File #5

Zack Proceeds to Clown Around

Right so that was an adventure. First I find out my dad is still alive, great. Then I find out that these Comic Con rejects are holding him hostage and draining him of his blood. Fuck. THEN some crazy cannibal that resembles my father mutates into a fucking monster and tries to kill me. What is even happening right now?! At least I got one of the keys. Something else was also on the ground near the keycard, an actual key. Like one you put in a door. To be honest, I haven't seen one of these since I was a kid. Most of the locks I've used/seen are high tech. The one on my parents house and my apartment are biometric even. I can program it to either let people in or turn them away if they attempt to open my door. Regardless, I might as well take a gander around Adrian's house right? Perhaps get some insight on what's going on here and get any more useful information. Unfortunately, still had to deal with those Red-Zombies shambling about without any real plan. It honestly just struck me that these things had been people once. Captured and subjected to the will of Grim and his band of douchebags. I half expected to see some of those Disciples of Azrael too but I think they'd be guarding my dad's cell waiting for my spectacular final act rescue...that is, if I could pull it off. I maneuvered my way around the various Red-Zombies, most of which just flat out ignored me, and made my way to Adrian's house. Now that he wasn't attempting to murder me, I got a good look at his yard and home. The yard was pretty overgrown and there was crabgrass everywhere. It once looked like a perfectly kept lawn much like the house I was now standing in front of. It was an older style of farmhouse, lacking a lot of the new higher tech stuff that was commonplace in 2037 i.e. the lock was one you used a key for. I pressed my ear against the door in order to see if there was anyone else on the other side. Nope. We're good. I inserted the key and opened the door...only to be greeted with the most foul smell I had ever had the misfortune to sniff. It was even worse than how Dad smelled when he returned from Europe after investigating the European branch of BSAA. I don't really remember why as I was more concerned that my father was OK but I do remember how he smelled. Like blood, sweat, dirt and burned hair. Didn't stop Mom though. To be honest, I hope Laura will eventually love me as much as Mom loves Dad. Oh fuck...Laura….Dammit. I checked my watch, which surprisingly still worked (plus it managed my current health status...I just remembered it did...idiot), and saw that it was around midnight of the same day that I left to get to Esmark. I had been missing for hours with no way of contacting anyone for help. I shudder to think what everyone is probably thinking right now. Regardless, back to Adrian's house. The interior, like I said, smelled horrible. I thankfully still had my scarecrow mask and put it on to filter out the putrid fumes. They seemed to be coming from the direction of the kitchen. I'll check that out later...if I had the stomach for it. The bottom floor of this house consisted of a few rooms, the aforementioned kitchen, a sitting room/den, a bathroom and a small dining area. All of it was covered in a layer of dirt and grime. How long had Adrian been a part of Grim's experiments? I started looking around the den. There were a few pictures on the tables. All of which were family photos...of course. Adrian looked more like himself rather than fused with my dad. In one of the photos, he was standing with what I assumed was his wife, a young blonde woman with piercing green eyes and a dazzling smile. The photo looked like it was taken at a local fair or something a few years ago. I noticed an old letter next to the photo and read the first few words of it before the rest of it was lost to dirt and faded ink.

"Mr. Zorario. We regret to inform you that your wife suffered a misscarriage and lost the baby. She herself has…" the note became illegible after that. Next to that letter was a certificate of death. It read;

"Eliza S. Zorario. Born July 12th, 2000. Died March 18th 2036. Cause of death: Suicide by hanging due to grief of loss of child in womb" Damn yo. My man Adrian just wanted to start a family. I spied another note nearby. This one looked more recent and was hand written by someone with real neat loopy handwriting, like calligraphy. It read;

"Adrian, I hope this message finds you. My name is Grim and I may know a way to bring your wife back from the grave. It involves your cooperation and loyalty to my cause however. I am devising a plan to capture the legendary BSAA agent Chris Redfield to extract his blood/DNA to use in my tests. If my theory is correct, we may be able to revive your wife. Attached is my card. Let me know. Grim" So this Grim douche was exploiting poor grieving Adrian for his own gain? What an asshole. At least Adrian's suffering is over and he can now be with his wife for-

