-Chapter 2-








Around her she heard the voices of motorists who had left their cars in the stalled traffic and other students that were walking to their homes. She shut her eyes to try to block out the horrible event. "You okay?" a motorist, a woman of about twenty five, asked her. Kat nodded.

She heard sirens in the distance.

The sirens grew nearer, louder.

She opened her eyes. The bright mid April sunshine longer seemed so innocent or pure. The blackness of death had rushed through the afternoon like a tsunami.

Red lights flashing, the wail of the sirens fading, a paramedic vehicle and police car approached on the side of the road leading from the school.

"Kat?"

She turned around to see Razor, both her friend and the deceased Mike's friend as well.

"I ran here as soon as I saw the ambulance." he said in a concerned tone, "Ran here as fast I could, too. Goddamn..."

"Yes," she said numbly, "It is horrible, isn't it?"

¤ ¤ ¤

The hot, dry air was filled with static sounds from police radios, the mechanical monotonous voices of the dispatchers, and the smell of the baking asphalt.

The paramedics could do no more for Mike Arevir except haul his body off to the city morgue, where he would lay in a refrigerated room until the medical examiner could attend to him. Because he had been killed in a traffic accident, an autopsy had to be done.

They loaded the draped corpse into the van. The shroud was dark with blood in some places.

"You need to sit down, Kat." Razor ushered her with utmost concern with one hand on her shoulder, "Get a grip on yourself."

"I'm all right, Razor." she replied with abnormal calmness, "Really, I am. I'm just... shaken up a little, that's all."

"Watching anime, that'll cheer you up. C'mon."

"No, thank you."

The two paramedics closed the rear doors of the van and quickly walked to their seats in the front of the vehicle. No need for the sirens and lights, haste could not save Mike now.

"I appreciate your sudden concern for me. I honestly do. It's just that I'm so disturbed that I'm taking this so well. I mean.... it's strange but.... I feel no grief at all."

She sighed

"I feel so wrong to feel so little of what just happened."

The van bearing the corpse drove away.

Razor walked her to the front gate of the school where she was waiting before. "You sure you're okay?" he asked her as she sat on the concrete flower box that made up the foundation of the gate.

"Yes, I'm fine."

"Okay..." he started to walk the other way, "See you later, Kat."

¤ ¤ ¤

Nearly five hours had passed since Mike's death at 2:34 PM. Kat had been taken home with lingering memories of the event of his death. She sat down at her desk in her room, a bleak and dreary room with a single light in the corner.

She started to do her homework, but only to be stopped by the horrible memory of the death. "Mike...." she said to herself, "Please, rest in peace. Stop having your memory hound me.... please rest."

She heard a scratching sound at her window; in response to the sound, she instinctively looked to her left side, towards the window; strangely expecting Mike to be there. But of course that was just her mind playing tricks on her. The dead can't come back, it's just not possible. Is it? But the scratching sound did sound like the scratch of clawed fingers.

She remembered something about an accident in a few areas that involved a few Anti-Umbrella movement groups that gave the government an example of past incidents to try and motivate them to shut down Umbrella.

Something that Mike said before he died made her worry about him at the time before the accident. He was oddly rude, abrasive, and abusive before that happened; it wasn't anything like him.

She stood up from off of her desk chair and walked towards the window and gazed outside. When she saw nothing, she returned to her desk to continue doing her homework.

¤ ¤ ¤

Meanwhile at the Arevir household, a small single storied house about five minutes by car from the school, Mike's parents Sandy and Lawrence Arevir had just arrived home from a long day at the Umbrella laboratories; totally unaware of the tragic events that had just unfolded nearly five hours ago. "Mike?" called out his mother, "Are you here?"

There was no answer

"Mike?!" she looked in the Family Room to see if her son was there like he usually would be at this time. To her dismay, he was not there.

All was quiet in the air, a psychically unsettling silence though. Not the comforting silence of restful peace, free from any nuisances or annoyances. She started to get worried, "MIKE!!!!" she screamed out and ran to his room, hoping to find him there.  She only found a dark and undisturbed room holding material possessions of their son.

"The hell....?" his father said to himself.

A sound broke through the dense silence, startling him. It was the phone.

It rang once...

twice...

three times...