City of the Dead

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Chapter Eighteen

The brick red Jeep Wrangler bumped over an uneven section of dirt road and the front driver’s side wheel splashed into a large mud puddle. Inside, Leon Kennedy glanced down as the cup of coffee in his cup holder tipped sideways and spilled hot coffee down the side of the center console. The cup holder was too short, and his tall cups of coffee always tipped over. The side of the center console was permanently stained brown by now. Leon just frowned, shaking his head, and picked up the cup to take a drink.

He wore a pair of dark blue jeans and a snug, black long-sleeved shirt. His brown, fur-lined jacket lay draped over the passenger seat. On his feet were a pair of black hiking boots. A silver watch was on his wrist, his only decorative item he wore, and it currently read 2:13 in the afternoon.

Leon glanced in the rear view mirror. He sometimes got razzed by his friends for his hair style, but he never heard any complaints from the women he dated, and that was all that mattered. His reddish-brown hair was grown long, parted down the middle, and his bangs on one side hung down to eye level. He had maintained the same basic hairstyle since high school and did not see the need to change it now.

The Jeep hit another bump and the coffee cup tilted over again. If he stayed on paved roads like a normal person, he would not have that problem. But he preferred to take the long way around when driving through the Arklay Mountains. Instead of just jumping on the highway to get to Raccoon City, Leon liked to head up and around the rarely-used dirt roads crisscrossing the mountains. He knew all the back roads, even the ones not officially listed on any maps, because he grew up in the area and spent most of his teenage years exploring the woods with his father.

It was nice to get a chance to drive along the twisting, winding dirt roads of the Arklays once again. It was the perfect time of year for it too, and Leon took in the sights as he drive along the rutted, abandoned roads, his reliable Jeep bumping and rolling along.

Despite his excitement at being accepted for a position in the Raccoon S.T.A.R.S. team, his enjoyment was spoiled by knowledge of how the opening came about. It was all over the news. More than half of the S.T.A.R.S. team tragically lost their lives during a mysterious mission a few days before, and even now they were still trying to piece together what happened. The local news told a scattered story, and Leon sincerely hoped that when he joined the force he might learn more details. If anything, it would at least ease his guilt at taking the place of someone who died in the line of duty.

Leon had graduated from the Police Academy just in time to send his application to join the S.T.A.R.S. team. Before that, the past eight years of his life were spent in one of the most prestigious military units in the United States. He joined the Army right after high school, and from there, joined the Rangers.

His time with the Rangers guaranteed that he would be more than prepared for anything he might encounter in a place like Raccoon City. The missions the S.T.A.R.S. units went on would pale in comparison to the kinds of missions he experienced while a member of the Rangers. Of course, Leon didn’t know enough about the mission that killed so many members of the team to really judge.

He was currently on his way to find an apartment in Raccoon City, and would start work at the beginning of the next week. Once he got his apartment finalized, he would move in as soon as he could. It gave him a few days to get settled, at least.

The Jeep rolled down a slight incline and splashed through a huge puddle at the bottom, and then emerged from the trees at the back end of a large field. The road leading along the edge of the field was almost completely grown over, with only two narrow muddy ruts in between waist-high weeds marking it. Leon drove the Jeep along the edge of the field, putting down the sun visor to block the mid-afternoon sunshine.

The unused dirt road led past a few old homes nestled at the very edge of the city and then onto a regularly-maintained dirt road that circled past some large rural properties. Leon drove past casually and turned right when the dirt road ended on a paved road. As his tires rolled across the smooth, flat surface, Leon almost missed the bumpy ground.

There were no other cars on the street, but it didn’t seem strange. He was still on the outskirts of the city, after all. Most people were probably still at work, and the kids were probably still in school. His Jeep was the only vehicle on the road as he drove into the city.

Leon turned on the radio absentmindedly and found nothing but static. He turned the dial all the way in each direction, but there was nothing on the airwaves at all. That was the first strange thing he noticed.

He slowed down at a stop sign and rolled through the intersection, continuing down the street. Nice houses lined each side of the street, with a few cars parked in the driveways, but nothing else was around. No other cars on the street, no one walking along the sidewalk.

