boxofmisfits | A Man and his Tyrant

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A Man and his Tyrant

A week after Anders took this job in Raccoon City, things went to hell. It had seemed like such a nice offer, him fresh out of medical school, ready to save lives, pay off that college tuition, and Raccoon City seemed like a nice place to start his career.

Then a man came in who claimed he'd been attacked by someone who bit him. Then more cases like that, of people attacking each other. Patients died overnight. Then the bodies in the morgue rose up and attacked the doctors. Then patients rose up before they could be taken to the morgue. Finally, the whole city broke out in pandemonium. The dead rising, swarming the city, people rushing to get out.

As he packed a small backpack full of food, and other supplies, Anders was suddenly very grateful that his apartment hadn't allowed pets, and he'd left Ser Pounce-a-lot with Delilah Howe in the next state over.

Once he was out of the apartment, he checked to make sure the coast was clear before heading out into the street. The bridge out of the city was a long ways away, especially on foot, and he could only hope that luck would be on his side as he walked at a brisk pace.

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Getting a closer look at Mr. X, Anders got a better idea of what he looked like. His skin looked like it was melted, and those eyes were so inhuman. He was still a little scared of the creature, but Anders couldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

"The bridge out of Raccoon City is just a few miles away. Once we get there, we should be home free. Plan B, we get out through the subway." Which was much riskier, hence why it was the backup plan.

Grabbing a magazine and shells, and loading both weapons, Anders was good to go. Opening the front door a crack, he saw a few zombies shambling around aimlessly down the street. There was a car pileup blocking the way, but right ahead was a cafe that they could cut through. He slipped out of the gun shop, pistol drawn.

Should they be following his commands? They still don't know. But he has direction. Orders. That simplifies the possibilities to something they can comprehend more easily. They now have a direction, and a task.

They duck under the door after the doctor, heavy boots thudding dully on the concrete. There is nothing about them that was built for stealth. While their presence does not aggravate the infected, it tugs their limited minds towards focusing on the human. One hisses, and begins staggering forward.

They push forward to meet it, snapping its neck with a backhand. It drops, paralyzed, but it still bites the air uselessly where it falls.

Anders raises his gun, preparing to shoot the zombie, when Mr. X charges forward before he can even line up the shot, breaking the thing's neck. He lowers his gun, staring in awe for a moment. He snaps out of it as another zombie runs at him, and this time Anders does shoot it. He only gets it in the cheek.

He quickly runs up to Mr. X, "We can cut through that cafe. The back door leads to an alley, and we can use that to get back to the main road." The car blockade might have undead passengers and drivers in them ready to reach through the windows to grab them.

Anders is also assuming that Mr. X understands him, because they did listen to him when he told them to run. He's certainly not getting the impression that they're just a dumb beast.

A shot behind them, and they turn to look. Another infected, and the rest will hear the fire.

They place a hand on the doctor's lower back and push him towards the direction he indicated, clearing enough space to grab the next infected and toss it aside. They could kill each of them, but it would be slow, methodical work, and the human does not have as much time as they do. Keeping on the move until the doctor is secure will serve them better.

Anders almost protests, but it's probably not a good idea to mouth off to the super strong giant, and so he allows himself to be pushed along. Mr. X will certainly help him save on ammo, because he only grabbed so much, for fear of being weighed down.

Once inside the cafe, Anders takes out his flashlight. The place smells of day-old coffee. There's still some food behind the glass, and Anders realizes that he didn't eat anything before he ran out.

"Just a second," Leaping over the counter, he grabs a cookie and quickly stuffs it into his mouth for a quick bit of energy. Looking up at Mr. X, he swallows the mouthful of cookie and asks, "You want anything?"

The door closes and they stand just inside of it, physically blocking the way in. The infected maybe driven by their hunger, but they were stupid and forgetful. With the doctor out of their line of sight, their memory of him would fade quickly. If any somehow remember, they will kill them. Simple.

And yet the human confuses them as well. They stare unblinking. Why would they want anything? They are still in the city. Once they leave, the objective will be complete.

"I guess that's a no." Anders hops back over the counter, grabbing an extra two bottles of water from the cafe fridge while he's at it. "If you do need food, I'm willing to share, by the way."

Creeping towards the back door, Anders peeks out, then looks back at Mr. X. "Okay, no zombies in the alley." Before he moves to step outside, he looks back at Mr. X, "But, just in case, you can go first."

