Author's Note: It's not my fault! Honest! It was my son's idea.

"It's pretty obvious that there's been another accident."

It was the final line in the story she'd recited in answer to Jarod's questions. The story was strange to the point of being unbelievable, Jarod thought, studying the slender, auburn haired woman sitting on the bed in front of him, but she clearly believed every word. She ignored his introspection and went on with the cleaning of her gun with an obsessive attention to detail.

She reminded him of Parker in many ways. Oh, her hair was lighter and she lacked Parker's inches, but she had the same core of strength and iron determination to survive, no matter what the obstacles were. And her story, while fantastic, lined up perfectly with what he'd already observed in the past few days.

He'd arrived at Raccoon City almost a week ago, just as the first cases of the plague that had quarantined the city began to be noticed. He wasn't sure yet if he should thank Angelo for bringing this place to his attention, or curse him. If he survived the next few days, and managed to escape, he'd decide then. In the meantime, he was going to do his best to investigate the reality of Angelo's e- mail. It contained the carefully reconstructed reports of an incident in a mansion outside the city limits that had wiped out nearly every member of one S.T.A.R.S. unit, and almost half of another.

In fact, the woman before him, Jill Valentine, was one of the chief witnesses he'd hoped to find when he planned this investigation. The coincidence of their meeting, shortly after he'd given up on his search and was about to leave the place, felt uncomfortably like fate. And she'd had the information he'd been looking for, if he could only believe it. He`d seen some of what she was talking about for himself, and he was still wondering about his sanity.

Zombies? The Living Dead? Animals mutating into ravenous, huge, and often virtually unstoppable, creatures? Most of the mutations Jill had mentioned to him were of creatures so vastly changed that she couldn't even tell what they'd been originally.

It was like something from a low-budget B-film. And it was undisputedly happening. No amount of wishful thinking was going to make this nightmare go away.

"Okay, let me see if I've got this all straight." Jarod began.

"Better make it quick, I'm leaving soon." Jill observed, looking up briefly from the collection of objects on her bed.

Jarod realized, with some admiration, that she was cobbling together her own grenades with her spare gunpowder and objects she'd dug up around the hotel. They'd spent the night together, not from any attraction, but from necessity. Jarod had met up with Jill as she attempted to leave the city, and was detained by the mercenaries Umbrella had hired to find her. They were augmenting the military blockade around the city, with the country's grateful permission. He'd just been turned back by those same men, when the sounds of excitement drew his attention back to the checkpoint.

Even if he hadn't recognized Jill from a picture in his files, he'd have gone to help her. Two gorilla-like men were twisting her arms up behind her while a third removed the black wig she'd used in a vain attempt to conceal her identity. Before they could disarm her, though, Jarod had disabled one man and was engaging another. Jill took care of the third by herself. She'd then coolly appropriated the men's weapons and ammo, and jumped into their jeep before any of the other mercenaries could respond to the commotion.

She hadn't been happy when Jarod jumped in the passenger seat beside her, but she couldn't really complain after his help.

"Can you fire one of these?" She asked, tossing him magnum and putting the jeep into gear.

"Yes." He'd affirmed briefly. He'd done more than one Pretend within the various branches of the military, and he was quite familiar with weapons. "But I'm not prepared to kill theses men--- yet."

She laughed mirthlessly. "Do you know what the zombies look like?" She asked, controlling her mirth and swinging the jeep around to head back into the city.

In spite of the martial law, and the fact that the mercenaries were obviously a threat, Jarod was deeply reluctant to return to the beleaguered streets of Raccoon City.

"Zombie?" He had repeated incredulously. "Like from the movies?"

"Close enough." She'd affirmed shortly. "Except that these guys are created by a virus and not black magic. Half of the city must be infected by now, which means that half of the city wants nothing but our blood. You'd better be prepared to use that if you want to tag along with me."

The half-hearted pursuit that had followed them disappeared within moments after they re-entered the strangely menacing city. Jill knew the territory far better than any of the mercenaries, and they weren't too keen on taking on the monstrosities that they'd heard now inhabited the place. But no matter how competent she seemed, Jarod was seriously wondering about her sanity---until she pulled the jeep to a halt in front of a burning pile of cars blocking their progress.

