Epic: The Third Survivor

By. Indigo Siren

Disclaimer: Resident Evil is copyright 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: I honestly can't believe how long it has been since I last updated this. Nearly 9 months! Well, lots of things have put off this actually being finished quicker, mainly writer's block, and I am so happy to have finally got this done. Anyway, enough talking, on with the show!

Chapter 11: Reality Bites

Claire looked at the slightly illuminated watch face on her wrist. It indicated it had just gone past midnight. It had been around nine o'clock when she had first arrived in Raccoon City. Had she really been running around for three hours in this God forsaken hell hole?

She had to admit, time had never felt so fleeting to her in her whole life. It didn't even feel like two minutes ago that she'd left her college campus, determined to find her brother.

That was three days ago.

She was really starting to feel the lack of food and sleep now more than ever. She was running on pure adrenaline alone now. Deep down, she'd wished she'd not followed her gut feeling about rushing into Raccoon City. If only she'd known what was waiting for her.

Serves me right for not turning the TV on once in a while… She pushed open the door ahead of her, coming to stand on a filthy ledge just above a gulley of dirty water. She was somewhere in the heart of Raccoon's sewage network; cramped paths, stale air and the occasional zombie to take down. Not the kind of night she was used to.

She had been clueless to the events that had overtaken the city, despite listening to Chris's bizarre stories. He had been vague in his accounts of the strange things he'd seen, though she had put it all down to the stress and grief he had experienced when losing his team mates out in the field of action. He'd tried to assure her that he would be fine, but his lack of contact in the last month had urged her more and more to visit him, just to see for herself that he was alright.

Chris had been a rock all her life, especially after their parents died while they were still relatively young. She felt she owed him a lot for practically giving up his life to support her. It was her gratitude that fuelled her resolve to protect her big brother, a gratitude that had her mounting her motorcycle days ago, taking the long trek to Raccoon City.

Her unawareness had led her right into the heart of this nightmare.

As she stepped carefully off the ledge into the combination of oily crud water, a part of her wondered whether it had really been worth all the trouble after all. Maybe if she'd had more patience, she could just have waited a little longer for him to contact her - and he probably was due to get in touch. At least then she wouldn't have had to find out the hard way that he had left the city weeks ago.

Chastising herself as she shuddered at every ominous creak and groan emanating from the shadows, she knew she could have avoided all this trouble if she'd not been so foolhardy.

Her brother's whereabouts lingered in the back of her mind, pushed back in favour of her new concern in the form of the innocent Sherry Birkin.

She'd met the young girl not long after arriving in the city, one of the last survivors looking for security in the police station, which had already been breached by hordes of the undead. She reflected a strong intelligence in her fearful eyes, her heart imbued with a perpetual determination to live. Where other stronger more capable people had died, she had managed to keep going, using the environment to her advantage. She knew not of the true evil that had overwhelmed the city - brought on by the girl's own father. Police Chief Irons had dropped that bombshell on her before his untimely demise.

Sherry couldn't have known what her father had been up to; she only showed admiration and love for him. Wherever he was now, he was probably hiding away from this horror of his own making.

In the few hours that she had come to know her young companion, she had found her heartstrings tugged with compassion for her wellbeing. Almost as if she'd adopted a little sister. She wanted to offer her the warmth and assurance that she sorely lacked, having been left on her own for so long. Touched by her courage, loyalty and selflessness, Claire made an inward promise: That she would help Sherry to survive, whatever it took.

Despite fate conspiring against them, Claire hurried as quickly as she could through the narrow sewer channels, searching for her young friend. It was just as dangerous down there as it had been in the police station, and Sherry had nothing to defend herself with.

Claire had had the misfortune to come across a new abomination while circumnavigating the waterways. A gargantuan spider, the size of a pickup truck. Anyone with arachnophobia would have imploded at the sight of it. Lucky for her, a couple of shots to its bulbous body were enough to take it out. She hoped Sherry had been lucky enough to avoid an encounter with one of those beasts.

