Resident Evil: Epidemic - 2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

::Symptoms::

When I got home I immediately started on my math homework, some boring crap about a theorem no one cares about. I swear, they must sit around in a committee and think of the most useless things they can possibly teach us. When am I ever going to need this? Ugh, math sucks!

I went on to work on my art project, a pencil drawing of some random guy with a sword. I know, that description doesn’t tell you much of anything, but that’s how I think of it. I’m a fairly decent artist, and this piece is showing that off to the best of my abilities, but I’m honestly sick of having to put out more effort just to get a decent grade. If I shell out something that looks half as bad as the rest of the class’ work I’ll get a “D”.

I finished the majority of the piece when the phone started to ring. It took me about two minutes to remember that I’m the only one here and then made a mad dash across the house to answer it, sliding across the kitchen on the slick tile in my socked feet. I gracefully crashed into the wall, slamming my hip into the counter, and landing on my ass. I got up, winced in pain, and answered the phone.

Salesman. I’m not certain, but I’m fairly sure he learned the full extent of my “expletive” vocabulary. I must have been cursing up a storm, because I didn’t hear my mom come in the back door. When I hung up the phone (slammed it down), there she was, one hand full of groceries, the other on her hip, with a scowl on her face that makes babies cry. Hell, the way she was looking at me would make scary bikers cry.

“Hi, mom…” I said meekly.

“Don’t you dare ‘Hi, mom’ me!” yeah, she was pissed. “Honestly Kieran, what am I going to do with you? Language like that is unacceptable! Where do you get these behaviors? First you decide you’re a sissy, then you think you can cuss like a sailor? I will not tolerate this any longer! You are grounded until you decide to shape up!”

“But mom, I…” she cut me off.

“I don’t want to hear it. Go to your room, I don’t want to see you anymore tonight.” She stormed off, slammed the groceries on the counter, and leaving me staring at the frozen peas dumbfounded. Ten minutes later, she walked back in and found me still standing there.

“Didn’t I just send you to your room? And now you’re crying like a sissy too? Go to your room now!” I hadn’t felt the tears start. I noticed my vision was blurry, but my mind hadn’t registered it. I blinked a few times, sniffled, and went up to my room.

I kicked off my shoes and laid down on my bed. My hip hurt pretty bad from where I hit it on the counter. After the pain didn’t stop after a few minutes, I lifted my shirt and pulled the waist of my jeans down to look at it. I was bleeding quite a bit. There was blood on the bed, too.

I limped back out into the hallway and heard my mom rustling some things around in the kitchen. She was on the phone.

“Honestly, Debbie, I don’t know where he gets the nerve!” I heard her say. “It must be the lack of a father figure. After Jack left for his job opportunity, I tried to do my best. Maybe I’m a bad mother. Maybe I just don’t know how to raise boys. It wasn’t nearly this hard with his sister.” She paused, I'm assuming she was listening to what Debbie had to say. By the time I made it back to the kitchen, I was getting dizzy, and loosing feeling in my left leg.

“..Mom?…” I said, barely a whisper.

“Kieran, how many times do I…” she yelled before she turned around.

My leg gave out, and I was dangerously close to passing out. Looking down at myself, I could see my jeans were stained a nasty dark purplish color, and my normally gray T-shirt was a dark red by my hip. My hands had blood on them. My vision clouded.

“Damn it…”I heard my mom say, and I was vaguely aware of her walking towards me when everything went black.

* * * * *

I woke up sometime later, in a hospital bed. I wasn’t feeling much of anything, so I knew I was on painkillers. I could hear a couple of nurses, a man in his twenties and an older woman, talking in the doorway. I could see the man, he had a long goatee and a pierced eyebrow. The woman was out of sight.

“…It’s the weirdest thing! We’ve had six people come in today with bite wounds, and now three of those six have symptoms of the new flu. Fever, rash, dehydration, the works. There was no one around who could have spread it to them, and they didn’t have symptoms before they came in,” the woman said.

“Isn’t it strange to have a rash if it’s the flu? I’ve never heard of it,” the man said.

“Well, the head doctor here said that Umbrella called the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and they’re still doing the final tests, but the general consensus is that it’s just a new strain. He said not to worry, though, because Umbrella is sending in a new, stronger vaccine, and some of their top virologists,” she said.

“Huh, it’s still weird, though. It seems like weird is going around these days”, the man said. “Jane down in E.R. said she had a patient come in with huge bite marks on his abdomen. Looked like some kinda huge dog or something, but they couldn’t tell what kind. All that could be said for sure was it had very large teeth in the front of its mouth, and he was bitten on the job.”

