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BEFORE AND AFTER

ONE

BEFORE

Dr. Jim Knable stood on the Ravens’ Gate Bridge, with a seething tide of humanity heading straight for him. Knable was grateful for the presence of the Umbrella Corporation security guards and members of the Raccoon City Police Department who were stemming that particular tide, keeping him from being overrun.

Knable and a small medical station had been placed at the wall that had been hastily constructed around Raccoon City. The island metropolis had been completely enclosed by that wall, with the only opening at this bridge, the major artery in and out of Raccoon.

The outbreak of a virus that didn’t just kill you but animated your corpse and gave it an instinctive need to feed on human flesh—thus transmitting the disease to more and more people—brought a fierce desire on the part of the surviving citizens to leave the city as fast as they could. But the risk of infection was quite high, so the Umbrella Corporation—the pharmaceuticals and electronics firm that paid Knable’s obscenely high salary—physically quarantined the city and would allow only those who were uncontaminated to leave.

That morning, when the outbreak was first announced, Knable had been given the specifics of the virus and told to develop a quick-test that would determine if the virus was in a sample of human blood. Knable had pioneered many streamlinings of standard blood tests, the patents for which would guarantee him a comfortable retirement. But Knable was only in his late twenties, and he still wanted to practice. Umbrella, having purchased the rights to use his procedure for their Medical Division, which provided services to hospitals around the world, hired him to do just that.

The rumor around the lab was that Umbrella had actually developed this virus, though Knable didn’t really credit rumors. It wasn’t as if samples of tainted blood were hard to come by right now. Some of those rumors were that the virus had wiped out the Hive, killing all five hundred people who worked in that underground complex. Knable had a few friends down in the Hive, and he hadn’t actually heard from any of them since yesterday—but then, he often went days without hearing from them.

However, that wasn’t Knable’s primary concern. He’d spent the better part of the day taking blood from people and running the quick-test, with only one food break, and then only because he was on the verge of collapse. Major Cain had been willing to let him take more breaks, but with so many people piling onto the bridge wanting to leave and unable to do so without Knable’s express okay, the doctor couldn’t bring himself to keep them waiting.

By the time darkness fell, he could barely stay upright. Sleep was building up in his eyes, and he tried to rub them, only to wince from the oily feel of the rubber glove on his eyelids.

The crowds had just grown larger with the onset of night. Knable had long since lost track of how many quick-tests he’d done. Whenever he was in danger of running out of anything—test tubes, gas for the Bunsen burner, rubber gloves, or the solvent he had developed—some black-suited person from Security Division showed up with a fresh supply before Knable even had the chance to ask.

At some point, he’d cut his finger. He’d barely acknowledged the trickle of blood that had been smeared as he removed the rubber glove, when a security goon handed him a Band-Aid. “Thanks,” he said with a ragged smile as he applied the Band-Aid. He wasn’t too worried about any infection—that was why he wore the gloves, after all. It would’ve been nice if he remembered how he actually got the cut, but that was a concern for another time when he wasn’t in an emergency situation and exhausted beyond all reason.

Shaking the third of three test tubes over the burner, one each from a mother, father, and child who had come together, and seeing that they all came up green, Knable said, “They’re clean. Let them pass.”

So far, none of the blood had turned blue. The error margin for the test was that it often gave false positives but never