"He...lp….me….plea..se" I turned in the direction of the voice that just uttered those words. It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen. Great. Doesn't the handsome guy that goes to investigate the spooky voice usually get killed in literally every horror movie ever? I grit my teeth, leveled my pistol (I'll save the rifle for more intense firefights) and made my way towards the kitchen. Upon approaching it, I began hearing ragged breathing coming from the other side followed by that same voice I heard earlier pleading for help. I tried the door. Locked. Dammit. I looked closer at the door. There was like a note or something taped to it and what looked like an elaborate kind of puzzle near the locking mechanism. I examined the note first. It was a poem or something. It read, "Oh dear, oh my, oh goodness me! To find the key, you must solve these riddles three! The first key is hidden out-" BLAM BLAM! CRASH! The wooden door was blasted off its hinges and fell inward with a loud thud as well as the sound of splintering wood because I shot and kicked the absolute shit out of it. You think I'm gonna waste time solving a stupid game to open a THIN WOODEN door? Fuck you Holmes. I don't work out at the gym every evening to not kick in a door at every opportunity I get. I looked in the kitchen and, you guessed it, was immediately repulsed. Bits of rotting flesh were legit EVERYWHERE. Hanging from the walls, in pots and pans, in the oven and even on the table where I also saw this emaciated body sitting there. It seemed to be the source of the ragged breathing. This thing's eyes were blank, it's skin was gray and chipping off and it's hair was wispy and falling out in chunks. It looked up at me and reached out an arm towards me.

"Please….end it" it said. I quickly put 2 and 2 together.

"Eliza? Adrian's wife?" I asked her, leveling my pistol just in case. Eliza nodded. Again she looked at me with pleading eyes and I seemed to have answered her unasked question with the look I was giving her.

"He's no longer suffering? Good," Eliza said and closed her sunken eyes. I aimed at her head and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the undead Eliza's skull, shattering it into pieces. The rest of her body turned to dust soon after I swore I heard her say "Thank you" before the house became quiet once more.

Smash cut to a few minutes later. I'll spare you the huge details but I managed to score some more rifle ammo and some grenades during my search of the house as well as some extra pouches to add to my vest so I could carry more items and a few trinkets and treasure I just found like literally laying on the ground. The key card I had swiped from Adrian's corpse was currently in the pouch I designated the "Key Item" pouch. Wasn't just for keys mind you but rather really important stuff that I needed for later or something. I still needed the other 3 cards in order to access the lab area that was apparently being used to house Dad. I wonder if Grim or the others know I've killed Adrian by now. Don't know and don't care to be honest because Grim was now at the top of my kill list...followed by Xander. Wonder how that asshole is enjoying his "vacation" for pistol whipping me in the face. I honestly don't know who was the most angry that he did that to me. I myself was pissed along with everyone else but if I really needed to choose, I'd probably say Mom was the most pissed. According to Jin (Oni remember?), she had fought tooth and nail to get him fired for doing that but some kind of bullshit technicality didn't allow that for some reason. Whatever. Dad and I will kick his ass later. Dad outranks Reaper afterall and if he got wind that his son was pistol whipped after being accused of a crime he didn't commit? Hoo boy, let's just say Xander's face would look like a smashed piece of rock after Dad was through "talking" with him. Now that I was back outside, I had to deal with those Red-Zombies again. Not a hard task to be honest. All they do is shuffle around slowly and whenever one spotted me, it yelled a name (Like Jill, Sheva, Jenna, Ethan or my own...which was unsettling) and started shambling in my direction. Not wanting to waste a lot of my limited ammo, I used a technique Uncle Leon told me that he used during his mission against that Saddler guy. Shoot the enemy in the kneecap, kick or punch them in the face and then, if they are still alive, use a knife to finish the job. I used this tactic as I began to make my way out of Adrian's lawn. Once or twice, my punch caused a Red-Zombie's head to explode plus some of them even dropped a few coins. Eventually, I realized I had quite a bit of coinage. These didn't look like American currency or any other type of currency I recognized but still, nice to look at. The coins ranged from copper, bronze, silver, gold and what I think is platinum. I had about 30 copper, 20 bronze, 10 gold and 5 platinum coins in one of my pouches by the time I finally left Adrian's area of the mountains. Off in the distance, I spotted what looked like a big marquee, a.k.a. a giant tent. Like for a circus.

"Great...the clown...might as well deal with HER next…" I muttered to myself. Suddenly a deep chuckle sounded from the path ahead. I drew my rifle and peered into the scope to see a man dressed in a black coat with a blue face mask covering his mouth standing near a warm blue flaming lantern. He was wearing a brown backpack on his back and seemed to have noticed me even at a distance. The guy was beckoning towards me as if to say "Over here, stranger." Being weary, I drew my gun and held it loosely at my side but still ready to draw and fire if I needed to. I approached the man dressed in black. The man raised his hand and said

"Got something that might interest yah. Heheheh!" The man then opened his jacket and I was greeted with weapons, ammo and healing herbs galore. My eyes widened at the sight of it all. The man even took off his backpack to show me the guns he had in stock too. I saw an RPG, a old school Tommy Gun and

"Whoa! An StG 44?!" I said out loud. That was one of my favorite old school rifles.

"Stranger, stranger, STRANGER! Now that's a weapon!" the, I guess, Merchant said to me, clapping his hands together. I pulled out some of the coins I gathered a few minutes ago.

