[Edits] 20/05/2019, updated the grammar and changed James surname to Richards.

Enjoy!


Chapter 3

James had to admit that as that tram came flying down the street he expected to feel a great bout of pain when it rammed into him. He imagined his body would be ripped to shreds by the trams wheels and his life would end painfully as his skull was crushed to a bloody pulp. He shut his eyes and waited for impact.

However when the tram rammed right into him he felt… nothing! Was he dead already? It was painless at least. As his eyes began to lazily open he expected to see white clouds of heaven or the fires of hell or even just blackness. What he was seeing could be classed as blackness but it wasn't the sort of static blackness he was expecting. It was more a mixture of shades of fast moving grey which blurred together as it moved past him from the top of his view to the bottom rapidly. Every now and again he saw bits of white and red as something else passed by his view. He also felt a very vivid gust over his face blowing down on his head. Was he racing up towards heaven or something?

It was then he registered the loud 'clitter clatter' of tram wheels moving very fast on a track, and as he looked to his left and right he saw a whirling tram wheel next to his head. He had been ran over by the tram alright, but somehow he was stuck to the underside of it like a bug stuck to the windscreen of a car.

Suddenly a loud crash came from somewhere along the tram and he felt his arm come free. He tried not to let it make contact with the fast moving tarmac in case it ripped his arm off.

He heard the sound of people above somewhere moving around, and then he heard the sound of a door being slid open and closed. If there were people up there then he has a chance of surviving this nightmare.

Then came a great 'roar' of a voice which sounded like a monster somewhere above and loud thudding footsteps started to come near to where he was. He heard gun shots being exchanged, then hurried voices before the tram hit a particularly nasty bump in the track. His head came unstuck and it slammed into the tarmac. He felt the tram race past him as his face, now stuck to the tarmac and held him tight as his entire body peeled from the underside of the tram. Only after that did the road let go of his face and he was sent into a roll along the tracks, and only then did he come to a stop when he slammed into something, which turned out to be a destroyed, burnt out car.

The sensation of hitting his face on fast moving tarmac hadn't been as painful as he had expected. In fact he had to admit it felt rather pleasant to feel his body peel away from the underside of the carriage. His body should be racked with pain, and his neck should've been snapped clean off, and his face at least should be sanded away to nothing. But as he felt his features they all seemed to be perfectly in place.

James shrugged as he sat on the cold tarmac in thought, which were of the green Mask which covered his entire head. He'd somehow instinctively done several, seemingly impossible things as if they were the norm to him.

Weird.

A massive, thundering explosion sounded. The carriage at the rear of the tram exploded in a ball of flame throwing the form of a large man clear of it and it landed on the ground with a heavy thud. The tram rolled on undeterred by the explosion from its rear carriage.

James got up from his sitting position and brushed himself off as around him several sparsely spaced zombies spotted him and started shifting awkwardly towards the masked James. James Richards would've started running for his life and would be firing off shots from his gun. But strangely enough 'this James Richards' kept his cool as he picked out flakes of broken glass from the lapels of a red suit; which he had somehow changed into without noticing; without a care in the world.

His attention returned to the large man who lay still on the ground apparently dead. He seemed to have incredible muscle bulk and his legs and feet were massive like those of an elephant. He had arms like telephone poles! His face was incredibly scarred and looked like he had several skin grafts in his life. One large piece of skin covered most of the right side of his face including his right eye, and only his left eye seemed to remain.

Whoever this guy was, he seemed to have seen some action at sometime in his life, but his large form somehow made him seem unreal. Oh and one minor detail he forgot to take note of. He was currently on fire.

"Hmm..." he said picking up on of the dead mans large arms. "A little overdone for my liking." He said talking in the voice of a chef. Why did he just make that quip? It was tasteless and now wasn't the time for it, a man had just died and for some reason he didn't seem to want to do anything but make jokes about him. As these thoughts went through his head, he realised it wasn't translating to his face, which still held that mischievous grin on it, showing rows of large teeth.

The monsters arm suddenly jerked, and James opened his mouth as wide as a trash can lid and screamed at the top of his lungs.

