She trailed off, noticing that Claire seemed dis– tracted suddenly, her gaze far away. It was a look she had seen plenty of times before, on both of her parents' faces – and it meant that they weren't really listening anymore. But as soon as she stopped talking, Claire refocused on her, reaching out to pat her on the shoulder – and for some stupid reason, that made Sherry want to cry again.
Because she's listening to me. Because she wants to watch out for me now. "Your mother's right," Claire said gently, "you're very self-sufficient, and that you've made it this far means that you're also very strong. That's good, because we're both going to have to be strong, to make it out of here." Sherry felt her eyes go wide. "What do you mean? Leave the station? But there are zombies all over the place, and I don't know where my parents are, what if they need help or they're looking for me…" "Sweetie, I'm sure your folks are just fine," Claire said quickly. "They're probably still at the plant, hiding and safe, just like you were – waiting for people to come from outside of the city, to, to make everything better…" "You mean kill everything," Sherry said. "I'm twelve, you know, I'm not a baby." Claire smiled. "Sorry. Yeah, to kill everything. But until the good guys come, we're on our own. And the best thing we can do, the smartest thing, is to get out of their way – to get as far out of their way as possible. You're right, the streets aren't safe, but maybe we can get a car…"
It was Claire's turn to trail off. She stood up and walked toward the big desk at the far end of the office, looking around as she went.
"Maybe Chief Irons left his car keys here, or another weapon, something we can use…"
Claire saw something on the floor behind the desk. She crouched down and Sherry hurried after her, as much to stay close as to see what she'd found. She already knew that she didn't want to lose her again, no matter what else happened. "There's blood here," Claire said softly, so softlythat Sherry thought she hadn't meant to say it out loud.
"So?"
Claire looked up at the plain tan wall, frowning, then back down at the big drying splotch of red on the floor. "It's still wet, for one thing. And see the way it's just kind of cut off? There should be some on the wall here…"
She rapped on the dark wood trim that lined the wall, then on the wall itself. There was an obvious difference; a dull thump from the trim, but the wall sounded hollow. "Is there a room back there?" Sherry asked. "I don't know, it sounds like it. And it would explain where he took… where he took off to earli-er. Chief Irons."
She glanced up at Sherry as she started to feel along the baseboards, running her hands up the wall and pushing at it. "Sherry, look around the desk, see if you can find like a switch or a lever. My guess is it would be hidden somewhere, maybe in one of the drawers…"
Sherry started to move behind the desk and tripped, her foot sliding on a handful of pencils that she hadn't seen. She grabbed at the desktop, trying to catch her balance, but still came down pretty hard on her bare knees.
"Ow!"
Claire was next to her right away, putting an armaround her shoulders. "Are you okay?" "Yeah. I just… hey! Look!"
Her bruised knees forgotten, Sherry pointed at the switch under the top drawer of the desk, set into a small metal plate. It looked like a light switch, but it had to be for the secret door, she just knew it.;
I found it!
Claire reached out and flipped the switch and behind them, a section of the wall a few feet across slid smoothly upwards, disappearing into the ceiling and exposing a dimly lit room lined with oversized bricks. Cool, damp air breezed into the office; it was a secret passage, just like in the movies. Together, they stood and stepped toward the open– ing, Claire holding Sherry back with one arm until she'd looked first. The small room was totally empty – three brick walls and a stained wood floor, and only about half the size of the office. The fourth wall was dominated by a big old-fashioned elevator gate, the kind that pushed to one side. "Are we going to take it?" Sherry asked. She was excited but nervous, too. Claire had taken her gun out. She crouched down next to Sherry and smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile, and Sherry knew what was coming before Claire said a word.
"Sweetie, I think it would be safest if I went and looked around first, and you stayed here…" "But you said we should stay together! You said we could find a car and leave! What if the monster comes back and you're not here, or you get killed?"
Claire hugged her, but Sherry felt almost sick with helpless anger. She was going to tell her not to worry, that the monster wouldn't come, that nothing bad would happen and then she was going to leave anyway.
