Chapter 3: Hell Freezing Over

Later that same night, on an early moonlit full eclipse of the city, just as the virus continued to loom across Raccoon City...

Raccoon City became bound to disaster, leaving each of it's victims at bay. It seems word has been spreading much faster than the virus itself. Through televisions, pagers, cellular phones, handheld and ventilation systems worldwide, human civilization began to get a mere taste of the tragedy which was painstakingly at hand, too soon to be sound. Even so, it's rate of evolution became coarse and it's destruction imminent. One would bow to believe otherwise, however...

Inside of a random household residence.

"Breaking news," a news reporter implied. "today inside downtown Raccoon City."
"One calls it a nuclear strike."
"No one can dare explain the massive outbreak which helped claim the lives of many innocents today."
"It was Umbrella's first nuclear strike since the foreclosure of the first major Umbrella Headquarters in 2000."
"While no further evidence has been found, it is rest assured that no one is indeed safe."
"We suggest that you remain indoors, unplug any electrical devices from outlets including televisions, and bbbbebebebe...bbbbeeee..."

A huge surge of static let out, and the TV's audio started going haywire.

"On sspecial alerrrrrrrrttt..."

ZZZZ...

And then a message was left on that very television and on that very same channel, which self-implied itself with an unsubtle message attached. The Umbrella logo was portrayed somewhere high above it on their screen.

"This has been a presentation of the Umbrella Corporation."

At that same moment, as many as five people were dropped and left dead in that very room. Such was a deeply profound mystery as to who or what was deemed responsible, but rest assured, Umbrella's already lengthy hit count was upped five from point of origin to the focal point of outrageous disaster.

Moments later...

A civilian walked through the door, supposedly breeching the line of immense terror which awaited her inside this very place. It was a warm welcoming of imminent disaster, starting and soon ending with her. She walked in, and came to find not an almost-complete family watching television together, but numerous souls which soon belonged to the Dead in what was to become an Undead resurrection. She anticipated the forthcoming with her mind as she continued to look around her, seeing few people lying around before an ominous message encrypted onto the television set, written purely in stone, and just as she heard the sounds of a paw scraping against the nearby bathroom door, which had been closed to her dismay...

"Guys...," she began to perponder. "...guys?"

Then she was the door open with her very eyes. It wasn't he suspicion which killed her ingenuity, but the suspicion which lay behind the door itself...

...a zombie dog. Once her own, now someone else's, namely Umbrella's.

It came running after her, in the wake of the night. A single rush of adrenaline sped her into running the o other way, leaving her panting with fright along the way. Frightening and fearful was all that compelled her notion-wise along the way, the way which was paved by a dozen more zombies as she proceeded forth. She continued running—as fast as her young-but-vastly-aging legs would permit—straight forward. Her path lay bombarded with a kitchen crawling with zombies, straight ahead, their moans getting the best of her internal remedy from somewhere deep inside, that and the zombie dog chasing her tail. To the left of her, a pair of staircases, one leading upstairs to her bedroom—which w as deemed to be crawling with suspicious activity from inside somewhere not far up—and one leading downstairs to their basement, one just as danger-filled as up. She chose to go up, having but a split seconds timing to make the decision before becoming a zombie snack, that or a zombie dog's warm meal, her's. Nevertheless, the dog's path of disaster led her upstairs in a heartbeat, barely beating her "follower" by as much—or as little—as a single foot by the time she reached the stack of double doors leading into her bedroom to what may be lurking inside, as they were opened, and the immediately sealed thereafterwards...

Just in front of her, there was a bed. A water bed, which was leaking it's unusual pours of blood from underneath the mattress in some way, shape, or form. Bestowed upon it were two corpses, each of the opposite sex, one of which struck her more than the deafening moment which had already been at hand. Her husband-turned zombie, piled on top of another helpless corpse sure to be as such, a woman. Like the flow of immense timing, she had never since suspected such... her own husband, even in death, had been cheating on her. She had been left with one tainted corpse and one pregnant one, sure to give Undead birth in any waking second now, it seemed. She couldn't help but address her emotional linguity at the site of all of this, wondering as if there ever was a cure, which seemingly there wasn't.

"Thomas?" she asked in fright. "Thomas? Is everything alright?"

Thomas, her "husband," responded back with little more than a series of senseless moans, allowing for the "newborn baby' to come out of the so-called "Mother." Suddenly, something could be heard kicking the pregnant corpse's belly, fighting to get out... what she found afterwards disgusted her beyond any stretch of the imagination as well as compress her will into a state of pure shock.

