Chapter Text
“I remember it all like it happened yesterday,” Nithya typed out on her brick of a laptop, fans whirring on high with just the word processor open. She paused and reread the opening sentence before scrunching up her nose. “Too cliche,” she mumbled, index finger landing heavily on the backspace until the white document was scrubbed clean. The blinking black line remained behind like a clock, ticking along the seconds her mind was irritatingly blank for in trying to figure out how to start this paper. It wasn’t for any of her classes, and yet it was one of the more important things she would have to write about in her life: her survival of Raccoon City, her birthplace and home for twenty-two years until its fiery, prolonged death at the hands of the government and one, singular company. A classic American tale.
Easy, right? So she thought.
Much had happened where putting the events all into order proved mentally taxing. It started during the summer of that same year of 1998, the fine details plucked up and shown to give way to the cliche. Nithya did remember as if it had happened recently despite it being just shy of three years ago. Down the line, years turning into decades, Nithya felt as if she would still remember it. Clutching her brain so tightly as those events did, they were in her nightmares waking and sleeping, even the best therapist in the world would pale at the thought of unraveling it all. It turned out, seeing your home descend into madness, your family and neighbors both rise from the dead with only the singular thought to eat you, wore down one’s brain to immeasurable degrees. There was no wonder none of the other survivors wished to speak on their time—all in the want to forget it and put it behind them even when those who caused it were still walking free. The government banked on it and gleefully accepted the survivors’ right to silence. Nithya didn’t want to lay down placidly in front of a train. She wanted to be the sharp rock in their shoe, constantly pricking them.
With a sigh, she rubbed her face before pushing back her sleep-tousled, dark-brown hair into a braid. It gave her fingers something to do and her mind time to think, as the threatening blankness of the document watched her in its own sick humor. Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to do this, having just woken up with only a cup of cooling coffee to her side on the bartop counter in a kitchen she wouldn’t have been able to afford on a student’s salary were it not for the “Our Bad” stipend of quote-unquote hush money she had received after the fact.
“The government will wish I had died in Raccoon City after what I’m going to tell you,” Nithya typed out and snorted before hitting backspace again. She had to be smart about this. They didn’t force her to sign anything to keep her quiet, but there were other threats. She could talk, but not too much. So, what could she say? She could start with a picture of a small Midwestern city, large by the citizens' standards but oh, so terribly small by any other metric. It had its own university where she received her bachelors, class of 1998—double major in English and History, overachiever and valedictorian, part-time writer for the school paper no one read, part-time writer for the city’s failing paper no one read, and the apple of every teacher’s eye (or the class annoyance with a hand endlessly shooting up to answer questions, gave her two cents even when unasked for, and ready to do the extra work no teacher wanted to grade). She graduated and got her acceptance to Columbia University for their master’s program in journalism. A full scholarship too, signed, sealed, and delivered. She was slated to move there and start the Fall semester. But then her baby sister disappeared over the summer, forcing this overachiever’s life to slam to a fearful stop.
What she didn’t know then as she made her daily visit to the Raccoon City Police Department, asking why they hadn’t looked for her sister, Maari, and her friends yet, only to be shown the door by a bored cop who said very little, was that every insane mishap was all connected. Hindsight had the clearest vision, and the warnings of Ben Bertolucci echoed in her mind. The Arklay Mountains seemed so innocent at the time—not the looming mass of death they turned out to be. Many people hiked through those mountains and even camped in certain spots at the base over the summer, marking it a prime location for tourists and locals alike. Sure, there was old man Spencer’s mansion, but he was the eccentric millionaire who kept to himself. Innocence in ignorance. Their parents agreeing to Maari going off with her friends to spend the weekend up there before classes started up was hardly a discussion to be had. Nithya even let Maari borrow her pair of hiking boots because Maari’s had finally fallen to pieces after years, granting the future to have its own curious little foreboding omen to say “See, there were signs she shouldn’t have gone.” As if they could’ve known. As if anyone could’ve known.
But that was in July.
Maari didn’t reappear until September; dazed, dehydrated, and bloodied, speaking of a man trying to eat her, but having no recollection of where her friends had gone, or if they still lived. She was the only survivor despite the police telling Nithya they had looked and presumed her to be dead. Unfortunately, this was just the start of something far worse…
**
Nithya watched in growing concern at the flashes of chaos on a small, hospital room TV screen, narrated by a calm newscaster in the all-too-familiar passive voice. It was routine, she knew, but it felt out of place, as if what was being reported on was a horror movie and not real life. Worse yet, no one knew exactly the source of the chaos. Some reports blamed it on sports fans going overboard once again, while others said it was a virus making people violent. The RPD and National Guard were out in the fray, taking control of the situation, but the riots only grew. Like wildfire, spreading further and further out with no hopes of containment. Nithya’s brow pinched, while concerned brown eyes watched people climb over fences, get into fights with those closest to them, and even so much as one man who forced a chain reaction by tackling a police officer down to the ground, never to get up again. Guns were used, alongside every other munition the force had at their disposal, but somehow, they were still slowly being overwhelmed.
How?
To say this had proceeded over the course of a week felt unbelievable. They were all in a kind of lockdown, but no official wanted to say anything too soon to panic the rest of the citizens who weren’t out in the original riot. The mayor had only tried to calm the public from his office during the first night, but since then…silence.
“Nithya?” Maari’s voice filled the room, making Nithya turn towards her sister laid up in bed, but not beholden to it. Her arm was in a white cast, broken at the elbow, with only a couple wires attached to her out of an abundance of caution from the doctor. She came in severely dehydrated and lost a heavy amount of blood out on the mountain. Aside from the broken arm and internal bleeding, they wanted to make sure there was nothing more wrong with her. So far her vitals were improving despite the dull coloring to her dark brown skin and her unwashed hair. Perhaps a little uncomfortable, but who wouldn’t be in her situation? “What’s going on, do you know?”
Nithya shook her head, making her way back to the bedside to sit on the firm chair that was her spot and bed for a good chunk of the time spent in this room. It had been days since Maari’s reappearance (around the same time the riots began, too, Nithya noted to herself) but there was a new worry to add: would she be safe inside the hospital, or did Nithya need to figure out a way to get her out? All of downtown was in some state of emergency, but what of the rest of the city? What of those on the outskirts, or the smaller neighborhoods where they lived with their family?
“I can guess,” Nithya said, crossing her legs. Her sister looked just like their mom who was back at home, seeing after her mother-in-law who had come down with a worrying cold. Their father and grandfather were also there, and Nithya thought that if they were in trouble, they would call the hospital to let her know. Silence was good, she tried to tell herself. Silence meant they were watching the news but safe, away from the chaos and laying low until it ended “But I think I’m wrong.”
“Try me.” Maari smiled, laying her head back against her pillow. “I know how you are, Ms. Investigator.”
