NINE
THANKS TO A VAN PARKED IN THE ALLEY
behind Kendo's, Leon's straight shot to the station
had taken a few detours - through an infested basketball
court, another alley, and a parked bus that had
reeked from the sprawled corpses inside. It was a
nightmare, punctuated with whispering howls, the
stink of decay, and once, a distant explosion that
made his limbs feel weak. And though he had to shoot
three more of the walking dead and was wired to the
teeth with adrenaline and horror, he somehow managed
to hold on to his hope that the RPD building
would be a safe haven, that there would be some kind
of crisis center set up, manned by police and
paramedics - people in authority making decisions
and marshaling forces. It wasn't just a hope, it was a
need; the possibility that there might be no one left in
Raccoon to take charge was unthinkable.
When he finally stumbled out into the street in
front of the station and saw the burning squad cars, he
felt like he'd been hit in the gut. But it was the sight of
the decaying, moaning police officers staggering
around the dancing flames that truly wiped out his
hope. There were only about fifty or sixty cops on the
RPD force, and a full third of them were lurching
through the wreckage or dead and bloody on the
pavement not a hundred feet from the front door of
the station.
Leon forced the despair away, fixing his sight on the
gate that led to the RPD building's courtyard. Whether
or not anyone had survived, he had to stick with his
plan, put out a call for help - and there was Claire to
think about. Concentrating on his fears would only
make it harder to do whatever needed to be done.
He ran for the gate, nimbly dodging a horribly
burned uniformed cop with blackened bones for
fingers. As he clutched the cold metal handle and
pushed, he realized that some part of him was growing
numb to the tragedy, to the understanding that
these things had once been the citizens of Raccoon.
The creatures that roamed the streets were no less
horrible, but the shock of it all just couldn't be
sustained; there were too many of them.
Not too many here, thank God...
Leon slammed the gate shut behind him and
pushed his sweaty hair off his brow, taking a deep
breath of the almost fresh air as he scanned the
courtyard. The small, grassy park to his right was well
lit enough for him to see there were only a few of the
once human creatures, and none close enough to be a
threat. He could see the two flags that adorned the
front of the station house, hanging limp in the still
shadows, and the sight resparked the hope that he
thought he'd lost; whatever else happened, he'd at
least made it to someplace he knew. And it had to be
safer than the streets.
He hurried past a blindly reeling trio of the dead,
easily avoiding them - two men and a woman; all
three could have passed for normal if not for their
mournful, hungry cries and uncoordinated staggers.
They must have died recently...
... but they're not dead, dead people don't gush blood
when you shoot them. Not to mention the walkingaround-
and-trying-to-eat-people thing...
Dead people didn't walk . . . and living people
tended to fall down after they'd been shot a few times
with .50 caliber slugs, and didn't put up with their
flesh rotting on their bones. Questions he hadn't yet
had time to ask himself flooded through his mind as
he jogged up the front steps to the station, questions
he didn't have the answers for - but he would soon,
he was sure of it.
The door wasn't locked, but Leon didn't allow
himself to feel surprise; with all he'd been through
since he hit town, he figured that it would be best to
keep his expectations to a minimum. He pushed it
open and stepped inside, Magnum raised and his
finger on the trigger.
Empty. There was no sign of life in the grand old
lobby of the RPD building and no sign of the
disaster that had overtaken Raccoon. Leon gave up on
not feeling surprised, closing the door behind him and
stepping down into the sunken lobby.
"Hello?" Leon kept his voice low, but it carried,
echoing back to him in a whisper. Everything looked
just as he remembered it; three floors of classically
styled architecture in oak and marble. There was a
stone statue of a woman carrying a water pitcher in
the lower part of the large room, a ramp on either side
leading up to the receptionist's station. The RPD seal
set into the floor in front of the statue gleamed softly
in the diffuse light from the wall lamps, as if it had
just been polished.
No bodies, no blood ... not even a shell casing. If
there was an attack here, where the hell's the evidence?
Uneasy at the profound silence of the huge chamber,
Leon walked up the ramp to his left, stopping at
the counter of the reception desk and leaning over it;
except for the fact that it was unmanned, nothing
seemed to be out of place. There was a phone on the
desk below the counter. Leon picked up the receiver
and cradled it between his head and shoulder, tapping
at the buttons with fingers that felt cold and distant.
Not even a dial tone; all he heard was the sound of his
own heavily thumping heart.
He put the phone down and turned to face the
empty room, trying to decide on where to go first. As
much as he wanted to find Claire, he also desperately
wanted to hook up with some other cops. He'd
received a copy of an RPD memo just a couple of
weeks before, stating that several of the departments
were going to be relocated, but that didn't really
matter; if there were cops hiding in the building, they
probably weren't concerned with sticking close to
their desks.
There were three doors leading away from the lobby
to different parts of the sprawling station, two on the
west side and the other on the east. Of the two on the
west, one led through a series of halls toward the back
of the building, past a couple of filing offices and a
briefing room; the second opened into the uniformedofficer
squad room and lockers, which then connected
into one of the corridors near the stairs to the second
floor. The east door, in fact the whole east side of the
first floor, was primarily for the detectives - offices,
interrogation, and a press room; there was also access
to the basement and another set of stairs on the
outside of the building.
