The Asylum
Claire Redfield banged hard on the padded reinforced door, yelling to anyone who might listen till she was hoarse. It was hopeless. She hung her head low and sighed.
"And how are you doing today, Ms. Redfield?"
She raised her head, staring hard at the figure in the white lab coat and refusing to say a word.
"Still don't feel like talking? Well, that's a pity."
Claire let out a barely audible growl. She hated being helpless – caged like an animal – and mocked daily by this freak. She contemplated reaching through the bars and grabbing him, but he always stood just outside of her grasp, almost as if he expected such attempts from her.
The man in the lab coat's attention wandered as he briefly glanced over some paperwork. "Well, Ms. Redfield, you may not feel like speaking, but my results say you're making very good progress otherwise. Another regiment of treatments and we may be ready to leave your room for brief periods."
She knew he was lying, getting her hopes up. She'd been locked in the cell for what seemed like ages, and she didn't see why they'd have any intention of suddenly letting her go now. After all, they're the ones that captured her in the first place. She remembered it well.
It wasn't long after she reached the city limits of Raccoon City that she saw it – a diner full of dead, dying, and something in between. At first she thought there'd been some sort of horrible attack, maybe terrorists. There was blood everywhere when she rushed in to help the survivors. But then she saw it.
A large, burly black man in his late forties, apparently unharmed, though his clothing was spattered with blood, turned to meet her. When their eyes met she noticed how dazed the man looked, as if his eyes refused to focus. She tried to say something but he spoke first.
"Waaah!" Guttural and infantile, spittle ran down his round chin. He seemed excited by her presence and extended his reach.
She backed away, the very sight of him unnerving.
"Are you alright? Do you want me to call an ambulance?" Claire spoke quickly, in a nervous pitch, and nothing she said halted him as he stumbled her way.
Suddenly he lunged at her, clenching her left breast hard with his strong, meaty hand. His other swung wildly at her as she let out a terrible yelp, struggling free of his grasp. And then she ran.
Claire didn't stop till she'd made it back to her bike. Out of breath and horrified. She couldn't even begin to rational what was happening. Was it some sort of gas, a nerve agent? Some new kind of biological weapon unleashed on an unsuspecting city? Or perhaps it was a disease? All those dead people, they looked injured. Some had bleeding gashes on their arms and necks - chunks of flesh ripped away, exposing the muscle and sinew beneath. Maybe that was one of the side effects. "God," she thought, "and I've been exposed."
Claire rode away as fast as she could, subconsciously holding her breath as her mind raced. Fevered thoughts of flesh eating viruses and brain destroying proteins like "mad cow disease" all stood as possible explanations for the carnage she'd seen. But she heard none of this upon entering the town. Wouldn't there have been some warning? She turned on the radio. Every station was dead air.
The roads were strangely empty as well; in the commotion traffic had been the least of her concerns. She only noticed when she passed by an old van, that had broken down on the side of the road. The driver waved her down. Her foot itched as she contemplated speeding by, but charity won out.
"Radiator's overheated." The driver said, a plain, older looking man, who Claire suspected of being one of the local farmers or laborers. He wore coveralls and a red flannel shirt, and his hands were stained with grease.
"I don't have any water, Mister." Claire spoke. "I think you better find some, fast." She said as she peered underneath the hood of his broken down van. "I was just in town, and it isn't pretty.."
This is crazy, she thought to herself. There is some sort of killer plague out there. The radio stations are down, and this is the first car she'd seen since she took the off ramp. Maybe this was the beginning of World War III. She needed to get out of here.
"I think-," she turned around to find a thick, black tube in her face. It was the silenced barrel of a Beretta. The man fired twice into her face.
"That's when I woke up here, with a horrible headache." Claire collapsed on the padded floor of her cell. She didn't know what she was going to do now.
"Feeding time!" a voice rang out, and Claire instinctively jumped to her feet. She couldn't remember how long it'd been since she'd had a decent meal. Rushing to her feet, she peered out through the barred window of her cell door.
"Come and get it," the man in the white lab coat called, causing quite a commotion with some of the other inmates - people, who, like Claire, expressed no knowledge of why they were here.
As the cart neared Claire, she found herself overcome, and reaches through the bars, grasping at her captor as he arrived at her door, pushing a metallic cart.
"Hungry, Ms. Redfield? That's very promising."
He reached into his cart and produced the most delectable cut of infant Claire had ever seen, still practically oozing its recently spilt blood. Claire frenzied, grasping desperately at the tiny carcass.
"Easy there, Claire, plenty for everybody." He let go of the dead baby as she yanked it through the bars of her cell.
Immediately, she ripped the arm from its body and tore into its soft flesh, savoring the tender, gooey gristle as it ran down her chin. She knew she could think of a way to escape this place. If only she could remember what happened.