Chris and BJ arrive in the Ford. They slowly drive up a gate, it's manned by 4 guards. Chris looks at the debris covering the stoney-flapjackets protecting the military. He thinks about how it could have it got there, or even how the situation to get it there came about. Chris thinks and slips more into a day-dream but snaps out and slows the car down to a halt. BJ looks up at Chris, he is wagging his tail, waiting for a call of happiness or a cry of fear. Chris stars through the shattered glass fronting on the Ford, he flickers between BJ and the building, but only momentarily. Chris unzips his and BJ's seat belts. He flips open BJ's doors and simultaneously repeats it on himself. BJ runs out and moves to Chris' side of the car. Chris has the keys in his hand, he stares down at them, then back up to the military squadrons and the survivors he can see further on. Chris smiles and throws the keys, to this BJ starts walking, Chris followed.
"Freeze!" One of the men shouted at Chris, the man seemed to be middle-aged, worn, fatigued. He was waiting for a day off, one thing that cannot happen. Chris stares at his eyes, he sees the tired bags and the light watering, but just barely. Chris looks at the moving BJ and cries out for him. BJ turns and shuffles his way back to Chris' side.
"What do you want?" Another man shouts.
"I want to be like them." Chris says, unemotionally, he points at the survivors down the hill, to which everyone turns. They all notice a family, of maybe about 4 or 5. The child was laughing, he had discovered joy in the turmoil of destruction.
"Don't we all." The first man said. ">Sigh<...speak to Josie, she can get you housing." The man sighs and breathes heavily, he is not putting effort into his voice, there is obviously something upsetting him. He is almost in tears but remains firm and asks Chris to hand over his weapons.
Chris voluntarily hands over 1 of his deagles, and 3 of his 5 clips. Chris is now limited to 1 deagle and 2 ammo magazines holding 10 rounds each. The main guard is too tired to check, he puts his face in his tight hand and flickers at the gate with the other. The guards open it and Chris and BJ enter, happy, for now.
One man escourts them into the 15 story building, they walk through what looks like a modern apartment. They go to the stairs, the man mentions that they have no electricity. Chris and BJ ask which floor Josie is on. The man says; "Floor 1, oh and by the way, don't be a douche to her."
Chris looks at BJ in puzzlement but BJ stairs back in his usual blissful expression. The man walks off and exits the apartment from where he came in. Chris and BJ walk up the stairs, BJ runs but Chris makes sure he doesn't run away. They reach the level on the stairs where there is a large, green, number 1 painted on the wall. Chris touches the door and was surprised that it melted to the touch. Chris opens the door and sees no-one except a few doors. Chris walks along and sees a hand-written sign with the name Josie and an arrow; "->" pointing on it. He enters the room and sees an empty desk to which Chris sees a post-it note. Written on it is; "Away, I'll be back in 2 hours." Chris looks at BJ and thinks to himself, why not wait, this could mean the end of the struggling. Chris kneels down and comforts BJ to which he and BJ walk out of the room and notice a few chairs. Chris sits and urges BJ to sleep. BJ climbs on and wait with Chris, they both soon fall asleep but are currently waiting for Josie to come along.
(Chris and BJ wait for 2 hours for Josie)
Chris and BJ are asleep. They felt safe knowing there are military outside. The slow ticking of the clock acted like a sleep metronome, every tick made was like a little way of God telling them, they're in safety for another second.
Chris awakes rapidly with the instant wiping of his face and the slow raising of eyelids. He stares down at BJ, and accidently wakes him up too. BJ barks optimistically. Chris grins at this and turns to face Josie's door. It's closed. Not how he left it, he looks at the clock. It's been 2 hours and 18 minutes since he fell asleep. He stands up and brushes himself down, to which BJ jumps off and is ready to anything. Chris walks over to the door and feels the cold handle against his warm hand, he hates the warmth escaping but it was cool and felt nice. He turns the handle and pushes the door through. He looks into the now brightly lit office and sees 3 people. A child, a man and a woman. The woman is sitting at the desk, it is obvious that she is Josie. The man and the little child are unknown to him. He can't tell the gender of the child from his position yet. The man is crying, he takes his hands off the desk, to which he was previously leaning and thrusts them in the air. Chris realises he wasn't crying because of sadness but in fact, he had just been given accommadation. His child looks up, it's a small boy, he laughs and grins. Chris becomes more optimistic towards the next situation. The man and child walk over to Josie, she stands up, goes to a series of lockers, opens them and gives them a key, the man reads the number on the key, he immediately kisses Josie's hand and walks off. All the while grabbing his son by his tiny wrists. Chris leans out of the hallway and sees the man hug and lift the boy on his shoulders, walking off into the abyss of tranquility. Chris leans in and sees Josie sitting again, typing away on what appears to be a working laptop. She looks up and speaks to him.
