AN: Pulp. Pure pulp. There is no other way to describe a story of this magnitude. Pulp is fun to write, but hard, too. For within pulp, you also need a storyline to weave in. Without a strong plot, pulp is nothing. Well, I've got a storyline, and the pulp is prepared. Enjoy this RE fiction, in all its pulpy goodness. Apologies for the shortness of the previous chapter.
I do not own the Resident Evil series, or its characters in any way at all. Contains pervasive strong violence and language, and adult situations. Rated M.
Resident Evil: Depredation
Chapter one: A Broken Jar
John hit the streets of Raccoon City with a cocky stride. The wet stones under his feet sloshed as he made his way across the busy road. Cars honked and hollered at the cop as he walked right in front of them, sending them to a screeching halt, but he just fingered them and kept on his way.
As he walked onto the opposite sidewalk and down toward the PD, he noticed a black man beating the living crap out of another man. The black man was completely bald, and he was kneeling on the ground, socking out the other guy with a bloody fist. John stopped, and tapped the black man on the shoulder.
"What the fuck do you –" began the guy, then he saw who it was, and said "Johnny boy! Where've you been? Isn't it kind of late?"
"Not at all, I slept in this morning. Who's this shithead, here?" John asked, gesturing at the man who's face was splattered with blood and heavily bruised by his fist.
"This scum sucking little shit's been stalkin' my girlfriend! I found him a few hours ago."
John laughed, and walked over to the pitiful, crumpled heap that way laying on the sidewalk, groaning in pain. "Have you been stalking his girlfriend?" questioned John. The man looked up at him with two puffy, black eyes and said "fuck off, you prick, this don't concern you."
John just smiled, then kicked him in the stomach. The man coughed up blood, and moaned louder.
"Here, help me out, will ya?" said the black man, tossing John a metal pipe. He nodded, and both men starting pounding on the piece of trash as hard as they could. After several minutes, when the ground around them was splattered in blood, and the man was crying, the black man said "damn, you are one bad cop, you know that?"
"I don't give a shit, Ayden!" laughed John, tossing the pipe back to him. "you know I've always been like this. All these stalking fucks need to be taught a lesson. Hey, asshole!"
The battered man looked up at John, his teeth stained with his own blood.
"Take a run home, why don't you. And if I ever catch you stalking anyone again, you're gonna wake up without a dick."
The man tried getting up, but fell flat on his face. He stumbled to his feet, and staggered off down a nearby alleyway, screaming angrily. John shook his head, and turned back to Ayden.
"This is what I do," he said with a shrug. Ayden grinned, and pulled out a magnum from his belt. He aimed it at the guy running away from them down a dirty alley between the two buildings, and shot him in the leg. The bastard cried out in pain and he collapsed against the wall to his right, breathing hard. Ayden pocketed the magnum, and turned back to John. "And it's what I do," he replied.
John smiled devilishly, and said "I could have your ass thrown in jail for shootin' someone, ya know that?"
Ayden just shook his head, laughing. "Uh huh. Cops are always people to get on my ass. Not you, man!" He clapped John on the shoulder, and John did the same.
"You'll always be my favorite criminal," said John. "I gotta get my own ass over to the PD though, before the captain gets pissed. I'll catch you later."
As John walked away down the street, wiping droplets of blood off his arms, he heard Ayden calling after him "I'm whoopin' yo ass tonight, motherfucker!"
John grinned to himself. He stuck up his middle finger over his shoulder, and kept walking. Several people around him shook their heads in disapproval, but he didn't care. He just ignored them, as he always did.
It was less than twenty minutes later that John was sitting in the passengers seat of an old ford with the large words POLICE decaled on both sides. His partner Steve was driving it full speed out of the RCPD and onto the hard black streets of Raccoon. The police lights were flashing from the top of the car, and the high pitched wail was echoing across the building walls loudly, warning drivers in front of them to get the hell out of the way.
"Can you drive this thing?" questioned John. Steve brushed his curly blond hair out of his eyes and grinned devilishly at him.
"You kidding? If we're going to beat the shit out of someone, I can drive anything."
John watched as people flattened themselves up against the building walls fearfully, the Police cars were known to swerve off the road when they were in a hurry, and run over people. The cars in front of them cleared to the side, and Steve floored the car to the max. They shot down the road at high speeds, and he yanked the emergency break, expertly turning the steering wheel coolly. The car screeched as it turned to the right, and drove down Granada Ave.
"Where is the place?" asked John. "All I know is its on this street somewhere."
"Uhmmm …" began Steve, " … rrrright there."
On the left side of the street right before a right hand turn onto Jeremiah Street was a short, gray building made of oddly misshapen bricks of varying sizes. There were blood stains on the top windows, and a colt was sticking out from under the sill, firing multiple shots at people running in all directions on the opposite side of the street.
