September 24, 1998

7:42 p.m.

Jordan felt numb all over as they walked through the chaotic streets of Raccoon City. On almost every block they had come to, citizens were screaming, running to and fro in a state of utter pandemonium. Evidence of further psychotic attacks was visible on almost every corner. Dead bodies lay sprawled in the streets, their lifeless eyes staring blankly at the darkening sky above. Strips of torn flesh decorated the bloody asphalt around their gnawed corpses.

Jordan felt distant, removed, almost as though he was separated from his body and watching himself walk down the bloodstained sidewalk on Torson Avenue. A single thought was continually whirling around his head, bouncing and rebounding off the corners of his mind

I killed someone I killed someone I killed someone I killed

All around him, Raccoon City was banging and starting with constant noises. Car alarms pierced the dusk air, almost immediately followed by the loud roar of explosions and scraping metal. Screams echoed between the buildings rimming the road, a constant backdrop to the macabre scene. Sporadic bursts of gunfire also peppered the air, sounding much like firecrackers set off on New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July.

Except it's a pretty fucked up version of the Fourth of July over here, Jordan thought. I may never set off another firecracker ever again. The man I killed – he never will either. Same way he'll never laugh again, never eat again, never hold his daughter again –

Stop it.

He gritted his teeth.

"This is so fucked up," Michael whispered from next to him. He had shaken out of his trance after almost having his throat torn out by the raving lunatic in the park, but was still looking a bit frazzled. The others were holding up similarly. Todd was silent next to him, simply staring with wide eyes at the carnage and destruction that raged around them. Nathan looked sick as he surveyed the bloody corpses littering the roads. Ben was similarly quiet, his eyes darting about. The stranger with the Treasure Trove bag walked ahead of them, no doubt lost in his own train of thought. Jordan felt a strange tie between him and the man. Like himself, the man had taken a life.

The bat felt cold and heavy in his hand. It felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

xxxx

Caden was silent as he and his party trekked through the strangely deserted street. Every now and then, a tremendous explosion would rock the city, causing the ground to shake under his feet. He winced inwardly every time. Again he wondered what the hell had gone down in the city to cause such a huge and devastating effect. Maybe it was some sort of terrorist attack.

And how does that explain what happened in the park? What terrorist eats people?

His mouth tightened into a thin line. He forced the memory of the gaping jaws, the bloodstained face, and the deadened milky-white eyes out of his head. Until he reached the hotel, he refused to think about what had just happened. If he thought about it for too long, he would remember the woman whose life he had extinguished with a stomp of his shoes. The last trace of her could still be clinging to his soles.

No, no, no. He pushed the thought away savagely. I won't think about it.

"I've been meaning to ask. You're Caden Ross, aren't you?"

Surprised, Caden looked to his left side, where the high school kid named Jordan had stepped into line beside him. "Yeah, how did you know?" he asked, blinking. The kid had seemed so out of it after the… incident. Caden was surprised he had even taken notice of him.

"I recognize your picture from the back of your books," Jordan replied quietly. "You look different in real life. Not by much, but still different."

"In what way?" Caden asked. They turned on to Redhaven Boulevard.

"You seem a bit brighter. Not intellectually, just… more illuminated, somehow. Your pictures are just that, pictures. In person I can sorta see gears turning behind your eyes, like you're thinking about writing a story even now."

He was right. Caden's brain had been going non-stop since early that afternoon, like an action film that had just reached the most potent scene. He could see himself writing this, this whole series of fucked up events. He could see his fingers madly pounding away at his keyboard while the images replayed themselves fresh in his mind's eye: his agent's office, the Treasure Trove, the park, the man –

"Huh. Well that's an interesting outlook, and I'm not going to deny it," Caden replied. "You've read my books?"

"Most of them," Jordan said. "Cryptic was my favourite."

"And incidentally the most disturbing," Caden pointed out. Talking to the kid felt good. It was a way for him to escape the dread reality of what was going on around him.

"I don't get disturbed easily," Jordan said. "At least, not until – well, I mean the books don't bother me," he finished, eyes dark. He was thinking about the park.

"That's impressive," Caden replied, understanding that Jordan did not want to bring the subject up. "That one was pretty difficult to write. It even disturbed me, and I wrote the damn thing. In any case, it's always nice to meet a fan."

