SEVEN
GOD HELP ME, I'VE FINALLY SEEN IT FOR MYSELF;God help us all.They lied to us. Dr. Robison and the Umbrella peopleheld a press conference at the hospital just this morning,and they damn near insisted that there's no need topanic – that the cases being called in were isolated events,that the victims were suffering from the flu; not, accord-ing to them, the so-called cannibal disease that the
S.T.A.R.S. were going on about in July, in spite of what a few "paranoid" citizens are now saying. Chief Irons was there, too, he backed the docs up and reiterated his views on the defunct S.T.A.R.S.'s incompetence; case closed, right? Nothing to worry about. We were on our way back to the office from the press conference, south on Cole Street, and there was a commo-tion holding up traffic, a couple of stopped cars and a gath-ering crowd. No cops on the scene. I thought it was some minor accident and started to back up, but Dave wanted to get a few shots; he still had two rolls of film left from the hospital, what the hell. We got out and suddenly people were running, screaming for help, and we saw three pedes-trians down in the middle of the street, and there was blood everywhere. The attacker was young, barely twenty, white male – he was straddling an older man, and… My hands are shaking, I don't know how to say it, I don't want to say it but it's my job. People have to know. I can't let this get to me. He was eating one of the older man's eyes. The other two victims were dead, slaughtered, an elderly woman and a younger one, both of them with bloody throats and faces. The younger woman's abdomen had been ripped open. It was chaos, total hysteria – crying, shouting, even some crazy laughter. Dave snapped two pies and then threw up on himself. I wanted to do something, I did, but those people were already dead and I was afraid. The young man slurped away, digging his fingers into the man's other eye, seemingly oblivious to everything else; he was actually moaning like he couldn't get enough, gore all over him. We heard the sirens and backed off along with everyone else. Most people left, but a few stayed, pale and sick and frightened. I got the story from a chubby shopkeeper who couldn't stop wringing his hands, though there wasn't much else to tell – the kid apparently just wandered onto the street and grabbed a woman, started biting her. The shopkeeper said the woman's name was Joelle something-or-other, and she was walking with her mother, a Mrs. Mur-ray (the shopkeeper didn't know her first name). Mrs. Murray tried to stop the attack, and the kid turned on her. A couple of men tried to help, jumping the kid, and he managed to get one of them, too. After that, nobody tried to help anymore. The cops showed up and before they even looked at the mess in the street – at the freakshow kid lunching on his fellow man – they cleared and secured the scene. Three squad cars surrounded the attacker, blocking him from view. The shopkeeper was actually told to close up and go home, along with the rest of us. When I told one of the offi-cers that Dave and I were with the press, he confiscated Dave's camera; said it was evidence, which is total and utter bullshit, like they have a right… Listen to me, worried about freedom of the press at this point. It doesn't matter. At four o'clock this afternoon, one hour ago, Mayor Harris declared martial law; blockades have been set up all over the place, and we've been cut off from the outside. According to Harris, the city's been quar-antined so that the "unfortunate illness that is plaguing some of our citizens" won't spread. He wouldn't call it the cannibal disease, but there's obviously no question – and according to our police scanner, the attacks are multiply-ing exponentially. I believe that it may already be too late for all of us. The disease isn't airborne or we'd all have it, but the evidence strongly suggests that you get it when you're bitten by one of them, just like in the movies I used to watch on the Dou-ble Creature Feature when I was a boy. That would explain the incredible growth rate of the attacks – but it also tells me that unless the cavalry comes in very soon, we're all going to die, one way or another. The cops have closed down the press, but I'm going to try to get the word out anyway, even if I have to go door-to-door. Dave, Tom, Kathy, Mr. Bradson – everyone else has gone home to be with their families. They don't care about letting the people know anymore, but it's all I have left. I don't want to I just heard glass breaking downstairs. Somebody's coming.
There wasn't any more. Carlos lowered the crum-pled sheets he'd found, placing them on the reporter's desk, his mouth a grim line. He'd killed two zombies in the hallway… maybe one of them had been the writer, a distressing thought made all the worse by its application -how long had it taken for the writer to change? And if he's right about the disease, how long does Randy have?
A police scanner and some kind of handheld radio sat on a countertop across the room, but suddenly all he could think of was Randy, downstairs and getting sicker, waiting for Carlos to come back. He'd held up pretty well so far, managing to crawl through two of the blockades with only a little help, but by the time they'd reached the Raccoon Press building, he'd hardly been able to stand up on his own. Carlos had left him propped up beneath a dead pay phone on the first floor, not wanting to drag him up the stairs; a few small fires were smoldering on the lower landing, and Carlos had been afraid that Randy might trip and get burned…… which might be the least of his worries right now. Puta, what a balls-up. Why didn't they tell us what we were getting into?
Carlos choked down the despair that question raised; it was something he could take up with the proper au-thorities once they got out of here. He'd probably end up being deported, since he was only in the country through Umbrella, but so what? At the moment, going back to his old life sounded like a picnic. He hurried to the radio equipment and switched the scanner on, not sure what to do next; he'd never used one, and his only experience with two-way radios was a set of walkie-talkies he'd once played with as a kid. 200 CHANNEL MULTI-BAND was written on top of the scanner, and there was actually a scan button. He pushed it and watched a small digital readout flash meaningless numbers at him. Except for a few static bursts and clicks, nothing happened.
Great. That's real helpful.
The radio was what he wanted, anyway, and it at least looked like a walkie-talkie, though it said, AM/SSB TRANSCEIVER on the side. He picked it up, wondering if there were channels, or if there was some memory con-trol button and heard footsteps out in the hall. Slow, dragging footsteps. He dropped the radio on the counter and hefted his assault rifle, turning toward the door that opened into the hallway, already recognizing the shuffling, aimless steps of a zombie. The large newspaper office was the only room on the second floor; unless he wanted to jump out a window, the hall and stairs were the only way out. He'd have to kill it to get back to…