Nithya rolled her eyes, taking the tease on the chin. Maari wasn’t wholly wrong. Nithya had been looking into certain occurrences that she, once, did not think were connected. More of a nasty coincidence to her naive mind who believed good outweighed evil in this world. Still, what she found and what was given to her by another independent investigator was troubling. Missing hikers up in the mountains correlated with Maari’s own experience was one thing. But it was near Spencer’s mansion somewhere in the area and Nithya could only imagine what went on inside, having never had reason to question it before. He was part of Umbrella, and if tell of it being an infection were true, could there be a connection?
However Nithya faltered for how it would all come together with the riots. What kind of infection could make people do this? There was more to this story and Nithya did not have enough information to puzzle it out. Ben had been looking into Umbrella, but he hadn’t yet published anything to the public. He had only told her Umbrella was not what it seemed when he met up with her during her daily trips to the police department, apparently with the same idea of the missing people being more than suspicious. But it couldn’t have been so simple as that. What was she missing?
“I think it might have something to do with what happened to you,” Nithya said. “I wonder if you were not the only survivor, you know? And somehow…somehow it spilled out into the public.”
“Was it this Ben you told me about?”
Nithya shook her head. “He’s still working on it. I’m supposed to be getting something from him if he needs my help, but…” She shrugged. Just like with her parents, there was only silence from Ben. Silence meant safety, she wanted to scream.
“Strange,” Maari mused, her attention turned back to the TV, to which Nithya followed. Fires were starting, looting had begun. There was only so much a camera attached to a circling helicopter could capture.
Nithya headed to the one large window in the room, and pulled the curtains open to see down into the streets below. Just one block over the fires front and center on the TV had caught up to them, with cars driving up onto sidewalks in their race towards their only clear exit, the highway. People had split from the crowds, making a mad dash to the hospital while some bypassed it by taking the street around the corner. Anxiety knotted in her stomach. They were running for safety, surely.
“Oh.”
One syllable. Nithya glanced back to her sister whose mouth was a perfect ‘o’. The news broadcast was cut, only static remained. Maari picked up the remote and tried other channels, but nothing was coming through. Then the static disappeared and in its place EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM flashed. A calm, robotic voice filled the cold confines of the hospital room:
“Attention all Raccoon City citizens: Please remain calm and proceed to the nearest evacuation point. It is clear that this new cold virus is causing some people to behave irrationally and violently. Reports of violence are especially numerous in the downtown district. We urge all residents to avoid this area. If you encounter anyone behaving erratically or violently, please do not attempt to intervene. Maintain a safe distance, and continue to make your way to the nearest evacuation point. ” A pause. It repeated the instructions four more times before the channel went back to static.
“What about mom?” Maari asked quietly.
A sharp bang broke the silence, jolting Nithya out of her spiraling thoughts. There were now even more people scrambling at the entrance of the hospital, going so far as breaking the windows along the ground floor. Alarms blared. “Right, evacuation,” Nithya murmured before moving into action by grabbing the bag of clothes for her sister to toss onto the bed. “Up up, we need to leave.”
“Where are we going?” Maari pulled the wires from her fingers and then her IV with a wince. The screams of the machine only had Nithya bolting forward to rip the plug out from the wall to silence it.
“Home and then getting out of this city,” Nithya answered. “Quickly now, get dressed.”
More bangs were heard, louder and more often. Doors below and on the second floor slammed open and shut. People screamed, others roared. There were running feet, stomping and shambling both, before everything was thrown on a tilt as the power went out, veiling them underneath a shroud of darkness. Nithya froze, listening to their actions echo Maari’s soft rustling of dressing. More bangs, more doors slamming, more quick steps and hushed, frantic whisperings. Then growling paired with guttural grunts deep within the chest of someone nearby. Nithya thought at first it was an animal having broken into the hospital, but as the labored breathing moved past their door, it had a very distinct dragging step of a human. And then it stopped. The backup generator kicked in, bringing back only the red hue of the emergency lights.
Nithya’s breath shuddered out. Maari froze, looking at Nithya with a question in her eyes: do these doors lock on the inside?
The door was shoved open, but Nithya threw her shoulder against it, slamming it shut on whatever was on the other side. There was no lock, but there was a latch which she slapped into place before dragging the chair she had once occupied and jammed it underneath the doorknob. The intruder banged against the door, roaring its disapproval, as if it was using its whole body to do so. Nithya pressed her hands to the door, using all of her strength and yet it still budged impossibly.
Maari, now dressed, rushed over to help Nithya with one arm. She used her body weight by resting her shoulder on the door on the other side of the chair and braced with one foot out. With the added pressure, the door only rattled on its hinges now. The desperation of the intruder was quite clear, sounding much akin to a frenzied, hungry animal with their vision zeroing in on the only perceived prey around.
But there was another scream, so close it made the intruder stop. A very human, and very coherent, “Oh shit,” sounded down the hallway, and then more running. The intruder left the door to give chase. Nithya tried to quell her breathing and relax her body, but she wouldn’t let go of the door. It took longer than Nithya wanted to hear any sort of silence come from the other side. Minutes perhaps, but those minutes lasted for what felt like hours. Her arms were stiff as they slid down the door, but she didn’t get too far. What if it came back? Maari had the same idea as they both looked at each other with wide eyes.
“Remember when I told you a man tried to eat me up on the mountain?” Maari asked in a breathless whisper and Nithya nodded. “That sounded like him. It wasn’t him, but it was…you know? Like an animal.”
Nithya closed her eyes and let out a breath. “What do we do then?”
“Run. Run as fast as you can and never get cornered.”
“Great.”
“But also stay quiet, keep your voice down, and go.”
Easier said than done. Right next to the door was a map of the second floor highlighting the emergency escape route. Nithya tried to memorize it to the best of her ability, combing over it again and again as she mouthed down, right, left. There were signs around the building to follow, but she didn’t want to leave it all up to one thing. Not in this place with these monsters and no power. Should the emergency exit fail, climbing down from a window could also work. How far up was the second floor really?
“We only need to get to my car,” Nithya noted before silently adding, if it’s still there. “And we book it straight home, gather everyone up, and leave on the highway. Saw a couple cars going that way—think that’s one of the evac routes out of the city.”
Maari nodded.
“You’ll be okay?” Nithya then asked.
“I have to be.”
Hard to argue with that. When Maari nodded to signal her readiness, Nithya pushed the chair away from the door. Silence met them, and then the creak of the latch. Another pause. Whatever screams and growls could be heard were distant enough to assume the hallway right outside their room was empty. Nithya held her breath as she opened the door, cringing slightly as the hinges announced themselves for all to hear. Thankfully, only continued silence greeted them.
The hallway was a mess of viscera, puddles of blood and water, damaged doors and broken glass, alongside gore smearing across the walls and floor both illuminated by the red emergency lights. Not accounting for bedsheets and hospital equipment strewn about, but there was a surprising lack of bodies. Ahead, a red exit sign with an arrow pointing right at the end became their hope in the dark.