They moved onto Parkland Drive. Caden noticed straightaway that the street was packed with vehicles. Most were crashed, wrecked and dented. Others were simply abandoned, their doors wide open. Several were still running, keys in the ignition.

"Oh, Christ," the kid called Ben whispered from behind him. A grey Honda Civic was crushed between a black Mercedes Benz and a telephone pole. The hood of the Honda was completely smashed in, issuing clouds of dark smoke. The window on the front and driver's side was shattered, and the door wide open. Within the car was a young woman, a glass shard impaled in her throat. A shocking amount of blood had dripped out of the open door and pooled on the ground beside her. In the backseat, there was a trail of blood smeared across the seat that continued onto the pavement and away down the street, as though someone had been dragged kicking and screaming away from the car.

Caden's stomach twisted.

We need to hurry.

They continued down the street. "How much farther?" Nathan asked him. Caden turned briefly. "Only a couple more blocks. We'll be there soon."

He weaved his way through the mass of wrecked cars, stepping carefully over broken glass shards that littered the ground like a blanket. They crunched audibly underneath his feet. When he passed Bolton's Books at the corner of Parkland and Summerfield, he saw a flash of movement in the darkening street. A silhouette in the half-light, shambling and stumbling through the vehicle wreckage. Then another. And another.

Shit.

Caden held up his hand. "Quietly," he whispered. "I think more of the crazy people are nearby."

The teenagers looked around warily. Nathan shook his sleeves back and Jordan, despite his misgivings, hefted the bat securely in his arms. The shadows moaned quietly as they approached the group. However, they were far enough away for Caden and the others to slip past.

"Quick, we'll go around them," Caden said in a low tone. "We're almost there. Come on."

Quietly, hearts pounding, they went.

xxxx

They arrived at the Summerfield Inn about five minutes later. The door was locked, and the lights on the inside were turned off. The lobby was dark and looked empty.

Caden stepped past Jordan and frowned as he peered through the glass into the dark lobby. "Shit. I don't know what's going on but it looks deserted in there."

"You still have a key, though, right?" Michael asked, glancing warily up and down the street. Caden shook his head. "I have a key for my room. Not one for the lobby."

"Fuck," Nathan whispered. Todd motioned towards the aluminum bat in Jordan's hand. "Fine. So we break in then." Jordan shook his head. "We might need to barricade ourselves in here in case more of the crazies find us. They'll get in in two seconds if we break through the glass."

"So what do we do then?" Ben asked, agitated. "We can't just wait around here for those things to get us."

Jordan turned to look at Michael, who was, inexplicably, smiling.

"My dad gave me a lock pick set for my birthday," he said, pulling a set of pin tumbler locks and torsion bars out of his back pocket. "I've been testing them for a while. Finally got it down."

"Nice," Jordan said approvingly as his friend hunched over the lock, silver flashing in his hand. In less than a minute the door swung open before them.

"Awesome!" Ben said, and Michael took a bow, twirling an invisible top hat in his hand. Jordan rolled his eyes but grinned in relief, quickly ushering the others through the doorway. When they were all inside, he shut the door behind them, locking it again.

"So now what, Caden?" Nathan asked, looking up and down the dark lobby. The reception desk lay slightly ahead and to the left of the doorway. A pair of elevators lay to the right. A staircase winded up towards the upper floors at the other end of the lobby.

The author motioned to the stairs. "We go up to my room and see if the TVs are working. Then we wait to hear from the authorities." None of the others had a better plan, so Jordan prepared to follow Caden up the stairs. They were halfway across the lobby when suddenly a voice drifted out of the shadows.

"Who the hell are you?"

Jordan whirled around, the others a split second behind them, as someone materialized out of the darkened corner of the lobby. In the shadowy room it was difficult to make him out, but it appeared to be a red-haired man in his mid forties. Jordan tightened his grip on the bat. The man didn't sound too friendly.

"I'm Caden Ross. I'm a guest at this hotel," Caden said from behind him. The man frowned. "I work at this hotel. Or at least, I used to. Some fucked up shit hit the fan and suddenly people started going crazy and killing each other. Fuck, some of them ate each other."

"We know," Jordan said. "We saw them."

