Nemesis: Resident Evil III

Chapter Five: Murphy

Even after the screaming and gunfire had stopped, Carlos was still having difficulty wrapping his mind around what had just happened. His unit had been completely surrounded, and the enemy, who looked like they were all on drugs or something, just weren't dying no matter how many bullets got put into them. Trained to aim at center mass of his targets, like most soldiers, the young man hit several of them right in the chest, both to save ammo and cause the most damage, but it wasn't doing anything… until one of the others bumped into him, causing a bullet to hit one of approaching psychos in the head… and it went down.

For a moment all of time became still as he realized something about the enemy that they were fighting, but the idea was so damn loco that he didn't want to admit it, even to himself. They were shambling around like they were drunk or high, most of them were covered in blood, they didn't react to pain or fall from bullets, they were attacking his comrades and… biting the ones they got a hold of like animals… and worst of all, the only way they stopped moving was to… shoot them in the head.

"Zombies!" Carlos had screamed at the top of his lungs. "Ellos son Zombies!"

The others didn't pay much attention to this, at least not until the young man started actively aiming at the monsters' heads, and they the others started following suit when they saw how effective this strategy was. However, by this time it was too late to be used as a defensive strategy, and the whole unit would have been overwhelmed if the order for them to retreat hadn't come a moment later… in the form of an exploding grenade.

BOOM! Carlos had seen Mikhail take something off his tactical vest and toss it into the crowd of zombies, and everything shook for a second as more than a dozen of them were thrown through the air in a flash of noise and fire. Many of the ones who were hit were already starting to crawl around, but the attack had cleared a small avenue in the crowd for the soldiers to escape through. Yelling for them to get into a tight wedge formation, and stay together while running for the small alley at the end of the slowly closing gap, the Captain led the charge, hitting every zombie that got in their way with the stock of his rifle.

Suddenly the young man felt something grab him by the arm, and he looked just in time to see that he had been caught by one of the monsters that was now opening its mouth to bite him. Carlos tried to swing his rifle in the right direction to hit the monster, a young woman whose blonde hair was falling out, but he missed, and would have been bitten for sure if the man next to him, a guy that he only knew as Murphy, hadn't grabbed the monster by the hair so that the young man could free himself.

Unfortunately for Murphy, this act of bravery caused the female zombie to get free of his grip when its hair literally ripped off in his hand, allowing her jagged, rotting teeth to sink deeply into his shoulder. Now that he was free, the young man was able to repay Murphy for saving him by ramming the stock of his rifle into the female zombie's head so hard that several of her teeth flew out as she fell backwards into some others while the two of them caught up to the rest of the unit.

As soon as all of the survivors were through an open metal-bar gate that led into the small alleyway they had seen earlier, Nikolai slammed it shut in the approaching zombies' faces, before shooting a couple of them in the legs with his pistol, making them fall onto the street. What happened next came as a shock to everyone, when some of the other zombies threw themselves onto the ones who had been shot, and then started… eating them as if they thought they were attacking a human, or… something.

"No time to watch freak show, keep moving." Mikhail said, waving for them to follow him. "Gate will not hold forever, must get indoors."

Following his lead, the young man and the others ran after him as he kept going down the narrow passage, stopping at the first door they came to, which looked like the service entrance on the back side of some store. There were other doors farther down, like this building next to them was some kind of strip mall, but the need for shelter from the attacking monsters was more important than exploration at the moment.

The door was also locked, so the rest of them kept watch while Nikolai knelt down in front of the latch, and put something into the keyhole. Carlos didn't know the first thing about picking locks, although he had always wanted to learn, so he watched intently as the Lieutenant shifted and turned the different tools until there was a soft click from inside. Back at the gate, the zombies were rattling the bars with such fury that the whole gate was rocking back and forth, but that didn't matter once the survivors were inside, and the door was relocked.

"Do not let guard down, men." The Captain warned, keeping his rifle ready. "More danger could be waiting inside."

He was right, of course, so all of the survivors… all four of them, including Carlos, quietly moved out of the storage area, and into a small area that seemed to be a pharmacy. In the bright fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling, the young man could see through the windows at the front of the store that there were a few more zombies walking around on the street outside, although not nearly as many as the mob that had ambushed them, and he also saw that this place was completely stocked.

