Third Chapter

It was only when I reached almost the city itself that I finally understood why I didn't see it while I was moving towards the goal, only from the hill – barricades were hastily erected around the city and the area, although in some places it could already be safely called a wall.

And it's too damn bad, how do I get there if the purpose of my trip is fenced off?

All these thoughts raced through my head while I was crouching, reclining on the roof of the two-story building closest to this "construction site of the century".

No, as I saw, the path was clear from either the park or the forest, and it may be that this is where I need to go as to the final point of movement.

But it's better to get into the City without wasting time on detours, and barricades in some places, especially on the roads, were rather one name.

Actually, from the view that was opening up, it could be said that not even all the roads were blocked, but again, it was a long way to them from my place. Go for a breakthrough? Stupid to me.

But a swift throw a couple of meters from the target and a jump over the fence ... may work.

The main thing is to get as close as possible unnoticed. Said someone in white sneakers with lights ... No, I definitely have hypertrophied self-irony.

So, the goal is set, which means we have crawled! And surprisingly, this method of movement turned out to be a little slower for me than running!

True, my movements now could hardly be called remotely similar to human ones, too smooth, too predatory, probably Liqueurs \ Lizuns move in a similar way.

With jerks and rapid dashes, I managed to get within two meters of the barricades, I froze in the bushes.

There are no more places to hide, and one of the posts when I crawled or still ran? Ah, not the point, so when I was near the post, I was noticed.

No, it's not like that again, one of the soldiers with the Umbrella emblem on his back, spotted the movement out of the corner of his eye and was now looking for something, gradually approaching my location to the laughter of his colleagues.

- Mark, you're just scared of a cat!

- Maybe it's time for you to change diapers? – That's what I'm talking about, but despite the ridicule of his comrades, this youngster (and he looks even less than me, maybe twenty years old) stubbornly continued to move forward.

My God, if you are and you are interested in such incomprehensible crap as I am now, then please make sure that this soldier does not get to me!

I don't want to die so stupidly at the very beginning of my journey!

Why die? Well, my chances of breaking through are not so great, the crowd here is noble and dispersed so that they will open fire without problems, and I have serious doubts that I can survive a bullet in the head.

And let's say, thanks to speed, immunity to pain and survivability, I will be able to overcome the obstacle by fleeing into the city.

They'll report me right away!

And a dead man, rushing not out of the city, but into the city, cannot fail to interest the corporation, and it will be easy for them to draw parallels and a straight line from their base, so in this way I will directly let the Umbrella people know where to look for me.

No, there are not idiots sitting there and sooner or later they will understand where I ran away and where I am, but it's better to be late, when I sort myself out and on my own and can adequately meet them "before death", an inner voice added maliciously.

No, definitely, I have too much self-irony.

And it was at this moment that a miracle happened. A group of survivors approached the barrier from the other side of the barricades and began to ask for a pass, but was refused and threatened to use force against them.

Well, yes, so Umbrella will let someone out of the City.

The suburb is still okay, it's easier for them to catch fugitives in an empty suburb, but not in the city.

As for the people leaving, or rather the reasons why they left – so the corporation could spread rumors about biological weapons or an epidemic and show the edited footage, letting a relatively safe lime tree, and there would be no word about the real situation and zombies.

No, they could have come up with something else, I just indicated a tentative direction, and so anything could be the reason. But that doesn't bother me much.

— Move away immediately, otherwise we will open fire. – And the guns are cocked. Heh, what did I say?

Oh, and the survivors have their own pistols, which they threw up, in general, the charm!

Not only has everyone forgotten about me for a long time and the guy is pulling up with his partners to the first fence, so there is also a chance to secretly go into the city unnoticed.

But it is unclear what the people who came to the fence are counting on? Do they really think that after threatening them with pistols they will be immediately missed, or do they hope to kill everyone?

Moreover, the uniforms of the soldiers seem to hint that you can't shoot them on the move, if only you shoot at the eyes.

Since the first line is not only in uniform and armor, but also in helmets, and two also in some masks, and I have a suspicion that from the first shot these masks will not break through.

A short firefight and it was all over, there wasn't even one wounded from Umbrella, and I'm completely silent about the dead, but the survivors were completely disposed of.

Hmm, too fast, I didn't even have time to lean out. A herd of sheep, not survivors!

Was it really so difficult for the couple to retreat and stretch out the shootout, distracting attention in this way? No, it was necessary for everyone to lie down in the first couple of seconds.

