Best of Intentions: This Fyre (ch. 4) (Patreon)

Oh, he was big. Oh, he was scary. Oh, he was big and scary and this entire situation was not part of the plan! I thought Nemesis would be hunting Jill -- it’s why I gave her the tattoo. Why was he here!? Right now, appearing as if he fell out of the sky almost directly on top of us with pinpoint accuracy. When we were already dealing with a huge snafu in the plan in the form of thousands of undead that would soon start pouring into the city, and we were just a small cork trying to hold back that flood. I’m not exactly sure what the worst case scenario would have looked like…

But, now that I think about it, it probably would have looked a lot like this.

"Oh shi- worry about that, Chris! Definitely worry about that!" I courageously yelled at the large man standing between me and the much larger monster.

“I’m worried!” Chris shot back, dropping to a knee and opening fire on the creature. The bullets from his assault rifle seemed to bounce off of its thick hide, and it hardly noticed as it strode through the gunfire. I made a snap decision, wheeling my Eldritch Cannon around and sending it up to Nemesis while I continued to fire at the undead. I had leveled up again, just before Chris arrived. The zombies were 50xp apiece, and there were a lot of them. I was tearing through the early levels like they were nothing.

The difference between level 3 and level 4 was 1,800xp. Which was thirty-six zombies, and I had killed a lot more than that standing here.

And I, foolishly, chose the Keen Mind feat. Got a little boost in intelligence, but more importantly, I could recall everything I had seen or heard in the past month. In game mechanics, that was used for using the DM to tell you things you had forgotten, but in real life? After a huge blunder like this? I thought it was a stroke of brilliance. In reality, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that I was the biggest dumbass on the face of the planet, because my big brain wasn’t going to do much to Nemesis.

My Eldritch Cannon did, though. The railgun on it bucked back, the projectile slamming into Nemesis’ chest with enough force to knock him back a solid five feet, his chest caving inward ever so slightly. However, the creature was hardly daunted. Chris was impressed, though, so there was that. “That thing packs a punch!”

“We have to move!” Marvin shouted out, the dead incoming. We could barely hold them off between the four of us, but with my Cannon and Chris dealing with Nemesis, they were quickly swarming us. The night air was filled with the sounds of moaning and groaning, so many of them that the gunshots almost seemed quiet in comparison. The zombies carried the scent of blood and shit, and with so many, I could practically taste both on my tongue.

Marvin was right. "The truck! Get in the truck!" I decided, abandoning my position as I grabbed the bag of holding while squeezing a few shots. And I really wish it was that easy, but Nemesis wasn't content to leave us be. Disgusting tendrils that honestly reminded me of a dog's red rocket emerged from the monster's back, lashing out at Chris, who dove underneath it to roll to his feet. I squeezed a shot off at a zombie that lunged for him from behind, killing it, but Chris' attention was solely on the Nemesis. The creature tried to take another step, but another blast from my Cannon caught it in the leg, driving it to a knee.

I switched modes, and it took a terribly long six seconds. The barrel on my Cannon was dyed with a red light -- I went with a good old fashioned RGB color scheme. Naturally, red was for fire. Flames belched out of the Cannon, splashing over Nemesis as he lashed out. I threw myself to the side, but it wasn’t enough to save me from getting swiped by the tentacle. It felt like I got hit by a baseball bat from a professional league player, knocking me down the step and sending me tumbling.

My arm was broken, I realized. If not because of the throbbing pain, then because I’m pretty sure a bone was sticking out of my arm. Leveling up didn’t restore my spell slots. After healing the kid, then healing myself after getting shot… I only had the one left. I wouldn’t get more until I had a long rest, but I didn’t see that happening any time soon.

“Rude!” Chris shouted, and I suddenly found myself picked up by him, him throwing one of my arms over his shoulders as he half dragged me to the car while he unloaded bullets into Nemesis. I was blinded by pain. I thought the adrenaline would help, but every step was nothing short of pure agony. Did he break some of my ribs too?