"Hello? Can I help you?" She says to him. Chris walks over, leans on the desk, as the man before did, hunched and intimidating.
Chris stares her in the eye, he sobs but remains looking.
"I'm here to check in." He says after brushing himself up. Josie smiles, she has a good sense of humour.
"Well, today's your lucky day. Please tell me how many in your party?" She says kindly. Chris looks at says, "Me and good ol' BJ here." He looks down to which BJ wags his tail and walks about. She looks down at BJ but proclaims that animals aren't allowed in without quarantine. Chris agrees, that if it must be done, it should be. Even though it was obvious he just wanted to be safe.
"Take him down 2 floors, quarantine signed will be posted there."
"Isn't this the first floor?" He proclaims inquisitively. "Don't worry, one word; Basement." She says logically. Chris smiles and says, "Once he's quarantined, which room do I get?" He asks rather informally. She says he has a choice of nearly every room in the building. "Top floor please" he says. "Sure thing, just bring me back a quarantine form from the science lab in the basement, it's just to make sure that you aren't lying about him being quarantined." She says.
Chris and BJ enter the basement, it's musty and dark, but in the quarantine lab there is perfect lighting. There are pristine equipment everywhere, all of which are unknown the Chris and BJ! Chris walks BJ over, whilst staring at the puzzling items, all of which are shiny and clean, something that is a wonder in the world as it is. Chris stares at the scientist, he looks friendly. Chris says; "Hello there, I've got BJ here for quarantine." The man turns round and smiles;
"Sure, take this form up to Josie, she'll get you a room!"
Chris looks down at the sheet and kneels by BJ, he faces him and says; "You're gonna be here about..." He looks down at the sheet for info, "...2 months?!" he yells. "It's just procedure!" the scientist shouts. Chris knows if he did anything he'd get kicked out of the complex so he remains quiet. Chris looks back at BJ and says; "...2 months. It's fine, I'll visit...if I can and we'll make sure you're fed." BJ whimpers but then barks and wags his tail. Chris knows this is a comfirmation. Chris stands up and looks at the scientist, he says; "Please take care of him, Mr..." Chris looks for a name tag but there isn't one. "Downy, Mark Downy." The scientist replies. Chris says, "Mr, Downy. Thankyou oh and by the way, I'm Chris!"
Chris enters Josie's office, to which he sees her typing away still at her laptop. He coughs to get her attention, she looks up abruptly but not shocked. She says, "Form?" He looks down and is surprised at himself for forgetting about it. He checks in his pockets to which gratefully, he finds it. He hands it to her, she takes it, puts it in a compartment of her desk and walks over to the lockers. She opens it and throws him the keys, it says the number 1589. Chris has always been hateful towards skepticals and notices that the numbers add up to 23. He always hated that number ever since he saw that "stupid movie". Chris says, "Thankyou, thankyou so much, you've no idea what this means to me." He sobs in happiness but remains strong. He nods gently, to which Josie smiles and nods back, almost mockingly, only Chris didn't care.
He walks back through to the elevator, he pushes the button, climbs in and his new favourite number; 15.
