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 Four: A Thousand Black Daggers

The four of them clambered out of the bus one at a time. Nathan was first, after putting his cell-phone away he inelegantly scrambled out of the bus from the window. It was while climbing out that they had realised the bus had actually bent out of shape and the window was a few extra feet off of the ground.

"A hand?" Celeste asked, slightly perturbed at the fact Nathan hadn't offered but was instead checking his phone again. With a look of slight reluctance he took her hand and helped her dismount from the window safely and without landing on one of the bird carcasses that littered the ground around the bus.

Mike was next; his departure was awkward and painful even with Celeste and Lisa's assistance. He shunned the pain away with an uneasy but grateful, wincing smile none-the-less.

"I don't think I can do this." Lisa said, gripping the edges of the broken window frame with both hands. She looked at the others. It wasn't the height that bothered her; it really wasn't that high, it was the awkwardness of the climb out. She'd never climbed over fences when she was younger. She'd never adventured through the marshland near her house like her brothers and their friends had when they were younger. She'd certainly never imagined herself needing to climb out of a raised bus-wreckage.

"Just don't even think about it, just jump." Celeste urged.

Nathan wasn't even watching now, his back was turned to the others and he was continuously trying to phone Amanda. The oppressive, repeating tone suddenly riddled with him with guilt.

"This is what you get," he thought. "This is what cheating liars get." And with that he restrained himself from throwing his phone to the ground.

Lisa landed badly. In any other circumstance she would have been endlessly embarrassed but it wasn't a time for embarrassment. Celeste helped her quickly to her feet again and for the first time the group was stood outside.

They had just about managed to begin reading their surroundings when the desperate calls of maddened crows began to call once again, this time from the sky.

"Run!" Celeste yelled.

The four of them darted in the same direction, instinctively towards the brightest light they could see, emitting from a small café on the corner of the street.

The choir of shrill shrieks grew closer as they ran. Mike was struggling, as was Lisa. Celeste ran in desperation, as fast as she could, she knew she was advancing ahead of the pair and while it wasn't a nice feeling, she did not intend on slowing down. Nathan was furthest ahead, his legs mechanically lunging at such a velocity he almost buckled beneath himself.

Celeste risked glancing back. The sight of a thousand black daggers darting out of the sky completely threw her. She almost tripped but used the opportunity to call to the others.

"Hurry!" She screamed.

The huge cloud of what looked like fluttering black paper in the darkness was gaining on them. The squawking had become a deafening disharmony of angry, child-like screams. The café was just ahead. Breaking his run into a kick and using his full momentum, Nathan crashed through the doors and into the café. The others swiftly followed; Nathan threw the café's shutters down as Celeste, Lisa and Mike dived into safety.

The same suicidal explosion of blood and feathers pelted the shutters and the front of the café for what seemed like an age. If its glass front and windows had taken the full force of the demonic birds, all four of them would have undoubtedly been killed. Nathan had saved their lives.

"Quick thinking." Celeste said turning to Nathan, clutching her chest in breathlessness. There was a silence as they all caught their breaths. Lisa was having particular difficulty; she couldn't remember the last time she had run so fast in her life. She could feel the blood pulsating, pushing through her, making her entire body throb.

The café was comfortably lit. There were sofas, tables and chairs sporadically arranged so the busy workers of Raccoon City could sit with their copies of The Raccoon and catch up on the day's events with ease. If it wasn't for the bird blood seeping slowly under the bent shutters, the situation the group found themselves in would have seemed quite normal.

The first thing they did was search the café for a phone. There was one, but it had been torn off the wall and was now no more than a heap of cracked plastic and broken plaster. There were signs of a struggle in the café; some chairs lay on their sides and some plates and other kitchenware lay on the floor, much of it broken. The kitchen of the café was a haven of food and drink and although nobody was hungry, everybody helped themselves to a can of something.

There was a back door to the café, securely shut with a key in it. That was something, at least they weren't trapped. For now though, they were safe and that's all that mattered.

They sat together, around one of the smaller tables at the back of the café, all of them shaken from the events of the last fifteen minutes. There was an awkward silence to begin with; Nathan was reading one of the menus from the café. Rather he was scanning the words with his eyes, not paying them any notice.

"Is your leg okay?" Celeste said to Mike. She was taken aback at how quickly he had been able to run on it considering moments earlier it was a struggle for him to sit up.

"I didn't get a chance to stop." Mike muttered. The figure falling into the path of the bus plagued his mind. He put his hand over his mouth in shock as the thought repeated over and over.

"What's your name?" Celeste asked him.

"Mike." He replied, it had taken him a moment.

"Listen to me Mike, what happened back there wasn't your fault. Something else is going on here tonight. Something much bigger than us, that bus and those birds."

Mike looked up; he hadn't really seen the faces of the people he found himself with yet. The panic and confusion that had surrounded their introduction hadn't allowed it. But now, here in this strange café with these strange people, four very distinct faces came to light.

The first was a young girl; the girl that was talking to him, a striking, dark skinned, pretty face. The other woman in their group was slightly older, an overweight, sympathetic looking nurse. Then there was the young man, there was something Mike couldn't quite pin-point about him, he didn't know what it was but he had made his mind up that second that he didn't like him. He didn't trust his face.

"I've never seen birds behave like that," Lisa said. "They wanted to hurt us. All of them." A shiver scuttled down her back.

"Where is everybody?" Nathan asked. But nobody had an answer. They all thought about it for a moment. How could everybody just have disappeared? Everybody. It occurred to Celeste that nobody would know where they were either.

"Hiding," She said. "Everybody's hiding." The grim reality that something much bigger was going on hit all of them. That same feeling of dread she had felt earlier had crept back and this time they'd all felt it.

Lisa had spotted two speakers in the corners of the café.

"Do you think we could hear the radio through those?" She asked, pointing. Celeste got up quickly and went behind the counter. Sure enough there was a music system and an option to listen to the radio. She turned it on quickly, desperate at the thought they might be able to find out what was going on.

Static crackled out of the speakers. With every turn of the dial on the system the hearts of all four survivors sank further. Perhaps the radio was broken. Perhaps the terrible truth of the matter was that it wasn't, it wasn't broken at all.