Jon and Nightcrawler: Goin' to Raccoon City

With the incident at the Grand Canyon weighing heavily on my mind, Nightcrawler and I quickly made our way to Raccoon City. We nearly reached our destination when we were forced to slow down due to the garbage cans, overturned cars, and other items littering the highway. As we weaved through the ersatz roadblock, a figure appeared before us.

“Turn back while you can,” he warned as we slowed to a stop near him.

“Who are you?” I leaned my arm out the window and looked at him.

“I used to work here in the city,” he answered. “Everything seemed nice until the zombies came!”

“Zombies?” Nightcrawler exclaimed. “Holy glockenspiel!”

“It’s something to do with the Umbrella Corporation,” the man continued. “They were working on something sinister and the zombies are a result. They’re unstoppable!”

“And you know Umbrella is behind this?” I asked. “Is there any proof?”

“There’s zombies coming out of their labs all over the place!” he wailed. “What more do you need? They should just nuke this whole city, man! Burn this place to the ground!”

I waved a thank you to the frantic man and we pulled up to our destination. We were then greeted by a woman at the guard station.

“I’m Lynn Martin,” she introduced herself. “I’m the director of this facility. I think you already know what’s going on.”

“Yeah, but zombies?” I asked. “What’s up with that?”

Lynn quickly explained that they were developing a top secret super solider formula for the US government. The formula mutated and the zombies were a result. This “T-Virus” would infiltrate a victim’s DNA and transform him or her into a cannibalistic zombie. She also explained our options: Total annihilation or try to find a cure. Within the bio labs was plenty of research that we could use in our endeavor.

“Well, I’m no scientist,” I stated flatly. “But we’ve got to try to save these people.”

“Jah, I agreed,” nodded Nightcrawler. “These poor souls need our help.”

“There are weapons stashed along various routes,” Megan added. “You can use them as you work your way through the levels. We staged them there knowing that the zombies don’t have the capacity to use them. Be careful, they may be slow and plodding, but the zombies are relentless. They’ll smell you and they won’t stop until they get you or are destroyed.”

“Got it.” I gave her the thumbs up and Nightcrawler and I dashed into the building. We quickly scooped up a pair of M16 rifles sitting in the front lobby. Less than a few feet away, our first zombie brainlessly shuffled towards us.

“Brainsssss....”

I aimed my weapon and pulled the trigger. I felt the jarring effect of the gunpowder igniting, but something didn’t seem right about it.

“Pop and no kick,” I said. Quickly, I dropped the magazine out of the rifle, pulled the bolt back, and tapped the takedown pin. I opened the weapon and peered through the barrel. “Yep, the round’s stuck in the barrel. Had I fired this on full auto, we’d both be in a world of hurt.”

“Good thing you only fired one bullet, Jon,” Nightcrawler said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It would be foolish to open up on these creatures with full auto when a few quick shots would likely be all that we need. I have a suspicion though that your own weapon will do the same.”

“Brainssss….” The decomposing mockery of a man stepped closer.

Emulating the way I field stripped my rifle; my mutant companion opened his up and looked down the barrel of the one he was holding.

“Mein Gott, you’re right!” he exclaimed. “The first bullet traveling through here will get lodged halfway through! But was ist?”

“I suspect that whoever wants us in here, doesn’t want us to get out alive.”

“Brainsssss….” The zombie lurched closer.

“So what do we do now?” Nightcrawler asked. “We have a lab full of zombies and I bet that any weapon we encounter would also be booby trapped.”

“They didn’t count on us having this though.” I pulled my sleeve up to reveal the Wristcomm strapped around my forearm. “I’ve dealt with zombies before. Even the warped and primitive brainstems of these creatures could not endure a sonic assault.”

“Brainssss…..” The nearly brain dead undead threw itself at us. We quickly dodged its clumsy attack and I fired my sonic stun blast at it. It loosed a pained howl and crumpled to the ground.

“Nice,” Nightcrawler whistled. “I think I can teleport us near the second level bio lab.”

He grabbed me and once again I felt the dizzying effects of being pulled trough his dimensional portal. When my eyes regained focus, I saw a long corridor in front of me. At the other end was door marked Bio Lab 2. In between us and the lab was a horde of zombies.

“Brainss….”