(Chris is now on the 15th floor, waiting for BJ to get quarantined and to find out what his apartment looks like)
Chris steps in front of the door; 1589. He notices scratchings, burnt sections, even sections carved from different coloured wood. It smells of burning tire and mutilated carcass. He holds the dirty key in his right hand, he looks up and down from the door to the key, he sighs and sticks the key in the lock. He turns, trying to hear every click of the lock, he can't. He opens the odd door and steps into a hallway. It's probably, 80-90cm wide. Enough to fit, on his left instantly is a door, he opens it to find a storage compartment. Chris leaves the storage compartment door open, he walks in about 10cm and shuts the front door, he also notices that there is a second door, opposite the storage comparment. He steps up to it and flips it open, only to find a small en-suite, complete with toilet, sink and shower, all of which are somehow pristine. He closes the door of the toilet and closes the door of the storage compartment, he walks further down the corridor and comes out into a room about the size of a normal bedroom, he sees two beds; double beds. He walks over to them, noticing 2 cabinets, a set of drawers, a desk, a pile of old magazines and an old TV along the way. He sits on the first bed, feeling the comfort, he smiles blissfully and lays back. Chris takes his clothes off, down to his underwear and lies under the cloth. He feels warm and serine, to which he instantly falls asleep. 3 hours and 12 minutes later, he hears a beeping on the alarm clock. He never noticed it as he came in, he sits up, it says 7:00PM. Chris wonders why he was woken up, he takes the clock, checks the back to find an old fashioned manual alarm clock twister, he twists it 'til 7:00AM. He looks over and notices the TV, there's no way that it'd work. But it's not for terrestrial television, it's for the VCR and DVD sitting next to it. Again, he never noticed these. He gets out of bed, putting on a pair of pants and a shirt. He walks over and sees no video cassettes or DVDs. He opens the top drawer of the cabinets, to find a row of old DVDs. He sees old classics including; The Godfather (Trilogy), Die Hard, Die Harder with a vengeance, Independance Day, Dawn of the Dead, Resident Evil: Ground Zero and Harry Potter and the Socerer's Stone.
(OOC: Or Philosophers Stone like it was meant to be.
)
He picks out Harry Potter, he looks at it and chucks it on the floor, he always hated that British crap. However, he picks up The Godfather, the first one and looks at the cover. If there was one thing he missed, he missed bustling surburbias so he quickly flipped the case open, took the DVD out and flicked the TV on. He pops in the DVD and realises he has to put the power on, he runs over to te wall and flicks the switch, he sits back on his bed and climbs under the cover; He watched the entire thing.
Chris dreams of the complex, of Josie and BJ living with him, not as a family but as roommates. He thinks of the security guards downstairs being industructable and being volumed in the millions.
He smiles until he dreams of a single outbreak, one of the guards gets infected, who in turn affects another guard who eventually infect the millions of industructable guards there. He dreams of BJ running out of the door. Chris leans out of the apartment door following BJ, he sees BJ turn a corner to which Chris sprints and skids to a halt as he sees the corridor that BJ ran down. BJ is the pet of another man, an evil man, A man known as Christopher Selwood Snr. He is dead, but not a zombie, he's a vampire. Chris catches one look of BJ sitting next to him, waiting intently, with unconditional love. Chris dreams of his father, bearded, tall, wide and scary. He sees his father's face, he is angry. Chris turns back and runs in the apartment, he doesnt close the door. He turns to hide and asks Josie to cover him. Josie doesn't understand. She turns back and sees his father, she stares in shock to which he draws his sword and stabs her through her chest. Chris shouts at him to which BJ runs up to Chris, opens his jaws wide, moves in and...bites.
Chris awakes in a sweat, he is bewildered, flustered, confused and feels that he is alone. He turns to the other bed and sees nothing, he sits up and breathes deeply, he notices a mini-bar, which he did not see earlier. He opens it to find several bottles of cola. He takes one and drinks it, every drop fights the pain and helps the peacefulness. He breathes heavily after the last gulp and chucks the bottle on the floor. He goes over to the alarm clock, it is 6:58AM. He turns the alarm off and gets dressed, he's got 2 months of solid loneliness ahead of him.
(2 Months later, BJ should be out of quarantine, Chris is waiting for a reply from Josie or Downy about the whole situation, whether he can have a job, whether he can get BJ back, etc.)
