SUZUKI'S SILENT SOLILOQUY (A Resident Evil Outbreak Story)

These felt like the longest five minutes of my entire young life.

Was it soon to be an unlife?

If people out in Raccoon knew who I was—what I was, in relation to the future of their piddling, inoffensive metropolis, they would probably wish that I took a "turn" for the worse. It was the company I worked for around here, after all, which facilitated this seemingly preternatural predicament.

Well, the company that most think I work for, anyway.

I look across the way to that old hard-swinging security guard, he fumbling at his wounds as he, too, impatiently awaited the signal for the armored truck to go ahead. It must have been tough for him to let go of his old compatriot on the evening watch—although I would imagine that if anyone were to call out a name in passionate agony, for the love of God it would have to be anything other than a protracted, anguished "BAAAAAAHHHB!"

I saw it from around the corner, though—saw Mark as he was seemingly a beat too tardy in preventing his middle-aged friend from pulling the handgun's trigger—and I wondered, in that fleeting moment, if old Ving there had really done all he could to stop his buddy.

Made me wonder if I were really the only one with a deathurge…upon myself, and on others.

I could see it too in Tyler Durden over there, the most heroic plumber since Super Effing Mario, he now fervently taping together a lighter and a can of first aid. I would never have thought to do that with a plus-spray. And with what he did at the tanker, with the streams of fuel…I tell you, I hate, hate fire violence. They considered me for the job at first, but I begged off, preferring to dart here and there between the once-living to scavenge for anything useful before David took all those husks out.

He seems pretty nice…though the waitress who freaked at the rat back at Jack's was something more my speed. Too bad she didn't make it along.

What would happen next—would Megaphone Minion over there, the one who would call in a couple of minutes for everyone to hustle into the truck—would he attach friggin' rockets to his speaking device? The ingenuity of people with bloodlust in a crisis, I swear.

Anyway, this was not what I signed up for, when I undertook the assignment for Awning. The company wanted me to go in, look as unabashedly naïve as I possibly could. Infiltrate Umbrella, they told me, as they also did two years ago, shadow that icy brunette who assisted in the G-Larvae process.

You know, it's funny; the fright of it all, the whole Umbrella terror—it's always a lot more frightening when at first you don't know really, what it really is. Those STARS putzes, they went toward that haunting house a couple of months back—for all they knew, it was an effing warlock who was behind the generation of all this undead. Some incantations, magic spells, some real housesitting evil and not just corporate greed and corruption that was behind all of it.

I've always had a storyloving side. I wish it were some devilish vileness behind all this instead—it would make matters more interesting, and certainly a lot less complicated than the de facto bureaucracy of pharm machinations.

Awning's dynamic has always been better. They're like the "good guys" in adventure stories (again, I'm a romantic when it comes to narratives); they stick together, they have solidarity. They're not so right-hand left-hand backbiting betraying like it is in Umbrella. I had to feign not remembering my past just to save my stubby little neck, these parasol-parasites are so damn cutthroat.

I look to Ving again and he has a steely, vindictive look. He's still overcome about BAAHHB.

All these people in Raccoon might as well go off and make a similar sound without the "B" at the end, the sheep that they are. I pity them.

There I was an hour ago, just padding my way into Jack's with my too-long hair, which I wore into Umbrella as a sort of disguise almost. I cut it down to its regular length, and fully became myself again. It felt so good to see the follicles frame my face properly once more.

That was, of course, when I saw, from the corner of my eye in the bathroom past the glinting follicles in the sink, arms, hands reaching from me from previously-people who lost their own selves, body and soul. I took off and ran nearly headlong into these two poor fools who are sitting, languishing by me now in the lingering minutes.

Well, there was the third as well, as I said…but his sorry, sallow corpulent self didn't quite make it this far. Mark's face again registered that loud and completely clear.

I look across to the Apple, that small hotel which is one of Raccoon's highest rated. Think about how Awning sent me in there, with my hyperdeveloped skills in engineering, to futz with the boiler in the basement. And my company sent me—me, who can't stand the idea of a fire, much less be the one to set one off. I did that one because I had to do it.

It was all for the sake of containing the threat that was Monica Umbrellaface. She was visiting the facility from out of town, staying at the Inn for about a week on company expense. My real employers wanted there to be a bit of a mishap at the Apple—a Mishap-ple, if you will (sorry, that was bad)—so that the witch wouldn't be an issue at the facility. If I didn't effect the oncoming incident at the Apple, Monica would likely go on with her destructive career until the Hell of Umbrella froze over.

(Which it did, to a literal extent, in a small facility under the city, and that was a job at which I could not wait to put in my notice, not at all).

Yep, at the Apple, a little…accident was about to occur in the coming hours… I'm looking around, now, seeing the resolve in David and Mark, and I'm feeling inspired. Should I about-face, play up the hero bit and warn the boys in blue?

Nah…how could I tell them, without being implicated. And besides they've got their hands full anyway, the authorities. That blond mullet badge back there, right at the fuel tanker, had his hands…and face…and body full of these no-longer-alive. Poor effer.

You know, too, Awning couldn't get enough of the idea of vengeance. They pointed accusatively at Umbrella for supposedly sucking off so many ideas from my bosses regarding biological warfare. Awning claimed that everything from Mr. X to Nemesis was based off prototypes that my employers designed. So my supervisors, in turn, got a little cute.

After complaining ad infinitum about how Umbrella leeched off all my company's ideas, Awning created a new kind of stalking enforcer, made up entirely of bloodletting…

…well, I'm not in the mood to discuss it anymore. Especially because I was the individual who helped usher that threat into this burg as well.

Now I'm looking all around me and feeling pretty sick. A sure quantum of the death and disrepair in Raccoon is on me, and I own up to it.

Of course, I won't tell anyone about my part in it…but…maybe I can rectify matters a tad.

Maybe this Yoko can bring a group together, not tear it apart (for once). At least it'll serve to save my skin for a few more hours, so it'll be worth it.

But I'll still go through with Awning's last assignment. They wanted me to cap matters off by letting loose a radiation emission device at the city's perimeter. That whole "radioactive waste" rumor, which I've heard about through the Umbrella brass grapevine, for the sake of covering up the undead epidemic, wouldn't be a sham after all.

I'll do more than what they assigned, though. I'll go the extra effing mile.

I'll whisk that device away from the city limits, set it off in a bunker, take the energy into myself and become a superbeing. Be dubbed the "Incredible Yolk" by the ethnically ignorant conservative media as I grew nuclear muscles and smashed my former company to particles of the paramecium that they are. I'll become a one-woman corporate presence, and I'll be known by my own smothering-implement/fixture trade name. I'll be…Canopy, or Curtains. Yes. Curtains for Umbrella and for Awning.

In the minutes to come, we would get in that truck, we would travel all of three blocks before slowing, stopping at a small roadway easel or three, Mark would put together a detonator and bawl in the name of BAWWB one more time as he let the mechanism rip. Again, a bloodthirst for destruction from my compatriots which rivaled my own.

But I would be sure that the pleasure of the last blast would be saved just for me.