City of the Dead

Chapter Twenty-Five

When placed into a volatile, unpredictable situation, the single most important thing that a soldier has to do is to remain calm. Fear is usually more dangerous than your actual enemy. Fear makes you distracted, fear makes you clumsy, fear can make you waste valuable ammunition and run into a situation without taking everything into account.

Hunk learned long ago to control his fear. So it seemed fitting that while all the other members of his squad were now dead, Hunk was still alive.

He methodically removed all the bullets from one magazine and clicked them into another, combining two half-empty ones to make a full one. He was hiding, for the moment, in a garbage-strewn alley, backed up against a dumpster. Two dead zombies lay on the concrete about fifteen feet away. A screen door hung open across the alley, and Hunk used the reflection in the glass window to see if anyone was coming behind him.

Luckily, he ran into another UBCF soldier a few minutes earlier, but his former teammate had already turned into a zombie. Hunk shot him down and looted his body for ammo, getting the half-empty magazine, as well as a full Desert Eagle. Hunk had been down to his last four bullets at that time, so the ammo was very much appreciated.

He could hear scattered gunfire somewhere nearby. Yanking back the bolt on the M4, he stood up and walked around the side of the dumpster.

There was no reason to be afraid. The zombies were slow, stupid, and unarmed. You could run right through a crowd of them and barely get touched if you were careful. Hunk had already escaped several large crowds and gotten out of a few tight places without having to waste a single bullet. The members of his team, the ones who were all dead now, had panicked in those situations. They freaked out and started shooting, wasting all their ammo, and they ran blindly away, not watching where they were going. Seeing how easily his squad got killed almost made him angry, because he thought that Umbrella trained their men better than that. Hunk’s original squad was certainly trained better, but of course, his original squad was dead too.

He walked out to the street and easily slipped down the sidewalk, past a dozen or so random zombies. There were fewer and fewer of them on their own, he noticed. Most of the zombies gathered in huge crowds that blocked entire streets. Hunk would be sure to mention the peculiar behavior to the Umbrella scientists if he ever got the chance.

In a few hours it would be dark. Hunk sincerely hoped that he was out of the city by then. If fighting the zombies during the day was too much of a challenge for the UBCF, trying to fight them in the darkness of night was going to be impossible. The people in charge at the Arklay mansion must have realized by now that trying to fight the zombies on the ground was a lost cause. By Hunk’s guess, at least fifty percent of the UBCF troops brought into Raccoon City were now dead, perhaps even more than that. And each one that died just became another zombie the rest of them had to fight. At some point, the losses would be unacceptable.

Hunk continued down the street, only firing his rifle once, at a zombie that emerged from a doorway a few steps in front of him. He went down another alley behind a small car dealership and found himself watching a huge mob of zombies surround a gas station across the intersection. He could see a small UBCF transport helicopter parked on top of the gas station. Occasional gunfire erupted from the gas station, but Hunk could not see clearly inside because there were so many zombies standing around out front.

There was a self-service car wash next to the gas station, so Hunk went farther down the street until he was past the crowd of zombies, and then crossed the street and walked cautiously to the car wash.

He climbed up on top of the car wash building and walked to the edge, staring out across the sea of undead bodies that surrounded the gas station. Peering into the convenience store, he could see a handful of UBCF troops there, blocking the windows and guarding the doors. Judging by the size of the crowd, Hunk guessed that they would break through the barriers and infest the store within half an hour.

There were two soldiers on the roof, standing near the helicopter as if they were guarding it, and Hunk called to them to get their attention. “Hey!” he called out. “Who is in command over there?”

“Holy shit!” one of the soldiers shouted when he saw Hunk. “How did you get over there?”

“I flew here,” Hunk snapped. “Now who’s in command?”

“Commander Ginovaef.”

“No, I mean who’s in command over there right now?”

“Commander Ginovaef,” the soldier repeated with a shrug. “He’s down in the store right now.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hunk said.

A door on the roof flipped open as if on cue, and Nicholai came through the hole and climbed up. It was like he knew that someone said his name, so he came up to investigate. He walked over to the edge of the roof and looked hard at Hunk, his hands on his hips.

