ,sensing a large fight was on thier hands, stood on the stairs ,which had a view of the door. The door shattered in the center, exposing the zombies to the bullets of Louis and the old man. They continually fired at the door, but it seemed the zombies kept on coming no matter how many of them were downed. Finally, the door shattered, knocking the old man down, but giving Louis the opportunity to see how many were left. He fired into the crowd that had crowded around the old man, and kept shooting until all of them were dead.

“Help me up!” said  the old man.

Louis walked over and helped the old man up saying, “Come on, lets get up, lets get up!”

“Whats your name anyway, son?”

“Its Louis.”

“Well Louis, i’m Bill, Lets keep moving. This fight ain’t over yet.”

What happened after that, is a story not for now, but in the near future.

 

46 Responses to “Left 4 Dead- Prologue: Louis” (post new)

  1.  

    Didn’t really like the Shaun of the Dead parody in the first extract but the rest was pretty good…

  2.  

    What Jakka said.

  3.  

    Really? I personally thought the second part was worse than the first. I will take your critiques into consideration….

  4.  

    Got much better towards the end, especially direct quotes of Louis.
    Good though.

  5.  

    Good point toxoplasma, but the problem is that for most of the characters, the quotes are directly correlated with in game actions, and thus, i can only use them in those sorts of situations. I’ll dig through the sound files to see if i can get better ones…

  6.  

    Pretty good. i enjoyed the shaun of the dead quote. But get a little more racist please. I haven’t heard Louis say “Dawg” or “yo” at all.

  7.  

    I found the language and the sentence structure ata the beginning rather dull(It improved slightly towards the end), but I still couldn’t help but be drawn into your story. Like the game itself, your story was absolutely immersive.

  8.  

    Yeah, the swearing and such wasn’t really in louis’s character.

  9.  

    How many times did Louis say shit in this? And come on, CS? :/ This is a good idea, but the storyline is very abrupt and people bizarrely rude, not to mention the Shaun of the Dead influences being VERY obvious and unnecessary. This could use some serious improvement and less references.

  10.  

    The cs thing is actually a reference to a quote that louis is rumored to say. Aparrently, when picking up the m16/uzi, he says “This is just like counterstrike!”

  11.  

    Yeah sometimes if you pick up an Uzi Louis will say “Just like Counterstrike!”

  12.  

    Shit, I live near an Oak Lane.

  13.  

    Story was good, although a bit dull at times. Left 4 Dead takes place in Pennsylvania, not Southern California.

  14.  

    I have to agree with SirMax, it was kinda… juvenile. Louis cussed WAY too much, and I felt that the CS “pwn n00bs” reference was really out of character.

    Also the sentence structuring seemed to represent a writer that’s new to prose, and the entire article had grammatical and spelling errors.

    Sorry to be so harsh, the more criticism the better. It also seems that this was a rough draft. I advise you to edit your posts at least twice. I used to think that I was a good enough writer to write just one version and it be decent enough for publication. No one is a good writer, just a really good self-editor.

    Keep trying, just remember: Edit twice, post once.

  15.  

    Come on, Louis is a mr. Commonguy, not some cold-blooded rifle wielding assassin as you pictured him.

  16.  

    Let me guess, in the next part, they find Francis listening to Queen from a boombox while shooting zombies?

    GET YO ASSES BACK TO WORK

  17.  

    Counter-Strike generates more internet-traffic than all users in Italy.If no one plays CS in ENTIRE WORLD,something certainly gone horribly wrong.

  18.  

    Time to go shoot some zombies, dawg!
    Wooooord UP!
    etc.

  19.  

    I’m a shooting star, racing through the skies, like a tiger, defying the laws of gravityyyy…

    Louis: “OFF WITH THE QUEEN, BITCHES!”

  20.  

    Guys, CONSTRUCTIVE criticism.

  21.  

    It just didn’t feel like Louis talking.

    It was like

    A not funny, black Shaun of the Dead.

  22.  