"How much for the StG 44?" I asked.

"Ahh! Let's see...5 platinum and 5 gold coins stranger," the Merchant said. I handed him the coins and he in turn handed me the weapon. It was when he laughed and said thank you was when I remembered something else Uncle Leon had told me about his European mission.

"Do you happen to know a tall American with blonde hair?" I asked the Merchant while examining the absolute pristine StG 44 in my hands. The Merchant laughed again.

"I do. Guy bought a few RPGs and sold me quite a lot of spinels and other useless junk too," the Merchant said. I pulled out the gems and other treasures I gathered from Adrian's house.

"How much would you pay for these?" I asked.

"Ahh! I'll buy them at a high price!" the Merchant said and handed me back 2 of my platinum coins. "Come back anytime stranger!" I nodded at the strange Merchant and walked off in the direction of the big marquee again. I heard a kind of swooshing sound and when I turned back to where the Merchant was, he had vanished.

I approached the large marquee about a few minutes later. The area was set up much like a carnival...minus all the fun and smiling people that is. There were "people" in the area. Red-Zombies mainly as well as...fuck. Demonic clowns. I fuckin' HATE clowns. Both kinds. Actual circus clowns and stupid people. I took a second to examine my new StG 44. As I noticed earlier, it looked pretty much brand new which was saying much from a weapon that was first manufactured almost 100 years ago during WWII. It looked like it was modified to fire more modern ammunition as opposed to the old school 7.92x33mm Kurz cartridges it used to fire. It now fires the standard 5.56×45mm NATO rounds that have been in use for literal decades. The Merchant guy also gave me 2 extra mags alongside my purchase. I wonder if I would be able to find an extended magazine or something. Anyway, back to the fucking demon circus I just walked in on. I took out my rifle and looked at one of the clowns from a distance. It looked like a standard clown. White greasepaint, big goofy smile, wild multicolored hair and...razor sharp teeth and glowing red eyes. The clown I was looking at suddenly stopped meandering around aimlessly and slowly turned to face me. It grinned at me before opening its mouth and started maniacally laughing at me. Then it sprinted at me. FULL SPEED. Like I'm talking faster than that time Jin realized that there were chocolate cupcakes at the work Christmas party resulting in him tripping over Jenna's legs and face planting on the floor. Good times. Oh yeah, the screaming clown running towards me ready to tear my fucking face off. Thankfully, the clown didn't know the first rule of dodging a sniper and continued to run at me in a straight line so I fired a rifle bullet into its face. The cartridge blew the clown's head to pieces...but that didn't stop it nor the maniacal laughter that seemed to be attracting more Red-Zombies to my location. What was even worse was that the remaining portion of the clown's face had sprouted teeth as well. To give you a better picture of what I'm trying to tell you without pissing myself, imagine a hotdog in a bun right? Now remove the hotdog and that's essentially what the clown's head looked like after I shot it. Get it? Got it? Good. Now, FUCKING WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE CLOWNS?! As the clown got closer to me, I pulled out my new StG 44 and fired a burst of it into his chest which caused it to stagger again. As it recovered, I pulled out one of the grenades I grabbed from Adrian's house, pulled the pin and chucked it at the clown. It landed in between the 2 halves of the clown's face in between the teeth and exploded. The clown was currently engulfed in flames and began flailing about before finally succumbing to the flames and stopped moving. I proceeded to double tap the charred body on my way past just in case. I've seen plenty of horror movies with Jenna and Dad where the characters don't do that and subsequently get killed.

"Ok, so these things don't like fire. Noted. Reminds me of those plant things Auntie Claire told me about once," I muttered to myself as I delivered a devastating right hook to a Red-Zombie that tried to attack me. I had to use 2 more grenades on 2 more of the clown things. One of which I caught by complete surprise by yet again imitating a Red-Zombie to get close and then rammed the grenade into the clown's fleshy stomach. Not my best idea because as soon as I did so, I felt my hand and forearm get scraped up pretty badly as I pulled it out. What, were these things just flesh and teeth? That sounds like a good horror movie to be honest but I digress. I needed to find out where that clown bitch was. Turns out that was easier than I thought. After I took out that second clown thing, I turned to see a banner hanging over what looked like the main circus tent in the area.

"The Wedding of Jessica Sterr and Zack Redfield!" Great. Fucking GREAT. It was bad enough that this Jessica person basically molested me about an hour ago and now she thinks that I want to marry her?

"Why me?" I said out loud. As if on cue a voice came from a speaker system much like it had at Adrian's house.

"Why you?! WHY YOU?! Have you seen yourself handsome? I'm so happy you came to see me! I was afraid Adrian or one of the others killed you before I got to have my fun with you!" a female voice, most likely Jessica's, boomed from the speakers.

