Resident Evil: Outbreak was my third favorite game of the series (first being the original and the second Resident Evil 2) and I adored the romance between George Hamilton and Cindy Lennox, although the game hadn't completely covered it in detail.
This story (narrated solely by George) will revolve around three levels of the first Outbreak game. In order, they are Outbreak, The Hive, and Decisions, Decisions. Parts I and II will detail Outbreak, Parts III and IV will detail The Hive, and Parts V and VI will detail Decisions, Decisions.
I don't own the Resident Evil series.
It is sad how fragile a life can be. One moment, a person would be standing in a warm pool of sunshine. The next, that very same person would be cast on his or her back into a cold, dark shadow. Being a doctor, I should have been able to understand that easily.
My patients had lives of their own, all of whom had been interrupted by their misfortunes.
An outstanding example had been a young man, the victim of a weak heart. A successful transplant would have aided him, but a complication had arisen, and the surgery, as a result, had been a failure. It had been an utter shame. He had had his whole life ahead of him.
But the truth had been that I hadn't understood. I had been merely an onlooker. I would not have known of these losses if I hadn't helped to care for these people, so was the way with my career. I had to straighten up, and try again the next day.
However, there did come a day when I finally did comprehend: the day my wife, Ruth, left me. Although I had denied its eventual occurrence out loud whenever I had looked in the mirror, a quiet voice inside of me had said it would be inevitable. Life with her had become hell.
We had had a happy marriage together for many years, but during that time period I had failed to realize she had been slowly slipping away from me. By the time I did know it, it was too late.
Ruth had truly won my heart when we were younger. She had been fun to be around with, charming, and far more extroverted than I. In short, she had lit up my life.
Looking back, I should have kept a better watch of her because of those traits. Although it had been a hard job, I had loved being a surgeon, perhaps a little too much, and I had found myself losing time to see my wife.
The rumors had begun about what she had done when I hadn't been home, and other men had been eyeing her from across the way. I had been no means deaf to the stories and accompanying sniggers, though I still wish now that I could have been.
I hadn't allowed her to see the pain she had put me in, the tears that had fallen when I had been alone, and the self-doubts. Rather, I had let her see the anger that I had felt as well as the sadness, the former becoming a mask. I think that is why I had continued to stay with her; divorcing her would have showed this weakness, a tourniquet to a wound.
The anger had manifested itself in verbal snaps at her, and arguments between us soon followed. I had wanted to hit her, but I couldn't. However, there had been a few occasions when I had come close.
Such a time had occurred that fateful night when I had broken a glass.
I had tried to be congenial by asking if she had wanted to seek marriage counseling. It had been partly due to the fact that I had been beginning to grow tired of acting so angry so often, and partly because I had been even starting to feel bad for being so hard on her, that my mind had changed.
My result had been quite the opposite. Ruth had been the first to yell that time. She had declared how utterly shocked she had been that I actually cared about our marriage for once instead of my job.
Hence the broken glass.
Before I had realized what I had done, she had already risen from her chair,and run to doorway leading out of the kitchen.
"That's it, George Hamilton! I'm through with you!" Ruth had screamed at me.
The next sounds had been clinking of her wedding ring on the tile floor and her retreating footsteps.
I had slowly stepped over the glass, and bent down to pick up the ring while she had vigorously packed her things to leave.
I hadn't tried to stop her. Hadn't had a mind for it. I had merely stared at the abandoned ring in my hand until the door leading out to the street had been decisively slammed behind her.
My trance broken, I had let out a sigh at the fact that I had been truly alone in my own home.
XXXXXX
Three empty weeks later, I found myself once again turning this memory over in my mind at the counter of J's Bar after the especially trying day of my divorce. I had ducked in there because it hadn't been far from the courthouse I had just left behind, and I hadn't been in the mood to go home.
I hadn't been to the bar before, so although the atmosphere was happy and somewhat cozy with the dimmed gold lights, classic-style interior, and the humming rock n' roll music in the background, I still felt isolation placing its choke hold on me.
