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The realization had hit them all hard. It might very well have been possible that they would never reach the city limits, and if they somehow did, be shot down or turned away by the military. But it had been nearly two full days since the outbreak; why had the government waited this long? Surely the red tape couldn't be slowing them down this much. No doubt they had seen what the virus did, how easily it was passed from one person to another. And even to some animals. Who knew what else? From what the survivors had observed, it was passed from one host through another by bodily fluids, most often blood. Once the next victim was contaminated, they would convert within a few minutes after their death. Other than that…they were running around blindly.
"We can't escape," said Yoko.
They were sitting at the edge of the Raccoon City park, their backside to the edge of the city hall building. For the moment, they were safe, even in the open area.
"We can't escape," she repeated. Jim looked at her, suddenly irritated.
"Shut the fuck up," he said, without anger or passion, just a matter-of-fact tone in his voice. Yoko looked at him, surprised. Jim stood up. "I don't wanna fuckin' hear that we're done! We're not! I ain't goin' down this fuckin' easy; not without a fight!" Jim spoke, his voice growing bolder with each word. Cindy couldn't help but look admiringly at Jim as he quickly paced back and forth, the little guy that was always so nervous and frightened, so pessimistic. Despite it all, he really would fight to the very end. She wanted to say something, something from her cheerleader days, when everything was simple and normal, when everything was warm and safe. The way things were supposed to be. Instead, Mark spoke.
"So what do you suggest?" asked Mark, a note of resignation in his voice. "At most, we got a day and half or so from dusk to reach the city limit, and even then…" his voice trailed off.
"We make the bastards pay!" yelled Jim. "We find out how the fuck all this happened, how it spread, and who's fault it is!"
"It's…Umbrella," said Yoko, finally. Everyone turned to look at her.
"How do you know that, Yoko?" She sat in silence. George grabbed her arm and asked again, harshness in his voice, bordering on anger. Cindy recognized it as frustration, something she hadn't seen in George until then.
"I don't know," she answered. "But I'm sure of it," she added, almost as an afterthought. She didn't seem as sure now as she had when she first made the bold accusation. Somehow though, it all made sense. Umbrella ran the whole damn city; it was the only bureaucracy powerful enough to have kept the government in the dark for this long with such a huge disaster on their hands. Could it be possible? A company that made everyday household goods…responsible for destroying a city, along with nearly everyone in it? No, thought Cindy. That isn't possible. There would be no reason, no sense in it.
Gunfire erupted on the other side of the wall. Not just a burst or two of handgun fire; rapid, automatic gunfire. They all looked at each other, frozen with surprise, before they began to move. Automatic weapons meant police…it meant help. Or at least Cindy hoped. Been doing a lot of that lately, she thought, as they rounded the corner to the front of the building.
More gunfire. And now, screaming. As they reached the main entrance of the doorway, Mark turned to the girls.
"Stay here," he commanded, before looking at the large door. "We don't know what's in there," he added, readying his shotgun.
"I'm not-," Cindy began, before George cut her off.
"Stay back, Cindy…we'll clear out whatever's in there," he said, looking at her with a cool assurance. "Please…just stay back," and then there was a genuine fear in his eyes, as if her being in any kind of danger was what truly caused him fear. She nodded.
"Man, I gotta go in too?" asked Jim, clicking the safety on his pistol. "Fuckin' A, bro," he said, before giving Mark the nod. With Mark leading the way, they burst through the door. A hastily half-built barricade slowed them down some, but with an extra push by the three men, the doors swung inward.
The main entrance hall was beyond gigantic. It had once been a lavishly decorated hall, but now its fine plaster walls were riddled with bullet holes and drenched in blood. Corpses lay spread out across the floor; policemen, women, and a few security guards. Two of the corpses were half buried under scattered pieces of the barricade; it seemed they had been trying to remove it in a hurry, which was rather strange considering the situation. The three men cautiously crept into the room, their eyes scouring everything.
From above them, on the catwalk, a man screamed. Not a death cry, but a battle cry of desperation. Then, more gunfire echoed throughout the huge hall. Over the din of it all, they heard a soft squishing sound. Then, nothing. The silence seemed to hum within the large room.
Mark, never taking his eyes off the catwalk ten yards above them, whispered to Jim and George.
"Move back," he said through clenched teeth.
"What?" Jim asked, a bit too loudly.
"Be qui-," he began to say.
"Oh, shit…!" someone yelled, lost in the abrupt mayhem.
The dark shape blurred over the railing above them before dropping down the thirty feet to land with a soft thud and face them. It was large, impossibly large as it stood on two wiry legs. The flesh was gray, lizard-like, almost scaly. Its eyes were of a cloudy sheen; there was no intelligence behind those eyes, only a cold, clear desire to hunt. The creature didn't bellow or roar as Mark hoped it would, to announce that it had seen them and intended to move in for the kill. Instead, it began to silently bound towards the men with giant strides across the marble floor. Its claws clicked across the surface like a ticking stopwatch, as if counting down the remaining seconds the three men had to live. Mark yelled at the others to scatter.
