SEVEN
IN THE COOL DARKNESS, RODRIGO HAD BEEN
resting uneasily. Now he heard a noise out in the corridor,
and forced himself to open his eyes, to get ready.
He lifted his weapon, bracing his wrist on the desk when
he realized he hadn't the strength to hold it up.
I'll kill anyone who messes with me, he thought, more by
habit than anything else, glad he had the gun even if he
was already a dead man. A zombie guard had fallen
down the stairs and crawled into the cell room sometime
after the girl had left, but Rodrigo had killed it with a
boot to the head and taken its weapon, still holstered on
its broken hip.
He waited, wishing that he could go back to sleep,
trying to stay alert. The gun eased his mind, took away a
lot of his fear. He was going to die soon, it was inevitable
... but he didn't want to become one of them,
no matter what. Suicide was supposed to be a particularly
awful sin, but he also knew that if he couldn't manage
to wipe out an approaching virus carrier, he'd eat a
bullet before he let it touch him. He was probably going
to hell, anyway.
Footsteps, and someone was walking into the room,
too fast. A zombie? His senses weren't working right, he
couldn't tell if things were speeding up or he was slowing
down, but he knew he had to shoot soon or he'd miss
his chance.
Suddenly, a light, small but penetrating - and there
she was, standing in front of him like some dream. The
Redfield girl, alive, holding a lighter up in the air. She
left it burning, set it on the desk like a tiny lantern.
"What're you doing here?" Rodrigo mumbled, but she
was rummaging through a pack at her waist, not looking
at him. He let the heavy gun drop from his fingers, closing
his eyes for a second or a moment. When he opened them
again, she was reaching for his arm, a syringe in one hand.
"It's hemostatic medicine," she said, her hands and
voice soft, the prick of the needle small and quick.
"Don't worry, you won't OD or anything, somebody
wrote dosage numbers on the back of the bottle. It says
it'll slow down any internal bleeding, so you should be
okay until help comes. I'll leave the lighter here ... my
brother gave it to me. It's good luck."
As she spoke, Rodrigo concentrated on waking up,
on overcoming the apathy that had taken him over.
What she was telling him didn't make sense, because
he'd let her go, she was gone. Why would she come
back to help him?
Because I let her go. The realization touched him,
flooded him with feelings of shame and gratitude.
"I ... you're very kind," he whispered, wishing there
was something he could do for her, something he could
say that would repay her for her compassion. He
searched his memories, rumors and facts about the island,
maybe she can escape...
"The guillotine," he said, blinking up at her, trying
not to slur his words too badly. "Infirmary's behind it,
key's in my pocket ... supposed to be secrets there. He
knows things, puzzle pieces ... you know where's the
guillotine?"
Claire nodded. "Yes. Thank you, Rodrigo, that helps
me a lot. You rest now, okay?"
She reached out and stroked his hair back from his
forehead, a simple gesture, but so sweet, so nice, he
wanted to weep.
"Rest," she said again, and he closed his eyes, calmer,
more at peace than he'd ever felt in his life. His last
thought before he drifted off was that if she could forgive
him after the things he'd done, show him such mercy as
if he deserved it, maybe he wouldn't go to hell, after all.
Rodrigo had been right about secrets. Claire stood at
the end of the hidden basement corridor, steeling herself
to open the unmarked door in front of her.
The infirmary itself was small and unpleasant, not at
all what she would have expected for an Umbrella
clinic - no medical equipment to be seen, nothing modern
at all. There was only a single examination table in
the front room, the splintery wooden floor around it
stained with blood, a tray of medieval-looking tools
nearby. The adjoining room had been burned beyond
recognition; she couldn't tell what purpose it had
served, but it looked like a cross between a recovery
room and a crematorium. Smelled like one, too.
There was a tiny, cluttered office just off the first
room, a lone body sprawled in front of it, a man in a
stained lab coat who had died with a look of horror on his
narrow, ashen face. He didn't appear to have been infected,
and since there were no virus carriers in the room
and no obvious wounds, she guessed that he'd had a heart
attack, or something like it. The contorted expression on
his pinched features, bulging eyes and gaping, downturned
mouth, suggested to her that he'd died of fright.
Claire carefully stepped over him, and found the first
secret in the small office almost by accident. Her boot
had nudged something when she walked in, a marble or
stone that had rolled across the floor - which had turned
out to be a most unusual key. It was a glass eye, one that
belonged in the grotesque plastic face of the office's
anatomical dummy, propped leering in the corner.