It was official: Ruth and I were no longer together. The papers had been signed by the two of us, and wedding band was gone from my finger. She had barely even looked at me throughout the entire court proceeding.
"Damn it," I hissed as I stared down at the dark wooden surface of the bar, placing the fingers of my left hand to my brow. The upbeat music emanating from the bar's speakers, the reporter speaking on the multiple televisions, and the clacking of the waitress' high heels as she carried an order to her customer were nothing but faint whispers in my ears.
That was, until the waitress let out a cry of surprise, stumbling in her step. That effectively caused her to dump her tray (and the glass bottle it held) on the floor.
I looked up to see if she was unharmed, and found I needn't have worried.
She had a hand up to her mouth, and was smiling embarrassedly at a muscular dark-skinned security guard, whom she had nearly dumped her items on. A cute, rosy blush was plain to see on her cheeks beneath her widened chocolate eyes.
A slight smile formed on my face at her expression.
If I would have seen what had startled her, however, I would have at least left the bar, or at most informed the authorities. However, those decisions probably would have gotten me killed, seeing as how the future events were to unfold.
But as that hadn't been the case, I instead resolved to order a drink of my own. I had been sitting dry at the counter as was, and perhaps one drink would help me to forget about Ruth for a little while. Besides, I didn't mind the prospect of seeing that pretty waitress again, once she had finished cleaning up her tray and reserving, of course.
As I was about to call the young bartender over for one, the music switched off and the television went to gray simultaneously. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck raise as I glanced around the room for anyone else who had noticed.
A few had. A blonde woman that had been working at her laptop near the window wore a surprised look on her face as her ice blue eyes flicked from blank television screen to blank television screen. A lean man with his long black hair in a ponytail that had been sitting nearest to me had his thin eyebrows raised.
It was to signal the arrival of the demon that was yet to come.
The sound of the bar's front door hitting the wall broke the silence. In limped a pale, dirty figure. He could not even hold his own head up, so all that I could see of his face was a mop of long, matted russet hair. I thought him drunk, but for some reason that write-off wasn't setting well with me.
I heard the bartender comment about the same, and watched him walk over to confront the man.
By then, the attention of the others had been raised. A lanky colored man who had been sitting nearest to the door jerked his head up. A scruffy police officer that had clearly been enjoying his night off at the counter's forefront was turned around, his drink set aside. His free hand was hovering over where his gun was holstered.
I felt my throat move at that visual.
The security guard from earlier growled, "Who is this guy?"
The other guard next to him wasn't nearly as alert. The poor man was pale as a sheet, and had his head down on the bar. He slid to the side, and fell to the floor, causing most of us to gasp.
Ignoring the strange man at the door, I ran over to the fallen man and his friend, who was trying to see if he was all right.
I quickly introduced myself as a doctor and began to examine him when a disgusting tearing sound came from behind me.
I whipped my head around, and in doing so had to stifle a cry of shock. Very few of my fellow patrons had the same success.
The newcomer had his mouth in the bartender's neck, and was tearing at his flesh like a mad man, his teeth being his weapon. A red ribbon flew from his screaming victim and splotched on the floor next to them with a sickening squish.
I shrank back to better protect the sick security guard by placing my body as an obstruction. Since I was only a few feet away from the carnage, my heart rate immediately began to increase, and sweat began to bead on my face.
Two white flashes, one after another, suddenly lit up the wall with loud cracking noises, and the attacker fell backwards out of the doorway. The bartender took advantage of this by slamming the door shut and locking it.
The blue dots left from the flashes remained splotched in my vision, and my head was ringing from the sound of the second shot, the healthy security guard behind me having fired it. The police officer had fired the first one.
Something slammed against the bar's window, causing the blonde woman and the thin man to nearly fall out of their seats in surprise.
