Nemesis: Resident Evil III
Chapter Fifteen: Rooftop Run
Ratta-tatta! Ratta-tatta! The good news was that Carlos had managed to find the Hemostatic medicine that was needed to save Mikhail's life, however it had taken longer than he had hoped to find it, and now the main zombie horde was once again throwing themselves in through the broken window. It might have just been the young man's imagination, but the monsters seemed almost enraged after discovering that there were no humans inside the car where the alarm had been going off, and he might have escaped if it had taken him just a few less seconds to find the medicine and run away.
"Estu'pido alfabeto ingles." He grumbled to himself while pulling the trigger. "No podria ser simple, no."
The zombies inside the pharmacy were easy enough to handle, each one with a single shot to the head since these American rifles were accurate as hell when it came to controlled shooting, but once the main horde reached the windows, things became a lot more difficult. In droves the monsters threw themselves over the low wall where the windows had been, and although shooting a bunch of them in the legs worked for a while, since a lot of the others attacked them as soon as they fell, the young man just didn't have the ammo to keep this up.
Knocking over another one of the store's display aisles seemed to help for a little bit, trapping several of the monsters underneath it, and the next few as a kind of domino effect took down the rest of them that were still standing… but it wasn't enough to help him escape. Using the fallen racks as stepping stones allowed the young man to get back toward the custodial closet where the survivors of his unit had made their first escape, but even though he had been able to stomp on a few zombie heads along the way, simply moving across the room didn't help his overall situation.
His exit was blocked, there was no way he was going to try running through those insect-filled tunnels on his own, and there were probably just as many zombies out the back door as there had been when he, Mikhail, and Nikolai had come through the first time. In less than a minute he was surrounded, and with the undead closing in from all sides, the only option left was to follow Nikolai's original plan of climbing up onto the roof.
A metal ladder had been permanently bolted to the wall near the janitor's closet, leading up to a trap door that had a padlock on it, but that would be no problem with the use of his pistol. So Carlos slung the rifle over his back, and jumped onto the ladder with the first of the zombies right on his heels, scrambling all the way to the top of the ladder, and shooting the padlock off the latch with a sharp bang!
The lock fell off and fell downward, making the nearest zombie groan when it struck him in the head, making the monster nearly lose its balance while the young man pushed the trap door open. Climbing through the open hatch and onto the roof, Carlos then aimed his pistol downward and pulled the trigger, making that same zombie lose its grip when the bullet passed through its head, causing all the other monsters on the ladder to fall down as its body crashed into them.
Slam! As soon as he was on his feet, the young man forced the trap door closed again, but he knew that he couldn't stay on the roof for long, since there was nothing heavy to set on the trap door, and it was only a matter of time before the monsters were able to follow him up. Of course, the hatch didn't lock from the outside, but if he could go over the wall to the roof of the next building before the zombies saw him, then maybe he would be able to still get away.
There were several businesses along this stretch, so he moved over to the waist-high guard wall between the pharmacy and the next one, and was glad to see that the next roof was the same height as the one he was standing on. A rattling sound started coming from the trapdoor just as he was climbing over, and Carlos had just made it to the other side, crouching down lower than the wall as the trapdoor was slowly pushed open. The zombies had a tough time of it, needing to push several times to figure out the right way, but thankfully by the time they started to climb onto the roof, the young man was already nearly to the other side of the next one.
Groans and rasping could be heard as the monsters started to shamble their way around, bumping into each other and climbing over and around the heating and cooling ducts in an effort to find where their intended meal had run off to, and one of them even lost its balance and tumbled over the side of the building that faced the street after climbing too high. Smack! Carlos watched it fall and winced a little when the monster's head busted all over the sidewalk, causing several of the zombies still trying to get into the pharmacy to begin a feeding frenzy once it was noticed.
A couple of the ones on the roof tried to join in as well, taking the same falling route as the first one, and splattering their skulls on the sidewalk in the same way as the first one, making the feeding frenzy on the ground so intense and downright disgusting that the young had to turn his head, especially when the others started to rip out the dead ones' intestines and… other parts. As disgusting as it was, this frenzy provided him with the distraction that he needed in order to crawl over the next guard wall in order to crouch down and begin making his way across to the next one.
