by S. D. Perry
A Hunter. Like the ones at the estate, in the tunnels.
She'd stood on the fire escape outside of an uptown boutique, seen it in the street just past one of the vans that blocked the fire escape's alley. It didn't see her; she watched it lope by and out of sight, a little different than the ones from before, but close enough – the same strangely graceful, malignant carriage, the heavy, curved talons, the dark mud green color. She held her breath, her stomach in knots, remembering…… hunched over so that its impossibly long arms al-most touched the stone floor of the tunnel, both its hands and feet tipped with thick, brutal claws. Tiny, light-colored eyes peering out at her from aflat reptil-ian skull, its tremendous, high-pitched screech echoing through the dark underground just before it sprang…
She'd killed it, but it had taken her fifteen 9mm rounds to do it, an entire magazine. Later, Barry had told her that he'd heard them referred to as Hunters, one of Umbrella's bio-organic weapons. There had been other kinds on the estate – feral, skinned-looking dogs; a kind of giant, flesh-eating plant that Chris and Rebecca had destroyed; spiders the size of small cattle; and the dark, mutant things with bladed hooks for hands, the ones that hung from the ceiling of the es-tate's boiler room, skittering overhead like spined mon-keys.
And the Tyrant, somehow the worst because you could see that it had been human once; before the surgeries, before the genetic tampering and the T-virus.
So it wasn't just the T-virus loose in Raccoon. As awful as the realization was, it wasn't exactly shocking; Umbrella had been messing around with some very dangerous stuff, breeding slaughtering, nightmare chil-dren like some aberrant God without preparing for the inevitable consequences; sometimes, nightmares didn't just go away.
Unless… unless they did this on purpose.No. If they'd meant to destroy Raccoon City, theywould have evacuated their own people… wouldn'tthey?
It was a question that haunted her on her journey to the police station. Seeing the Hunter had made up her mind for her about what to do next; she simply had to have more ammo, and she knew there'd be some in the
S.T.A.R.S. office, in the gun safe – 9mm, probably shotgun shells, maybe even one of Barry's old re-volvers. The station wasn't too far away, at least. She stuck to the growing shadows, easily dodging the few zom-bies she passed; many of them had decayed too much to move any faster than a slow walk. One of the gates she had to pass through to get to the station had been heavily roped and knotted, the knots soaked with oil. She gave herself a mental kick for forget-ting to bring a knife; lucky for her she'd picked up a lighter at the Bar Jack, although she worried some about the smoke drawing attention to her position until she got through the gate and saw the heap of burning debris farther ahead, just in front of Um-brella's medical sales offices. Damage left over from the riots, she guessed. She thought about stopping to put out the flames, but there didn't seem to be any danger of their spreading in the cement and brick al-leyway. So, here she was, standing at the gates to the RPD courtyard. The rioting had been bad here. Trashed cars, broken barricades, and orange emergency cones littered the street, though there were no bodies amidst the rubble. To her right, a fire hydrant spewed a foun-tain of hissing water into the air. The gentle sound of splashing water might even have been pleasant in an-other circumstance – a hot summer day, children laughing and playing. Knowing that no fireman or city worker would be coming to fix the gushing hydrant made her ache inside, and the thought of chil-dren… it was too much; she blocked it out, deter-mined not to let herself start thinking about things she couldn't fix. She had enough to worry about.
Such as stocking up on supplies… so what are you waiting for, anyway? A written invitation?
Jill took a deep breath and pushed the gates open, wincing at the squeal of rusty metal. A quick scan told her the small, fenced yard was empty; she lowered her weapon, relieved, and carefully closed the gates before moving toward the heavy wooden doors of the RPD building. A lot of cops had died out in the streets, which would make this easier for her, as terrible as that was; not as many carriers to deal with once she got in-side… Sqreeak! Behind her, the gates swung open. Jill spun, almost firing at the figure that crashed into the yard, until she realized who it was.
"Brad!"
He stumbled toward the sound of her voice, and she saw that he was badly wounded. He clutched his right side, blood dripping over his fingers, a look of com-plete terror on his face as he reached toward her with his free hand, gasping.