The large man began getting up and appeared to be feeling no pain whatsoever from the flames which danced over him. He stood an impressive eight feet by James' reckoning, and as his feet made contact with the ground they created a slight 'thud' as if he were an elephant. The head of the man turned to look at him.

"Hey Hightower!" James quipped, "you're sssssmokin'!" and actually he was. The flames still covered his body and he made no attempt to put them out, nor showed any indication that he felt any pain from them.

The man just regarded him with one blank staring eye, then his heavy brow lowered over his left eye as if he was trying to make him out as a threat or not. He didn't seem to speak though his mouth looked horrific disfigured, as if he'd just spent three weeks with an elephant sat on it. A low growl came from his mouth as he concentrated. What was wrong with the guy? Did he take one too many hits in the head as a kid? Was he the sort of person who needed special needs at school? If he was, you wouldn't want to bully a kid this large.

"STARS!" Came a deep rasp of a voice which hardly sounded human.

"Not yet, just a rookie cop right now. Maybe in a few years." James said as he turned to look at the apocalypse of Raccoon City. "Though I must say, they have really let this place go!"

Thud, came the giants footsteps as it began walking away in the direction the tram was heading. The flames on its body somehow started to die out as it continued its slow walk along the track. James caught up with him in a second.

"So what's your story big fella?!" James said walking smoothly next to him. He noticed his movements were sort of dance-like rather then the usual clumsy walk he usually had. The giant didn't seem to be paying any attention to him, at all.

"STARS!" it muttered again.

James looked up into the sky to look for any stars, but it was a cloudy night. He continued to follow this giant along the tramway but then sick of the silent treatment he stood in front of him and the giant stopped dead. The last thundering footstep he took echoed around the street as he looked down at James as if he were an annoying bug.

"Do you have someone who usually looks after you?" James said as if this guy was mentally retarded, not something he would've come out and said if he was in his right mind.

The giant took a step forward but James held his ground, then bash! James felt a sharp impact as the giant punched him in the face. The force of which caused him to fly backwards across the street, crashing through the back end, and out the front windscreen of a car before ploughing through the wall of a burning building. Only then did he come to a stop. His fall broken by a table.

Though he hadn't felt the impact, or at least it hadn't registered as a full blow of pain. James now felt like he was in a daze. He reached up and felt his face, amazingly it wasn't damaged in anyway, though his sight was now clouded by a halo of circling stars.

"Hey, look pal! I've found your stars!"

He felt cold hands pull at his arm which brought him immediately out of his daze. There was the scarred, grey face of a zombie woman crawling towards him. She began crawling over his body attempting to bite his neck.

"Hey!" He shouted as he tried to push her off him. "No biting face on the first date!"

James pushed her up so she was standing, and he pulled his legs into his body. He aimed them, and let them extend out with such force that the zombie's head snapped clean off its shoulders and rolled away. The headless corpse now took a step forward as if it were unsure if it still should be walking if its head was missing. But soon it made up its mind, and fell to the floor in a heap.

"Hey, don't lose your head…" he said, as he picked up the zombie severed head by the hair. "But you are 'so' not my type." With that he flung the head over his shoulder.

James leapt back through the hole he'd made in the wall and covered quite a distance before landing on the tarmac and broke into a run as he headed back towards the giant who had just clobbered him. He ran with incredible speed and was back by the giants' side so quickly he might've been the Flash.

The thing, whatever it was. He'd decided it wasn't human anymore because its burn clothes showed large growths over its body as if it had a very aggressive form of cancer. The only time he'd seen skin like that was on the body of a mutant monster. Therefore this thing was not human, at all.

"Touchy I see; you've got some issues I can tell." He said adopting a Sigmund Freud type voice. "Looking for z'ese stars o' yours!" it wasn't a particularly good representation of an Austrian accent. "I think I might be able to help you zhere!" He said as he held one arm out at an angle behind him and from his sleeve he felt something very long emerge quickly into his waiting hand. Whatever it was, it had quite a weight attached to it. He swung it now taking it in both hands and he pulled the heavy thing over his head, and slammed what he could now tell was a large, heavy mallet down on top of the giant's head.

