Best of Intentions: The Pretender (ch. 3) (Patreon)

“THE DEAD SHALLL RISSSEEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES IF YOU SEE PEOPLE WITH SUSPICIOUS BITE WOUNDS OR SHOOT THEM IN THE HEAD!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, throwing out pamphlets like they were confetti, causing as much of a ruckus as I possibly could. As it turned out, hospitals don’t have much in the way of security, though I did have a mall cop that was chasing me around the hospital. He was lucky he worked in a hospital because I’m pretty sure he was about to be driven to a heart attack. “THERE IS NO CURE ONCE BITTEN! THE SYMPTOMS PRIOR TO DEATH ARE A FEVER, CLOUDY VISION, LIGHTHEADEDNESS, ATTEMPTS OF CANNIBALISM… AND DEATH!”

Memories had to stand out for you to bother to remember it. For the life of me, I couldn't recall reading some random pamphlet that I would pick up out of boredom waiting for the dentist. I'm sure there was some pretty good stuff about oral hygiene in there, but I didn't care so I couldn't retain it. My pamphlets worked under the same principle -- highly useful information, but if no one recalled it or made the connection? Then it was useless.

So, make the memories stand out. Run around screaming and throwing them at people. No one would remember a guy handing them out, but a guy screaming about the end of days and hurling them at you? That was a memory worth recalling.

I flung another handful of papers into a random room as a nurse stepped out to check what in the hell was going on. I think I hit her in the face. “Sorry, my bad!” I called out to her, feeling a little guilty. I was trying to become a nuisance, not assault people. “THE DEAD SHALL RISE! A BULLET IS THE ONLY CURE FOR THE UNDEAD!” I continued to holler, seeing one of the doctors was feeling brave and went for a tackle.

I juked him so badly I realized I missed my calling as an NFL athlete. He hit the ground and I downright danced around him, throwing another handful of pamphlets up. Behind me, I heard someone shout out, “Someone stop him! He’s getting away!” I threw another handful in a room as I passed it by, getting a solid idea of the layout of the hospital. It was pretty big, but overall, it was pretty simple. There was an inpatient wing, and an outpatient wing, while the inpatient wing had various wards.

One of them was the maternity ward, which was… a whole ass problem, I decided glancing at the large window that would more or less act as an advertisement for bite-sized snacks when the zombies came. Luckily, only a handful of the crib things had babies in them, but it was still far too many for comfort.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the mall cop hadn’t caught up to me yet, so I took out a notepad that I stole from the nurse station and continued making my map and added a few notes. Five babies. Assuming that we could carry one per arm, that was three people on carry duty- wait, were those chest harnesses a thing yet? Well, I could just invent them if they weren’t. So, that was two people on carrying duty. The hospital would be a mad house, so there would need to be at least… three others on combat duty.

“What about the child ward?” I muttered under my breath, frowning at the notepad. We would need to get the kids out. And we would need to get the necessary medicine for their ongoing treatment. I would be so fucking pissed off if one of these kids had the audacity to die of leukemia or something after I saved them from this unmitigated shit show. The trip to the hospital was going to be a massive operation, no two ways about it. My eyes narrowed to a glare at the sleeping infants, having no idea what was coming. “You know, baby giraffes and horses can run as soon as they’re born,” I told them.

Predictably, I didn’t receive an answer. Couldn’t even talk. Literally useless.

“S-stop right t-there,” Paul Blart said, red in the face and sweating. I glanced over at him, feeling a little bad.

“You want some water, or something?” I asked him, and that just seemed to piss him off. I’m trying to do a nice thing here. I was the good guy! He went for his mace as he approached, and I quickly made a decision, “Alright, damn, I’ll take that as a no! Dick.” I said, taking off in a brisk jog and leaving him behind. Zombieland was 110% on point -- cardio saved lives. I hated running in general, but it was a damn useful skill to have in the apocalypse.

I was running low on pamphlets, so I took my time to explore the hospital. Though, that didn’t stop them from looking for me. They were tearing up the hospital, and I chose to hide out in a backroom. In a child ward, so, their concern was completely valid, I decided upon turning around to see a kid that looked like he got hit by a truck, after which the truck stopped, then backed up over him for good measure. He looked at me through black eyes, his nose busted, and his lips split. “What happened to your face?” I asked him, checking to see if the coast was clear.