“We have to kill it!” I shouted at him, knowing that it was true. I was completely unprepared for it. I thought I would have at least enough time to get my Arcane Firearm -- the thing I was building my whole class around. “It’s as weak as it’s ever going to be, we need to kill it here. And now,” I decided, making a snap decision. I heard Nemesis roaring behind us and I looked over just in time to shove Chris out of the way. In response, I felt a punch in my back and looking down at it-

“That’s so fucking gross!” I exclaimed, more horrified than anything. My Cannon took another shot at Nemesis, making it roar in frustration and hopefully, a shit ton of pain as the offending tendril that was squirming in my gut was ripped out. I dropped to my knees, rolling down the rest of the stairs and coming to a stop at the bottom. Shit. Did I just get infected? That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all.

Wait, when Jill got infected, she started spasming and foaming from the mouth. I was just bleeding out with my insides trying to become outsides. Was I fine? Well, I wasn’t fine but was I not infected?

Regardless, there wasn’t any choice now. “Cure Wounds,” I decided, using the last one on myself. Best spell choice I could have made, I decided. Though, it was rather icky feeling my bone slide itself back into place, mending, while my organs shifted back where they were supposed to be. And, almost as in punishment for it, Nemesis finally lashed out at my Cannon that was drawing its attention and gave it a swift kick. It flew through the air, bouncing off the truck and landing in a heap. Sparks flew off my creation, but with three legs remaining, it pushed itself up.

I really needed to name it. It had guts.

Pushing myself to my feet, I saw Chris and Marvin firing at Nemesis, who was slowly being surrounded by undead. They ignored the creature, it registering as dead to them with their stunted senses, even as it blazed with fire. It had taken a few hard knocks despite my panic. It was durable, but not invincible. We could kill it if we overwhelmed it. Better now when it was comparatively weak than when it was a massive sludge monster and we needed a rail gun.

I shot at Nemesis again, this time catching it in the head, but it still was standing. The flesh gave away, revealing hints of skull, but other than that, it was fine. And with a lone black eye it only had eyes for Chris despite everything that we were throwing its way. It lumbered forward, splattering the brains of a zombie with the back of its fist, and in a low grumbling voice that was more of a growl, it uttered, “Stars!”

“Get to the car!” I shouted at the two of them, the zombies closing in on them even as Nemesis did. Grabbing the bag of holding, I hurled it at Nemesis, cutting my connection to the bag just as it hit his chest. True to form, the leather became normal leather, bursting at the seams as heaps of ammo exploded out of it with enough force that Nemesis stumbled a step back. The fire that clung to his body, ignited the bullets as Marvin and Chris threw themselves down the stairs.

The bullets exploded, acting like an explosive with how many of them there were. They tore into Nemesis but all of us were rushing into the car. I slid into the driver’s seat, looking at him. He still stood, the flames flickering around him in a cloud of smoke from entire boxes of bullets. The undead were swarming forward, stumbling or falling down the steps. There were hundreds of them. Thousands. And they stumbled past Nemesis, who seemed to glower at us through the smoke and the fire.

“I thought you were dead!” Chris exclaimed as I slammed a foot on the gas the moment Marvin was in the back, and we started speeding away just as the first undead hands slammed against the truck. My Cannon sat between us, occasionally sparking with a grinding sound. Chris glanced at it, worried that it would blow up. And there was, admittedly, a non-zero chance that it might. "How are you-"

"Nanomachines," I threw out an answer, not really wanting to get into it now. "The answer will always be nanomachines."

"What was that thing? What were those things?!" Marvin demanded, sounding panicked.

"Big. Angry. Pissed off at Chris," I threw out adjectives as my mind raced a thousand miles a second. As we raced down the street, I saw the panicked and terrified people fleeing, most of which looked like they escaped from the stadium. My stomach clenched when I saw blood. They were bitten. Should I… no… no, it was way, way, way too late to hope for a contained outbreak. I need to refocus. The outbreak had happened. Not great. Nemesis was here. Also not great. The plan had to be adapted, but the bones of it were still good. "Get Jill on the phone, we need to get the central station up and running."