Nithya dared not speak, only craned her head to the side to indicate to Maari where to go before walking out. Maari was close behind, keeping watch over her shoulder while Nithya steadily looked forward. The exit sign felt so far away. She didn’t want to speed up for fear of making too much noise, but anxiety forced her to walk just a little faster. Her steps were light while avoiding the debris on the floor and careful not to slip in any of the gore, knowing it was a sight not worth investigating further. Nithya had to keep her head and if the hospital was this far gone in a matter of minutes, she couldn’t imagine what the rest of the city had devolved into. No, she definitely had to keep her head straight. Ignorance was the safety net where it wasn’t life-saving to know things that hindered her ability to survive. All of this would be unpacked later. Much later, when they were out of the city and safe.
Once they got to the corner, Nithya pressed up against the wall and looked both ways. Much of the same to be seen, where the only movement she saw was down her left. In the dark, it was hard to see, but she heard a wet, chewing noise that almost made her want to gag.
Careful…Nithya slipped around the corner and made for the exit door. She pushed it open fast before rushing in, pulling Maari with her before closing the door with a soft click. The lights in the emergency stairwell flickered white, but all appeared empty save for a crumpled corpse folded up against the wall as if it were thrown off of the first set of stairs.
“Don’t look,” Nithya said more for a reminder to herself than for Maari as they descended down the stairs. They both remained cautious. Unnecessary noise could spell their death even alone, but Nithya would be lying if she didn’t admit anxiety itched her still. However she took a moment to look at the first floor map beside the exit, noting where the fire exit was once through.
The door leading out could only open so far that she had to push against it with her shoulder to force whatever was blocking it out of the way. The noise was unavoidable and the groaning grumbling of the suspected monsters grew louder in their apparent curiosity. To say the first floor was worse than the second would be an underestimation of what they were met with.
With a jut of her chin, she pointed out her route to Maari who nodded her agreement. It was now or never, truly, so they proceeded down the adjacent hall on quiet feet, careful to avoid the glass and bizarre puddles mixed with what could be blood and mysterious liquid of this or that substance. The noises all around them were not missed and more often than not, the noises sounded so close to them that they had to stop and duck around a fallen bed, or creep into a nearby room to peek through the crack of the door to figure out if they had been spotted or not. When nothing came around a corner or popped up behind them, five seconds was counted down before leaving their hiding spot to continue their slow path towards the door. The light above it flickered, but when Nithya pushed the bar to open it, an alarm did not sound.
Little time was wasted in going through the door and into the side lot of the hospital where the sound of a city falling to its ruin exploded all around them. Smoke and flame filled the sky as helicopters circled overhead with their own searchlights combing up and down the streets they flew by. There was no telling how successful they were, but with the sounds of explosions, gunfire, and cars screeching by, Nithya held little hope there would be any kind of help from anyone but from their own selves. Taking her car keys from her pocket, she looked back at Maari who marveled in horror at their surroundings. Overturned cars, bodies scattered in various states of death, pockets of small fires, and ruined buildings were all about them, and this was just by the hospital. Downtown, mere blocks away, had to be where the bigger fires had to be. Where more of the ruin was centered. There was some hope that that was the brunt of it—that those in the neighborhoods on the outskirts of the main city barely felt the chaos that had erupted.
“We have to keep going,” Nithya reminded her sister, who swallowed deeply before giving a nod. “Car’s just over there.” An easier statement to make than to commit to, for “over there” was across the parking lot. Some luck came to them now from this morning when she found a spot towards the front, so they wouldn’t have to deal with the parking structure. Yet that was where the luck ended, for the front also meant near the entrance where most of the destruction to the hospital was located. Wandering monsters, who looked like dazed survivors of the chaos, still lingered.
“Run. We have to run,” Maari whispered.
Nithya didn’t fight it. She simply took off in a sprint and only chanced a glance behind her to see that Maari had quickly followed suit. There was an attempt at being quiet, but the sound of their quick feet stomping on the pavement alerted the crazed ones from their attempt at a breaking in as if they had forgotten how windows or even doors worked. But that didn’t matter, they gave pursuit no matter in what shape they were in. Some walked, some ran, while some even crawled along the ground gnashing their teeth and uncaring they were trampled on by the runners. They had no other desire but to get to the sisters as quick as possible.
Nithya had the key extended and she slammed into the car, jamming the key into the door lock with shaking hands. Maari swung around to the passenger side, trying not to jiggle the handle in her own anxiety.
“Come on, Nithya,” Maari pleaded.
Nithya’s nerves made her clumsy. She glanced over her shoulder once and regretted it instantly as a crazed man with pale eyes and blood dripping from his open maw, gunned for her. The lock gave and she ripped the key out to open the car door and slammed it shut the moment the man slammed into her side. Without pause, she reached over to unlock Maari’s door before turning on the car. More people slammed into the car and battered on the windows, but with the car running, Nithya punched into reverse and thought nothing of taking it carefully as she accelerated, punched into drive, and accelerated across the parking lot with a notable amount of speed bumps on the way.
“Seatbelt, seatbelt,” she said out loud, using one hand to click her seatbelt over her as she burst out of the hospital parking lot. She turned the wheel quickly, careful not to run into overturned and burning cars, as she drove down the street away from downtown and towards home.
It was as if the idea of a Christian hell had finally found its truth here on earth. The streets were torn up, buildings were hollowed out, and bodies scattered the streets just as much as burnt out cars did. Nithya had no idea how long it took, but to her this was several weeks of destruction even though she knew that was not true. Suppose now she could say she knew what thousands of people in a city could do to it should they run wild, and this was it. There was no telling if she would see any sort of survival, but she wanted to keep a positive head on her shoulders. To simply lie down and die just because the city looked utterly lost was not a part of Nithya’s M.O. Her family was still alive and her sister had been found, she had to see this through.
Just as her thoughts eased, the destruction around them, too, eased off as they left the main thoroughfare, but not by a lot. Houses were dark inside, cars were gone, but there was still a smattering of corpses about and small fires being made. Nithya had to count their luck that they had no incident driving up to their house and getting into the driveway. But it seemed to be their only luck, for the lights in their house were not on. She hoped they were simply laying low, or that the power had been cut from the neighborhoods given the chaos in the city, but the positive thinking was losing its fight to dread.
**
Nithya let out a shaky breath, her gaze blurred the writing on the screen. With a blink, she straightened in her seat and pulled her mug of warm coffee closer to take a sip from. She had been avoiding writing this report due to the memories it pulled. While her nightmares were one thing, sometimes her mind couldn’t simply touch the true horror she experienced those final days in Raccoon City. As if what was real could never be relived through the imagination. A small comfort, until one deliberately recalled the horror and brought the reality back. No imagination, simply a replay as if she were going through it again. As if she walked up those same steps now to the front door of the house she grew up in, always surrounded by family never leaving her alone for long. That she now shifted her keys to get her house key and pushed it into the lock to jiggle a little before it gave. Where she raised her hand to push open the white door with a small half circle window at the top, and revealed the dark house within.
