RESIDENT EVIL
A N A M N E S I S

Written by Nick Blackford
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami

Chapter Three: Black Feathers

Dust swept over everything, softly like snow as a hard silence rang through the bus wreckage. Celeste opened her eyes; fragments of glass fell from her hair. A heaving pain in her head prevented her from sitting up too quickly. It took her a good few seconds to remember where she was and what had happened.

Her vision was blurred, she waited for it to adjust, and slowly everything came into focus. The glass had come from the windscreen which was now nothing but a concave spider-web of cracks splashed with blood. She checked herself over quickly, the blood wasn't hers.

Lisa had woken to the sound of Celeste sitting up, she'd hit her head on the seats in front of hers and had been knocked out cold. She wiped the warm blood from her eyes and then held her hand firmly over the cut on her forehead.

"Is everyone okay?" Lisa yelled before standing to get a better view. The bus driver was unconscious next to the doors of the bus, which were twisted, broken out of shape and clearly wouldn't be able to open now.

Another man towards the back of the bus appeared to be unharmed but was clearly disorientated. Lisa made her way to the driver. On her way through the debris she noticed several seats crushed into one another, a man's arm was protruding from the contorted metal. He had been crushed to death but was still holding a suitcase, his knuckles white from the deadened grasp.

The carnage shocked Lisa but her there was nothing she could do now to help the unfortunate passenger, so much destruction had devastated the entire bus in a matter of seconds.

Lisa knelt down next to the driver, careful that she cleared any glass before applying her weight to her knees.

"I'm okay," Celeste said brushing herself down as she stood up. "Hey you, you all right?" Celeste asked across the length of the bus at Nathan, she deliberately avoided looking around too much at the horrors sprawled around her. Nathan looked up despondently.

"I'll be okay," He said, his face glum and pale in the flickering lights on board the bus. "We hit someone didn't we?" Nathan asked as he took in the horrific shape the front of the bus had taken.

Celeste followed Nathan's gaze and felt the same sickness she saw in Nathan as she looked at the blood that had forced its way through the cracks in the glass. "We need to get out of here." Nathan demanded, suddenly standing in a panic.

He marched down the length of the bus tripping over gore, passed Celeste and over Mike, who was still unconscious and being attended to by Lisa. Nathan firmly gripped the bus doors and pulled with all the strength he could summon up, but shaking them only sprinkled more fragments of glass onto the floor. The noise had caused Mike to stir.

"Hey, mister." Lisa put her hand on Mike's shoulder and he squinted; it was a miracle he was alive, the driver's seat had been completely crushed inwards by the impact.

Lisa turned to Celeste who had made her way to the front of the bus. "He must have jumped out of the way just in time." She said. Celeste was looking at Nathan, who was still looking through doors of the bus.

He was an attractive man, older than her but obviously overwhelmed by the situation. He looked confused and shaken.

"What's your name?" Celeste asked him. The seemingly pointless question was a distraction from their surroundings, a necessary one.

"Nathan." He said looking back at her, his eyes clearly haunted.

Lisa was handling the situation like any nurse, with efficiency, almost like she'd expected the whole thing.

Mike still hadn't completely come to and Celeste, well, she wasn't really sure why she hadn't slipped into shock in the same way Nathan had. While she obviously wasn't expecting the crash, its happening hadn't been hard for her to take in somehow. She had, however, noticed her hands shaking uncontrollably.

"You want some help with those doors?" She asked. Nathan nodded.

Lisa had sat Mike up now, who'd managed to ask Lisa her name.

"Name's Lisa, I'm a nurse." She'd said in a friendly concerning voice, the voice you would expect of a nurse.

"That's lucky." He'd replied, and the pair had smiled weakly at each other.

Nathan and Celeste had managed to pull the doors inwards slightly, but they simply wouldn't budge any more despite their joint effort.

"It looks like we're stuck then." Celeste said and sat down on one of the seats, defeated. She turned to Mike who had tried to get up but winced.

"Try the emergency release." Mike pointed just to Celeste's side, but tugging at it did nothing. Celeste sat expectantly; help couldn't be too far away.

"I don't get why nobody's here." Nathan said, still looking through the broken doors. He had noticed before any of them that there was not one other person on the streets outside. The rest of them slowly grew to the realization that they weren't completely out of trouble yet.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell-phone and dialed 911. The others watched as he stood impatiently, looking frantically for movement in the stillness outside. None of them knew how long they'd been knocked out for, but however long it was, shouldn't another vehicle have noticed the crash? How can nobody have even heard it? Where was everybody?

