Chapter 9
Jill and Carlos passed through the residential neighborhoods and found themselves in a business area. There was an oil change service on the corner, and a line of shops along the side of the street, including a real estate office, a hair salon, and a used electronics store. Cars were parked haphazardly everywhere, jammed along the street in random directions. There was a building on fire halfway down the street, bright orange flames swirling from the gutted windows, flickering light shimmering up and down the avenue, glinting off the cars in the traffic jam. The smell of smoke and sound of crackling flames permeated the entire street.
“Keep your eyes open,” Carlos said. “There are a lot of places for something to hide.”
They crept along the street, staying mostly to the sidewalk. Some of the cars were stopped up on the curb, blocking their path. One car was halfway through the front windows of a comic book store, broken glass and debris scattered around. Jill saw blood smeared on the car windows, but there were no zombies so far. She stayed close behind Carlos.
“We’re still going the right direction?” he asked, peering down the barrel of his rifle.
“Yes,” Jill answered. “We can take this street almost all the way to the park, but its still pretty far away.”
“You want to rest for a little while or keep going?”
“We can keep going. Maybe we can stop to get food somewhere though.”
Carlos nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty hungry too. All I had was breakfast.”
“I didn’t even have that,” Jill said. “I haven’t eaten anything all day except those candy bars you gave me.”
“You know, I wanted to ask you earlier,” Carlos said hesitantly. “I mean, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But how did you stay alive this long, anyway? How come you didn’t get infected this morning?”
“I slept in late,” Jill said. “I woke up this afternoon after everything had already gone to hell. After that, I just got lucky, I suppose. I didn’t get bitten by anything.”
“Do you ... you know, have a family?”
“They don’t live here. My parents live in New York.”
“Okay, so no kids or anything?”
“No, I don’t have any children. I’m single and I live by myself.” Then, as she though about it, she added, “Thank God for that.”
“Yeah,” Carlos said solemnly.
They made it past the traffic jam and the burning building, and continued on down the street. They saw a couple of ragged zombies, and ran into one of the infected dogs, but Carlos shot it quickly and they were in no danger.
“I’m sorry I argued with you earlier,” Jill said. “About working for Umbrella. I don’t want you to take it personally.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Carlos shrugged. “I don’t blame you. I would probably say the same things if I was you.”
“How did you wind up working for them?”
“I was in the Army back in Mexico but they kicked me out. Umbrella offered me a job as a soldier with the UBCF, so I took it. I don’t regret it, cause it’s been a great opportunity for me, you know? But when they send me to places like this, it really makes me want to change careers.”
“Why did you get kicked out of the Army?”
“Some of the guys in my unit were taking bribes from the drug cartels. When I found out about it, I told my commanding officer.”
“And then what?”
“Turns out he was taking bribes too. And so was the base commander. The drug cartels were paying all of them. So I got kicked out because I tried to stop it.”
“I think I understand why you’re still working for Umbrella,” Jill said. “You already got in trouble once for trying to do the right thing.”
“I could have gotten killed for it,” Carlos said bitterly. “Back in Mexico, you don’t cross the cartels. They have so much power. You say the wrong thing and you’ll wind up decapitated, your body hanging from an overpass as a warning to others.”
“You could say the same thing about Umbrella.”
“No, Umbrella does way worse things than that.”
From far down the street behind them, Jill heard a sound that made her hair stand up on the back of her neck. She stopped and grabbed Carlos’ shoulder urgently, and he spun around immediately.
“What is it?”
“It’s that monster,” Jill said. “I heard it.”
“What do you –”
And then they both heard it, a loud agonized scream coming from far in the distance. Jill peered down the dark street and saw something moving, several blocks away. A dark shape, too small to make out the details, coming down the street.
“I thought we killed it already,” Carlos said nervously.
“I told you, it keeps coming back. I’ve already fought it a couple of times today and I can’t kill it.” She pulled Carlos away and said, “Come on, we’ve got to get moving.”
They ran down the street, past more businesses and houses, past gas stations and convenience stores that they might have stopped at for food. There were auto parts stores, hair salons, and insurance offices, along with diners and fast food restaurants.
Screaming again, this time closer. Jill looked over her shoulder and saw the creature behind them, a block away and gaining, its burnt and shredded trenchcoat flapping behind it like large black wings, its huge black boots slamming into the pavement. She could almost see the twisted look on its monstrous face.
“What are we gonna do?” Carlos shouted. “I don’t have enough bullets left!”
“I don’t know!” Jill shouted back.
“Oh no!” Carlos groaned, causing Jill to look up ahead.
In front of them, blocking the entire street, was a crowd of zombies. There were more than a hundred at least, slowly moving towards them on shuffling feet, glaring with bloody eyes and gaping mouths.