The house always smelt of her mother’s cooking filled with delicious spices which danced upon your tongue and warmed your belly once had. Of a grandmother’s baking, swatting away curious hands who desired a treat before it cooled. A house with a light always on due to a father who slept at odd hours because of his job, or grandparents who got up early before the sunrise to begin their day, or simply a singular light above the oven kept on to welcome a late-comer home from their night out. Instead, there were no smiles of welcome now. There were no voices raised to give their welcomes, or hellos, or simply to get the one who had come home to help them with this or that chore, echoed by many grumbled complaints.
Silence greeted Nithya then, as surely as the silence in her own kitchen she sat in now reigned in this early morning. She took another sip of her coffee before refocusing her attention back to her screen. She couldn’t put it off for long, she had to tell this part of her survival. She had to let people know that while she survived, in her heart she felt as if she was living on time not her own. That she didn’t deserve it when so many people she knew and loved had not made it out alongside her when they should have. That the death of loved ones scarred deep and bloody on the hands who caused their demise so quickly, so readily, and so horrifically. Her story was but one of many too scared to speak.
**
“Mama?” Maari pushed past Nithya to get into the house.
Nithya tried the lights in the entryway, but a couple clicks told her the power was out even here. There was a need to be cautious with this silence, like there was something heavy in the air she couldn’t quite explain. A strange smell of burnt food lay around, stuck as if stagnant, mixing in with the smell of blood. Through the darkness she could not see very well, but committed to her memory of the layout she had traversed for 22 years now allowed her to move with some confidence as she raised her hands out in front of her to try to get to the staircase. But she tripped over something hard and almost fell had she not caught herself.
This was against her own knowledge of the house. She spun and dropped, touching the slightly damp clothes. Hands shook, she tried to feel along the clammy flesh, to find the neck and press her forefingers to the jugular where the pulse should have been, but felt nothing aside from the cold stiffness of a corpse. She didn’t want to believe it. She stumbled away, trying desperately now to search for some kind of light to see by.
Eventually she found a lighter in the kitchen they once used for the stovetop and then grabbed a candle from the top of the refrigerator. She remembered the scent well when she lit the three wicks. Candy apple—a gift to her mother from one of her coworkers at a white elephant gift exchange for the office Christmas party. It didn’t matter to her work that she told them she didn’t celebrate it, she got a present anyway and only used it whenever the power went out. Like now, where a small portion of the kitchen illuminated itself before her in the light. Dinner was on the stove, cold and waiting, but nothing else was out of place.
Steadying herself, she went back to the living room and back to where she had fallen.
“Dad?” She knelt down. She knew she felt no pulse before, but setting aside the candle, she then rolled him onto his back to try to get some semblance of life back into him, only to find that most of his face was chewed off…
Nithya screamed, scrambling back away from his corpse. “Maari?” Now panic gripped her. She hadn’t seen or heard her sister since they entered the house, and now with the state of their father, her heart pounded in her ears. No longer was home safe. Nithya grabbed up the candle before sprinting up the steps. “Maari?” She almost shrieked. Why was her sister not saying anything back? Nithya saw the door to their parents room open and ran towards it, only to be hit with her sister sitting on the floor staring at the bed. Atop it was their mother, dead…and atop their mother, was their grandma face deep inside of her child’s chest. So engorged was she, she barely noticed Maari inside. Yet Nithya’s foolishness of yelling out changed that. Their grandma’s head cracked up like a whip and stared at them with a mouthful of dripping gore.
In the moment it felt like everything slowed down considerably. Nithya knew each step that was taken then as if they happened one by one, but as she remembered it now, everything sped to catch up with her. Maari scrambled up, tear-stained face in a mask of horror, as their grandma clambered off of her child and meal, no longer caring about the cold meat on the bed, but the warm meat right in front of her. Her face was crazed. Once brown eyes were but a milky gray with no spark of intelligent thought inside of them. Her skin had been a deep brown, worn by years and the sun during her youth in India, but now was an ashen pallor to them with deep, dark veins crawling along her face. She snarled and growled her desire and Nithya had a split second between her and the door that she pulled Maari the rest of the way through before slamming it in her grandmother’s face with a loud crack, bulging the splintered wood outward.
Nothing was left for them here, as much as it pained Nithya to think. There was survival on the line, and trying to find anything here while their grandmother hunted them without any sign of relenting, was merely an idiotic move. Maari had the same idea, already down the steps and yanking the front door back open as their grandma bashed her way out of the room. Nithya followed Maari back to the car, which she thankfully never locked.
“Did you see grandpa?” Nithya asked as she started the car.
“Dead,” Maari shuddered out. “Think grandma got to him first.”
Nithya reversed out of the driveway and spared no glance to her grandma as she drove away from the house. It hurt, but there was nothing she could do. She didn’t want to dwell either. Just like in the hospital, there was no use to do so. She could reflect later. Grieving for the dead was a living person’s duty.
The way to the highway was clear in a sense where no one barred their way. While there were empty cars upon it and some destruction along the sides, Nithya managed to navigate south. Away from the fires, away from her home… Away from all she knew.
Nithya forced her mind to remain blank. She focused solely on driving with both hands on the wheel, grip tight and brown knuckles paling. Maari didn’t speak and Nithya didn’t force it. Instead, Maari turned on the radio and sorted through the static to try to find news about the state of Raccoon City. Perhaps it was not as bad as it appeared. Perhaps more help arrived to sedate those crazed and help those who were not. A fool’s hope, perhaps. But the static didn’t yield anything and soon enough, Maari shut off the radio and they rode on in silence.
As the destruction thinned, their safety became realized. Nithya had a friend in the next city over, close to a two hour drive from them. She wasn’t sure if the chaos extended to the entire state or not, but she had to hope. She had to cling onto something or else the anxiety would kill her from within. It was her mantra through it all. Once something was deemed hopeless, she moved onto something else, and so on and so forth. It was in her friend in the next city being safe and allowing them in. It was in Ben sending her an email two days before she left saying he had more to uncover and he might need her help were she able to meet him back in the city. It was in the news reports coming out of Raccoon City of armed forces quelling the chaos and allowing her a way to sneak back in with only one solitary desire: to bring down those who killed her family, who destroyed her home. It was in the two who, despite her idiotic decision to return, saw her back out with more than a bond binding them together.
**
Nithya wiped her eyes and sighed out through her nose. She went to take a sip of her coffee, but found it empty. Another sigh, yet more of an irritated groan now. Beyond, towards the back of the apartment where her room was, a soft shut of the bathroom door sounded. A flush of a toilet, and then the rattling of the pipes as the shower was turned on. Nithya stood and grabbed her mug, making her way to where the coffeemaker was to pour herself another cup. The coffee was at least slightly warmer, but it was hardly any good from sitting out for so long. She drank it anyway, letting the chalky bitter taste run through her teeth and over her tongue before slipping down her throat.
