Chapter 8: On Wheels
(ELZA)
Elza Walker was willing to take it was a small miracle that her bike was still where she'd left it: on its side on the curb. The dead policeman she'd swerved to avoid was gone (she tried not to think about where he might've gotten off to), as were all the other terrified people in the area. Elza hoped they'd gotten to safety, but she wasn't in a position to do anything about it if they hadn't.
Even more surprisingly, Elza's helmet was where she'd left it, too. Quickly she picked it up, giving it a once over, before planting it firmly on her head. The big plastic and metal headgear would severely restrict her vision, but Elza never rode without it. There was stupid, and then there was stupid, after all.
Elza picked up her bike, mounted it, then kicked it into gear. There was a purr as the engine (Good girl she thought) came to live, the rear of the bike vibrating slightly. She gave it a little more gas, and was off, weaving her way down the street, around abandoned cars and a few zombies who stumbled forward, too slow to catch her but attracted to the noise.
She ran through possible escape options in her head as she rode. If she remembered correctly, she was in St. Michael's right now, on the other side of the River Circular. If she went east a few miles, she'd be able to go back to her dorm, but she decided against that immediately. The odds of the College being zombie free were pretty slim; she'd be better off heading just about anywhere else.
There was the RPD main HQ in Uptown. Elza thought about heading that way, but decided against it too. That jerk who'd picked her and Roy up earlier had claimed the RPD were still fighting there, but the odds were better than even they'd been pushed back or overrun in the intervening period. Elza could just as easily find a precinct full of zombies as living, breathing officers ready to help her.
Think, think. There had to be somewhere she could go to get help.
Elza checked her fuel gauge, and had another worry to add to her list.
There had to be a place she could go to help…before she ran out gas.
(DEAN)
"I think I may've buggered this up" John admitted, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
Dean kept his mouth shut. A, because he suspected this was simply British understatement, a stereotype he'd never encountered until everything had gone to hell, and B, because John and his merry band of mercenaries were at least trying to do the right thing, so there was no reason to castigate him. Still and all, it was hard.
They never managed to find the source of all that gunfire. Dean was beginning to suspect they'd imagined it in their desire to have some human contact. They hadn't seen anyone since breaking off from the RPD, and he was starting to feel like they were alone in Raccoon City.
Well, alone among the living, anyway. There were a fuck-load of dead people everywhere, and the vast majority weren't willing to sit around and behave. Dean's shoulder was starting to ache from the steady kick of the SPAS-12. He'd switched it over to semi-auto after his arm got sore from the constant pumping. He'd started to run out of shells and eventually slung his shotgun entirely, switching to the Beretta until the zombies clustered together enough to make the scattergun worthwhile.
Something must've happened here recently. There were a lot of dead bodies all over the place, suggesting a recent battle between the infected and…someone.
"Fuck!" exclaimed Mac, kneeling down beside two bodies in an alleyway next to a chain link fence. There'd been a brief respite in the hordes of undead, and they were taking a breather. Dean leaned up against a wall, shoving shells into his shotgun, then doing the same with his Beretta magazines.
"What?" Lewis asked, looking up from where he was doing the same thing with his assault rifle.
"Look" said Mac, kicking one body off the other. "It's that Rodriquez chica. Y'know, the crazy one?" He looked over at the other body. "And that's wha'sis face…Werbowski."
Lewis pushed off the wall and stepped over, nodding a little. "Sure is. Shit, man."
"How'd this happen?" Mac asked. "I mean, I always figured nothin' could kill Rosa Rodriquez. That bitch was tough as nails."
"Hey, look at this" said Lewis, kneeling down next to the bodies. "Those look like…gunshots."
Mac nodded. "Yeah. Whaddya think? Friendly fire?"
"Maybe…" said Lewis, shaking his head. "But you remember those fuckers we ran into earlier. Maybe their team bumped into the same guys." He paused, thinking. "What team was this, anyway?"
"I dunno" Mac replied. "Delta platoon I think. Not sure what squad though. Maybe Alpha…" He shook his head. "Everything's gone balls up today."
"Well, ah think ah can fix that" said John. After his declaration, he'd wandered off. Now he was back, with a disconcertingly happy expression on his face.
"What are you talking about?" Dean asked, pushing off the wall. He felt a slight twinge in his leg, but ignored it. The pills were starting to wear off, but he was loathe to ask for more. After all, he didn't like to think of himself as a pill popper, and he had no idea what was in the blasted things anyway.
"Come on" John said, still smiling. "Ah'll show ya."