"And us?" Chris asked, looking in the rearview mirror for Nemesis.

"We need to go to the hospital. Kill the zombies that are there, save who we can, and loot a shit ton of medical supplies." I said, forcing myself to calm down as I laid on my horn when I encountered traffic, and the sidewalks were full of people fleeing. The doctors would be able to get a grip on the infection -- easily singling out those that were bitten or infected. More than that, though, was the vaccine.

It was better to get it now than later, I decided. My poor sweater. And my poor insides.

Marvin seemed to have a revelation in the back seat. "You're that crazy guy everyone has been talking about?!" He blurted out, looking at me while I looked for an opportunity to swerve around the traffic while Chris got on the phone.

"I wish I was just crazy. Unfortunately, I'm something far worse. I'm right," I told him, seeing a break in it and I drove up on the sidewalk to go around the long line of traffic. Ah. There had been a car crash at the intersection, and a bad one from the looks of it. Marvin didn't have a response to that, and I took the opportunity to reach into my pocket and take out one of the stickers I had on hand. With the destruction of my bag of holding, I had opened up an infusion slot and it was going to the Spellwrought tattoo.

Wetting the tattoo with the blood that was still soaked into my sweater, I infused it to my skin. As I did, Chris looked over at me. "Jill's at the station with a handful of cops, trying to get everything in order but just about everyone is being called out to deal with the undead-" Chris started, only to be cut off abruptly as something landed directly in front of us. I slammed on my brakes, the truck screeching to a halt but we were going too fast and still slammed into Nemesis.

It was still on fire and took the hit like a champ, his feet digging into the ground as he caught the front bumper. "Oh, shit!" I helped, my eyes going wide and a second later, the tenderil erupted from Nemesis' back, lunging forward at Marvin and me. No sooner than they had busted through the front windshield, I threw up the Shield and the tendrils bounced off of it. Directly where my heart would be. My Eldritch Cannon leapt up onto the dashboard, bracing for a split second before firing a blast that knocked Nemesis back, and I heard the painful cracking of ribs.

Nemesis was knocked back, but the Shield blinked out of existence a second later while the stick-on tattoo burned up.

"Get us out of here!" Marvin exclaimed while I slammed the car into reverse a couple dozen feet before throwing up the emergency break.

"Hit him!" Chris shouted, a bump on his forehead from the impact. He kept one hand on the dash and took his time to buckle his seatbelt. Stomping on the gas, I burned the tires out while my Cannon made another shot, striking Nemesis again. It was knocked back a few feet, but it looked like it was learning to lean into the blows. Its skin was charred, it's chest holes and chunks in it, and it had a bad limp, but all the same, it was marching forward. And, to my horror, it's gait was getting stronger.

As the truck lurched forward, my Cannon fired another shot, then another, and just before we connected, the barrel shifted to green. I felt myself growing stronger as temp hp was given to all three of us in anticipation for the crash. The very last shot knocked Nemesis off balance, opening a perfect opportunity to catch it in the stomach and drive forward. I put the pedal to the metal, the engine roaring back at Nemesis as it lunged for us inside of the truck. "Ew, ew, ew, ew-!" I shouted as it tried to grab hold of me, only to be abruptly cut off when we slammed into something.

The next thing I knew, it felt like I got kicked by a horse when the airbag triggered. The breath was knocked from my lungs, but overall, I felt okay. The temp hp ate the damage, and my Cannon, miraculously, managed to survive the crash too. It gave a grinding warble before popping some sparks, looking like it was on its very last set of legs. Literally, since all but two legs were completely busted.

More importantly, Nemesis looked out of it. It was slumped over the hood of the car, its hands half in the truck. I swallowed thickly before I opened the door, hearing the moaning and groaning of Chris and Marvin. "This sucks," I decided, half falling out of the car with my Eldritch Cannon tucked under my arm. I was completely out of spell slots. I needed to get my hands on more stick-on tattoos. My plan was fucked. And as I looked around to see where we crashed, I saw that we had slammed Nemesis into a brick wall.

