Epic: The Third Survivor
By. Indigo Siren
Disclaimer: Resident Evil is to Capcom. I do not own any of the characters and situations depicted from the games. They are merely being used for entertainment purposes only. I do however own this story and any characters and scenarios that were not featured in the franchise. All rights reserved.
A/N: A bit of a filler chapter before we start getting into the real meat of the story. Anyway! Enjoy!
Chapter 2: Haunted By Fear
Minutes turned into hours; hours turned into days; days… never-ending.
Hopelessness. Prayers left unanswered. A lingering nightmare they'd all hoped would have faded away. But it wasn't so simple as opening their eyes from sleep. It was reality in all its morbid glory.
What's going to happen to me? Will I end up dying all alone? These thoughts had constantly plagued young Sherry as she watched one by one, the people around her disappear; both civilians and police officers alike - death took each and every one of them indiscriminately.
It was those first few days that were the most prolonged and agonising, as if time was purposely ticking slower and slower, trapping them in some sort of infinite limbo. What made it worse was how helpless she felt. She could do nothing except sit around and wait for something, if anything, to happen. Not that she didn't try, to offer aid and comfort where she could, but it was either dismissal or faux appreciation from those who could only see her as a child.
But I'm a smart kid! I can help! I can, I can! She wanted to say the words out loud, but refrained, not wanting to cause trouble when they were already suffering enough.
The survivors did their best to unite in their efforts to protect the station from an impending onslaught. They all knew that it would happen at some point - it was just the when and how that had them all jittery.
All the ground floor windows were boarded up; a blockade of cars were pushed together to make a barrier around the station; all unused areas and exits were sealed off for extra protection. Weapons were handed out to those who could fight - guns to those who could use them and sturdy handheld items to the others. But somehow it seemed useless. Zombies were slipping through the net - some from the outside, but some materialised from within.
Anyone in the station could turn into a zombie at any time. Whatever the infection, most of the populous were contaminated. With such a concept now circulating amongst the survivors, there was a lot of tension and unease. A person who could be helping one minute could suddenly turn the next and be feasting on the nearest flesh. Those who began to show the symptoms were quickly isolated, but not all cases could be caught in time and for the most, were quickly put down.
Sherry had seen this happen firsthand. A woman who'd been sitting on a bench just down from her - guessed to have been in her thirties and definitely a little chunky at the midriff - had looked to have been sleeping. It wasn't anything unusual, she'd done so quite often during their time there, so nobody showed any concern. But in the next instant, she rose up, yowling demonically, white eyes searching out the nearest throat to tear apart. Officer Cowell, or simply Rita as she'd asked everyone to call her, quickly dropped her with a single bullet to the brain. Sherry had sat frozen the whole time, watching the blood pool spread from beneath the corpse almost to where she was. Minutes later she'd been vomiting into a plant pot. Luckily, she hadn't had to experience anything like that since.
Only so many zombies managed to get into the station in those early days, but enough to show this was a battle they may not win. They were just about able to cope. As much as they placed their hope in their sanctum, Sherry couldn't help but feel that they had built their own prison. What if something happened and they couldn't get out? As much as she tried not to think negatively, their situation was getting worse by the day. Dark thoughts were rife amongst each and every surviving person.
On one of the long, indistinguishable nights - while procuring herself a bottle of juice from a drinks machine on the second floor - she'd found herself staring out of a window, down into the darkened precinct. There didn't appear to be much movement at first, just the stillness of the surrounding buildings. And then, there it was, emerging under the dimmed outer lights - something she couldn't quite distinguish. She could only see a glimpse of its outline; vaguely human, but greatly malformed - specifically one of its upper limbs. It was dragging something heavy behind it, something she couldn't really see. Her imagination did the work for her. And through the silence, it began to howl. A mixture of pain, anger and sorrow. Needless to say, she ran into the nearest room and locked herself inside until she felt safe to come out again.
She couldn't believe there'd be anything worse out there then the zombies.
On September 27th, three days after the outbreak, a frontline assault on Central Street ended in disaster. The police defences were massacred. The only officers left alive were the ones taking refuge in the police station. It was their last real stronghold. By the early hours of the 28th, it was confirmed that a great hordes of zombies were closing in on them.
Marvin, in a last ditch attempt, tried to arrange an escape effort. Rita had crawled out to a contact meeting point through a passage under the statue in the main hall. A van managed to fight through the streets to get there, but only a few people were able to escape amidst a sudden zombie blitz. More people died then were actually saved. Most of the remaining cops were killed repelling the hordes. Though a temporary peace was brought upon the station, the damage was already done. The place was no longer safe.
During the kafuffle, Sherry had taken to hiding in the vents. She'd discovered a loose covering in the downstairs waiting room and after ascertaining she was small enough to fit, had scuttled in for safety. Most of the zombies were too big to follow her, though most of them were too stupid to even consider it. She was relatively safe. For now.
In the labyrinth of welded steel passages she remained, lonely and frightened. She would lay, clutching her knees tightly to her chest as she tried to block out the terrified screams and hungry moans resonating down the hollow flue.
Sometime in between previous events, she had lost her backpack. Sherry and a small group of survivors had been traversing between rooms when a scuffle had broken out in the corridor between a policeman and a zombie. At some point during this event, a control panel on the wall had taken damage and the protective shutters suddenly malfunctioned and shot open. A zombie outside burst through the unprotected window and made a grab for her, snagging her pack. She struggled desperately until her arms slipped free from the straps it and she made her escape, regrettably leaving her supplies behind.
