Resident Evil: Exodus - The Tale of Elza Walker

Chapter 1 - Refuge

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It was late in the evening of the 28th of September, 1998 ... the fourth day of the T-virus outbreak in Raccoon City. The Outbreak, as it would ever after be known. There was a longer, more official-sounding term which used many more syllables but said far less. For the pitiful handful who lived through that entire event and somehow survived to tell about it, those two simple words - the Outbreak - said enough.

The street which ran alongside the eastern walls of the old Raccoon Police Department (RPD) station house was temporarily clear of zombies. The reason was obvious enough, for anyone still human who might have looked down upon the scene. A swath of death even for the undead had been cleared by an out-of-control police SWAT van. It had just finished crashing into the back of the building, smashing through a retaining wall in the process. The front end, with its shattered front axle, had caught on the remains of the wall itself at its broken base, while the rest of the van remained outside. Thus, it neatly plugged the very hole it had created.

Things were no better within the small walled courtyard behind the old RPD, where the front half of the wrecked SWAT van now protruded. The wreck had split the van's gas tank, and most of it had spilled inside the courtyard. A fire had started several minutes later, most likely by a spark from the van's still-live electrical system. Fortunately by then, enough of the gas had dispersed to prevent an immediate explosion. Even so, all of it ignited at once, completely engulfing the van and almost half of the inner courtyard in a spectacular gout of flame. Anybody who would have been caught in that instantaneous fireball would have died a horrific death. The fire had claimed only one victim, however. He, or rather it, had already been dead. It was the zombie which had been on the front of the van when it had wrecked, almost completely blocking the driver's side of the windshield as it had clawed at the window, trying to get at the driver inside. It was now burning alive ... or unalive, perhaps? Its fatal wails filled the courtyard and the streets beyond as it staggered about, then fell to its knees and collapsed. Seconds later, it was little more than a pile of roasting flesh and burning bones. The same went for the other body in the flames, but it had already been dead before the fire had even broken out. It had been the driver of the van, and he had been killed instantly in the crash. The only reason his body had been left in the driver's seat was that the van's two passengers, who had been in the back, had been forced to make good their hurried escape. There had been no time even to say a few words over him. No time ... and now both the dead and the undead thing which had caused the wreck were perishing in the flames.

Huddled in the far corner of the courtyard, where both the lee of the old RPD building and an oversized packing crate protected them from the heat and flames, were two dirty and disheveled police officers. One was a well-built man in his mid- to late twenties, with a square jaw and reddish brown hair parted in the middle. He wore the short-sleeve version of the padded blue fatigues of an RPD officer assigned to the Special Police Force (SPF), the department's new elite SWAT unit. The other was a petite female officer who also appeared to be about the same age, wearing the light blue shirt and dark blue pants more commonly worn by the rest of the force. She had short, closely cropped blond hair, and might have easily been mistaken for a meter maid back in the day had it not been for the standard issue gunbelt she wore. Both sported a number of cuts, bruises, and abrasions earned from the wreck of the SWAT van. Both were also armed. It was fortunate for them that their pistols had been holstered when the van wrecked. Any other weapons or gear they might have had were now burning with it. All they had left to them was what was on their person. It was all they had left to survive.