Serenity

BIO HAZARD, the beginning… GO
By HIROYUKI ARIGA, the story narrated on 7 chapters and 127 pages explaining the events before Resident Evil 1

The prologue included a brief interview with R.E. producer Shinji Mikami, and (voila!), a short 7-chapter novel (written by Hiroyuki Ariga) followed.

The story begins when Chris receives a strange late-night call from his long-lost friend Billy Rabitson, and ends when the S.T.A.R.S. chopper lands at the Spencer estate. About 16 or so illustrations graced the pages of this book. Many of them have now become classics.

Right now discover the texts, which explain the events that took place before the beginning of Resident Evil.

Chapter One: Resident Evil

Whenever the phone rings in the middle of the night. I know someone’s dead who wasn’t dead the day before. Happens all the time. Except when it’s a wrong number. Like this totally drunk woman who thought I was her long lost lover. Or the idiot who tied up my line with a long monologue in Portuguese.

I’ve had this late-night fear of the phone for five years now, ever since a state police chaplain called me at two a.m. to tell me my parents were dead. Their vacation van had been crushed by a runaway big rig. The coroner had to ID them through dental records, they were mangled so bad.

Even though I’m assigned to S.T.A.R.S., Special Tactics and Rescue Squad, a Raccoon City P.D. strike force formed to handle violent crime and victim rescues, I still get spooked when the phone rings in the dark hours before dawn. A lot of felonies are perpetrated at night. Most people are sleeping, so there usually aren’t any witnesses around. A violent crime can go unreported for hours. Which means that when I get there, the victim’s usually stiff as a board.

Yeah, when that phone rings late at night, it’s a good bet something bad’s going down.

Like a half hour ago. I was having my favorite dream, the one where I’m a rock star besieged by adoring female fans, when I got a call from Billy, my best friend from school. Normally, I like hearing from old friends, even in the middle of the night. But this was not a normal call, not unless they’d started installing cell phones in coffins. Billy, you see, had been dead for three months.

My old buddy had been an up-and-coming researcher for a large local outfit called the Umbrella Company. Then, about three months before, he’d suddenly been transferred to Chicago to work on some hush-hush research project. He’d left Raccoon City aboard the Company’s corporate jet on what seemed like a routine flight. It turned out to be anything but routine. An hour after takeoff, ground control lost radar and voice contact with the aircraft.

The day after the jet’s disappearance, a fishing boat found several pieces of the plane’s wreckage and the bodies of eight passengers floating in the Great Lakes. Billy and 12 other passengers were never found, and searchers finally concluded that their bodies had mysteriously sunk into the cold depths. Case closed, except for the memorial service for Billy, and some bittersweet memories of a good friend I’d never see again.

Or hear from again. This call had to be some kind of twisted joke. “Whoever you are, you’ve got a sick sense of humor,” I said, wishing I could get my hands on the miscreant on the other end of the line.

“Chris, I swear it’s me. Billy.

This time I listened closely to the caller’s voice, zeroing in on his tone and inflection. It sure sounded like Billy. But I wanted to hear him speak another couple of sentences before I made up my mind. “If this is Billy, tell me how you survived the plane crash.”