CHAPTER ONE
The night sky cast the trees of Raccoon Forest in darkness. A dire problem when looking for a helicopter that would be somewhere amongst them.
Chris Redfield kept looking out the window at the darkened forest. He was sitting next to Jill Valentine, wearing her blue uniform. Across from him was Barry Burton, his red vest contrasting the seat. Joseph Frost was next to him, cradling his assault shotgun in his arms and making sure his shoulder cam was working. Captain Wesker was sitting in the co-pilot seat, next to Brad Vickers in the pilot's seat. Chris could see neither's face, but he was sure that they were both concerned.
The S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team helicopter had gone down the night of the 23rd—yesterday—during a search of the Raccoon Forest for the so-called 'cannibal killers' that were supposedly hiding out somewhere in the dense forest. No reports had been made by any of the six members of Bravo team, or the Raccoon Police Department pilot gaining training from them—Kevin Dooley. If Edward had been piloting, this probably wouldn't have happened, but Chris didn't blame it all on Kevin. He was still a rookie, after all.
"Chris?" Wesker's voice called from the seat behind Barry. "Do you see anything?"
"No, I haven't found them yet."
"Jill?"
"Nothing," she said, the concern obvious.
"Barry?"
"Nothing yet, Captain," Barry rubbed at his beard after his report.
"Joseph?"
"Nothin' yet, sir."
"Keep looking." The order was directed to all of them in general.
Chris went back to his scan of the forest. Nothing. He was almost ready to ask Brad to let them all down in the nearest clearing, so they could search on foot, when Jill gasped beside him, "Look, Chris!" Chris scooted over and looked out her side of the chopper. Sure enough, there was the Bravo helicopter.
"You see it?" Wesker asked.
"Yeah, put us down, Brad," Jill answered.
"You heard the lady, Vickers, set us down."
The chopper descended to the ground, with everyone but Brad exiting and rushing for the Bravo bird. Joseph was the one who went inside. Chris watched as he swung his shotgun from side to side and checked out the interior of the Bravo helicopter. Chris caught a glimpse of a helmet when Joseph shouted and jumped out of the carriage, puking his guts out all over the grass below.
"What was it?" Wesker asked.
"Kevin. Dead."
"What?"
"Mauled, sir. By some kind of animal. Couldn't have been more than two hours."
"All right." Wesker turned to the rest of them. "Fan out and sweep the area. Looks like our cannibal killers are still somewhat close. Tracks, prints, anything. If you find a blade of grass that you didn't step on, report it."
Chris was used to military type drills, being a USAF wash-out. What he wasn't used to, however, was dead pilots and missing teammates. It was like a bad dream.
He pulled his Samurai Edge M92F/S Beretta out of his holster and held it ready. He was aiming the muzzle at nothing but the sky above, noticing a thick amount of clouds rolling in. A storm was coming. He started forward, focusing on nothing but watching for everything.
Then he saw a flicker of movement behind the trees.
He spun in the direction and aimed the Samurai Edge that way. Nothing. Maybe he was just seeing things. A death in the S.T.A.R.S. was something that could rattle any member of the elite group.
There it was again.
This time, however, he knew he wasn't seeing things. Joseph had also spun his assault shotgun in the direction of the movement.
"Joseph, you see anything?" Chris asked.
"No. Nothing."
Then, as Joseph lowered his shotgun, the animal ran at him.
It was a dog of some kind. Maybe a Doberman, but slightly bigger. Though Chris couldn't see very well in the darkness of the forest, the dogs appeared to have large sections of their flesh torn away from their bodies—he could even see through the stomach of one and saw the one behind it.
It took a few moments to realize that Joseph was being eaten alive.
The rest of the team other than Jill must have been frozen by the feast, because only her weapon was firing. Though, it didn't seem that she was hitting anything. She ran out without taking any of them out.
Then one of the dogs leapt at her.
It took Chris a fraction of a second to raise his weapon and launch a bullet directly into the side of the dog's head. Jill herself fell backward, a drip of blood running down her face. Chris couldn't tell if it was from the dog or Jill. He ran over to her, helping her up. "Let's go!" Chris breathed.