A loud explosion rang out behind the charging hunter, but it didn't hesitate as it lunged forward. Mark's bomb had just barely missed, but it had knocked the scaly beast off balance. He dodged to his right, but with his great bulk, his speed was no match for the swift monster. He felt a sudden, sharp tear along his left thigh, and needles of pain stabbing along the length of his leg. His large body crashed into a low wooden table, and more pain dug into his right shoulder. He turned to see the monster picking itself up, less than three meters from him, and he began to push himself backwards. His back bumped against that same wooden table; it was more heavyset than he had expected, and it still wouldn't budge. The hunter began its charge again.
This time, though, it crouched much lower to the ground, readying itself for a jump attack. From the other side of the room, Jim began to fire desperately, but only two of his six shots connected with the creature, neither enough to knock it over. The creature leapt up, high into the air and seemed to almost hang there for an eternity. Its shadow fell over Mark, and he knew he would die in the next moment. His eyes focused on the clean curve of its claws, but he could only think of his daughters, their laughter, and his wife, her touch.
Automatic gunfire screamed in his ears; George stood up on the other side of that damned table, and held a behemoth assault rifle, firing it unflinchingly into the monster as it descended towards Mark. The gray flesh seemed to disintegrate; the tumbler bullets ripping into its body relentlessly as the beast howled and fell backwards. And then it was over. Only the echoes of their heavy breathing, the wispy smoke from their gun barrels, and silence of the dead.
"Damn, Doc, you crazy mothafucka! You put Rambo to shame, dawg!" cried Jim, coming over to slap George on the shoulder. George's face was ashen and pale; he noticeably flinched from Jim's touch. "Where you learn to use one of those?" he asked, marveling at it.
"Uh…in college…ROTC," was all George could say. He still seemed to be in shock. But then the doctor in him kicked in. He rushed to Mark's side, setting down the still smoking rifle. "How badly did it get you?" he asked.
"Ahh, not so bad," Mark answered, trying to get up. A spurt of warm liquid sprayed down his leg, and for a moment he could have sworn he had pissed himself in fear. He wasn't that lucky; the spray of blood formed a growing puddle beneath him and he couldn't help but gasp, suddenly lightheaded.
"Oh my," said George, now calm and in control. "Jim, bring the girls in here…it's probably safer in here than out there," he ordered as he looked around the now calm hall. Jim nodded, and ran outside. "Mark…" he began.
"Give it to me straight doc," Mark panted. "I know it's bad; I'm no beginner at death," he said, his teeth gritted. George was taking off his jacket now, tearing at something while his lips moved, wordlessly. Surprisingly, the pain was slowly easing. Mark's vision began to get blurry and the world slipped away into darkness.
---
When he next opened his eyes, George was tying a tourniquet tightly around Mark's upper thigh. Cindy was crouching beside George, and the room was much darker than he remembered it. It seemed that they were in a storage closet of some sort. Mark opened his mouth to speak. Cindy pressed a cold, damp cloth to his forehead, her concerned smile full of warmth and health. In the dim glow of the dusk leaking through the sole window in the cramped room, Mark could have sworn she looked like an angel. The nurses in 'Nam hadn't been this pretty.
"Take it easy Mark," she said. "We're all safe, so no worries."
Mark looked around the room. Where were Jim and Yoko? Cindy took his hand into her own, and kept him from sitting up.
"It's ok," she said, "Jim and Yoko are foraging for supplies off the dea—out in the main hall." She looked relieved at having caught herself from saying her first thought.
Mark felt a sharp pain in his leg now. He grimaced; looking down, he was surprised to see George nearly covered in blood, his arms soaked a dark red. Had he been injured in the attack as well? Or maybe afterwards, while getting him to this shack? Looking again, Mark realized that George was sewing up his leg. He bit down hard, his body wracked with agony. He felt a warm liquid pass through his lips as he groaned, an almost creamy butter taste. Cindy poured more whiskey down his throat, the alcohol dripping down his chin on down his already sticky neck. He closed his eyes, and once again sank into the darkness.
---
Outside in the main hall, Jim moved cautiously from corpse to corpse, making sure that each had died at the claws of the hunter, and was devoid of zombie bites. The room was sweltering hot, and Jim longed to open just one window. Summertime without fans, air conditioning, or an open window…surely that was a vision of hell (not to mention the bloodthirsty monsters and walking undead). But Yoko had insisted on doing so; it made sense, with all the blood around them. Didn't want any zombies sniffing out the bodies, or even worse, another of those leaping freaks. Jim still couldn't believe how quickly it had moved, how it had shrugged off his handgun bullets like they were pebbles. Granted, he had missed with most of his shots, but still…despite the heat, he shivered.
