July 2016

Washington, DC

Sweat dripped down Chris Redfield's face, into his eyes, across his cheeks. His mouth was dry and tasted like a mixture of dust and blood. He hadn't really eaten in two days, hadn't slept in almost three.

But when there were fucking zombies along the streets of Washington, DC, one of the best fighters in the world didn't get to take any fucking naps.

Right now, Chris was running. Over twenty years fighting bioterrorism and he had gotten good at running. Running, shooting, and looking out for his partner. He had only ever had two mission partners over the years, and he was damn lucky they were both with him now.

Sheva Alomar. An agent from the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA)'s West Africa division, she had accompanied him in 2009 on a mission in Kijuju. An old nemesis, Albert Wesker, was planning to turn the entire world into some sort of selection experiment. If they survived being hit with the Uroboros virus, they would be some new breed of superhuman. If not, well, they all turned to quick-running, gun-shooting zombies.

He and Sheva had wrapped that up nicely with a big fucking bow, but not before they had saved Chris's old partner, and closest friend, Jill Valentine.

He and Jill had been through a lot together. They had worked together in the Raccoon City Police Department's STARS (Special Tactics and Rescue Service) division fifteen years ago, and she had helped him start the BSAA. He thought he had lost her to Wesker twice – once, when she and Wesker both fell out a window as Jill was saving Chris. And once, when Wesker had taken Jill over with a mind control device, only three years ago.

Chris and Sheva had saved her. And with the help of Josh Stone, who was Sheva's old mentor, Jill escaped and then arrived just in time to pick Chris and Sheva up from almost certain destruction.

In the game of survival, there were a lot of times when you just realized how damn lucky you were to have people around you.

The only people around Chris right now were undead, but there was a certain familiarity in that as he ran to their home base – the heavily gated, now-devoid White House. He had to admit, in his 43 years of life, he never imagined he would be inside that building…let alone inside it while preparing to overtake a zombie horde. But here he was, as if nothing had really changed since his last big mission in 2012. In a way, it hadn't. Sure, his brown hair was fading to gray and there were more wrinkles around his piercing blue eyes. But he still walked the same, talked the same, shot the same. Even dressed the same: green BSAA t-shirt, khaki cargo pants, black combat boots, and green melee vest. Though he had wielded many guns over the years, his favorite was still the Samurai Edge handgun.

No, the only thing different about Chris Redfield was the mission he was on.

When scientists announced last year that they had created a strain of avian flu that could effectively wipe out a population in a matter of months, they should have been more careful about whom they gave that knowledge to.

And when that lethal strain arrived in Washington for people to study, Chris and his team arrived right behind it, ready for the worst.

Conservative senators had roared for the virus to be destroyed. Liberal ones wanted more testing, more research, so a cure could be made in case the knowledge got out. President Obama spent his days talking with scientists and researchers, figuring out what to do.

Ultimately, as it was with any fucking government decision, they all took too long. Someone broke in to the Carnegie Institute for Science, where the virus was being held, and took it to an undisclosed location. While the government scrambled to find it, and people scrambled to get out of Washington, whoever had taken it made some modifications.

And so, that hot June, when a mysterious flu began sweeping the city…

Chris, Jill, Sheva and Josh had been holed up in a hotel, watching the news. The breaking story about this new disease had put fear in the pit of their stomachs, and they had decided at once to travel to DC and check it out. They didn't wait for the BSAA to order them around. They just went for it, and were now the only BSAA agents in the city.

None of them were sure what this flu was capable of. But whoever had designed it made sure that when people died of the flu, they didn't stay dead.

No matter how many rounds of training the US Army had, nothing quite prepared them for the remorseless, unfeeling, unceasing willpower of a group of the undead.

Now, a month later, the city was a ghost town. Most had fled. Those who didn't were in hiding, being picked off one by one, or maybe getting lucky and finding refuge somewhere. Chris didn't know, but he hoped the people still in the city were safe. More and more infected people seemed to turn up every day, lumbering through the streets in search of living flesh.

Most of the living people that the team had found were now in the White House with them. Among them was a young man named Jeffrey, who was studying biochemical engineering at American University, and was desperately looking for a cure, an antidote, a vaccine, something. The only thing he had was a few textbooks and a printout of the virus's chemical makeup.

But to effectively find a way to fight the sickness, they needed the actual virus.

So, Chris was now carrying a small laboratory with him that he had taken from the campus of American U. Vials, syringes, test tubes. Some random chemicals. A Bunsen burner. A microscope. Safety goggles. And a dissection kit, because the only way to get the virus was to take blood from one of the infected.

He was half a mile from the White House, running over rooftops to avoid any more collisions with the dead down below, when his phone rang.

He had turned his radio off just in case anyone would broadcast over it and risk alerting the zombies, so the only way for the rest of the team to reach him was his phone. Still, there was a moment of panic in his heart. No one called him because they wanted to just fucking talk. They called him because something was urgent.

And this wasn't an iPhone or a BlackBerry. It was a BSAA-issued machine, capable of video chat and the uploading, downloading, and transfer of files. He was lucky he wasn't with AT&T or Verizon or any of the mainstream networks, because their lines had gone down weeks ago.

"Is everything okay?" were the first words out of his mouth as he pressed the green button. The picture on the screen came slowly into focus. It was Sheva, and Josh was right behind her.

