The first thing Carl saw was a certain blonde looking down on her. Immediately he looked at his hands and was more than relieved to realize it wasn’t rotting.

“Hey.” Jean smiled.

“Hey.” Carl replied. “How long was I out?”

“About an hour.” she answered. “We were lucky. Alice’s blood worked on us.” She paused for a second. “The same can’t be said for JD.”

Carl closed his eyes for a few seconds before standing up from the bed. A few gunshots from outside suddenly caught his attention. This was not exactly what he imagined to hear in the outside world. “What was that?”

Jean’s mouth hung open for a second before telling the truth. “Somehow the infection was spread into the outside world.” She saw an angry look on Carl and immediately explained. “It wasn’t me. It was Xia and Ivan. They must’ve brought zombie bodies to the outside world.” In fact Jean knew they did. After all, she saw Xia collecting infected bodies, but Carl didn’t need to know that. It was for his own safety.

Carl groaned and slammed his fist onto a stand. In his anger, he didn’t see the mark his fist left on the desk. Standing up, he demanded. “Where are we?”

“We are in a house in Racoon City, but we need to move quickly.” They both knew a nuke would be coming this way in no time.

Carl walked out of the bedroom and met up with the rest of what was left of the team. They entered the Hive with twelve men, fifteen including Alice, Addison, and Spence. Just a few hours later there were only seven of them left. The medic died at the laser hallway. JD and Warner died by t-virus. Xia and Ivan left. Shade died via chewing. Spence got shot in the head. Carl felt something was wrong and he counted the names again, but nothing special came out. Shrugging, he classified that feeling as being too tired.

“What should we do?” The mercenaries looked at Carl as Rain asked. Usually decisions in the Sanitation Team were made by Shade. The rest of the team simply complied. Now that Shade was gone, what was left of the team subconsciously looked for a substitute leader. In this case, it was Carl.

“We need to warn the rest of the world about this.” Addison suggested. He was always against Umbrella and wanted to expose its secrets to the world. This case was no different. Rain looked at him but didn’t say anything. Her loyalty to Umbrella was no longer enough to convince her to turn on someone that fought with her side by side. Plus, even her thought t-virus was too much. It was already ending the world, and as its cause Umbrella was completely responsible.

Jean pointed at outside. Her power told her the infected count have already grown to thousands. “Oh I’m certain something like this can’t be covered up. I think our top priority is to get out of here. The police are gradually overrun. If we want to escape, we need to do it quickly.”

Carl nodded. “Map?”

Kaplan pulled out a map of Racoon City on his computer. A red line representing the Umbrella barricade surrounded the city. “The only way out is Raven Gate Bridge, and that is heavily guarded by Umbrella forces. They are scanning the civilians and letting them through one by one. It’s going slowly.”

“We will never make it through the gate in time. Everyone in the city is going there.” Alice reasoned. Jean and Carl didn’t need to use logic to know the gate was a bad idea. Their memory was enough to tell them Umbrella would close the gate quickly, sealing everyone still left in the city to death by zombies.

“We’re in a giant city. It’s not like there’s only one way out.” Jean pointed at several other points. “This is the closest spot.” She looked at Carl meaningfully. ”So what do you say? Do we leave as soon as possible or...”

Carl frowned. He knew what Jean meant. “We’ll see.” He looked at his watch, not for voyager purposes but for the watch itself. “We move in ten minutes. Get ready.”

“Yes sir.” Jean answered rather formerly. The rest of the team departed, getting ready for the next fight.

Meanwhile, at the Umbrella barricade at Raven Gate Bridge, two figures stood among the crowd of civilians. They weren’t carrying any obvious weapons, but a cold look in their eyes differentiate them from the frightened men and women around them.

Among the civilians, a man suddenly collapsed on the ground, coughing. The civilians had no idea what was happening, but both the Umbrella commanding officer and the two voyagers knew what this meant.

“They’re going to close the gate.” Xia tapped on her watch. If the gate was closed, then they might be stuck in the city. As strong as they were, it’s not like they could just jump over the wall. Eventually, as soon as the important personnel were evacuated, Umbrella High Command would launch a nuclear missile at the city. Even voyager battle suits couldn’t stand against a direct blast of a nuclear explosion. If they wanted to move, they needed to do it now.

A pair of black pistols solidified in her hands. The few civilians that saw her weapons turned and fled, not that she killed.

“Let’s go.” Ivan saw a person on the wall talking to an Umbrella soldier beside him. Wasting no time, he wiped his hand on his watch and dropped two grenades on the ground. Immediately, a thick layer of smoke covered the crowd.