Just as Leon noticed how quiet everything was, he spotted something in a yard up ahead. He took his foot off the accelerator and the Jeep slowed down and came to a halt right as he came up to the house. He quickly put it in park and jumped out, running over to the yard and then stopping in his tracks.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered, turning around. He took a deep breath and faced forward again, taking a few steps, bile rising in his stomach.

The body of a young man lie in the middle of the yard, sprawled in a twisted position, bloody from head to toe. His shirt was ripped open, revealing brutal gashes across his neck and upper chest, and more savage wounds along his upper arms. At first glance, they almost looked like bite marks, but Leon barely had time for that first glance.

Leon knelt down near the body and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, staring in disbelief at the mangled corpse lying in the grass. Right in the middle of a nice neighborhood, right in the middle of the day.

He dialed 911 and got no response. Looking at his phone, he saw that he had no reception. That didn’t make any sense.

Leon stood back up, his breath coming faster. What in the hell was going on here? He turned around and took one step toward his Jeep, when he saw someone standing across the street.

It was a middle-aged woman wearing a flimsy blue nightgown. Leon took a few hurried steps to the curb. “Hey, you gotta call ...”

He stopped when he saw the smear of blood running down the side of the woman’s face, across her neck and down under her nightgown along her shoulder. The thin fabric was stuck to her shoulder, dark red underneath. The woman’s eyes stared at him blankly, her mouth hanging open. She took a step forward and almost fell over the curb.

Leon held out his hand. “Lady, just stay where you are,” he said. “Don’t come any closer.”

The woman didn’t seem to understand him, but she increased her pace when she heard his voice. She garbled something and a thin line of blood dripped from the edge of her mouth. She managed a few more unsteady steps until she was only a few feet away. Almost by instinct, Leon swung his leg up and then slammed his foot right into the woman’s chest in a forward axe kick. She sailed backwards and crashed into the curb, blood sputtering from her mouth.

Leon heard a noise behind him, and spun around to see three people emerge from the side yard of the nearest house. A man wearing a Nascar t-shirt, an elderly woman in a bloody pink blouse, and a teenage girl in pigtails and a t-shirt with a rock band logo. All of them stepped forward awkwardly, gazing at him with disturbing expressions. The man in the Nascar shirt was in front of the others, and he staggered unevenly off the sidewalk and lurched forward with a psychotic look in his eyes.

Leon spun around and crouched down, sweeping the man’s legs right out from under him. He flopped to the pavement, his head cracking hard. But he only groaned angrily and reached for Leon’s leg. Already, the other woman was groggily getting to her feet.

“I don’t think so,” Leon said to himself, and went to his Jeep. He looked across the street again and there were five more people walking toward him. Then ten, then fifteen. They seemed to just appear from nowhere, all of them taking jerky steps and staring with insane eyes. More of them were behind him now, they were coming from all directions.

Leon reached under the passenger seat and pulled out the pistol he kept there. It was a standard 9-millimeter Glock in a black leather holster. Leon slipped off the holster and turned around, only to find himself facing a crowd of thirty strangers, all of them walking unsteadily toward him.

A shirtless man in blue jeans, flaps of skin hanging from the jagged wound on his neck. Another young woman wearing a pink shirt, blood splashed across her entire face. A young kid wearing a blue t-shirt with bits of gore in his hair, baring his teeth. A soccer mom in a flowered shirt, one arm hanging useless at her side, coated with blood. The man in the Nascar shirt was already on his feet, groaning and reaching out.

Leon shook his head and backed away. He got into his Jeep, slammed it into gear and pressed his foot onto the gas pedal. The Jeep jerked forward, tires squealing on the pavement, and then it zoomed down the street, leaving the crowd in the dust. When he was at the next intersection, he slammed on the brakes and the Jeep skidded to a halt.

His breath was still coming fast, but his heartbeat was slowing down now. He was in control, he was okay. Leon looked in the rear view mirror and watched as the crowd of people followed after him.

“No,” he said to himself. “No, this isn’t right.”

