Title : Three Times the Fear
Author : Wongster
Summary : Follow the plight of 3 young teenagers as they attempt to survive the city they once called home. They will not only encounter monstrous creations, but also battle with their inner fears & emotions. But what happens when they uncover a devious plot?
Author's note: Hi all! This is my very 1st fanfic, so I would really appreciate it if you could review it and update me on areas of improvement. Another word, I plan on making a continuation after this fanfic, andpossibly go on to a trilogy.
Oh, and I do NOT own Resident Evil or any of its characters! This fanfic is written to please all you fans out there!
Chapter 1 : Caught Off-guard
Julian Lias scribbled down the last line to his Chemistry homework, wanting to get the torture over as soon as possible. After the last set of numbers were down in ink, he slammed his pen down and leaned back on his chair, sighing heavily. Shortly after, a night breeze blew through the open window, causing him to shiver involuntarily as he got up and walked towards it, peering out into the empty streets. 3 hours ago, he had been walking down 5th Avenue to get back home, and didn't like how devoid of life the streets were, for never before had he seen Raccoon City fully asleep by 9.30pm.
The news did little to ease his growing worries. There were reports that a number of people were getting sick with a mysterious illness, and residents had been advised to remain indoors. Julian didn't care, though. He had a busy lifestyle-- living by himself at an age of 18, not to mention having to put up with college life, every single minute of his time felt like hours as he struggled to balance between work, play, and his family who were in New York. His senses were on full alert when he was walking down the streets, every single movement in the shadows would draw his gaze towards it, pushing Julian to increase his pace. Save for the occasional rats scurrying about in the trash, and the extremely rare joggers whom he had waved to, the silence which persevered was very unerving. Stray pieces of newspaper flitting about in the breeze, along with the dark sky overhead, contributed even more to the freakishly haunting atmosphere.
Julian shuddered again, before reaching out and closing the window. He turned and headed to the shelves, and started to flip through the letters he had received for that day, since there wasn't any time to look through them in the morning.
Letter from Mum, Sis, college yet again... Huh, still no letters from him... Julian frowned further, his worries coming back to him in full force.
"Him", was referring to Julian's elder cousin, Leo Linz. Leo had been given a position in the multi-billion dollar company, Umbrella, or more specifically, White Umbrella, the viral research sector. This was something that he had always wanted, so at an age of 25, Leo's future certainly seemed bright. However, his job required him to work in another country. Still, long distances didn't prevent the 2 close cousins from remaining in contact with each other. But recently, Leo's letters stopped coming in, and Julian had started to worry as to what was wrong. He always told himself that Leo's work must have caught up to him, but deep inside, his instincts were telling him otherwise. He clutched at the dogtag around his neck. On it was written Leo's full name. Leo had given it to him on the day he left Raccoon City, said that at least it would help Julian to remember him, and since then, Julian had never taken it off, whether he went to sleep, took a bath, or anything of that sort, the dogtag remained around his neck. By now, even the markings of the chain could be seem clearly on his skin, but Julian didn't seem to mind. He cared more about his cousin than about his cousin's gift.
No point worrying now, better get some sleep first... With that thought in mind, he dropped the letters back onto the shelf, plopped himself onto his bed, and was asleep almost instantly.
But his sleep was interrupted by a crashing sound coming from outside, followed by several screamings. He sat up straight and rubbed his sleepy eyes, wondering what the hell was going on. Just then, a constant banging sound ensued from the front door. Julian stumbled his way downstairs, thinking it was probably someone who wanted to look for help.
An accident in the middle of the night, tell me about it. Damn, this guy is impatient! The banging on his door continued, and seemed to be getting more violent.
"Alright I'm coming! What the heck is going on out there!" Julian yelled, opening the door-
only to fall backwards as someone threw himself onto Julian. Luckily, Julian's good reflexes enabled him to hold the person upwards, and almost puked inside. Whoever it was who flung himself not Julian, had half his face torn off, revealing his skull as well as an empty socket. His skin, as Julian was pushing it away, felt cold, dry and so very squishy. His breath was hot and smelled like shit as he attempted to grasp at Julian's throat, mouth opening and closing rapidly.