If things weren't complicated enough with Sherry disappearing and the army of viral monsters lurking about, she now had Leon to deal with as well; though, more accurately, his request.

The rookie police officer was the first living person she'd encountered when she rode into the city. They had been assisting each other while looking for survivors and means of escape. He'd been shot in the shoulder in the entranceway to the sewers. His condition was stable, not that he appeared too concerned about his own state, more for that of his companion, who'd run off chasing the gunman who'd shot him.

Leon had begged her to find his friend, a woman he'd hooked up with at the police station. It was enough that she had to look for Sherry, but this other woman, too. But she had promised him she would and she wasn't one to go back on her word.

After begrudgingly leaving Leon behind, she'd trekked all the way to the gulley where she believed Sherry had first fallen. She was nowhere to be found.

Following every possible path that the young girl could have taken, she found herself led to the darkest, most spine-chilling recesses in this underground maze. What was equally disturbing as the few mouldy zombies she'd mowed down along the way, was the pile of bodies she'd found partially hidden in a lonely, shadow-drenched corner. They were festered with maggots and stank worse than some of the waste floating around her boots. They had to have been there a while; a few weeks maybe? She couldn't be sure.

More bizarrely, the bodies were donned in SWAT-like attire with gas masks obscuring their faces. There were no distinguishing markings on their outfits, either, which raised a certain amount of suspicion about them. They couldn't have been with the police. What could a unit of their type have been doing down there, and what the heck had finished them off?

They were wearing enough body armour to survive the blast of a high velocity weapon. But it wasn't bullets that had killed them. Their torsos were split wide open, their armour torn open like paper. She stared at the jagged lines that spilled the contents of their stomachs across the concrete. She envisioned large claws slashing them with ferocity, but couldn't quite picture the kind of creature that could have caused the devastating blow, but it must have been a size of epic proportions. Claire swallowed back the bile, sensing that something more sinister could be lurking around the corner. She wondered if these bodies had been a part of a prelude to these devastating events? Who were they? What had been their purpose? That, she would probably never know.

She shook her head with a sigh. The giant spiders she could just about take, but something that could potentially slice her in two without even breaking a sweat, send chills rocking through her.

And here I thought things couldn't get more convoluted…

Treading carefully through the spent cartridge casings, she held her breath as she leant over the corpses, searching them for any remaining ammo. There were quite a few handgun magazines still left over unused. Whatever had killed them hadn't given them much time to react.

Lucky for her… In some morbid way.

Leaving the masked men to their makeshift grave, she moved on; better armed, though no more confident than before.

She proceeded down two wider conduits. The current of sewage water between them was being pumped down more fiercely. A couple of zombies lurked in the misty water, rising unceremoniously as she trudged her way forward. A few careful shots to the head took them out without much fanfare.

Pushing through a iron barred gate at the very end, she found herself facing a dirty waterfall at the far end of the short waterway. She couldn't see beyond the filthy torrent, and didn't particularly want to step under it.

Her attention was soon drawn to a rusted, gunk covered panel to the right of her. There were two round slots indented into the top of it, below which were two engravings; one with the image of an eagle and the other with a wolf. They appeared to be indicating the 'keys' that operated the system, not that she knew which system she was operating. Currently, both slots were empty.

Maybe she'd find them on her travels, but they weren't foremost in her mind. Stepping up onto a walkway to her left, she headed through the awaiting double doors at the bottom.

The sound of running sludge water was prevalent in the room beyond. It was - to no lesser extent - a cesspool; a tank of whatever ungodly slush they'd gathered together. It sat at the bottom of a two levelled room, accessible - as it appeared - by a motorised bridge that would rise and fall between the levels.

Claire's attention was drawn enough to distract her from the figure moving against the shadowy wall. She could have even pleaded ignorance, as the running water covered up the sound of the careful footsteps on the metal walkway. She only realised she had company when she turned to find a gun pointed at her face.


