A/N: Second chapter already! Well, so I had already written this a while ago, but... anyways. Please review! It's helpful and also gives me more stories to read.
Jill tossed her keys onto the table, looking around. The apartment felt strange, seeing as how it was devoid of personal possessions. Well, except for a couple changes of clothing, three books, and her sidearm. Everything was over with one of her old friends from the academy in Philadelphia – papers, photographs, and anything else that couldn't be readily carried on her person.
Chris had been gone for over a month, and she still had gotten nowhere. Irons had only become more of an ass without Wesker bribing him, Brad had gone AWOL a week ago, and no one was willing to take her seriously and investigate Umbrella. She wanted to strangle someone. I should have just left with Chris.
She turned on the TV, switching to the news channel only to see a commercial for one of Umbrella's products. It made her feel sick to her stomach. They were getting away with this, with the breaking of international laws, with murder, everything. There truly was no way to stop them.
Snap out of it her mind reasoned. If you can't pull yourself together, there won't be a way. Of course, her inner voice was right. It almost always was.
The corner of something yellow stuck out from under a book. She pulled it out, remembering exactly what it was even before it came out from under Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The note Chris had left for her, giving a clue as to the location of supplies he had hidden in case something went wrong. She couldn't ask for a better friend; Chris always had her wellbeing at mind, even if he took being prepared to the level of a paranoid Boy Scout. Why could she never seem to return that kind of care?
"We interrupt your current programming with this urgent message."
What? She looked back up at the screen, seeing both news anchors' faces displaying a combination of disbelief and horror. Jill should have seen this coming, new what was about to be said, and her heart sunk.
"Rioters are filling the streets up in the Victory Lake District, site of the recent and unsolved cannibal murders and a series of brutal animal attacks. RPD SWAT is reported to have been sent in, but Chief of Police Brian Irons has yet to release an official statement." The anchor paused, staring at the teleprompter and his eyes grew as wide as saucers. "Just in, the police have opened fire on the crowd, as per orders. The rioters are… eating the officers?"
Whoever was in charge of censoring missed a short burst of profanities.
The second anchor swallowed nervously before picking up where the first left off. "Eleven officers down, four missing. Unknown civilian casualties. Citizens are advised to…"
Jill left the television set on as she quickly changed before grabbing her boots, gun belt, and sweatshirt. Time to get the hell out of dodge.
Chris let out a sigh of relief as he stepped out the glass front doors and into the dull but natural light outside. Elizabeth's car idled in the parking lot, one of few vehicles at the Paris Umbrella office. Getting in the passenger seat, he loosened the plain, dark blue tie around his neck. Never cared for the things; always felt like they were trying to choke him.
"Go well?" asked Elizabeth, putting the car in drive.
"As far as I can tell, they don't suspect a thing."
His fingers fumbled around in the plain business jacket before finding his brass lighter, one of his few prized possessions and an heirloom from his grandfather. Barry occasionally gave him flak for how dull its once polished surface had become as a result of his habit of toying with it while he thought.
They passed the guardhouse on their way out, a feature that reminded Chris of the gated communities in Stoneville. A black-clad Umbrella security guard nodded politely at them as they drove past and onto the road.
"It'll be a while before I can start getting information, but now we have a foothold. Luckily most of the people there speak fluid English. The papers helped too."
"Glad to hear it. I like the alias we came up with."
"Matt Addison. Gonna take me a while to get used to that."
A black Mercedes trailed behind them, and Chris suddenly got a very bad feeling. "Elizabeth, take a right up here."
She did and the car followed, bumper bobbing up and down as it went over a bump. Maybe coincidence, but Chris doubted it. "In three blocks, I want you to hang a left." The sedan was still behind them. Damn. "We have a small problem. We're being followed."
He barely got the sentence out when a second, identical car slammed into the driver's side, forcing Elizabeth's BMW skidding sideways, tires screeching over the sound of twisting metal and shattering glass. Then came the unmistakable boom of a shotgun.
"Drive!"
The car lurched forward as the car behind them impacted, then Elizabeth floored it. Its chassis rocked as another shotgun blast slammed into them and a scattering of pistol shots spider webbed the rear window.
"Who the hell are these people? Umbrella?"
Elizabeth sent the car careening around another corner as Chris checked his magazine and palmed it back into the gun before racking the slide and responding. "Probably, unless we got someone else pissed at us. Someone must have tipped them off."
"Are they still back there?"
Almost as if to answer her question, more gunfire erupted and bullets raked the back end, one clanging off something on the bottom of the car. A submachine gun chattered.
"Don't head back to the apartment, try to take us somewhere with lots of other people. With any luck, they will either stop shooting or stop following us for now."
Chris stuck his hand out the window, squeezing the trigger in an attempt to return fire. Up ahead was a street alive with activity. Perfect.
Jill's boots clomped down the steps leading down to the ground level of the apartments. Sirens wailed from north of where she was, and the occasional distant gunshot made her flinch. Oh God, this was really happening.
A police cruiser screamed past, and Jill noticed that a number of other sirens were getting closer as well. She guessed that meant that they were falling back, which implied things Jill didn't want to imagine. No big surprise she supposed. The SWAT team's paddy wagon wasn't far behind the first squad car, the massive turbo diesel roaring. Blood was splattered in arcs along its armored sides, a few handprints smeared through the red fluid. Suddenly the vehicle swerved back and forth, veering at first into the parking lot then trying to get back to the road, and two of its tires left the ground. The massive vehicle toppled over sideways, scraping along the asphalt before coming to a rest mere feet from the brick apartment complex. Jill sprinted forward to see if the driver had survived.
One of two heavy back doors swung open and hit the ground with a crash, and an officer struggled to pull himself out. Silva.
But as she moved to help, she saw that it wasn't Silva anymore. His blood encrusted fingers clawed for purchase on the pavement in an attempt to drag his hungry, broken form toward Jill. A knotted mess of intestine trailed behind, sliding through the trail of gore he left. Congealed blood burbled from his pallid lips as his jaw dropped open in a ghastly moan. Every ounce of fear welled up inside her, he terror she had managed to hold down so long rising to the surface along with the bile in her throat. She grabbed her keys from her pocket, dropped them, and began shakily trying to find the key to her hatchback before attempting to jam it in the lock.
Silva was getting closer, his groaning more incessant. She couldn't shoot him, had to shoot him, there really was no alternative. The Beretta slid out of its holster, she clicked back the hammer and aimed. With a squeeze, the sidearm bucked and Silva's head snapped back, eyes rolling out of view in their sockets, crimson trickling from the hole in his forehead down his face.
"I'm sorry."
She slowly decocked the Beretta and flipped the safety back on.
Her car came to life and she flew down French Street, but didn't make it far when she hit a traffic jam. Hot far away was the cause of the standstill.
A tide of undead hungrily surged forward as people fled their vehicles, shouting and screaming. Some had been trapped inside by the proximity of other cars and were devoured once rotting fists managed to pound through windows. The wave of death didn't so much as slow when four of the ghouls knelt down and tore a struggling man to pieces. A familiar stench nearly overpowered Jill, making her gag. She turned to get back in her car when a pickup slammed into it from behind. The Datsun's front end was wrenched up at a forty-five degree angle, flames beginning to lick up from under the hood, and the front axle was no longer attached. The snapped drive train rest on the ground, and her hatchback was a crumpled mess. Taking a shocked step forward, she saw the other driver's gray matter dribbling down the inside of the cracked windshield.
Guess I'm walking.