"Get off me, damn it!" Julian yelled, but the person paid no attention as he moaned and tried to lean in further.
Shit man, this guy is strong! Julian mustered his strength from his adrenaline rush, and managed to push it further upwards. Then, bringing his right knee to its chest, Julian kicked the person off. He, or IT, fell backwards with a 'thud', but by the time Julian had scrambled backwards and recovered, it had already stood up and began making his way towards him. Julian's gaze darted around the room, looking for any weapon of sorts, and his eyes narrowed on the wooden chairs set around the table.
Highly doubt it would do much, but if i can break it...
Wasting no time, Julian firmly grabbed onto the chair, hefted it up, and swung it downwards with full force, crashing it down onto the person's head. It once again stumbled and fell backwards, but this time Julian wasted no time. He fumbled through the wreckage, and finally held up the broken leg of the chair he just broke. He then dashed forward, and plunged it deep through the person's forehead. Blackish blood sprayed onto the stone steps as an audible squishing sound was heard before it fell back down, completely motionless.
Julian backed away from the body, grimacing slightly at the sight of its bloody and ragged appearence. The clothes were all soaked red with blood, and a big hole was seen in its stomach, as if it had been ripped open with force. The skin was already peeling and flaking off. As for the face, well, Julian had already seen it up close and personal, so there wasn't much need to get into the details.
"That's...a zombie..." Julian stammered to himself. Being a fan of late night horrow flicks, it was no doubt that the corpse which lay in front of him is a zombie. Mindless, decaying, smelling like shit, desperate for human flesh. It all fit the description. Julian's shoulders were still throbbing from the zombie's firm grasp, but there were no scratches whatsoever, and he was relieved for that.
A crunching sound came from behind his house, a twig being snapped, only signifying that there were more of those zombies closing on him. Julian hastily put on his shoes, and opened the bottom drawer to reveal a 9mm Beretta handgun. He had kept it just in case some weirdos decided it would be fun to break into his house with guns flailing. But because of that, he didn't keep any extra clips. All he had was another box of bullets, and that gave him a total of 25 shots, with 15 already inside the gun. Too bad he didn't use it on the zombie he had narrowly escaped from...
But hey, saving ammo is good right? If I'm lucky, this baby here would help take me through 25 of these things. Anyway, I better go find Andrew and Desmond.
Andrew Jacobs and Desmond Watt, Julian's 2 best friends. They had always been through thick and thin together, and had remained best friends for as long as anyone could remember. And now, the situation certainly called for some serious action. With the 3 of them together, nothing could go wrong.
Julian quickly changed into a cyan coloured shirt with bermudas. Not ideal for such situations, but it's better than running around in plain sleeping clothes. He then darted over the corpse and out the door. In an instant, he was dumbstruck by the chaos which lay in front of him. The streets were littered with bodies, some already getting up, and wrecked cars. The crash he had heard earlier most likely came from the car which was smashed into the lambpost in front of his house. 3 of those zombies were already feasting on the driver's dead body. In the distance, he could see people running from the zombies screaming, most of them still dressed in their sleeping clothes and nightgowns. One of them broke free from a zombie's grasp, only to stumble into a group of 4 of them, and Julian tore his gaze away as her screaming were drowned out by moans and her own gurgling throat. Gathering his courage, he ran out his gates and turned right, as 2 additional zombies stumbled out of the shadows of his garden. The 3 zombies at the wrecked car didn't even notice him before he was far across the street. Andrew's house was quite a distance away, but if he paced himself, he would be there in no time. He only hoped that Andrew hadn't become one of those things.
He won't, he's stronger than that... That mere thought comforted him as he broke into a constant jog. The empty, dusty streets he had seen before, was now transformed into a bloody feast. Zombies were shuffling their way around, several were munching down on bodies. Julian felt sorry for them, but now he couldn't do anything but run, before the zombies ganged up on him. Sure, he would love to help them, but they were strangers after all, His first priority was to find his friends.