“That way!” Jill cried, pointing to the left. “We have to split up!”
“Are you crazy?” Carlos shouted. “You don’t even have a gun! If it catches you, it’ll kill you!”
“It will kill both of us!”
They turned left and ran down the next street, past more businesses and offices, and two-story buildings with stores below and apartments on the second floor. Streetlights illuminated the street, which was also packed with more cars and trucks, but there were only a handful of zombies standing around.
The creature behind them roared angrily, and Jill could practically hear its thudding footsteps as it ran after them. She turned and ran along the sidewalk, while Carlos stayed in the street, dodging in between the cars.
Up ahead she spotted a building with the lights still on inside. It was a three-story building with large front windows on the main floor, next to a narrow alley with another three-story building next to it with a restaurant on the main floor. A large yellow van was parked in the alley.
“Keep running!” she called to Carlos. “I’ll try to distract it!”
“You’re crazy!” he shouted.
Jill jumped over a hedge and hurried across the well-manicured front lawn of the building, barely stopping when she reached the glass front door. She yanked it open and bolted into a well-lit lobby and waiting room. On the wall was a large sign that read, “The Raccoon City Herald.” It was main office for the city newspaper.
Jill ran across the waiting room and to the main hallway to the offices in the back. Before she even made it that far, she heard a horrendous crash, and glimpsed the creature smashing its way through the glass windows in the front of the building, swatting aside the panes of glass like they were curtains. Glass exploded across the lobby as the creature crashed inside.
It didn’t bother to go after Carlos at all, it immediately went after her. Jill suddenly realized that her encounters with the creature were not just a random coincidence. It was no accident that she kept running into it.
The creature was chasing af
ter her. It wanted her.
She glanced into side offices, seeing numerous desks and stacks of newspapers, but nowhere to really hide. It didn’t matter, because Jill knew she couldn’t hide from the monster at all. She kept going until she reached the end of the hall and saw stairs going up to the second floor. Barely slowing down, she grabbed the railing and swung around to head up the stairs, jumping up three at a time.
The monster howled furiously, the sound pounding in Jill’s head. As she reached the top of the stairs, the creature was at the bottom, smashing the railing with one brutal swing of its massive fist, splintering the thick wood. It charged up after her, the steps cracking under its tremendous weight.
There was another long hallway ahead of her, but instead Jill dove into the first doorway and barged into the room. There were two rows of desks covered in papers and old desktop computers. Jill barely acknowledged the two zombies in the room, and ran right past them as they reached for her. It was a man and a woman dressed in office apparel, most likely employees of the newspaper. They reached out and their cold fingers fumbled at Jill’s sleeve, but she went past them and to the back of the office room, to the door at the other side.
The creature reached the top of the stairs and tore into the office, its wide shoulders breaking through the door frame. It howled and rushed forward, swiping at the zombies with its arm, knocking them off their feet and tossing them across the room like dolls, their bodies cracking against the wall. The beast kicked desks aside as it charged after Jill.
The next office had more desks and tall metal shelves lined down the room, full of cardboard banker’s boxes that were packed full of photos, documents, and paper records. There was another zombie there as well, and Jill slammed her hands into it, knocking it down as she rushed past. She kept going into the next office, as the rooms that ran parallel to the hallway were all connected.
As she made it to the next office, the creature behind her crashed into the room and rushed headlong into the rows of metal shelves. They tipped over and crashed to the ground with an avalanche of paper flowing across the floor. Jill didn’t even look over her shoulder.
The next room was taken up by a large conference table with dry erase boards on all the walls, covered in multicolored writing. A male zombie wearing a business suit blocked her path, so Jill jumped up onto the table and scampered across it. The creature came into the room but couldn’t jump up after her, so it just smashed its huge fists on the table, making the entire thing rattle, knocking Jill off her feet. She went flying off the table and rolled when she hit the floor, quickly holding her breath so the wind didn’t get knocked out of her.
The creature roared and battered the table chairs aside to make its way across the room. The zombie was smashed into the wall, its body crushed under the brutal strength of the monster’s arm. It kept coming, unstoppable, unwavering, like the robot from The Terminator.
Jill stumbled into the next large office room, desperately trying to stay ahead of the monster, and found herself facing a room of zombies. Most of them, like the others, wore office clothing, but one of them caught Jill’s attention right away.
It wore an Umbrella military uniform like Carlos, apparently another one of the UBCF soldiers deployed into the city. The zombie staggered forward, groaning and clutching, and Jill jumped at it to knock it to the floor, even as it grabbed at her hair to pull her closer, its bloody jaws snapping at her face.