(ELZA)
Zombies lurched out of alleys, stumbled off sidewalks, and clawed at rolled up car windows as Elza rattled past. She trying to play things safe, keeping her speedometer around thirty MPH. Anything less, and she might as well have been walking. Anything more and she risked getting blind sided by a zombie.
She kept her helmet on, although it was severely restricting her peripheral vision. On the other hand, if she had to speed up, or managed to get on the highway, she was going to be glad for the extra protection.
Her head was getting sweaty, though, her hair plastering itself to her forehead. So far, it hadn't gotten down into her eyes, a fact Elza was willing to accept as proof of divine intervention on her behalf, but that didn't make it any less irritating. Worse, her visor was just small enough she couldn't fit her hand in to do anything about it, meaning she'd have to stop and take off her helmet to fix her hair, and Elza decided that was a monumentally stupid way to die.
Elza checked her fuel gauge again. She was down to a quarter tank. She needed to find a gas station fast, before-
"Whoa!" she exclaimed, swerving as a short, skinny man in a bright yellow vest suddenly darted in front of her. She caught a brief flash of terror on the man's pale face before she lost control of the bike and skidded down the street. She felt a hot friction in her leg as the abrasive pavement scraped away at her pants, rubbing her skin raw, and let out a cry of pain. Fortunately, she hadn't been going very fast, so she ran out of momentum pretty quickly.
She lay in the middle of the road on her back for a minute, searing pain in her leg pulsing through her entire body. Dimly she saw the man she'd almost hit lean over her a minute, as if trying to see if she was still alive. Then, his head suddenly jerked up, and he turned and fled.
Elza gritted her teeth and slowly sat up, taking in the situation at a glance. Her bike was about ten feet away, minus the left side mirror, which had been smashed off and was sitting within an arm's reach. One of the tires was still spinning lazily, but overall it looked like it was still drivable.
There were zombies closing in, slowly stumbling toward her from all around. Gingerly she stood up, then cried out as fiery pain shot through her leg, dropping down on one knee for a moment. She wasn't in any condition to get back on her bike, thanks to that idiot.
With her left hand she yanked off her helmet, tossing it at one of the zombies. It hit the undead man in the chest, causing him to stumble back half a step and moan slightly, but not slowing down. Still, losing her helmet granted Elza a clearer field of vision, which she took advantage of as she drew her handgun and pulled back the hammer with her thumb.
She shot the nearest zombie in the leg, causing him to drop to one knee. Elza staggered painfully to her feet, wincing as more pain shot through her bad leg, but keeping the handgun up at eye level. She squeezed the trigger again, putting a bullet in the brain of a zombie less than five feet away, her head exploding from the 9mm round, her body dropping limply to the ground. Elza shifted targets and shot two more, opening up a narrow gap for herself, which she limped through, keeping a wary eye on the zombies stumbling forward to close it.
There weren't many options available to her. Elza stumbled down the road, managing to out pace the zombies, but only just. Already they'd managed to cut her off from her bike, and there was not way she'd be able to shoot her way through them to get to it. She needed another plan.
There was a loud howl from the pack of infected, and Elza turned to see a pair of rotten and decaying dogs trotting forward. One of them barked angrily, and the two quickened their pace. It was clear they knew she was injured and wouldn't take much trouble to run down.
Elza quickened her pace, but the dogs easily matched it. She half turned, firing the handgun behind her back, but her bullets merely chewed up the pavement. Then she felt the toe of her shoe scrap the ground, and found herself falling forward.
She landed on her face, but ignored her pain and rolled over, just in time to see the two dogs running toward her. She raised her handgun and fired without aiming, pulling the trigger repeatedly. She managed to hit one dog three times, the monstrous canine letting out a yelp of surprised pain before dropping to the ground. The other leapt at her from eight feet away, and Elza squeezed the trigger again, the slide locking back on an empty magazine.
There was a loud boom, and the dog was thrown backwards, its head exploding in a bloody flash. Elza looked behind her, to see a tall police officer with a big, scope-sighted rifle. Another person, a young woman about her age, was sprinting forward.
"C'mon!" she shouted, concern on her face. "Get up!"
Elza struggled to do so, but her leg gave out on her almost immediately and she cried out in pain, dropping back down to her knee.
"Chase!" the other woman shouted, pointing at her.
"Yeah, yeah" the man complained, slinging his rifle and hurrying over. Together, the two newcomers hoisted Elza on their shoulders and carried her down the street.
They hurried over to a nearby building, where another police officer, this one a woman with a big submachine gun, stood by, nervously eying the approaching horde.
"C'mon, c'mon" Elza heard her mutter as she was carried past. Then she was inside the dark building, the big metal door swinging closed with a bang.