A look back at the dogs told Chris that they had ten or less seconds before they got to the two S.T.A.R.S. members. Chris made sure that Jill was half a pace ahead of him during their run. He heard the sound of a helicopter directly above him. He looked up—
—and there was the Alpha team helicopter heading straight ahead.
"That's Brad!" Chris shouted. "Where the hell's he going?!"
He heard the dogs behind him getting ever closer.
Get Jill outta the way, he thought, giving her a slight nudge forward and then turning around to face the dogs.
The closest dog was already jumping at him, so Chris raised his arm, as he and the rest of S.T.A.R.S. had been taught in training. He closed his farthest eye, keeping the closest on the dog.
Then the dog's head exploded.
This had stopped the dogs as much as it had Chris, who looked to the side the gunshot came from and saw Captain Wesker standing there, aiming his weapon. He said, "Chris, this way!" Chris looked to the way Wesker was already moving in and saw a large house in the thick mist that was forming in the air.
Chris shouted, "Make for that mansion!"
As he ran, he spun around, ran backwards, and popped a few shots off at the still sitting dogs. This got them moving again, and Chris fired another few rounds off. To his right, Chris heard the sounds of Barry's .44 Colt, then behind him another couple of dogs went down.
Jill was the first to reach the mansion. She shoved the doors open and Chris could see lights on. Maybe the owners were home. Barry followed, then Wesker. Chris was the last one—
—then a dog got between him and the doors.
"Shut them!" Wesker shouted, scrambling at the doors. It didn't help, though, a dog got inside.
Now alone in the forest, Chris looked for another spot to enter the house. There it was, to the right: a lit window. He decided to risk hit. He ran for the window, turned and popped off another round at a dog, then jumped into the house through the window.
Jill was the one who put the bullet into the dog's head. Barry snatched the lock, while Wesker walked around the large room they'd entered.
Jill looked around. The mansion they were in looked old and decrepit from the outside, and while the inside was dusty, it sure wasn't as bad as it should have been from the outside look.
"What is this place?" Barry asked, out of breath.
"It sure isn't your ordinary house," Wesker wasn't as breathless, but he was slightly heaving.
A thought suddenly dawned on Jill, a thought she said out loud, "Chris!" She walked over to the doors but was stopped by Wesker.
"Jill, don't! You don't wanna go back out there."
"But, Chris—"
A gunshot came from the direction of a double door on the left side of the room. They all waited for a few moments when two more shots came.
"What was that?" Barry asked.
"Chris?" Wesker considered.
No...
"Jill." Wesker turned to her. "You go and investigate."
"I'm going, too," Barry already started for the doors. "Chris and I go back a long way."
"All right. I'll stay and secure this area. Report in if anything goes wrong."
Barry and Jill both nodded, then left the room.
Jill was the first to enter the dining room. She swept along the length and depth of the room with her Samurai Edge. A large grandfather clock was ticking away in the center of the room along the right wall. The room itself was dominated by a large dining table, at which there were three candle holders placed on the edges and the center. Above them was the balcony that connected to the main hall, at least from what she could surmise based on the look of the two rooms. A very grand fireplace was burning at the far edge of the room, and there seemed to be one other door.
"A dining hall," Barry said, stating the obvious.
He walked over to the far edge of the room, keeping his Python firmly in hand. Jill herself made a slow travel to the other edge. She noted the typewriter on the edge closest to the door, a set of ink ribbons next to it. As she passed the ticking clock, she noted that the 3, the 6, the 9 and the 12 were replaced by a sword, shield, helmet, and armor. A golden plate on the wall above the fireplace looked extremely out of place.
"Take a look at this," Barry said, looking at her. Jill quickened her pace to the fireplace. She made a mental note that the fire looked at least a couple days old. There must have been a lot of wood if it still hadn't burned out yet.
Jill's heart skipped a beat when she saw the pool of blood in front of the fireplace.
"Oh God..." she whispered. Twenty-three years of life, a tour in Delta Force, and membership in the elite RPD S.T.A.R.S. unit couldn't have prepared her for the pain that came with the thought that the blood in front of her could belong to one of her teammates.