She returned to her laptop. Scrolling up to the start, she ran through what she had written quickly, debating on if she wanted to write the rest, of the illegal actions framing her return to Raccoon City, and simply leave it at her having escaped with her sister. That they lived for a couple months with her friend’s family from university, figuring out what they could do now that they had no home and were deemed dead unless they showed themselves to the government to collect their apology check which would secure them for the rest of their lives. That Maari had joined with the BSAA in the same desire as Nithya to never let this happen again, but in a totally different route.
Nithya did not want to ask for more pity. Her goal at the beginning was to frame the picture of being a normal citizen who simply desired to survive just as anyone else in the world. What she did after was to reveal all. To shine a light and trap the cockroaches from skittering back into their little holes.
She listened to the shower running, glancing towards the back of the apartment to the closed door of her bedroom. But all in all, none of it would have happened had it not been for him…
**
Raccoon City had only gotten worse during the days since her leaving. Despite the news reports claiming the U.S. Government and that of the Raccoon City police department, the state’s National Guard, and lastly, those from Umbrella’s own enforcers (Nithya had no idea existed to such a degree), were all working together to help those left inside, the place had only crumbled further. Streets were blocked by fallen buildings, stacks of cars burning still, and unmanned barricades set up every which way—that was if the streets were there in the first place. It was not difficult to get inside the city limits, but all the more difficult to leave due to how many streets were destroyed and the highway leading out was completely fenced off now. From the looks of it, after Nithya and Maari left, city officials changed their minds and ended up quarantining the entire city.
Yet what stood out the most to Nithya was that there seemed to be no semblance of intelligent life left. Survivors were no more and what was inside Raccoon City were those crazed enough to kill indiscriminately. Storybook monsters through and through, bloodthirsty and singular minded in their desire to consume and kill. Violence ruled them, forcing them to be lower than beasts. Already the regret was piling up in Nithya’s mind as she ventured, on foot, through the city with only a switchblade for protection. She had to move slowly, finding stealth a better shield than her shoddy attempt at fighting those things while she made her way towards downtown where the diner Ben named in his email was. It was an attempt to not bring any unwanted attention to her, but it was not all smooth sailing as she would have hoped. What luck she used in her first escape seemed to have had run out.
She had no need of maps, she knew her way around well enough even with the destruction and the fires appearing around every corner. Her path through the city was not conventional. One could not simply walk the sidewalks and wait at crosswalks for her chance to cross. Instead, she went through alleyways and carved out buildings, sometimes sprinting as fast as she could across streets to hop over overturned dumpsters and abandoned cars to get away from an infected monster who sniffed her out. She didn’t want to think of them as human anymore. Not with how they acted—it would simply ease her fears just a little should she ever need her knife to protect herself.
And such a wish came true far too soon for her liking.
Nithya had judged a burnt out clothing store to be empty wrongly. She entered through the back, knowing the front entrance would lead her out to the street the diner was on. This store was a personal favorite of her grandmothers, even if she rarely shopped inside of it finding the clothes themselves, while pretty, were far too expensive to waste any of her son’s money on. It did not stop Nithya nor Maari from combining their summer job income together one year to buy her a scarf she had loved the feel of for her birthday. She loved it and had worn it often since… Nithya blinked back tears and rubbed at her eyes with her wrist, careful not to knick herself with the tip of her knife.
But then she froze, watching as a crazed monster staggered to his feet with a growling deep from his throat. Spit dripped from his infected mouth, dripping down his chin as he turned to spot her. Hunger was the only emotion he held within those otherwise lifeless eyes.
She ran without thinking and somehow the infected man knew where she wanted to go, making a beeline to block off the path to the door and fling himself at her. She hit the ground, a surge of pain zipped up her tail bone, before scrambling away from him, but he came after her with dirty, gnashing teeth. Her hands shook enough her knife was in an unsure grip, unable to do any damage to him aside from a couple scratches. He tried to bite her, she kicked him hard in the face and then again. She finally stood and kicked him again, but he grabbed her leg and his teeth scraped against her, unable to pierce through her jeans. She panicked. She brought the knife blade down on the side of his head over and over and over again. Her leg jerked out of his loosening grip, but the blade continued going in and out of his skull, leaving nothing but a mass of red, throbbing pulp and stark, white bone.
There was no desire to stop and reorient herself, nor to catch her breath. With how much the infected moved during the attack, she wasn’t even sure he was dead dead. So she ran away. She vaulted over a table and shouldered through the door and sprinted down the street. The flickering sign of the diner was like a beacon of safety she pushed through her fear and exhaustion to get to as quickly as possible.
Perhaps she should have been more cautious, but fear ruled her now and most of all regret, as she slammed into the diner and stumbled to a halt. At the very least, she had enough sense in herself to calm down and make sure there was no one else in the diner. Somehow it was empty save for a couple corpses she prodded with her foot just to make sure they wouldn’t get back up. Once proven more than dead, Nithya slumped into a booth and tossed the knife and her barely charged mobile phone onto the dirty tabletop.
She took a breath and relaxed as much as she could, which was not at all. There was a chance Nithya had missed her window in meeting with Ben. The email he sent was from the morning of when the outbreak started, claiming there was a trail he found and if she wanted to join in on the hunt. She hadn’t checked her mail before going to her sister. It was only when they were out of Raccoon City, safe in her friend’s house and able to finally realize what all this meant for them now, did she read it. It took some convincing of everyone to let her go, but even then they weren’t on board. None of it mattered more than her life, but Nithya begged to differ. The sight of her grandmother eating the entrails of her own daughter was enough to solidify Nithya’s attempt at some semblance of revenge. Ben was the key to such a door, but she feared the opportunity was long lost. There had been no more contact from Ben despite her replying to him. He could be anywhere: dead, under government watch, or safe somewhere but too busy with what he found to give her any attention. She hoped for the last. At least there’d be somehow out there to expose the criminals who allowed this all to happen.
An hour, Nithya told herself. She would wait an hour and if he didn’t show, she would progress. To where, she did not know. Perhaps the mayor’s building…
The TV set at the bar screeched its loud emergency alarm. Nithya jumped, reaching for the knife only to watch as the words scrolled by. “EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM…Attention all citizens: Due to the citywide outbreak, you are advised to take shelter at the Raccoon City police station. Free food and medical supplies will be provided to everyone in need.” It repeated itself a couple more times before the ringing shut off, bringing the TV back to dull static. Nithya wasn’t sure if the station was where Ben would be, but it could be a step into her own investigation.
Nithya tried to reserve her strength as she waited, but it was impossible with her nerves collecting in the pit of her stomach, making her get up from the booth and pace around the diner. Looking out the windows she passed, she found the city unnerving. The smell of death and char alongside seeing the streets absolutely empty of people brought fear she thought impossible to achieve. She wanted to leave. Regret bubbled in her silence and the minutes ticked on far too slowly for her liking. The longer she stayed in one place, the more her nerves started to leave her. Were she to stay the full hour, she would never leave and she knew it as if it was carved into the inside of her mind. She took up her knife and pocketed her Nokia before leaving the diner. She went out the back way this time, careful not to cause any more noise than necessary before setting off to the police department towards the edge of downtown.