After living in a completely undesired moment's worth of agony, the baby came out, smothered in it's own blood, jeered to a motionally-ill sophisticated green color, yet not remaining young and newborn quite for long. To her dismay, that was not her child, not like she had hoped for. Even more so to her dismay than aforementioned above, it started an immediate growth spurt, growing all on it's own in second's timing. It's flesh continually widened as it continued to grow until it could do so no more. She was seeing a fully-grown zombie, walking on it's own, in second's timing. The rate of evolution favored against her survival as she hurried back k out towards the bathroom, closing and locking it to stay secure... or was she really?

From inside, she heard something. Something that would normally sound casual, but not in such unprofound of times. It was the sound of the shower running, so audibly-sound as to close out any opposing sound or figure in sight, or out of sight, one or the other.

Nonetheless, she simply ignored it, and headed further out towards the sink with a row of drawers stacked underneath. A hand reached from behind the curtain and out at her, corpsied to the bone, but that's all that was seen r felt of it... for the moment.

She unraveled the middle drawer, and cocked a hand pistol wrapped in spider-webs, not help but noticing a small spider crawling around from within the drawer at her disposal. She closed it tight just as soon as her right index finger was wrapped tightly around the trigger, baged in silver.

Just then, she was befaced with the full-frontal night creature herself as it began making it's way out of the shower; still running, clotheless and naked from head to toe.

Her sister, visiting for the summer she was, not so much any more that she opened fire upon her the second she heard her moaning plea. A single .9 mm round had been emptied into her skull. Lying heedless and bloodied from her skull on downwards she presented, her mouth laying open as well as her mutant tongue, sticking out of it's salival inheritance. One shot, one kill, it clearly had been...

It had been that very moment in which she feared not but fear itself, that and her own danger which lay straight ahead of her. She proceeded to open the door, to find the "newborn baby" standing and staggering right close to her face, reaching it's arms at her, crippled to the bone. She fired once again the instant she saw it open it's slimy mouth at her in an awful stench, in the usualest of spots, notably the head area. Same result, different zombie.

She resumed firmly out the door and, with the gun in hand, pointed it towards her "ex" husband, and fired from it, clean at his head. A nice mess of blood stained the bed sheets in thick pools of slimy goodness. His girlfriend, needless to say, was already dead, it's newborn taking her place.

She walked slowly towards the pair of clocked bedroom doors, ready to make her hazardous way through them when dueling anxiety began to rear it's ugly head in. She heard the zombie dog continually scrape it's paws against the two doors from the outside, as well as his barking, barking it's humble, maniacle zombie hound growl. She proceeded back towards the nearest closest the second she watched it's shadow go by from outside, revealed was a mere stint of it from the crease area located at the very bottom. She hurried towards the closet several feet behind her and was rather slow and firm to open the door. She came cautiously towards it and, without a shadow of a doubt, opened it. Inside, she found two weapons: an axe, and...

...a zombie. She heard it's grimacing moans just as she began to pick up her axe, lying on top of a clothes drawer sealed up from inside. She turned, and saw a pair of near-skeletal hands grab her. She merely grabbed the axe and, just as she grabbed a hold of it, sliced it with it. She saw the blade dive straight through the thing's head, in the skull, then watched it fall over and die the instant she released the axe from it's brain. A spot of blood the size of one's head was imprinted into the side of the wall which it lay bent over onto.

She then hurried out the room, and continued by swiping the dog straight square in the mouth the instant it lept up at her with it's slimy mouth hanging wide open. A mere segment of a decapitated mouth piece lay lying on the floor, in a bloody mess. She began to pull it out seconds prior, and heard something ravenous coming from up above through the attic... something moaning.

Zombies. More of them. Lots more. The attic, though sealed shut at this point, contained even more evidenced activity inside of it. Through the consistent knocking and banging coming from the inside of it, she knew that danger lay ahead of her. That is...

...until the door collapsed and fell on her at the most random of times. A batch of zombies came diving out of it as one began crawling over to her. She began working her way out of there by crawling backwards, using both hands as leverage. Just as she crawled her way out, she looked back to notice that she was being surrounded. Straight ahead, there was a bunch of zombies crawling towards her coming from the attic. Behind her, there was yet another bunch, staggering up the stairs towards her. But, from where she was, there was still one step left to take.