"It's fresh. A day old at the latest."
"But it doesn't belong to Chris, right?"
"I hope not."
Jill looked to her right at the door. "I'm gonna go check this out, you all right in here?"
"Yeah. Hurry up, though."
"Right."
She opened the door, making a short sweep with the Samurai Edge as she entered. There was another door almost directly in front of her, another to the right down the hall. The hall either ended or turned off at that end. To the left—
—was someone hunched over on the floor.
Chris?
The person was wearing green, just like Chris's uniform. She holstered the Samurai Edge, but kept her holster unsnapped. If he wasn't Chris, he could be one of the cannibal killers.
She walked over to him, checking for any visible wounds. She wasn't a medic, but she could give decent field care. She couldn't tell what the man was hunched over yet, but it would only be a matter of time. She stepped into the small sitting area and almost threw up.
The man in green was eating someone.
Not just someone, but a S.T.A.R.S. member.
Jill drew her Samurai Edge and pointed it directly at the man's bald head. Closer inspection made her notice the scabs all over the back of his head. He'd apparently heard her, because he turned his head around. His mouth was covered in dried and fresh blood. His left eye rolled back in his head. His nose was missing.
This was one of the cannibals.
Jill backed into the wall as soon as the man stood up. He turned his whole body to her, revealing a large, bloody wound on his right arm, as if he'd been bitten there. A hungry moan escaped his lips. Her handgun was still pointed at his head, but this time was directly between his dead eyes.
He was a little bit more than just a cannibal.
Jill kept the weapon trained on the spot of his forehead that was between his eyes. Another hungry moan came from the man's mouth. She spared a passing glance at the corpse on the floor and saw Kenneth Sullivan, a large open wound in his neck—no, his neck was a large open wound. Between the head and the body, there was no neck. His fall to the floor must have damaged the video camera on his shoulder, because the tape had been ejected.
She brought her eyes back up to the cannibal in front of her. He hadn't moved at all since standing. She slowly crept along the wall and to the right. She needed to make it to the door to the dining room, she needed to get to Barry. She was almost halfway to the door when the cannibal began to lurch toward her, reaching with his left hand out toward her.
Jill took a shot—the man's knee. It would be best to slow him down further, so she could escape to the dining hall. Not proper police procedure, but necessary in this situation. The man fell onto his wounded knee with a loud "Auh!" sound coming from his mouth. Jill reached the door, turned the knob, then looked back at the cannibal—
—and saw him standing up, practically oblivious to the pain that a nine-millimeter bullet in the knee would cause.
She opened the door, and virtually ran into the dining room. Barry stood up immediately.
"Barry!"
"Jill?"
Jill reached him, then fell onto her knees beside him. The cannibal entered the room behind her. "Look out! It's one of those cannibals!"
Barry aimed his .44 Colt Python directly at the cannibal's forehead. "Freeze!" he shouted, cocking back the hammer. The cannibal didn't stop, he kept lurching for Jill, his arms outstretched like some kind of zombie. Another hungry moan filled the room. "Stop!" Barry shouted, supporting his right hand with his left. He lowered the weapon as the cannibal got closer, redirecting the barrel toward the chest. He squeezed the trigger. The cannibal fell backward, into the wall. He did not, however, stop his trek toward the two S.T.A.R.S. members.
"What the hell?!" Barry shouted, keeping his weapon raised. Jill raised her Samurai Edge, took aim at the skull, and squeezed the trigger. The round went cleanly through the left eye and exited out the back of the head, splattering blood, bone and brain matter all over the wall behind the insanely tough cannibal. "What the hell?" Barry repeated, less hysterical this time.
"He ate Kenneth..." was all Jill cold respond with at the moment.
"What? Ken?!" Barry rushed into the hallway and to the left. Moments later, he emerged with the tape from Kenneth's camera in his hand. "Son of a bitch..."
Jill walked over to him. Kenneth had been one of Barry's friends. "We should report this to Wesker," Jill said, jerking her head slightly to the doors to the main hall.