“Zis is a close as I could put us,” Nightcrawler said. “We’ll have to fight the rest of the way.”

“Somehow I knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” I replied.

Nightcrawler and I leaped into action. Using my sonic attack, we disabled most of the creatures; still many more were felled by my kicks and Nightcrawler’s acrobatic attacks.

After working our way through the unfortunate victims of the zombification, we threw ourselves into the lab and had a look around.

“Vell?” Nightcrawler shrugged. “Now vhat?”

“Maybe something in this computer will help.” I sat down in front of the terminal and started working the keyboard. Images quickly flashed up on the screen. “Interesting.”

“Was ist?”

“This doesn’t appear to be a super soldier serum at all,” I said while looking at the characteristics of the T-Virus. “This looks like it started out as some sort of mind control formula.”

“Wow,” Nightcrawler audibly let out a breath of air. “If they could control everyone’s minds, they could... That’s just evil.”

“Here’s something about a cure,” I said. “It was still in the testing stages, but it looks like this retrovirus can reverse the effects of the T-Virus. Maybe we can follow this formula and synthesize the cure.”

“We can call it the X-Virus!” Nightcrawler said excitedly.

I looked at him for a minute.

“I should have guessed that you were going to say that,” I answered. “How are we going to test our hypothesis with this synthesis?”

“Ve do have a hallway full of subjects right out zhere,” Nightcrawler pointed to the door.

“Here’s an atomizer!” I quickly poured the cure into the tank of the spray device. With Nightcrawler right behind me, I opened the door just enough to spray the closest zombie. It howled and grasped its face with its once-human claws.

“Something’s happening!” Nightcrawler said excitedly. We pulled the moaning zombie inside and laid him on the floor. He began to look more human, but he was still covered in scars and scabs. “It may take a vhile for his skin to heal.”

“Yeah, everyone we cure here will need to spend some quality time in a hospital, but it looks like it works. Let’s get this into the ventilation system.”

Nightcrawler grabbed me again and again I endured the topsy-turvy felling of being teleported. This time we arrived on the third level, near the environmental control facility. We quickly dumped the cure into the air conditioning and turned the machine up full blast. Looking at the security monitors, we saw zombies on all levels writhe and collapse, their undead wailings transformed into more human-like moans. Nightcrawler and I cheered and gave each other a high five, then we teleported back to the guard station.

“I can’t believe you’re back!” Lynn ran up to us. “I thought the zombies would get you for sure.”

“You would’ve liked that, wouldn’t you?” I asked. Then I punched her right in the face. She flopped to the ground, then looked up at us while clutching her sore jaw.

“Jon, are you verrückt?” my Germanic teammate exclaimed. “Vhy vould you punch her?”

“Because she’s not who we think she is!” I reached down and pulled off her mask.

“Was? The guy from zhe outskirts of town?”

“That’s not all!” I pulled off another mask.

“Evel Knievel? But vhy vould he be mixed up in zis?”

“Ah, but he’s not!” I triumphantly tore the Evel Knievel mask off.

“Danny Bonaduce?” cried Nightcrawler. “Now I am very confused.”

“So am I,” I admitted. “I didn’t expect this.”

“I’m not Danny Bonaduce, you idiots!” He pulled off another mask.

“Tom Cruise!” Nightcrawler and I yelled in unison.

“That’s right,” he answered.

“But why?” I asked.

“I’ll show you.” Tom pulled down a screen and revealed an elaborate plan to take over the world. “We’re tired of waiting and people are getting too smart to fall for this Scientologist stuff. So we decided to use mind control. We would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you pesky do-gooders!”

I hauled Tom Cruise up off the floor and handed him over to the police, who were just bursting through the door.

“Take him away, boys,” I said (just a little smugly).

“No jail can hold me,” Tom growled. “I’m famous! And rich! I’ll get the best lawyers and when I do, you’ll be sorry!”

“Zhat was very clever of you,” Nightcrawler said as the police hauled the cackling celebrity away. “Who would have guessed that the Scientologists were behind this all?”

“You’re right, my friend.” I then looked at the camera. I don’t get to break the fourth wall very often. “But was this all clever social commentary, or lame satire?”

“Does it matter?” Nightcrawler asked. “Ve still have a race to win! Let’s go!”

With that, we dashed out of the guard post and raced to the Raccoon City police station.