For new readers, welcome to the other side… the other nightmare.
For old readers, I'm so sorry I re-did the story, but the original was just not right in more ways than one. To explain it all would be an excuse, and I'm done with that.
This was my original idea for this story. I think it would be best if you read how it was really supposed to be.
Don't own RE, obviously. Don't own Delta One, and the other teams are only about half-way mine. Delta Eight is all mine, as are all civilians and Umbrella soldiers that pop in.
Hope you enjoy.
Chapter One: Before the Outbreak
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Tom aimed his Beretta at the targets and fired three quick shots. All three targets went down in a fluid motion.
He sighed. This was just too trivial for him, yet he still did it. Never mind that he was one of the best shots in the unit- the practice just helped. Just because you were good didn't mean you couldn't be better. And as one of the team leaders, he had to provide a good example for his men.
He was a member of the highly elite Delta Squadron, the special ops. unit known for its secrecy and its being the best. He was the team leader of Delta Eight, one of the ten Delta teams that had been assigned to the makeshift base ten clicks outside of Raccoon City- his former hometown. Why they were here was a bit of a mystery- command had been extremely discreet in regards to this mission. But it had to have been for a reason- otherwise, he wouldn't be extremely pissed off right now.
He wasn't exactly pissed at her- he never could be. But… it had just been so sudden. She had just dumped him, just like that. True, it was easier to handle when everyone started bugging him about it. But he had never felt so empty in his life.
Tom was a tall, lanky kid with long black hair and a scruff beard. This was one of the reasons he liked Delta- he didn't have to go with those annoying shaved heads and clean shaven. Because they were stealth ops, they couldn't just go on a secret mission with an Army cru cut and no facial hair- that was a dead give-away. He could look like he always did back home- like he just got out of bed.
He holstered his Beretta and walked out, grabbing his jacket and hat and putting them on. It was a peaceful end-of-summer day, the kind he and Anna used to enjoy back when he was a civi. It was the last summer they had spent together before joining up. That was… almost two years ago, yeah. He way twenty now- one of the younger D-boys in the unit. And he and Anna were no longer together. He guessed it was because of his job, or maybe it was just college- Raccoon University was supposed to be a real bitch. He just wished he could have had more time.
No time to deal with that now, he guessed. He had paperwork to fill out.
88888
Around that time, the mail boy was wandering around with a large package in his arms. He was looking for someone, anyone. He finally found someone who could help him find the man he was searching for.
That someone was Jimmy Nelson, Delta Eight's medic and sniper, a tall guy with a pointed nose and hair that was a mix of black and red. The mail boy went over to him.
"Hey, Nelson, you see Sergeant Horan anywhere?" he asked.
"Um, try gun range, he went by there 'bout an hour ago," Nelson replied.
Thanking him, the mail boy went to check, and came up empty handed. Kinda desperate now, as this box was breaking his skinny arms, he went around again and found another helper- Paul Jackson, Delta Eight's machine gunner and radioman. The tall, thin, muscled man with a bandana on his head was sitting on the back of a truck and giving his machine gun a good spit shine.
"Jackson, you see Sergeant Horan?"
Jackson looked up, "Yeah, uh, try a few buildings down, maybe." He hacked up a good loogie and spit it onto his gun.
Not a load of help, the mail boy nevertheless went down and sighed in happy relief when he found a truly reliable source: Ryan Cribbs, the second in command of Delta Eight and Tom's best friend. He was standing in the street, lighting up a cigarette, while the kid went over and repeated his question a third time.
"Yeah, he just walked in there a few seconds ago," Cribbs nodded towards the building adjacent them, the clerks office. Tears of joy almost ran down the kids face as he thanked him and ran inside.
Tom was sitting at the table, filling out some release forms when the mailman came in and cried in happiness. He placed the box onto the table and panted.
"Pa-Package-for you," he huffed.
"What is it?" Tom pushed the papers aside and pulled the box over.
"Don't have a clue, but it's one heavy bitch," the kid sighed, "tell whoever you correspond with to make your cookies with a little less yeast."
The Delta sergeant chuckled and dismissed him. Once the boy was gone, he whipped out his combat knife and slid it through the tape, cutting it evenly. Once done, he opened it.
His eyes closed in pain. It was all of his stuff- the stuff Anna had held on to. She was giving it back. Tom searched the package. No note, letter, nothing. She just sent it back without a word.
Totally and utterly dumped.
And the pain grew even worse.
88888
That night, all the Delta men and the chopper pilots- the Night Stalkers from the 160th that were on the mission with them- were in the bunker, enjoying their food, watching movies, playing games, and just loafing around.