I think the kid’s eyes narrowed at me. “What happened to yours?” He asked, and he sounded young. Oh, snarky.

“I was born too good-looking,” I said, throwing a cheeky grin his way. The room was a private one, as far as I could tell. Meaning that the kid had been here for a bit seeing as this was part of the inpatient ward. “It’s caused me no end of trouble.”

“Pretty sure that’s because of all the shouting,” the kid… Will retorted. I picked up his medical clipboard hanging off his bed and let out a low whistle at his extensive list of injuries. A truck did hit him, if you considered a truck to be two fists and a boot. He was eight years old and brought in after he ‘fell down the stairs.’ William Evans. Evans. I would remember that last name, I decided. “What were you talking about? The dead coming back? Like… ghosts?” He almost sounded hopeful.

“As in the rotting corpses eating the living kind. It’s going to be a whole deal,” I told him, ruthlessly crushing that hope. Better that way. None of that ‘maybe they’re still inside’ stuff allowed here. Hesitation was going to get people killed, and while I couldn’t do much about a lot of it, I could do this much. “Not fun or particularly wholesome. So, while you’ve been laying around after your dad beat the shit out of you, you hear anything intresting?”

Immediately, the kid bristled. “My dad didn’t hit me,” he protested. No. No, he definitely did. Good to know.

“Really? My bad. So, have you heard anything interesting after getting laid up by some stairs that beat the shit out of you?” I asked him, making Will glare at me. At least I think he was. It was kind of hard to tell with the twin shiners. His lips pressed into a thin line, chewing on something that he clearly wanted to say. I gave him a moment, but he swallowed it down.

“There have been some weird people,” Will admitted after a moment. "The nurses are pretty worried about them. They say that they’re really confused and they keep trying to bite people? Are… are they?” He questioned, paling when I nodded to answer his question.

“Yup. Sounds like it,” I confirmed, frowning. That… wasn’t good. I was holding out hope that the homeless couple would be a one-off. I knew it wouldn’t be, but I had harbored hope.

Will started to look scared, “I need to go back home. I- my sister! She’s all alone with my dad, and they-” I held up a hand, forestalling any protests. That… well…

“In that case, I can work a little magic to get you out of here. Better now than when shit’s going down,” I rationalized. I don’t think he would be going far on some busted ribs, even if I really didn’t like the idea of sending him back to his dad. Will tried to give me a weird look, but most of his face was swollen, so it didn’t really work. Sending a smirk his way, I wiggled my fingers in his direction, “Oggity boggity boo,” I intoned.

With the words, I cast Cure Wounds by touching his arm. In response, the black eyes faded away, the split lip smoothed over and even his nose straightened out. Not sure if I did anything for the ribs, but I’m pretty sure that Cure Wounds took care of it. Will gaped at me, then at himself, then at me again. “Y-you-you’re a wizard?!” He exclaimed as I tossed a wink his way, having done my bit and burning one of my first level spell slots for the day.

“I am a man of mystery, kid,” I told him, passing a pamphlet to him. “Spread the word and take care of that sister of yours,” I told him, peeking my head out of the room to see that the coast was clear. I saw that he was still gaping at me as I stepped out, and I think he was going to be just fine. Now, with my good deed for the day done, time to stir up some trouble. I took off running, looking for someone in particular.

I had only ever played the Resident Evil 3 Remake before I found myself here. I saw a little gameplay of the second remake, and I had a pretty good idea of the future plotline because of the movies -- Raccoon City gets fucked, the apocalypse happens, and Umbrella is pants on the head stupid. And, at some point, there would be a dommy mommy vampire lady. Soon, hopefully. But, RE3 was the one I needed to know about the most because it gave me just enough knowledge to have a very vague idea of what I was doing.

This world wasn’t the game. There were no convenient yellow boxes that had loot and guns in them. The little gem thing in the train station didn’t give gun attachments, a grenade, and a police-issued hip pouch. Shockingly. However, as far as I could tell, things in the broad strokes were still true.

So, it was pretty easy to spot Brad… Bard? Dr. Bard. A portly man in his late forties, his hair thinning to the point of nonexistence. Striding up to him with a smile on my face, I stole a paperclip from a nearby desk and shoved it in his face. “Mr. Brad, any opinions on the lack of a state of emergency for the very real crisis that this city faces?!” I asked him, making him just about jump a foot in the air.