"Damn! I was hoping to make it to the station." She muttered, looking around for an alternative route. There wasn't one. The side streets and alleys had all been blocked, either by accidents, or by human design.

That was when Jarod saw his first zombie. It shuffled out from the shadows of some stairs, its eyes white and filmy and its face utterly blank. Shots rang out next to him as Jill pumped bullet after bullet into the thing's head. It finally dropped, but didn't die until it had dragged itself nearly to them, moaning its hunger the entire time.

"C'mon." She ordered him, taking pity on his obvious shock. "We'll go through that gun shop---maybe we can pick up more ammo from it on our way through."

"It took five shots to the head!" Jarod murmured to himself, following Jill's lead numbly.

"Side effects of the virus. They're nearly impossible to kill and seem to feel no pain." Jill informed him, dodging around a female zombie trying to intercept them. She was in better shape than the other---one eye was actually normal---but there wasn't a trace of intelligence on her face. "Fortunately, it also makes them incredibly slow and clumsy. We wouldn't stand a chance otherwise."

She banged on the shop door, waited about five heartbeats, and then used the butt of her gun to break the window. Jarod fired on the approaching female zombie, fighting to put aside his horror and think clearly. He'd had practice dealing with his fears all of his life, but he'd never faced a situation as appalling as this.

Even now, the memories made him want to shudder uncontrollably. The struggle to fight through the never-ending waves of zombies, to find a safe place, had melded in his mind into one nightmare montage. He still didn't remember exactly how he and Jill had made it to the comparative safety of this hotel. And it was Jill's insistence that had put them up here on the third floor. She'd maintained that they were less likely to encounter zombies upstairs, and claimed that even if there were zombies up here, once they killed them there would be no more. Most zombies simply couldn't climb stairs. It seemed that she had been right, because they'd been left strictly alone, even when she had led him on a foraging run earlier this morning. He dragged his mind back to the present with difficulty.

"Right. Now, Umbrella, Inc. has been experimenting in bio-weapons. A couple of months ago their latest virus escaped and killed the researchers of a hidden complex just outside of town."

"Yep. And more than half of my teammates, and quite a few innocent tourists too."

"But when the rest of you made it back here, no one would believe you?" Jarod questioned dubiously.

"Oh, they believed us, the ones who actually heard our story, but this city is owned by Umbrella. The corporation has bought the mayor, possibly the police chief, and most of the city council. Most of the citizens are only too happy to go along with the official Umbrella line, because Umbrella funded our shiny new hospital and City Hall and other lovely improvements. Hell, half the people here are employed by Umbrella in one way or another."

"So they buried your reports and tried to pretend nothing ever happened."

"Yep. Except that they also tried to get rid of the rest of the S.T.A.R.S. members that didn't die at the mansion."

"But what caused this?" Jarod questioned, waving his arm towards the window to the hotel room to indicate the city outside.

"Like I said," Jill repeated slowly, as if to a particularly stupid child. "There's obviously been another accident."

Satisfied with her preparations, Jill stood up and began distributing her homemade grenades around her person. Her handgun lay gleaming on the bedspread. They'd used up the majority of their ammo just to get this far. Jarod wondered just where she intended to go now, and how she intended to get there alive.

"What are you planning to do now?"

"Only thing I can do---get out of Dodge." She replied tersely, scooping up the gun.

"You're running away?" Jarod was astonished.

"There's nothing left to do. Those people," Jill pointed out the window, "are already dead. It's more important that I get out, with any proof of Umbrella's involvement that I can gather, and carry on the fight to take them down."

"What about a cure?"

"As far as I know, there isn't one. Even if there is one, do you really think Umbrella would volunteer it? They aren't about to admit that this disaster is of their making."

"You said that Umbrella built the hospital, do you think they were using it as a base to research this --- stuff?"

"Could be." Jill allowed grudgingly, starting towards the door. "But I don't think I'll have the time to check it out. Are you coming with me, Mr. Salk?" Her wry grin made it obvious that she recognized his pseudonym for what it was.

"You're going down there? They'll kill you!" Jarod quailed at the thought of facing the abominations waiting at street level again.

"The zombies failed once with me, I'm betting they'll fail again. I know how to fight them now." She answered calmly. "Besides, this room will only be safe for a short time. Eventually they'll come looking for us, even up here."

