Chapter 72:

The Mad Dog Loses His Temper

Resident Evil: The Mad Dog of Edonia

New chapter is live.

Settle in, take your time, and let's see what waits in the dark 🖤

✦

The armored truck crawled down a crowded dirt road, horn blaring.

Malvia greeted them with heat, dust, and men who pointed rifles at strangers before asking questions. The town they entered was half market, half checkpoint, and entirely chaos. Vendors shouted from canvas awnings. Children ran barefoot between battered cars. A goat wandered across the road as if it owned the country.

Adrian kept one hand on the wheel and the other near his pistol.

"This place is already annoying," he said.

Rita sat beside him with T-Lilith perched calmly on her lap. The maid looked out through the windshield at the people refusing to move. "Would you like me to clear the road, sir?"

"Do not tempt me."

A local gunman in a sweat-stained shirt stepped into the road, raised an AK-47, and fired at the truck.

The first burst rang across the hood. T-Lilith leaned out of the passenger window with a silver Desert Eagle in hand and fired once.

The man's head snapped back. Blood and bone burst across the dust. He collapsed before the sound of the shot had finished echoing.

The crowd scattered.

Several children immediately rushed toward the fallen AK.

Adrian stared at the scene through his sunglasses.

"I hate this country already."

"His life ended when he raised a weapon toward you," Rita said gently. "Being killed by Miss T-Lilith was more mercy than he deserved."

Adrian glanced at her.

Sometimes Rita's devotion sounded like a maid speaking. Sometimes it sounded like something far colder borrowing the shape of a maid.

Since Roanna, the line had grown thinner.

T-Lilith killed with the clean satisfaction of a weapon obeying its own nature. Rita was different. Rita could smile, serve tea, fold laundry, and then look at death as if it were another form of etiquette. Adrian remembered the way she had tasted blood at the manor and felt an odd, crooked thought settle in his mind.

Maybe it was not a problem.

His job was killing people. Their instincts and his profession were not exactly in conflict.

The truck reached a checkpoint at the far end of the road.

Three soldiers in mismatched uniforms moved in front of the vehicle. One slammed his hand on the hood and barked something Adrian did not understand. Another pointed toward the cargo bed.

"Search?" Adrian asked in English.

The soldier barked again.

"No."

The man stepped closer, anger sharpening his face.

Adrian opened the door, stepped down, and slapped him hard enough to turn his head. Before the soldier could recover, Adrian pressed a pistol to his temple.

"Try again," Adrian said.

Every rifle at the checkpoint came up at once.

Rita stepped out of the truck with an Uzi in each hand.

The soldiers hesitated.

Then T-Lilith climbed down. She moved awkwardly because the minigun was almost as wide as she was. The moment the weapon cleared the cab, the checkpoint fell into a silence so complete that Adrian could hear the truck engine ticking.

Sweat slid down one soldier's cheek.

"Friendly! Friendly!"

A man came running from behind the checkpoint, waving both hands. He was tall, narrow, and sun-baked, with a red compact car parked crookedly behind him. He looked at Adrian, then at the pistol, then at the minigun.

"Mad Dog," he said in accented English, "you came to Malvia for five minutes and already almost started a war with the government."

Adrian looked at him for two seconds before recognition clicked.

"Geiger?"

"Most people here call me Radiation now." The man pointed at himself with a grin that showed too many teeth. "You know. Geiger counter. Radiation. Very funny, yes?"

"It was barely funny the first time."

"And yet people still laugh. That is how you know the joke has power."

Geiger turned to the soldiers and spoke quickly in the local language. The man with the bruised cheek glared at Adrian, but the rifles lowered.

Adrian removed the pistol from the soldier's temple.

Geiger exhaled. "Agor said you were bringing cargo. He did not say you were bringing enough firepower to overthrow a province."

"He should have assumed."

"With you, yes. That is my mistake." Geiger looked at T-Lilith's minigun again. "Please tell me that thing is for decoration."

T-Lilith stared at him.

Geiger swallowed. "Of course it is not."

Adrian climbed back into the truck. "Lead the way."

"I am charging extra for emotional damage."

"Bill Agor."