Past the rail. She hurried back onto her feet, and as she had done so, she took the breathtaking approach out. She jumped over the rail, struggling to land safely on both feet—rather, on one knee—but towards her means of escape, and her only one at that.

...in the basement. Through limping, she hurried down stairs away from all the zombie action taking place as fast as her wounded knees could take her. Little was she aware of the great dangers that awaited her down below...

The same dangers. She came down, bypassing a computer with an ominous message inscribed onto it:

If you are reading this, you are already Dead.

Somewhere up above it on the screen lay an even more frightening imagine than even it. It consisted of a largely-mutated zombie face tinted in brown, showing no eyeballs but rather, a pair of eye sockets secreted in blood. Both cheeks, left and right, contained a bloody, veiny hole with an oversized ripple mark through each one, with a large tarantula figure laying inside of it, barely fitting inside. But throughout this message, past the screen implementing it, was a child who looked no older than six or perhaps seven, laying bent over and motionless inside the seat in front of the monitor. This was Tobey, her youngest son, doomed to fall prey to yet another one of Umbrella's cheap scandals.

"Tobey?" she began to question in pure psych. "Tobey? Are you al--?"

But before she could finish her sentence, something cut her off, something volatile and discreet as to terrorize her mental strength and well-being. In the creased area next to the stair case where several dog cages, each of which contained a zombie dog inside, barking and howling about, striving for jail break. But that wasn't the worst of her troubles. No, not by a longshot. Just ahead in front of her, before her own two green eyes, there lay de-ja vu all over again. She sought out a television set carrying the same message as the one witnessed one floor up it. Same message, different people.

Different victims. When, just as she began to notice, to her own dismay, that one helpless victim who had sold his soul to the Devil—or rather, to Umbrella—began to look up at her in a senseless rampage of moans, and even looking past the same moans and lifeless figures coming down the stairs, following her down and seeking her presence, she came into sudden realization that each of the cells on the pet cages not only loosened, but broke free, with the dogs letting loose and running wildly at her. Yet there was still one more path to take, even if it meant going outside to meet many more of them: the side door. She hurried towards it and locked the monsters inside, barely beating them to it.

But upon her arrival, she was faced with not a series, but a legion of flesh-eating, thoroughbred zombies lurking throughout her own back yard. Danger was there to make her path an uneasy and much less-traveled one, yet she hurried onward through the backyard and into the forest, careless as to the Dead walk creeping around her every side. The only way safe was somewhere far out ahead of her, somewhere deep out of harm's way, which she gladly took, just knowing there would be a large mess of zombies following close by.

She literally ran past them, at a rather adolescent pace, but still out of harm's way. She was steeping through a sea of green plants along both edges to get to the woods portion of it, which contained yet even more Dead at quantities too large to count. But they were rather far-spread, which gave her the edge. Throughout the distance, from 50 or so feet out, there lay an underground mort used for shelter. Ever impatiently, she went to it, beating out the audible and consistent moans and army of corpses striking to terrorize her, a senseless human with fresh layers of skin tasty enough to feast upon.

She hurried to open up the wooden double doors—left unlocked—and get inside. Granted, it was rather dark with not a single source of light in hand to guide her through it. The weak shelter failed in any which attempt to close out the seemingly lifelong sounds of zombies moaning from outside, ensuring only certainty that one would just so happen to follower her inside of it. The outer barrier left by the doors was weak; mere wood, and the insides of the shelter was larger than it appeared to be, though appearances were every bit as deceiving to her as the intolerable situation at hand itself. Nonetheless, she slowly crawled backwards, silent and holding her own breath as to keep oneself from speaking at the most improper of times, until suddenly, she heard something, and it was coming from inside the shelter.

Vigilante. It had been out there, sitting in wait for her, inside the shelter. The second she heard it's licking manner, she heard not much else. She didn't have much else to hear... she didn't have time. She screamed her last scream after it began to wrap it's mandibles gently around her neck, sweat and adrenaline slowly rushing down her cheeks as she sat in sheer horror at the barely-visible creature lying just in front of her. Seconds passed as the creature was finishing accompanying it's latest victim, and then gunned in for the kill: he ate her. Alive. And that, is where the screaming had sufficed, not that it helped any. Needless to say, it was the first of many victims for the new Bio-engineered weapon of destruction from Umbrella, Vigilante.