-snick. Steve froze, staring at the metal door straight across from the tower. The graveyard was on the other side, and he knew for a fact it was full of zombies, he'd sneaked a look right after plugging the courtyard corpses. Jesus, could they open doors? They were walking vegetables, mush brains, they weren't supposed to be able to open doors, and if they could do that, what else were they capable of…

… don't panic. You've got the machine gun, remember?

All of the other prisoners were dead. If it was a person, he or she was no friend of his … and if it wasn't human, or was a zombie, he'd be putting it out of its

misery. Either way, he wasn't going to hesitate, and he wasn't going to be afraid. Fear was for pussies. Steve grabbed for the searchlight handle with his right hand, his left already on the trigger guard of the heavy black rifle. As the door swung open, he swallowed dryly and snapped the light on, firing as soon as he had the target piimed down. The weapon rattled out a stream of bullets, the handle jouncing against his hand, rounds kicking up tiny fountains of mud. He caught a glimpse of something pink, a shirt maybe, and then his target was diving out of the line of fire, moving way too fast to be one of the cannibals. He'd heard about some of the monsters Umbrella had cooked up and machine gun or no, he hoped to God he wasn't about to meet one of them. I'm not afraid, I'm not… He tracked right with the searchlight and kept firing, a sudden anxious sweat on his brow. The person or thing was behind the protruding wall near the base of the tower, out of sight, but if he couldn't kill it, he could at least scare it away. Cement chips flew, the high-intensity beam illuminating the lower half of a dead prison guard, mud, and debris, but no target… … and there was a lightning flash of motion from behind the wall, a glimpse of pale, upturned face… BAM! BAM! BAM! … and the searchlight shattered, white-hot chunks of glass spraying across the tower room floor.