“Where did he work?”

“He was a plumber for the city sewer system,” he said. “I don’t even wanna know what it could have been. Maybe the stories of the alligators in the sewers are true.”

She laughed, and they both moved on, as a doctor came into the room.

“Hello there, I’m Doctor Swanson. Looks like you had quite an accident,” he said, looking at my chart. “how exactly did you get a four-inch laceration on your left hip?”

“I guess it was just a stupid accident. I was rushing to answer the phone, slipped and hit my hip on the counter. The countertop is unfinished, so there’s still some rough edges,” I said.

“Well, that wouldn’t have been enough time to almost bleed out, are you sure that’s all that happened?”

“I was…upset about something, so I didn’t really feel the pain. It wasn’t until a little while later that I really felt it,” I explained.

“I see. May I ask what was upsetting you?” he asked.

“…It was just a bad phone call. Nothing to be concerned about,” I said, with a bit of conviction.

He looked as if he were still skeptical. “Alright then, if you say so. But just so you know, you can tell me if something is going on at home.”

I laughed without much humor. “Doc, I’m not being abused, I just ran into the damn counter. Nothing to get all bent out of shape and call social services, or anything.” Social services had been called by my doctor before. Not Swanson, but the guy before him, the one that retired, I just can’t remember his name. It was just after I had been outed in seventh grade, and had some bruises from being picked on. I was in for the mandatory physical for starting high school, and the doc saw them. He jumped to conclusions, and then we had the extra headache of having a social worker come out every few weeks.

“Well, you should be okay to go,” he said, returning me to the present. “You need to come back in about ten days to have your stitches removed. If you start to feel nauseous, lightheaded, or dizzy, be sure to come back in right away.” The doctor left, and I went about changing out of the ridiculous ass-less gown they make you wear. My mom had brought an old pair of sweats and a loose fitting shirt while I was out. After I finished, I went out into the hall.

I found my mom walking down the hall toward my room, it looked as if she was coming from the bathroom. She had a sad look (and almost…guilty?) on her face. She stopped in front of me and looked down.

“Are you alright?” she asked with some concern.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. She nodded once, and started toward the front desk. I followed as fast as I could hobble. My leg was starting to hurt.

When we got to the front desk, she started filling out the release paperwork, boring legal insurance crap. I didn’t pay attention. I did however notice the male nurse that was by my room earlier. A younger nurse in here early thirties walked up to him.

“Hey Todd, have you seen Regina?” she said.

“Yeah, we were up in the recovery area earlier,” he said. “But she had to check on one of the patients. Bite victim number four, I think. It was one of the one’s that had the virus. But, she should’ve been back by now…” They walked off down the hall, and I couldn’t make out the rest of what they were saying.

My mom finished with the paperwork, and after she paid the insurance deductible and signed the receipt, we went to the car. She walked a lot slower this time when she noticed me struggling to keep up. My hip was hurting pretty bad now, and I looked like an old man after hip surgery.

After a stop at the drug store, we made it home. When we got inside, she said, “You’re still grounded, you know.”

I sighed, hung my head and said in a whisper, “Yeah, I know.”

“I’m not just going to excuse your behavior because you hurt yourself,” she said.

I nodded.

“Take your pills and head to bed. I’ll check on you in a while,” she said.

The pain pill must have been pretty good, because next thing I knew it was nine P.M. My stomach rumbled pretty loudly, reminding me I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, at about 11:30. I headed downstairs, only slightly wincing as I walked. Most of the pain was gone, it was just sore now.

When I got to the kitchen, I found a plate of chicken wrapped in plastic wrap in the refrigerator. I pulled it out, unwrapped it, and put it in the microwave to heat up. I went into the living room and found my mom. She was watching some show on the Discovery channel, about how they make ice cream. She looked over at me.

“Dinner is in the refrigerator,” she said.

“I know, I found it. It’s heating up,” I said.

She nodded, then went back to her show. We used to be close, her and I. My mom and dad raised my sister Bethany until she went off to college. Two years later, my mom got pregnant again, even though the doctors didn’t think it was possible. I was born on November the eighth, at 1:39 A.M.

My dad got a job opportunity that he said he couldn’t pass up when I was three years old. He was a pharmaceutical technician, and was hired by Umbrella Incorporated. We moved to Raccoon City shortly after that. When I was five, he had an “important assignment” that involved an experiment where he needed to live on site for about six months. He was getting a huge bonus for this job, and it was supposed to revolutionize modern medicine. We weren’t allowed to be told any more than that. Two years and about a hundred unreturned phone calls later, we figured out that he left us. We later found out he became a “Regional Manager” and was transferred to Houston, Texas.