Bloodied faces were pushed up against the glass, their mouths agape, and their eyes glazed over. They began to bang on the window, as if wishing to break through it, and left gruesome dark brown and red face, hand, and arm prints from their decaying appendages.
The locked front door began to heave loudly, and I saw the outline of someone outside throwing himself or herself against it full force. What on earth was happening?
It was as if a spell had been broken.
The two who had been sitting by the window dashed away from it, the woman cursing loudly.
The policeman, his gun still drawn, sprinted over to the oversized barrels that they had been using as tables, and began pushing the one that was the closest to the door with his shoulder to form a barricade. All the while, he warned the rest of us to stay away from the windows.
The man with the ponytail ignored him, and instead went over to the second barrel to begin pushing it as well.
I looked back and forth between the pale security guard, who was still on the floor, and the wounded bartender, who was collapsed before the door. They both needed medical attention.
The healthy security guard nodded to me, and helped his friend to stand without holstering his handgun. "Go ahead. We can handle it for now."
I quickly thanked him and focused my attention on the wounded man.
I tilted his brunette head carefully to the side to avoid injuring him, but I needn't have bothered. His eyes were rolled back, his face was beginning to lose color, and his breathing had slowed. He was completely out of it from the rapid blood loss. I tried to remedy that by covering it with my handkerchief, but it grew quite moist quickly. I needed a haemostatic.
Someone skidded to a halt beside me and asked in a frenzied tone, "Is Will gonna be all right?"
I looked up and saw the waitress from before kneeling down beside me. An anxious look was on her face as she repeatedly pushed the strands of stray light blonde hair from her ponytail behind her ears. I couldn't help noticing that those same hands were shaking.
Instead of answering her question, I asked, "Do you have a hemostat around here?"
"I think there's medicine on the second floor. Maybe we can—"
"Cindy! Do you know where the staff room key is?" It was the policeman, who was rummaging behind the counter with the man that had been sitting near the window.
She spun around. "Check the left side, Kevin!"
I pulled out my medical kit with my free hand, hoping I had stowed away some spare medicine earlier.
Much to my disdain, it was empty. I smacked the floor with my fist. "If I only had a red herb!"
"Wait, a red herb? You mean like this?" She asked, as, much to my amazement, she held one out to me.
If the situation had not been as pressing, I would have questioned as to why a waitress would be carrying such a thing on her person, but instead I grabbed it out of her hand and began to crush the leaves into a powder. I normally couldn't make pills quickly, but I had to try.
Worrying more for her colleague's health than her hand becoming dirty, Cindy pressed the cloth down, giving me both of my hands free.
"What are you doing, having a tea party? Hurry up!" A commanding voice called from across the room. I recognized it to be that of the female that had been by the window, but didn't care to look up and break my concentration.
Right after her call came, the door burst away from its hinges, falling to the side. A ghastly moan came almost immediately, followed by the sickening noise of an organic mass forcing its way up to the top of the old barrels.
My heart leapt into my throat as a silvery drool fell onto Will's head. I heard Cindy scream and quickly try to push herself backwards across the floor as I raised my eyes to see that her friend's attacker had returned.
His amber, filmy eyes were not focused just on the bartender, rather they flicked between him, me, and Cindy, his jaw falling further and further open with each glance to reveal a set of blackened yellow teeth. One of them fell onto the floor with the drool he continued to expel.
I felt the urge to gag when I accidentally inhaled the scent of his rancid breath.
I was suddenly yanked back by my collar, the powder from the herb falling out of my hands. I tried to grab Will but missed, and end up taking my medical kit with me instead.
I whirled on my captor, who turned out to be the blonde woman that had yelled over at us before. At the close range, I noticed she had a press pass on, and that her name was Alyssa Ashcroft.
"Release me! I have to help him!"
"Sure, if you want to get yourself killed!" She snapped in an agitated voice, pointing with her free hand back at where his dejected form was.
I looked and cringed.
The creatures that had once been human had descended upon Will, and were tearing him apart with their teeth.