    Thanks to those that provided constructive criticism.
    @Coded/SirMax: Good point, I can’t rely on the editor or the spellchecker to catch everything. As for the prose, I did overdo it a little. Next time around I will tone that down a little, since it seems that is not my forte. And him saying shit every 4 seconds was from in game material ( intro scene, when someone dies, ect.) but I see that the cussing needs to be toned down as well
    @Squeaky: I see what your saying. But, unfortunately, in my time of playing L4D, Louis says very little at all, so its hard to come up with material that is independent from the original in so many ways. I probably should brushed up on his way of speaking before anything else.
    @Tweedle: Good point, but this is the first one, I will try to improve staying in line with the charachter more in the up coming ones.
    @Oneperson: Then why is Death Toll in Riverside, CA? :P

  23.  

    I’ve never noticed a sign saying it took place there, but then again, I don’t play Death Toll that much. However, Blood Harvest takes place in the Allegheny National Forest, which is North West (I think, not the best at US Geography) Pennsylvania, and No Mercy takes place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, judging from phone numbers around the town.

    Also, according to this:
    http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php?t=652131
    Riverside is a town in PA too.

  24.  

    I haven’t written anything for L4D, but I’ve got to comment on this. First of all, Louis does seem out of character, what with the “pwning n00bs” and whatnot. While it is possible that he has played the game, it’s hard for me to imagine that it would be one of the first things to come to mind. Why doesn’t he think of zombie movies first?

    Look at what he’s wearing, it speaks less of a l337 gamer and more of a 7 to 5 office worker. Also, counter-strike probably isn’t the only reason Louis is capable with guns. I remember an ad with a clip of him mentioning spending his work-breaks practicing at a firing range.

    It’s fine if you want to include mentions of CS or Shaun of the Dead to lighten the mood (if that is what you want), but don’t force them in. They really grate against any possible immersion by the readers, especially in such a short paragraph.

    Also, Louis has plenty of things to say in L4D, you just have to press Z & X, maybe take some time in single-player to hear all his stuff. Further, don’t just listen to what he says but *how* he says things. Is he nervous? Cocky? Going slightly unhinged?

    Also, there’s a minor (maybe major depending on the nit-pickiness of the reader) plot-hole with how Louis whips out a gun out of nowhere. You can keep the zombie encounter in there, but have Louis take something from a fallen security guard or maybe beat the guy down bare-handed.

    Lastly, you only used ’shit’ three times, but as I mentioned earlier, this is a short piece so any kind of repetition can lessen the strength of the narrative. You don’t have to write out his dialogue every time he swears, so you could fix it by saying “He swore” or think of another common (yet PG-ish) swear Louis could shout out.

    And…. yeah, overall I can’t say I really liked this piece. It’s *nice*, with correct grammar and spelling and etc, but it’s not something that really sucks me in.

  25.  

    I have to agree with the last comment by Ryebread. I felt that Louis was almost completely out of character in this. He seemed like an “angry black man” character. When I look at him and his clothing, I see him as having been a moderately satisfied office worker who could’ve been on his way up in whichever company he was working for. And the “dawg” and “yo” stuff…. yeah… not so much. He doesn’t sound like that in his voice clips in the game. At all.

    I can appreciate that this is the first of many. I’m sure Louis will actually be probably the most difficult of the four to come up with a believable back-story for.. so maybe revisit him later?

  26.  

    Actually, in more than one of Louis’s voice clips, he says “dawg” or “yo”… But not that much.

    My biggest problem was that you made Louis a douchebag. Honestly, going entirely off of clothing and the few voice clips there are in the game, he seems like the nicest one of the four. At the least, he’s certainly a lot more optimistic and lighthearted than the others.

  27. Jigglesthefatmanisnomatchforchicagoted
     

    Wow, what is this, fanfiction?
    Because it’s written bad enough to be it.

  28.  

    Ryebread: did you read the story? Louis DID practice at a shooting range on his work breaks.

    I thought this piece was thoroughly enjoyable, but I also agree with some of the “out of character” examples given above. Can’t wait for Zoey’s story if there is going to be one XD

  29.  

    Awesome, keep it going !

    Can’t wait to read the Zoey background :)

  30.  

    I thought it was pretty good, even if Louis was little out of character.

  31.  