Because the mission had been on such short notice, Delta command didn't have time to get an actual military barracks for them. So they got an old abandoned bunker instead. To Tom, it seemed a lot like the Somalia set-up the unit had had in '93, but he didn't complain. They were only here for another week or two, then back to a real base.
All around him, his comrades were loafing around, enjoying themselves. He didn't. His mood was too terrible to hang with the others.
The teams all had their own little areas where they hung together. In Delta One's area, Sergeant John Bradley was cleaning his M-16, which he did twice or three times a day. A tall, stern man with a serious attitude, Bradley was an old-time soldier from the Desert Storm days. A former lieutenant, he was brought down a couple of ranks due to a botched mission that he didn't know all of the details for. He and his team were now always the one being left behind on missions. It sucked.
Behind him, his team members, Paul Foley, Mick Connors, and David Jones were all playing a game of Bullshit and shooting exactly just that.
"So I'm with this broad in a bar, right?" Connors, the machine gunner, a large man with a New Yorker's attitude, told them, "And all of a sudden, this guy comes up to me, he's obviously had a bit too much to drink, and he's hitting on the girl I'm with. Right in front of my eyes!"
"Dude, that's fucked up. One six," Foley, the sniper, a tall thin man with a hawks eye, laid a card down.
"No kidding. Two sevens," Connors placed two cards, "so I get up and tell the guy, 'Hey, she's with me. Back off.' And the guy turns to me and asks, all slurred, 'you wanna fight me, bitch?' Now, I'm not one for fighting civilians, but he's asking for it, so I go, 'Aiight, take your best shot.' So, he winds back, punches, misses me, and the fist goes like a fucking boomerang. And he just goes WHAM!" he slammed his fist onto the table, "Fist goes into his face, he falls back onto the table, the table goes down with him due to his weight, and all the drinks and peanuts on the table spill on top of him."
His friends barreled over in hysterical laughter. Even Bradley, sitting a little ways away on his cot, cracked a grin. Connors resumed his story, tears lining his face.
"So- so then the police show up, right? And the youngest one- couldn't have been more than twenty- takes one look at the guy, then looks at me and asks, 'What did you do to him?' all surprised like. And I just go, 'Pffft. I didn't do nothing. Crouching Tiger over here knocked himself out, interrogate him.' And then me and the girl just walk out like nothing happened and enjoyed the rest of the night."
"God, man, you're fucking nuts, you know that?" Jones, the team's medic, a short black man with a funny attitude off duty but a dead serious one in the field, shook his head and placed four cards down, "Four eights-"
"Bullshit," Foley stated. Jones, grinning, flipped the cards over, revealing indeed four eight cards. The sniper slammed his fist onto the table.
Across the bunker, in the Night Stalkers area, Warrant Officers Jack Hughes and Paul Howe were playing a game of Yahtzee. Hughes, a skinny man with a scruff and a superstitious nature, was up, shaking the cup containing the dice, blowing into it, sometimes blowing kisses, and whispering for a good roll. Howe, a short man with a gruff attitude, watched this in bizarre fascination.
"Hughes," he finally said. His buddy looked up, stopping, "just roll the fucking dice already," Howe laughed.
Hughes made one last shake and blown kiss, and then threw them out. The plopped onto the table and stopped as-
"Snake eyes," Howe grinned.
"Fuck!" Hughes cursed, raising his hand to his eyes and rubbed them tiredly. Howe grabbed the score card.
"So you wanna go with two of a pair on that one?" he asked.
"…Yeah, sure, whatever," Hughes waved his hand in an annoyed manner, saying "just go ahead." His buddy wrote it down.
"Jesus, let's hope you're better in the air than you are at Yahtzee, huh?" he joked.
Hughes grimaced at this. All the pilots treated him like shit around here. Just because he was a nervous guy who didn't stick his neck into hazardous situations. Howe was his only real friend in the unit. But this was his mission. This time, he would prove to everyone he had what it took to be a Night Stalker. "Play again?"
In another area, the Delta Three team was enjoying a game of their own. Kyle Lake, the sniper, a tall, rugged man with a shaved head, and Rich Atkins, the machine gunner, a tall, thin man with a serious military attitude, were playing a game of Clue. So far, it wasn't going very well.
"Your guess," Lake began.
"God, this game is stupid," moaned Atkins.
"Just make a guess," his teammate insisted.
The machine gunner groaned. "Alright, is it… Col. Mustard… in the Ballroom… with the Handcannon-?"