Stupid grownup lies…
Claire leaned back, smoothing Sherry's hair away from her face. "I don't blame you for being scared. I'm scared, too. This is a bad situation and hon-estly, I don't know what's going to happen. But I want to do the right thing by you, and that means that I'm not going to take you into a situation where you could get hurt, not if I can help it." Sherry swallowed back tears, trying again. "But I want to come with you… what if you don't come back?" "I'm going to come back," Claire said firmly, "I promise. And if… if I don't, I want you to hide again, like before. Somebody will come, help is going to come soon, and they'll find you."
At least she was being honest; Sherry didn't like it, not at all, but at least there was that and from the look on her face, Sherry could see that there was nothing she could say to change her mind. She could be a baby about it, or she could accept it. "Be careful," she whispered, and Claire hugged her again before standing and moving toward the eleva– tor. She pushed a button next to the gate and there was a low, soft hum; after a few seconds an elevator car rose into view, coming to a gentle stop. Claire pulled the gate open and stepped inside, turning for a last look at Sherry. "Stay here, sweetie," she said. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
Sherry forced herself to nod and Claire let the gate close. She touched something inside the elevator and the car went down, her smiling, strong face descending out of sight, leaving Sherry by herself in the cold, dark passage. Sherry sat down on the dusty floor and hugged her knees close to her body, rocking herself slowly. Claire was brave and smart, she'd be back soon, she had to come back soon… "I want my mommy," Sherry whispered, but there was nobody to hear. She was alone again, the thing she wanted least of all.
But I'm strong. I'm strong, and I can wait.
She rested her chin on one knee, touching the necklace her mother had given her for good luck, and started to wait for Claire to come back.
SIXTEEN
Annette birkin sat in the laboratory monitor room, exhausted, staring up at the wall of video screens centered over the surveillance console. She'd been there for what felt like years, waiting for William to appear, and was starting to think that he never would. She'd give it a little longer, but if she didn't see him soon, she'd have to do another search.
Goddamn technology…
It was a brand-new system, less than a month old -
– twenty-five screens with a channel control that should have allowed her to see any and every part of the facility. A brilliant security advance – except only eleven of the screens still worked at all, and over half of those would only show static, an endless dance of electric snow. Of the five she could still get a clear picture from, all she could see – all there was to see -
–were dead, rotting bodies and the occasional Re3, either feasting or sleeping…
"Lickers. You called them lickers, because of their tongues…"
She thought she'd been past the worst of the pain, but the lonely sound of her own voice in the cold, cavernous chamber and the realization that there would be no answer – that there would never be an answer again – brought on a fresh, knifing wave of grief. William was gone, he was gone and she was talking to no one at all. Annette lowered her head to the console, closing her weary eyes. At least there were no more tears; she'd wept an ocean of them in the days since Um– brella had come for the G-Virus, but was simply too spent to cry anymore. Now there was only pain, interspersed with fits of violent, helpless fury over what Umbrella had done.
Another month, maybe two, and we would have given it to them. We would have turned it over without a fight, and William would have made the executive board and we would have been happy. Everyone would have been happy…
There was a faint squealing from one of the muted security screens. Annette looked up, hoping and dreading at once, but it was just a licker, one floor up in the surgical bay. It had dropped from its ceiling roost to snack on one of the techs, howling stupidly to itself as it ripped into the corpse's guts. The dead man looked like Don Weller, one of the chemical plant go– betweens, but she couldn't tell for certain; he was almost as mutilated and inhuman looking as the Re3 that was eating him. She watched the licker feed, watched the small screen but didn't really see; her mind wandered, running over what was left for her to do. She'd already wiped all of the computers and locked in the countdown codes; the lab was ready, and her escape route was secured. But she couldn't finish things until she saw him again, saw that he was back in the Umbrella facility. Destroying the lab wouldn't solve anything if he wasn't in the blast zone; they would find him, and extract the virus from his blood…
… and Umbrella won't have it. I'll die before I let them have it, so help me God.