"Define fun," I said to the area at large. Jessica proceeded to describe some FUCKED UP shit that does not need to be repeated by anyone. It involved stuff like ripping my arm off and using the exposed bone to...well yeah.

"Wow, that sounds like a grand old time but here's the thing, you must have my father's face now right? Yeah, that is a HARD pass on all those sexual fantasies. I'm not about to do any of that," I said. Turns out that was the wrong thing to say because Jessica let out a blood curdling shriek that sounded like

"HE STOLE MY BEAUTY FROM ME!" followed by just yelling. She must have an image problem as in she most likely was a beautiful woman before Grim got to her or something. Wonder what her motivation was to join his little cult.

"KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!" Jessica proceeded to yell. "I NEED TO PUT ON MY FACE!" Great. More clowns right? Pretty much yeah. About 5 of them started running at me...in a straight line...in the path of some explosive barrels. I cocked an eyebrow and fired one shot at the explosive barrels which caused all 5 of the clowns to become engulfed in flames before falling to the ground dead. I sighed to no one in particular and made my way towards the tent under the banner. I guess I could tell you why I'm so unsettled by clowns. You know that old horror writer Stephen King right? Sure you do. Most people have read his stuff. I'm a fan of The Shining, Carrie and IT. IT is the reason that I am a tad unsettled by clowns when I was a kid. I'm alright now but clowns in general still make me feel antsy. Jenna doesn't like snakes so you can use that against her if you want. Anyway, there was a TV adaptation of IT made in the 1990s followed by a theatrical movie in the 2010s. Dad happened to be watching the 2017 film on TV while he was at home with me and Jenna when we were around 4 or 5 years old. Auntie Claire happened to be with us as well and she had been busy playing with Jenna and thought I was in my room. I guess I wanted to see what my father was doing and happened to walk in on the scene where Pennywise appears in the projector screen with that demonic grin on his face and then proceeds to crawl around the room while growling menacingly. That seemed to have scared me so much that I passed out on the floor. The next thing I remember was Dad kneeling in front of me with Auntie Claire behind him and saying

"Dammit! I should have locked the door! Zack, buddy. That was not real. It's a scary grown-up movie, ok?" Auntie Claire followed up with

"It's my fault, I should have been watching him. Jill's gonna be so mad." That was followed by Mom coming back from wherever she was and asking what happened and why I looked so pale. She wasn't mad at either of them thankfully but Dad kept the door to the TV room locked whenever he was watching a "scary grown-up movie" afterwards. I proceeded to have nightmares for a few weeks afterwards. It got to the point where Mom sometimes had to sleep in my bedroom or on the couch with me to make me feel safe. I watched the movie and read the book when I was older with no issues. I enjoyed both but still, when you experience something like that at a young age, it tends to stay with you for a while. In a psychology elective I took in high school, I was teased a little bit for telling the class that story but Jenna put a stop to that. How do you ask? Well the guy that started the teasing had a crush on Jenna (and didn't know she was my twin cause he was a moronic football player and can't read last names) and proceeded to ask her to some dance or something before she laughed in his face and told him who I was. I was in the cafeteria when that happened. That shit was HILARIOUS. His face was priceless. Back to the present, I silently walked through the opening in the tent and made my way inside. It looked like an old school 3 ring circus show with grandstands full of...corpses. Because of fucking CORUSE they were. 3 of them were the BSAA guys I stumbled upon earlier but a lot of them looked like hikers or campers and the vast majority of them were male although I think there were a couple female ones there too. Couldn't really tell in the darkness. There was a light on over in one of the corners and I could hear a female voice talking to herself.

"No no no! That won't do at all! I need to look my best for my little Zackie!" Jessica was saying to herself. I made my way over as silently as I could and managed to get a good glimpse of her from the shadows about 10-20 yards from her. I could see her back clearly as well as her face in the mirror. I was correct on my theory on what Jessica's face looked like. It was Dad's but more feminie if you catch my drift. I could still easily discern his features from Jessica's original ones. She was currently doing her makeup and looked as if she was trying to cover up Dad's face as much as she could. There was a photo pinned up to the side of the mirror of a rather attractive woman. That must be how Jessica looked before Grim got to her. From what I could gather, she looked like a typical American woman. I felt bad for her to be honest. She didn't ask for this but at the same time, she had killed a lot of innocent people and I couldn't let that slide. Jessica was still too busy with "getting her face on" to realize that I was standing there in the mirror. I watched her for several minutes before she finally finished and put on that mask she was wearing earlier. After she put it on her face, she did a double take at me in the mirror before turning to face me. I had my StG 44 leveled in her direction. I smirked at her from under my own mask and said

"Oh dear, you know what they say if the bride and groom see each other before the wedding. That's bad luck," before squeezing the trigger.