Nemesis: Resident Evil III

Chapter Eight: Brad's Nightmare

Even with a shot or two of some of the stronger whiskey sitting around the bar in him, getting Brad to elaborate about what he had said about someone coming after them was next to impossible. He would start out clearly enough, talking about how he had tried to escape the city through the downtown area the previous day, but as soon as the pilot got to the part about trying to describe why he was so freaked out, he would start to, well… get really freaked out like he was having flashbacks or something.

He rambled on about how nothing could hurt it, and said something about it being smart and really fast, but this seemed like a load of nonsense to Jill. With all of the horrors that she had seen in the Spencer Estate, there was nothing short of that Tyrant monster that wouldn't die if it was shot in the head enough times, and besides, Tyrant had been artificially created in an Umbrella lab, not just simply exposed to the T-Virus like the people of this city. Even those clawed gorilla things and the giant snake that Rebecca Chambers had described, all went down after enough head damage.

"God damn it, Jill, you have to listen to me!" Brad yelled, slamming his fist down on the bar. "It's coming for us, do you understand? As in… you and me… and anyone else from STARS that it can find."

"Brad, right now we need to stay calm, okay?" The young woman replied, putting a hand on his shaking shoulder. "Listen to yourself… you're trying to tell me that one of those monsters out there is deliberately hunting STARS members, and that's just… ridiculous. I mean, how would you even know if it was hunting you specifically? These things attack any human they see."

Now the pilot started rambling again, talking about how it had ignored anything else and zeroed in on him from the moment it saw him, and then something about having to leave everyone else behind in order to get away, before the tears started to flow. With shaking hands, Brad tried to pour himself another shot, but ended up dropping the bottle so that it smashed to pieces on the floor… probably a good thing, since Jill was about to cut him off anyway.

"I'm a coward, Jill, I'm a fucking coward!" He yelled, burying his face in his hands and sobbing uncontrollably. "I left you guys to die in the woods when those dogs attacked last summer, and Lieutenant Liquid tried to save me from that thing yesterday, and I left him, too… I left him and that girl to get killed by that monster at Raccoon Street Station while I stole the cable car to save myself!"

There was more to be said, but it came out as a bunch of sobbing slurs that sounded like a whole bunch of words strung together to make one big one. The part about him leaving people to die wasn't too hard to believe, since he had done it twice to her already, but the rest of his story must have been some kind of fevered hallucination. For one thing, all public transit had been shut down from the power company by order of the Mayor, so he couldn't have used a cable car, and as for that other part…

"Brad, I know you're scared, but you need to listen to me." She said, patting him on the shoulder. "Tobias Liquid has been in a coma since last spring, with like, no brain activity, so he couldn't have been there with you yesterday. You must have imagined it to somehow, oh, I don't know… help you get through what has been happening in the city, but if you come with me to the station, I might be able to rescue both of us, okay?"

"You think I… I imagined him?" The pilot asked, slowly sitting up. "But I saw him, he was fighting it, and… and… he knocked it down. But… wait… no one could be that strong, I… oh God, I am hallucinating! Did I imagine the monster, too? Jill, I'm losing my mind!"

Okay, maybe one more drink for him, the young woman thought as she gave him another shot, this time of the really strong stuff on the back shelf. There were no words to describe how glad she was that Brad's story turned out to be mostly imagined, and now that he was coming back into reality, it was going to be a lot easier for them to get to the police station. At first he didn't want to go, since apparently this was the first mostly safe place that he had found in a while, but after Jill explained her plan to use the radio to call for help, he seemed to be a little more onboard.

It was also nice to have bullets for her pistol again, even though it was only a single clip, since he only had two left. Oh well, better than being unarmed, she thought while walking toward the back door, and even if it was Brad Vickers who she was stuck with, an extra weapon to fight off the infected was always welcome. What wasn't welcome, however, was how closely he clung to her once they stepped back outside.

The back door of Bar Jack led into a narrow alleyway, that like the others, was dotted with trash cans and heavily spray painted with graffiti, but was thankfully empty of the infected. This didn't stop the pilot from keeping himself pressed up against her, gripping his pistol so tightly that his knuckles were white, and shaking so badly that for a moment Jill thought that she was the one who was scared. A couple times she tried to elbow him back to give her a little space, but he just came right back until she gave up and just kept moving.