In every other city that he had ever been sent to during any kind of emergency, the first thing Carlos always saw was that the stores were empty as if the people were trying to stock up in order to be able to survive during… whatever the hell had happened to this place. This was different, though, and with all of the store shelves fully stocked as if having been ready for a normal business day, so… what, did this whole zombie nightmare just catch everyone by surprise?

And zombies, Jesus Christ, fucking zombies… the young man had seen Dawn of the Dead when it had finally reached Central America about ten years after being made, and it had nearly scared him to death when he was a kid… would have been nice to know that it was based on a true fucking story, though. But this… this just couldn't be happening, he told himself as the four of them checked out every inch of the store, everyone knew that things were a little loco in America, but how the hell could they have fucking zombies?

"God damn it, radio man didn't make it." The Captain was heard saying a couple aisles over. "All right, men, search for anything useful; telephone, radio, anything… we must call for reinforcements, or at least warn brothers of threat."

Finding a telephone was easy, since there was one behind the cash register, as well as a payphone mounted in the corner near the front door, and that was the good news. The bad news was that neither of them were working, and the only radio that any of them could find was just an AM/FM receiver for listening to music… maybe CB radio transmitters weren't as popular in America as they were in other parts of the world. Plenty of batteries for them, though, so Carlos put a few into one of the radios, and turned it on.

Maybe there would be a news broadcast, or an emergency transmission telling people where shelters had been setup, or maybe even just a little music to lighten the mood. After all, he was in America, so maybe now the young man would have a chance to hear new songs when they came out, instead of having to wait two years for it to reach Costa Rica, or wherever he was at the time. So he tuned across the whole bandwidth, but there was just… nothing. No news, no emergency stations, no music, no nothing.

"Probably better off without American music." Mikhail commented when Carlos got frustrated and tossed the radio down. "Trust me, Olivera, you do not want Barbie Girl stuck in head for two weeks."

He was probably right, so the young man decided to forget about it, and focus on more important things, like grabbing a bag of Cheetos off the nearby shelf and wolfing down the contents after realizing how hungry he was. Carlos had seen the commercial for them on TV where this big cat in sunglasses does anything to get a hold of them, but after trying them himself, the taste was actually kind of disappointing.

"Oli… Olivera!" Murphy suddenly called out. "Something… something's wrong!"

Rushing over to the end of the aisle where his comrade was standing, the young man got there just in time to see Murphy pull off his black knit-cap… and taking with it some of his light colored hair. It didn't rip, it just kind of… pulled out, and now Carlos could see that his friend didn't look very good at all. His face was getting pale, even for a blanquito, and he was drooling a little… sweating with labored breaths. Clearly this man was not well, but hey, they were inside a pharmacy, right? Maybe there was something in this place that could make him feel better.

There were some advertisements for Umbrella manufactured medications like Safsprin, and Aquacura… whatever the hell that was… but in the young man's experience, what was usually needed in cases like this was antibiotics. Such things were apparently not available over the counter in America like they were literally everywhere else in the world, so Carlos started toward the locked storage area in the back to look for more supplies, when a new sound reached his ears.

"Captain! Lieutenant!" He yelled, rushing back over to his comrade's side. "There's something wrong with Murphy!"

In response, Mikhail and Nikolai rushed over to them, only to stop in their tracks at what they saw. No longer standing, Murphy was on his hands and knees, gasping and clawing at himself so that his shirt came open, allowing the three others to see how infected and discolored the bite he had received from that female zombie had become. In fact, all of his skin was becoming discolored as he convulsed on the floor, while a white glaze formed over his eyes, and he suddenly reached out to grab Carlos, who stumbled backwards and tripped over a small display.

Bang! In a single gunshot, it was all over, and when the young man was able to get back up, he saw two things. The first was that the pistol in Nikolai's hands was still smoking from being fired… and the second was that Murphy was dead. His comrade now looked exactly like one of the zombies outside, but thankfully not moving as the discolored blood flowed out from the wound in his head.