She tried to be more cautious as the destruction was thicker the further she went. There were more fires, but she used the lack of visibility from the smoke as a way to keep out of sight from those infected. Surprisingly gunfire was heard down here, yet it was scattered. Almost like they were panic shots without any true coherence in getting rid of a target. She was almost tempted to move towards it like a siren’s call, thinking they would be able to help her, but she thought against it. There was no telling what a scared person with a gun would do. Though ironic enough, the police department was her sole destination, and by the looks of the fires around it with a big rig having exploded just outside the entrance, had her slowing her walk by just a little.
The building itself used to be an art museum, now given over to the police much to her own misgivings on the matter. There was something to be said about the gutting of the arts so that systems of violence and greed could hold free reign which always sat in the corners of her mind when looking upon the facade. But that was barely scratching the surface of her own irritations with them as of late, what with their own inaction and lies concerning her sister.
No use in a distraction, not with the sounds of the infected growing louder, so she took what knowledge she had of the building and went around to the back gate where the parking lot was located. A gate that wasn’t so formidable as the front, wrought-iron gate, but a chain-link fence easy enough to scale should the call for climbing be necessary. Though that was not what slowed her progression. A helicopter seemed to have made its home on the side of the building as infected clamored against the windows in the hopes of getting in.
Nithya walked down the length of the fence, towards one of the poles where the wires were twisted around it. There was something to be said about going to Raccoon City public schools where chain-linked fences circled the field. One could walk with their friends next to it until you got to the far corner where the pole met with the back fence of someone’s house. There, if one wanted to skip class or simply go out for lunch rather than remain on school property for their nasty cafeteria food, they could simply kick out the fence’s corner. With booted feet, Nithya kicked and pressed against the weakest part, bulging the fence out until a gap between the wires and pole began to form. Once she thought it was enough, she tried to squeeze herself in but could only get the top half of her body through. She pushed and prodded at the fence some more before she was able to pass with only a couple snags. She drew blood on her hip from the chain link catching her there, but she didn’t care. She stumbled forward before turning back to grab the edge of the gap to pull on it some more, but upwards so that she would have a quick way out should it be needed.
The first door she saw was underneath a metal staircase leading up to where the helicopter was. Flames licked all around it, giving no indication that any of it would get too close to the gas line, making for one nasty explosion she wasn’t sure the building could handle. Nor could she, in that respect. Thankfully, the door was open, so she slipped inside of the oddly silent building and began to wonder where everyone was. No cops, no staff, not even those survivors who were expected to make their way over here. Nothing but the growls of the infected outside and the stray drips of water on the floor above her.
“Strange,” Nithya murmured, even finding the sound of her voice echoing in this room to be odd in sound. As if she just broke the perceived calm. Better to be quick here and leave than not at all. “Right, classifieds and records. Classifieds and records.”
The tap-tap-tap of her boots against the marble floor had her almost wanting to take off her shoes to quiet her steps, but there was blood around she didn’t want to look at, and corpses she didn’t want to look at either making the idea an unappealing one. Instead, she focused on the doors she passed and the signs on the walls telling her where she was going and where she came from. Desks of the higher ups, records room, evidence rooms even…she would take anything, even finding Ben on the way should she be so lucky. But the records room came first down a hallway, where she ignored the body in the corner crumpled up in a broken mess. Her luck, however, was little. She found the door, but as she tried the doorknob, it didn’t budge. Fearing making too much noise, she thought against grabbing one of the planks of wood off of the windows and breaking the door open.
Nithya took a bobby pin out of her hair, letting the curled front piece slouch forward before she tucked it behind her ear. Unlike with getting through the gate, she never picked a lock before, but surely it couldn’t be too hard. She knew that the locking mechanism needed to be pushed up with the pin depending on the shape of the key, so there would be a lot of trial and error. Easy, right?
Not so much.
Lips pressed together, a tongue peeked through, she furrowed her brows as she jimmied the lock, but the door wasn’t budging. There was nothing to feel around in, as if there was no ordinary lock on the door. Perhaps it was electronic? She poked and prodded at it still, her attention fully on the task that a set of footsteps stopping just short of her went unnoticed.
A throat cleared. “That’s breaking and entering, you know,” a voice sounded like a cut in the air.
“Yeah? And who are…you—”
She looked at the man, R.P.D. across his chest in large white letters atop his rather blue police uniform. Another idiotic move by her…
“Police.” He looked mildly amused, albeit at odds with the wariness in his eyes. But that wasn’t the only thing at odds either. For one, Nithya had never seen his face before in all her time spent inside this building over the summer trying to harangue the officers into action to look for her sister. Back up from another city, perhaps? But the news never said the other nearby cities were helping.
“Right.” Nithya stood, careful to slip her hand holding the bobby pin behind her back as she took one step away from the door. “Hardly think those laws matter anymore here. What with the…” A hopeless gesture towards the blocked off windows and the hissing infected behind them. The officer gave it only a glance.
“And you, what? Take advantage of a bad situation for personal gain?”
Nithya frowned, slipping the pin in her back pocket before gripping the switchblade in hand. “If you want to assume I’m only in it for bad reasons, then buddy do I have some news for you.”
He held up his hands. “Hey, no harm, no foul. You got a point, but it still doesn’t look good.”
“Like I said…”
“I know,” a breath and a brief smile.
Nithya stared at him for a second longer. Mulling over her options. He had a gun, she noticed at his side with his finger off of the trigger. But it also looked as if he was the only one here. Her chances of running would be disastrous, not with her destination so close. Then, she had a better idea. One that had her bringing her empty hand back around to the front to gesture at the door. “Maybe you can help me? If you have a key to this door, I’d be out of your hair as if I was never here.”
He looked at the door, frowned at the name and then at the green club sigil on the door.
“I’d need clearance first. Most likely from someone higher up,” he said. There was a strong reaction building up inside of Nithya to roll her eyes and yell at him, but she held back with a bite of her tongue.
“It’d be better for you to get out safe from this city. Your life is more important.”
“Yeah, see, that’s not happening unless I get to look at what’s behind this door. And the quicker this gets open, the quicker I’m gone.”
“Why?”
“For justice this department was too scared to seek,” she answered, adding only a breath later, “Or didn’t want to seek.”
He was quiet. Thoughtful, she hoped. Nithya had more than a notion of this man being new here, or at least ignorant of what had been going on in Raccoon City long before the summer incidents. She almost pitied him before she hardened herself again. She was speaking to someone who could easily get a power trip because of that uniform on his back and make everything far more terrifying than those monsters outside could ever—baby faced or not. Still…she had to admit: this was the first non-infected person she had seen since she entered back into the city. Part of her desired to trust him more simply for the faint human connection this city had been lacking for days on end.