He looked back in front of the Jeep and there were more people coming out of nowhere, stumbling out of open front doors or appearing from side yards, all of them dazed and unsteady on their feet, some of them wounded, some not. People from all walks of life moved into the street, drawn to Leon as if following a beacon. There were a hundred people in the street, slowly surrounding his vehicle, before he even had a chance to count them all.

He turned the wheel and drove down a side street, leaving the crowd behind. He started driving slowly and then picked up speed as he began to see more and more destruction. Dead bodies in the street, along the sidewalks. He finally noticed the long columns of smoke coming from the city. He drove twenty blocks, seeing more crowds of people, abandoned cars, burning wreckage, and scattered corpses.

He slowed down to drive around a three-car accident in the middle of an intersection. A brown sedan had T-boned a red sports car, and a then pickup truck apparently crashed into both of them. The driver of the sports car was still in the vehicle, his mangled body hanging from the driver’s side window.

“Stop!” came a scream from nearby. “Please! Stop! Help me!”

Leon hit the brakes and was stunned to see a woman running toward him, waving her arms. She was wearing a pair of cutoff jean shorts and a red tank top, and her feet were bare. “Oh God!” she cried, “Thank you!”

Leon stared at her in disbelief as she opened the door and climbed inside. Her long blonde hair was tangled and uncombed, and her pretty face was wet with tears. Specks of blood dotted her shirt and bare arms.

“Drive!” she shouted. “We have to get out of here!”

Leon grabbed her arm. “Tell me what’s going on here,” he demanded. “Just what the hell is happening to all these people?”

“We have to go!” she cried. “They’re coming!”

As if she had called to them, more crazy people began coming into the street and reaching for Leon’s Jeep. The woman cried hysterically and grabbed the steering wheel. “Drive! Just go!” she screamed. “We have to go now!”

Leon sped away from the intersection and the woman fell back into her seat, her whole body trembling, whether from fear or relief, Leon wasn’t sure. He kept a constant speed and looked to the woman.

“What’s happening?” he asked again. “I just got to town, okay? I don’t know what’s going on. What’s wrong with them?”

“How should I know?” she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I got up this morning, and they were just like that. They were all acting like zombies. I tried to go outside, but they ... they attacked my boyfriend ...”

She leaned forward and buried her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. “Oh God, they killed him,” she sobbed. “I saw them do it, they just attacked him and ...”

Leon shook his head. If this was some kind of strange disease, then how had this woman been spared? Nothing he saw so far made any sense. How in the world could something like this effect so many people all at the same time? Was it some kind of bioterrorist attack, some kind of drug that drove people insane? It didn’t explain how this woman wasn’t affected. And it didn’t explain the man with his throat ripped out.

“No,” the woman said suddenly, “No, you’re going the wrong way.”

“I have to find out what’s going on,” Leon said. “There has to be someplace safe, like the police station or the hospital or something. Did they announce anything on the radio about this?”

“No, the radio doesn’t work. Neither does the television.”

“Well, there has to be a safe place to go,” Leon said. “They must have set up some kind of safe area. The police station is probably a good bet.”

“No,” the woman insisted, grabbing Leon’s arm desperately. “Just get out of the city, there’s nowhere that’s safe. You don’t understand. These zombies are everywhere. Please, just turn around and go the other way.”

“I have to find out what’s going on,” Leon said, looking at her. “I’m not just running away. There has to be some kind of explanation for –”

“Look out!” she screamed.

Leon slammed on the brakes, but it was too late, and his Jeep smashed right into the man who jumped in front of them. He crumpled against the front and his body swung up over the hood and crashed right into the windshield. The Jeep skidded sideways and spun around, ending up facing the other direction. The man was thrown off the hood and he landed in someone’s driveway, his body twisted almost in half. The windshield was cracked in a spiderweb pattern, and Leon smacked his hands against the steering wheel in anger.

“Damn it!”

“Oh no,” the woman whimpered, pointing with a trembling finger.

There was a huge crowd of people coming for them, way more than Leon saw before. At least two hundred of them. Old men, young women, even a few children. They were like a hive mind, surging as one thinking unit right for the Jeep.

