Note: This is my first actual finished RE fanfic, and this is also the first time I have written a fanfiction in a while. I had the whole process of what happens in this first chapter happen slowly on purpose for I planned to only have Claire in this chapter. BTW, I made a bit of a reference to Dawn of the Dead.

CHAPTER 1

Near Death Experience

The peaceful town in Massachusetts soon was foiled over by the abrupt outbreak of zombies. The infecties were mindless, they were once dead but they were brought back by the chemical virus created by Umbrella Corp. All these creatures wanted were to endlessly feed on others. If you're bitten and you do not have an anti-virus, then you technically are screwed. For some people, they would be immune to the virus. These people would be the only ones who could bring them down.

Claire bumped into a few outbreaks constantly lately. Most of them she was not alone in but this time she split up with her primary partner, Leon S. Kennedy, the man whom she first met back during the Raccoon Incident. He had to undergo another government related situation. Though Claire had experience with these creatures, the chances of her surviving varied. It all depended on how bad the outbreak was.

Claire was soundly asleep in her apartment in which she just began to rent. It was about a week or so ago. The apartment was often stuffy and due to this she kept her windows open slightly to let some air in even when she was sleeping. A sudden yelp echoed the street she lived in. Her eyes quickly flew open a moment after. She took a glance out the window next to her only to see two different zombies feeding on a middle aged business woman. Her eyes widened in surprise, and then she descended from her bed in haste.

There were a few health sprays by her, one of them being half empty. She quickly packed them all into a mini bag that was attached to a belt she would typically wear around her waist. After a few minutes, her equipment was all packed up. She had a handgun and a shotgun to her advantage. She looked around for any sort of extra ammo for her guns, and she spotted 5 boxes of ammo for shotguns and 10 for handguns. The auburn brunette decided that she'd use her shotgun sparingly.

There was no time to waste, she had to march downstairs before those mindless cannibals began to crowd up the apartment building itself. As soon as she ended up outside, she let out a few heavy breaths. There were heavy gusts of wind outside, along with the rain and fog which did not help her situation one bit. She walked in a slow pace with her handgun fully loaded and tightly grasped within her hands. Her eyes widened slowly as she saw a zombie up ahead of her. She slowly raised her gun up towards it's head which was their weak point.

Her finger slowly pulled onto the trigger and she successfully rid of one of the zombies in the town. She ran in haste, not seeing a single survivor in sight at all. "Damn..." She said quietly as she gasped while running, "This all must have started right after I went to bed." she continued. As she heard constant stretched out moans coming from the nearby police station, she stopped for a moment and glanced over there. The whole building already was consumed by the man eating creatures and that made her have doubts of there being any possible survivor.

She continued to walk ahead and due to the current weather that was shadowing over the city it made her awareness limited. She felt a tight grip on her shoulders, tight to the point where it began to hurt and she heard a stretched moan as the zombie attempted to bury his teeth into her skin but before his teeth could touch her she without thinking slapped the being on the forehead with her gun. As the intectie fell to the floor, Claire turned around and then she shot carefully at the zombie until it made no sign of movement. It was dead. She was relieved that she made the reflex she made.

She groaned quietly at the sudden pain she felt on her shoulders. She took a glance at her shoulder by sliding a bit of the cloth from her shirt off for a moment. The dark spots on her shoulders were bruises from the tight grip that zombie had on her. She was relieved that they had not grown smarter but, they still grew rapidly in size. She had to keep going, and so she did. The farther she went, the more amount of zombies that seemed to appear. It was not a good sign at all. Soon, they would come towards Claire in large groups. She shot a few down as the one she was not aiming her gun at decided to bite her arm.

Claire yelped quietly in pain as she pushed the zombie away from her. Two other zombies attempted to bite her arm and out of reflex, she swung the handle of her hangun right into both of the zombies' cheeks. The rough strike to the infecties caused them to collapse onto their back. This wasn't the time to kill each zombie in her path. It would be waste of ammo and that amount of ammo she had was extremely limited. As she walked quietly she noticed a zombie on the floor which appeared to be dead. Maybe there really is a survivor somewhere. Either way, she couldn't look.

As Claire walked past it, the zombie grabbed her leg and then bit her as the other zombies did. The auburn brunette groaned in pain as she kicked it directly in the head to escape from it's grasp. She had been immune to the virus but with each bite she received, she felt her body grow to ache more and more. It made it tedious for her to move once in a blue moon. She felt like it would take a few nights to get through the city on foot. Was there a motor cycle or car around that she would be able to use? She doubted the possibility but she still kept her eyes out.