Considering what Steve had said, about no one coming
back from the infirmary, and considering what she
already knew about the kind of insanity that Umbrella
seemed to attract, Claire wasn't surprised to find a hidden
passage behind the office wall. A worn set of stone
steps were revealed when she'd placed the eye back
where it belonged, which hadn't really surprised her, either.
It was a secret, a trick, and Umbrella was all about
secrets and tricks.
So open the door, already. Get it over with.
Right. She didn't have all day. She didn't want to
leave Steve alone for too long, either, she was worried
about him. He'd had to kill his own father; she couldn't
imagine the kind of psychological damage that would
do to someone...
Claire shook her head, irritated with her own
dawdling. It didn't matter that she was in a barren,
frightening place where lots of people had apparently
died, where she could feel the pervasive atmosphere of
terror emanating from the cold walls, trying to wrap
around her like a burial shroud...
"Doesn't matter," she said, and opened the door.
Immediately, three stumbling virus carriers started for
her, drawing her attention, keeping her from really seeing
the details of the large room they'd been trapped in. All
three were badly disfigured, missing limbs and long,
ragged strips of skin, their putrefying flesh flayed and raw.
They moved slowly, painfully dragging themselves toward
her, and she could see older scars on the exposed rotting
tissue. Even as she targeted the first, the knot of dread
in her stomach was expanding, making her feel sick.
It was over quickly, at least - but the terrible suspicion
that had been growing in her mind, that she'd been hoping
was false, was confirmed with a single good look around.
Oh, Jesus.
The room was strangely elegant, the muted lighting
coming from a hanging chandelier. The floor was tiled,
with a runner of finely woven carpet leading from the
door to a kind of sitting area on the other side of the
room. There was an overstuffed velvet chair and cherry
wood end table there, the chair facing out so that
someone sitting there would be able to see the entire
room ... which was worse than she could have imagined,
worse than the mad Chief Irons's dungeon, hidden
beneath the streets of Raccoon.
There were two custom-built water wells, one with a
pillory built into its rail, a steel cage suspended over the
other. Chains hung from the walls, some with well-used
manacles attached, some with leather collars, some with
hooks. There were a few elaborate devices that she didn't
look at too closely, things with gears and metal spikes.
Swallowing back bile, Claire focused on the sitting
area. The elegance of the furnishings and of the room itself
made things worse somehow, adding a touch of
warped ego to the obvious psychosis of its creator. Like
it wasn't enough to enjoy torturing people, he -or she -
- wanted to observe it in luxury, like some mad aristocrat.
She saw a book on the end table and walked over to
retrieve it, keeping her gaze fixed straight ahead. Virus
zombies and monsters and useless death were all horrible
things, tragic or frightening or both - but the kind of
sickness represented by the chains and devices all
around her was appalling to her very soul, because it
made her want to give up her faith in humanity.
The book was actually a journal, leather bound with
thick, high quality paper. The inner cover proclaimed
that it was the property of a Dr. Enoch Stoker, no title or
inscription otherwise.
"He knows things, puzzle pieces..."
Claire didn't want to touch the thing let alone read it,
but Rodrigo had seemed to think it might help. She flipped
through a few pages, saw that nothing was dated, and
started scanning the narrow, spidery writing for a familiar
word or name, something about puzzles, maybe ... there,
an entry that made several references to Alfred Ashford.
She took a deep breath and started at the top.
We finally talked today about the details of my
preferences and pleasures. Mr. Ashford wouldn't
share his own, but he was most encouraging to me,
as he's been since my arrival six weeks ago. He was
informed at the beginning that my needs are unconventional,
but now he knows everything, even the
small things. I was uncomfortable at first, but Mr.
Ashford - Alfred, he insists I call him Alfred - proved to
be an eager audience. He said that he and his sister
both strongly approve of research in the boundaries
of experience. He told me that I should think of them
as kindred spirits, and that here, I am free.
It was strange, describing aloud my feelings, sensations
and thoughts that I've never shared. I told
him about how it all started, when I was still a boy.
About the animals I experimented with early on and
later, the other children. I didn't know then that I was
capable of killing, but I knew that the sight of blood
excited me, that causing pain filled an empty, lonely
space inside with profound feelings of power and
control.
I think he understands about the screaming, about
how important the screaming is to me and...
Enough. This wasn't what she was looking for, and it
was making her want to vomit. She turned a few pages,
found another entry about Alfred and his sister, scanned
over something about a private home and went back,
frowning.
Alfred attended one of my live autopsies today,
and told me afterward that Alexia has asked after
me, that she wants to know if I have everything I
need. Alfred worships Alexia, will let no one near her,
I haven't asked to meet her yet, and have no plans to
do so; Alfred wants their private home to remain private,
and to keep her all to himself. It's behind the
common mansion, he told me, most people don't
even know it exists. Alfred tells me things that no one
else knows. I think he appreciates having an acquaintance
with common interests.
