Nemesis: Resident Evil III

Chapter One: Yesterday

What a nice day, Jill Valentine thought to herself as she got out of bed. What a nice normal day in Raccoon City, a nice, normal place where nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. She knew that today was going to be a good day because not only had she managed to wake up in time to shut the alarm clock off before it went off, but her long brown hair somehow hadn't got all messed up while sleeping, and as a bonus the hot water pressure in the shower of her apartment was just… amazing.

Yes, this was going to be her day, the young woman just knew it, especially when there was a full tank of gas in her car after she was dressed and ready, and there was no line when she stopped at Emmy's Café for her favorite breakfast of a buttered raisin bagel with the largest size coffee that the small restaurant was capable of providing. Traffic was good, too, with everyone seeming to be in a pleasant mood, and it was the same when she walked into the Raccoon City Police Department.

There were no struggling, fighting criminals being dragged toward the holding cells, and everyone that Jill passed on the way to the STARS office, where she worked, was smiling and waving to her when she said hello to them. Everything was so clean and smelling good as she walked down the different corridors, as if the cleaning crew had just finished the best job of their careers, and the air wasn't stale at all, as if the windows had been allowed to be left open for once. Hell, even the metal emblem on that wall that read Special Tactics and Rescue Service was highly shined as she opened the door to the office.

Everyone was there, smiling and happy like the others as they sat at their desks, diligently writing reports and doing other typical office tasks while waiting for a call to come. Today, though, the young woman knew that there wouldn't be one… today there wouldn't be any crime at all in Raccoon City. There was just her and Chris Redfield, her partner who had the desk right next to hers… and there was nothing strange at all about him having his shirt off, especially since the two of them were suddenly alone in the office… where had everyone gone? Did it matter?

No, it didn't matter… what mattered was when Chris put his big, muscular arms around her waist and picked the young woman up so that she was sitting on her desk. He was now running his fingers through her hair, using his other arm to pull her so that she was right up against him, pulling her head back to expose her neck… and then Jill's eyes snapped open. The STARS office and Chris Redfield were gone, replaced by a much smaller and dirtier office with a single fluorescent light fixture that was blinking rapidly.

Instead of sitting on her desk, the young woman was sitting in front of a different one, clearly having fallen asleep in the world's most uncomfortable office chair with her head tilted back so that her neck was actually sore when she tried to sit up. Sunlight was coming in through the small window on the wall next to her, allowing Jill to see the piles of disorganized shipping manifests that covered the desk and spilled out of the nearby filing cabinets that she had seen after finding her way into this place the previous day.

Suddenly choked up by the hard grip of reality as she remembered everything that had happened, the young woman picked up her bottle of water, and drinking just enough of the warm liquid to keep herself from coughing… and then growling in frustration as she threw it across the room, since it was now empty. For a second she thought about simply going to the store and buying another one, but that was quite impossible, given the current state of Raccoon City. So she put her hands on her head, looking down at her filthy jeans and bloodied t-shirt as recent events played through her mind.

After she and the other surviving members of STARS returned from the mission to the Spencer Estate, where the truth of the horrific experiments being conducted by the Umbrella Corporation was revealed, she and the others found themselves getting suspended from duty pending further investigation. Regardless of the deaths of their teammates, the betrayal of their leader, Captain Albert Wesker, and the eye-witness accounts which all of them told in exactly the same way… RPD Chief of Police Brian Irons punished them.

Part of her expected this; after all there was absolutely no proof thanks to the whole mansion exploding, and Umbrella did provide employment to more than a third of the city, and that was that. Ordered to turn over their badges, firearms, and keys, Jill had simply been too tired after the whole ordeal to fight any more, so she just went home and went to sleep… at least she didn't have to get up early for work the next day, right?

Rebecca Chambers, the rookie and only survivor of STARS Bravo Team, left town the next day without so much as a word, while Barry Burton, who would have taken over as STARS Captain if not for the suspension, packed up his wife and two daughters and headed north. After they had been used against him by Wesker, it was no surprise that he was hiding them somewhere, and that was the last time she saw him, too. As for Chris Redfield, who had to be physically restrained from attacking the Chief, well… he said he was going to continue the investigation of Umbrella and just… just left.

The only member of STARS who hadn't gotten in any trouble was Brad Vickers, the pilot who had abandoned them to die in the forest, only to pull them out of the fire at the last possible second. Since he hadn't actually been inside the mansion with them, and couldn't corroborate anything they were saying, he was allowed to continue working at the department… he was lucky Chris hadn't shot him after the pilot hadn't said anything in their defense.