He was glad there had been just one of those things for them to kill. He found another pair of hunter corpses on the upper balcony, punched full of countless bullet holes, oozing their guts all over the expensive oriental carpeting. The three creatures had killed nearly a dozen well-armed men. Eleven, to be exact…and possibly twelve, depending on if Mark would pull through. Of course he would make it though, Jim thought, cursing himself for doubting Mark for even a second. Mark was a stand up brother, the one guy Jim had counted on since the beginning, the one guy who hadn't let him down even once.
Yoko gasped. Jim spun around, his pistol drawn and ready to fire, when saw what she had: an elite soldier of some kind, literally sliced in half. His torso rested by his feet, buckets of blood and entrails surrounding him in a reflective, murky pool of life fluid.
"I really don't want to check that body for items," said Yoko.
"I don't blame you," Jim said. "How much stuff do we have already?"
"Well, we've searched ten bodies so far, and have come up with--" she began, digging through her backpack, "Hmm…about forty handgun rounds, two first aid sprays, a survival knife, two and a half clips for that assault rifle, eighteen shotgun rounds, two flashlights, one combat shotgun…and a blood encrusted radio that none of us know how to use," she finished, going over their found loot.
"Not bad…not bad at all," said Jim, sliding a fresh clip into his handgun. He had at first felt guilty filching ammo for himself, but hey…this was situation where a few bullets could mean the difference between life and death. His life, to be specific. "Looks like our luck is changing for the better," he said, flipping his lucky coin into the air and deftly catching it, his face wearing a broad grin.
---
"How bad is it, George?" asked Cindy, when the two were alone. They stood in the dark marble hallway by the stairs, and she could hear Yoko and Jim moving about above them, talking while foraging for supplies. Mark was still unconscious on the other side of the door behind her.
"It's not good, Cindy," he replied. "That…that thing got his femoral artery pretty bad."
"How important is the fema-femor—that artery?" she asked, too tired to pronounce her words carefully.
"It's important if he wants to live," he said, a note of resignation in his voice. "If I only had better equipment…" he began, a bit wishful.
"I know," she said, soothingly. "But there's nothing we can do about that…is it possible to move him?" she asked.
"It's risky; the stitches I've put in him are tenuous at best," said George, sitting on a hard wooden bench and sighing. "His life is literally hanging by a thread."
"I don't like this; I don't like this at all," said Cindy. She glanced down at George to see him staring at his bloodstained hands intensely. Looking closer, she could see that they were trembling ever so slightly. He caught her looking, and let his hands drop.
"These hands haven't trembled in a long time," was all he could say. She bent down beside him, pushing aside a stray strand of matted hair from his forehead, holding his face for just an extra moment. She smiled at him.
"Let's get you washed up," she said, taking his hand. He could only nod as he stood and followed.
---
Later, Yoko looked over the corpse again; despite the mess of blood and torn clothing, she could make out an insignia with the stitched acronym UBCS. It sounded like something she should know, something she could almost remember. Within the fold of the blood soaked jacket, she found a set of documents. She began to thumb through them quickly. Though it was hazy, it all seemed familiar to her somehow, the lingo, the code numbers, the procedures-
"Hey Yokes, you find something?" Jim called from behind her, breaking her train of thought. She jumped, startled by his sudden voice.
"No, nothing at all," she answered, stealthily sliding the document under her shirt as he approached. She turned to face him.
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. I figured in a shitty situation like this, we'd be used to it by now," he said, glancing at the mess of fallen soldiers. "Any idea who these guys are? Don't look like cops to me, and they packed some serious hardware."
Yoko was deep in thought as Jim continued talking. She had since learned to zone out his constant rambling; she had noticed that the dead men downstairs were police officers and security personnel, and that the UBCS soldiers were all killed upstairs in the hallway and on the balcony. Looking down the long hall, she realized that the UBCS mercenaries must have entered the building from the rooftop entrance at the far end of the hall. Standard procedure for the Umbrella's Biohazard Countermeasure Squad. (Umbrella paid top dollar for the best soldiers around, and to provide them the best equipment) Something else was bothering her, though, and it wasn't how she somehow knew all this information. The mercenaries had entered from the roof, but ended up cornered here, in the opposite end of this hallway, away from the stairs and any chance of escape. Which meant that the creatures could only have come in…behind them. But how-?
It hit her then, the realization. The roof. The hunters had come in through the roof.
---
The only bathroom they could find with running water was on the third floor by the stairs. George had considered washing up in one of the downstairs toilets, but the look on Cindy's face had been enough to convince him to walk up the few flights to find a working sink.