The pharmacy must have provided roof access for this whole side of the plaza, since so far none of the other rooftops had contained a hatch for climbing down into their buildings, but even if that was the case, Carlos figured that there had to be a fire escape or an external ladder or something on the far end. I mean, they couldn't just leave people to be trapped up there if the one hatch got locked somehow from the inside… could they?
Now it looked like his plan to get away by using the rooftops was going to work, since he was too far away after the next wall for the monsters to spot him easily, and when Carlos looked back at where they all were, he couldn't help but laugh a little when he saw yet another one of the zombies fall head first onto the sidewalk. Hell, at this rate he could have waited behind the first wall, and then climbed back down the ladder into the pharmacy after they all dove off like morons. Oh, well, after turning around and peeking over the next wall, the young man was relieved to see the railings of a fire escape just a few more rooftops over, and good thing too, because he couldn't afford to waste any more time.
"Adio's idiotas." He whispered, looking back at the zombies as he slid his way over the next guard wall. "Divertirse busc… oh, oh, oh no!"
Expecting to roll over the wall to the next rooftop and continue on like he had done with the last couple, Carlos's quiet words suddenly turned into a surprised outcry of fear when he discovered that the next rooftop was a lot lower than the last two he had been on… about an entire floor lower. It was okay, he thought in a split second as the rooftop rushed up to meet him, falling ten to twelve feet wasn't so bad as long as he tucked and rolled, and in most cases the young man would have been right, but not this time.
Instead of tucking and rolling across the roof on impact, and then simply carrying on after a moment of catching his breath, the roof must have been weakened by all the bad things happening to the city, or maybe just not up to code, because when he tucked in to roll upon hitting the surface… he kept going. Crash! Crunch! Wham! The outside world vanished as he tore right through the roof, breaking right through wood, drywall, and other building materials as he broke right through the ceiling below, landing hard on a stainless steel table, but at least that didn't break.
He was covered with dust from the roof and ceiling, as was everything within a few feet of where he fell, making a small cloud come from his mouth when he coughed while trying to sit up and get a look at his surroundings. The first thing Carlos noticed, once the smoke cleared and his vision came partially back into focus, was that there were no zombies around, thank God. Then he saw that in addition to the long metal table, there were also rows of ovens and fryers, a really large metal refrigerator, and containers full of both dirty and clean silverware.
A kitchen? Had he fallen into some kind of kitchen, he wondered during his second attempt to sit up? More smoke from his mouth as he coughed again, and now that the adrenaline from the fall was wearing off, the young man could feel that his whole body was sore, in addition to the massive throbbing on the side of his head. Folded plastic menus and porcelain flatware were stacked in neat rows… except for the ones that had been broken during his fall, and out beyond the cooking area Carlos could see the blurry image of what looked like tables and booths… was this place some kind of restaurant?
Two such businesses had been listed on the directory sign for The Arcade Shops, and this place didn't look or smell like Asian cuisine, so it must have been the other one, the uh… what was it? Oh yeah, the Grill 13. Aside from the damage he had caused, the restaurant looked mostly untouched, like the pharmacy before the zombies busted in, and it was too bad that he was in such a rush to get the medicine back to Mikhail, since it seemed like a nice place to hide out for a while.
Yeah, too bad, Carlos thought, groaning through his third attempt to sit up, but the others were counting on him, so he had to get to his feet. This time through the sheer force of his own will, the young man managed to not only sit up, but also to slide off the table to his feet… only maybe someone should have told his legs about this idea beforehand, because it turns out that they wanted no part of it.
Crash! His legs gave out completely, causing him to fall against some more stacked rows of plates and cups on the way down, so now not only was he covered in dust with a shower of broken porcelain, but now the room was getting darker… no had to stay awake… couldn't lose conscious… the others, they… the others needed him, but… the room… the room so dark…