Nemesis: Resident Evil III
Chapter Thirteen: The Arcade Shops
Even with all of those giant insects down in the sewer tunnels, at least it had been a direct route, instead of trying to somehow make a straight line across a city full of zombies and wreckage barriers in broad daylight. After making his way across the rear courtyard, moving around to the other side of City Hall, Carlos found himself entering a set of crowded side streets, that even though they were off the main roads where the zombie horde had been patrolling, where it became much harder to navigate even with the city map.
The alleyways twisted and turned, passing several back doors to different kinds of businesses as the young man slowly navigated his way through, and there were bodies… several bodies lying within the wrecks of car crashes, but with too much head damage for them to become zombies, he supposed. Wait a second, one of the bodies was moving, so Carlos quickly ducked around a corner, stuffing the map back into his pouch while hoping and praying that the zombie hadn't seen him.
Of course, it must have seen him, or else why would it have suddenly let out a loud groan before shambling its way right toward his hiding place. Well, so much for staying quiet and sticking to the shadows, the young man thought while readying his rifle, wouldn't Captain Victor be proud? Then again, a single gunshot shouldn't attract too much attention, he figured… as long as he could take the monster down in one try. The zombie was shambling closer, and it was now or never, so Carlos stepped out around the corner, raising his rifle and taking aim… just in time for the monster to vanish.
"Que?" He asked himself, blinking several times. "A donde se fue'?"
Stepping farther out from his hiding place, the young man looked all around, since he doubted that God himself had come down to just miracle the zombie away, and once Carlos finally figured out what had happened to the monster, he couldn't help but laugh. Right where the zombie was standing, there was an open manhole, complete with orange warning cones and caution tape like the city had been about to do some work there before everything went to hell… and the zombie had been so focused on getting him, that the maldito idiota had fallen right in.
Down in the darkness he could hear the zombie's frustrated groans as it tried to find a way up, but then he heard something else… something that chilled him to the bone. It was a clicking sound followed by the same shrieking hiss that he had heard in the sewers, and judging by the way that the zombie's groans were suddenly cut off, there must have been several of those insect creatures attacking it. The sun was still high in the sky, so the creatures didn't dare come out of the tunnels, since they were so sensitive to light, but uh… what would happen once the sun went down?
He didn't want to think about that, so after taking the time to carefully and quietly push the nearby manhole cover back into place, the young man continued on toward the pharmacy. This whole area of the city looked a little different from the place where they had first been dropped in by the helicopter, looking more like some kind of commerce center than a downtown residential zone, and that was when he saw the sign. THE ARCADE SHOPS was printed largely at the top of an illuminated banner, and below it were the names of several businesses that occupied spaces inside of this, uh… plaza, he guessed it was called.
KOI Japanese Food & Delivery, Sal's Shoes & Casual Wear, Grill 13, Barber Masters, Carmike Cinema… what, these people got a movie theater? Oh, it figures, he thought angrily while looking at the sign; the one and only time he was someplace where there was a place for him to see Hollywood Movies right when they come out, instead of waiting a damn year to reach what they called the third world, it had to be in the middle of one of George A. Romero's fucking wet dreams.
And of course, the theater was right near him, too, so close that he could read the sign to see what was playing. Lethal Weapon 4, Saving Private Ryan, There's Something About Mary… man, this was such bullshit, and somehow the young man just knew that if he got out of this mess alive, the company was going to send him to someplace like… oh, hell, anywhere that didn't have a movie theater. If Mikhail's life hadn't been depending on him to get that medicine, Carlos was seriously tempted to blast his way right into the projection room of that place, and just spend the whole zombie apocalypse eating junk food and watching movies.
"Solo de'jalo ir, Carlos." He said to himself, sighing with disappointment. "No es para ti."
The pharmacy was listed on the sign as well, so the young man left the theater behind, marching angrily toward the direction that the sign told him to go, only to stop in his tracks, all the anger instantly forgotten at what he saw. Now he understood why there had hardly been any zombies at all on the way there… it was because they were all gathered around the broken front windows of the pharmacy. Ahead of the crowd that was made up of a couple dozen of the undead freaks, he could see the familiar inside of the store… as well as the monsters that were groaning and bumping into each other as they searched the aisles for humans.
