Nine Months Ago

Eastern Slav Republic

It started with the sound of screaming. Not of people, that had come later, but of rockets falling from on high. Whistling through the air and detonating in the woods nearby. The forest engulfed in flames and foul smelling smoke, heavy with metals that weighed in their lungs even as they ran.

Odet had been expecting this of course. The civil war had gone hot again, though they'd hoped there would be more time before Southern forces rolled over them. The Liberation Army had taken the oil fields and with the threat of their destruction there'd been little to no use of artillery or airstrikes for the last few weeks. Men and supplies had moved through their small village by the truckload, but it had looked at first like they might actually come to a more peaceful resolution than the last time when NATO and Russian forces had simultaneously intervened in the capital.

A fool's hope, but she'd been a fool for some time. Her uncle, her brother, and even her sister had ran off one by one while she had stayed put. Hearing nothing from them, only rumors of the tragic slaughter which had taken place in the capital a few short years ago before the old regime had been ousted. It hadn't taken long for things to descend into the same problems as before, the new leadership pulled from the surviving military leaders which had moved to position themselves as reasonable figures during the transition of power after the West pulled out once more and Russian forces retreated, secure that the oil fields were running once more as efficiently as desired.

It was the only thing anyone seemed to care about here.

So they ran, from the flames now burning through the trees near their homes, towards the military positions near the oil fields, too close for bombs and rockets to be safely used without risking hitting the pipes themselves.

They'd almost made it when she heard the screaming again.

Only this time it wasn't rockets. The soldiers were screaming. Wild and panicked, voices raw with a terror that made her halt even as others still moved forward. In the fading sunlight ahead she saw shadows moving, low to the ground and hunched over. Rising up as the first of the villagers drew near. Deep, guttural and animalistic sounds issued forth from the bloody mutated form of one as the half-eaten body of what had looked like a dead man rose up and stumbled forward. Elsewhere she saw their own soldiers, moving with awkward and stiff actions, taking aim towards the crowd and-

Odet ducked down as the machine gun roared to life. Covering her head and shaking in the muddy ditch. The creature's own sounds added to the cacophony and silenced her cries and prayers.

She didn't dare move, even as the bodies began to pile about her. Even as one of those beasts came past, sniffing along the otherside of the road. Odet only pulled closer, letting the mud cover her in the hopes that she would be overlooked as the walking dead, guns still haphazardly aimed at the very people they had sworn to protect before, moved past her and into the village. The sounds of gunfire and further cries of alarm fading into the distance as they passed.

By the time she dared move again the sun had fully set, the hills in the distance shrouded in a dying red light while those behind her filled the air with smoke from the initial rocket strike. It made sense now, as perverse and monstrous as it was.

They'd missed on purpose, distracting people and forcing others to move towards where they'd thought they'd be safe. Only to have already infected the soldiers at the oil field so as to-

"Oh god… they're killing all of them." This wasn't military action, it was a slaughter. She had to do something… find some help. Get on the radio and call…

Who?

The use of such creatures had been forbidden since that incident in the capital, but that hadn't stopped whoever was behind this attack. Cell towers and phone lines had been blown up over the last weeks, and even if she could find a working radio, who would she even call? Their enemies down by the capital to tell them that they were being eaten by zombies? Even if she got through, would they believe her?

Would they come even if they did?

No. She needed to move. Run away from the attack. Hide till it burned out and hope to be found afterwards. She might be a decent shot with an old army rifle, but these things took more than that to put down. Her mind made up, Odet walked towards the now silent outpost, daring not to look at the bodies strewn about on the ground. Too torn up to move even if whatever unnatural force possessed some of them had been present. She was thankful for that, even if the rancid smell of blood and gunpowder hung heavy in the air as she passed. Happy indeed when she found the commander's tent and something to block out the sight and scent around her.

Though it was not unoccupied. The commander was still there.

Tied to a chair, strange black bile dripping from his jaw and eyes bloodshot so much they seemed to almost glow in the darkness. She clutched at her mouth to strangle a scream as he lunged forward. Halted by the zipties which had secured him to a post on one side. No sense of self or sanity remained, only a wild and murderous intent focused on her. Though by the looks of it he'd suffered before his infection, injuries not self-inflected by his current state easily seen.

"What happened here…"

Her question seemed to be answered soon as she heard the sound of boots on loose gravel over the growling of the now former commander. Odet saw the crates to one side, some opened and others still nailed shut and bolted towards them. Ducked low and daring only to peep through the cracks in the wood as the tent parted once more.

And a pair entered.

One man and one woman, clad in black and gray fatigues. Faces covered and bedecked in weaponry that looked a good deal more expensive than what either the Liberation Army or their foes down in the capital could afford to muster. Her questions only deepened when one spoke to the other.

"Can't believe you forgot to let this one out with the rest, Carter."

"Stuff it Bravo," the woman bit back, pulling her facemask down and her goggles up. Revealing short brunette hair and a pale complexion that fit with both her accent and language. "And use codenames for fucks sake."

"Americans?"

"Why? There's no one left here but brain dead zombies like these and the controlled BOWs we sent out with them."

"It's called professionalism."

"Yeah, and if we were fighting a real army and not playing cleanup for Leviathan Chemicals so these asshole rebels would stop squatting on the pipeline maybe you'd have a point."

"Whatever," Carter said as she cut the commander loose. Who dropped to the floor before standing up, arms outstretched and jaw unhinging as something long and wriggling stuck out of him and in a mass of tentacles tried to engulf the woman that had set him loose.