Hmm, but what if... it wasn't! I throw as inconspicuously as possible a stick that was lying nearby, fortunately they don't look in my direction, looking towards the city, and a muffled "oh!" is heard from the neighboring bushes.

So the red backlight did not seem to me, and then there were doubts about this feature, because who knows, maybe it's just some kind of bend in the brain exposed to the virus to see these lights and in fact people will not always be in their place.

Yes, I had such a fear when I threw this stick, because if everything went wrong and I could be discovered. To put it bluntly and frankly, I was "slightly" afraid of failure.

Meanwhile, a reporter jumped up from the bushes opposite mine! Here's one for you!

What luck.

— «And here's the cat!» – The partner of the soldier who came to me before the approach of the civilians said enough, while the journalist covered the portable camera hanging on his chest and rubbed something about freedom of speech.

Great, now a small part is looking towards the city, and even at the distant approaches, and the rest have focused their attention on the journalist.

Good luck staying, and forgive the "knight of pen and ink" for the setup, it is unlikely that you will survive after such a shooting, but thanks to you, I will get to the city without running around and wasting more time.

A jerk and at the very edge of visibility my blurred figure slips under the barricades on the road. The journalist's eyes start to widen in fright, but you can still see me with ordinary vision if you know where to look and catch the moment, but he doesn't have time to say anything, a couple of Soldiers have already raised their rifles and opened fire at the reporter or whoever he is.

I allowed myself to straighten up only when I was already in the city and hiding behind the building from the vigilant guards of the "border".

Phew, that's the first mission accomplished, hello, Raccoon City. Heh, and yet I didn't have time to get here before dawn, but I had breakfast... no, this self-irony is already annoying.

Interlude. A short excerpt from the message to the headquarters.

... Today we found two nimble infected outside the barricade.

Both objects were eliminated, our scientists assigned to such cases conducted a superficial examination.

Both Zombies have an increased dose of the T-virus, and were at a stage higher than the usual infected, the so-called "Scarlet Heads" as our operatives called them.

Also, both of our employees of the scientific department note that the mutation in them was initially underestimated.

More precisely, according to them, the object that infected them is at a much higher stage of the evolution of the Virus, the Zombies themselves have degraded during the change. Both bodies were sent under guard to the nearest laboratory for detailed examination.

Also, the operatives who followed in their footsteps report that at least one more infected person should have been on the spot.

Since both of these objects were exposed to the virus already on this side of the barricades.

After examining the scene of the incident, a broken wall of the house was also noted, there is a suspicion that one Tyrant passed through the perimeter. Photos from the scene are attached…

... In the evening of the same day, the barricades were broken through from the outside, the survivors claim that a girl did it.

Perhaps this is another kind of infected, please increase the number of teams to guard the perimeter.

***

Heh, it was me who got lucky, I'm just watching with interest a police shootout with zombies, the police are leading on points, but in the overall picture of the mess, zombies are clear favorites.

Somewhere to the side of me there were also explosions, beauty!

Especially from the roof of a five-story building, yet I'm not going to save everyone and everything, and people's gratitude to the monster ... this is already from the mysticism section.

I have been in the city for a decent amount of time, but suddenly I ran into a problem – I do not know where to go! From the word at all!

So, my task is to find someone who knows the way there, I determined that right away, but the trouble is, looking for someone from the protagonists of the series in a huge city is also another task.

No, I can trust a strange call that pulls me towards the forest, where a dilapidated mansion is visible, fortunately I can see it from a hill and with my eyesight.

But this feeling of kinship mixed with a call for help and something alluring does not cause me to trust.

But it's almost lunch time, and I've been here since dawn, and there are no results, so another fifteen minutes and I'll have to jump into a possible trap. What if the entrance to the Hive is there?

Over the past fifteen minutes, zombies have finally eaten up the police, but the shootout to the left of my building did not even think to subside, but the standard uniform of Umbrella fighters flashed through the buildings, and I did not notice anyone familiar from the canon, although I saw everyone, it was quite easy to isolate the red outline of the figure.

Already about to jump further, I was stopped... by the tongue. Ugh, damn, that's bullshit!

I catch the tongue flying at me with my hand, and quite long in size, something similar to a head looks out from the opposite edge of the roof.

Why is it similar? Imagine that the upper part of this head is a bare brain, up to the nostrils-slits, and then the red-brown skin begins, a decent-sized mouth from which this tongue flew out.

I pull on myself and the Liquor, and it was he, leaving a trail of claws behind him, drives up to me, though rather slowly, resists, the infection!

Heh, and when he doesn't move, his posture somewhat resembles a frog, except that it has an almost human body and human dimensions.