I glanced nervously around for Cindy, and saw that she had been rescued by Kevin.
He was trying as best as he could to push her reluctant body to a door that the other bar patrons were running through without harming her.
Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
I felt a pang of sadness for Will, and another of sympathy for her, but nothing more could be done.
I quickly collected my medical kit and got up, exclaiming to her, "Thank you! You saved me!"
"That's more like it," she replied bitterly, and took off behind the counter with me following close behind.
I was the last to leave the first floor of the bar, and although I didn't see those monstrous beings getting up to follow us, I did hear their chomping recede. I silently prayed that Will had already been on the other side when their cannibalizing of his body had occurred.
XXXXXX
"For the umpteenth time, I don't know!" Cindy exclaimed angrily.
I frowned from where I stood near the medicine shelf, which had been marked with a black cross on a small white paper, and not just because the only useable item I found was a red herb.
David, the man with the ponytail, was being far too hard on her. There was no excuse to act so rudely.
As much as I wanted to confront him, a fight would eat up too much of our time.
Kevin ran over and declared rather loudly, "Ya know, we can also break our way through."
David gave him a look, and then shouldered by him, replying, "Yeah, seeing as how she doesn't know where the hell the damn key is."
We had all successfully made it onto the second floor, and during the chaos I had learned the names of most of the people I now found myself with through their being called. It seemed that I was one of two odd persons out, the others having been frequent customers of the bar, or in Cindy's case, part of the staff.
Although we had thought that our path would lead to sanctuary, we were horribly mistaken. On the stairs, another creature had broken through a window to pull one of us out onto the street. Luckily, no one had been hurt by the flying glass, and its attempt had been unsuccessful, but it did earn a name for itself: zombie.
Jim, the man who had been sitting by the window, had screamed it in a panic, and so the name stuck.
The staff room itself had one that had been slumped over on the floor right before the stairs, its anemic form barely rising and falling. Most of us had chose to pass it while it was still groggy, but Kevin, had wanted to see it dead, perhaps out of an act of vengeance for not being able to save Will from the horde below. Mark, the healthy security guard, had disgustedly called it a waste of bullets.
The adjoining owner's room apparently also held a zombie, since one of my fellow survivors had exited out of it right after she had entered. It had been Yoko, the only patron I had not seen until we had all been racing up the stairs. I had only learned her name when I had asked her about it, the fact being that she was a newcomer to the bar as well.
David's frustration with Cindy had been caused by the fact that although we had a staircase and a new barricade of wooden boards set by Jim between us and the zombies that were chasing us, another locked door was now separating us from the next floor up.
She had thought that the key had been hidden beneath a newspaper on the staff room's coffee table, but it had in fact been absent. Although she had tried to defend herself by saying that the bar's owner had probably taken it home with him without telling her, David hadn't been inclined to listen.
I turned my head away and walked across the room to where David was beating on the door with an iron pipe. Alyssa soon joined in by firing with the handgun she had picked up from somewhere.
With that sort of weaponry simply lying around, I was beginning to wonder what sort of bar this was.
"Shit, here they come!" Jim yelled from where he standing by the barricade. He turned tail and ran toward us.
Looking past him, I saw the first zombie slowly turning the corner.
Kevin appeared next to me and declared, "Allow me."
David and Alyssa lowered their weapons as he aimed a kick at the door, causing it to give almost immediately.
"Et voila!" He exclaimed in a cocky tone, which the two ignored as they passed him rather roughly. Jim was hard on their heels.
Instead of following them, the policeman turned around and ran back to most likely seek out the others.
I was about to enter myself when I saw Mark and Bob, the sick security guard, coming out of an open door across the narrow hallway.
I had inspected Bob shortly after the wooden barricade had been built, and found that he was showing no apparent signs of any known illness.
I was getting the strange, nauseating feeling that it had something to do with the zombies. If so, then the worst was yet to come for him.
I held the door open for the two men. After they had passed through, I went up the stairs.