"juh… Jill!"
She stepped toward him, so focused on him that when he suddenly disappeared, she didn't understand what had happened. A wall of black had sprung up be-tween them, a blackness that emitted a deep, rumbling howl of fury, that started toward Brad and shook the ground with each massive step. "Sstaarrss," it clearly said, the word nearly hidden beneath a wavering growl like that of a wild animal, and Jill knew what it was without seeing its face; she knew it like she knew her own dreams.
Tyrant.
Brad fell backwards, shaking his head as if to deny the approaching creature, staggering in a half circle and stopping when his back hit brick. In the split second before it reached him, Jill could see it in profile; time seemed to stop for that instant, allowing her to really see it, to see that it wasn't her nightmare Tyrant, but no less horrible for that; in fact, it was worse. Between seven and eight feet tall, humanoid, its shoulders impossibly broad, its arms longer than they should have been. Only its hands and head were visi-ble, the rest of its strangely proportioned body clothed in black, except for what appeared to be tentacles, slightly pulsing ropes of flesh that were only half tucked under its collar, their points of origin unseen. Its hairless skin was the color and texture of badly healed scar tissue, and its face looked as though whoever had designed the creature had decided not to bother, instead pulling a too-tight sack of torn leather over its rudimen-tary skull. Misshapen white slits for eyes were set too low and separated by an irregular line of thick surgical staples. Its nose was barely formed, but the dominant feature by far was its mouth, or lack thereof; the lower half of its face was teeth, giant and square, lipless, set against dark red gums. Time started again when the creature reached out and covered Brad's entire face with one hand, still growling as Brad tried to say something, panting in high, wheezing gasps beneath its palm…… and there was an awful, wet squishing sound, heavy but slick, like someone punching a hole in meat. Jill saw a flesh tentacle sticking out from the back of Brad's neck and understood that he was dead, that he would bleed out in seconds. Numbly, she saw that the ropelike appendage was moving, swaying like a blind snake, droplets of blood falling from its muscular length. The Tyrant-thing grasped Brad's skull, and in a single, fluid motion, it lifted the dead pilot and tossed him aside, retracting the killing tentacle back into its sleeve before Brad hit the ground. "Sstaarrss," it said again, turning to face her, and as it focused its attention to her, Jill felt a fear greater than any she'd ever known. The Beretta would be useless. She turned and sprinted, barreling through the doors to the RPD, slam-ming and dead-bolting them behind her, all on instinct; she was too frightened to think about what she was doing, too frightened to do anything but back away from the double doors as the monster slammed into them, rattling them on their hinges. They held. Jill was very still, listening to the pound of blood in her ears, waiting for the next blow. Long seconds dragged by, and nothing happened, but full minutes passed before she dared to look away, and even the realization that it had stopped for the moment brought her no relief. Brad had been right, it was coming for them and now that he was dead, it would be coming for her.