"Oh my God," Lake groaned, throwing his hands in the air.
"What?"
"Dude, we've been through this. It. Is. A. Re-volv-er. You fuckwad!"
"Alright," Atkins was pissed off now. He had been in Delta seven years, and he could tell a Handcannon from a normal magnum. He held the little toy up, "look- cylinder barrel, six inches, double edged, six-round shot, probably 50. caliber, this is a damn Handcannon. Clear?"
"Dude, you gotta stop thinking like the Army all the time. OK? It is a children's game, a children's board game, the fucking," Lake held the box up, "Parker Brothers invented it. I don't think they were ever in the Army. They are not going by military weapon standards-"
"Is my guess right or not?"
Lake sighed, "No, it's not."
"Alright, then what the hell's the point of ragging on me if it's not right?"
As the two friends bickered, Zack Pettigrew, the team's radioman, a tall black man with a shaved head and beard, laughed at them. Those two were like a married couple. He rolled over to talk to Sam Arnold, the Delta Three team leader.
Arnold was a large, portly sergeant who was an old-timer in Delta. He too had seen action from Desert Storm to the present day and was a good leader- even if he did seem a bit arrogant for the other sergeants' tastes. He and Bradley didn't get along too well, but that was old problems. Right now, he was reading the paper, which had come in that morning.
"Man, I tell you, I wonder how those two ever get along in a combat zone," Pettigrew chuckled to his friend.
"It all goes alright in the field, no matter how much they hate each other," Arnold replied, not looking up from the paper. His friend inclined his head.
"What's up in the city?"
"Another couple got butchered about 0200 last night. Cops found them in an alleyway this afternoon," was the grim reply.
"Any clues?"
"No, that's the freaky part. No entry wounds, no weapons, no identity match, just two civilians torn to pieces. Looks like they got into a fight with Freddy Kruger and lost, except it's not claw marks… they're teeth marks."
Pettigrew cocked an eyebrow. "What, like a dog or something?"
"Investigations says that the bite radius is too small… it was almost like another human did it…"
Arnold folded up the paper and clapped his hands together, bringing them up to his mouth.
"It's the same with all the others. Something or someone is eating these people."
"You think that's why we're here?"
"Must be, but why send in a strike force? Couldn't they just get the National Guard to vaccinate the city? Sure would be a hell of a lot easier."
Pettigrew didn't have any ready answers. This whole mission was so top secret, not even they knew anything about it. Usually they got a decent briefing upon arrival, but it was three weeks later and they still didn't have a single clue. True, they had had a few runs out in the city, as civilians, but that didn't tell them what was killing people. He didn't know; the whole thing just seemed too trivial to them.
In yet another end of the bunker, Delta Two was just resting on cots, not doing anything in particular. This was good for Sergeant Bill Waters, the team leader. He was a tall man with a clean shaven face and a good nature. He and his guys were relatively newcomers to the unit, and this was their first real mission. As such, he wanted to do it right. And the best way to do that would be if his men were well rested.
"Hey, Ski, why do you always read that thing?" David Mabrey, the tall, skinny, pale medic on the team, asked.
Matthew Slowenski, the big large machine gunner, was lying on his cot, book in hand. He barely glanced up as he answered, "Because this is the key to Heaven, my friend."
"What is it?" Waters asked.
"The Bible."
Figured.
"This is my ticket into getting into God's paradise. My luck can't hold out forever, and if I gotta go, I'd rather go on the passage if righteousness," Slowenski explained to all of them, "It's my survival ticket."
Slowenski was quite the devoted Christian. Waters had been like that as a kid and he still kinda was, but nowhere near as heavily as his friend was. It was a good thing to have around.
"Well, I dunno about y'all, but this is my survival ticket," Jason Owens, the lean black sniper on the team, held up his M-21 sniper rifle, "The M-21. 22 inch barrel, 7.62 mm cartridge, capable of taking down a target from 750 yards away. The sniping man's best friend."
"How the hell do you work with that thing? It's so damn heavy," Mabrey pointed out, "You'd be better off with this," he held his weapon up, "The CAR-15. Only good up to 200 meters, but has a 5.56 mm cartridge and is light enough to take anywhere. It even has its own scope and, if you can manage it, can fit an M-203 under the barrel. That's a better gun than that heavy thing."
"To hell with you," Owens snapped, "Who cares how heavy it is? As long as it takes a guy down in one hit, I'll live with it."
Waters couldn't help but laugh at little at this. The two were fighting over whose gun was better. He guesses that the next time they were in the field, they'd get a competition going. That was just who they were.