It was willpower alone that brought her back to consciousness. The real battle now was maintaining that state.

Her symptoms were almost flu like. The aches and pains, the nausea, the terrible heat that stabbed through her like hot pokers…

She tried to move, but couldn't. She had no energy left. All her limp body wanted to do was sleep, but she knew deep down that it would be a bad idea to give in to that longing.

All she wanted to do was get off that trash pile and away from that acrid water swirling around her, but any effort to do so brought her close to blacking out again. That didn't seem like a bad thing though; some of the things she could feel moulding themselves around her through the trash bags made her skin crawl. She didn't dare think what they might actually be, in fact, thinking had become a little bit too much of a task in itself. Maybe a blessing in disguise.

She could barely remember how she'd gotten into this predicament. She'd been attacked, hadn't she? Brief images flashing across her vision confirmed that fact. And fortunately, she had survived… just about.

She squinted at her surroundings, shuddering as a breath of cold air from a vent behind her drifted over her skin. Unable to move, she could only see what was in her line of sight, and that was nothing much at all. Only water and trash.

Her eyes gazed at the surface of the water. Its oily, green-tinted surface gently rippled. Sometimes, there was even a rolling movement, as if something had shifted beneath the surface. Despite her fragile condition, she felt some level of uncertainty. A sloshing sound caught her ear, sending a jolt of dread through her like a bolt of lightning.

There was something in there with her. Her attacker? She tried to recall the hulking form that had loomed over her. There was something humanoid about it, that's all she remembered. A zombie like creature? No, she'd have been dead for certain if a zombie had gotten a hold of her. It had been a much different creature.

She desperately wanted her parents. And Claire. She didn't want to die down there alone.

A single tear fought its way out and trickled in a warm line down her cold, pale cheek. She tried to speak, but nothing emerged; instead, she just mouthed the words she wanted to shout at the top of her lungs.

Help me…


It had been a long time since she'd seen daylight. It had been just as long since she had breathed in fresh air. Cooped up deep underground most of her days, Annette Birkin, was starting to miss the things she'd barely even considered before, and this was only because she had plenty of time now to really think about life and everything she took for granted.

What day was it now? How long ago was it since she last had a decent meal? Was she going to get out of this nightmare alive?

She had failed to keep order in the chaos inside the labs in which she worked. And now the virus had consumed there, too. She had done the best she could to preserve her husband's research. After everything he'd been through, she wouldn't allow all his hard work to be destroyed.

She thought of her poor, darling husband, her throat tight with emotion. He'd suffered so terribly. All because of Umbrella. She cursed their name to the heavens. It had only been a matter of time before they'd turned their back of them, greedy for the power William Birkin's research brought.

She'd wanted to save him. Her precious William. But she had failed him. What a terrible wife she was to allow his glorious mind to be lost. Time and again, she'd stared at the gun she carried in a vice like grip, contemplating turning it upon herself. She was most deserving of the bullet to the temple.

But she needed to carry on. She needed to protect the labs. Find some order in the chaos. And ultimately, get her revenge.

But what of her now? All she could do was run around the sewer like a trapped rat, awaiting a fate unknown.

Unforgivably, she'd forgotten about her daughter, Sherry. She had instructed her little girl to seek refuge at the police station. She thought it would be the safest place for her to be.

It was only be chance that she found out her daughter was on the move, as she encountered a young woman - a biker girl, as she could describe her - as she trawled through the sewers. Her mind had been focused on finding more incriminating evidence to use against her murderous employers and try and hide any evidence regarding her husband, but soon her attention was focused solely on the whereabouts of her daughter, lost in a culvert somewhere.

The biker girl had told her that the police station had become too dangerous to continue to hide out in, and she and Sherry had escaped together, only to become separated shortly upon entering the sewers. It seemed this complete stranger had taken it upon herself to become Sherry's protector, and was doing everything she could to find her. Annette was heartened, if only a little.