"Chris," she said, her slightly accented voice tinged with excitement. "Turn on your radio. Someone found our channel and they're looking for survivors."

"It sounds like a bunch of women!" Josh boomed. While Sheva's South African accent could have been mistaken for an English one, there was no mistaking Josh's loud voice as belonging to a man from West Africa. "We wanted your go-ahead before we contacted them," he continued. "Jill is trying to trace their location."

"I'm not getting anything yet, Chris," came the third voice from offscreen.

Chris furrowed his brow as he thought. Survivors? Trying to contact other people? Clearly they were far more capable than the scared, clueless people they had run into so far. But if they were US government, Chris wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. He paused to take his last sip of water as he pondered.

The last people they found had tried to kill them. A small group of survivors, mostly middle-aged men, had taken refuge in a hotel near Capitol Hill. Chris and Josh had been hunting for supplies when they were surrounded by armed strangers. It had taken all of their diplomatic skills (and then a few shows of force) to get away.

"All right," he said, his deep voice thoughtful. "Let me see."

He clicked on his radio, and immediately heard a calm female voice.

"…still here in an apartment by Dupont Circle; we're doing okay but we're low on food and ammo."

Ammo? Chris thought. And radios that can reach our channel? Who are these people?

"We have a vehicle but it's almost out of gas, and we're running low on food. If there's anyone out there, please respond. Maybe we can help each other." A pause, then she began speaking again, her voice sounding weary. She must have been relaying this message for hours over different channels. "Is anyone out there? We're broadcasting over every channel we can find. One of us is a police trainee, so we have access to these radios and to weapons. We're fighting every zombie we can find, but we know we can't fight forever. We're still here in an apartment…"

The radio was muted from Chris's end, so they couldn't hear his heavy breathing as he listened, sweat still dripping down his back.

"Sheva, they don't sound like they're US government," he said into his phone.

"I know, but can we risk more liabilities? We have so many people here as it is."

"I don't know. But they have weapons, too. They can help us fight this thing. More people get infected every day! And I don't want to leave their lives to chance if they are innocent."

"It's your call, Chris," Jill said calmly. He sighed, looking around instinctively for any sign of movement on the other rooftops. The last thing he needed was a horde to find him.

Could these people help in the fight?

"I'll talk to them," he said.

Chris took a breath and pressed the speaker button, watching on his phone screen as Sheva and Josh walked over to where Jill was sitting by the radio.

"Hello, we can hear you."

He heard some rustling over the air and another voice in the background.

"Hello?" The same voice again. "We're here, are you in Washington?"

"Yeah," Chris replied, unsure of how much to divulge to these strangers. "A group of us are trying to kill as many of these creatures as we can, and we have some other survivors. Are you doing all right?"

"We're fine," the woman said. "We're running short on supplies though and we've raided everything we can find in a mile radius. It's too risky to travel too far. One of us has a pretty bad sprained ankle, but we need to stick together as a team, so she goes wherever the rest of us do."

"Okay," Chris said, his mind running through every possible pro and con of identifying himself to these people. "How many of you are there?"

"Four."

"Are any of you military?"

A burst of laughter from over the radio, and another voice cut in – sharper, but still sounding exhausted. "Military, are you serious? You think any of them are still holed up here in DC? The government made sure to get them out safely, didn't give a fuck about civilians. No, we're four 21-year-old women with a decent accuracy level, a few guns, and a lot of fucking luck. And we need some help, so if you're out here fighting these things, too, we should join up."

Chris rarely smiled anymore, but he couldn't help allowing his lips to turn up slightly at this young woman's sass.

"Hold on a minute," he said, and muted his speaker. Three sets of eyes stared at him from the phone as he wiped his forehead.

"What do you think?" Sheva asked. Chris sighed.

"We're going to run low on options for easy food and water access. But these people need help. They're in this with us; they're fighting too. They don't sound like they're going to be any trouble or anything." His team had encountered several gangs of young people who were aggressively looting stores and other people for money and weapons. But the two girls he spoke to didn't sound like they had some hidden agenda. They just sounded tired, like their fight was running out. Even as he thought, he heard them discussing something quietly. They sounded…desperate, a little. But seemed resilient. They were fighters.

Chris knew that one person could make the difference between life and death. Maybe having these women with them could give them the edge.

He nodded to Sheva. "I'm going to see where we can meet them," he said, and turned his radio on.

"All right," he said to the women on the other end. "Do you know where the White House is?"

The sharp voice again. "What the hell kind of red-blooded Americans would we be if we didn't know that?"

"Santana, come on," came the first voice.

"All right, sorry," said Santana. "But yeah. We know where it is. We can make it there by car. Is that where you want us to meet you?"

"…no," Chris said. "I'm sorry, we can't risk you driving right up to the gate." He thought for a moment of a better spot. "You can park a block or so away, at the ABA law library, and I can meet you there. But if the infected hear your vehicle, they'll come right up to the noise."

The first woman spoke again, as two other voices began talking excitedly in the background. "…I suppose that makes sense. All right, we can be there in half an hour. I'll keep the radio on."

"All right," he said, and muted the speaker again.

"Looks like I'll be a little later with these supplies than I thought," he said to Sheva. "Tell Jeff to hold on. I'm going to go pick up some reinforcements."