A spark of magic entered the paperclip, making it an infusion. Just in time, too, “Get away from me, you lunatic!” Six words. Perfect. As he stumbled a step back, a hand drifted up to grab his keycard.

“Not the answer I wanted, but the one I expected. Try not to get assassinated like a dickhead,” I gave him forewarning, making him flinch. Then I flung a stack of pamphlets in his face just as Paul Blart caught sight of me.

“Get back here!” He shouted while Dr. Bard sputtered.

“YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!”

…

“Jill, you trust this guy?” Chris asked her and Jill was forced to consider the question as she was looking at blowing her savings on aluminum, spools of fencing, and wood. The cashier was giving her odd looks, but said nothing as Jill was silent for a long moment. Her gaze flickered to the trashy magazines that were in front of the conveyer belt, seeing one of the pamphlets that Rude was giving out tucked in front of every single magazine.

Did she trust him?

“No,” Jill confessed after a long moment of consideration. She hadn’t really believed him until those homeless people. He clearly knew about the T-virus, but she was half certain that the outbreak was something he… Jill didn’t know. Made up, or something. Perhaps simply because that’s what she wanted to believe. She’d take the mansion all over again if it meant what happened there wouldn’t happen to the city. “But, he hasn’t given me any reason to distrust him.”

Jill didn’t think she had it in her to trust anyone that wasn’t in Stars anymore. Before Wesker, Jill would have said she trusted him. He followed through. He stepped up to the plate. Rude hadn’t done anything to make Jill distrust him, she just didn’t have a lot of trust to give anymore. Worse, the people she still trusted could be counted on one hand with some fingers left over.

Rebecca, Brad, and Chris.

"I hear you. So, he checks out? The plan is good?" Chris asked, already on his way back. He got himself suspended from the force just so he could go to Europe to investigate Umbrella there, but this was more pressing. If-...No. There was an outbreak of the T-Virus. This… this was going to be so much worse than the mansion.

"He checks out. As for the plan -- I'd call it the best of a bad situation," Jill admitted, handing over her card to pay for everything. Yikes. Being in Stars paid well, but that was a decent chunk of change. "I saw his to-do list. It was thorough. He's thought about pretty much everything that can be done with the resources that he has."

"Can we stop it?" Chris asked, his tone even but it sounded like he suspected the answer already.

Jill wanted to say yes. Desperately. But, the idealistic girl died in the mansion. She knew what this disease could do. What it would do. People that knew what they were doing ended up dying to it. Civilians didn't stand a chance. "We're in damage control, Chris." The confession was bitter because she ran through the option in her head. All of the scenarios.

Going to the police? Maybe they could get some of them on board, but even with all, it wouldn't be enough. The military was losing its grip over the situation. Start forcing an evacuation? That could work, but how could you force a city to evacuate? The military wouldn't believe how bad it could get. She could try screaming from the rooftops, but who would believe her when the government was actively keeping it quiet?

People wouldn't believe that they were in danger until they were fighting for their lives. Jill ran through every possibility, every course of action, and the current course was the one that was realistic. Mitigating the damage done. That's the most they could hope for.

"Fuck," Chris summarized rather aptly. "I'm going to be calling Kendo. Secure some weapons for us." Another thing that was on the to-do list.

"I'm going to get who we can in the force, but it won't be much. Short of getting Big Iron on page, we'll be lucky to get more than a few squads, if that." Irons was the police commissioner and a blatantly corrupt one at that. How involved he was with Umbrella was up in the air at the moment, but it was safe to assume the worst. Just as she had to assume that the police wouldn't just rally around her word.

After the mansion, Stars had been gutted. Rebecca left Raccoon City entirely, Brad was a functioning alcoholic, Chris punched out their CO for the sake of the investigation, and she… she was on medical leave, officially. If she called about the dead rising, they'd think she cracked. And maybe that wasn't far from the truth, but the point was that they wouldn't believe her. Not wholesale. Not enough to pull the situation from the brink.

"Rebecca?" Chris floated the idea.