Hunk saluted. “Good to see you alive, sir.”

“Yes,” Nicholai said. “I take it the rest of your team is dead?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is becoming a habit,” Nicholai said. “But I am glad to see you. I am putting you in command of the troops at this location.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Nicholai smiled grimly. “Do not be so happy.”

“Should I come over there?” Hunk asked.

“No,” Nicholai said, waving his hand dismissively. “This place is not safe, as you already know. There are too many infected ones.”

“So what’s the plan, sir?”

Nicholai glanced back at the chopper. “I am needed at the central command station, in the city park. But I will not stay there long. You are to withdraw from this location and regroup at the streetcar station six blocks west of here. There is already a team in place there.”

“And then what?”

“Just wait for me to come back,” Nicholai said. “Can you handle that?”

Hunk did not bother to look offended. “Of course, sir.”

Nicholai walked back to the helicopter and spoke briefly to the two soldiers there. They both got inside and Nicholai said to Hunk, “I will provide a distraction for short time to allow the men to retreat. Do not waste any time.”

He got into the pilot’s seat in the chopper and slammed the door. In a few seconds, the rotors began to turn, and when they reached full speed the chopper rose steadily into the air. It hovered over the station and slowly drifted to the side, until it was directly above the crowd of zombies.

The zombies followed the chopper as it drifted away from the gas station, stumbling away and reaching up as the rotors blasted them with wind. All of them were preoccupied with the helicopter, and soon there was a space open on one side of the gas station.

Hunk climbed down from her perch and quickly ran across the side lot. “Come on!” he shouted, his voice barely audible above the roar of the chopper. “Let’s go!”

Once the coast was clear, the soldiers opened the side door and hustled out. Hunk led them through the back lot and across an alley to the next street. No zombies blocked their path, as most of the undead in the area were congregated at the gas station.

“Where are we going?” one of the soldiers asked nervously.

“A safer location,” Hunk answered simply.

They ran non-stop for six blocks, barely stopping to catch their breath, and much to Hunk’s relief, the streetcar station was right where Nicholai said it would be. It was a long rectangular building built like a train station, with the streetcar rails running along the open side of the building, with a set of four attached cars already parked right against the station. The station itself was a much more solid structure than the convenience store, with small windows and large, heavy doors.

The open end beside the streetcars was on a raised platform about four feet in the air, too high for any zombie to easily climb, and a tall fence lined one side of the railway for half a block. The zombies would congregate behind the fence, too stupid to go all the way around it so they could get to the platform. There were already a few zombies outside the building, harassing the small team defending the location. They banged on the doors but Hunk saw little chance of them getting in.

He led his team around the opposite side of the parked streetcar and they climbed one at a time up onto the platform. Two members of the other UBCF team helped them up and handed out bottles of water from a vandalized vending machine.

“Who’s in charge here?” Hunk asked. While the other soldiers collapsed onto the floor, gasping for breath and taking a much-deserved rest, Hunk barely felt winded after the six block run. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and waited for an answer.

“I’m the Captain of this squad,” a burly man with reddish hair said, speaking in a grumbly Russian accent. “Where is Commander Ginovaef?”

“He went to central command,” Hunk said. “He said he would come back here soon.”

“So we’re just supposed to wait here until he comes back?”

“That’s the plan.”

The squad Captain shook his head, disappointed, “All right then. We wait.”

Hunk looked at the other soldiers in the squad. There was another man who looked Russian, and a young Mexican. The fourth member, a black man, was reclined on a long bench, his ankle wrapped in a bandage.

“Has he been injured?” Hunk asked, pointing at him.

“Sprained his ankle,” the Captain said. “Don’t worry, he wasn’t bitten.”

“Are these men from your original squad?”

“Yes, we lost four men.”

“I’m impressed,” Hunk admitted. “Most of the other squads lost all but one or two men, or were wiped out completely. I didn’t catch your name, Captain.”

“Mikhail Victor.”

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