City of the Dead

Chapter Nine

The crowd got larger every second, as more and more desperate people arrived at the police station seeking help and shelter. By now there were people packed all the way across the street, pushing forward like rowdy fans trying to get closer to the stage at a rock concert. Bodies surged forward like the tide, pressing against the huge front doors. Shouting, screaming, begging, the crowd was like a single organism seeking entry.

But there was no room. The inside lobby was packed with people as well, all the way down both sides of the main hallway. People, young and old, whole families and by themselves, crowded into the police station like refugees running from a war zone. They sat along the edge of the huge central fountain, and more than a dozen people opted to stand right in the water, since there was no room anywhere else.

Marvin Branagh pushed his way into the lobby, breathing heavily. His police uniform was wrinkled and a sheen of sweat stood out on his forehead. Five more officers stood at the doors, looking even worse for wear. The last two hours were the most hectic of Marvin’s life, and he knew right away that things were only going to get worse.

“We’ve blockaded the back doors,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s just too many of them out there.”

“The crowd is getting violent,” an officer said. “There must be three hundred people out there. How in the hell can we fit them all in here?”

“We can’t. That’s all there is to it.”

“Do you think they’ll go away if we tell them that?”

“We need more cops here,” another officer said. “Has anyone been able to contact any of the cops on patrol?”

“No, the radios are still totally down.”

The front doors shuddered as the crowd outside pushed against them. Marvin swallowed hard, still trying to catch his breath. He looked around at the people in the lobby, scared and helpless, some of them having escaped the danger so suddenly that they were still wearing their pajamas. He saw one man sitting on the edge of the fountain with blood splattered all across the front of his white dress shirt. A woman in the back wearing a pink bathrobe, her feet bare. An older man wearing a blue business suit, clutching his briefcase to his chest as if it was the most important thing in the world. Two teenagers seated against the wall, the distraught looks on their faces telling Marvin all he needed to know. The whole crowd of people was terrified and traumatized, most of them crying or holding onto the people near them. Some of them just looked gone, their eyes just staring blankly forward.

There was not enough food at the police station to feed this many people. Marvin realized this far too late, just as he realized that at the moment, he was the senior officer here on the main floor. The five officers were actually awaiting his orders, or at the very least his advice.

Before he could say anything, there were gunshots. Several of them in rapid succession, coming from the hallway Marvin had just come from. Some people shrieked or cried out in fear, and some of them backed away from the sound of the guns, but the majority of the people in the lobby just looked up disinterestedly and seemed not to care.

Marvin ran back down the hall, stepping over people sprawled right in the middle of the floor. Two more police officers met him at the end of the hall.

“They broke the windows!” one of the officers exclaimed. “It was some of the crazy ones, they just smashed right through the windows and climbed inside.”

“Did you block the windows back up?” Marvin asked.

“We pushed a bookcase in front of it.”

Marvin shook his head. “Try to get some help, and block off the other windows.”

“Sure thing.”

Marvin rubbed his eyes. It was like trying to fight off an invasion. Hundreds of normal, innocent people tried to get inside, hoping to find some kind of safety here. But they weren’t the problem; there were also hundreds of violent lunatics roving the streets as well. Marvin saw enough of those today, the crazy ones who stumbled around like drunks and then attacked at random. They were like monsters, not even remotely human anymore. Marvin witnessed some of them attack a woman in the street a just an hour before, and the recent memory made him sick to his stomach.

Screaming dragged his attention back to the lobby. He ran back to see a young woman in the back of the room, surrounded by other refugees, pointing at someone down the rear hallway toward the detective offices. People scrambled for cover, some more of them shouting or calling for help.

Marvin waded through the sea of bodies to the back of the lobby. Down the hall he saw one of the senior detectives standing by himself, as everyone nearby backed away. His face was pale and his eyes stared intensely forward. He took a step forward and reached out.

“He’s one of them!” someone cried out.

Marvin raised his gun and did not even say anything, because there was nothing to say. He had seen it happen a dozen times already. One more of them coming to life to attack anyone who came close. Threatening them was pointless, warning them was a waste of time. They didn’t listen to warnings, if they even understood them.

He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger, the bullet hitting the detective right in the forehead, knocking his head backward as he fell to the floor. His legs spasmed once and he went still. Marvin lowered the gun and let out his breath.

“Marvin!” someone shouted. “Marvin! Look out!”

He looked back toward the front door. The officers there were backing away from the door, and Marvin barely had time to realize what was happening before a wooden bench came flying through one of the front windows, shattering it with a crash, sending a barrage of broken glass into the crowd of refugees. The bench crashed into a woman sitting on the floor, knocking her flat.

People jumped through the window and rushed into the lobby like a torrent. Marvin ran and tried to scream for them to stop, but it was far too late once more. One of them unlocked the doors and they exploded open, letting a flood of people into the building.

“Get out of my way!”

“Let me in!”

Marvin tried to be heard over the rabble. “It’s not safe here!” he cried, waving his hands. “There’s too many people! We can’t protect all of you!”