The door at the top not did not lead to the roof, but to a storeroom packed with different types of liquor. David, Alyssa, and Jim had either gone around the bend that branched off to my left, which Mark and Bob were making their way towards, or through the door to my right. Was there any exiting this maze?
The door opened behind me, drawing my attention, and I saw Cindy enter the room.
Shortly afterwards, Alyssa emerged from the door to my right, carrying a key by its red string in her left hand, and her gun in her right hand.
"Do you recognize this, Cindy?" She asked, holding it out.
The waitress looked at it, and her face lit up. "Yeah, it's the key to the forklift further back!" She took it from her and dashed away.
Alyssa shook her head. "She needs to find something to protect herself. Running off like that will get her killed."
"But she can depend on the rest of us, can't she?" I asked.
She raised her eyebrow at me. "Says the man whose ass I saved."
Although I was by no means ungrateful, her catty tone forced me to take on the defensive. "I'm a doctor. My main priority isn't fighting."
Alyssa began to walk away, tossing over her shoulder, "Then don't play the macho man act, George."
I felt my irritation with her continue to grow as I headed around the bend after her.
Kevin and Yoko came running through the door from the stairwell into the room shortly after. Kevin was carrying on in an archetypal big brother fashion over how heroic it had been to rescue her from the zombies below, while Yoko sheepishly replied that it hadn't been such a big deal.
A loud, jarring rattle came from the door, forcing us into a run once more.
XXXXXX
Much to my displeasure, I was beginning to see Alyssa's point.
With an annoyed groan, I held up my arm as Yoko's flailing foot nearly hit me in the face. Finding the forklift key had been the easy part, in retrospect, against the challenge of fitting eight full-grown adults into a small crawlspace atop of several shelves of hard liquor.
The loss of time from the limited movement wore on us greatly, with the zombies' moans and shuffling footsteps echoing toward us from the opposite end of the cargo area. Mere minutes provided the buffer between our groups.
"Hurry up," Alyssa hissed from behind me.
"I'm trying," I growled, half-twisting my head around for emphasis, although I knew I couldn't see her.
The shutter to the floor directly below us opened with a screech of metal, much to the relief of Bob, who had been leaning against the wall beside it, his bad health making it impossible for him to access the crawlspace.
Mark emerged from the large doorway below as I propelled myself into the opening of the next room.
Staggering to my feet in the low, grayish light, I found myself to be standing in a small access stairwell from the cargo area, the ghastly moans echoing up into it.
A brightly-colored can of pesticide caught my attention on the floor, and I grabbed it as Alyssa forced herself through the opening to the crawlspace. Jim, Yoko, and Cindy hesitated on the stairs above me, while David and Kevin provided backup to Mark below, whose muscular form was just beginning to ascend the bottom set with his friend at his side.
Shortly following him was the hand of the first undead, reaching through the opening and grasping nothing.
David and Kevin rushed downward to help, leaving the rest of us to do what we could from above.
The first zombie headed straight for Bob and Mark, but met the blunt end of one of Mark's bullets. He stumbled backwards, but didn't fall.
Mark took advantage of the being, stunned by a gushing bullet hole in his neck, by pushing past him.
Kevin was plugging bullet holes into the zombie he was facing, but had neglected to see the one coming directly behind him, its outstretched sleeved arms resembling that of a black pincer. David was too engaged in fighting off one of his own, and Mark had ascended too far to be of much help without dropping his friend.
"Watch out!" Cindy cried.
He hadn't heard her. The zombie latched onto him from behind, its mouth gurgling vile, dark red foam.
I lunged forward in a tackle to knock the monster off, but the action was unnecessary, for Alyssa had opened fire on the creature, weakening him enough for Kevin to push him away.
Instead of giving thanks, he yelled, "Get off your butts and go!"
Alyssa sniffed. "Yeah, when your gun runs out of bullets and you get a chunk of your face ripped off, you'll come with us."