By the time he had reached the lsat corner before he would see Andrew's house, he had already took out 7 zombies, and was left with 18 shots. He stepped on the crawling zombie's head with a loud, sickening squashing sound, and turned the corner. Only to see Andrew standing outside his house and bashing the head of a zombie in with an iron pipe. A zombie got up from behind Andrew, unknown to him, and was almost within lunging distance as Julian took aim and fired. Andrew turned around to see the zombie's lifeless body crumple to the ground with a sigh, and then glanced towards Julian. Dressed in a simple red T-shirt, with a beach coloured pants to top it all of, his appearence contrasted slightly with the background.
"Hey! You missed one!" Julian yelled, with pride, before running towards Andrew.
"Boy am I glad to see you!" Andrew commented, breathing normally.
"Same here. I assumed from the looks of things, that you just got up right?" Julian looked at Andrew thoroughly, noticing that his hair was all messed up and his clothes were creased.
"Yeah, I did."
"Heavy-sleeper... Anyway, we have to find Desmond. He's the one with the heavy arsenal." True enough, they both knew that Desmond kept a gunsafe in his basement. 'In case of emergencies' he always said, the current situation was more than enough for be considered as an 'emergency'.
Lucky for them, Desmond's house wasn't very far away, and after another 5 minutes of running, they were closely enough to see Desmond's house, as well as the many corpses of zombies littering the front lawn. That only proved that Desmond was still alive. Julian was sweating and panting heavily, but he pushed his aches aside as Andrew and him dashed towards Desmond's front door.
"Desmond! Desmond it's us, open up!" Andrew rapped on the door, and it creaked open, revealing a tall, six-foot-seven man in a white singlet and blue jeans. Muscles bulged out from his arms and a tattoo of a sword was seen on his right arm. His hair was in a slight mess but looked better than Andrew's.
"Oh it's you guys. Hey Des, your friends are here!" Ashton called out. Steady footsteps were heard as Desmond came running to the front door in his favourite black uncollared T-shirt and greyish three-quarters. As always, his hair was spiked up. Apparently, Desmond still had time to do his hair, even in the gravest of situations.
"Thank goodness you guys came. Come on, get in before those things see you." Desmond pulled Julian and Andrew in before slamming the door and locking it. It was dark inside the living room, except for the lamp on the dining table. The light illuminated a bunch of stuff which, to Julian, seemed to gleam with glory. 3 Berettas lay side-by-side, with an extra clip for each of them. 4 boxes, all labelled as '9mms', rested beside the handguns. At the side, lay a single Remington shotgun, with 2 boxes of rounds for it. Andrew almost gagged at the sight of the firearms.
"Gee man, you preparing for war or what!" Andrew exclaimed, staring idly at the shotgun.
"Hah, sort of. We emptied out the gunsafe, so what you're looking at is what we have for now." Desmond explained, still looking quite tired.
"Seems like enough to me." Julian said, and began reloading his own handgun. He transferred the bullets such that he had 20 spare bullets, making it a total of 35 shots. To keep the extra bullets, he had to empty out his pockets, but it didn't seem to matter anyway. His handphone was dead, and now is a bad time to be worrying about monetary objects.
"So do you guys know anything about what is going on?" Ashton asked.
"We were hoping you would know..." came Andrew's reply.
They had been holding out in Desmond's house for an hour now. Julian knew that sooner or later, they would have to leave the sanctity of the house and search for another location to hold out, since it's pointless to remain in one location if help didn't seem to come.
"Damn, radio still doesn't work. Stupid piece of junk...!" Desmond was complaining from the table. After fumbling with a few switches, he had gotten nothing but static, and now the radio lay on the table a good distance away from Desmond, who had thrust it aside out of anger. Julian was just about to tell him to calm down, when his handphone started ringing.
Everyone jumped 5 centimetres into the air as the handphone's sudden raping against the oak table filled the air. Desmond glanced at Ashton, who stared at Andrew, who merely looked towards Julian, who also had a look of confusion on his face.
"It was dead, it can't possibly..."
"Well it's not dead now. Hurry and answer it!" Ashton gestured impatiently towards the still ringing phone.
Julian grunted to himself before flipping the handphone open and switching it to loudspeaker. He placed it in the middle of the table for everyone to listen.
"Um...Hello?"
"...Julian! Oh thank goodness you're alright!"
"...Dad?"