Original title: “Dead End...”
Date added: 02/15/13
Date stored: 05/08/13
Backstory
My old computer.
It was a cold Sunday morning, I had just finished doing my most favorite thing, Playing video games. I was playing Left 4 Dead 2 on my steam account and it was really fun. I got through all of the campaigns apart from "The Sacrifice". I don't know what it was, but something told me that something was wrong and somewhat frightening about it. I went downstairs, got some lunch and went back up to play on my computer.
I suddenly heard a weird scratching noise coming from my computer. I brushed it off thinking that it was just because my computer was old and my family had no money. Since my father had left we didn't have any money, only enough to deal with the bills and once in a while when we had enough for me to get games from the Steam website.
When I wasn't able to get games that I really enjoyed, I would end up going to websites to download them, since we were on Virgin Media I couldn't go onto "ThePirateBay" since it was blocked because of some new internet law. Instead I went onto "IsoHunt".
That day I was really eager to play the first Left 4 Dead game since I was a huge fan of zombie movies, games, and even figurines. I went onto IsoHunt and saw a Torrent called "Left 4 Dead", I jumped with excitement! I really wanted to play this game. The user who had uploaded this Torrent went by the name of "TheyAreComing", "A weird name" I thought to myself, but I just brushed it off and downloaded the torrent.
The Torrent took about three hours to download, But I didn't understand because after I had opened the folder for it there was only two files; Left 4 Dead.exe and Dead.txt. I couldn't open the txt file for some odd reason it just came up with "Notepad has stopped working" and it closed the whole folder and uTorrent down. I re-opened it and there was another file called; Play.txt, I thought to just ignore the txt files since they were never any use to me and clicked on the exe file.
Gameplay
When the game finally loaded after what seemed like an eternity, the screen was normal. The zombies were walking around a crashed plane and the title "Left 4 Dead" was written in a darker shade of red, almost to the color of blood. I thought this it normal because it was the first game and usually old zombie games had dark colors. The thing that creeped me out thought was that, inside the plane were broken with hanging bodies outside of the broken glass with torn clothes as well.
Eventually after staring at the bodies I decided to play the game that I had wanted to play for so long, I clicked on "Start New Campaign" and the Select Difficulty option popped up. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it to let me select my character, it was set to Bill and the campaign was set to, "You Are The Sacrifice" I had never heard of this map but couldn't do much about it since I wasn't that skilled in hacking games, just downloading them.
I clicked Start Campaign and it faded from a small train coming towards a stop on what looked like an abandoned train station. Zombies were running towards it, but every time a zombie got hit by it. They just went underneath the train without making any sound and just disappeared. Eventually it panned towards the survivors. For some reason it was going from the front instead of the usual back, I just thought that the developers had updated it or something.
Francis was kneeling on the floor, crying with his hands over his face, his biker jacket had been covered in what looked like vomit; his head had a lump on it, it looked like someone had just hit him on the head with something hard. Zoey was looking to the floor with a depressed look on her face, her red hoodie was gone and she was wearing a grey t-shirt with what looked like scratch marks. Louis was looking straight ahead with no emotions showing, just a straight face, his tie was wrapped around his mouth, spit coming down like a fountain; he still showed no emotions. And finally Bill; Bill was terrifying to look at he looked so angry but was laughing at the same time, he was completely fine apart from the few scratches towards his stomach. Bill remained, the healthiest of them all. After looking at them for a few minutes I finally got to play.
I was tempted to just stop the game, but I let my curiosity lead me. I grabbed a shotgun, a health kit which was now green, and the words "Help" was written on the from instead of "Health". I proceeded towards the broken down train station, there were people burning alive—not zombies, but people. Real people were burning to death until they eventually turned into smoke. I chuckled a little bit since it looked like something from a cartoon the way they just turned to dust.
Nothing else happened in that map. Everything was fine, I passed through the zombies without a scratch on me. But every time the survivors got hurt, they all screamed in agony and lost a part of themselves. It ranged from parts of their flesh, to fingers; Francis eventually lost a foot and then the music for when you die played over and over and over again, until we got to the final stage.
[[File:Zombies in Graveyard.jpg|thumb|The zombies I effortlessly got through.]]
In the final stage we were told to gather as much gas as possible and fill the generator up, after doing this and battling with three tanks, we were ready for the end, but before I could get on there was a cutscene.I was astonished by this because there is only one cutscene in Left 4 Dead and that's the launching! The cutscene had this really emotional music, Bill jumped onto the bridge as it was getting higher. That was another weird thing to me, because I heard that the bridge comes down and you have to make it go up. I didn't question it and just sat there and watched, I couldn't do anything because every time I held Ctrl, Alt and Delete, It wouldn't do anything. The main menu wasn't working either.
Bill was on the bridge crawling, laughing at the other survivors as they reached out for him to grab their hands. Bill just stood there grinning while zombies tore them apart, limb from limb. Bill turned around and a tank-like
thing stared at him with his demonic eyes. Bill screamed and the game ended. Nothing else happened, no end credits, the game just quit and it returned to my desktop.
Another file was in the folder called You win.txt I opened it and it said, "Congratulations. You just won Your Sacrifice. What did you think of it? Do you feel good for what you did? You let Francis die. Yes I know you did because that exe file keeps track of everything you do, and it even records your voice. Yes we know that you have a microphone." I was terrified. I asked myself over and over again, "How in #@$! sake did it know I had a microphone?"
I eventually went downstairs to have dinner with my mom. She asked me why I was screaming and crying in my room, asleep near the computer."What?! I wasn't asleep mom! I was playing a game!" After having a long discussion, my mom eventually sold my computer and got me a new one for my birthday. I never saw that game on IsoHunt. It was deleted and there was no author by the name of "TheyAreComing". I pray to anyone out there that reads this, don't look for it. I assure you, you will not be satisfied by what you witness.