Oh, well, fuck it… the mansion had been destroyed, and Umbrella's virus-driven bullshit was over, right? Well, that was what the young woman had foolishly allowed herself to believe while sitting on the couch in her apartment for a couple months. She knew that she probably should have gone with Chris to keep hunting down Umbrella's secrets or whatever, but honestly she needed time to process everything that had happened to them, and after seeing what the company had done to their own people in that lab… she wasn't exactly sure she wanted to jump right into all that again.

For a while all was fine, and life continued on as normal in Raccoon City, at least until early September, when the riots started. At least, that was what the news was calling the outbreak of violence that started at the north end of the city and worked its way south regardless of the RPD's efforts to contain the perpetrators. Looking back on it all, Jill felt that she should have been able to put it all together, but maybe she was just in denial… denial, or perhaps desperately hoping that it was just another urban riot like what had happened in places like Detroit at one time.

Well, it wasn't, and maybe if the young woman had tried to get out of Raccoon City a single day earlier she could have made it, but no, instead she tried to help what remained of the RPD Officers make what was probably their last stand against the exact thing she had warned them about. The awful truth was that these were not drug addicts who were attacking people on the streets and in their homes… but the infected… the same infected people that she had seen in the halls of the Spencer Estate.

There had been word that the US Army was putting up barricades around the perimeter of the city to contain this incident, and that was great… except for the fact that herself and the others who were trying to put a barricade of cars together to stop the advancing horde were trapped in the middle of the uptown district. Trying to get as many of the panicked survivors to safety as they could… wherever safety was… Jill was given a pistol by one of her uniformed friends, and the battle for the last district of Raccoon City had begun.

All over the city there had been fires and car crashes as people tried to flee or fight off the infected, resulting in a lot of streets and buildings becoming inaccessible, so there really wasn't a lot of maneuvering room once the groaning monsters came into view. Now the only sound was gunfire as everyone on the barricade began shooting, and a lot of the zombies, as Chris called them, collapsed into pools of discolored blood. Things became a little easier once they started listening to her advice to shoot them in the head instead of just targeting anywhere, but… but God there were more infected people than the RPD had bullets.

A few minutes later the gunfire stopped as everyone ran out of ammo, but the zombies still advanced, shambling right over the remains of their brethren, and although many stopped to, uh… feed on the fallen dead, the majority threw themselves right over the barricade of cars, and that was when the screaming began. The Officers of the RPD fought valiantly… at least the ones who didn't run away screaming, but those valiant warriors were quickly tackled to the ground and devoured, and the cowards… well, they weren't too far behind.

Eventually there was no way to keep fighting, so the young woman screamed for the remaining survivors to fall back with her, leading them into a small back alley while the infected gave chase. One of the remaining cops grabbed a frightened girl and forced her to get in front of him as a shield when they were cornered, but that only bought him a few extra seconds of life… a few seconds that allowed Jill to get the others through the narrow passage between two buildings, where hopefully they would be safe.

Unfortunately, once they had reached the three way junction at the other side, the was a partially cleared road waiting for them, but both ways were occupied by zombies who noticed them very quickly thanks to all the loud noise that the frightened civilians were making. Trapped, with the infected slowly shambling toward them from both ways down the road, as well as from the direction from which they came, and Jill… had… one… bullet… left.

Even with all the experience that she had dealing with these things, she knew that one or two zombies were difficult to fight off at close range, and if there was more than that… forget about it. The infected, with their discolored skin, white glazed over eyes, and bloody mouths from previous victims, were getting closer, and the screams from the survivors around her were not helping the young woman think of a way out… maybe the fire escape? No, the ladder was too high up, even if someone stood on another's shoulders.

No, that wouldn't work, and the zombies were getting closer, so close that the young woman was startled when she backed into a wall… a wall that moved? It was metal with a grooved surface, shaking when she hit against it, so she turned around and gasped when she saw that it was a metal rollup door like the ones found in the shipping areas of warehouses. Bang! The door was padlocked, but the last bullet in her pistol took care of that, and once she started lifting the gate, the survivors began to push and fight to be the first ones through.

More screams as a man who had been knocked backwards by the fist of another, was grabbed by the nearest zombie, but thankfully Jill was able get to him in time to help. Whack! Striking the monster with her pistol in the forehead just as it was about to bite the man's neck, she gave it a kick to the stomach, making the infected stumble backwards until falling, while the two of them ran for the door. As soon as they were inside, Jill and the others worked together to slam it back down into place, wrapping the chain around a nearby pipe so that it couldn't be pulled open again by the monsters who were snarling and banging against the other side.