Left 4 Dead 2 the latest electro-dongle from the folks over at Valve software is one of them first-person shootin’ games where you and a few other persons of your acquaintance get together to shoot other persons and suchlike what have been simulated by one of them computer-brains. Now Valve’s latest zombiecide simulator is a right-fun time and no mistake but them’s words you can read all up and down this here electro-web. For what my opinion’s worth the game ain’t worth the sand its printed on if you ain’t got any friends to go along with ‘ya and its finest moments are the ones made by someone actin’ the fool at the wrong time – or hell sometimes at the right one. I was lucky enough to have one of them “emergent gamin’ experiences” t’other night and I thought it showed everything what’s good about the game in miniature like one of those tiny bottles of Jack Daniels my cousin Idris sometimes stuffs his pockets with before runnin’ out of the liquor store screamin’ like he saw Ol’ Jipsum McChomp the local crocodile who was known to wander into liquor stores when he had the occasion.
Not that cousin Idris would be scared of just a regular old crocadilla’ mind. We done wrassled plenty when we were both a few feet shorter height-wise and also with regards to our mental development were it to be measured in feet. But it just so happens that Jipsum is also a registered sex offender something what some folks think contributes to his menace as much as his scales and razor-honed teeth but this was doubly terrifying for cousin Idris who was also a registered sex offender and knew that Jipsum – being a crocodile – wouldn’t have enough sense to keep his mouth shut about seein’ Idris at the meetings when both was in public.
But I digress. Here I am goin’ on about my family’s history of crippling emotional retardation and mental illness when you come to listen to a tale of zombies ‘n violence. And I’ve got one of those. Happened just t’other night. This here’s the story of Ol’ Fuckin’ Will versus the Invinci-witch.
Now Fuckin’ Will is called as such because that’s the way I tend to say his name into my headset most frequent. Fuckin’ Will makes it his regular to hop up and down on cars what are alarmed causin’ the zombie horde to come-a-rushin’ t’word us and then once it’s arrived chargin’ in armed with little more than a busted old machete or electric guitar. This makes him tough to heal when the zombies send him to meet his creator – somethin’ already made tough enough on account of his health pack hoggin.’
“Ugh Fuckin’ Will.”
O’course part of the reason Fuckin’ Will plays the game the way he does is because he’s durned good at it and most times takes on three of the risen dead to everyone else’s one. Playin’ with a guy such as Fuckin’ Will lets the rest of us get real comfortable gallavantin’ through the levels like cohort of fairies on their way to the land of buttermilk rivers and gumdrop rain. Or one of them homo bars. It was during one of our zombicidal sweeps through the videologically recreated New Orleans that Fuckin’ Will’s showdown with the Invinci-witch took place.
For those of you unawares the Witch is a feared enemy in the Left 4 Dead games on account of her havin’ a pair of claws that’ll shred up a whole team but good. She wanders around like a hound whose hobo master done abandoned her three railstations ago until you startle her with your flashlight or gunfire so the best tactic to take with her involves avoidance more often than it don’t. Fuckin’ Will his being a fucker disagrees.
Before we found ourselves starin’ down the Invinci-witch we’d managed to roll up three of her sisters in our little pogrom almost all of which havin’ been provoked by Fuckin’ Will’s Molotov cocktails bullets and the edge of his machete. When usin’ the latter of the three to go about his zombicidal dismemberment Fuckin’ Will could sometimes be heard to sing:
“Ma-che-te squad! More than you bar-gained for!”
Fuckin’ Will.
It was on one such occasion that we encountered the Invinci-witch. We’d heard her ethereal moaning a ways off as is usually the case so we’d all switched off our flashlights in anticipation of the fight. It just so happened that Fuckin’ Will was charging headlong into a group of zombies singin’ pop culture references to his big ol’ knife when from around the corner we hear the telltale growling of the Witch. Not ever one to walk away once the cards had been dealt Fuckin’ Will charges her with his machete. Seein’ this and taking account of the twenty-odd explosive rounds I had left in my combat rifle I squeezed off a few in her general direction. She seemed to mind more about the bullets what were setting her on fire than Fuckin’ Will’s machete so she turned away from him and started chargin’ me down instead. I backed up still shootin’ while trying to guess at the distance I had before she got close enough to gut me like a runt swine. From playin’ the game with the frequency that I have I knew that between the distance and the damage output of all our guns on her I should have had enough time to put her down before she posed anyone any real danger. This as things tend to go in stories like these was not the case.
The Witch sliced me open like a piniata on Mexican Christmas and then went on to kill the rest of the team as they all cried in my ear filling her full-up with all the bullets they had left. “How is she not dead!?” Everyone was askin’ in their way. No one could tell if the game was takin’ some kind of revenge on us just in the way that cousin Idris says all machines are like to do someday or whether we’d just seen one of them vudejas Keanu Reeves talks about in that movie with the sunglasses and the highfalutin’ New York jackets. Fuckin’ Will was the LMS and he went down tryin’ to fillet her with that Haitian harvester of his.
We loaded back up a ways before we met the Invinci-witch and formulated a plan should we encounter her again. Boiled down it came to: “run.” We picked our way back through the level a mite more careful this time and it wasn’t long before we heard that shrill whine off in the distance. From what we could tell the Witch was somewhere in the old tenement we had to get through so we switched off our lights and started to feel our way through real careful-like. We couldn’t tell if this Witch was going to be quite so God damn invincible so we all agreed that it was for the best if we just avoided her.
And yep – Fuckin’ Will disagreed.
The three of us who weren’t Fuckin’ Will were all off in a room fightin’ some other Zombified folks when two things came to our ears: That growlin’ sound the Witch makes when she reckons you’ve sidled a mite too close and the throaty rumble of Fuckin’ Will’s chainsaw startin’ up. The Good Lord only knows where he found one of those.
We all charged into the room in time to see it happen. The Witch only had the occasion to pull herself to standin’ before Fuckin’ Will had the business end of that tree chomper in her pushin’ her back down. She shrieked a spell as he cut her to chuck and there was a big ol’ fountain of gore as he followed her to the ground with the saw. The words what had come up on the screen to tell us that Fuckin’ Will had startled the Witch didn’t even have time to mosey on before the more welcome ones tellin’ us he’d finished her off had arrived. And he didn’t loose one lick of health.
“Did you guys just see that?” one of us asked though I can’t rightly remember who. “Fuckin’ Will.”
“Invinci-witch my ass” Fuckin’ Will could be heard to say.
And at that moment I don’t reckon none of us could help it: We all broke out a-gigglin’ like we was a bunch of little girls in one of cousin Idris’ sacks.
That was the only time I can recall seeing when the numbers done came up at the end of the game tellin’ you who murdered what and how fast that all the “Damage to the Witch” was attributed to one man. One crazy highfalutin’ fool called Fuckin’ Will.