    TeddySlayer: Honestly, I skimmed it. It’s nice in spelling and grammar, but it didn’t pull me in enough for me to read it in depth.

    Zoey’s going to be hard though. Francis and Bill have obvious backgrounds, but I don’t know what to make of Zoey.

  32.  

    Aside from what’s already been mentioned, my hang-ups are that I felt some parts of the story felt forced. The part with the scribbling on the wall about being attracted to noise and the pipe bomb felt like it was shoe-horned into the story. Perhaps a little more development leading to the realization that the zombies are attracted to noise.

    Also, I didn’t get the logic of Louis getting out of the car after breaking the fence. By that point he knows that the zombies can haul ass. Cars are a lot faster than running on foot, and there didn’t seem to be any reason for him to abandon the car (there could have been barricades that would have prevented him from driving anywhere, after breaking the fence he crashes the car, etc.).

    Just my 2 cents worth. Still, this was a fun read in giving some additional insight into the world of L4D, and I’m looking forward to reading the next installations.

  33.  

    Stfu you guys. That was epic

  34.  

    Ryebread, Zoey’s story will be like that:

    Zoey was watching horror movies for three days straight. Suddenly, zombies! Thousands of them! So Zoey gotted her palsma rifle and blew up the wall.

  35.  

    What I get from Zoey.

    She’s a bit of a nerd, she’s a klutz. She makes a lot of awkward jokes that people eye her kind of funny. And kind of has a thing for Louis.

    Also, yeah, didn’t like it.

  36.  

    I’ve never played l4d before. So it’s probally the reason why i thought that WAS EPIC!

  37.  

    In the first part you said that Louis headed to the rifle range but its actually supposed to be Francis who likes to go there.

  38.  

    [...] to anyone that has read the first installment in the series! If you have not, Read the first one here. Lets see what Bill is up [...]

  39.  

    don’t mean to rehash this by posting a new comment but…

    if your going to write about gun-play, i suggest a little research as well. the only place the term “clip” is used, is in low budget and poorly directed movies and TV, the correct term is “magazine”. also the line

    “Pulling out his rifle, he set it up, attaching the scope, and inserting the clip. When that was done, holding the gun, he rested his elbow on the table, and took aim. The target was close enough so he would not have to adjust his aim.”

    does not really make sense. give the reader a little background, is it a hunting rifle? is it a carbine (AR-15, FN FAL, etc)? realistically the only “rifle” that could have a detachable scope with any kind of repeatability would be a carbine. any higher power scope (greater then 2-3x) mounted on a hunting rifle will lose it’s point of aim/point of impact (zero) without the use of quick-detach ring/base system.

    by saying “no need to adjust his aim” do you mean no need to adjust the scope for the distance he was shooting at? typically, the only scopes that have external adjustments for range to target are either “target” or “tactical” model scopes.

    just a few tips.

  40.  

    in the second one, didnt bill get a assult rifle? In this, he pulls out a shotty.

    awesome work nalfang

  41.  

    Doh. That’s what I get for taking so long to write the second one.

  42.  

    People have been complaining about the shaun of the dead parody…..But the fact is Louis IS a shaun of the dead parody that’s his character. Why do you think he’s wearing the exact same clothes as shawn does? Valve purposly made him like that.

  43.  

    nalfang, your writing needs so much work. Have you ever had a college level writing class?

    Besides the structure and flow problems, you have many spelling errors and way to many commas in the wrong spot.

    I’m not trying to be an asshole, but seriously, this wreaks.

  44.  

    @david Don’t say anything if you are going to have nothing nice to say.
    I didn’t edit this when it was first released. It was a mistake. I KNOW that. I would actually respect your opinon if you have actually written anything that I can see.

  45.  

    [...] notes: Yes, this took a buttload of time to get to, and I’m sorry. Read Louis first, then BIll.  I’m also aware of that this can’t be canon due to location [...]

  46.  

    I appreciate the time inputed in these fan-fiction stories, but can we stop with the prejudice and get Louis to say normal things like in the game. It could have done better without the “Shawn of The Dead” beginning, but the bottom line is that I would’ve bought all of this if it was a book.

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