Despite the good qualities of the M-21, there were only two in the unit. The second belonged to Jeff Shipley with Delta Five, a tall silent man with a buzz cut that was right now enjoying Dogma with his best friend Mike Bielski, a short blonde soldier with an easy going attitude. Both were professional soldiers, old time Delta, as was their team leader, Joe Sanderson.
Sanderson was short with gray hair and a hooked nose. His was the team that took care of covert ops. missions and as such had two snipers instead of one and a machine gunner. Shipley and Bielski were the two snipers, and machine gunner belonged to Shawn Hallings, the only newby on the team. He had seen a large load of missions, either out front or behind the scenes in a combat zone, but this one took the cake. It was like the C.O. was trying to keep them in suspense. He had made a run into the city just this afternoon, had seen the latest corpses, and he still didn't get it. Why in Christ's name was this happening? How was this happening? And why the hell weren't they being told anything in regards to it? What the hell was command waiting for?
"Hey Sarge?" Hallings, a tall brown haired guy from New Jersey, was regarding his obviously troubled team leader, "You alright?"
Sanderson looked up and snapped out of it. "Yeah, man, I'm good," he answered.
"Shit, Sarge, c'mere. Best part," Bielski grabbed the remote and turned the volume up.
Not long after that, the voice of Jason Mewes' character Jay burst out, screaming "What the fuck is this shit? Who the fuck are you lady? Why the fuck did you hug my head?"
Shipley and Bielski burst out in hysterical laughter. Sanderson smiled and shakes his head. Those two were truly kids.
"Hey Sarge, you OK?"
Tom picked his head up at these words. His squad mates had situated themselves around him, and he knew they were in a last ditch attempt to cheer him up.
"Not really." He figured there was no point lying about it. They could tell anyway that he was in a shit mood.
"What's the deal, man? Talk to me," Cribbs insisted. It wasn't like his best friend to be this bummed out.
"This came in the mail today," Tom tapped the box on the table next to him.
"Oh, the package that was breaking that poor mail clerks arms," Jackson laughed, getting up off his chair and opening the box, "Brownies can't be that bad."
When he saw the contents of the box, his smile faded and a puzzled look replaced it.
"What the hell is all this?" he asked, picking stuff up, glancing at them, then throwing them back in.
"Pictures, CDs… Sum 41, 'Does this look Infected'?"
"Yeah, looks like it to me," piped up Nelson, glancing at the CD before Jackson placed it back in.
"What is all this, Sarge?" Cribbs asked.
"It's… the stuff I left with Anna when I was going out with her," Tom answered with a sigh.
Cribbs and Nelson exchanged understanding glances. Talk about your double-barreled dump.
"Ooh, Advent Children, definitely gotta watch this tonight," Jackson, even though he had heard what his sergeant had just said, placed the DVD aside, went back to the box, and recoiled in horror as he picked up a pair of boxers.
"OK, I'm not even gonna go near that one-"
"Give me those. You fucker," grumbled Tom, snatching the boxers and throwing them onto the bed, growing red in the face as he did. The machine gunner couldn't help but laugh a bit. And here he thought the Sarge was a virgin.
"Have you talked to her, try and sort it out?" Cribbs asked concernedly.
"She wouldn't write back, I don't even know if she read the letter. Tried calling her, but all I ever get is her roomie or the damn answering machine. So I've come to the conclusion that she wants nothing more to do with me."
This sucked for more people than one. Everyone hated seeing Horan bummed. He was always the most cheerful guy in the unit, even without coffee. Always with a smile on, almost always with a positive response to people. And now, he was a mere shadow of his former self.
Jackson, in a truly last ditch attempt to cheer his boss up, grabbed a can of beer and tossed it to him. "Well, cheer up Sarge! Look on the brightside- at least now you're a free agent, and all those beautiful women are callin' your name. Especially those beauty nurses back at Fort Bragg."
"Hoo-ah to that," Nelson raised his beer.
"Hoo-ah," Cribbs did likewise.
They all looked at Tom, who just sat in silence for a few minutes, his beer completely untouched. He glanced around at all of them. He realized this was all just to cheer him up, and he appreciated them for it. Best play along.
"Yeah, Hoo-ah," he said softly, raising his beer along with them.
But the sad reality was, it hadn't worked. Because deep down, his heart already pinned for someone… someone whose name began with "A".
88888
It was the dead of night. Raccoon City had never been more at peace. In their patrol car, two cops were snacking on donuts while awaiting any crimes that were thrown their way.
