Resident Evil: The City Survivors

In the dead of night, she had left the safety of her family home and had been roaming the zombie infested streets of Racoon City for a little under an hour. Somehow, and to her amazement, she was still alive. That part made little sense even to her. She had hit zombie encounters. Many of them. One of which had her thrashing with screaming terror to break free from the clasp of snatching fingers. But salvation was close. Her uncle, Robert Kendo, had a gun shop just up ahead in downtown Racoon City. That fortress was her last chance of salvation in a city that wanted her dead.

Her uncle was a smart and capable man. The sort of person who always read between the lines of news headlines and stocked up on tinned food and supplies in good times to prepare for bad times. That was half the reason he owned a gun shop in the first place. Some in the family thought of him as a whacko. Mainly because of his outlandish conspiracy theory beliefs about big corporations with selfish and sinister motives taking over the United States. Namely, the Umbrella Corporation. But those in the family who once held those negative views of Kendo were all now dead and gone. All had sunk beneath the mobs of flesh-eating zombies that had spread outwards across Racoon City like rings on swamp water.

Up ahead in the street, there was an overturned fuel tanker engulfed in a raging fire red inferno with the flames snapping like angry vipers. With her arms up, she shielded her face from the blistering heat and turned a corner, sauntering down the narrow and dark alleyway she knew led to her uncle’s gun shop. It was just off the main road and anyone driving by and who didn’t know any better would never even know the gun shop existed. The lack of foot traffic didn’t bother Kendo or that his shop was out of sight. It was cheap rent, and he was a well-connected person with many customers.

Her heart fluttered with hope, and a gasp left her dry lips. Kendo’s 4x4 SUV was parked in front of the gun shop up ahead, and the bright sheen of the shop’s interior was gleaming off the black paintwork. That was a good sign, she thought, because it meant he was likely still inside. Of course, he was still in Racoon City. Her uncle wasn’t the sort of person who would simply bail on his fellow citizens in times of dire need.

That hope quickly evaporated like her warm, misty breaths in the cold nighttime air. The shop window was broken. Her booths scuffed away loose debris and then glass shards crunched beneath her heels. She crept in front of the wide and rectangular window frame and that’s when she first saw her uncle. Or at least the gory red carcass and remnants that was once the man she knew and dearly loved. Kendo was lying in the middle of the shop floor in a dirty pool of crimson blood.

It was a murderous and gory horror scene. She cupped her nose and mouth and caught the scream about to escape her tight throat. Her knees buckled with shock, and she fell backwards against the black 4x4 SUV outside. Her eyes swelled with raw and sorrowful tears. She was hyperventilating now at the grisly scene in front of her own trembling body. Her chest was rising and sinking fast and breaths short and raspy. It looked as if a horde of zombies had smashed through the window, mobbed him and eaten him alive. Kendo’s clothes were now rags of torn fabric drenched in moist red blood. The pink flesh had been wrenched from his arms, legs and chest by what she knew were the teeth of zombies so much she saw the glint of yellowy-cream bone between the nasty gore.

She stepped slowly through the shattered window and into the gun shop, the shards of broken glass crunched beneath the soles of her boots. Her uncle was dead and gone. She cut a wide and safe arc around his dead body. Those with the virus in their bloodstream she knew could rise again as zombies. She had seen it before with both her parents. But now, as an only child and with her uncle Kendo also dead, she was truly lost and alone in Racoon City. A nightmare that no matter how hard she tried; she just couldn’t wake up from.

Now was not the time to breakdown. At least not any further. She wiped away the tears from her eyes and ran her fingers through her dusty blond hair to not think like a feeble seventeen-year-old but instead a survivalist. After all, Uncle Kendo always had a plan. She spun on her heels and that’s when a fleeting idea came to her, an idea of how she would escape the clutches of Racoon City with the help of her dead uncle’s bulky 4x4 truck. The SUV outside the gun shop, complete with a bull bar on the front, was exactly the sort of heavy-duty vehicle she could use to escape the deathly streets littered with zombies.

Of course, she didn’t officially have her license. But unknowing to her parents, her uncle Kendo had secretly taught her to drive anyhow outside of town whenever they went shooting at his friend’s range. Her mother would never have approved of either. Her mother never did like Robert Kendo. But because of her uncle, she knew how to drive and shoot, and both might now just save her life in a city full of monsters.

She quickly searched the counters for the car keys and, in a gray gunmetal lockbox, found a black Beretta and a tiny red box of bullets. Kendo had taught her to use the weapon before. It was second nature, and that training would now come in handy in the event there were any more zombie encounters. All without her parents knowing. After all, wasn’t that what uncles were for—to secretly grant their nieces and nephews the freedom parents didn’t?

Then she saw the keys. They were hanging from the front pocket of her uncle’s blue trousers. They were exactly where she didn’t want them to be.

She crept forward and kneeled slowly beside the mangled and half eaten corpse. His head of black hair, slick with wet blood, was facing away from her. Her heart began pounding hard in her chest, each strike thumping her ribcage with sickly fear that he might suddenly twitch with the zombie virus. She reached out, her fingers stretching and then, with a quick motion, took the keys and fell backwards with a deep gasp of relief.

She took one last look at her uncle’s mangled body lying in the center of his beloved gun shop. This truly was goodbye.

The 4x4 SUV unlocked with the flash of orange blinkers. She climbed up and behind the steering wheel and shut the door with a dull thump. Her hand was trembling so much with the fear of what might come next, it took her a few seconds to line the key up with the ignition. The engine rumbled powerfully to life and then purred in the narrow alleyway like a well-oiled war machine—too loudly for her own liking. Noise drew unwanted attention from zombies. The headlights splashed white across the brick wall in front and the taillights lit the alleyway behind a deep blood red. The glowing dashboard told her the 4x4 had a full tank of gas—that was typical Kendo. She clicked on the heater and with a whoosh, warm air blew out of the dashboard vents and across her cold skin and sore eyes in the early hours.

Her head turned to the right. To her uncle’s lifeless body lying in a sea of glass shards. This wasn’t a fitting end for a man who taught her so much. A man with a jolly laugh and kind smile and without a bad word to say about anyone. Even her own mother, who he knew hated his guts. If Kendo was beside her now in the passenger seat, she knew he would tell her to stomp the gas pedal and drive until sunrise.

“Thanks for everything, Uncle Kendo.”

She clunked the Beretta on top of the dashboard. Then, with a deep breath of hope, she shunted the gearbox into reverse and the bulky tires rolled slowly backwards. There was no telling if she would make it out of the city alive, but her uncle Kendo had at least given her the best chance of survival in this living nightmare—a parting gift. She backed out of the alleyway, shunted the gearbox into first, and then stomped the gas pedal. The tires spun fast and screeched loudly and as the vehicle left behind the gun shop for the last time, the hum of the mighty engine vanished into the night.