"What about going up?" Jarod questioned reasonably. "From what I've seen, the zombies aren't very coordinated. We might be halfway safe if we took to the rooftops."

"It's a sensible idea, but it won't work for me. I'm not tall enough to jump between some of these buildings. Besides, I need ammo, and I'm more likely to find that at street level. If you want to try the roofs, go for it." Jill advised him. "Just remember one thing: Animals get mutated too.

"At the mansion birds were attacking people like something from a Poe story and there were creatures that I didn't even recognize. There's no telling what you'll run across up there, so be prepared."

"On second thought," Jarod reconsidered, recognizing the voice of experience when he heard it. "I think I'll take my chances with you. But I'm almost out of ammo for this thing."

"I'm headed for the Police Station first to see what weapons I can salvage. You're welcome to anything I don't need. If you run out of bullets along the way, keep the gun anyway. You can use it as a club, if worse comes to worse, and there ought to be munitions there. In the meantime, take this, its better than nothing."

She tossed Jarod a long hunting knife that she'd had strapped to her calf-high boots.

"Stay close." She advised him, cracking the door to check the status in the hallway.

It was empty, for the moment. The longer a person had been infected, the lower their intelligence and coordination became. Since their room was on the third floor, it was unlikely that any new zombies had made their way up three flights of stairs, much less mastered the elevator. On the other hand, any of the other rooms on this floor could have an infected person inside. Somehow, even though their brains were barely functioning and some had cataracts blinding both eyes, the zombies could sense the presence of the living.

Jill met Jarod's eyes briefly, gave a brisk nod, and eased into the corridor. Jarod mimicked her movements and they both began to tiptoe down the hallway as silently as humanly possible. Halfway to the stairs they heard a sound that raised the hairs on the back of Jarod's neck.

It was a low moan, combining pain and hunger, and accompanied by a particular shuffling sound. One of the doors shivered as the zombie inside began mindlessly banging into it in an attempt to get at the two people it sensed on the other side.

"Shit!" Jill hissed, breaking into a sprint. "We've got to avoid contact as long as possible." She explained as they burst through the doors to the stairwell.

"Ammo's that low?" Jarod asked with understandable concern.

"It's lower than that." Jill admitted grimly. "I've got 15 shots left and these two grenades."

But the bottom of the stairwell was blocked by several more zombies, milling around restlessly, but unable to navigate the stairs up to the people above them. Jill and Jarod backtracked to the second floor, and made their way to the elevator unmolested.

"But they're waiting down there!" Jarod protested when she pushed the button for the lobby.

"As soon as the doors open, make a break for it. I'll try to hold them off."

Jill pulled out a grenade and lit the fuse just as the elevator indicated they'd reached the lobby. But when the doors opened, and the two of them burst out, there were more zombies than either of them had expected. Jill ended up on the right of them and Jarod on the left, near a set of double doors leading to the service portion of the hotel.

"Run, Jarod!" Jill hollered urgently. "It'll explode soon!"

She'd tossed the grenade into the middle of the approaching monsters as she dashed around them.

"I'll try to get to the police station!" Jarod shouted back, ducking towards the doors. "Go on without me."

The doors had barely swung shut when the homemade bomb went off, taking out most of the creatures in one explosion. Unfortunately for Jarod, three kitchen chefs and several hotel maids were waiting for him, their skin mottled and faces as mindless as the others. All too aware of his lack of ammo, Jarod ducked passed them on the other side of the long counter dividing the kitchen space and slid through the door leading to the back alley. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when he realized that it was empty, at least for the moment.

The next two hours merged in his memory as an endless mosaic of dread. Dodging the endlessly reaching hands of the walking dead, backtracking time after time as he encountered roadblock after roadblock, and scavenging ammo from the corpses of police, mercenaries, ---even the occasional armed civilian. The horrors were endless and he finally ended up operating more from instinct than intelligence. It saved him countless times, but it almost killed the woman. He almost blew her away when he came across her, simply by reflex.

"Don't shoot! I'm human!" She exclaimed, her brown eyes wide with fright, but the hand holding her berretta on him was as steady as his own magnum.