"Is it dead yet?" Marvin asked, leveling a gun at it while I switched my Cannon to gun mode.

Almost as if to respond, Nemesis let out a low growl before lifting it's head up-

My Cannon shot it. Its face smashed inward before slumping forward. Didn't stop me from shooting it again. And again. And another time. Or five more times after that. Or setting it on fire. It was that last bit that had Chris pulling at my shoulder, "We got to go."

"It's not dead yet," I told him. I had no idea what kind of challenge rating this thing would have, but it had approximately three motherfuckin' shit loads of HP. I knew it wasn't dead simply because if it was, then I would have leveled up twice over. The thing was stupidly tough.

"I know, but the car is going to blow!" Chris warned me, dragging me away from pummeling the monster into non-existence. I really needed to rethink my build. When could I get Disintegrate? Or how about Power Word: Kill? Chris pulled me back, and true to his word, the truck exploded when the gas caught on fire, enveloping Nemesis as it burned. And I would have gone right back to pummeling it, but Chris started shooting at something that wasn't the monster in front of us.

I looked over to see Chris had dropped a zombie. And worse, more were stumbling up the streets. The ones that we hadn't been able to stop in the stadium, I think.

I licked my lips, looking back at Nemesis to see it was being cooked away and pinned by the truck. Then at the undead stumbled our way and I felt a hole open in my stomach. We wouldn't be able to kill it here and now. Meaning that it would be coming back for us stronger and more dangerous and equipped to deal with what we could throw at it. That… that really wasn't good, I decided, having my Cannon latch onto my shoulder with the two legs it had left.

"The hospital," I decided mournfully, knowing that we missed this chance. "We need to go to the hospital."

"Then to the hospital we go," Chris decided, but Marvin cast him a look as we kept ahead of the undead that were slowly filling the streets.

"It kept saying Stars. And it was after you, Chris. Should we really be going to a hospital if all of that didn't kill it?" He asked, and that was a genuinely good question. It was a cruel one based on how Chris grimaced, running ahead of the three of us. He was by far in the best shape. I was already starting to feel a pinch in my side, and it wasn't the side that got tentacled.

"If it follows, then I'll lead it away. Your priority is the civilians, got that?"

"Got it," I told him… but, I was an idiot. I knew the words were a lie as soon as I said them.

…

Unsurprisingly, the general hospital was kind of completely fucked. Not in a ‘the dead are pouring out of the hospital’ kind of fucked, but more in a ‘completely overwhelmed with infected and injured that would soon be turning into the zombies that would be pouring out of the hospital’ kind. We entered and the waiting lobby was completely filled with people that were sporting bite wounds and scratches.

It was a tough pill to swallow realizing that I was surrounded by dead people waiting, but I ignored them. Instead, I raised a gun in the air and popped a few shots, making everyone panic. “RCPD! Everyone that was bitten or scratched by some crazy person trying to take a bite out of you, please go to that wall. Everyone with lamer and more mundane illness, please go to that wall.”

Dying or not, they were smart enough to do what the man with a gun said. Even if my approach did get some stink eye from Marvin. The infected gathered on one side of the lobby while Chris quickly usurped control over the situation. “We’re making arrangements for treatment for all of you, but please remain seated.”

While he was doing that, I was moving on. I didn’t even need my map. Keen Mind allowed me to recall the layout to the hospital perfectly, and as I entered it properly, I saw the medical staff was absolutely swamped with patients and the ER was practically overrun already. A veritable army of nurses ran between patients with bandages and stitches, injured people screaming. They hadn’t even heard the gunshots.

They were utterly screwed, but before we made a scene, we needed to get the kids and the shit factories out. And, more importantly, kill who they had in an isolated ward while they were harmless. I found my way to the babies, who were still slumbering through everything. Making one of those hammock swaddling things, I started loading them up after squeezing a bit of cotton in their ears.

“Ear muffs?” Marvin asked me, as I began to make a vest of babies.