He stood in front of one now, his shirt opened and wrapped around his waist, the white porcelain sink caked with a soft pink ring around its edge. He shivered for a moment under the cold water, but it also gave him a burst of energy, feeling that crisp bite of the coldness as it washed away the dirt and grime. And the blood; there was too much of that too. He forced his mind to wander, just like his early days in medical school. The blood had bothered him then, until he learned to make his mind drift away.
Hobo showers, his friends had called these in college. Backpacking across Europe, they thought roughing it was washing up in public restrooms without the luxury of showers. Thinking back over these past few days, George realized what it really meant to rough it. He heard a soft knock at the door. Cindy poked her head through the crack.
"Hey, are you decent?" she called. As he began to push his arms through the sleeves of his crusty shirt, she stopped him. "I got a present for you," she said, smiling a childish grin.
"A present? I could use one of those," he said. Reaching from behind her back, she shyly pulled out a fresh white polo shirt. His eyes widened in surprise. "Where did you…?" he asked, dumbfounded with surprise.
"It was in one of the small side offices. I just hope it fits," she said, shaking out the wrinkles. George anxiously pulled off his other crusty shirt and tossed it aside, soaked in two days worth of sweat and filth. He stopped when he realized Cindy was staring at him.
"That scar…" she said, stepping forward. He instinctively looked down, already knowing she meant the scar along his chest, just above his heart. She reached out to touch it, but her hand stopped, mere inches from it. As if she were afraid it would hurt him to touch it. Or perhaps it would hurt her to touch a part of his pain. He turned away and stared at his cloudy reflection in the dusty mirror, wiping away a last bit of dried blood from his body.
"It happened when I was young, barely a child," he said. "The doctors had missed my heart defect when I was born, and it nearly killed me." It was an old story, one he had had to tell every woman he had been with. But somehow, this time, it was different to tell this woman. Sometimes he had told his story as a lie, to make himself seem tougher than he really was. He figured with a situation like the one they were going through, that there was no need for macho posturing. Or was it something else? Something about this young woman made him honest. "It's why I became a doctor, to fix nature's mistakes," he said, "no child should have to bear that pain, nor the worried mothers out there," he finished, a bit wistful. He hadn't thought of his mother in over ten years, god rest her soul. Although he faced the mirror as he spoke, he felt her beside him, her warmth, her compassion.
She stared at him now, not the scar, and he could feel the warmth of her heart stretching across to him, taking a small bit of his painful memory and easing its passage. He felt the softness of her small hand now as she stood behind him, reaching around his torso to lightly touch the hardened lump of flesh that formed his scar. She pressed the side of her head against his shoulder, as she closed her eyes. Her hand gently brushed across the coarse hair of his chest to caress that scar again, and he brought his own weary hand to meet hers. She opened her eyes dreamily, and their eyes met in the reflection of the mirror. He turned his head slightly towards hers, resting his forehead tenderly against her hair and inhaling her sweet scent. It sent a rush of blood to his head, a flood of fragmented memories; flashes of springtime mixed with autumn, falling leaves and blooming flowers. Visions of fireflies dancing against the contrast of the velvet dusk played in the back of his eyes. They held each other tightly, afraid to let go of each other and the moment, as it stretched on, endless but never enough.
---
Yoko suddenly broke out in a run, without word or warning. Jim heard rather than saw her take off, and he rose and began to give chase. She ran now, faster than he had seen her run since the onset of the outbreak, and he wondered to himself if she had finally cracked. It was just a matter of time, and she was just a young woman when it came down to it. She was rounding the corner now and heading up the flight of stairs, her sneakers pattering lightly across the floor. Jim skidded around the corner, grabbing the railing to bound up the stairs after her. Again, she was already turning the corner ahead of him, and all he could see was the back of her shoes.
He rounded the corner and opened his mouth to yell, to call to Cindy and George. Maybe they could help him grab her and calm her down, reassure her that they were alright. Before he could say anything, though, he felt a sharp jab in his gut. He gasped for air, and brought up his gun before he realized it was Yoko. She held a finger over her lips and a stern look in her eye. Jim took the message and kept his mouth shut. She leaned behind an outcropping, and pulled him with her. They both cautiously peered around the corner, Yoko's determined eyes set straight ahead and Jim's nervous eyes looking anywhere and everywhere, wondering what it was exactly they were looking for. And then he saw it: another hunter. He began to curse his luck when he felt Yoko's hand on the side of his face. It was a surprise and it was soft, but then he felt it slowly turn his head to the right, and he saw it. Or rather, he saw them. His throatsank into his stomach. Two hunters. For the first time in his life, Jim Chapman could think of absolutely nothing to say. What was there to say? They were dead.
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