Her only consolation in all of this mad, horrible affair was that Umbrella hadn't managed to get their greedy hands on William's synthesis. They hadn't and they never would. Everything that had gone into the creation of the G-Virus would be buried under a thousand burning tons of stone and wood, along with William and all of the monsters they had created for the company. She would go into hiding for a while, take some time to heal, to consider her options and then she would sell the G-Virus to the competition. Umbrella was the biggest, but they weren't the only conglomerate working on bioweapons research and when she was through with them, they wouldn't be the biggest anymore. It wasn't much of a revenge, but it was all she had left. "Except for Sherry," Annette whispered, and the thought of their young daughter made her heart ache, a different pain but pain nonetheless. Since the day Sherry had been born, Annette had meant to spend more time with her, to focus on the child instead of on her part in William's brilliant work. And yet some– how the years had slipped by, William's promotions had kept coming up, the work had grown ever more interesting and valuable and although both she and William had made promises to themselves and each other that they would make more of an effort to develop their family life, they had continued to put it off.
And now it's too late. We'll never be a family, we'll never be parents together. All that time wasted, slaving for a company that sold us out in the end…
It was too late; there was no point in mourning what could have been. All she could do now was make sure that Umbrella wouldn't get anything else from the Birkin family. William was gone, but there was still Sherry; that part of him would go on, and Annette meant to finally become the mother she should have been all along. Of course she'd have to wait until things cooled down before she could collect Sherry, at least a few months, but the girl would be safe; the cops would send her to live with William's sister, it was in both of their wills…
… unless Irons is still alive. That fat, greedy bas-tard could find a way to screw even that up if given half a chance.
She hoped he was dead; even if he wasn't directly responsible for Umbrella's awareness of the G-Virus, Brian Irons was a disgusting, arrogant man with the morals of a sea slug. After years of loyalty to the company, he'd been bought out for a measly hundred thousand dollars. Even William had been surprised, and he'd had an even lower opinion of the police chief than she had… On the screen, the Re3 had finished its meal. All that was left of the dead man was an empty shell, arched, bloody ribs, and a faceless cup of skull, the surely vibrant colors lost to the video's flat shades of gray. The licker scrabbled out of view, trailing sticky fluids in its wake. Thanks to the T-Virus, all of the reptile series were efficient killers, although the 3s had design flaws – the protruding cerebrum was the most obvious, but they also had a ridiculously high meta– bolic rate; keeping them fed had been a constant hassle.
Not a problem anymore. Plenty of canton to go around – and lucky them, they'II get a chance for a hot dinner soon enough…
Annette felt drained of energy, and didn't want to go back out into the facility – but she couldn't just keep hoping that William would happen by one of the working cameras. She'd heard him up on level three, perhaps two days before, but hadn't seen him in almost twice as long; she couldn't keep waiting. Umbrella's people were probably already working on a way in – even with the mainframe wiped, there were other ways to get past the doors…
… and William may have found a way out. I can't keep denying it, no matter how much I want to. There was an abandoned factory west of the lab, a shipping company that had been bought up by Um-brella to ensure that the underground levels would stay secret; it was how Umbrella had managed to build the complex in the first place without arousing suspicion, hiding equipment and materials in the factory's warehouses and using the heavy machinery lift to transport them. Although the entrances from the factory had still been sealed off the last time she'd checked, there was a slim chance that William had gotten through – and if he could get to the factory, he could get into the sewers.
Annette forced herself to stand up, ignoring the cramps in her legs and back as she picked up the handgun on the console. She didn't know much about guns, although she'd figured out how to use one quickly enough, after…
… after they came for the G-Virus, the men in the gas masks, shooting and running and William, poor William dying in a puddle of blood and I didn 't see the syringe until it was too late…
She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to push that terrible memory aside, trying to forget about the incident that had taken William from her and turned Raccoon into a city of the dead. It didn't matter anymore. The journey ahead wouldn't be a pleasant one, and she had to concentrate. Escaped Re3s, first-and second-stage infected humans, the botany experi– ments, the arachnid series – she could run into any of the T-Virus carriers, not to mention whomever Um– brella had managed to send.
And William. My husband, my beloved – the first human G-Virus carrier, who isn't really human any-more.
She'd been wrong to think that she had no more tears inside. Annette stood in the middle of the vast, sterile room five floors beneath the surface of Rac– coon and wept lost, racking sobs that didn't even begin to touch the pain of her loneliness. Umbrella would be sorry. Once she could be sure that William was beyond their reach, she was going to destroy their precious facility, she was going to take the G-Virus and run, she was going to make sure that they understood how badly they'd screwed up – and God help anyone who tried to stop her.
