It's that time... when excessive bleeding, moaning, and general pissy moods are rampant, where one wrong word can get a person killed, one mistaken glance can get their face clawed off... a time when you should just avoid everyone you know, just to be safe...

The zombies are here.

Associate Evil

They dashed through the aisles - a striking pair, with him huffing, out of breath; and her sleek, graceful, executing artful turns down every corner, gun raised. The monstrosity lurked unseen on the underside of the roof, tongue lolling in a long coil, ribbons of corrosive blood falling in long arcs onto the floor. Where the acid landed, acrid waves of smoke billowed out from the tile as it dissolved almost immediately.

He gestured to one such tile, slid to a stop. She saw another tile hiss, immediately tracked the trajectory of the acid splash, aimed her gun high, fired three times. The third shot clicked on an empty chamber.

"I thought you reloaded before we left!" Joe cried out, ducking down another aisle to avoid the tongued beast as it slammed to the ground. It reared its head, clawed out randomly, causing Elizabeth to roll quickly towards him.

"You said we had to hurry and get to the other survivors as a first priority!" She shot back, dropping the casings with a flick, and reaching into her pocket. She fumbled six more rounds into her gun, clicked it shut, and dove out of the aisle again.

"I'll let you know now, then." Joseph yelled. "Any time we go out into a zombie invested area, always reload your weapon first! Common fucking sense!" Joseph sighed, slouched back. He was useless right now. He had no weapon, was heavily bandaged. So he devoted his attention to other things to keep his mind off the fact that a gunfight with some sort of mutant was occuring a few feet away from him.

"What the hell!" Joseph cried out suddenly. Elizabeth cast her glance from the beast in front of her, looking towards the aisle Joe was on. The monster chose that exact time to rear back and flick its tongue at her, a move she hadn't been expecting. She barely flattened herself on the ground in time to avoid its impaling thrust.

"What happened, Joe?" She yelled as she rolled back into a firing position. She shot three more times, saw two of them embed themselves in the creature's skull. It still advanced.

"I didn't authorize this sale on screwdriver sets! Two for seven - that's ridiculously below market value!"

It licked again. She tumbled, felt the brush of the tongue as it rushed past her hair.

"Joseph, I've got some perverted monster out here trying to lick me to death, and all you can worry about is a fucking screwdriver?" She stood, aimed, fired off three more shots. Her hand must have been shaking; only one hit, in what might have been the monster's shoulder.

"Damn six shooters, I'm out of ammo again!" She gulped, backed into the aisle behind her. A glance confirmed that she wasn't going to be able to vault over it and reload safely on the other side. The beast seemed to sense cornered prey. It began to slowly advance to her, making quick moves to counter every feint she made. The beast reared back, it's tongue hanging grotesquely from its mouth, and roared. Elizabeth shut her eyes and screamed.

Slick. An interesting sound. Elizabeth risked opening her eyes again; noted that the licking monster was lying on the ground, blood pooling out from both its ears. Dead. She looked up again, realized that Joseph was holding a slimy, lumpy, excessively bloody rod. He leaned over, wiped it against the licker, then held it up again for her inspection.

"Screwdrivers - they don't need reloading." He said with a smirk. He flipped the screwdriver in his hand a few times, finally stopping with a grip on the blade of it.

"Ow, Jesus fuck!" Joseph cried out, throwing the screwdriver to the ground angrily.

"Did you cut yourself?" Elizabeth asked. In answer, a plume of acrid smoke shot up suddenly from his bandaged hand, the one he had used to catch the screwdriver. He hastily shed the bandages, inspected his fingers for any burns or lesions.

"Thank God I was wearing bandages on that hand." He said finally. Then he kicked the ground suddenly, madly, nearly slipping in the licker's blood. "Why the hell does this shit keep happening to me?"

As if he deserved a cosmic answer, another licker chose that exact moment to land on his back, pinning him to the ground.

A/N: I go from two long chapters in a day to one short chapter in a month... sorry about that.

You may have noticed that the creature goes through several changes in naming - creature, mutant, monster, beast, licking thing, etc. But only twice is it named as it is. Licker. We all know what they are, we've all played RE, but our characters, being situated in a fiction taking place in RE, haven't ever heard the term. So, I had them come to it themselves. After the (hopefully spontaneous sounding) "lick me to death" comment, they started calling it a licking monster, licker, etc. Soon, it'll make the necessary progression to capital L, the Licker.

Quite possibly the best monster in any video game, ever. :)

And how the hell are the Hunter's going to get named, if I keep this scheme up? "Oh, hey look Elizabeth, ugly monsters on the prowl. We should name them after you. SLAP"

(For those who don't get it, Elizabeth Hunter is her name.)

As always, thank you for reading, and if you like providing feedback, please review. :)

Everything except my survivor group and Wal-Mart are (c) those Resident Evil people. You know who they are. And Wal-Mart is (c) Satanic Industries.

I'm done wasting your time.

Seriously.

Get out of here.

Go review, or something.

Still here?

Okay, fine, I guess it's...

OMAKE TIME!

Got your hopes up, didn't I?

I'm a cruel bastard.

:) Please don't review harshly for this.

Until next time!