Oh. Food. They had been fed and made ready to deploy only a few hours ago. Hunger was not trying to distract them yet. Later, maybe. But not now.

They waited, listening carefully. No snarling, beyond the confused infected behind them. Those did not react when they moved away from the front of the shop. The door was narrow for them, and they had to turn their shoulders to fit through, feeling their coat brush against the frame as they passed.

No noise. A few dead infected--shot, bludgeoned, smelling too stale to be alive. Humans had been here.

Anders sees it too. A sign that someone's been through here. Other survivors, perhaps? A rescue team? Hopefully not looters or assholes who are seeing this whole thing as an excuse to go wild.

Stepping out into the alley, Anders keeps his gun lowered, because even with his huge bodyguard, he's being cautious. Especially since Mr. X walks rather loudly.

Creeping down the alley, Anders peeks around the corner, towards the main street. More zombies, and a few cars stopped dead in the street, but no blockade. "Okay, let's do this."

Telling himself to be brave, he steps out and walks down the sidewalk.

They pause at the edge of the alleyway, thinking. If they were alone, there would be no hesitation. But the doctor will be vulnerable. The infected will follow him. They have to take an approach that will minimize the risk.

When the doctor moves, they move, taking the lead on a path that curves as far around the infected as the street will allow.

But escaping the notice of all of them is impossible. Two start toward the doctor, and they walk faster to intercept the first one, sending it flying with a punch. The other one mindlessly staggers closer, and they recenter themselves, turning to face it while providing the doctor cover on the sidewalk.

There is a groan up above, a shuffling, and a second later an infected falls on them from a broken window above, clawing at their face as it tries to get down and reach the doctor.

The smell is worse than anything else. They reach up, grab it, and fling it at the infected approaching them from the road. A scratch across their face seeps with blood, but the skin is already closing shut. They have more work to do.

Anders hides behind Mr. X, knowing that they'll protect him and those zombies might as well be insects to them. The noise from above makes his eyes widen, "Oh shit! Mr. X!"

He didn't even know that zombie was there, or that they would do that. He gasps when it scratches Mr. X, only for those wounds to immediately heal. "Well, looks like I won't have to worry about patching you up."

The remaining zombie is struggling to get out from under the dead one and Anders resumes moving. He looks up at Mr. X and asks, "Do I have to worry about you dying and reanimating now?"

Above wasn't safe either. More complications, and more infected standing in their way. They continued onward, now scanning the windows above as well.

Would they be infected? The question was not their concern. They did not know what the other doctors had done to the infected, nor did they care unless they stood in the way of their objective. They had been instructed to disregard the infected

Their only eventual reply was a quiet huff of breath when the doctor kept looking at them.

"I'm going to guess that's a negative," Anders' eyes dart up to the windows, looking out for more falling zombies. Some more undead shamble out of another alley up ahead, causing Anders to freeze.

"I'll just leave these guys up to you."

They absently reach up to grasp their jaw and adjust their neck, joints loosening with a quiet pop. Then they pushed forward, breaking each infected as they came.

So it continued, methodically pushing their way outward towards the city outskirts. Clearing the way when they could, covering behind the doctor when too many infected swarmed. It was slow work, but they progressed ever further toward the objective.

As they approached an overpass, the road seemed clear. The road was littered with cars and blood pooled on the ground, but nothing stirred. Infected had been here, but they had eaten and moved on.

Or at least they thought so. Their footsteps were echoing under the bridge, but they still heard something breathing up above, smell the infection. They looked up, and something shifted among the girders above. They stopped, standing between the thing and the doctor.

Anders couldn't believe it. They were almost home free. The question of what they'd do after was something they could ask themselves once they were no longer in danger.

When Mr. X stopped and looked up, so did Anders. He froze in terror. That didn't look like a zombie. He hid behind Mr. X, taking out his shotgun this time, just in case he needed backup.

The thing above looked like it had been skinned, with exposed muscles and tissues. It had claws to grab the underpass and scuttle along it. The worst part, though, was the tongue, which it ran along the girders, searching for prey.

The doctor moved behind them, rustling something, and the thing above them twitched. It was infected, and unfamiliar. Why had it not attacked yet?

