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
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?