He assessed her condition with one quick glance. Dirty, disheveled, and tired, she was still relatively unharmed and appeared healthy.

"Are you feeling okay?" He asked anyway.

He'd discovered, through an unpleasant encounter earlier, that an infected person could change from relatively normal to zombie in a matter of minutes. But she wasn't scratching herself, which Jarod had learned the hard way was a sure-fire indication of this illness, so her denial didn't surprise him.

"But that looks bad." She pointed to the sluggishly bleeding tear on his leg. Already the flesh around it was red, swollen and tender.

"I didn't realize it got me!" Jarod was astounded, looking down, to see the injury.

He shuddered, remembering the terror as the corpse he'd blithely walked passed had come to life, snagging his leg and chewing voraciously on his ankle. Another lesson learned the hard way.

"Here." The girl sat him down on the steps of the nearest house and carefully inspected the nasty looking wound.

"It couldn't have happened more than half an hour ago." Jarod protested. "How'd it get infected so quickly?"

"I have no idea." She replied. "But my brother told me Raccoon City has some plants that have nearly miraculous healing properties." She went on. "Sit here for a sec, I'm going to take a look around."

Her shoulder length brown hair was gathered into a simple pony tail and she wore pink jean cutoffs and a pink jean vest over a simple short sleeved, mid-thigh, black leotard. On the back of her vest was an embroidered angel, wearing an outrageously short, white dress and holding a bomb. The words stitched out above her, "Made in Heaven", nearly made Jarod laugh. Heaven had nothing to do with this hellish place.

High up on her left shoulder was a knife that was only slightly shorter than the one Jarod carried thrust through his belt, and her knee high, leather boots were arguably far more practical for this environment than Jarod's Reeboks.

"My name's Claire." She called out as she approached him, her hands filled with the red and green stems and leaves of some plant. "Claire Redfield. I'm looking for my brother Chris. You live here, or are you looking for someone too?"

"Jarod." He offered. "Jarod Johnson. I came looking for information on this disease. I didn't realize that I was walking into a total disaster."

"Me either." Claire's lips tightened grimly as she used a rock to grind up her plants on the cement steps. "I knew something was wrong, but not how bad it was. Chris wrote me after the mansion incident---"

"He's in S.T.A.R.S.?" Jarod interrupted.

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"I was with Jill Valentine until just a few hours ago. We got separated by zombies, but she's headed for the police station. I don't suppose you know where that is?" Jarod asked hopefully.

"Just a few more blocks." Claire grinned encouragingly. "I'm headed there myself. Want to join forces?"

"Yes." Jarod's answering smile turned into a grimace as Claire slathered the mixture of herbs on his leg and slapped a gauze bandage over it to hold the stuff on.

"That burns!" He protested.

"Good. That means I got the right plants." Claire responded briskly, binding the gauze to his leg with some surgical tape. "According to Chris this stuff is great. If he wasn't exaggerating, you'll hardly know you were hurt at all in an hour or two."

"Nothing's that good." Jarod countered skeptically.

"I don't know. Chris isn't prone to exaggeration." Claire informed Jarod, her lips quirking with humor. "How's the leg feel now?"

"Better!" Jarod was surprised again, and sat down, as if to remove the bandage and examine the wound, but Claire stopped him.

"We don't have time for that. Let's get to the station and see if we can make contact with Jill. Chris has written about her, and I know they're friends. She might know where he is."

"Okay." Jarod agreed reluctantly. "I just hope she hasn't been and gone already. I don't know how we're going to get out of this place without help."

"Chew on these." Claire handed him two more stems, one red and one green. "Chris says the juices boost the immune system when they're ingested, and fight infection and promote healing if they're rubbed on an injury. He claims they even heal bruises."

"Right. If they're so miraculous than why aren't they being harvested and sold? Why haven`t I heard of them before?" Jarod demanded but he obediently chewed them after he saw Claire stick one in her mouth too.

He was cautious, fearing that they'd burn his mouth like they had his leg, but they had a light, refreshing flavor, something like a combination of mint and parsley.

"They only grow in Raccoon City, and they loose their effectiveness hours after harvesting." Claire informed him as they began moving down the street.