Chris worked as a security guard. No surprise, considering that that was his previous job. Every morning, he went to the outpost on the horizon, he wasnt military but he sure as hell was needed. He'd killed a few zombies in his 2 months, but nothing big ever happened there. He helped build the wall up around the centre and it was almost done, all they needed was the sliding doors. He sat down every morning for the first week at a desk and learned the basics and advanceds in military combat. He was perfectly trained and was taken on by the military, he was a soldier, through and through. At least now anyway.
Chris opened his storage compartment door. It was small and started at his knees. He hated the smell of old clothes, but he put up with it. There were now 521 people living in the apartment. 4 to a room, 2 to a bed. Luckily Chris got in early and so didn't have to share. He looked at his clock. 8:18AM. He was finally going to get BJ out of quarantine, he saw BJ as often as he could, he saw BJ a total of 29 times whilst he was in quarantine. If BJ was infected, so was he. He picked the same clothes he was wearing the day he arrived.
He came out of the elevator in the basement, he steps into the cold, concrete room and walked over to the door. He opened it and everything was as he remembered. He remembers the little scalpals positioned the same, he remember every cup, every cloth, every piece of tile that he could see and if was perfect.
He walked over to the quarantine sections and saw Downy playing with BJ. He smiled and opened the door, Downy looked up and smiled back at him. BJ ran straight to him and cuddled by his legs, wagging his tail.
"He's clean. Just make sure he doesn't interrupt the guests." He said.
"Thankyou so much, were there any problems at all?" Chris replied.
"Well, there was one thing, he had bone cancer, but it was at it's minimum and we removed it, yesterday." He said.
"Yesterday? I've been visiting and visiting, you never told me he was going into an operation, let alone have bone cancer!" Chris growled.
"I know, it was unexpected, but it was a little bit of leg bone, only a smidgen, he's fine and can still run faster than you!" Downy replied, quite optimistically.
"...Well, thankyou then! But I'm afraid we're off!" Chris said.
"Off?! You mean you're leaving the complex?" Downy said.
"Not just the complex, not just downtown, not just Racoon City, but the country." Chris replied.
"How?! There's no planes or anything!" He said.
"Nope, but I have a pilots license, something which means me travel out of this hellhole. Oh and by the way, since you've done this for me, I'm doing something for you." Chris said. Downy was kneeling on the ground, where he was playing with BJ before, Chris outstretched his hand. "Come." The one word made downy feel exhilirated, he felt alive, but his whole life was here. Downy knew of the escapism he could discover outside the complex. He knew of the life, the freedom and the fact that he won't be stuck in there forever. But he knew of the danger out there and of the comfortability in the complex.
Downy stood up, he walked to Chris and said "...no." Chris wasn't surprised. He shook Downy's hand and walked off. Chris was back in the elevator 10 seconds later with BJ. Downy was standing there, looking at the place they had set him, that was it. His whole life. In one room. Downy felt claustrophobic. He looked at the equipment, he fixed a dog, that was it! He knew what he had to do, so he left! He caught up Chris and BJ in the elevator. He held the door, but was still on the other side, this was decision time.
"Where are you going?" He asked.
"Egypt. Africa." Chris said bluntly.
"What? Why? Those are only rumours..." He said, he had trailed off into thought about the rumours that were spreading through the complex.
"Rumours? No. They're real. Egypt is safe, uninfected, the major cities have no infections at all. It's the only truely safe place in the world." He said.
"Well..." He was looking for an argument, but then he realised, why was he looking for an argument?, "...you said major cities. What about little villages?" he said.
"Gone." Chris replied, he took the door from downy's grasp to make sure it could stay open. "If you want to come, come now."
Downy sighed, he looked back in the room, he looked down at his first and cried, about 5 seconds later, he recovered himself and decided that going would be stupid. However, he knew that his career choice was stupid, he hated science, he was just good at it. Good at everything. Except becoming haphazard. He knew that he needed hit and miss times in his life, he needed the randomness, the unplanned. He needed to make split decisions. His mathematical mind was running through statistics about his life at the complex. He realised that he would probably end up dying anyway. So he went.