Then, he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
**
Nithya puzzled over what she had written before highlighting the last couple of paragraphs mentioning Leon and deleted them. Perhaps it would be better for her to leave the others out of this, especially Claire Redfield who had more than enough to worry about at the moment. To say the least, Nithya was not expecting the best reception by the powers that be should this ever get published, and any blow back she would get should be hers alone. Which meant summarizing all of what she went through, passing over what happened between certain actors during her time in the underground labs because at the end of the day, it was all bells and whistles. What truly mattered was what Nithya found while scouring Umbrella’s files.
Files she did not find enough of within the small amount of time she had down there. Nithya twirled the C.D. inside its case before drinking the last of her coffee down. There was still more in the pot, but then she’d have to get up again—a problem that may or may not be solved as her bedroom door opened and Leon emerged. Hair wet, pushed back away from his face, and shirtless. She couldn’t help but smile at the sight, closed lipped and soft regardless. He had come a long way from when they first met within the hell known as Raccoon City. Once a baby-faced police officer thinking the law would always prevail, to someone sharper, more severe. The baby-face lost its innocence, and the blue eyes no longer wide, but ever-cautious as if to let his guard down even in the midst of her quiet apartment was but a hard task There had been a death in him, which only had Nithya wondering just what he was like before everything went to shit.
“So that’s where my shirt went,” Leon remarked by way of greeting.
“Hm, this?” Nithya pinched her shirt collar. Despite the change in him, there was still a way to make him blush. “You want it back?”
“Would be nice.” Leon let out a quiet laugh before kissing the side of her head on his way to the coffee pot. “I do need to leave soon. Boarding call’s in an hour.”
Nithya’s smile dropped. She watched as he poured his cup and drank, turning around back to her. Something changed in the silence. He was unsure now and then it dawned on him. She had been the fool again, thinking there was more time to be spent with him when there had never been any assurances to the contrary. So swept up in the surprise of his return last night, just shy of midnight, to have him in her arms again after weeks, she just didn’t think this would be like every other time.
And yet, just like every other time, she made a hopeful assumption only to be embarrassed.
“Why do you never tell me these things?”
“Look, I’m sorry—”
“There was ample time for you to say something last night, but you didn’t. You make me feel like such an idiot, Leon. Always guessing, always hanging around thinking maybe this time he’d stay longer.”
“It’s not like that, Nithya, I just didn’t think at the time.”
“When do you ever?”
“You could ask.”
“You know I can’t, Snoopy,” Nithya said, mimicking his words from last night when she dared to ask about what happened during his training. Why question the man when the answers remained the same time and time again.
How was balance achieved? His position, tenuous as it was, with the government and their relationship he, in a way, probably shouldn’t have. Perhaps it was selfish to demand more, but was it so wrong of her to not want to be kept in the dark on what was happening? Even if it was so much as a heads-up to his length of absences, a check in to say he was still alive, or to just not be left questioning if Leon was dead, trapped somewhere, or he finally found someone better to spend his very limited free time with. There was a want to understand, be pliant to the whims of his overlords and never complain again, but there was also the want in her to be angry she had to put up with it in the first place.
“I’m sorry.”
A quiet plea from Leon, but Nithya didn’t want to hear it anymore. She pulled the shirt off and tossed it onto the countertop before leaving the kitchen.
Maybe they entered into a relationship far too soon after the Raccoon City incident. Built up over the following year while Leon settled into his new life not as a cop, but as an ‘aspiring’ government agent where they had been able to hang out together more. They weren’t sure where Claire had gone in the search for her brother, so Nithya had reached out to Leon for some kind of comfort born out of their shared trauma. Was their relationship just her desperation to not be alone? Was he the same and they were both in this almost forced connection because there was no one else to turn to? Or was she fluffing her own presence up in his life, a life she still had no ideas of what it could be like where not even a singular thought was given over to her.
But she had to admit, it was good when it was good. But when it was bad…
Vile thoughts rose in her mind, thinking she was merely a quick fuck whenever Leon decided he missed the feel of a woman for a night, but it made her feel nauseous to even give it any sort of room. They didn’t belong no matter how frustrated she was over Leon’s actions. He wasn’t cruel. It did not help the tears from budding in her eyes as she tugged on her pajamas from the bedroom floor. There was no use in getting dressed. She had more than enough time today to finish her report now.
“Nithya?”
Leon had followed her. Of course he had.
“I’m not saying it to say it, I am sorry.”
“I know,” she murmured, quickly wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Duty calls. Or whatever.”
“I’ll try to come back as quick as possible.”
“Will I be privileged enough to be told or am I just supposed to guess whenever you think it acceptable to mention it?” Leon sagged under the lashing and Nithya felt regret rise like bile in her throat. “I know it’s hard for you. Just…”
“I’ll remember next time,” he promised.
Nithya could only nod. It wasn’t in her to let him leave on a sour note. He would do good on his word, as he always did, but she would still be left behind wondering. So she went to him anyway to say goodbye. He embraced her tightly with love whispered in her ear, and she begged time to switch the seconds with the hours just for a moment so she wouldn’t have to feel his arms retreat, to feel the hollowness they formed in her chest, but she had to feel it. She had to attempt a small smile as he took up his duffel bag from where it never made it past the entryway, before attempting a quiet goodbye on her lips he took away with his own before leaving.
The apartment continued in its silence, the soft buzz of the refrigerator drifting through and melding into the hint at the ghost of another body having once been inside. Nithya closed her eyes and willed her emotions to subside until there was nothing but a dull remnant.
She returned to the kitchen, grabbing the coffee Leon had poured and drank the rest of it down before sitting at her laptop again. She stared at the document, the line blinking like an impatient toe-tapping.
“Right…duty calls,” she murmured, settling her fingers on the keys.
**
Progressing through the police department was another type of concentrated hell. Raccoon City was a laundry list of destruction, but inside this once museum turned jail was but a slaughterhouse. This was where the last stand was before becoming overwhelmed by the infected. This was the place where the story ended, leaving nothing but death and rot in its wake. Somehow an appropriate place for it, Nithya’s own poisoned bias aside. But it was not all useless. She found Ben, though it looked as if a monster with too-big hands found him first. There was no head for identification and Nithya had a hard time believing it was him in the first place until she spied the reporter’s badge. The information he hinted at having was nowhere to be seen, taken perhaps by the same cops who locked him up.
But there was still hope in the records office. Once she found a way inside, using a more elaborate system than she cared for, she went straight to any hint she could find on what had happened over the summer. Missing people by the dozen, stories of cannibalism, and now this outbreak that felt far too connected for Nithya to ever dismiss now. The connection was all the more revealing once she got to the underground labs, reading the tests for herself like a new world opening up in front of her. Well-placed lies and her leaving with Claire Redfield for Leon to handle it on his insistence, allowed her to walk free with this knowledge. She was just a survivor who had not been privy to anything subterranean, all while she felt the jut of a C.D. case dig into her skin where it sat snug in the waistband of her jeans. Lab results, journal entries, and specimen databases, on top of some records of missing people from the police, tied everything together. What her sister went through was but a tip of this infected iceberg.