Jill's lips thinned as she pushed the supplies out to the truck. The stolen truck. Rude really was a character, alright. "I say that we leave her out of it. She's tough, but she's still just a kid." Eighteen. Rebecca Chambers was a certified genius that graduated college by the time Jill had graduated highschool. She was scouted hard into Stars as a demolitions expert, and less than a year later, her squad was dead. "She's back at school fighting in her own way. We could use her skills, but…" but, Jill didn't want Rebecca anywhere near this mess. She was studying virology and in a few years, maybe she could create a silver bullet that could kill Umbrella forever.

"She's made of sterner stuff than you're giving her credit for, but… yeah, I don't want her near this shit show if I can help it," Chris agreed. "And speaking of shit shows -- how are you doing?" Jill managed a small laugh at that as she loaded everything up.

The truth was? "I would have missed the outbreak if I didn't run out of milk," Jill confessed. She hadn't left her apartment in days. The investigation into Umbrella stalled out into a sprawling series of dead ends. She had just been counting down the days before she would leave Raccoon City entirely, and she hadn't had a single good night's sleep in months. She would have stayed in that room until the end if it wasn't for the fact that cereal was the only food she had left, and she wasn't desperate enough to use water to eat it. "Stumbled across one of Rude's posters about the T-Virus. Felt like I got punched in the gut when I saw it."

"Posters?" Chris echoed, sounding surprised as Jill finished loading up the bed of the truck.

"He's been slapping them around all over the city. I thought it was stupid at first, but… I don't know." It seemed so inefficient. Pointless, even. But Jill saw it for what it was now -- desperation. Throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the problem and hoping something stuck.

Chris was silent for a moment. "And how did he find out about the T-Virus?" He questioned, a frown in his voice.

"He says that he stumbled across them in the sewers," Jill answered, also finding it suspicious. "He knows more than he's letting on. Even if he knew about what the T-Virus did, he wouldn't know what it's called. Or exactly how it works. But, his record is clean as far as I can tell. And even if it wasn't… he's not a bad guy." That was the verdict she came to after a brief interaction with him. Even if there was more to Rude, that first impression of him wouldn't change -- a guy trying to hold back the apocalypse by himself because he knew no one would believe him.

He stayed when anyone with a couple of brain cells would have taken those supplies, found a bunker, and left the world to meet its grizzley end. For that and that alone, Rude earned her respect.

"I'll take your word for it," Chris decided, having his own sets of doubts. "I'll be in by tonight. Hold down the fort for me," he said, ending the call as Jill slid into the truck. Snapping the phone shut, Jill let out a breath and rested her forehead against the steering wheel for a moment. The sheer weight of the situation bearing down on her. They were doing what they could. It was just a question of if it would be enough-

Jill heard a shout in the parking lot, making her head snap up to the source of it. A car in front of her came to an abrupt stop, a person crumpled In front of the bumper with the driver getting out. It was a bystander that had shouted, rushing to the person's side. Jill felt it in her gut. She knew exactly what this was. "Get away!" Jill shouted, throwing open her door and yanking out her gun. "Get away from them-"

The fallen person lunged upward and Jill reacted on instinct. Just before the zombie could take a bite out of the good Samaritan, her pistol was up and she pulled the trigger, threading the needle and popping the zombie in the head. Their head snapped to the side, and the shouts became panicked screaming. "I'm RCPD!" Jill announced, thankful that she remembered her badge and kept it on her belt. The good Samaritan and the guy that hit the zombie with their car looked at her with fear and shock. "Did it bite you?"

"Y-you killed that woman!" The Good Samaritan protested, looking down at the corpse and it was only then that he noticed something. She had been dead beforehand. A chunk ripped out of her throat with blood covering the front of her blouse. Jill knew that meant another zombie was out and about, but she didn't see it.

Jill licked her lips, her blood turning to ice in her veins. That was the second one she saw today. How many more would there be? How long until two became two hundred? Then two thousand? Then two hundred thousand? There were five hundred thousand people in Raccoon City. How many could they realistically save?

"I want your fucking badge number!" The driver demanded, going from shocked to angry. Jill didn't have time for this, she realized. It was already starting.

It was already too late.