“Tenitus is a lifelong disease that doesn’t have a cure,” I reminded him, protecting the shit factories ears. “We should all be wearing ear protection right now.” I ended up taking three babies and Marvin took another two. And… “You know, for someone that got tossed into the deep end with all of this, you’re not doing bad.”

“I’m in shock right now,” Marvin admitted, pinning me with a sharp look as I adjusted to my new baby weight. God, what a couple of absolutely useless potatoes. “I’m going to have a lot questions for you when we have a minute to ask them,” he warned me. It sounded like I needed to delegate that to Chris or Jill. Or generally anyone that wasn’t me.

“Well, so long as you wait a little longer,” I remarked, leaving the baby incubation room. Or the viewing room. I had no idea what to call it. Whatever it was, the security was pretty lax because we were literally just walking away with a bunch of noise makers. Was it the cop uniform? I needed to steal one of those.

As we left the baby room, I headed to the kid ward and a familiar voice cackled over the intercom. “This is Chris Redfield, RCPD. To any available nurses and doctors, please know that a quarantine is in immediate effect. After the initial wounds sustained from any bite or scratch marks, the patient is to be immediately quarantined.” That was one way to do it, I decided, entering the kid’s ward.

A kid was laying back in a bed, looking skinny and sickly. He was missing his hair, and the sunken in eyes… chemo, I quickly deduced. “Hey, kid, get out of bed or you’re going to die,” I told him. He seemed in his mid teens, fifteen or so, but he seemed a little older on account of that whole ‘dying’ thing. He blinked at me while Marvin shot me a look as he started gathering up the other kids. He even got a nurse helping him.

“I think I’m going to die anyway, so might as well die comfortably,” he shot back at me. What was with kids these days? Were they physically incapable of being snarky shits?

“Getting ripped to pieces isn’t what I would call comfortable. Come on, up, up, up,” I said, approaching him. A quick look at his chart told me that his name was David.

“Get lost, soccer mom,” he quickly flipped me off and dug his heels in. “I’m dying no matter what. If that cannibal disease doesn't get me then the leukemia will. So, how about you get fucked?”

Seriously, what was wrong with kids these days? “Okay, there’s been a fundamental misunderstanding here -- I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for me. You’ve been rescued. Bask in it. However… if you have the fucking audacity to die after I rescued you,” I jabbed a finger in his face and narrowed my eyes, “I will beat the shit out of you. Got it?”

David’s jaw dropped. He was probably used to people pitying him or something. Oh no, poor David and his mortality. He’s dying too soon. He never had a childhood. Sucks to suck, loser.

As if to confirm my suspicions, he openly gaped at me. “Dude. I have leukemia.”

“You’re about to have a broken nose,” I rebuked, and the shock wore off and he seemed more affronted than anything. He lifted his chin defiantly, fire burning in his eyes.

“You? Kick my ass? Not in this life, soccer mom,” he spat at me. The door opened to the ward, and I saw Chris entering. Perfect timing.

“Fine. Then I’ll get him to kick your ass. Look at him. That’s a man that can punch out a boulder and I’m sure he even knows what a touchdown is,” I said, gesturing to Chris, and he looked like he desperately wanted to know what he just walked into. He gave me a pointed look, and David just rolled his eyes. Then he noticed something that was sitting on my shoulder.

“Is… that a robot?” David blurted, looking at my cannon. “That’s so cool! What’s it called?” He asked me, the sullenness all but forgotten.

I gave it a moment of thought. “Dakka,” I decided, before glancing at Chris. “Get this punk out of bed. We have one more errand to run here. There’s a doctor here with a sci-fi door, and I just know he has connections to Umbrella,” I told him, catching his full attention.

“Right. I’ve scrounged up some nurses and doctors to take with us,” Chris informed, and that was a relief. “Spun some yarn about setting up an emergency hospital at the central station. All non-infected will be directed there. Figured it would be a stop gap until we can get some official forces here to have a proper evacuation.” Having Chris around certainly threw a wrench in my plans, but I couldn’t say it wasn’t reassuring that he was here. It was good to have someone on the level taking command of the situation.