"Quiet night, huh?" one asked.
"Yup," his partner agreed, "maybe we can have a peaceful night tonight. No murders."
"Thank Jesus."
Suddenly, they heard a loud collection of moans. The driver looked through the side mirror. His eyes bugged.
A large group of people were stumbling around drunk. It wouldn't have been so nutty if it weren't so many- men, women, hell, even kids were bumping into each other as they went through the night.
The driver, realizing someone sober had to step in, placed his handgun into his holster and turned to his partner.
"Hold tight. I'll handle this," he said.
"Sure, sure," said Cop 2, not showing too much concern. Cop 1 exited and stood in front of the crowd, standing in a stance that would make John Wayne and Clint Eastwood proud in their Western movies.
"Alright, break it up people. It's dangerous in the streets this time of night these days. I think y'all better just head on home," he called out.
The only reply was another chorus of moans. One of the strangers staggered towards Cop 1. He literally looked like the living dead. His skin was pale and his eyes were hazy and unfocused. If the officer didn't know any better, he'd swear the guy had actually been dead a few days.
"Sir, I suggest you go home now. This is a dangerous time now and I'd hate for more innocent people to have to- HEY!"
The man had just tried to swipe at him. Cop 1 backed up and whipped out his handgun and aimed it in the air.
"I'm gonna fire a warning, and you'd better back off."
The man looked at him with an expression that gave him the appearance of having the mentality of an infant. He staggered at him again.
"Alright, I'm warning you. You'd better-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!"
The man had suddenly taken his arm and took a gigantic bite out of it. Cop 1 pushed the guy off him and in doing so, dropped his handgun. He bent down to retrieve it, but the rest of the group suddenly sprang to life and crowded him, ripping at his skin and tearing him to pieces.
"Hey, AH, GET OFF, GET AWAY, GE-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh!" he screamed as he was steadily devoured by the horde.
"Jesus…fucking… CHRIST!" Cop 2, having witnessed the entire ordeal, sprang out of his seat and scrambled for the drivers seat. He grabbed for the keys- but to his horror, he realized that his partner had them.
Frantic, he reached under the hood and grabbed the wires to try to hotwire the car. He pressed them together, trying to start them.
SMASH! Those things had just smashed the window. Their hands reached out to grab him. Falling backwards, he tried to kick them away, smashing his foot into their heads. He reached behind, trying to grab the Remington Tactical he had underneath the passenger seat. His hand groped around for the beloved shotgun.
SMASH! The passenger window was smashed. Frantic now, his hand finally found the barrel. He grabbed it and swung it up and grabbed the end. He aimed it at the drivers' window and pulled the trigger.
BOOM! The spread projectory round tore through the ranks, reducing the numbers. Cop 2 quickly spun the gun around and fired another round, blowing the second threat away. SMASH! The back windshield was knocked out. Not even looking back, he aimed the shotgun and quickly fired another quick round.
He then placed the shotgun down and went back to the wires.
"sizzle" VROOM! The car started. He slammed his foot on the gas and floured it.
Down the street he went, not even taking time to acknowledge the fact that the entire city was a ghost town. He just drove until he reached the park and then stopped. He grabbed the comm. link and screamed into it.
"10-Charlie to HQ! There is a-a large crowd of hostile civilians… they just tore my partner to pieces! Request back-up, repeat, I NEED FUCKING BACK-UP, OVER!"
"Roger, 10-Charlie, where's your current position, over?"
But Cop 2, unfortunately, didn't hear this last, as he just realized that, just maybe, that last shot he had fired back there hadn't really done the trick. He hadn't heard too many screams…
"You're right behind me, aren't you?" he said softly to himself.
A soft growling answered this. Whimpering slightly, he placed the link back in its holster and, slowly, reached into his glove box and took out his handgun. The clip was loaded. He took several deep breaths, then let out a loud howl and turned around.
The car began rumbling and bumping as shots were fired, 15 loud rounds tearing through the night air, loud screaming emitting from the car. Suddenly, the gun stopped, as did the screaming.
SPLAT! Blood flew across the front windshield, followed by hungry munching and ripping sounds. Amongst it, a voice from a lone radio rang through.
"10-Charlie, missed your last, please repeat location, over… 10-Charlie, do you copy, over? 10-Charlie?"
And that, ladies and germs, is how it really happened.
Yeah, I replaced the two snipers in Delta Five with Shipley and Bielski. I had wanted to make a memorial of the original two, but now I realize that's not a good idea.
I only hope you welcome me back with open arms and enjoy the new story.
Review please.