But she knew Sherry was in much greater danger.

Maybe it was tiredness, or a certain feeling that she could rely upon on this young stranger, that she spilled her soul to her, about that night in the labs. That night that had been the beginning of the end for Raccoon City.

It had been late when the mask soldiers had entered the labs. There were only a small number of the research team still in the labs. Most had gone home for the night. Those were the lucky ones.

The moment Annette had caught sight of the soldiers, she had alerted her husband, and narrowly avoided confrontation with the men. The moment she heard gunfire, she knew with a cold dread that something terrible had happened to William.

By the time she reached him, the masked men were long gone with a case of virus samples. Some T-Virus, but also with a supply of William's own precious creation. The G-Virus. A weapon like no other.

He clung barely to life, pitilessly riddled with bullets. She begged him to hang on, and that she would make things better. But that had not stopped his determination to punish his assailants, by using his own creation on himself.

The results were horrifying. He turned into a monster.

Deservedly, in her mind, the soldiers got what was coming to them - by curtsey of William, giving them a taste of the G-Virus - their carcasses left to rot in the sewers like the garbage they were. But during William's onslaught, the virus got out, and was carried by the rats into Raccoon City.

The young woman listened to her story in silent horror, but she did not crumble under the weight of her words. She had a strong will.

Annette lamented that the more time that passed, the more she knew that William's humanity was slipping away. By now, he must have forgotten about his former life, but she still held the hope that maybe, just maybe, there was something of him left of him… Maybe then, Sherry would stand a chance.

The G-Virus infected its victims with an embryo to create its offspring, but the host needed to be compatible to the original carrier. Sherry was the perfect match, being William's daughter. Annette had wanted to keep her as far away as possible, so that her little girl wouldn't suffer the same fate.

She had no room to feel guilty for the experiments she had dedicated herself to, and what horrors they had caused when they had broken loose, but she felt a sense of anger at herself for not being a better parent and getting Sherry out of harms way the moment she knew trouble was coming. How blind she had been to the world beyond the four walls of the lab.

It was probably irony that once she had finished telling the young woman about what might happen to Sherry, a terrified scream echoed through the sewers.

The woman wasted no time taking off to find her, as did Annette, taking a different path to cover more ground in finding her.

If there was a God in the world, she begged him not to punish Sherry for their sins.


Sherry had slept for a short time. She felt a little less groggy than before when she next opened her eyes. Not that she felt any less nauseous. Her stomach felt like a cavern with decaying walls.

Her lips were sandpaper dry, but she thought twice about licking them. Her face had touched things that she didn't particularly want to ingest; and she didn't particularly want to make her stomach any worse.

She groaned weakly, the sound little more than a choked gurgle trying to force its way out. A slosh not far from her reminded her of the 'thing' that was still around under the gloomy water.

Moments later, a metallic clank shook her from her daze. She tried lifting her head to see where it came from, but a throbbing in her temples forced her to remain inert. She groaned again, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Sherry!"

The relief flooded its way in through the pain. Claire? There was hope after all…

… For all of two seconds.

Something burst from the water in response to Claire's call. Something huge. The hideous roar it made was unlike anything she'd heard before. Still finding it difficult to move, she was unable to get much of a glimpse of the creature - only its tail. Green, scaly, and covered in a thick layer of slime. Some kind of reptile.

The size of it chilled her to the bone.

Claire cried out. There was hurried footsteps on a metal walkway, pursued by the rampant and heavy pounding of the chasing beast, its frame slamming from wall to wall, which Sherry could feel vibrate throughout the room.

An alarm sounded shrilly, followed by that metallic clank she had heard earlier, this time, more violently.

Muffled gunfire and roars boomed off into another area, moving away from her position. Sherry quaked, feeling helpless, calling out feebly for Claire.

Don't die… Please…