"No answer..." Nathan said, the colour drained from his face. Celeste looked down at the floor in confusion and then outside. The foreboding emptiness was completely unnatural and it prompted her approach to the doors where Nathan stood. She called out into it, perhaps to stir it awake somehow.

"HELLO?" Silence. "IS ANYBODY THERE?" She yelled. Lisa stood up.

"People will come." Lisa said, but she had also noticed the emptiness outside. It wasn't just that either, since they had all woken up, since they hadn't had the engine of the bus running to drown out the silence, they had for the first time realized just how loudly it rang through the air.

Celeste noticed the cut on Lisa's forehead, it was still bleeding.

"No answer. How can there be no answer?" Nathan spat, agitated, looking at his cell-phone. He tried dialing Amanda's number but he was given the same repeating tone in return. Perhaps the cell-phone had broken in the crash somehow. Unlikely, but the only plausible explanation he was willing to accept.

"ANYBODY?" Celeste yelled, she heard her own voice echo away from them, being carried off into the darkness, delivering her calls of help to no avail.

"Try that." Lisa pointed. Nathan turned away from the door and made his way back towards the back of the bus. Lisa had spotted a twisted length of metal frame that lay among the glass. Nathan picked it up, holding it in the same way a baseball player would hold his bat readying to hit a home run. Holding it high above his head, the others all shut their eyes and leant back. The metal bar swung into the glass and sent a ripple of cracks throughout the whole window. The glass was reinforced heavily and while he was weakening it with every blow it wasn't shattering apart. Nathan resorted to kicking the window in an attempt to break it out of the frame completely.

The window was almost out; Nathan was about to give the failing glass one last kick when suddenly it's collapsing shape bent inwards from the outside with a loud crack. Everyone jumped, no one had expected it and for a short time they didn't know how to react.

Nathan looked at the glass, a ring of bloody cracks had forced through the glass from the outside. Black feathers had stuck to the glass, one of them drifted in through the broken doors Celeste stood at. Everyone followed it as it drifted downwards and rested silently on the blood-splattered floor of the bus.

It was the sound that came next that truly confused all of them. A loud fluttering enveloped the entire bus, the sound of strong flames coming from all around. Another explosive smash broke the silence from the back of the bus and within seconds every window exploded inwards.

"We're on fire. We're on fire and this damned thing is going to explode. We're all going to die." Celeste thought, but rationality reminded her that where there's fire, there's smoke and heat and she could see or feel neither.

A bombardment of scratching and punches battered the bus, rocking it in every direction at once. In pure panic and confusion Lisa, Nathan and Celeste all threw themselves to the floor. It was only when Celeste dared to open her eyes, what was going on became apparent. Black feathers filled the bus and swirled around in the mayhem. Blood splattered the bus from the outside, as the impacts became even more frequent.

"What is that?" Lisa screamed, her eyes still welded shut. Under the amazing noise, only Celeste had heard her shouting and she knew exactly what the noise was, she just couldn't believe it.

When the sound of smashing glass and denting metal finally subsided, the undeniable squawks of crows could be heard outside. Lisa slowly opened her eyes; Celeste was sitting up, as was Mike. "Is it over?" Lisa asked as the swarm of black feathers slowly settled.

"I think so. I hope so." Celeste said standing up, hunched with caution. Nathan followed, gripping the metal bar in his hands so tightly his knuckles were white.

"I think it's time to get off this fucking bus." He muttered before punching out the window that he had so vigorously tried to break just moments earlier.

"Not a wise move. What if more of those birds try to get in?" Celeste thought, but even before she had finished thinking it the glass had fallen away and the idea of getting off the bus had become the priority.

Nathan took a step back, the sight was almost impossible to take in. There must have been at least fifty crows that he could see from where he stood, most of them dead, others flapping around on the ground outside squawking awkwardly. The amount of blood was incredible, not one of the birds was able to stand, let alone fly. "You lot might want to take a look at this," Nathan urged, gesturing to them that it was safe to get closer. "Come on."

Lisa helped Mike up and soon enough the four of them stood at the window staring out in disbelief.

"Oh my God… This doesn't make sense." Celeste said shaking her head slowly; the sight was horrific, the sight would have saddened her if the crows had not been so savage in their attack. Instead it filled her with a terrible dread. The same fear of the irrational that she had felt in the strangest and most chilling of her nightmares.

"Let's just get out of here. Now." Nathan said with his phone to his ear. "I'm not even getting a signal anymore..." he looked at the others, each of them still staring at the mass of black, feathered corpses outside in shock.

What was strangest to everyone at that moment was that the streets were still empty. Not one person had heard any of the commotion in the middle of the high street. No one else had come to help and because of that, it still didn't feel real, it still felt like a really bad dream.