Only for her eyes to glow blood red in the darkness as he slowly came to a stop, standing there as if frozen before her gaze.

"At least these things they gave us make it quick and easy. Hell, we didn't even have to take a shot once we got in here and infected the lot of them."

"Almost feels too easy," the man said. "When I was in Iraq-"

"Oh god, just shut up Bravo. I have had it up to here with your machismo war stories." She turned and pointed and her compatriot, the zombie forgotten for the moment as they argued. Which took the opportunity to turn towards her hiding spot.

Odet's heart leapt into her chest as the former commander moved closer and closer. She pushed back, coming towards the edge of the tent as he lunged against the crates, causing the open lid of one to fall over and onto the ground.

"Seems like he found something."

Odet didn't bother to wait, crawling out from under the edge of the tent and sprinting in a mad dash into the oil field. The pumps, still off, standing about her and casting long shadows in the deepening darkness as the last glimmers of sunlight faded. She couldn't hear anything over the pounding of her heart, simply driven by blind panic to run as far and as fast as she could from what was chasing her. Worse than the monsters made of men, worse than the living dead which had been her friends and comrades only a few short hours ago.

The monsters wearing the flesh of men and women, come to her quiet corner of the world to bring such death and devastation. All thoughts save fleeing had left her, all plans from before abandoned in the face of such depravity and evil. She knew that there was no hope of mercy from those behind her, only the faint and fleeting possibility that they might miss her if she could run far and fast enough.

The howl of dogs, or something worse, set that hope to rest. And she tripped and fell. Rolling down the hill, through a broken section of the fence that had separated the oil fields from the road. In the distance as she crawled out of the mud Odet saw the flames and smoke from her village. And figures walking towards her out of the darkness.

Slow and steady, without the halting wrongness of the rest. Eyes aflame like demons from hell.

And behind them a legion of nightmares leaped from the shadows.

Now

"An investigation continues into the bioterrorist attack near the Leviathan Chemicals Oil Field in the Eastern Slav Republic. On site verification of BOWs has been determined by the BSAA and independent investigators, though the specific strains are yet to be determined."

"The total death count is still unknown, though estimates place it over two thousand in the region dead or infected. The vector for the spread appears to be yet another variation of the Plagas which has become the bio-weapon most commonly used after variations of the T-virus."

"Ashley Graham gave a public announcement that she and the US division of the BSAA would make another effort to have the viral inhibitor treatment approved. Last year it narrowly failed in the EU by-"

She shut the television off, leaning back into her bed and trying to ignore the odd sounds it made as her limbs shifted. Her weight hadn't changed that much, comparatively. Hell, if Wesker's insane plan had worked it certainly would have. But then he'd always thought he was smarter than he actually was and in her particular case it had caught up to him.

Jill still wasn't quite sure what he'd planned, her memories during those years of mind controlled obedience thankfully foggy most of the time. Clarity had come back when he'd decided to alter her injections, using an immune system suppressant to make her open to infection to the original progenitor viruses so he could, in his words, "Make a proper impression when Chris arrived."

She'd still been too out of it to tell him wear to stick it when the needles came out, but whatever plan he'd had to make her into some hulking abomination to murder or be murdered by Chris Redfield had failed spectacularly when it turned out that the most recent infection she'd received was faster on the draw then even Wesker had anticipated. The T-Abyss had ran rampant within days of his modified treatment and Jill's last memories of a normal human existence were of Wesker looking oddly panicked ( good ) and that idiot fangirl Excella's sharpening look of disgust at what she was becoming (that was less pleasant to remember).

When her vision had faded away, eyes vanishing as her flesh grew over them she'd actually been thankful for the solitude. Sounds and scents became muted as her body mutated within darkness. Until she started to see again.

Through her skin. Her new eyes jet black orbs, far too sensitive, but thankfully sharp enough that nothing had been lost there. Then with time sound and smells had come back too, some parts sharper. Far too clear, as the way she'd licked the air when she'd been let loose again, the P30 replaced upon her chest and kept her compliant and blissfully unaware of how much she'd changed.

Till Chris had yanked it off and she'd awoken at last.

Clawed, tailed, and looking more like a walking shark than a woman. Though given how mercifully humanoid most T-Abyss variations had been and her own cocktail of viral inhibitors even after Wesker had idiotically decided to repress her immune system after all the things she'd been in contact with, Jill had to secretly wonder if she'd lucked out.

She was alive after all?

Wesker standing over another man, watching as he writhed on the ground and screamed. Veins bulged out as the infection took over. She didn't look away as she couldn't look away as she'd been told to observe and-

She sank further into the bed, covering her head with sheets, trying not to think of how many atrocities she'd been part of, those she remembered and those she thankfully did not. If anything this… had at least put an end to that, her body too mutated for Wesker to send her out to do his bidding or to follow him outside of the lab when he committed yet another unspeakable act of bioterrorism as part of his mad agenda.

Jill hadn't told anyone, least of all Chris or the therapist the BSAA had managed to dig up and who hadn't gone running when they'd seen her, but part of her wondered if this was just her punishment for all the death and destruction she'd failed to stop, and then became an unwilling participant in. As awful as her state now was…

At least she could properly mourn those deaths she'd born silent witness to, standing beside Wesker as he-

She grabbed at the remote control, her three clawed hand almost breaking it as she turned the sound back on. Hoping to drown out her thoughts, if only for a moment, with anything else.