It soon grew quiet. It was relieving to her yet strange. Claire grew suspicious of this, and she decided to keep her guard up despite the silence. She heard a few crows, and as she did her eyes grew wide. "It's been a while since I encountered possibly man-eating crows…" She said quietly as she aimed her gun at one of them. One of the other crows flew down at her, beginning to attack her with their legs. The attack caused her to receive cuts from them.

She yelped again in pain, she attempted to get them off of her by waving her hand at the ones that were attacking her. She fell over which caused the health sprays to fall out. She took the chance to shoot the one that was attacking her arm with her gun a few times. When she began to walk once again, she felt even weaker than she wanted to be. She practically limped her way out of the town. But, she knew that there were still long ways she would need to go.

Claire thought she was going to die at some point. There were so many zombies coming after her, and there was no sign of human life. The thought of her life ending like this all due to her partner Leon being on a Government-oriented and her brother being all too busy managing the BSAA camps around the nation, world for that matter actually terrified her. It wasn't their fault though. They couldn't help their situations.

She soon noticed that she was a little over half way out. As she limped slightly she also saw an airplane that crashed onto the ground. She turned toward it and then she walked over to the crashed plane. The auburn brunette's sea blue eyes traveled every single little detail she received from the crashed plane. Her eyes widened slightly, "This might be the cause to the whole thing." She noted as she quickly noticed a motorcycle nearby. That was a relief. Hopefully, there is a key in the ignition. That would be even more of a lucky relief.

Claire steadily walked over to the motorcycle. She placed the helmet onto her head as she sat onto the abandoned motorcycle. In high hopes, she slowly twisted the handle to start it. Yep, it had some gas left atleast enough to help her get through a sufficient amount of the city. It happened to be a big city. As she drove, she saw a few zombies in sight. She aimed her handgun towards each one that came in sight and then she shot them directly in the head.

The mass of zombies grew large again, but the only difference was that more were coming than the last huge amount of them. It made it extremely hard for her to keep up on driving and shooting. Claire reloaded her gun and she proceeded to shooting as many as she could while she drove. The gas was running low on the motorcycle. Her eyes widened in shock due to this but, there was nothing she could do about this and she knew it.

"This is not good…" Claire quietly mumbled to herself as she winced slightly due to the fresh wounds she received before. A big group of zombies, where they were all spread out into pairs threw her off mentally. She wanted to get rid of them but to drive into them would mean more of a chance of getting more wounded. She grabbed her handgun and then she shot at the ones that had been in front of her.

As she shot them both she felt one zombie attempt to grab her shoulder as she drove. She elbowed the clingy infectie, and thus that caused her to lose control of the motorcycle. Claire shrieked loudly as she tried to gain control back on the motorcycle. It came to no avail at all. Instead, she only fell off of it and then landed onto the ground, lying on her chest as the bike crashed against a wall.

Claire lifted her head up, and then she saw that the motorcycle somehow took the hit for her. Soon, she noticed that a strip of her hair was draped over her shoulder. Her ponytail broke in the big fall. She had an extra one but her body felt too weak and beat up to actually take and reach for it. She struggled to get up and onto her feet again. One of her legs was hurting, even worse than before, along with one of her arms. Every single wound on her body ached even more than before.

How could this happen to her? This has not happened before, and it shocked her to the very point where she somehow knew that there was a possibility of not making it this time. Even so, she wanted to keep going nevertheless. Claire made an attempt to get up. She stood straight as her legs dwindled slightly, groans of pain slipping from her lips each second. The one thing that distracted her was the fact that she was bleeding constantly, though it was not enough to say that she's lost too much blood but it somehow made her feel slightly weaker.

Couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't find a way out

And though you can't see it
So hard to believe it
Sometimes you just need a little faith (all you needs a little faith)
Theres an answer to your prayer

The smell of rain remained in the surrounding area she was in within the town. It probably was raining. If I don't get out of here, soon... The zombies may catch upto me. She thought as her breathing became heavy. It was all like as if they could smell blood, and therefore they would be able to track their prey down that way. For Claire, she had to live with these wounds for a while. The bleeding stopped finally which had been a good sign. Claire began to walk her way out of this town that can be newly pronounced as "hell".

Her arms were hanging down as one of her hands was gripping onto her handgun tightly, prepared to face anything that could come her way. She guessed that she was almost out of here, or at least a little over the middle of getting out. It seemed that it was actually for a fact that she was a little over halfway out. There was no reception, so she couldn't make an attempt to call her brother and tell him about the whole ordeal. Chances were that he'd start to get overly concerned about his baby sister, especially after the Rockfort incident.