Well, he had made it to the pharmacy, that was something… but now how in the hell was he going to get past like, thirty zombies in order to go find the Hemostatic medicine for his wounded Captain? Maybe if he knew right where the stuff was, he could run in and shoot a bunch of them in the legs so that they would all attack each other, and… no that was a stupid idea, but maybe… but maybe there was a way to get them out of there.
From what he had seen so far since setting foot inside Raccoon City, these zombies were drawn to any lights or sounds that were commonly produced by humans, maybe out of instinct, or whatever, but if he could somehow produce those same kind of sounds a good distance away, maybe they would follow it. But what could he use to cause such a thing? Shooting something far away was out of the question, because the sound still came from him, and the only things around were a bunch of cars… too bad he didn't have a second person to beep the horn of one of them or something.
Wait a second, maybe he didn't have to… this was America after all, and all these cars looked like brand new '98 models, so didn't that mean they came with all the fancy options… like car alarms? Yeah, those loud, annoying sirens that turned on whenever someone touched the car without disarming it, so what if he was to… I don't know, pick up a small rock like that one on the ground, and toss it as far as he could across the parking lot before diving back into cover?
If there hadn't been so many car wrecks, half-assed barricades, and partially destroyed buildings blocking all the roads, he might have just taken a car and used it to get out of the city, but since there wasn't even enough room to use one of them to drive into the zombies, the rock would have to do. So the young man ducked back around the corner just after the rock flew from his hand, and a few seconds later there was a sound of cracking glass, followed by flashing headlights, a repeatedly beeping horn, and the most awful siren that he had ever heard.
As soon as they heard the alarms going off, the zombies all stopped what they were doing; remaining where they were as if frozen, before starting to snarl and groan excitedly as they started shambling toward the sound. The ones outside started trying to get around and over the cars that were in the way, while the ones inside the pharmacy began to throw themselves back over the window ledge the same way they had done to get into the store only a short time ago, leaving only a few clueless monsters still walking right into store aisles for him to deal with inside.
No more of them were trying to get out, and the majority of the horde was now climbing over each other to be the first ones onto the empty car, so it was now or never. Slinging his rifle across his back, and taking the long knife out of his boot so that there wouldn't be any noise, Carlos crouched down and ran as fast as he could over to the broken pharmacy windows, where he did a kind of roll over the bottom frame… only to cause a loud crunch when his boots hit the broken glass that was all over the carpet.
"Oh, mierda." He whispered to himself when both he, and the zombie facing away from him at the first aisle froze at the same time. "No me mires… no me mires… por favor."
They both just stood there for what felt like the longest time, but then the young man decided that he couldn't afford to waste any more time, since Mikhail was losing more and more blood all the time. These monsters were the dead brought back to life by… whatever, but that didn't mean that they could move around without their spine, so he turned the knife downward in his hand, stepped forward, and stabbed the blade as hard as he could into the base of the zombie's neck.
Carlos didn't trust himself to be able to stab through the skull itself in one blow, so he instead aimed at severing the spine, which left the monster still alive, but unable to use any of its limbs as it fell.. right against the aisle full of things that were mostly made of glass and porcelain… hard enough to knock the whole thing over. CRASH! For a moment it felt like the whole world had stopped moving to look at him while every loud breakable thing in the store shattered into a million pieces like Big Ben itself going off, and now not only was every zombie in the pharmacy looking at him… but he could also no longer hear the car alarm going off anymore.
Caution and stealth were no longer an option, so he ran toward the back of the pharmacy, pushing another zombie out of the way as he ran, hard enough to knock over another display aisle, and then leaping across the counter into the secure prescription area of the store. Now not only did he have to find the Hemostatic medicine for Mikhail, but he also had to do it before the main zombie horde got back to the pharmacy.