Taking their time in moving around the cans and dumpsters, so as not to make any noise that would attract the monsters, the two of them made their way toward the far side of the block, away from the distant sounds of the zombies who were still trying to figure out how to get through Bar Jack's front door. And they could stay there forever, as far as the young woman was concerned, because once they found their way through the narrow alleyways, the police station was only a block or two away.

Of course, Jill had never gone through this particular set of alleys before, so they ran into a few dead ends, having to turn around and even deal with a stray zombie or two, with which the ever chicken-hearted Brad was next to no help at all. Instead of finding a way to help deal with the threat in a quiet way, or even just shooting the damn thing, the pilot cried out like a twelve year old girl who just saw a spider, which ran the risk of bringing in more of them.

To be fair, he did shoot once or twice, which was actually helpful… however, it was during those times when the young woman had been trying to deal with the threats quietly because there were more of them right around the corner. Eventually Jill lost her patience with sneaking around, and used her pistol to shoot off the padlock on the service door of a business. Yes this drew in some more of the infected people, but it wasn't like she was planning to use the place as a hideout or anything.

"Come on!" She urged, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him into the darkened building. "If we can get through, then the RPD will be right there."

Only the back-most room was darkened, it turned out, and when the two of them stepped out into the main room of the building, it was discovered that they had entered the largest of the local bookstores. The young woman had been there many times while searching for something to read during her more quiet weekends, but what pleased her the most about having to cut through this place, beyond that there was no one inside, was the fact that the police station was just a stone's throw from the front entrance.

The bookstore looked mostly untouched, since she supposed that books were not exactly high on people's list of lootable materials during a crisis, nor was it the first place that scared people thought to hide when the undead walked the streets. This just meant that it was going to be really easy to get through, and that was nice, especially since there turned out to be no firearms underneath the bar in Bar Jack… only a baseball bat… making her think of the survivors that she had left at the warehouse.

Were they still alive, she wondered? The baseball bat that she had taken from the bar, was what the young woman used to keep the back door of this place closed so that the zombies couldn't follow them, and as for the survivors who had pretty much kicked her out… well, maybe she could still send help for them once they reached the radio equipment in the STARS office of the police station. Wow, what luck, Jill thought when she saw that there were no zombies standing around in front of the large windows of the bookstore… now was their chance.

Even though Brad wanted to stay there and hide for a while in order to make sure it was safe, the young woman once again pulled him along as she pushed open the flimsy metal front door, and they passed under the lighted sign that simply read BOOKS on their way out. Oh, thank God, the police station was only about a football field's distance away, so they started walking toward the high metal gate that surrounded the precinct, when she stopped as a strange sound reached her ears.

Thud… thud… thud…

Out there in the middle of the abandoned street, it was hard to tell which direction the strange thumping sound was coming from. Let's see… there was crackling coming from a burning car that was crashed into a light pole not far from there, so that wasn't it… a little farther down the street a fire hydrant had broken, and water was gushing out, so not that either… hold on, now the thumping sound was getting a little louder, and Jill was so focused on finding it that she didn't realize until a moment later that Brad was urgently tapping her on the shoulder.

"Damn it, Brad, what is it?" She asked, following the direction that he was pointing. "I'm trying to… who the hell is that?"

Following the terrified man's finger, the young woman looked and saw that a long figure was slowly walking toward them, down a part of the street where the buildings kept it mostly shadowed from the bright sun, so much in fact that it made the figure's features hard to make out. Whoever he was, he was tall, really stocky like a linebacker, and baldheaded… seeming to notice them at the same time, because the thumping sounds stopped when he did, and now she and the figure were just staring at each other.

"What's that guy doing over there?" She asked, squinting to see better through the sunlight. "He's just kind of… standing there."

"J… Jill… we gotta go." Brad whimpered, now being the one to pull on her arm. "Jill, we gotta go right now, come on. Come on… that's him!"

Like before in the bar, the young woman tried to get the hysterical pilot to calm down, but then she heard something that made a knot form in her stomach, and it wasn't Brad's chattering teeth, nor was it the thud-thud-thud of when the figure started walking toward them. It was a word… a single word that awoke a nameless fear in her heart when it cut through the silence like a chainsaw.

"Sstarss." The figure growled in a deep, inhuman voice as it got closer.