The Rockfort outbreak… It was something that Claire could have become a test subject to Umbrella in if Leon was unable to track her brother down. Of course, Leon could have come instead, but he was dealing with government affairs that involved him and Sherry. The experience was a haunting one, especially if her second partner, Steve Burnside became infected and almost killed her at one point. The curves of Claire's mouth lowered down into a frown as she thought about it. Steve wasn't alive anymore. This fact still made Claire feel glum, and she definitely would not be able to contact him since he was… Well, in Heaven now. He was possibly with his Father and Mother.

This was no time to start mourning about something that happened 6-7 years ago, she had to make it through this. There was a truck that crashed up ahead. It looked like it crashed a little before she rushed out of the town. The streets had a few potholes. Which was not unusual since that tends to happen during the winter and they aren't fixed right away usually. Ironically, these pot holes were a bit deeper than the traditional ones. The truck was blocking the direction she was going after.

Claire glanced around the surroundings. Nothing, there was no other direction. She had no choice but to climb over that truck and avoid the fire that was on the front. A few grunts slipped from her lips as she walked. The pain was getting to her slowly. She wanted to get out of here, and as soon as possible. But she kept the fact that she's almost out as motivation. Otherwise, what's the point of dying now when you've already made it so far? One of her feet stepped into pothole. She yelped in reaction to almost falling but without using her arms she caught herself.

The young brownish-auburn head attempted to pull her foot out of the pot hole. A sudden pain ignited into her foot as she tried. Claire's foot was stuck, somehow. "Why is this not surprising me?" She asked, with obviously no one to answer that question other than herself and the brainless undeads that longed for nothing but human flesh. Two zombies were walking towards her, their arms hanged out forward. One of them was overweight while the other was skinnier than a juicy carrot. The skinny one's rib cage was exposed along with the tubes to it's stomach.

Claire stomach went upto her heart and twisted in pain as she shook her foot more intensely to get it out of the hole. They were getting closer, there was hardly any time for her to think. If she did take the time to think then she'd end up being their dinner or breakfeast. She slowly raised her arm toward the big one at it's head and she then tried to pull the trigger. Nothing. Her handgun was out of ammo, and the ammo she took was literally pushed within the packs on her pants. Which was something she could not quickly reach, and this was a bad thing.

I have no choice, she thought as she grabbed a loose hair pick she randomly found in the apartment and then she prepared for the zombies. As the first came up, she stabbed it in the eye vigorously then she elbowed it. The zombie collapsed and she sighed in relief. Another one grabbed Claire's ponytail holder, a gasp slipped from her lips. Fear was filling every inch of her body as she tried to figure out what to do. She used her free leg to kick the disgusting unnatural being in the stomach, as it was launched back from the kick, it broke the only ponytail holder she actually had.

Her hair draped down a little past her shoulders as she fought her way out of the pothole. She shook her ankle lightly and twisted it around slightly, soon finally finding her way out of it. Claire sighed in relief. Her heart was pounding so fast against her rib cage that even she could hear it. After a few moments, she felt a sharp pain start on her ankle. It was bleeding; there was nothing that she could possibly do at the moment.

The gate out was just up ahead. Luckily, she was not very far from getting out. Dying right before she'd get to the 'finish line' would be nothing but wasted time. Claire ran despite the pain within her wounded ankle. The exit felt like it was so far away yet, it really wasn't. She ran faster, wanting to get out of this hell hole as soon as possible. She didn't care about the zombies around her, nor did she care about her condition. Claire wanted to get out alive as soon as possible.

A few zombies jumped out of nowhere, attempting to grab her arm. But, only instead they gave her mere cuts. She groaned in pain as she kept going, not planning to bother with the zombies considering she's a few steps away from getting out of the horrid town. One of the zombies tripped over another one while the others kept going on and on. They were close behind Claire but the chance of them getting out with her was incredibly thin.

Finally, she made it out of the town, and she rushed to close the gate tightly behind her. She heard the zombies throw themselves against the fence as she winced. After a moment, she began limping. Where could she go in a condition like this? She felt so weak that she thought she was going to die. Claire saw a nearby car that had its driver door open. Despite the pain and weak feeling, she continued on towards it. Maybe someone would find her?

Claire walked to the side of the car the driver seat was on. Then she fell forward onto the seat, groaning desperately in pain. Her hair was scattered around her in little strips. As she breathed heavily while groaning, she heard a person walking. The sound of the footsteps seemed to be coming from the sidewalk. She looked back slightly, and saw a mysterious figure that was within the shadow near the car. No, She thought What if this person happens to be crazier than Alfred, Alexia, and William combined…?