Jill unlatched the holster at the zombie’s hip and yanked out a Desert Eagle pistol. She jammed it in the zombie’s mouth and pulled the trigger, scattering its brains across the ceiling. She rolled up as the other zombies converged on her and shot them as well, killing four more until there was room for her to make her escape. She ran out the side door, making her way back into the main hallway.
She barely made it out of the room before the creature lunged after her, its hand snatching at empty air. Jill ran down the hallway, making some distance between them, and ducked into the next room. She ran past more desks and shelves and then doubled back into the previous office, where the other zombies were still standing around.
She blew away a few more zombies that stood in her way and ran back to the dead Umbrella soldier. Strapped over his shoulder was a small pack similar to the one Carlos and the others had been carrying when Jill first met them. She yanked the pack off of the dead zombie and ran back out the door as the creature circled around and came again, still howling its rage, yellow saliva streaming from its twisted mouth as it screamed its unnatural scream.
Jill jumped back into the hallway and ran all the way to the stairs to the third floor, fumbling in the ammo pack for what she hoped would be there. She was almost to the top of the stairs when she found them.
Grenades.
She pulled the pin from one and dropped it down the stairs after her. It bopped down the steps like slinky. As the creature reached the stairs and smashed its way up after Jill, she took off.
The grenade exploded with a thundering blast of flame and smoke, blowing the staircase to pieces, throwing the creature into the air and back down to the second floor. Debris and flaming bits of wood launched to the top of the stairs, blasting right past Jill. The detonation shook the floor, and she lost her footing and fell down. She glanced back, half-expecting to see the creature coming after her through the fire and the flames.
She got to her feet and went through the first door at the end of the hall, and for a moment was able to think for a second about her next move. Undoubtedly, coming into this building was a good idea. Even if she hadn’t found the soldier and his grenades, Jill was confident that she could keep ahead of the creature, since she was able to move faster in cramped quarters. The creature slowed down considerably when it was indoors, as it had trouble maneuvering through narrow rooms and doorways, clumsily battering its way through like a bull in a China shop.
But now, Jill needed to get out of the building, and she had just destroyed her only way back downstairs. Her options were limited. Maybe there was an elevator?
She was in another office room with more desks piled with disorganized stacks of paper. Jill went to the closest window and opened it, looking out to see the alley below. Directly underneath the window was the large yellow van, and a small loading dock against the side of the building. Directly across from her was the building next door, but unlike the newspaper office, that building had a fire escape.
Could she jump from the window and reach the other building’s fire escape? Jill doubted it, as it was easily a twenty-foot gap for her to cross, and she would need a running start and a much larger window to jump from.
She looked to the side into the corner of the office and saw a dead body sprawled on the floor. But when she stepped near it, the corpse’s head jerked up and glared at her. It was another UBCF soldier, and Jill wasted no time shooting it in the head. And then she reached down to pick up its assault rifle, which was lying conveniently right on the floor, and grabbed its ammo pack as well, slinging it over her shoulder with the other. She took the soldier’s pistols as well and dumped them into one of the pouches, along with its combat knife, which she felt might come in handy.
There was nothing in the room she could use as rope, so she walked out of the office to find some other way out. As soon as she reached the hallway, she froze, instinctively raising the assault rifle in self-defense.
From the flaming remains of the staircase, the creature climbed to its feet, growling darkly, the front of its chest now blackened and charred, the leather trenchcoat ripped and tattered even worse than before. The creature was framed by burning wreckage, black smoke drifting across the hallway, and its mismatched eyes seemed to glow even at it was silhouetted against the bright light of the fire.
The creature hunched down and screamed, and Jill again heard the word “Stars” in the bestial roar. It staggered forward, seeming to gain strength with each step it took, and Jill darted back into the office
room.
She dropped two more grenades onto the floor and ran, slinging the assault rifle over her shoulder as she reached the window.
The creature smashed into the room after her, just a few steps behind. It reached out to grab her, its arm splitting open to reveal the writhing purple tentacle concealed there. She was only a few feet away.
Jill dove out of the window, arms outstretched, as the grenades went off. The entire room exploded in a powerful shockwave, blasting out all the windows in a torrent of flames and shattered glass, part of the roof blowing off as well in a rapid whoosh of smoke, burning debris, and swirling tongues of flame. From inside the explosion, she heard the creature’s agonized scream of pain and hatred.
Jill sailed out into the open air, surrounded by waves of glass and spouts of fire, reaching out for the fire escape across the alley as she fell. But she wasn’t even close, and the explosion knocked her body sideways in mid-air with the force of the blast. The shockwave hit her like a blow to the head.
She barely made it a few feet from the window before she fell straight down to the alley below, but she was already unconscious before she hit the ground.