Racoon City civilians were already on high alert. Being woken up in the middle of the night by screams from outside and running miles only to get blocked by armed forces, they were already an explosive waiting to be lit. The smoke was the last spark. As smoke covered the field, screams and complaints soon followed. People started to run around like headless chicken.

“What the…” Major Timothy Cain, commander of the Umbrella forces in the city, frowned at the chaos below. He knew there should be some chaos when he closed the gate and condemned those below to death, but that didn’t explain the smoke. Doesn’t matter. “Close the gate.” He repeated.

“But our men are still down there!” A captain said with disbelief. Sending civilians to die was bad enough, but that should be fine against an iron first. The unarmed people could only yield and comply against an army of soldiers, but if Cain was to send a part of the soldiers to die...there was no telling what the rest of the soldiers would do. The single order might do more damage than a small horde of zombies.

Cain had other concerns. There were mercenaries all over the planet, and Umbrella had enough money to buy an army. A few soldiers could be replaced, but if the infection was spread into the outside world...the best case he would be replaced and sent to a lower position. Worst case? He would be used as a lab rat. Knowing Wesker, Major Cain knew he could do such a thing.

“Yes sir.” The captain finally obeyed. Cain made the decision, which meant he would hold the responsibility. He was just obeying orders.

The metal gate was lowering. At first Umbrella soldiers within the wall were being all nice and cocky and business doing against the crying civilians. They were fine with sending the civilians to die, but the entire time they thought themselves would be evacuated first. That was why they were completely taken by surprise when the door closed and they were still on the wrong side of the wall, stuck with the civilians they were just pushing back.

Two soldiers closest to the door acted before they could think, and that probably saved their lives. They quickly slipped through the door and to the safe side of the gate. The rest of the men weren’t so fortunate. They could only stare at the closed gate and swear desperately in the comm.

Ignoring the angry voices in the chat, the captain turned around and was about to leave when he felt a sudden pain in the back of his head. That was the last thing he knew.

Using the chaos created by shutting off the gate, Xia’s pistols singed without being noticed. The captain was on the wall, but to Xia on the wall was the same as within five feet. The man was the first, but he was not the last. Before the Umbrella forces could even see where the shot came from(Xia’s pistols had silencers and the smoke covered her), several other Umbrella soldiers were dropped. The black helmets were ripped open by flying bullets. Bodies fell down from the wall and were transformed into bags of flesh.

Major Cain was on the ground as soon as the first shot came out. He wasn’t a combatant, so he wasn’t the first priority.

“Fight back!” The man yelled while backing up. This wall could not fall. Wesker would have his head, certainly figuratively and maybe even literally. “Take them out!”

The sound of automatic rifles firing echoed through the scene as soldiers retaliated. Since the smoke grenades were launched, most of the civilians have turned back and fled into the city. The few police officers joined them. Umbrella troopers did their best to fire into the smoke, but how were they supposed to kill the enemy if they couldn’t even see them?

Umbrella troopers fired into the cloud, but there was no proof that they hit anything. Theoretically speaking the visual block worked both ways, but...looking at another two comrades being shot in the head, the rest of the soldiers wondered what type of monster they were facing.

To be fair, there was a lot of Umbrella soldiers at the gate. However, major Cain decided to send most of them to be models under the wall to show the world the might of Umbrella. As soon as they were abandoned and shots were fired, they practically turned and ran into the city. Why would they risk their lives for a cause that abandoned them already? Most of what was left of the defenders were in an Umbrella base way behind the wall. They were ready to leave, and calling them back here would take them. Just the two dozen soldiers on the wall were pinned down by the insanely accurate gunner. Anyone that poked his head out would be taken out almost immediately.

The only thing going well was that the attackers didn’t have a mean to go through the gate. No matter how accurate a pistol was, it couldn’t go through a one meter thick metal gate.

Major Cain wanted to swear when a rocket slammed into the gate. Immediately, the giant impact of the explosion pushed the gate back. Cain and the rest of the soldiers shook as the wall took the heat.

When the cloud cleared, one third of the gate was gone. Cain barely had time to take a breath of relief when the second rocket came, and then the third, and then the fourth.

When the eighth rocket hit, Cain came to a conclusion. “We can’t hold this!” He had no idea what sort of madman brought rocket launchers with them, but he did know he didn’t have the men to stop the attackers. If he stood and fought, he might die right here right now. Fail the mission, and he might survive and have a chance to make up for this failure. “Fall back! Retreat!” He was the first to flee. The rest of the men abandoned their position as well. Their commander left. Why should they remain?

When the gate fell and the smoke cleared, Xia and Ivan casually walked through the half destroyed wall.

Unknown to Carl, someone just opened up a path for human beings to flee the city that would soon be nuked. Then again, this path wasn’t necessarily made for human beings.

The infected now have a way to leave Racoon City whenever they wanted to.