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 Ten: A Colossal Blast
Agonising seconds drifted passed as Lisa, Celeste and Nathan waited in the ambulance. The smell of disinfectant made the air stale; it was a smell that Lisa had grown accustomed to in the bleak hospital corridors where she had worked. She wouldn't miss those corridors; they had always been filled with the haunted faces of the sick and dying. To nurse the sick better was one thing but Lisa had seen two lifetimes worth of suffering and if the hospital hadn't have crumbled to the ground it would eventually have been her.
A loud smash followed by a flash burst from the bar doorway, then another followed by a figure sprinting out of the bar.
"Open the doors!" Lisa called back to Nathan, he quickly obeyed and kicked the back doors open, the stranger leapt inside throwing the doors behind him. It wasn't Mike. The man was covered in blood, a scarf wrapped around his face below his eyes masked his expression but the way his eyes shot around the ambulance and at the faces around him told the others all hope was lost for Mike.
"Where's Mike?" Lisa shouted at the man who sat up and quickly pulled the scarf away from his face. He was young but as he sat up Celeste had noticed his uniform, he was an officer for the Raccoon Police Department, a cop.
"There was too many." The man said flustered, wiping blood from his brow.
"No." Lisa felt her heart drop into her stomach, tilting her head down with it. Celeste and Nathan traded shocked glances; 'What? He'd been inside a matter of seconds and that's it? Now he's not coming back?' their faces had said.
"I couldn't." The man looked at all three of them but each of them wore the same vacant, shocked visage. Lisa recognized his voice suddenly from the radio broadcast, anger enveloped her. This man had called them, he had brought them to him and in return of saving his life they had lost one, they had lost Mike.
The reality of the situation was almost upon them when a glowing light emerged from the bar.
"Mike!" Lisa shouted, she opened her door and dropped out of the ambulance.
Sure enough there was Mike, limping backwards away from the doorway, in his hand was a bottle of whisky, newspaper stuffed into its neck, Mike had lit it and was holding it out in front of him, ready to throw it back into the bar.
"Get back into the ambulance, quick! Start the engine!" Mike yelled. Lisa spun around and did as he said before leaning over and throwing the passenger seat door open.
With the engine ready and a moment for Mike to get the timing right he threw the bottle with all his might, it span into the bar and exploded into a ball of flames. As he turned to run away one of the dogs leapt from the doorway doused in flames. It yelped and growled rabidly before making chase at Mike, an angry hell hound which despite being ablaze was bent on catching him.
Mike threw himself into the ambulance as it began to move.
"Everyone hold on!" Mike shouted. The group braced themselves as a colossal blast rocked the entire street. For a split second it was daytime, the street had broken into light revealing the true destruction it had suffered before being yanked back into the darkness. The sound itself had forced everyone to fold over, clamping their heads, their hands over their ears.
The ambulance swerved erratically as rubble rained over it until one larger piece the size of a large brick embedded itself into the windscreen. Lisa hit the breaks and covered her head incase any pieces fell through the hole in the roof above her.
The sound of crashing debris and twisting metal roared from the street behind them. Nathan cautiously opened one of the back doors as the others reformed their bearings. Several car alarms wailed around them. The entire bar was gone, the two buildings adjacent to it had partially collapsed and the road had been rendered useless by the rubble that littered it. Fire had engulfed the area and a burning stream shot out of the small mountain of ruin from what must have been a gas pipe.
"Whoa." Nathan looked in disbelief; he hadn't imagined hell to look much different.
"We thought you were dead… You okay?" Lisa asked Mike, he was wincing, holding his leg.
"Yeah, I'm not sure how, but yeah I'm alright." The pair looked back at the others and at their new passenger.
"You're from the R.P.D?" Celeste asked.
"Yeah. Not that it means anything now though, the whole place got taken over." The man said, wrapping his scarf around his hand.
"Taken over?" Lisa asked.