After hours cooped up in the ventilation system, the sounds from the outside dissipated, bringing in a heavy, eerie silence. Now and again a pitiful moan pierced the stillness, but for the most part, everything seemed blanketed in a copious hush. Every now and then she would be overcome with a terrible fear - the fear that the zombies would sniff her out and pry her through one of the openings. With these thoughts wracking her, she kept as quiet as humanly possible.
For a whole day she found herself crawling through the venting system like a tiny mouse. Some areas were even too small even for her to navigate, but she had near enough free roam of most of the station, keeping an eye out for the safer areas and the places which were too risky to visit. She felt a little like a fly on the wall, peeking in on locations to see what was happening. Besides milling zombies and butchered, bloodied corpses, there was nothing worth looking at.
As more days progressed in a long, piteous cycle, she ended up trying to sleep more then to stay awake. It seemed better to hide in her own mind then to stay glued to a reality riddled with monsters. Though it wasn't exactly safe inside her restless dreams either. As she lay drifting in and out of twisted scenes concocted by her own imagination, she felt the switch between warm and cold air on a constant rotation throughout the ventilation system. It was obvious that the air conditioning unit had malfunctioned, but it was something she ha little concern over. It was neither too hot or too cold.
Her fears mostly focused on the future. What awaited her next? She was too scared to try and make an escape, the unknown too much of a frightening prospect. Beyond the vents was a horror so great, so dangerous, there was no hope for someone like her to survive. This was suppose to be the safest place to be - the place her mother had told her to go. But now it was crawling with the undead. She needed someone to guide her through, but all the most important people who'd been with her over the last few days were either dead or missing.
In those long days she often wondered what had become of her parents. Were they safe? Were they dead? Had they arrived at the station yet? Were they hiding at their workplace? She couldn't bear not knowing, but there wasn't much she could do about the situation, rather just pray that they were alright.
Though she felt a sense of isolation hiding away like she was, she knew she wasn't completely alone. There were still a few people alive in the station, running from the zombie masses. She'd seen them going to and fro mindlessly, trying to find their salvation.
There had been the police chief, Brian Irons. She'd seen him pass the vent she was hiding in, gun totting and eyes twitching like a mad man.
When she'd first arrived at the station, he'd made a brief appearance, mostly to berate his subordinates and tell them to gas out most of the areas of the station to stop the monsters (which it didn't and ended up harming a few of the survivors). There was something pretty disturbed about him. Something not quite right about his eyes - dark and narrow - suspicious like. She had instantly distrusted him.
They were all thankful when he'd holed himself up in his office, refusing to come out. But now, he was prowling around like a beast out of it's cage. Sherry couldn't help feeling an edge of panic with his presence in the corridors, almost as scared of him as she was of the zombies.
The mayor's daughter had also survived up until now, fluttering around in an expensive evening gown like a panicked swan. Sherry had only spoken to her briefly when they'd been herded into the conference room with a few other survivors. But she wasn't exactly the best conversationalist, due to the fact she was nigh on hysterical. The poor woman couldn't even hold a coffee without her hand going into spasm, so she avoided drinking it so that she didn't spill the contents over her expensive white dress. Sherry had watched her try and ring her father on her phone, wailing to nobody particular that he had abandoned her when she needed him most. It did everyone best to ignore the woman and leave her to her self pity.
Sherry did her best to detach herself from the emotional outbursts. It got nobody anywhere. She was just as freaked out as everyone else about their circumstances, but she had told herself to stay strong for as long as she could.
Protected by a metal grate, she stoically watched unobtrusively those few remaining survivors left to fend for themselves. Most didn't last long in a fight against creatures that barely felt pain. She felt too lost to help them those lost souls - not that she felt she could. She couldn't use a gun and she wasn't particularly strong neither.
A day after the escape effort, Sherry was awoken by the sound of glass shattering. It was so sudden she'd jolted right up, banging her head on the roof of the shaft. She clutched her head with a hiss of pain, but barely had time to consider it when she heard a huge explosion rumble a couple of corridors down. A vibration echoed through the passage, shaking her right down to her bones. She'd held her breath, frozen to the spot, trying to figure out what had caused such an explosion.
A door burst open in the room below her vent, slamming against the wall. Sherry slid down to look out the grate but she couldn't see anything. But then, in a blur, a woman rushed past at a breakneck pace. Sherry barely got a glimpse of her, only knowing for sure she was wearing a short blue top. A minute behind her, another blur. This one, not human.
It was a hulk of brown and black, undistinguishable by the speed at which it ran. But a gleam of silver on its shoulder telling her that it was carrying a dangerous weapon. It gave a guttural roar as it charged in pursuit of the mysterious woman. Another door banged twice and the two were gone.
They didn't come back.
Sherry stayed in the exact same position for a long time after. There was no other movement in the room beyond, besides the slight trickery brought on by a flickering light to the far right of the room. Finally, she relaxed to some extent, curling up again into a ball. Exhausted, and with very little food in her belly (besides a packet of crisp she'd grabbed from a broken vending machine a day or so earlier), she couldn't help but fall back into sleep, hand clutching tightly to her pendant.
Protect me, please. Don't let me die. Not here all by myself.
Another day passed restlessly.