I nodded, figuring that was the best that we could do. Marvin and the nurse he snagged went about helping David, which left me and Chris to go to the sifi door. All the while, Chris told me the plan. “There’s a substation nearby, so we hop on it. Ride to central station. Fortify there and link up with Jill. Then we can get the ball rolling.”

“Makes sense to me,” I decided, seeing the sifi door. Reaching into my pocket, I held up a paperclip to speaker, the imbued property I put into the paperclip came into effect. ‘Get away from me, you lunatic!’ The words from Dr. Bard said to me echoed out of the paperclip.

“Welcome, Dr. Bard,” the door greeted me before the door unlocked itself. Chris looked impressed as I swung the doors open.

“Nanomachines?” He ventured and I swallowed a smirk.

“Nanomachines,” I agreed, stepping into the private office/ laboratory of Dr. Bard. It was organized chaos, which was probably the best way to call it. Reaching out with a hand, I grabbed a plastic bag. Magic flowed into the plastic bag, turning it into a bag of holding. The loss of some ammo certainly sucked, but it was worth it if it got us away from Nemesis. Raccoon City was in a red state, so there would be plenty of ammo to find.

My gaze went to the computer and the papers that were strewn around it while Chris was inspecting everything else, loading up bottles of medicine and ingredients. There was even a red herb! Been looking for those things everywhere. The computer itself was old school, but in todays terms, it was cutting edge -- it was a box monitor and the actual PC was a tower. Unplugging it, I started shoving it into the bag of holding, knowing something of interest would be on it.

Then I continued onward to the back room. In the closet, I saw exactly what I thought I would.

The vaccine.

It was a dark purple liquid located in a syringe that was, in turn, located in a secure case. Tossing that into the bag of holding, a breath that I had been holding eased its way out of me. With this little guy, we could reverse-engineer the vaccine. I might even be able to do it. I had proficiency in medicine, but that didn’t necessarily mean I could reverse engineer a vaccine. Especially considering that I knew fuck and all about virology.

“Get everything we need?” Chris asked me from the main room.

“Yeah, I think so,” I answered. I thought I would find Dr. Bard here… but oh well. That guy was a dick and I wasn’t going to waste my time looking for him. Not when time just became infinitely more precious.

…

It was downright surreal riding the train back. We ended up leaving a skeleton crew back at the hospital, taking a good third of the nurses and doctors that took what they thought they would need to set up a makeshift hospital. People were still riding the trains, completely oblivious to what was happening in the city.

We got a lot of odd looks from various people that got on and off the train. However, those odd looks were quickly directed outward when we arrived at central station and were greeted with a barricade. Those orange and white barricades were set up with more fencing around it, all funneling into a single entrance that was being guarded by police.

“Chris! Rude!” Jill shouted, seeing us on the other side, and there was relief evident in her tone. She waved us through while the other cops began patting people down, checking for bites. Most people in the city still had absolutely no idea what was going on, so there was a lot of friction but that was mostly quelled by how serious the situation was. You could feel it in the air thanks to what seemed like a refugee camp set up in the station with cots set up for people to lay down on.

“Jill,” Chris greeted her in return.

“You two look like shit,” Jill observed, her eyes flickering to the wound on my shoulder and side, then on Dakka, who was reaching the end of her hour of life. Which left me without her since I had to use a spell slot to resummon her.

“I feel like shit,” I agreed, looking around the place. “Everything going smoothly here?” I asked her, and thankfully, I earned a nod in response. At least one of us was having as good day.

“I’ve managed to convince Raymond to take this seriously, but most of the RCPD are trying to contain the dead that just spilled out onto the streets. I’ve tapped into the radios and… it’s not good,” Jill admitted.

I nodded, taking a deep breath. It had finally begun. The start of the apocalypse was here. Nemesis was on the prowl, but we had the vaccine. The situation was fucked, but we were on damage control. Things were… going about as well as I expected, in all honesty. However, taking in that breath revealed something.

“Someone shit their pants,” I informed, looking down at my tactical vest of infants. “And I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t me.”