— Humanity never ceases to amaze me, — a laugh to the point of tears, if only. To be more precise, the situation can be described differently: laughter through tears. The virus has gotten out, it's unknown how, and unclear why, but it has spread throughout the city much faster than any plague.
I was conducting experiments with my own T-virus. At first, a treacherous thought even crossed my mind about my involvement in the incident in "Raccoon City." But no, something else infected Raccoon City; another, more dangerous source. Rats? Excluded, they are definitely involved in the rapid spread of the epidemic, but to a much lesser extent. The character is massive, too massive. According to my estimates, the outbreak infected a tenth of the city overnight. Moreover, the infected people did not immediately turn into insane zombies; there is an intermediate period, which means they were infected with the basic version of the virus — without additional mutations.
The virus works as follows: if a zombie bites a person, that person becomes like them. It's difficult to say how long it takes; it depends on the victim's health. Sometimes some held out for a day before turning into creatures. We called such people special. We even studied methods for creating an antidote based on them. But if a healthy person was infected from a test tube, then the immune system will try to fight the invader, invisible to the human eye, and the transformation time is increased many times compared to infection through other zombies.
Right now, it's the second case.
September 22 ended before the city turned into the most dangerous area on the planet; on September 21, everything was fine. Therefore, the countdown started on September 23 — the city's citizens have less than a day left; that's how long it takes to infect people with poor health. Until this moment, the infected will show symptoms close to rabies, but will still remain human.
And there are too many "rabid infected"; they have already begun to cause fires throughout the city, mass riots, and unrest. They forced local television to make dangerous statements, blaming everyone — the government and Umbrella, talking about their involvement in these events. No one provided evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if private military detachments from Umbrella soon appear here. State ones, as always, will arrive at the very last moment, after the private ones have already cleaned up the evidence.
And yet, how did the virus get into the city? Did it get into the sewage system or a water reservoir? Into the purification system or the water supply? Such options are considered acceptable in the current situation. Rapid infection. Already at nine in the morning, I was walking through a city filled with centers of chaos.
— What the hell? Where are you taking me?! Bastards! I'll kill you all! You and yours… — an aggressive man, whose skin had initial signs of necrosis, did not stop shouting. Sputtering saliva in all directions, he tried to break free, but the two policemen were working well.
He, the prisoner, has at best two days left before turning. However, he doesn't look like a healthy athlete with a clean medical record. I can give him a little more than a day. Tomorrow afternoon, mass incidents of cannibalism will begin.
I don't understand, what is a child doing here? On the street, and during a riot, no less. Where are her parents looking? It's foolish on my part, but I decided to approach to help. Only when I was almost there, I winced, feeling the prickliness of the fake beard, barely spat, and went on. The girl had a high fever, and she was scratching her skin until it bled. Blisters appeared on this skin, vile and purulent; also, there were the first signs of cataracts in her eyes. In general, she is still alive, but that's the thing, for now. Is this Birkin's or Umbrella's work? Definitely not the G-virus, otherwise monsters from different myths and legends would be running around here, possessing not magic, but the form and appearance of vile creatures. This is the T-virus, the symptoms are similar, one-to-one. A leak from the underground complex or an Organization's sabotage?
— Where am I? — a confused man of about forty, dressed in an office suit, looked around strangely. Memory loss occurs with the destruction of brain cells, but usually, before that, the problem concerns the muscles. He has less than a day left — without any guarantees for a longer period.
Also, passing by a fast-food restaurant, I involuntarily smirked. Then I barely held back from laughing, and instead, continued to watch the insane feast through the glass. Thirty visitors ate twice as much as they could possibly fit. The insane metabolism will make them hunt their own kind a little later. The brain, by the way, is destroyed in all of them in a similar way. Zombies will understand that a human consists of meat, and they will also remember: meat is food. Still, we were developing biological weapons, and not trying to achieve immortality or some "strange desires." Money is the main motivation of Umbrella's board of directors. A lot, an indecent amount of money.
Thinking through the situation from all sides, I reached the most ordinary bar. Alcohol did not affect me; it was carried much worse than milk, but still, it was not related to the water supply. This is the first reason for visiting a pub, the most absurd from the point of view of buying soda, but there were others: a convenient television, frequent conversations of all sorts of people, and complete indifference to my person.
This is where I spent the day and evening; analyzing information from a local TV channel. At the same time, I watched the visitors who came after noon in real time. Many of them had signs of infection, so the theory about the water supply was gaining more and more weight. The city's mayor had already left the dangerous place under military guard, and this was told by the city hall employees who came in the evening. They spoke quietly, but not quietly enough for my ears.
Umbrella is well aware of the incident; it has already evacuated one of its agents.
— Oh, yeah, I heard he didn't even take his daughter. Can you imagine? — a blue-eyed brunette whispered after his second glass. — No, you imagine, I heard the guys upstairs talking about it. He supposedly sent her to the police station, and he himself fled in proud solitude. And that's with all the people's cries. What a jerk, right?