Jill raised her gun into the air and poped a shot, startling the man and the bystanders, "All of you, go home and stay there! Bar the doors until a police or military unit comes to escort you to a safe zone!" Jill shouted, wondering how many would actually do what she said. They seemed confused. Uncertain. Worse, they didn't believe her. Jill closed her eyes and marched back to the truck, biting her lip as she threw it in reverse and left the scene behind her. She gripped the wheel with white knuckles, memories returning in full force.

Fear gripped her heart and gave it a savage squeeze. As soon as she was back on the streets, her eyes were darting around -- looking for any other shambling corpses that others dismissed as someone that was drunk or high. Everyone was a suspect in her mind, and there was no worse feeling in the world when she caught eye of another one. People were giving them a wide berth and worried looks, but a zombie stumbled forward. It looked drunk rather than dead, with no rot or visible injuries, but there was no mistaking that blank and vacant gaze. It was someone that was infected and the T-Virus was killing them, but they hadn't died to reanimate yet.

She made a snap decision. With pinpoint accuracy, Jill fired her pistol, catching it in the side of the head, much to the horror of the bystanders. The zombie dropped dead and Jill swerved into incoming traffic to skip a light to flee the scene of the crime.

It was getting worse. Three. That was three.

Jill's heart felt like it could belong to a hummingbird with how fast it was beating as she pulled up to Rude's apartment. That guy she laid out had parked his car back in the spot with a 'fuck you' sign tapped into the car. Jill grit her teeth, ruthlessly crushing a surge of anger and instead parked across the street. Pounding a hand at the door, to her immense relief, Rude was inside. "Sup-"

"There are more of them," Jill stated, entering his apartment. "I killed two on my way back."

"Ah,' Rude began, blinking behind his thick rimmed glasses. "Shit. That's not good, is it?" He muttered, closing the door behind her. She turned to glare at him for pointing out the obvious. Rude wasn't exactly who she had pictured when she imagined the type of guy that'd try to out stubborn the end of the world. Honestly, she pictured Chris for that. Someone large, physically imposing, and movie star handsome.

Rude was… well… he looked like a nerd. Honestly, he looked like someone who got bullied in high school for playing Dungeons and Dragons. He was on the scrawny side, and tall enough that he came across as lanky rather than imposing. He was handsome enough -- olive toned skin, dark hair, dark green eyes with a strong jawline… but he looked like a guy on the street she'd pass and never give a second glance to.

And now he was giving her a dull look that made her want to punch him. It was a look that said, 'why are you panicking?' "We have to get on top of this. Get the police on board. Get the military on board. Evacuations need to start, and we need to contain this," Jill began while Rude walked over to his freezer to pull out… ice cream sandwiches? She caught the one that he tossed her. "What is this?"

"Ice cream sandwich. They're pretty good," Ride told her, sounding ambivalent about everything that she just said. "Jill -- I want you to listen very carefully to what I'm about to say." He began, and Jill swallowed a retort before he continued. "The plan will not work."

That was a slap to the face, "What-"

"The plan was never going to work. It couldn't ever work. For it to work, everything would need to go perfectly a hundred percent of the time. Everyone would need to be exactly where they need to be and do exactly what they need to do. There would need to be absolute cohesion, no panic involved or infighting. Everyone would need to act in the interest of others instead of saving themselves. It wasn't ever feasible in the first place. I'm sorry if I gave you that impression," Rude continued, sounding as serious as he ever did. Even when he was being serious, he acted flippant. And now she saw the spine under all the layers of sarcasm.

A lump formed in Jill's throat. "Then what is all of this for?" She demanded, gesturing wildly at his apartment. All of the supplies, all of the effort, a to-do list with a thousand and one uncheckmarked boxes.

"The plan isn't going to work, but it won't be because we didn't do everything that we could to make it work," he told her, his tone blunt as could be. "We'll do our best. We'll do what we can to save as many as we can. That's all we can do."

The words sounded so much like the ones she just told Chris not an hour before. That they were in damage control, not prevention. However… with this… at best, they could save a fraction of Raccoon City. That would mean hundreds of thousands dead. How many could they really save? A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred? That was still four hundred thousand-

"So, take a breath and eat your ice cream," Rude said, pointedly taking a bite out of his, no evidence of panic on his face. Just resigned acceptance. "We're going to start building up the defenses and securing supplies…"

"Because this time tomorrow, this city is going to be on fire."