SEVENTEEN
Ada ran into the cell block only a step behind Leon, just in time to see the reporter stumble out of his cage and fall to the floor. "Help him!" Leon shouted, and ran past Bertolucci to check out the cell. Ada stopped in front of the gasping reporter but ignored the command, waiting to see if whatever had gotten to him was going to spring out of the open cell…
… he was behind bars, how did this happen.
She waited, weapon pointed after Leon as he leapt in front of the open cell, her heart pounding – and saw the bewilderment on his youthful face, the open surprise. The way his gaze searched the cell told her that it was empty. Unless the attacker was invis– ible…
Not a chance. Don't even start thinking like that, don't let it get to you.
Ada knelt next to the reporter, taking in immedi– ately that he was in a bad way – dying bad. He'd crumpled into a half-sitting position, his head against the bars of the cell adjacent to his. He was still breathing, but it wouldn't be long before he stopped. Ada had seen the look before, the far-seeing gaze and the trembling, the pallor, but what she didn't see was how, and that scared her. There were no wounds. It had to be a heart attack, maybe a stroke -
– but that scream.
"Ben? Ben, what happened?"
His flickering gaze fixed on her face, and she saw that the corners of his mouth were cracked and bleeding. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a rasping, unintelligible croak. Leon crouched down next to them, looking as confused as she felt. He shook his head at her, an unspoken answer to her unasked question; there was apparently no sign of what had happened. Ada looked down at Bertolucci and tried again.
"What was it, Ben? Can you tell us what happened?"
The reporter's shaking hands crawled up his body, resting across his chest. With a visible effort, he managed to whisper a single word.
"… window…"
Ada wasn't reassured. The cell's "window" was hardly a foot across, maybe six inches wide, and set eight feet off the floor – nothing more than a ventila– tion hole that opened into the parking garage. Noth-ing could have gotten through – at least nothing that she'd heard of or read about, and that meant that there were dangers she wasn't prepared against. Bertolucci was still trying to speak. Both Ada and Leon leaned closer, straining to catch his painful whispers.
"… chest. Burns, it… burns…"
Ada relaxed just a bit. He'd seen or heard some– thing outside of the cell, something that had kicked off a massive coronary; that, she could accept. A pisser for the journalist, but it would save her the trouble of killing him herself… He reached out suddenly and grasped her forearm, staring up at her with an intensity that surprised her. His grip was weak, but there was desperation in his wet eyes – desperation and some frustrated sorrow that inspired not a little guilt for what she'd been thinking. "I never told… about Irons," he breathed, obvi-ously struggling to hang on to life, to get it all out.
"He's… working for Umbrella… all this time. The zombies… are Umbrella, research… and he covered up the murders but I couldn't… prove it all, yet… was going to be my… exclusive."
Bertolucci closed his braised-looking eyelids, breath– ing shallowly as his fingers fell away from her arm, and she felt a surge of pity for him in spite of herself.
The poor dumb jerk; his big secret was that Umbrella was into bioweapons and that Irons was on the take. It would have been a big scoop, too, but apparently he hadn't even been able to get any hard evidence. He doesn't know dick about the G-Virus, he never did – and he's going to die regardless. Talk about a shit deal. "Jesus," Leon said softly. "Chief Irons…" Ada had all but forgotten how clueless the young cop was. He was obviously new, but a couple of times he'd seemed so perceptive that she'd been taken aback; the kid wasn't just a testosterone case, there was definitely something going on upstairs…
… knock it off already, he's not much younger than you. The reporter's about to kick and you need to be on your way, not worrying about Officer Friendly…
Bertolucci spasmed suddenly, his hands clutching at his chest as he moaned, a sharp, tortured cry of agony. His back arched, his fingers hooked into claws…… and the moan went liquid as blood started to stream from his mouth in a burbling gout. Choking and shaking, Bertolucci's limbs convulsed violently, droplets of crimson spraying out with each racking cough…… and Ada saw red blossom across his rumpled white shirt beneath his scrabbling hands and heard the thick, wet crack of breaking bone. She leapt back as Leon grabbed for the reporter's hands, not sure what was happening but absolutely positive that it was not a heart attack…
… holy Christ what IS this?
