Makoba Village incident

The Tragedy of Makoba Village
(1997 radio drama)

The Makoba Village incident (tentative) was a disease cluster in the Arklay Mountains that resulted from the May 1998 t-Virus outbreak.

Background

Makoba Village was a small village located in the Arklay Mountains some 40 km north of Raccoon City. Though located not far from the freeway, the village was cut off by a ravine on one side and Raccoon Forest on the other. This isolated and difficult to reach spot was the intention of its founders, who followed a cult that worshipped Saint Havohej, knowledge of whom had to remain an absolute secrecy.

Incident

In the Summer of 1998, a group of twenty-four adults from the village, led by The Reverend Harvey Simmons, went out through into the mountains to perform a ceremony and, on the way, came in contact with a mutant snake in Raccoon Forest. The twenty four all drank the blood of the snake, becoming infected with the t-Virus. Over the next few weeks, the group began exhibiting symptoms of Cannibal Disease, at first bouts of anger which would subside, but by mid-July this progressed towards cannibalistic assaults and murders. Due to their religious beliefs, many villagers believed the snake was a gift from Saint Havohej to save them from the end times, and the evil inflicted by the villagers was because they were shedding their corporeal form. As the victims were still lapsing in and out of sanity, the villagers were reluctant to kill their neighbours, and focus was instead directed to performing funerary rites for the murder victims and dead Zombies. A more extreme proposal was that of the village chief, who believed that the Zombies should be rounded up and executed in the church crypt, though Simmons was opposed to this.

Within days of the first murders, the village became too dangerous to live in. After a fatal collision with a truck driver that had been attacked at the village, S.T.A.R.S. officer Jill Valentine arrived in search of aide. When she was attacked by one of the villagers while making a telephone call, the village chief ordered she be kept as their prisoner to avoid the outside world interfering in their rituals, and to ensure this the bridge was destroyed. The bridge's demolition itself got the attention of the Zombies, who killed a number of villagers as what remained of the sane population fled to the church. More deaths followed, with Simmons' wife Sarah being killed by a Zombie while hiding in the back room, and Curtis being killed by Simmons himself, who had accepted his violent actions as Havohej's will. In the early hours of the following morning, the infected village chief shot himself to avoid his own transformation, while Simmons killed Wilson and an unnamed woman, leaving Valentine and his children Toby and Lorraine the only remaining uninfected survivors. Soon, Simmons discovered where his children were hiding, and began mutating into a more durable being while trying to force them to drink infected blood. He was not successful in his attempts, and died after sustaining a shotgun blast.

Following Valentine and the children's escape down the ravine, they reported their experience to the Raccoon Police Department. Quickly, word got out to Umbrella USA and the US Army, and the village was quarantined and sterilised.