SEVEN
GOD HELP ME, I'VE FINALLY SEEN IT FOR MYSELF;God help us all.They lied to us. Dr. Robison and the Umbrella peopleheld a press conference at the hospital just this morning,and they damn near insisted that there's no need topanic – that the cases being called in were isolated events,that the victims were suffering from the flu; not, accord-ing to them, the so-called cannibal disease that the
&nbs
p; S.T.A.R.S. were going on about in July, in spite of what a few "paranoid" citizens are now saying. Chief Irons was there, too, he backed the docs up and reiterated his views on the defunct S.T.A.R.S.'s incompetence; case closed, right? Nothing to worry about. We were on our way back to the office from the press conference, south on Cole Street, and there was a commo-tion holding up traffic, a couple of stopped cars and a gath-ering crowd. No cops on the scene. I thought it was some minor accident and started to back up, but Dave wanted to get a few shots; he still had two rolls of film left from the hospital, what the hell. We got out and suddenly people were running, screaming for help, and we saw three pedes-trians down in the middle of the street, and there was blood everywhere. The attacker was young, barely twenty, white male – he was straddling an older man, and… My hands are shaking, I don't know how to say it, I don't want to say it but it's my job. People have to know. I can't let this get to me. He was eating one of the older man's eyes. The other two victims were dead, slaughtered, an elderly woman and a younger one, both of them with bloody throats and faces. The younger woman's abdomen had been ripped open. It was chaos, total hysteria – crying, shouting, even some crazy laughter. Dave snapped two pies and then threw up on himself. I wanted to do something, I did, but those people were already dead and I was afraid. The young man slurped away, digging his fingers into the man's other eye, seemingly oblivious to everything else; he was actually moaning like he couldn't get enough, gore all over him. We heard the sirens and backed off along with everyone else. Most people left, but a few stayed, pale and sick and frightened. I got the story from a chubby shopkeeper who couldn't stop wringing his hands, though there wasn't much else to tell – the kid apparently just wandered onto the street and grabbed a woman, started biting her. The shopkeeper said the woman's name was Joelle something-or-other, and she was walking with her mother, a Mrs. Mur-ray (the shopkeeper didn't know her first name). Mrs. Murray tried to stop the attack, and the kid turned on her. A couple of men tried to help, jumping the kid, and he managed to get one of them, too. After that, nobody tried to help anymore. The cops showed up and before they even looked at the mess in the street – at the freakshow kid lunching on his fellow man – they cleared and secured the scene. Three squad cars surrounded the attacker, blocking him from view. The shopkeeper was actually told to close up and go home, along with the rest of us. When I told one of the offi-cers that Dave and I were with the press, he confiscated Dave's camera; said it was evidence, which is total and utter bullshit, like they have a right… Listen to me, worried about freedom of the press at this point. It doesn't matter. At four o'clock this afternoon, one hour ago, Mayor Harris declared martial law; blockades have been set up all over the place, and we've been cut off from the outside. According to Harris, the city's been quar-antined so that the "unfortunate illness that is plaguing some of our citizens" won't spread. He wouldn't call it the cannibal disease, but there's obviously no question – and according to our police scanner, the attacks are multiply-ing exponentially. I believe that it may already be too late for all of us. The disease isn't airborne or we'd all have it, but the evidence strongly suggests that you get it when you're bitten by one of them, just like in the movies I used to watch on the Dou-ble Creature Feature when I was a boy. That would explain the incredible growth rate of the attacks – but it also tells me that unless the cavalry comes in very soon, we're all going to die, one way or another. The cops have closed down the press, but I'm going to try to get the word out anyway, even if I have to go door-to-door. Dave, Tom, Kathy, Mr. Bradson – everyone else has gone home to be with their families. They don't care about letting the people know anymore, but it's all I have left. I don't want to I just heard glass breaking downstairs. Somebody's coming.
There wasn't any more. Carlos lowered the crum-pled sheets he'd found, placing them on the reporter's desk, his mouth a grim line. He'd killed two zombies in the hallway… maybe one of them had been the writer, a distressing thought made all the worse by its application -how long had it taken for the writer to change? And if he's right about the disease, how long does Randy have?
A police scanner and some kind of handheld radio sat on a countertop across the room, but suddenly all he could think of was Randy, downstairs and getting sicker, waiting for Carlos to come back. He'd held up pretty well so far, managing to crawl through two of the blockades with only a little help, but by the time they'd reached the Raccoon Press building, he'd hardly been able to stand up on his own. Carlos had left him propped up beneath a dead pay phone on the first floor, not wanting to drag him up the stairs; a few small fires were smoldering on the lower landing, and Carlos had been afraid that Randy might trip and get burned…… which might be the least of his worries right now. Puta, what a balls-up. Why didn't they tell us what we were getting into?
Carlos choked down the despair that question raised; it was something he could take up with the proper au-thorities once they got out of here. He'd probably end up being deported, since he was only in the country through Umbrella, but so what? At the moment, going back to his old life sounded like a picnic. He hurried to the radio equipment and switched the scanner on, not sure what to do next; he'd never used one, and his only experience with two-way radios was a set of walkie-talkies he'd once played with as a kid. 200 CHANNEL MULTI-BAND was written on top of the scanner, and there was actually a scan button. He pushed it and watched a small digital readout flash meaningless numbers at him. Except for a few static bursts and clicks, nothing happened.
