"Now Sherry," says Officer Martin, pointing his pen at her and smiling as though they are best friends. She's already shouted at him once, and knows it won't do any good to try again. So she nods at him and leans back on the sofa, crossing her hands over her stomach. Beside her, Mr Reynolds touches her knee lightly.
"Sherry, we want you to answer these questions as truthfully as you can," he says, "but if you get upset, try not to worry." She nods at him; she can recognise a social worker's beat when she hears it.
Officer Martin smiles, and returns to reading from his clipboard. "Your parents – Doctor and Mrs Birkin – they were scientists, right?"
"Right," answers Sherry, glad to be asked an easy question for once.
Martine continues, "right, and did they ever… hurt you? Were they angry, a lot?"
Sherry wonders how on earth she could answer such a question. She's sitting on a sofa in a hospital miles from anywhere she recognises, covered head to toe in blood and grime, still getting flashes from the past few days. She wants to tell him to get out of here, stop wasting his time with her and get out there to where the real monsters are.
She nods, slowly. Her parents were fucked-up physicists with more lab equipment than sense, a blood-alcohol level higher than she had learned to count at school and they'd left her cold and hungry on more than one occasion. So yeah, I guess you could say they'd hurt her.
Officer Martin nods, makes a note on his clipboard and stares at her. He's young, probably not even thirty, and has dark skin and darker eyes. He's probably wondering how he got stuck with this detail, how the hell on earth he got assigned to the hospital's first, and likely only, survivor of a bio-terrorism incident. Sherry couldn't blame him.
"Did they ever… touch you?" He says this slowly, as though he's making sure she really understands.
She understands all right. But she shakes her head, twice. They never paid her the slightest bit of attention, and she supposes she ought to be grateful for that.
"Tell us about their relationship with Mr Wesker, is that his name?"
Sherry nods again. "Mr Wesker was their friend. He came over for dinner sometimes, and he worked with them. Well, more with my father than my mom. They were partners."
Officer Martin's eyes light up and he scribbles more on his clipboard. Sherry wonders what she's said to make him write like that.
"Mr Martin," she says quietly. Mr Reynolds beside her smiles encouragingly. "Mr Martin, what's the point of asking me these questions? My parents are dead, and so is Mr Wesker." She says that last part hesitantly, because she sure as hell hopes he is. No, she takes a breath, she shouldn't be wishing that sort of thing. But then she remembers the blood in the street and the demons in the office, and she isn't sure what she should be thinking. She doesn't feel twelve years old anymore.
Officer Martin sits back in his chair. "Sherry, surely you can't be glad that your parents are dead?"
She feels sick just hearing him say it. Dead, dead, they're both dead, Christmas, birthdays, July 4th, school plays, science fairs – all of it is dead and undead and killed again at gunpoint by her knight in shining armor. She can barely recall how it happened, how she managed to survive. Even now, she's struggling to remember what Claire looks like.
Sherry shrugs. She's doing a lot of that lately.