He heard the splintering of wood and the cracking of something inside the monster. However the giant only took a step back and appeared completely unfazed. James brought the mallet around for another attack but as he held it in front of his face he registered that the large mallet end of his mallet was missing, there were only long splinters of wood from where it once had been. James' eyes widened and his jaw dropped, and dropped quite a considerable distance all the way down to his stomach area with, what sounded like the cartoonish sound of a loud clang of a hammer on an anvil.

"Ever considered a position in WWE? They could use someone like. MWUFFE!" what he was going to say was stopped as the creature clamped James' entire head in his fist and lifted him up off the ground. It then swung him and threw him as far as it could. James smashed into the lower half of a lamppost and snapped it clean in half. As he fell to the ground he saw the top of the post slam down on top of a zombie who had been fast approaching James. The Zombie didn't attempt to put its hands up to prevent what was about to occur to it as the lamppost fell right down on top of it, crushing its head into a bloody pulp.

James still couldn't understand why he hadn't died yet. After being ran over, punched in the face and now thrust into a lamppost; and he still didn't feel anything. He heard thudding footsteps behind him, which got closer and closer. James turned to see the giant slowly approaching him, and James could swear he saw uncertainty in its eye, as if even the thing itself couldn't understand why James wasn't dead yet.

It arched its back and gave a deafening roar as it lowered its head and charged forwards. It raised its arm intent on delivering a killing blow to the masked cop. James stood and watched as the lumbering giant fast approached him, with a speed he thought wouldn't be possible. Grinning again, he waited for the monster to be right up close to him… before he stepped out a foot and lent back, catching the monsters heavy feet on his own; and despite the momentum behind those heavy boots, they didn't move James' foot out of the way. The monster started falling forwards and landed smack on the ground causing it to shake violently.

James had just tripped the monster up as easily as you might trip up a child! It was amusing to see the look of annoyance on its face.

This was incredible, he decided. This Mask somehow enabled him to do things which he would normally think of as impossible, both physically and mentally of himself and the universe around him. For a start he knew he couldn't die while he was wearing this thing. He was oozing with a confidence, which he'd never felt before in his life, not since he asked Amy Roberts to go to the Raccoon School dance with him, and she'd said yes. He was also apparently able to conjure objects out of thin air, as that mallet had just proven. And...

SMACK!

Something rammed into his head and he was sent flying so far into the air that he could see his apartment from the top of the arc. That brute had just hit him!

The flight was short and he started to come crashing down to earth very fast. He'd survived impacts with solid walls and lampposts, so surely he could survive this… right? Though he didn't really feel like hitting the ground at terminal velocity right now. So he began cycling through what he could do to stop himself.

"Go, Go Gadget Copter!" he found himself saying. Oh yeah right as if that would've worked. He thought. But strangely as soon as those words left his mouth he felt his head pop open like a trunk and extending from his skull were a pair of red helicopter propeller blades and handles, which folded themselves out neatly above his head.

You… have… got… to be kidding! He thought slowly as he took the handles. The rotor blades began rotating faster and faster. Unfortunately they didn't work fast enough.

SLAM!

He hit the ground with such force he created a James shaped hole in the tarmac a few meters deep.

He slowly crawled out, dazed but not hurt. I knew I could survive this fall! He thought as the broken rotor blades began folding back into his cranium, which snapped shut. Pulling himself clear of the wreckage he used his new special speed ability to get back to the place where that giant once was very quickly. But he was gone!

"Hightower?!" He called out the name he had given him, but apparently the Hulks inbred cousin had vanished. James sped into four adjacent streets looking for any sign of the large man but he had completely vanished.

'Clang!' came the noise of a bell. 'Clang' it came again, a clock somewhere had probably struck the hour but over the noise of the clangs he heard something distinctive. Rotor blades of a helicopter! He realised helicopter meant rescue, rescue meant people, and people meant girls!

Why was he suddenly thinking of girls when his life was still in danger? That thought was soon put out of his head when he then heard a loud bang which completely overshadowed the sound of the rotor blades. Then an explosion sounded somewhere in the distance. When it faded away he couldn't hear the rotor blades anymore. James frowned deeply, the prospect of hot girls now reduced to zero.