But because of the elongated forelimbs (it no longer pulls on the hands because of the ten-centimeter claws) it is really easier and faster for him to move on all fours.

Actually, I doubt at all that he can stand up, since the hind limbs have also changed and it is they who cause the greatest associations with the frog with their structure.

The last jerk of the tongue wound on the hand and the Lizun flies exactly to me, but this infection waved its clawed paw in the air.

I lean back and squat a little, exposing the monster's own tongue to the blow.

How it howled! And even blood, spilling from the stump of the tongue.

At the sight of blood, thirst stirred in me again. What is it?!

I was trying to identify the limits of sensitivity, that's why I was sitting looking at the disassembly, but from this distance neither zombie blood nor human blood affected me, and here a couple of drops (exaggerating, but compared to the carnage below me, it's really a drop in the sea) and I'm already starting to lose my mind with bloodlust.

Yes, I would also understand if the blood were human, and so what should I react to there, to a double dose of the T-Virus?

But the roar of the monster that jumped towards me did not give me time to think about it, and then I had a rather two-sided attitude to the situation.

On the one hand, I did all this without any loss of control over my body, and on the other, the way I bent down and stepped forward, letting the clawed paws over me, was done so clearly and smoothly, as if I had done it thousands of times before.

And then, being close to the body, I just straightened up and bit into the throat of the Liquor, swallowing the blood that gushed into my mouth with a quiet rumble.

The monster tried to resist for the first couple of moments, but the grip of its upper limbs just above the elbow did not allow me to use its monstrous claws, and the rest of it was not scary to me.

True, he crushed my knee with a blow from one of his lower limbs, but I fell forward, shoveling the prey under me, and completely cutting off his ability to move.

Twenty seconds later, I got up from the creature's completely dead body and noted that with an influx of blood, my regeneration accelerates quite well.

Beauty! Except that the jeans now sparkle with small holes, yet there are claws on the legs of the Liquor, too, even though they are lost against the background of the hands.

And now it's time to take a walk to the call, at least I'll see what's there. And if so, then let's go!

And jumping on the roofs, the benefit here is that the probability of hitting someone is much lower, and the speed is higher, because there are no obstacles, I got to the forest area pretty quickly.

Although not without flaws, this is still such an extreme way of moving, I use for the first time, so sometimes I got carried away and had to move on all fours, fortunately I calmly cling to any ledges with my claws, so I climbed onto the roof, clambered banally, leaving behind small holes on the wall from the claws.

Under my acceleration, moving to the roof did not take much time, as well as the current journey to the outskirts of the City.

By the way, it is rather strange that this place is also not fenced, although I have already managed to note that there are enough flaws in the barricades, from a couple of sides it is still missing at all.

But I got distracted, jumping off the roof and landing.

A couple of minutes of waiting for my legs to heal after jumping from the roof of a five-story building, and I'm ready to continue my run again.

Sometimes it's good not to feel pain.

The next five minutes of running through the woods were almost paradise for me.

And what, no dead people and other things, I learned to run between the trees at the very beginning of my new life in this world, so only a basket of mushrooms is missing, and it would be almost an ordinary walk.

When I got to the mansion, I realized that I was a little out of place.

The call did not come from him, and a repeated, but very short run led me to some kind of pit, from where this strange summoning feeling came from, which only I seemed to feel.

I release my claws and start descending headfirst, I don't feel any disorientation at all from being in any plane, so I can move in a similar way along the ceiling.

After half a minute (a deep hole, however), I crawled to the very bottom, stopping three meters from the ground and looking at the prisoner of this place with surprise.

Right in the center of this prison stood a conventionally female figure. Why conditionally?

Well, the moving appendages-tentacles coming out of the upper part of the body, the bald head on the right side of the hump and the general cadaverous skin color seemed to hint that it would not be possible to call it a man.

That's just something I don't remember such a monster.

And then this one, who was standing with his back to me, turned around.

Ugh, damn it! It's even uglier in front!

Yes, it was definitely a woman before, even more like a girl, but now her face, although it retained its former features (she has two heads, damn mutant), but the tentacles coming out of her left eye and mouth sharply reduced her charisma to a minus rating.

But, what's much worse, she was clearly hostile, and I realized who I bumped into.

Lisa Trevor, the one on whom Umbrella conducted her most monstrous experiments, thanks to experiments on her, both the T-Virus and the G-Virus were born.

I got into trouble, the professionals couldn't kill her in the canon and didn't take the explosion, but what does the poor me shine?