No one listened. They flooded into the building and the whole crowd just rocked backward under the force. Marvin was shoved backwards and squeezed tight against the sea of refugees, struggling to push his way forward. All around him, people screamed and shouted, trying to keep their balance as the crowd surged.

“Get the doors closed!” someone screamed.

Marvin hated himself for it, but he raised his gun into the air and fired a shot into the ceiling. Immediately, people around him backed away, giving him a chance to jump forward and shove his way through the crowd. Someone elbowed him in the back and he staggered forward, trying to stay on his feet. If he fell down, no one would help him up. He wondered if anyone was already trampled, fearing to feel a body underneath his feet.

The other officers tried to force the doors closed, but people still streamed in like an out-of-control stampede. Marvin wanted to fire into the air again, but this time he wondered if the crowd would even react. They might rush him and overpower him. They were too scared, too panicked, and he wasn’t about to take the chance.

More screaming. He turned and felt the whole world fall apart, as the one thing he feared most came true. In the center of the crowd, a middle-aged man in a gray business suit thrashed around with his mouth clamped down on an older woman’s arm, blood splashing across his face.

Everyone seemed to scream at once and the entire crowd exploded into motion. Marvin was thrown backward and he managed to push sideways so that he wound up near the broken window as the crowd surged past him and down the hall.

Gunshots roared in the cramped space. Marvin couldn’t see who was shooting or who was being shot at. He looked out the window and saw more people coming, normal and crazy alike. The crazy ones just shuffled forward like an army of sleepwalkers. Half a dozen dead bodies were littered across the wide walkway up to the front doors, their blood staining the concrete. Marvin looked despairingly down at his gun. There were not enough bullets in the entire police station to shoot that many of the maniacs.

More shooting at the front door. As the crowd thinned out, forcing their way down the two main hallways, Marvin had room to move. The first crazy person he saw was a teenage boy wearing a t-shirt that read “Raccoon City Warriors.” He charged with his mouth open and arms raised, and Marvin shot him directly in the face. Blood splattered like a fountain and his body sprawled right in the middle of the floor. Two people stepped right over the corpse on their way inside.

Marvin slammed his shoulder into the door and managed to move it a foot or two. To his astonishment, a man came and helped him, but there was another body crumpled on the ground, blocking the door.

There had been five other police officers before, but now Marvin only saw two. They pulled the corpse away and the door slammed shut. They tried to get the other door closed, but two men stormed inside, knocking one of the cops over. As he tried to get up, another crazy person, this time an attractive young woman wearing a jogging outfit, fell through the doorway and attacked the cop. Marvin swung his arm out and shot her in the side of the head.

They forced the other door closed and dropped the lock. A crazy person was trying to climb through the window, the jagged glass on the bottom tearing into his stomach and spilling his guts down over the windowsill. Before Marvin could even react, some of the other people still crowding the lobby picked up the wooden bench and held it like a battering ram. They charged and smashed the bench right into the crazy person, knocking him out of the window.

“We can’t close up the window! There’s nothing to block it with!”

Above the deafening screams, Marvin heard more shooting, but far away this time. He tried to focus, but too much was happening. He stood there, dazed, as the others tried to somehow prop the bench up in the window. Another crazy person jammed his body in the window, reaching for them, glass slashing his arm.

“Marvin! We have to get out of here!” one of the cops yelled.

“And where can we go?” Marvin shouted back. “We can’t get upstairs with all those people in the way!”

“What about the balcony?”

Marvin glanced up at the second-floor mezzanine that ran around the inside of the lobby. He waved his arm and shouted for help, running over to the underside of the balcony on the right side of the lobby.

“Come on!” he shouted, holding his hands into a stirrup. One of the other cops stepped into his hands, jumping up with his other foot, and Marvin helped hoist him upward. He watched in dismay as the wooden bench fell out of the window. Two crazy people were starting to climb through.

The cop grabbed the ledge and pulled himself up. He climbed over the railing and reached down as Marvin and the third cop helped one of the refugees up. They helped up seven people, the ones who helped them try to keep the crazy people out, before things got too dangerous. Marvin hoisted up the other cop and the people above pulled him to safety.

“Marvin! Jump!” They extended their hands down for him to grab onto.

He looked over his shoulder and saw a dozen crazy people stumbling toward him, their arms and hands slick with blood, their eyes fixed on him. He raised his gun and opened fire, emptying his clip into the heads of the crazy people, dropping six of them.

“Now! Jump!”

Marvin leaped up, but they could not get a solid grip on him. Each time he grabbed hold, he slipped right out of their grasp. And he could not jump high enough to grab onto the ledge and pull himself up. Each second, more and more maniacs flooded into the lobby. He could see a mob of them through the unbroken window, and a steady stream of them came in through the other one. Marvin tried until the maniacs were only a few feet away before he ran for it, taking off across the lobby and to the rear hallway, toward the detective offices. There were still people jammed in the hallway, and bodies strewn around the floor, those who were trampled by the crowd in their furious stampede. People were just climbing over each other, trying to get away.

Marvin had no choice. He climbed.

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