But just the same, the real story had more depth to it than Nithya wanted to put down in words. How she would have had more information from the records room had she not been interrupted by some sort of giant gray man in a trench coat. It was a silly picture recalling it, but it was not so in the heat of the moment with his stomping steps echoing towards the room. With a crash of a door, he ducked through in his search to, what she could only imagine then and now, eliminate any witnesses to the crimes of who made him in the first place. He was a Frankenstein monster come to life, plucked straight from the book and dropped into the police department of Raccoon City. He spoke no words and held no philosophy but that of violence. Nithya had to run. The handgun she’d been given served no purpose other than to tickle him.
(There was another there, Nithya reflected presently with a little smile. Without Claire running into the room with the Bioweapon hot on her tail, the life she lived now wouldn’t have existed. But in this moment, she remembered the clammy grip of Claire’s hand as she pulled Nithya out of the room, through the opposite door with only a second of rushed, breathless introductions, before Nithya was spirited away.
Safety was only achieved out of the pursuers distraction and nothing else. Yet Nithya took more confidence from Claire who was so set on seeing this through, it was hard not to become infected by it. Reflecting back on it now in fond amusement, Leon had annoyed Nithya far more often during that night, she felt Claire’s presence to be something of a relief. But it was beside the point, one such where Nithya had just enough information to guide her on what to look for next.)
So, Nithya followed the trail even when she wasn’t exactly invited to do so. The amount of times she was told she should go back, to leave the city while it’s safe, were numerous, but she plodded on as relentlessly as the Bioweapon. This was personal, a point she was not shy to admit in order to keep those suggestions under a minimum. Ben would do the same, she reasoned. He would have done what he had to in order to expose the problem. To be an investigative journalist was to allow the public the chance to see the truth and judge whether it was deemed worthy or not.
It was something she would dedicate her life to.
There was a thrill that ran through her at the prospect, but it muted itself in the sewers. Nithya saw just how much rot there was building up, decades in the making, and a sickness full of anger roiled inside of her. It was no accident, this seemed more of a dedicated poisoning of a city just to see how they’d fare. While odd reports here and there appeared seldom, Nithya wondered if it had been building up so much the pile finally fell over into the public zeitgeist before exploding. It had to be, for the growth of what the virus was, was exponential. She kept her hands above the water, but couldn’t help but fear what the side effects of wading within this would be. Anxiety often spiked inside of her, but this was like the fear of being pursued, or seeing her grandmother cannibalize her own daughter. Everything screamed in her to leave, to get out immediately and leave this city with the scant evidence she had, but she swallowed it all down. She progressed and set her mouth into a line, hoping this would all be worth it in the end. It had to be.
Once she got to Umbrella’s underground lab, large as it proved to be, hatred suffocated all other emotions. A hatred so fierce, she felt now as she wrote about it that that was the only reason how she survived. How she took a page from Claire’s book in wanting to see this thing through because like hell she was going to die inside the beast’s maw, buried with the wealth of knowledge she acquired. It would never see the light of day in such a state and the public would never know the truth. To live beyond yourself, in horrific times like that, it was the only answer.
It was hatred turned to hope.
The lab lay abandoned, succumbing to death by its own hands making security clearance easy to come by. All Nithya had to find was a dead scientist somewhere and take their wristband or keycard (or hand...) in order to get through a locked door. She tried not to think about the morality of her actions, but she reasoned with herself whenever her mind did turn to that. If these scientists were fine being unethical to those still living, they had no right to complain about unethical postmortem treatment. Nithya couldn’t stomach the sight or smell regardless. Whoever said one got used to the sight of death had truly never seen death by the dozens before. Instead, she found a way to manage it, to place it in the back of her mind knowing it was not needed. The computers and bloodied records were a good distraction, especially as she got to the meat of the experiments to which she downloaded onto a blank C.D. she took from the director’s office.
It was one thing getting the information, it was wholly another disseminating it. Umbrella had tormented Raccoon City under their all encompassing shadow, but their reach was even further than that. Nithya scrolled through cities, countries, small towns, and lists upon lists of Bioweapons and scientists on their payroll. It was dozens…no, hundreds, and to think this was all under everyone’s noses—literally, more so, as underground labs were not just in Raccoon City either. Nithya wrote down what she could, her little book growing fat with names, addresses, and every singular number she came across to look into later. The C.D. estimated an hour for it to copy everything over, and that was all she needed.
Until alarms erupted forth and her heart moved up her throat.
Quickly Nithya tried to end the download, but was careful not to erase what had already burned into the C.D. before taking it out and setting it in a case she then slipped into her book to hold. Nithya didn’t know what the alarm could mean, but she wasn’t going to be left behind when she had so much more to do. She ran and searched. Panic dizzied her but she pushed through with cold determination. So close, she would not die. Not like this, not now.
But she made it back onto the surface, her little book clutched tight against her chest blinking up at the sun like a shell-shocked survivor of a war she should have never been a part of.
Days later, Raccoon City would be wiped off the map. Her home would not exist anymore.
**
Nithya lifted up the case and opened it to slip the C.D. into the laptop’s disc drive. There was nothing left to that ending to be written down. For the public, it was all they needed to know. They didn’t need to hear about their long walk along a deserted highway used by truckers to avoid the main city traffic. They didn’t need to know of the plan forming between the three of them and the arguments made to convince one or the other way. How they exchanged numbers, promised to check in, to stay alive, to do what they could, before parting. Nithya went with Claire to be dropped off at her friend’s house where her sister was, before Claire revved off with a wave and a smile to go find her brother. Leon stayed with Sherry to make sure she got into better hands. To say the child did remained to be seen still, really, but the way Nithya saw it now, it would’ve been better had they all just skipped town together.
But certain people still retained a belief in the good of the justice system held by the U.S. Government.
Nithya couldn’t relate.
Sorting through the evidence saved, Nithya began to edit her report. She took out much of the personal language and wrote as a third party looking in from the outside for more than half of the retelling. Those who read it would get the picture of who she was with what she gave in the beginning, of her own story in Raccoon City. It was but a plea of her case, to take her at her word even if she knew there would be a vocal minority who wouldn’t believe anything no matter how much evidence was put before them. She would be a liar, an upstart, a woman who forgot her place, but she would also be the whistle blower, the truth, the singular rock who started the slow-moving avalanche.
But it was not the nay-sayers who made her hesitate. Why she had not started this report until years later, trying not to let the fear of organizations more powerful than her doing whatever they could to silence her. Umbrella was still around. The U.S. Government was still in their pocket. Making sure she or her report never saw the light of day would be an easy feat for them to accomplish. It scared her all the more as she stared at her name underneath the title of her report. But if she allowed fear to rule her, she would have died the first night of the riots. She was proof she could overcome it and do right by her family, her friends, her home who were so wrongfully killed.
Nithya saved the Word document and sealed it in a zip folder before writing out the email to the editor who requested the story. With a deep breath, she attached the report and hit send.
Now, to wait…