After that, it was just me and mom against the world. I took after her in looks, having the same curly brownish gold hair, green eyes, and small nose. Our personalities are pretty similar too, both pretty laid back and down to Earth. We did pretty much everything together. I have pretty much always been lacking in the friend department, but we had each other, and we were happy. At least, as happy as a single mother and her son can be. Everything changed in seventh grade, and it was all because of Bobby Gibson.

In short, he was beautiful. He had short blonde hair, always kind of messy. He had large, blue-green eyes, with long lashes that were darker than the rest of his hair. His nose was thin and straight, and was slightly upturned at the end, giving him an elfin look. And on top of his physical beauty, he had a wonderful personality too. At least, I thought he did.

Despite my social status, he was actually nice to me. We weren’t really good friends, or anything, but we got along pretty well. Until that one day in gym class, when he caught me looking at him a little too long. He freaked. Called me a fag, homo, queer, you name it. It didn’t take long for word to spread, because half the boys in my grade were in that class.

My mom is a teacher at the Junior High, so of course, she heard the gossip, and confronted me about it at home. I never lied. So things have become…strained. Most of the time she just ignores it, but occasionally she blows up like this afternoon, and I have to hear it. At least she still loves me though. So I guess it could be worse. Life just sucks sometimes.

The bell on the microwave went off, so I went back and got the chicken. I grabbed a can of Dr. Pepper on the way back to the living room, then went in and sat down on the couch. We have a dining room, and a table, but don’t ever use it. There’s no TV in there.

I ate my dinner in silence. I could tell she tensed up the minute I walked into the room, so I decided it would be a bad idea to try to engage her in conversation. Before the incident in seventh grade, we would have been laughing at the TV together, or making cheesy jokes about the narrator on these stupid Discovery Channel shows. But now, here I am eating dinner in silence, not wanting her to yell at me, and trying to hold back tears. God, I hate how emotional I get!

She cleared her throat, and said, “I’m going to bed. You can stay home if your leg is still hurting.”

“I should be alright to go,” I said.

She nodded, told me to head to bed soon, and left the room.

The tears started not too long after she left the room. Sometimes, like tonight, I really miss my mom. I know she’s here, but she really hasn’t been here for me in a long time. She basically does what she has to, then leaves me alone. It sucks.

I turned on the news to get my mind off of it. I really needed a distraction.

“Umbrella virologists are still saying at this point that the virus is nothing more than an unusually potent version of the flu, and to stock up on things like over the counter flu medicines if you show symptoms,” the reporter said. The picture changed to one of a man in a business suit, Dr. Ashford was on the screen under his image. “Reports of flu related death are highly exaggerated, and designed as a prank by high school students.” The picture changed once again, to that of people in line at the store for flu medicine. “The best thing you can do for right now if you show symptoms, is to stay inside, drink a lot of water, and get plenty of rest.”

The TV went to commercial, and I got up to get another Dr. Pepper. When I sat back down, the news was back on.

“In other news, the Raccoon Police Department is still investigating the bizarre cannibalistic attacks that have been increasing in number. Police Chief Brian Irons initiated an 8:00 PM curfew for all residents until the investigation is over.”

“This came as quite a surprise following his suspension of the Special Tactics and Rescue Service, or S.T.A.R.S. teams, a controversial decision considering the S.T.A.R.S. were investigating the attacks at the time of their suspension.”

The screen changed to Chief Irons. “The suspension of the S.T.A.R.S. teams had nothing to do with the reports filed by the surviving members. The loss of life was a tragedy, but it was caused by poor police work, nothing else. The investigation will result in whether or not the S.T.A.R.S. is a valuable asset to the R.P.D.

“There is no evidence to support the rumors of a bizarre cult operating out of the Raccoon Forest. The current cannibals are thought to be copycats of the original criminals, and they will be brought to justice. The curfew will be in effect until the crisis is thought to be over, and is for the safety and protection of our citizens,” he said.

I turned off the TV, and idly wondered if there could be a connection between the flu and the cannibal attacks. Those nurses at the hospital did say that some of the people with bite wounds had mysteriously contracted the new flu. Nah, surely the Umbrella Virologists would have figured that out. I’ve seen too many bad horror movies. The male nurse was right though, weird definitely seems to be going around these days.