"Over here" the first woman said, pointing to a stack of crates in one corner of the spacious warehouse. Gently, she and the male police officer, Chase, lowered her down.
"Here, let me take a look at your leg" said the girl, kneeling down beside her.
"I didn't get-"
"No, I know" replied the girl, not looking up. "We heard your motorcycle and saw the crash." She shook her head. "I think I even know the guy you swerved to miss. Don't worry, we'll get you all fixed up."
Elza looked around the warehouse. It was big and spacious, the center cleared out, a few wooden crates identical to the one she was sitting on stacked against the walls. Two staircases at either side led to a catwalk in the middle, which in turn joined a big, glass windowed office.
There were over a dozen people, as well. There were the two obvious police officers, along with a third, shorter one with blonde hair; plus a dark-haired man in a tattered suit; a teenage girl in clothing stained with both blood and what looked like paint; an older woman with a shotgun, plus what looked like about ten kids, all huddled nervously together in the back.
"Who are you?" she asked, looking around.
The redhead smiled, still not looking up from her examination of Elza's leg. "I'm Rebecca. The officer who saved your life is Chase. The blonde woman is Rita, and the one with the SMG is Karen. That guy over there is Billy, the girl is Maddie, and the other lady is Loretta, and the kids are…well, the kids are over there." She paused, tightening the gauze around her leg. "There, good as new, whoever you are."
"I'm Elza Walker" she replied, looking down at the already staining gauze. Her leg certainly didn't feel good as new. "What's the plan?"
"Well, there's just too many of us to go back out on the street" Rebecca replied. "More importantly, there are too many of those things out there. We don't have a choice. We have to wait here for rescue."
Elza looked around. The warehouse looked sturdy enough, but all the same, she couldn't help feeling like she'd just gotten herself locked in a trap.
The sounds of infected pounding on the walls outside didn't help matters any.
(DEAN)
They all stood around the large, light blue minivan, looking for all the world like neighborhood hoods contemplating the theft of a soccer mom's vehicle…if one ignored the various weapons they were carrying.
"I don't know…" Dean said, looking around nervously.
John snorted, clapping him roughly on the shoulder. "C'mon! It's just a matter of figurin'. See, way I see it, we need this a lot more'n whoever it belongs to, roit? Well, seein' as how the owner in question isn't here to complain, who's say no?"
That made a lot of sense to Dean. So much so that it bothered him. Sure, there was the expediency of it all, but damn it, he was supposed to be a cop. This was stealing, and there was supposed to be a law, and…
"Damn it!" he swore quietly, before turning to face John. "Fine. If you can hotwire the thing, then by all means let's take it."
John smiled a gape-toothed grin. "There! See, I knew ya'd come around!" Without another word he turned around and began to fiddle with the car door. Dean thought he was going to demonstrate some special mercenary's way of breaking into a car, but he soon found it wasn't much different from a normal thug's when the other man slammed the barrel of his dart gun through the passenger's side window, shattering the glass. Gingerly he reached inside and undid the lock, swinging the door open…and cursing fluently when he saw the steering wheel on the other side. Muttering irritably about "dyslexic Americans drivin' on the wrong side of the fuckin' road," he scrambled inside.
Then Dean got his next surprise. He'd expected John to hotwire the van, but instead he flicked out his combat knife, using it to quickly pry free the plastic housing on the ignition, before jamming the blade into the opening and twisting. With a violent sputter, the van's engine started.
"C'mon!" John shouted, waving them forward with one hand.
Then, like some sort of perverse prairie dog, a bloody child's head popped up from behind a bench. Followed by another, and another, until half a dozen clearly dead children were peeking over the bench, contrasting sharply with the graphic of the Mayor and his campaign slogan, "Warren for a Better, Safer Raccoon City." One kid's jaw was dislocated and hanging limply to the side.
"Oh Christ" John said, less a curse and more a prayer.
Mac loudly vomited on the sidewalk. Dean wasn't willing to condemn him for it, since he was busy doing the same thing.
"Come on, come on!" shouted Lewis, waving to them. Dean wiped bile from his mouth with the back of his hand and hurried toward the rear passenger's door of the van, yanking it open and scrambling inside, reaching out and pulling Mac in behind him. Slowly other zombies began to stumble forward, the van's revving engine a clarion call.
"Fuck this" John growled, flooring the gas pedal and slamming the van into a dead traffic cop, dragging him under and leaving a bloody streak down the street as they drove.
"Where to, Officer?" John called over his shoulder.
Dean didn't have a good answer. He just shrugged. "Anywhere that's not here" he managed after a moment.
John chuckled. "Good enough for me."