"Jesus fuck!" said Steve as he slammed on the brake. Five shots rattled off the hood and flew into more buildings to the side of them. "Get out of the god damn car!"
The two cops pushed out of the drivers door and crouched behind the motionless car, cocking their own pistols threateningly. Distant gunshots were fired again, and the street just beside them unprotected by the car cover was punctured by the flying lead.
"Wait for the reload," said Steve very quietly in John's ear. The bullets rattled onto the street again three more times, then went silent. They waited one more second …
"Go! Go! GO!" shouted John, giving Steve a shove in the back. They rushed out from behind the car and sprinted full out across the street to the base of the building, putting their backs against the dirty wall. They glared up at the window, and saw the barrel poke out again.
After a split second, more bullets fired at random.
"God damn son of a bitch …" growled Steve. "Through the front door, it's the only way."
They moved along the wall, past several cracked windows, the tendrils icing up to the very top. Blood was caked on the inside.
"Door," said John. Steve clutched his gun in both hands, and kicked the door in, making a dry cracking sound as it gave away to the back of his sole. Light spilled into the dusty building room. It looked like it hadn't been touched in years, a fine layer of dust was coated everywhere. There were three bodies piled up in a corner, lying in a pool of blood. They deduced that they were where the gore on the windows was from. They all had bullet holes rimed with dark blood through their chests. Multiple holes. The smell was corrosive and disgusting, but the two cops ignored the horrid site and walked further into the building, their guns up.
"Should we make a lot of noise or play it stealthy?" whispered Steve to John as they walked back to back past the bodies toward a door that most likely led up to the level where the culprit was shooting from the window.
"What the hell do you think we're doing right now?" said John in response. Steve said no more, only nodded. "Well then the door kick probably wasn't a good idea," he said.
John grasped the rusted door handle and yanked it hard. The door creaked open, revealing three flights of stairs. "Jackpot. We got him, baby," he said to Steve, who was still looking at the bodies with a grimace.
Up the stairs they went, forcing their footsteps quiet in the layer of dust. They saw other footprints leading up as well … their guess was they were the criminals. Good guess. Didn't make things any easier.
The door at the top of the third landing was ajar, and unmoving. It led to a hallway which was about ten feet long and extremely cramped in width. They stared down the dirty hallway, and saw the window where the man had been shooting at them from. Nobody appeared to be in the room, but one side of the room they couldn't see, and since there were no other rooms in the building, they guessed that he was hiding right beside the door in wait.
Side by side, both cops hurried down the hall, and were about to aim their pistols into the doorway, when a hand flashed out, a heavily ringed hand that had hairy knuckles and dark skin. It seized Steve by the collar and yanked him into the room. Steve, always one to think quick, tossed his gun up as the hand yanked him into the room, and John caught it in his free hand. He slammed his back up against the wall, knowing he was probably only two feet from the piece of shit who was trying to kill the inhabitants of Raccoon City. A mindless murderer. No surprise, but nothing different than a normal days work.
Steve felt the cold barrel of a colt press up against his temple roughly, and the click of a hammer snap him to attention. There was an unpleasantly hairy arm wrapped around his throat. He smiled wryly, and looked up into the face of his nabber. The culprit wore a drooped fisherman's hat that fell over his eyes. He looked to have a fat, droopy face like a bloodhound, with scraggly brown hair. His mouth was curved in a frown, and he had yellow teeth. Steve had to stop himself from laughing. A classic villain.
"How's it hangin' you sack 'a shit?" grinned Steve. The fisherman shook him, which clearly told him to shut the fuck up. The gun pressed harder to his head.
"Looks to me like we've got ourselves a situation," said John calmly to the fisherman shooter. "And it looks like there's a very simple way to resolve it. Either hand over Steve, or I'll pump your eyes and mouth full of lead."
"You ain't gonna shoot you cop fuck," yelled the fisherman. "You ain't lettin' this son of a bitch partner of yours die! I got 'im, now you gotta listen to me!" His voice was scratchy and annoying to listen to.
"The hell d'you mean, dickweed? Give me back the cop or I'll blow your fuckin' head off! It's as simple as that!" yelled John back.
"Man, John, you gotta be so combative?" whined Steve in a mock worried voice. "He might actually be serious."
The fisherman grew angry that nobody was taking him seriously, and he shook Steve harder. Steve just laughed.
"A bullet in your head will really make it hard to fuck your husband tonight!" said John, trying not to let his smile sound in his voice. He fired a round into the room as a warning, which put a hole in the dirty window that the fisherman had been shooting out of.
"I'm gonna kill this piece of trash!" yelled the fisherman seriously, jostling Steve roughly. "He's gonna have his face blown wide open before you can take one step into here!"