“They’re coming,” the woman sobbed, covering her eyes.

Leon drove the Jeep up onto the sidewalk and sped across several front lawns, bypassing the crowd completely. He bumped over the curb and continued on, the broken windshield partially blocking his view. The woman beside him continued to cry.

He drove for blocks, seeing nothing but more death and destruction. He turned the steering wheel and drove past another pile of smoking wreckage. A man staggered near the vehicle and reached out, his arm smacking off the side mirror. Leon ignored it and continued down the street. He knew where the Raccoon City police station was, but he wasn’t sure how to get there, since so many streets were blocked with cars.

The woman in the seat next to him was still crying. “Listen,” Leon said, trying to sound calm. “What’s your name?”

“Laura,” she said quietly.

“Okay, Laura,” Leon said. “You have to help me out here. What happened this morning? Just tell me everything you can remember. There’s got to be some kind of reason that everyone is going insane.”

“I don’t know,” Laura said after a few moments. “I don’t know what happened. My boyfriend and I work second shift. We only got out of bed a little while ago. He went outside to check on the mail, and I started to make breakfast.”

She paused, and Leon gently urged her to continue.

“He went to get the mail,” Laura repeated. “And I heard him say something. And then ... and then he shouted, like he was in pain. I ran outside and he was fighting with our neighbor, this old retired guy.”

“Your neighbor was acting like one of these crazy people?”

“Yeah, he was totally out of control. He just bit Tommy on the arm, just like that, like he was an animal or something. And then there were a whole bunch of them around. We ran inside and tried to call the cops ... but the phones were all dead. And when we looked outside, there were like, dozens of people outside our place, and they were trying to get in. They started banging on the windows and ...”

Leon shook his head and tried to understand how something like this could have happened. Most of the people crowding the streets were dressed in regular clothing, not pajamas, so that meant that they went insane after they got dressed in the morning. It wasn’t something that affected him in their sleep. They came into contact with something, or were infected with something, after they got up.

What if it was something in the air? Something that infected their body once they went outside? Of course, if that was the case, then Leon was already infected. Laura would have been infected as well, but perhaps it took a little while to show symptoms. She might start acting like the rest of them any moment now.

But that didn’t explain how some of the people were able to walk around with such savage wounds. Leon saw numerous people with their faces and throats torn up and ripped apart, but they all still moved around as if nothing was wrong. And of course, nothing explained how all the radio stations were dead, and why Leon’s phone got no reception. Something else was going on here.

“They ... they broke the door down,” Laura said. “And we ran for it, but they grabbed Tommy and just pulled him down. They just attacked him, and they bit him. I heard him screaming, but I ... I just ran for it. I kept running until I saw your truck.”

Leon looked at her, but there was nothing he could say. There was no way he could comfort her, so he wasn’t even going to try.

He drove up over a slight hill and slowed down when he saw the scene in front of him. The entire street, four lanes wide, was completely jammed with traffic. Cars were sitting in the grass median, left abandoned. At least three cars were on fire, sending ragged trails of smoke up into the air. Looking across the sea of vehicles was like looking through fog, the air was so thick with smoke.

And among the traffic jam, there were more people meandering around, hundreds of them walking aimlessly in between the jumble of empty cars. Most of them were bloodied, their faces and necks and arms all smothered in blood and gore.

“Holy shit,” Leon said.

“I told you,” Laura said quietly. “You can’t make it, you can’t get anywhere. There aren’t any safe places, the entire city is full of those people.”

“You don’t know that,” Leon said. “There have to be other survivors. There has to be some kind of safe place.”

“Even if there is, we’ll never find it. Our only hope is to get out of the city. Just turn around and drive back the way we came.”

Leon glanced in the rear view mirror to see a handful of people coming toward them. He put the Jeep in reverse and backed up, slamming right into them. Laura barely seemed to notice as the Jeep lurched up as the tires ran over one of the people. Leon kept going in reverse until they were clear, and then he turned down a side street, trying to find some other route downtown to the police station.

“You’re just wasting your time,” Laura muttered.

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