He said that Rockfort has many places that require
unusual keys - much like the eye he gave me - some
new, some very old. Edward Ashford, Alfred's grandfather,
was apparently obsessed with secrecy, an obsession
shared by Umbrella's other founder, according
to Alfred. He and Alexia are the only people alive who
know all the hidden places at Rockfort, he said. Alfred
had full sets of keys made for both of them when
he took over his father's position. I joked that it's good
to have a spare in case he ever locks himself out,
and he laughed. He said that Alexia would always let
him in.
I believe that twins often have a much deeper
bond than other sets of siblings - that in a figurative
sense, if you cut one, the other will bleed. I'd like very
much to test this theory in a more literal way, regarding
pain levels. I've found that filling a fresh wound
with cut glass and sewing it closed again is a...
Sickened, Claire tossed the book aside and wiped her
hands on her jeans, deciding that she had enough information
to go on. She hoped quite sincerely that the
corpse upstairs was Dr. Stoker's, that his black heart had
failed him and it was the thought of going to hell that had
frozen his face into a mask of terror - and she abruptly
realized that she'd had more than enough of his atmosphere,
that if she had to be in the infirmary for one more
minute, she really was going to throw up. She turned and
walked quickly to the door, was full on running by the
time she reached the stairs. She took them two at a time,
and sprinted through the upstairs room, not looking at the
body, not thinking about anything but the need to get out.
When she hit the outside path that led back to the
guillotine door, she collapsed against one wall and
breathed in huge lungfuls of air, concentrating on keeping
her gorge down. It took a couple of minutes before
she was out of the danger zone.
When she felt ready, Claire plugged a fresh clip in her
semi and started back toward the training facility. She
realized that she'd lost the second weapon Steve gave
her somewhere between the torture chamber and the
front door, but there was nothing on Earth that would
persuade her to step foot back inside. She was going to
get Steve, and they would find those goddamn keys, and
then they were getting the fuck away from the asylum
that Umbrella had created at Rockfort.
Steve cried for a while, and rocked himself back and
forth for a while, dully aware that he'd just done a very
Big Thing -- as far as lifetime experiences went, there
was the small shit and then big and then capital B Big.
There were some things that just changed people forever,
and this was one of them. He'd had to kill his own father.
Both his parents, good people who meant no harm, were
dead. That meant there was no one in the world who
loved him now, and it was that thought that kept repeating
itself, making him cry and rock back and forth.
It was thinking about the Lugers that finally snapped
him out of the private emotional hell he was in, that made
him remember where he was and what was happening.
He still felt entirely terrible, aching inside and out, but he
started to tune back in to his environment, wishing that
Claire was with him, wishing for a glass of water.
The Lugers. Steve rubbed at his swollen eyes and
then pulled both of them from under his belt, staring
down at them. It was stupid, unimportant, but somewhere
in the back of his mind, he'd finally connected
that when he'd taken the matched handguns off the wall,
that was when he'd been locked in and the heat had
gone on. It had been a trap ... and as far as he could
figure, the only purpose of a trap like that was to keep
someone from taking the weapons.
Which means maybe they're useful for something besides
shooting. Yeah, they were gilded and cool-looking
and probably expensive, but the Ashfords obviously
weren't hurting for money ... and if the guns had some
kind of sentimental value, why were they being used as
part of a trap?
He decided that he wanted to go back and take a
closer look at where they'd been hanging, see if putting
them back did anything. It was a two-minute walk back
to the mansion, tops, he could be there and back in five;
Claire would wait for him if she got back first.
And if I stay here, I'll just keep crying. He wanted,
needed something to do.
Steve stood up, feeling shaky and kind of hollow as
he brushed dirt off his pants, unable to avoid looking
over at where his father had died. He felt a rush of relief
when he saw that Claire had covered him up with a
piece of tarp. She was a great girl ... though for some
reason, he suddenly felt kind of weird about her, about
telling her all that stuff. He wasn't sure how he felt.
He stepped outside, and was vaguely surprised to see
that he wasn't in the front yard of the training facility.
He was also vaguely surprised that in the small, highwalled
square he had walked into was what appeared to
be a WWII Sherman tank. Giant, mud-crusted treads,
revolving turret with huge gun, the whole deal.
He might have been interested earlier, or at least more
than just a little surprised - there was no reason at all for
there to be a tank at the Rockfort facility - but now all
he wanted to do was check out the Luger trap, see if he
could at least contribute something toward getting them
off the island. He felt kind of bad that Claire had been
stuck with questioning the wounded Umbrella guy by
herself, since it was his idea and all.
