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 Six: Fair Share of the Damned
They had collected their own weapons from the kitchen. The selection wasn't great but they hadn't improvised badly. Celeste had taken a bottle of wine from the rack in the fridge and smashed it over the counter creating an effective daggered club. Mike had twisted the leg off one of the tables from which several bent nails protruded from the end. Lisa had found an old bicycle chain which lay next to the door; it didn't make a bad chained whip.
"This seems a bit excessive." Lisa said, staring at her chain. Its edges were sharp. She thought about the damage it could do if she used it at full force.
"This is just a precaution," Celeste reassured Lisa "She'll back off when she sees these." Celeste held up her broken bottle. For a moment she doubted it. "She's not going to back off, she's going to attack us and we're going to have to end up killing her. It's going to be horrific." She thought to herself.
"Celeste, you okay?" Mike asked. Lisa's faith in Celeste's reassurance had vanished at the sight of her doubtful stare.
"You guys ready?" Nathan asked, his hand on the door knob.
"Yeah, let's do it." Celeste signaled, she gave a faded smile to Mike for his concern and passed it to Lisa, a kind of apology for not being more convincing in her confidence.
The door swung open and sure enough the haggard woman stumbled into the kitchen of the café on cue. She stood like a drunk for a moment and then woozily lifted her head again. The same haunted look on her face shocked all of them, she must have been in her twenties yet her face carried the years of a pensioner. The tragedy in her face recoiled into a snarl and she thrust herself at Lisa, both arms swiping in front of her.
"Why me?" Lisa thought, paralyzed by the sheer gore that covered the woman.
The woman had her now, by the shoulders, her grip was sharp but weak. As the woman prized her jaw open and leant towards her, Lisa saw the corners of her mouth crack and split. Her teeth were caked in blood and a stench of death spilled out of her mouth.
Mike's table leg hit the woman on the back of the head with such a force that when he pulled away her head snapped back with the weapon, pinned to the nails that protruded from its end.
"Shit! Lisa, do something!" Mike shouted. He hadn't intended his attack to be so severe.
Lisa pushed the woman off of her and quickly flung the chain as hard as she could at the woman. The chain wrapped around the woman's neck with such force that it drew blood, a stream of it, black and thin, gushed from where the chain had embedded itself.
Mike yanked his table leg back out of her head and with a kick, Nathan had her kneeling on the floor. She looked enraged. At this moment it occurred to Celeste that it looked almost like Lisa was walking her like a dog, a ridiculous thought considering the circumstances. Lisa pulled the chain back with force and the woman's neck snapped around, her throat torn savagely splattered blood all over the fridge and the door.
The woman collapsed. Celeste was right. She had attacked them, they had killed her and it was horrific.
They stood around her body, the amount of blood seemed impossible as is pooled out from around her head and neck.
"I think I'm going to be sick." Lisa said, the chain in her hand dripping blood onto the spotless kitchen floor, a place where hygiene had once been such a meticulous issue, now a bloodbath.
"No time." Nathan urged as the woman began to slowly but surely ready herself to get up again. Before she had gotten to her knees, all four of them had run around her and out through the door. Nathan still had the key and locked the door behind them; he rattled the handle to make sure and then threw the key away.
"That's impossible," Mike ranted "No one survives that." He said shortly before the pounding on the door began again, no groans this time, only a faint gurgling and spluttering.
"Oh God what have we done?" Lisa said, still in a state of shock, still gripping her chain so hard her knuckles were white.
"We should have stayed inside." Celeste said, checking their surroundings. It was an alleyway. It was empty, but it was also narrow and dark.
"Until more of those things found their way inside?" Nathan asked, he was for once not snapping. He didn't have the energy to be angry anymore and though he'd never admit it, he was just as shocked as the others over what had just happened.
"What have we done?" Lisa repeated gormlessly.
"We didn't kill her. She's not dead." Nathan reminded her. She didn't need reminding though, all of them had seen it, how she had begun to climb to her feet again, seemingly unscathed by the savage attack they had inflicted upon her.
"All that blood. It doesn't make sense, it's impossible. She can't be alive, she can't." But she was, and she was still reminding them by hitting the door they stood beside.
No one said anything else for a while because no one could comprehend the absurdity of the situation. Each of them tried to understand as they began to walk slowly down the alleyway; Nathan took the lead with Celeste, Lisa and Mike followed behind them. Each of them held their weapon which meant more to them now than they had realised they would when choosing them in the kitchen.
"How's the leg?" Lisa asked him awaking from her trance.
"It's okay." Mike said, still limping slightly.
"You got kids Mike?" She asked. Mike paused for a second as if bringing a photograph of them to his mind.
"Yeah, two. They're seven and ten."
"What are their names?" Lisa asked.
"Jack and Amber. They live with their mum in the suburbs though." Mike said. "Do you think this is happening there?" He asked her suddenly.
"I don't know what this is." She said.
"What about you? Have you got kids?" He asked her. The truth was, Lisa didn't have anybody, let alone children. She had nursed her mother to her grave for so long that she had never met anyone and the few friends she did have didn't fit into her schedule at the hospital.
"No." She said shaking her head. She looked ahead to Celeste and Nathan who were also making conversation. The alleyway was long enough to allow for it.
"I don't see much of my family anymore. We were never that close, Amanda and I just got married a few months ago. She's my family." Nathan explained to Celeste.
"Where is she?" Celeste asked. "That's where you're going isn't it?"
"Uptown. Eton Avenue, it's back up where the twenty-five came from," Nathan explained staring at the ground. "She's all alone. All this is going on and I'm not there, it's not right." He said, clearly disappointed in himself, angry at himself.
"You think it's going on everywhere?" Celeste asked.
"If you want the truth, I think it's the end of the fucking world," he said. "I think Hell's had its fair share of the damned and to punish us for being so shitty it's sending them back." Nathan said brandishing his knife.
"You really believe that?" Celeste asked, she could see in his eyes that he did.
"I'm not a religious man, but if you can give me a scientific reason, actually any other reason behind what we saw in that café back there I'd like to hear it."
"I can't." Celeste said solemnly, she wished she could but there wasn't anything she could say to put Nathan's theory to rest. She almost believed it herself.