"It's full of those crazies, you must've seen them. When I got out they'd pretty much cleared the precinct." His voice shook, not the voice any of the others had expected to hear from someone wearing the uniform. The Raccoon Police Department was predominantly male, they played darts, drank at The Raccoon together and traded stories of corruption but this guy didn't fit the bill somehow.
"He's just a kid," Celeste thought "Younger than me and he's scared to death."
"So what's your name, kid?" Mike asked, positioning his leg so that it didn't hurt so much. How Mike had managed to stay so upbeat after what had happened was a wonder to the others.
"Jake." The young officer said distracted as he looked over his shoulder and at the blazing remains of the bar.
"Were there other people with you?" Celeste asked. She would have asked if he was all right, but it was more than clear he wasn't.
"No. There was a bunch of us, at the precinct. It was our first day," Jake's face flickered as the fire raged in the street; his glazed eyes took in the flames and bellowing smoke as they swept over the rubble, carried by the breeze. Celeste leant over and pulled the doors shut.
"There was so many of us, new recruits I mean, how can any of us have been ready for this? We only just started…" Jake said turning to the others. "And then out of nowhere everything just…" A look of pure confusion overcame his face. The others waited but Jake didn't continue.
"Everything just what?" Celeste pushed.
"Everything just… went crazy. People were attacking, biting each other." He looked up at her, his dark and watering eyes were suddenly dull, they looked taunted and broken by the horror he had seen, Celeste could feel it just looking back into them.
There was a pause as the others tried to imagine it. They pictured more of the frenzied, furious people like the woman they had tried to kill in the café. They pictured them taking over the entire Raccoon Police Department, lunging and tearing at people.
"Oh my God." Celeste whispered to herself.
"At the hospital they'd been getting lots of attacks, people with bites in A&E. I remember thinking how lucky it was they'd hired all these new nurses and medics... we'd never have been able to cope." Lisa said.
"It's like they knew, like they were preparing for it." Nathan said. Celeste caught the anger in his eyes, she knew exactly what he was thinking; "Someone knew and didn't warn us. Someone's to blame for what's happened to Amanda."
"Lisa, you said this whole thing could be some kind of mass-epidemic, right?" Celeste asked.
"Yeah. It would make sense." Lisa nodded.
"Well what about some kind of disease?"
"Like rabies?" Mike asked
"It's possible I guess, it could be a virus like rabies. The thing is, with modern day prophylaxis you just don't get outbreaks that big, not from anything I've ever heard of, and not here, not in a city like Raccoon."
"I don't wanna be here anymore." Jake said, he was clearly uncomfortable, rubbing the drying, sticky blood from his hands onto his trousers.
"This is what I keep saying. Can we just go?" Nathan urged.
"And don't take the interstate." Jake suddenly added.
"Why not?" Lisa asked.
"Coz about ten thousand people had the same idea. We had these reports coming in… Just trust me on this, we can't go."
"We're never going to get out of here." Celeste thought to herself.
"Then we cut through the suburbs," Lisa leant over at the dials that littered the dashboard. "This thing's running out of gas, we need to sort that out first." The needle she was watching wavered, occasionally brushing the red 'empty', compromising their sense of security the ambulance provided.
"Hold on, why are we going to suburbs?" Nathan asked.
"There'll be less people for starters. It'll be more open, safer than it is here and if we get to the Tram Link we can follow the tracks straight to Arcley."
"Yeah but less people means less chance of finding help." Mike added.
"That's why we should think of getting somewhere safe, somewhere like Arcley. We can hold out in the suburbs for a while and then worry about finding help," Lisa said starting the engine. "We don't know the situation yet, for all we know Arcley could be worse than this. It's all we can do, unless someone has a better idea?"
"Alright, let's go," Nathan said, happy about the way Lisa had taken a firm hand in deciding what they should do next. He turned to Celeste and for just a second he could have sworn he'd seen Amanda in her place, sitting alone in the corner of the ambulance like she was waiting for something, for him to come and find her.
"It'll be over soon." Celeste reassured him. She sat next to him as the ambulance made its way towards the edge of the city. Neither of them knew just how wrong she had been; their nightmare was far from over, in fact, it had only just begun.
