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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"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?"

They trailed behind, keeping their eyes forward to fend off the dizziness. The wounds would close, but they would be unsteady for longer. They could feel the healing flesh trying to boil into new shapes, new tendrils of muscle twitching before falling into line.

They started paying attention again when the doctor sped up, toward... they didn't know what it was. Something metal, and it could be opened. That was all they knew.

They stared at it for a moment. It looked solid. They weren't even sure where it opened up. The human couldn't do it. Obviously. He wanted them to do it, but they didn't know how. Their arms were still weak. They knelt down to touch it--made from something rigid. Brittle.

So they took a deep, slow breath to steady themselves, stood up, and raised a foot to kick it. The breath audibly left their lungs in a growl as they struck, the metal snapped, and... water. Everywhere.

Anders jumped back at the sudden spray of water, so that his backpack wouldn't get soaked. "Well, that's one jog to the hardware store saved."

Figuring that he might as well rinse off too, Anders stood under the spray just a little, not taking off the backpack. He held out his arms, rubbing them free of dirt and grime, then cupped water in his hands to wipe off his face.

The pressure was so immense, the spray falling back down made it seem like it had started to rain. They took a step back, confused, watching the water gush from the broken pipe. They hadn't known it could do that.

But it was washing away the blood and infected brain, which had been the intent. They slowly raised their arms from their sides to let the water rain down on them, their skin still visibly knitting itself back together through the holes in their coat. Just as slowly, they brought their gloved hands to their face, partly in imitation of the doctor.

Now they were clean, and very, very wet.

"There we go," Anders stepped away from the water. He watched with some relief as Mr. X's wounds began to heal. "We can fix that coat. Or find a store for very tall people with wide shoulders."

He looked around, seeing some zombies shuffling out. "After we escape." Pointing down the street, Anders made sure to put some distance between himself and the windows of a nearby building.

That refocused them: Their objective remained incomplete. They followed the doctor's direction, setting off. Their head was slowly clearing, and with it, hunger came. Injuries always caused this, but they would not stop to attend to it. There was no food here, not unless they took from the infected.

And they did not want to. Biting into one of them would not hurt them, but the infected were a far cry from the dense bricks of food they received from Umbrella. They doubted the infected would be as satisfying. But if the hunger grew more intense, they might be tempted.

Also, there was water trapped in their boots. They had yet to form an opinion on that, but they had the distinct impression it might grow to annoy them.

Anders continued on down the street, making sure to avoid any zombies, as well as the windows, before he started to feel a bit hungry. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to just take a five minute break for a quick snack, seeing as the bridge was still about a half-hour away on foot.

Ducking into a nearby gas station, there was just a single zombie behind the counter, one which Anders shot in the cheek.

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