Great. That's real helpful.
The radio was what he wanted, anyway, and it at least looked like a walkie-talkie, though it said, AM/SSB TRANSCEIVER on the side. He picked it up, wondering if there were channels, or if there was some memory con-trol button and heard footsteps out in the hall. Slow, dragging footsteps. He dropped the radio on the counter and hefted his assault rifle, turning toward the door that opened into the hallway, already recognizing the shuffling, aimless steps of a zombie. The large newspaper office was the only room on the second floor; unless he wanted to jump out a window, the hall and stairs were the only way out. He'd have to kill it to get back to…
Oh, shit, it had to go past Randy, what if it got to him? What if… What if it was Randy? "Please, no," he whispered, but once the possibility occurred to him, he couldn't not think about it. He backed across the room, feeling sweat slide down the back of his neck. The footsteps continued, getting closer – and was that a limp he heard, the sound of one foot dragging?
Please, don't be, I don't want to have to kill him!
The footsteps paused just outside the door – and then Randy Thomas stepped, lurched into view, his expres-sion blank and free of pain, strings of drool hanging from his lower lip. "Randy? Stop there, 'mano, okay?" Carlos heard his voice break with dismal fear. "Say something, okay? Randy?"
A kind of dread acceptance filled Carlos as Randy tilted his head toward him and continued forward, rais-ing his arms. A low, gurgling moan erupted from his throat, and it was the loneliest sound Carlos thought he'd ever heard. Randy didn't really see him, didn't un-
derstand what he was saying; Carlos had become food,nothing more."Lo siento mucho," he said, and again in English, incase there was any part of Randy left, "I'm sorry. Sleepnow, Randy."
Carlos aimed carefully and fired, looking away assoon as he saw the grouping of holes appear just aboveRandy's right eyebrow, hearing but not seeing his com-rade's body hit the floor. For a long time he simplystood, shoulders slumped as he gazed at his own boots,wondering how he'd gotten so tired so fast… andtelling himself there was nothing else he could havedone.At last, he walked over and picked up the radio, hittingthe switch and thumbing the send control. "This is CarlosOliveira, member of Umbrella's U.B.C.S. team, squadAlpha, Platoon Delta. I'm at the Raccoon City newspaperoffice. Can anyone hear me? We were cut off from the restof the platoon, and now we – I need help. Request imme-diate assistance. If you can hear this, please respond."
Nothing but static; m
aybe he needed to try specificchannels; he could go through them one by one andjust keep repeating the message. He turned the radioover, looking at all of the buttons, and saw, stampedinto the backing, RANGE FIVE MILES.
Which means I can call anybody in town, how use-ful – except nobody's gonna answer, because they're dead. Like Randy. Like me.
Carlos closed his eyes, trying to think, trying to feel anything like hope. And he remembered Trent. He checked his watch, realizing how crazy this was, think-ing that it was the only thing that made sense anymore; Trent had known, he'd known what was going on and he'd told Carlos where to go when the shit came down. Without Randy to think about and with no clear path out of town… Grill 13. Carlos had just over an hour to find it.
Jill had just reached the S.T.A.R.S. office when the communication console at the back of the room crack-led to life. She slammed the door behind her and ran to it, words spitting out through a haze of static.
"… is Carlos… Raccoon… were cut off… pla-toon… help… assistance… if you can hear… re-spond…"
Jill snatched up the headset and hit the transmit switch. "This is Jill Valentine, Special Tactics and Res-cue Squad! You're not coming in very clear, please re-peat – what's your location? Do you read me? Over!"
She strained to hear something, anything and then saw that the light over the transmit relay switch wasn't on. She tapped several buttons and jiggled the switch, but the little green light refused to show itself. "Damn it!" She knew dick about communications, too. Whatever was broken, she wasn't going to be the one to fix it.