"Well, this is my place, and you can't stay here," the man continued, glaring at them. "How do I know you're not all fucked up like everybody else out there?"

For a split second Jordan wanted to slap him. "For one thing, we haven't tried tearing your face off yet," he snapped. "This is a fucking hotel. It's big enough for all of us. We're with a paying guest and we're going upstairs and checking what the news is. You try to stop us and I'll break your kneecaps."

Jordan was surprised at himself. The flare of rage he had felt had vanished almost as quickly as it had come. I'm just stressed, he told himself. I killed someone, after all. I'm really stressed.

His words, however, had had a profound effect on the red-haired man. He looked somewhat shocked. His mouth opened several times, but no noise came out. After several seconds he grunted and nodded his consent.

Jordan nodded back. "Good. We're going to the third floor. Is the rest of the building empty?"

"I'm not sure," the man said. "After everything went crazy, most of the guests ran out. They panicked. I don't know if any are left, but I haven't heard any noises come from upstairs yet, so there might not be any of the crazy ones up there."

"Is the cable still working? The radio?" Ben asked, stepping forward. The man shrugged. "I haven't checked."

Jordan opened his mouth to reply when something thudded against the door. They all whirled and to Jordan's shock he saw the same redheaded girl in the yellow tank top that he had seen at the park. She pounded on the door, her eyes wide with fear.

"What the – ?" Caden started, when suddenly the girl let out a loud scream, looking over her shoulder. A stumbling group of shadows were converging upon her from behind.

"I'm letting her in!" Jordan said, making for the door, but the red haired man strode forward and seized his arm. "You can't! What if she got attacked or something and she becomes like them? And we let her in here? She could kill us!"

"And she'll be killed if we leave her out there!" Jordan argued fiercely. The girl screamed again as the figures drew closer. Now Jordan could make out their individual features. Pale skin, glassy eyes that had rolled back into their heads, blood-streaked faces – they looked like corpses. The closest one, a middle-aged man that had had the left side of his face torn open, was less than fifteen feet away from the girl, who was staring right at him with a desperate look in her eyes.

"I'm letting her in, right now!" he yelled, stepping forward and flicking the lock. He wrenched the doorway open just as the corpse-thing in the doorway seized the girl by the arm and moaned loudly.

The girl let out a scream and tried to pull away, but the man held fast. Groaning, his jaw moving up and down, the man brought his pallid, bloody face to the girl's throat.

Jordan stabbed forward with the bat, slamming the man straight in the face with the bat's tip. The man's nose broke and blood gushed down his face, and he stumbled back. Jordan stepped forward to close the door, but another pale-faced, moaning creature had shoved its way into the door. This one was a middle-aged woman missing her right hand. Not only that, but her entire front had been torn open. Her clothes were ripped and tattered, and there was a gaping hole at her chest where she had been completely disemboweled. Thin white ribs showed through her chest, and blood dripped from the gaping wound as intestines slowly slid from the hole.

The woman leaned forward to bite him, and Jordan couldn't move fast enough to bring up the bat, but then Michael was there, shoving one of his lock picks right into the woman's eye, which burst and showered blood and fluid all down her face as she stumbled back –

And Todd leaped forward and slammed the door shut, locking it behind him. Several of the corpse people outside pressed against the glass, leaving bloody smears behind, moaning. Ben and Nathan stared wide eyed at them. Jordan, however, was concentrating on the girl who was clutching him tightly, sobbing into his shoulder through her auburn hair.

"Shh, it's okay," he said, patting the girl's back awkwardly, shooting a quick glance at the doorway. "You're safe now."

The girl continued to sob, her face still hidden in his shoulder, shaking like a leaf in the wind. Caden quickly motioned for the red haired hotel worker to help him block the doorway. The two men quickly moved off to the lobby desk, returning several seconds later with two large chairs which the wedged under the doorknobs.

"What's your name?" Jordan asked the girl, who was still crying. "A – Anna," the girl hiccoughed, her shoulders trembling.

"Come on, honey," Caden said gently. "Come upstairs, I have a key to one of the rooms here. We'll be safer up there. Come on…" Comforting, cajoling, he eased the girl out of Jordan's shocked embrace and away to the stairs. Casting a nervous glance over his shoulders at the moving forms of the creatures pressing against the doorway, Jordan followed him.