Chris, BJ and Downy were on the first floor outside Josie's office. Chris needed a fourth person. Josie was the only other person that he knew. They all knocked on the door, except BJ. She answered, she was tired. Chris stared at Downy, due to his intelligence Downy realised that she would be in an inaudible state to make rash decisions. Downy started the conversation.
"Josie." He said, happily.
"Yes..." She said with some effort.
"...Egypt." He said.
She wasn't sleepy any more.
"What?! You're going to Egypt? That's only a rumour! It's not real, who set you up to....Chris!" She stared at Chris. Chris didn't show any sign of care. He knew he could save them.
"Josie please..." Downy continued.
"No! How the hell are you going to get there?! There's no way you could even leave Racoon City! This is stupid. If you all go, I'm calling security!" She yelled.
"Woh!" Chris spluttered. "Don't call them, we're gonna leave, yes! But we want you to come!" He said, knowing it was going to fail.
"Come...with you?! To Egypt?!?! No way! Are you kidding me?! This is ridiculous!" She continued to Ramble, BJ covered his ears. Chris looked and Downy who recipricated the notion. There were several ways she was going to come with them, but none of them involved asking.
"What if there was a zombie attack?" Chris asked. He knew it was a stupid idea.
"No, when is there going to be a zombie attack?"
"I said...IF!" He replied.
"...Yes, IF there was a HUGE zombie attack, I would come to Egypt with you. BUT there isn't. So we don't need to." Chris knew the conversation had turned into a rambler. So he knocked her out with one clean punch.
Chris, BJ and Downy are running out of the building front gates. Chris is officially military and so no-one can stop him, unless they mutiny. Chris runs to the unbuilt section of the wall, he sneaks out, making sure they all get out. Chris currently has Josie on his shoulders. He knew the military training would come in handy.
They all snuck round the ruins of an old factory next to it, hiding behind every pillar on their way. Chris spots the same road he drove in on, 2 months ago. They sneak their way there, but they stop at the end of the building. Chris peaks round the corner and sees 4 security guards, just as he did when he arrived. He knew there was no way he could get out without being stopped. After all, even though they had no legal ability to turn on someone with the same level of military, they could still get him, Josie was one of the complex leaders after all.
Chris turned to BJ and Downy, still carrying Josie
"Run as fast as you can! Don't stop until you get to that ford on the hill there." He pointed to it, Downy confirmed the correct car.
"On my mark...3...2...1...Go!" He shouted, he sprinted as fast as he could with Josie on his shoulders. Downy was much faster than him at this point, he sprinted with BJ and opened and climbed in the back doors. The guards spotted them after about 3 seconds of running, they spotted Josie too. One man shouted to snatch him. Others were screaming war chants or intimidating noises. Chris didn't stop, after all, he was one of them.
Chris kneeled over, put Josie on the floor, quickly ducked, rolled and pulled out his deagle. His training had completely changed his abilities, he was good. He shot 3 shots, killing 2 of them. Both of the shots had gone through the brain. The third had shot someone in the knee, he immediately fell over and screamed in searing pain. The last man was running, running so fast to kill and shoot Chris and save Josie. Chris couldn't reload in time. He was messing about with the unmountable pressure. Chris could see the man running at him, he took out a knife as he ran and was about to kill Chris. However, he got shot along the way.
"What the hell?!" Chris shouted. Josie was awake. She was so awake that she took her pistol out of her pocket and killed her main guard. She looked at Chris, him being in a state of shock and aimed her gun at him.
"No, no please no!" He said, he cowered beneath his arms. It was a cold day, he could see the steam surfacing from her respiration. She stood there, winked and dropped the gun. Chris sat in a sigh of relief and asked her; "Why'd you help me?" She dropped down.
"You helped me." She said.
Chris stood up, Josie picked up and holstered her gun. She picked up a sub machine gun off of the guards and handed it to Downy, he didn't even hesitate to take it.
Chris found the keys on the floor, it was exactly where he had left them. He climbed in and smelled the once so friendly air. He felt safety again.
They all climbed in and/or buckled up. He was on his way to the airport.
(Chris, BJ, Downy and Josie are on their way to the airport)