It sounded like whoever was flying the thing had just crashed it, or something like that. "Drat!" James said, snapping his fingers. He then stretched out his left arm and from the sleeve extended a long metal pike, which went straight through the mouth of a zombie that was lumbering towards him. The pike went in and out the back of his head, killing it instantly.

"Wonder if there's a burger joint around here?" He said out loud. It had been a long time since he last ate and he could just go for some freshly cooked food right about now.

During the rest of the night he arrived at a place called J's Bar, and prepared food for himself. He discovered wearing this Mask also made him a master chef, despite having no idea how to cook. He hadn't a clue how the Mask allowed him to do this, but it was just a fantastic experience.

While he prepared food and ate it he taunted the zombies who were already inside the bar. They raced around the counter chasing James, but he was much too fast for them. They were so pathetic that James decided to role play with them.

First James played bartender for a bit and served drinks to them. Of course, they wouldn't drink the stuff voluntarily, so he forced it down their throats. The reason he did this was simple, he wanted to see if alcohol affected the zombies' already jerky motions. He chuckled as he thought what a drunk zombie might look like.

Next he played chef again, and in the process of food preparation he'd burnt half the zombies that came back, behind the counter. Hey, the sign clearly said, 'Staff Only.'

One look outside and he noticed he'd attracted quite a horde of zombies which were now banging on the walls and glass trying to break in.

"Sorry guys," he said, "You can't dine here unless you're wearing a tie!" He'd used it before, but it was more appropriate here.

Dawn was fast approaching, he noticed. So he then played the part of the bouncer of J's Bar and physically threw each zombie out, trying his best to see if he can throw them into the garbage cans across the littered road. Crash! One landed directly inside and the lid slammed shut on it.

"TWENTY POINTS!" He bellowed as out went another, and another. When the last one was out he shut the door and put a sign up on the door which read, 'Sorry, we're Closed'.

He left by the back door chuckling to himself and began walking down the alleyway that would lead him towards his next amusing encounter with zombies and monsters. He turned a corner back onto the road and saw a giant horde of zombies coming out from down the street. There must've been about fifty at least and they all attempted to quicken their pace the moment they saw him.

The bright sun shone from between two buildings, which temporarily blinded James until he somehow managed to obtain a pair of sunglasses that he placed over his eyes. He then reached into his red suit pockets and attempted to pull out a gun of some sort. But he couldn't feel anything. Maybe a baseball bat, he could use one of them. Nothing came from his trouser pockets either. A lightsaber he decided! A lightsaber would be ideal for taking down a horde of zombies. But he couldn't even pull anything like that from his pockets, none of them. All the time the zombies shuffled towards him hungrily.

James started to get a tingling feeling from his face, it was like pins and needles. He reached up to check the feeling in his face, something was wrong! His face felt like it was both melting and crusting over at the same time.

No. 'The Mask' felt like it was melting and crusting over! The rubbery texture for some reason felt more like hot wax without being hot. He started to feel the energy and confidence drain from him as if someone had just blown a hole in a large dam and the water was draining away.

His black shades vanished and he felt the glare of the sun more on his face. He put his hands up to his face in an attempt to stop whatever was happening from happening. He heard a crack of thunder. The rubbery mask began to feel wooden, and he felt his comfortable suit begin to tighten and become more heavy. Looking at his sleeves he saw his red suit was turning back into his police uniform.

He felt the power leave him and with a final thunder crack, which sort of ended in a pathetic hiss, he felt the rubber Mask quickly come off his face. It had reduced to its original size and it had turned back into its wooden form.

"What the…?" He asked looking at the edges of the wooden, green painted mask covering his face. What just happened, where am I? He asked himself. A loud collection of moans and groans caught his attention and his eyes turned back to look at the massive horde of zombies which were... -as he just stood there clutching the 'not working' wooden mask to his face- continued to lumber towards him, hunger and a desire to rip him apart clear on their faces.

"Oh crap!"


To be continued...