They took a couple of slow steps, circling around the thing, keeping themselves between the doctor and the thing. It hissed as their boots crunched through the debris on the road, turning to face them. It knew.

Before they could do anything else, it dropped from the ceiling and skittering between the cars, circling around and launching itself at the doctor. Too fast to strike at it, they could only move to intercept the blow.

They staggered back as it struck halfway up their chest, gouging through their coat and into muscle, lodged in both. It thrashed, and they were almost pulled to one knee as it tried to retreat. They tried to grip and crush its neck, but the long tongue wrapped around their arm and squeezed. They could feel something sharp there as well.

Anders instinctively raised the shotgun to shoot at the thing, but he shook with fear. His finger hovered over the trigger as the thing rat at him. It was fast, much faster than the zombies. Up close, Anders could see that its brain was outside its skull and it lacked eyes. What was this thing?

The moment Mr. X took the blow, and the creature dug its claws in, Anders yelled out, "Mr. X!"

Raising the shotgun again, Anders tried to line up the sight, the the thing kept thrashing. Hopefully Mr. X wasn't about to crush his head if he missed. He fired at the monster's head.

It convulsed, tongue going slack, and they took the opportunity that gave them. They caught its neck in their free hand, pulling hard on the tongue with the other, forcing its head back to bring the tongue against the thing's own sharp teeth. They could feel their own muscle tearing beneath the claws in their chest, weakening their grip.

But it was weaker than them. With a hard tug the tongue ripped away entirely, and the creature shrieked, the dismembered appendage twitching feebly against their arm. It was badly wounded, but still not dead.

Anders turned his head away, not wanting to be sprayed with gore, and getting more than a little grossed out at what he was hearing. As a doctor, one would thing he wouldn't be so squeamish, and yet this was different than seeing normal injuries, such as compound fractures. This was like being in a horror movie.

Looking back up, he aimed his shotgun at the monster again and fired.

The shotgun roared again and they flinched, the quiet ringing in their ears from the first shot now overwhelming. The infected convulsed one more time, then went limp, hanging from them.

They slowly reached up to grab the claws and pull them out, movements unsteady. Injuries like these hurt, but not as badly as their ears. The true problem was the damage: the muscles were torn, and attempting to move them only flared the inch-wide gouges open even further.

And they were covered in bits of infected blood and brain. They did not like this.

Anders put away his shotgun once the monsters was dead, and immediately looked over Mr. X's injuries. This was more than just a little scratch. If he were human, he would be super dead at the moment.

"It's okay, we can fix this. Maybe there's some place we can get you washed up."

The wounds were bleeding, darker red than human, but against gray skin it looked almost the same. They couldn't tell yet if it had only torn the muscle, or if it had reached between their ribs and cut a lung as well. They didn't think so.

They pulled the last claw out and let the corpse drop, their arms falling limp at their sides, dizzy and slowly trying to think. No more immediate threats made that difficult. Violence focused them. Now their heart was beating faster, but there was nothing to do. They simply stood.

The tongue unwound from their arm and slithered to the ground with a wet smack.

Edited 2020-03-29 20:18 (UTC)

Anders watched the tongue, wincing a little at the sound it made. Looking back up at Mr. X, he took note of the injuries. Mr. X didn't appear to be bothered by them, as he wasn't doubled over in pain or giving any other signs of distress. Hopefully he could heal from these just as he could with the scratch.

"Come on, maybe we can find some place with a bathroom where you can wash up. I'm not sure I have enough surgical thread for those wounds, through."

Taking his pistol back out, Anders resumed walking, all while keeping his eye open for more monsters and zombies.

They walked after the doctor, keeping to the human's slower pace. They needed to--their head was swimming. This had happened sometimes before, when they'd been injured or taken to the laboratory. They would not stop, not until they became too unsteady to walk, but the world did not feel stable around them.

Protecting the doctor was proving to be more complicated than they'd anticipated. In some ways, more frustrating. This would not have happened if their instructions had left them on their own. But they did... appreciate the consideration about washing off the blood.

Anders checked for zombies, before waving Mr. X along and creeping out into the open air again. Now that he knew there was more than just zombies roaming about, his paranoia had increased. There was also the question of where that monster had come from, and did it have anything to do with Mr. X.

Spotting a fire hydrant, Anders walked over to it at a brisk pace. "If we can get this open, you can rinse yourself off. Don't suppose you've got a wrench handy?"

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