"Rather, father of the year and the best daddy in the universe," I thought to myself when I looked at the television. A couple of organizations have already confirmed that it's some kind of virus. Dangerous statements that cause more panic among the civilian population. It's scary to imagine what will happen tomorrow during the football match held in the city: a whole stadium filled with infected people. What could go wrong? I've already heard a lot about protests in the city today. Tomorrow I will definitely hear about the shelling of zombies during the ball game.
— Crazy. Did you see what's up with the police? They act like wild, unsupervised dogs, — the man downed a full glass of beer in one gulp, blinking. — Irons seems to have gone crazy, — he was talking about the police chief. — They're running back and forth, and, as in the smoking room, well, you remember, on the phone, something was wrong on the way out of the city. They haven't blocked it, have they? — the second office worker added at the end.
Drunken ravings are sometimes useless, but during a disaster, information must be drawn and analyzed from the most diverse sources. It seems that not much time has passed, but I have already managed to collect a lot of useful data. If you put it all together, it becomes obvious: the city will soon plunge into hell. I am more than sure of that.
In addition, the solution to the virus problem will be extremely decisive on the part of the government. There are only two solutions: a quarantine zone or a nuclear bomb. I'm ready to bet on a nuclear warhead strike, given the real situation with the antidote. We created a test version for the T-virus, but it, to put it mildly, works crookedly and incorrectly. Too many side effects that can send an infected person to the grave. Exactly a person, zombies can no longer be brought back to life; their brains are simply destroyed.
You can't magically create a special gas with an antidote, spray it over Raccoon City, and thus save everyone. In this city, everyone is dead — a fact. And with this fact, I went wandering around the city, feeling the paws of death squeezing the throats of all the living. Even if by some miracle a couple of survivors hold on until the end, they will be wiped off the face of the Earth along with the city. But this will not happen immediately; the city is still hanging by a thread, it has not yet fallen.
— This apartment will do, — I nodded at these thoughts, heading to the yard, near which several ambulance crews were standing. Medical personnel led about six people out of the high-rise building, and it was not difficult for me to find their place of residence. Now these apartments are free; the owners will not recover anytime soon and will not return.
Well, after entering the open door on the seventh floor, I surprisingly examined the setting. They forgot to turn off the light; the beauty of the elite renovation immediately appeared before my eyes. It was clear that the owners earned well and invested in their future, but alas, now they will only get the process of decay. An eternal process for the infected, who, surprisingly, are close to true immortality. As soon as they rot more than halfway, the viral cells will attack the bacteria that cause this process. In other words, simply waiting will not work. Zombies will wander until their bodies are burned.
Reaching the bed, I took off my sunglasses, wig, and fake beard, then lay down on the couch. I need food because of my high metabolism, but I had absolutely no desire to eat. The world is rolling into an abyss… Not the city, but the whole world…
In case Spencer is cornered, there is a Doomsday project. China, India, USA, Pakistan, Nigeria, Russia, Great Britain, Japan, Germany, and France. Ten countries will face the infection of a dangerous virus, which will completely roll the world back a couple of hundred years and put it on the verge of extinction. William and I assumed something like this when we dug too deep.
— Sherry… — I remembered the name of William's daughter.
William, you're not going to abandon your daughter in this chaos, are you? Oh, damn it, and why should I even think about anyone but myself and my own safety? Along with the memory, I inherited dangerous thoughts. Why should I help an unknown girl?
Birkin, although he helped me many times, was also dependent on me and my cover. Together we developed the T-virus, bringing its functions to the required level so that it would be easier to sell as a biological weapon. After the research center, both of us were transferred to the Arklay laboratory, where we were appointed as head employees.
Together we killed our mentor and climbed even higher, of course, we did it more at the command of Spencer himself, who wanted to strengthen his position and appropriate Marcus's merits for himself; but we ourselves were not strongly against it, trying to jump above our heads.
We conducted complex experiments on Nemesis Alpha…
Our views diverged only with the appearance of the G-virus. Birkin was passionate about it, while I was sharply against it. I hate everything that cannot be controlled. And then, not only our views, but also our paths diverged. Right up to the events with the destruction of the resurrected Marcus… It was Birkin who activated the self-destruction system, which allowed us to avoid problems with the former leader, who acquired the ability to return from the dead with the help of virus-infected leeches.
— Damn it, — escaped from me when I turned over to the other side.
I'll solve this issue during the day. I'll somehow find a twelve-year-old girl in this chaos, if she's alive or still in the city. The latter is very likely; Birkin will be strictly questioned about the T-virus incident, I would say, fatally. If he is dead, and he is most likely dead, then his wife, as a laboratory employee, is also dead. There are chances that my conclusion is wrong, but it's better to think from a bad perspective. The child, however, is not in the laboratory, but in the city. I can go now, but it's better to act later, I need to clear my mind.