All at once, Bertolucci went limp, his eyes rolled back and fixed, sightless. Blood still oozed from his cracked lips and there was a sound, a horrible sound of meat being torn, and under the stained fabric of his shirt, something moved. "Get back!" Ada shouted, pointing her Beretta at the dead reporter, and in the split-second it took her to aim, a thing erupted from Bertolucci's bloody chest. A thing the size of a big man's fist, a gore– drenched thing that opened a tiny black hole of a mouth and squealed shrilly, revealing nubs of sharp red teeth. It wriggled out of the corpse with a whip-ping manta's tail, splashing the cold cement with shreds of wet tissue and gut. Lashing against the cooling flesh of the reporter, it poured from the body in a gush of blood and onto the floor – and took off like a shot for the open gate back into the hall, propelling itself with its snaking tail and legs that Ada couldn't see, smearing a red path be– hind it. It was out the door before she even remembered that she was holding a gun; for the first time since she'd come to Raccoon, since ever, she had been so completely shocked that she hadn't thought to react. A chest-bursting parasitic creature, straight out of a sci-fi movie… "Was that… did you see…" Leon fumbled breath– lessly. "I saw it," Ada said softly, cutting him off. She turned and looked down at Bertolucci, at his face, frozen in a bloody contortion of anguish, and at the gaping wet cavity just below his sternum.
His mouth, cracked at the corners…
He'd been implanted with the creature, by what, she didn't know, and she didn't want to know. What she wanted was to get the mission wrapped, as quickly as possible, and then get as far away from Raccoon City as she could. In fact, she thought that she'd never wanted anything quite so badly. When she'd first realized that there had been a T-Virus incident, she'd expected to have to deal with some unpleasant organ– isms. But the thought of having one of them forced or forcing its way down her throat, nestling inside of her body like some slick, aberrant fetus before eating its way out… if that wasn't the most horrible thing she could think of, it ran a close second. She looked at Leon, giving up any pretense of trying to be reasonable. She was going to the lab, and it wasn't open to discussion. "I'm getting out of here," she said, and without waiting for a response, she turned and walked briskly toward the gate, careful not to step on the glistening trail of blood that the tiny monster had created.
"Wait! Look, I think… Ada? Hey…"
She stepped into the corridor, weapon raised, but the creature was gone. The blood trail petered out less than halfway down the hall, but she saw that they'd left the door to the kennel open…
… and the manhole cover's off. Terrific.
Leon caught up to her before she'd gone more than a few steps. He stood in front of her, blocking her path, and for just a moment, Ada thought he was going to try to physically stop her.
Don't do it. I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. "Ada, please don't go," Leon said, not a command but a plea. "I… when I got to Raccoon, I met this girl, and I think she's in the station somewhere. If you could help me find her, the three of us could leave together. We'd stand a much better chance…" "Sorry, Leon, but it's a free goddamn country. You do what you have to, and good luck, but I'm not staying. I've had enough. If – when I get out, I'll send help."
She started to push past him, hoping it wouldn't come to violence and wishing that she could tell him not to get in her way – how dangerous it would be for him to try – when Leon surprised her yet again. "Then I'm coming with you," he said. He met her gaze evenly, his own unflinching and resolute – and scared. "I'm not going to let you do it alone. I don't want anyone else – I don't want you to get hurt."
Ada stared at him, not sure what to say. Now that Bertolucci was dead, she didn't want to have to ditch Leon in the sewers; it wouldn't be hard, considering how extensive the system was… but he was just so goddamn nice, so determined to be helpful, that she was starting to – to not want to have to do anything bad to him. Things would be a lot easier if he was just some asshole on a machismo kick…
Okay, so blow your cover. Tell him you're a private agent working to steal the G-Virus, and you don't want company; tell him about the relief you felt when you realized the reporter was about to die, or how you don't have a problem with killing, if it's for a good cause like getting paid. See how nice and helpful he is after that.