His expression became annoyed, and he waved towards the door at the top without showing any signs of budging.
Jim, Cindy, and Yoko gave into his command to run up and out.
I still hesitated. If any of them was to be injured, I needed to stay and heal them. But at the same time, three of our comrades had just gone off into the unknown.
A grisly, decaying hand swiped just short of my face, and I came to the realization that I was doing more harm than good with my stalling.
I ran by Alyssa, who yelled at me for my lack of vigilance, and had joined the others on the roof.
The welcome wagon came in the form of screams of terror drifting up from the street level, and a malicious crow dive bombing at my head, its pointed beak resembling that of an arrow's head.
Thankfully, it was whacked away by Yoko's scrub brush.
"We just can't kill these things!" Jim exclaimed, covering his head with his hands and turning away. I could see red scratches on his hand from where the birds had nipped at him. What else was to become a fiend? Cats? Raccoons? Dogs? Horses? Just how far did this malevolent oddity extend?
Protecting my own head with my arms, I tried to ward the bird off with the can. It was as if Yoko and I were playing demented games of tennis. We had two that were bothering us, and two more that were perched on the top of the structure above, their beady eyes staring down at us.
Unfortunately, those who did have ranged weaponry were still downstairs.
"Cindy, where're you going?" Jim called out.
I looked and saw her veering to the left around a corner.
"I'm going to unlock the storage room! I think there're some weapons in there!" She replied without turning back.
Again, I was wondering what sort of bar this actually was, but I brushed off the thought in order to cover her.
A crow dove off the roof and headed straight for her. I ran forwards, aimed the pesticide at it, and sprayed until the can clicked dry.
The bird let out a squawk of discomfort and flew away, its molted feathers flying.
She took one more turn, this time to the right, and paused before a weather-beaten metal door to unlock it while I lobbed the empty can at the fourth crow, who had followed us.
The can hit the ground with a clang.
Thankfully, the lock was released, and we ran inside.
It was a rather cramped room filled with junk, boxes, and shelves. An eerily flickering light fixture dangled from above the ceiling.
She bent down over a cardboard box nearest to the door. "Look, there're two of them!"
What she picked up were two handguns that had been lying side by side.
Cindy held out one to me, and I took it, turning it over in my hand. It was fully loaded, and easy to use.
"You...good with one of these?" She gingerly held her own out, an unsure expression on her face.
I had really only handled a gun during hunting trips, and that had been a rifle. A hunting rifle was drastically different from a handgun, and so was a deer as opposed to a crow.
But at the same time, I didn't want to make Cindy, who obviously had no experience with the weapon, more nervous than she already was, so I nodded with the best reassuring smile I could muster.
She let out a sigh of relief and relaxed, her arm dropping down to her side. "Then I'll do the best I can."
I was about to search the room further, but heard several shots going off and the pain-filled screeches of a crow breathing its last.
We ran out of the room into to see what was going on, Cindy nearly taking a blow from the crow who had been waiting for us on top of the structure.
She ducked while I fired up at it, the gunfire emitted joining that of the guns that were going off around the corner.
It was difficult to hit my moving target, given the dual facts that the gun was so flimsy, and the cowardly winged rat kept flying in and out of the light above the door. The gun shook slightly in my hand from my lack of experience with it, and each shot I took hit nothing.
Cindy joined in the firefight when the crow was far enough away, but only managed to hit the light fixture.
Finally, after the fifth shot had gone off, the crow let out a loud squawk and fell.
I smiled in triumph, although I felt embarrassed in front of her.
She didn't seem to have minded my lie about my marksmanship, for when I turned to her, the same smile was upon her own face. We nodded to one another and took off to rejoin the group.
Once we did, however, our cheerful mood was shattered by a lone shot that went off as we rounded the corner, and the sight that followed.
I put a hand to my head and whispered "no," as I took in the form of Bob lying on his side, a bullet wound to his head. The once-hidden gun in his hand signified suicide. He was surrounded by the others, all of whom showed their own signs of grief, Mark's being the most damaging with how he screamed his lost friend's name.