"A little reminder honey," said Steve, "you have the gun pointed at the side of my head, not my face. Although if you think my ear is an eye, then by all means, why don't you look at both walls and tell me which is dirtier."
"Fuck off!" screamed the guy in pure rage. "I'm not playing games here! Drop the gun, you piece 'a shit cop!"
"Shoot my partner, see what I do!" screamed John. He fired two shots into the room. "Blow his fuckin' head off! I'll splatter your shit everywhere across this building, and your husband will have to stand trial for you killin' a cop."
"I don't have a husband!" roared the fisherman.
"Your damn right. If you shoot Steve you won't even have a life, asshat."
"I got a gun to your partners head," laughed the fisherman with a touch of insanity ringing in his voice. "And you're gonna watch his brains fly everywhere when I pop a shot through his face."
"Head," corrected Steve again.
"SHUT UP!" screamed the fisherman. "The point is I got a gun and this gun has a bullet, and guess who's gonna get it!"
"You are," muttered Steve calmly. Before the fisherman knew what was happening, Steve twisted his arm around, punched the elbow up, snapping it completely, and kicked him down, taking the colt from him easily. The fisherman was strangely resilient, however. He threw a fist into Steve's stomach before he could shoot, and ran past him. John dove forward into the room, and fired two shots. Impossibly, both missed by the width of a wire, and hit the walls on both sides of the running culprit. Before the two cops could realize what he was about to do, the fisherman launched himself into the air and crashed out of the window, shattering it to pieces. They ran to the destroyed window and watched him sail downwards, and roll to break his fall. Somehow he was still alive with a broken arm and weak legs from his fall.
"Come on, he's goin' for a car!" said Steve. The two cops sprinted from the room, and down through the building, bursting out the front door. They saw the fisherman jumping through the window of his car and starting up the engine about twenty feet away.
"COME ON!" shouted John, pulling Steve over to their car. They got inside quickly, and as Steve started it up quickly, John spoke into the radio beside his seat, "culprit driving black suburban, headed down Granada Ave, turning now onto Jeremiah Street."
Steve yanked the clutch and floored it after the fleeing fisherman's black car.
They sailed incredibly fast down Jeremiah Street with the cop lights blaring and the siren wailing. It only took a few minutes for the chopper to appear above them, and shine the lights down on the fisherman's car. John loaded a fresh clip into his pistol and cocked it. "I'm shootin'," he announced, then unrolled his window and aimed his pistol out into the wind.
Firing bullets fast isn't a good idea. Throwing them away like trash will get you nowhere unless you have a perfect shot and want that person to be turned into a flapjack. Take time, aim straight. "Look the Devil in the eye." Those words from the movie Sin City flashed through John's mind as he looked down the barrel. He dimly saw the back of the fisherman's head, and lined up the shot expertly, keeping his arm stiff. The fisherman was shooting bullets out of his car at random citizens.
Look the Devil in the eye. Take your time …
He shot.
The bullet whizzed through the air, and crashed through the back window, sailing right into the back of the fisherman's head. He jerked forward, blood and brains splattered the windshield. The car swerved and rammed into a building, flipping violently down the sidewalk. Pedestrians dove out of the way, screaming in utter terror as the rampaging car emptied the last of its will into the final flips.
It slid to a halt on the sidewalk, making a loud screeching sound that sent up sparks on all sides, now nothing more than a pile of steaming, bloodstained metal with mushed up human bones and bowels inside.
Frantic whispers echoed through the radio as Steve rode up alongside the complete wreckage. He gazed, wide eyed at the massive junk heap, and gasped out one final, profound, "nice shot, baby."
Claire Redfield stared through her tiny spectacles and a microscope at a tiny parasite, bright green and wriggling at 100K zoomed in. It was miniscule, smaller than any virus she had ever seen, and more bizarre, too. And she had it clasped between two pieces of glass. She had studied its genetic structure, and found nothing but the most powerful virus she had ever seen. And yet it seemed so simple … and invisible menace. If ever it were released … well, she preferred not to think about it. Her brown hair was hanging down over the sides of her face like a curtain, averting her gaze from anything else in her lab apart from the microscope. She watched the virus wriggle again, its tiny tail fluttering. A smile tugged at her lips, despite the fact that it was a complete menace to humankind.
A knock startled her, and she leapt up, hurriedly sliding the case containing the small virus off of the microscope. "C-come in!" she stuttered. The door to her lab opened, and in walked John. She smiled in relief, and gently set the virus case back on the slide.
"Hey baby," he said, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close. "I like you with glasses on." She laughed, and they kissed.
When they broke apart, she said "I've been looking more into it, but I still don't see anything different, aside from complete parasitic sickness packed into every single molecule," she informed him. He stood next to her, holding her hand, and asked "what about its activity? Anything new or different, or unusual?"
