It was shortly after George Hamilton, Cindy Lennox and Kevin Ryman entered the Raccoon City Zoo that they realized it too was hardly safe. Zombies surrounded the Elephant restaurant outside of the zoo proper and had also invaded its interior. They quickly found a way past the gates but almost as soon as they'd stepped onto the first concourse, an elephant infected by the T-virus had apparently been rampaging for some time. After several round trips around the zoo, all three were injured by infected hyenas, poisoned by mutated bees and exhausted from searching for another way out. While they had been trapped in the Terrarium dome, George normally would've normally been grateful for Cindy's attempts to heal his poisoned status, if he had been able to move from the swarm of insects that surrounded and continually re-poisoned him until she had run out of herbs and for some reason, refused to heal either herself or Kevin from her supply.
Somehow they found their way back to where they had first started and were once again pursued by the relentless zombie hyenas and rampaging elephant. The hyenas were easy enough to evade, but the elephant had them on the run with almost nowhere to go. George and Kevin hadn't realized that the pretty young waitress had been unable to keep up, weakened by poison and her injuries. Her cries for help and screams were too easily drowned out by the elephant's thundering footsteps. By the time George realized she was missing, he told the also badly wounded and poisoned Officer Ryman to wait and gave him the most powerful weapon in their scant arsenal, a hunting rifle secured from the Observation Deck. For himself he took only a half-loaded handgun and a shotgun with a single shell left and set out to find the missing Cindy. He doubted that she were still alive and his suspicions were correct. Cindy lay facedown on the stairs that led to the office, her body already succumbed completely to either poison, infection, or the numerous wounds inflicted by the crazed animals in the zoo.
George allowed himself only a moment of regret and sadness. She carried nothing of incredible value that was worth his returning for and in retrospect, he had known from the moment he realized she was gone that it would end up being a pointless journey to save her.
Hurrying as fast as he could to where Kevin hopefully still waited, George saved the handgun bullets and remaining shell for what lay ahead instead of pointlessly wasting them on the relentless - and seemingly endless - pairs of zombie hyenas that reappeared and continuously attacked out of nowhere. His allies had often been prone to doing this, cheerfully deaf to his pleas to conserve their scarce bullets. Unable to carry every single weapon and important item found himself, George resigned to let them do it. After all, there was one reason and one reason alone that he was here, one that complete success didn't necessarily hinge upon.
Upon his return, George discovered that his last ally was also dead. Kevin's body lay face down, his legs completely straight yet oddly enough sticking through the door George was soon to go through. He took the hunting rifle, silently giving thanks to whatever urge had possessed Austin, the obviously strange zoo employee who kept a loaded powerful gun in a place that was once so carefree and innocent. Perhaps for protection, perhaps a hunting aficionado's unstable urge to decorate his space with the head of the zoo's prize king of the jungle, it didn't matter now. It was being put to good use, George decided as he went through the door, dispatching a waiting undead female lion with one precisely aimed shot to the head. He'd had to struggle to raise the powerful hunting rifle fleeced from the recently deceased Kevin, while thinking it was hardly surprising that Cindy had lasted the shortest amount of time.
Proceeding to the Show Animal's Boarding House and getting rid of another female lion as it perched on top of a large cage with thick iron bars, George collected a single health item to momentarily halt the growing rate of viral infection and heal some of his wounds. After some pointless monkeying around with the controls to a crane that caused the machinery to drop its payload of a wooden crate with a loud crash that subsequently splintered the crate into several splinters that disappeared upon landing, George proceeded to the Animal Stage where he could hear the growls of yet another female lion somewhere out of sight. He gazed down at the empty hunting rifle - ridiculous that it held only two bullets - and then discarded it without a care in the world, despite a nearby stock of shells for the weapon that would easily take down the feral beast. It didn't matter now because his mission was almost complete.
The poison coursing through him had greatly affected his constitution and George was only able to limp to the console directly across from the door. Searching impatiently, his gaze fell and landed upon the very thing that had brought him here, that had cost the lives of two people and would very likely soon cost his own as well. It didn't matter. Once it was in his possession, all would be accounted for.
Gingerly, George picked up the copy of "World Medicine", calmly pocketed it and waited for the end sure to come.