None of those who had been on the stairs had endured any major injuries; Bob was the only casualty. The screams that echoed through the night from below us served to only make the scene more depressing.
"He said he didn't want to become one of them," Yoko informed me in a dejected tone from where she stood beside me.
Terror overwhelmed my sadness. It was confirmed; Bob had been on his way to becoming a zombie himself. That meant that all of us were as well. My hand fell from my head to my side, the blood roaring in my ears.
No, I kept telling myself, it couldn't be true! But it was. It was lying right before us in the form of an innocent man.
A heavy banging on the door leading to the roof broke the silence.
"I thought you killed all them off on the stairs!" Jim yelled in exasperation.
"Well, I guess there are more than we thought," Kevin replied, annoyed.
"Which means we should be going. Now," Alyssa chimed in, and with a final sad look at Bob and Mark, ran past us to find an exit.
Kevin, Jim, and Yoko followed her silently. I was still paralyzed with the dreadful knowledge I had just obtained, Cindy was extending her sympathies to an impassive Mark, David was staring down at him quietly, and the man in question was muttering something under his breath.
Suddenly, a loud squealing of metal pealed out. The door had given.
Mark rose, taking his own gun from his belt. "Well, you heard her. Come on!"
We quickly joined the others and saw that Alyssa, obviously out of ammo, and Jim were throwing themselves against a weak portion of chain link fence, presumably the maintenance man's gate. Beyond it led a catwalk next to the large neon letters that spelled out the bar's name.
Kevin, apparently having found a liking for his previous strategy, was kicking it, and Yoko was hitting it with the scrub brush. Much to her surprise, the brush end popped off as the gate collapsed.
A voice, amplified by a bullhorn, rose above the continuing cries from below.
"Attention everyone! Due to the riots in progress, this area will be closed off soon. If you do not proceed to this check point immediately, we cannot ensure your safety."
We yelled in protest. It wasn't fair! We had fought for our lives and experienced the deaths of two of our fellow men, all to be forced into a race?
"Well, it looks like there's no choice," Kevin declared, hoisting himself up onto the catwalk.
I carefully placed my weapon in my jacket pocket, and with a deep breath, hauled myself onto the catwalk. I ran forward to pull myself up yet again.
The screams, the running feet, the exclamations of their owners before me, and the moans proved a nightmarish background noise, while the sporadic flash of the neon light seemed to slow everything to a horrific crawl.
I panted hard, perspiration slid down the sides of my face, and my heart thumped.
When I got to the edge of the catwalk, I swore that I was dreaming, that one misstep would not send me falling to my death, but back into my own alert mind. It was highly probable that this scenario was a merely a nightmare that had been conjured by the high levels of stress I had been recently enduring, and not a reality.
"George, what're you waiting for? Come on!"
My head jerked up. It was Cindy, who was already on the opposite roof. She was bent down to put her high heels back on, having taken them off to jump. Yoko was next to her, waving me forward animatedly. Kevin was standing right before them, his hand outstretched. Mark was doing the same. David, Alyssa, and Jim had yet to jump.
"Don't worry, we'll catch you!" Kevin called across.
Back on the rooftop, several zombies had invaded the area and were making their way painstakingly toward the catwalk's ledge.
"Go," David uttered from behind me.
I made my decision. Whether they were real or not, these people needed my help, and I needed theirs as well if I was to survive.
I quickly backed up and leapt across, my arms outstretched toward Kevin and Mark. They each grabbed one and yanked me onto the roof of the neighboring building as if I was a rag doll.
I doubled over to catch a breath I didn't realize I had been holding in, and stared down at my outstretched hands, which shook slightly.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
"Are you all right?" Cindy asked.
I looked over at her and nodded soberly, pulling myself together. I felt a little embarrassed at how I had looked, but it didn't matter. Dreaming or not, I was alive, and that could not be disputed.