Their conversation became quieter as they studied their surroundings carefully, but they continued it in the brief moments they felt it was safe to speak. Claire led with authority, going around the inevitable roadblocks with the help of the city map she had stuffed into an inside pocket of her vest.

"Why aren't they being investigated? Anything that fantastic should be scrutinized until it's understood well enough to duplicate." Jarod continued the argument softly as they picked their way down another deserted street.

"Chris thinks that Umbrella has suppressed knowledge about them. He'd been in Raccoon City six months before the mansion incident, and he had no idea what they could do until he ran across a botanist's journal in the mansion, listing their properties. Apparently there's a third plant--same stem and leaves as these two, but with blue veins. It counteracts poison."

"Which poison?" Jarod asked.

"Any poison."

"Not possible." Jarod countered flatly. "There's no such thing as a generic counter to poison. Each anti-venom has to be carefully constructed to attack the particular venom it is neutralizing."

"Chris says it works." Claire stated simply. "Just like the green plants heal injuries. The red is a catalyst that increases the effectiveness of the blue and green plants."

"And does Chris have a theory as to why the plants are kept secret by Umbrella?"

"He thinks they're afraid to have knowledge of the plants get out because then they'd be studied by the government. He guessed that Umbrella produced them during the early stages of their bioengineering experiments."

"And, while the plants are beneficial, the virus experimentation they're doing isn't. If the government investigates the one, it might find out about the other." Jarod speculated.

"That's Chris's theory." Claire agreed. "Now, see that iron gate?"

She pointed down the street to the door-like gate spanning the entrance of a 12 foot high, concrete wall. Both of them ignored the grotesque sight of 4 of the zombies ripping the flesh from a fresh corpse. They knew by now that the creatures wouldn't notice them while they were feeding unless they drew the monster's attention by moving too close.

"Is that the entrance to the police station?"

"Yes. Think you can avoid our friends long enough to get to the gate?"

"No problem. I think we should split up, though, you on one side of the street and me on the other. That might confuse them and give us more time to reach safety." Jarod suggested.

"Sounds good. Zombies do seem to have a bit of trouble making decisions, don't they?" Claire shot him a mischievous grin and suddenly shot down the street, taking the far side and hollering at Jarod to hurry up over her shoulder.

Jarod was frankly amazed that anyone could grin under these circumstances, but he obediently raced down his side of the street. They'd underestimated their path, however, and Jarod was once again separated from a companion as Claire slipped into the back gate to the police station and Jarod climbed an unstable of cars to reach the high concrete wall circling the police grounds. Claire was just vanishing into a brick building, having evaded the zombie policemen waiting just in front of the garage, but Jarod knew he had no chance of following her, as the zombies had clustered hopefully just outside the door. He made his way along the wall, which was nearly a foot wide, safely out of reach of the most energetic zombie.

The courtyard leading to the front entrance was deserted, and Jarod jumped down and burst into the lobby of the station before any of the living dead realized he was in the vicinity. He heaved a huge sigh of relief at the sight of the still, silent room. It was enormous, made of stone and tile, and the ceiling open for all three stories of the building. It had two balconies, one traversing 3/4 of the room and giving access to two doors, one on Jarod's left, and the other on Jarod's right.

Directly in front of Jarod was a statue of a woman holding a jug that went nearly to the vaulting ceiling, and to either side of the statue were ramps. He could see just a hint of the reception area just behind the concealing statue. It was a bizarre arrangement for a public building, to say the least. Jarod didn't much care, though, it was enough to take this moment of peace and try to recoup his energy and reorganize his thoughts.

He was debating with himself whether to wait and hope that either Jill or Claire would arrive, or search the station himself, when a familiar voice cried out in anger, that only thinly masked her fear.

"Get away from me you freaks!"

The cry was accompanied by three shots and the mindless moaning of more than one zombie. Jarod glanced at his magnum, hoping that the five rounds he'd scavenged off of the last body would be enough, and dove through the door directly to his right. Parker almost shot him.

"Shit!" She hissed, turning her attention back on the cluster of zombies pressing mindlessly forward. "Don't do that!"

"Shoot." Jarod replied evenly, following his own advice and blowing away the head of the nearest zombie in a shower of half-rotted flesh and bone.

Part 2

Hope you're enjoying this, even if most of you probably haven't played the games. ;-)
Rebeckah