Not an option; neither was trying to talk him out of coming along, it wouldn't make sense. And there was some part of her, some part that she didn't want to admit to, that wanted very much not to be alone. Seeing that thing that had popped out of Bertolucci had shaken her, it had left her feeling that she wasn't as invulnerable as she liked to think.
So let him come, get to the lab and find a safe place to leave him there. No harm, no foul.
Leon was watching her closely, studying her – wait– ing for her approval. "Let's go," she said, and the grin he gave her, though winning, made her feel even more uncomfort– able. Without another word, they walked toward the kennel, Ada wondering what the hell she was doing and whether or not she was still capable of doing whatever it took to get the job done. Claire stood in front of a medieval door at the very end of the dark, dungeon-like hallway that the eleva– tor had taken her to. The station had been chilly, but the icy damp of this stone hall made the station seem like summer; it was like she'd descended into some ancient, haunted castle straight out of the Middle Ages. She took a deep breath, trying to decide how to go in; she was pretty sure that Irons wouldn't appreciate a surprise visit, but the idea of knocking seemed ludicrous – not to mention dangerous. There were torches burning in sconces on either side of the heavy wood door, the door itself belted with strips of rusting metal and if she'd had any doubt before that Irons was crazy, the sight of the twin sputtering torches and the feel of cold, quiet dread that suffused the corridor itself had wiped her uncertainty out.
A secret tunnel, a hidden room complete with mood-lighting… what sane person would want to hang out down here? It wasn't the disaster that did it – Irons must have been nuts way before the Umbrella acci– dent…
Another certainty, although she didn't have any proof – but when Sherry had told her about what her parents did for a living, and what had happened just prior to her coming to the station, something had clicked. Umbrella worked with diseases, and the population of Raccoon had definitely come down with a bad case of something. There must have been some kind of an accident, a spill that had released the strange zombie plague…
Quit stalling.
Claire bit at her lip, not sure what she should do. She didn't doubt that Irons was down here some– where, and she did not want to run into him again; maybe she should go back up, get Sherry, and try to find another way out. Just because the area was secret didn't mean that it was some kind of an escape route.
Still stalling, and Sherry is up there by herself. And you've got a gun, remember?
A gun with very little ammo. If this was Irons's hidden lair, maybe he kept weapons inside… or maybe it was just another corridor, one that led even deeper into the bowels of the station. Either way, wondering about it was telling her exactly jack shit. Claire put her hand on the latch, took another deep breath, and pushed it open, the heavy door swinging in slowly on well-oiled hinges. She stepped back, pointing the handgun…
Jesus.
An empty room, as dank and unwelcoming as the corridor, but with furnishings and a decor that made her skin crawl. A single naked bulb hung down from the ceiling, illuminating the creepiest chamber she'd ever seen. There was a table in the middle of the room, stained and battered, a hacksaw and other cutting utensils scattered on top; a dented metal bucket and a mop, slopped against one water-stained wall, next to a portable basin with dried red patches inside; shelves, laden with dusty bottles – and what looked like human bones, polished and pale, set out like macabre trophies. That, and the smell – a thick chemical reek, sharp and acidic, that only just cov– ered a darker smell. A smell like insanity. Even looking into the room made her want to be sick; "nuts" was maybe the understatement of the year for the police chief, but there was nobody home, and that meant that there could be another secret passage somewhere inside. At the very least, she had to check for weapons. Swallowing, Claire stepped into the room, glad that she hadn't brought Sherry with her; looking at the private little torture chamber was going to give her nightmares, it was nothing to expose a child to…
"Freeze, little girl, or I'll shoot you where you stand."
Claire froze. Every muscle in her body froze as Irons started to laugh from behind her, from behind the door where she hadn't thought to look.
Oh my God, oh, God, oh, Sherry I'm so sorry…
Irons's deep chuckle rose into the hearty, gleeful laughter of a madman, and Claire understood that she was going to die.
EIGHTEEN
Trying not to breathe too deeply, Leon reached the bottom of the metal ladder and turned around quickly, aiming the Magnum into the thick gloom. Murky water sloshed over his boots, and as his eyes adjusted to the low light, he saw the source of the terrible smell.