Claire probably came in through the garage ... or
through the back lot to the roof ...
Or, she could've circled around and come through
the same door he had - assuming she even made it to
the station; she could be anywhere. And considering
that the building took up almost an entire city block,
that was a lot of ground to cover.
Finally deciding that he had to start somewhere, he
walked toward the squad room for the beat cops,
where his own locker would be. A random choice, but
he'd spent more time there than anywhere else in the
station, interviewing and working through scheduling.
Besides, it was closest, and the tomb-like silence
of the oversized lobby was giving him the creeps.
The door wasn't locked, and Leon pushed it open
slowly, holding his breath and hoping that the room
would be as undisturbed and orderly as the lobby.
What he saw instead was the confirmation of his
earlier fears: the creatures had been there - with a
vengeance.
The long room had been trashed, tables and chairs
splintered and overturned everywhere he looked.
Smears of dried blood decorated the walls, splashes of
it in tacky, trailing puddles on the floor, leading
toward ...
"Oh, man..."
The cop was sitting against the lockers to his left,
his legs splayed, half-hidden by a smashed table. At
the sound of Leon's voice, he weakly raised one
shaking arm, pointed a weapon vaguely in Leon's
direction - then lowered it again, seemingly exhausted
by the effort. His midsection was awash with
oozing blood, his dark features contorted with pain.
Leon was crouching at his side in two steps, gently
touching his shoulder. He couldn't see the wound,
but there was so much blood that he knew it was
bad...
"Who are you?" the cop whispered.
The soft, almost dreamy tone of his voice scared
Leon as much as the still oozing wound and the glassy
look in his dark eyes; the man was slipping, fast.
They'd never formally met, but Leon had seen him
before. The young African-American beat cop had
been pointed out to him as sharp, on the fast track to
detective, Marvin, Marvin Branagh...
"I'm Kennedy. What happened here?" Leon asked,
his hand still on Branagh's shoulder. A sickly heat
radiated through the officer's ragged shirt.
"About two months ago," Branagh rasped, "the
cannibal murders ... the S.T.A.R.S. found zombies
out at this mansion in the woods..."
He coughed weakly, and Leon saw a small bubble of
blood form at the corner of his mouth. Leon started to
tell him to be still, to rest, but Branagh's faraway gaze
had fixed on his own; the cop seemed determined to
tell the story, whatever it was costing him.
"Chris and the others discovered that Umbrella
was behind the whole thing . . . risked their lives, and
no one believed them . . . then this."
Chris . . . Chris Redfield, Claire's brother.
Leon hadn't made the connection before, although
he'd known something about the trouble with the
S.T.A.R.S. He'd only heard bits and pieces of the
story - the suspension of the Special Tactics and
Rescue Squad after their alleged mishandling of the
murder cases had been the reason the RPD'd been
hiring new cops. He'd even read the names of the
infamous S.T.A.R.S. members in some local paper,
listed along with some fairly impressive career
records...
... and Umbrella runs this town. Some kind of a
chemical leak, something that they tried to cover up by
getting rid of the S.T.A.R.S. ...
All of this went through his mind in a split-second;
then Branagh coughed again, the sound even weaker
than before.
"Hang in there," Leon said, and quickly looked
around them for something to use to stop the bleeding,
inwardly kicking himself for not having done it
already. A locker next to Branagh was partly open; a
crumpled T-shirt lay at the bottom. Leon scooped it
up and folded it haphazardly, pressing it against
Branagh's stomach. The cop placed his own bloody
hand over the makeshift bandage, closing his eyes as
he spoke again in a wheezing gasp.
"Don't . . . worry about me. There are . . . you
have to try and rescue the survivors. . ."
The resignation in Branagh's voice was horribly
plain. Leon shook his head, wanting to deny the truth,
wanting to do something to ease Branagh's pain, but
the wounded cop was dying, and there was no one to
call for help.
Not fair, it's not fair...
"Go," Branagh breathed, his eyes still closed.
Branagh was right, there was nothing else Leon
could do, but he didn't, couldn't move for a moment
- until Branagh raised his weapon again, pointing
it at him with a sudden burst of energy that
strengthened his voice to a rough shout.
"Just go!" Branagh commanded, and Leon stood
up, wondering if he would be as selfless in the same
situation, working to convince himself that Branagh
would make it somehow.
"I'll be back," Leon said firmly, but Branagh's arm
was already drooping, his head settling against his
heaving chest.
Rescue the survivors.
Leon backed toward the door, swallowing heavily
and struggling to accept the change in plan that could
very well kill him, but that he couldn't walk away
from. Official or no, he was a cop. If there were other
survivors, it was his moral and civic duty to try and
help them.
There was a weapons store in the basement, near
the parking garage. Leon opened the door and stepped
back into the lobby, praying that the lockers would be
well stocked - and that there would be somebody left
for him to help.
0 comments
Post a Comment