On the other side of the tank was a door that did open
into the training yard. At least his sense of direction
wasn't totally blown. It seemed darker than it had earlier;
Steve looked up and saw that the sky had gone
cloudy again, blocking the moon and stars. He was
about halfway across the yard when he heard thunder,
loud enough that the very ground seemed to quake a little
beneath his feet. By the time he reached the other
side, it had started to rain again.
Steve stepped up the pace, hanging a right at the exit
and jogging for the mansion. The rain was heavy and
cold, but he welcomed it, opening his mouth and turning
his face to the sky, letting it wash over him. He was
soaked in just a few seconds.
"Steve!"
Claire.
He felt his stomach knot up a little, turning to watch
her approach. She caught up to him outside the door to
the mansion's grounds, wearing a concerned expression.
"Are you all right?" she asked, studying him uncertainly,
blinking rain out of her eyes.
Steve wanted to tell her that he was aces, that he'd
shaken off the worst of it and was ready to get back to
the zombie smackdown, but when he opened his mouth,
none of that came out.
"I don't know. I think so," he said truthfully. He managed
a half smile, not wanting her to worry too much but
not wanting to talk about it, either.
She seemed to understand, swiftly changing the topic.
"I found out that the Ashford twins have a private house
hidden behind the mansion," she said. "And I'm not a
hundred percent sure, but the keys we're looking for
might be there. I think there's a good chance."
"You found all that out from the, uh, Rodrigo?"
Steve asked doubtfully. It was hard to imagine
that an Umbrella employee would give that up to the
enemy.
Claire hesitated, then nodded. "In a roundabout way,"
she said, and he suddenly had the impression that there
was something she didn't want to talk about. He didn't
push it, just waited.
"The problem is getting to the house," she continued.
"I'm sure it's locked up tight. I was thinking we might
poke around the mansion a little more, see if we can find
a map or a passage..."
She pushed her dripping bangs out of her eyes, smiling.
"... and, you know, get out of the rain before we
get wet."
Steve agreed. They went through the entrance to the
manicured grounds, stepping over a few corpses along
the way. He filled her in on his idea about the Lugers,
which she thought they should definitely pursue - although
she also pointed out that with the Ashford family
running the island, Umbrella's cute little puzzles didn't
necessarily need to be logical.
They stopped at the front door to do what they could
about their clothes, which turned out to be not much.
Both of them were drenched, though they did their best
to squeeze out the excess. Fortunately for both of them,
their feet had stayed dry; wet clothes were a pain in the
ass, but trying to get around in squelching boots seriously
sucked the root.
Weapons up, Steve pushed the door open. Shivering,
they stepped inside...
... and heard a door close, upstairs and to the right.
"Alfred," Steve said, keeping his voice low, "betcha
money. What say we put a few holes in his sorry ass?"
He started for the stairs, the question rhetorical. That
loony craphound needed to be dead, for more reasons
than Steve could count.
Claire caught up to him, put a hand on his shoulder.
"Listen, some of the stuff I found back at the
prison ... he's not just crazy, he's seriously deranged.
Like serial killer deranged."
"Yeah, I got that," Steve said. "All the more reason to
take him out ASAP."
"Just ... let's just be careful, okay?"
Claire seemed worried, and Steve felt protective all of
a sudden, big time.
Oh, yeah, he's going down, he thought grimly, but
nodded for Claire's sake. "You got it."
They moved quickly up the stairs, stopping outside
the door they'd heard close. Steve stepped ahead of
Claire, who cocked an eyebrow but said nothing.
"On three," he whispered, turning the knob very
slowly, relieved that it was unlocked. "One-two-three!"
He shouldered the door, hard, bursting into the room
and sweeping with the machine pistol, ready to shoot
the first thing that moved, but nothing did. The room, a
softly lit office lined with bookshelves, was empty.
Claire had gone in and turned left, past a couch and coffee
table on the north wall. Disappointed, Steve stepped
after her, expecting another door to another hall, so sick of
the stupid mazes all over the place that he could just shit...
He stopped and stared, exactly what Claire was
doing. Perhaps ten feet away was a wall, a dead end
with two empty spaces set in a plaque at about chest
level, indentations shaped like Lugers.
Steve felt a flush of adrenaline, of victory. He had no
rational reason to believe that they'd just found the way
to the Ashford's private residence, but he believed they
had, anyway. So, it seemed, had Claire.
"I think we've got it," she said softly, "betcha money."
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