"Yes," she replied with a slight frown. "It seems sort of … restless. Like it wants to get free. I don't think it likes being trapped.
"Claire, honey," John said gently, "you're talking about a virus … having feelings."
She chuckled as she realized that he was right. She shook her head, and looked up at her boyfriend lovingly. "Well maybe I'm just feeling a bit intimidated. It looks powerful."
"You're powerful," he said reassuringly. "and incredibly smart, and beautiful, and sexy, and I think that you can outsmart it. It looks like we're in no danger as long as its trapped."
Claire took the case off of the slide, shut the microscope light off, and set it back in the jar on the table, screwing the cap shut tightly. "I believe you," she said. "I think we're safe for the moment."
She pulled John close to her, and rubbed his arms comfortingly. They leaned in close, and locked lips again. They stood there, kissing quietly, and eventually it morphed into open mouth. She slid her hands up his back and grasped his shoulders, giggling as he picked her up off the floor very slightly.
They continued kissing passionately, and slowly moved toward the table with the jar containing the virus on it, not noticing where they were going. They were too immersed in each others tongues to care.
And that's when it happened. The first step in the cycle of horror that would begin the nightmare, the terror, the pure horror. And all it took, was a simple bump against the table.
The jar rattled, and slowly tipped, as though tentative. It fell onto its side, rolled off the table, and smashed open on the floor next to Claire and John's feet. They broke apart, still holding each other, and looked down.
The case that the virus was in had slipped apart.
"SHIT!" yelled John, diving away from the jar, and picking Claire up in his arms. He rushed out of the door, and pulled it shut behind him. They stood in Claire's kitchen, staring at the door in horror.
"Get something to cover up the floor opening," cried Claire desperately. John seized a nearby chair and set it down over the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor.
"Fuck," whispered John, running his hands through his hair. "It's loose. We have it contained in that room for now. We gotta go get some medical people to clean it up, or it will spread through Raccoon City!"
Claire was charged up with adrenaline like John, and though she was extremely worried also, she was still slightly disappointed that they had to stop making out. It had looked to her like a night full of passionate love making.
"Lets go over to your place," she said desperately. "I gotta collect myself."
"No problem, I do too," said John. He put his arms around her, hugging her tightly. They both walked out of the apartment, shutting the door behind them, breathing hard.
They were too flustered to notice, however, that the door remained unlocked.
John emptied a bucket of water over Claire's naked body in a desperate attempt to clean her. She brushed her hair out of her eyes, and scrubbed herself profusely in front of the bathroom mirror with a bar of soap. John had already finished cleaning himself, and was now pulling his clothes on in front of her.
"Do you think it spread before we got the door closed?" she asked as she rubbed the soap over her shoulders.
"Damn, I hope not," whispered John, pulling jeans on and grabbing a fresh shirt from a chair behind him. They had already put their other clothes in the washing machine. "I think we have a good chance of getting it in there before it got out, though. We just need to get someone to help us out with it –"
The phone rang. Claire turned to look at it. For some reason, it jolted them both. John picked it up, and pressed talk. "Hello?" he said tentatively.
"Hey, is this John?" asked the voice. He recognized it. It was Timothy Sanber, Claire's boss. He had forgotten that he was coming over to Claire's tonight to talk about scientific mumbo jumbo that John didn't understand.
"Yeah, its me. Hi, Tim," he said. Claire said "oh," softly, and went back to scrubbing her lower regions. "She came over here … uh, to talk."
"Oh, I see …" said Tim. "I don't suppose you could tell me why there was a chair in front of her lab door?"
John froze in fear. His eyes went wide, and he stared at Claire. She suddenly stopped cleaning herself, and looked at him back, not liking his stare.
"Uh, no, I don't know why …" responded John slowly. "Why … did you go in there!"
"Yeah, of course! There was a broken jar on the floor and everything! Did Claire accidentally knock something over?"
Panic flashed through John like nothing he had ever felt before while working for the RCPD. He suddenly shouted "did you touch the jar!"
"Yes! I picked it up to look at it! What the fuck is going on?" said Tim impatiently. "I'm on the way over in my car!"
"No, listen to me! Tim, you gotta get to your house and clean yourself off! You have to –"
There was a sudden choking noise. Tim suddenly stopped talking. It sounded as if he was gagging on something.
"Tim? TIM!" yelled John, his hands shaking in fear. "Tim, are you there?"
"Help me … I can't breathe …" Tim choked out in a raspy whisper. There was a screeching, as if someone had made a sharp turn, a smash of metal and the sound of shattering glass, and the phone went dead.
The dial tone buzzed in the cops ear.
John pressed end, and dropped the phone, falling into a chair with his hands on his head. Claire rushed over to him and cradled him. "Baby, what's wrong?" she said in fear.
"Tim …" whispered John, his eyes wild with terror. "He's been infected."