SERVE AND PROTECT 2

The muzzle of her gun let out a roaring light as the bullet embedded itself in the zombie's skull, letting out a gush of blackened blood and rotting flesh as the entire head exploded in a flurry of gore. It always caught Claire off guard whenever it happened, Elliot even more so. Thankfully they hadn't encountered much zombies up until now, only about four or five but all of them were R.P.D. officers. She didn't need to have telepathy to notice how much it bothered Elliot to be shooting at people he was working with just a few days ago. The one's whose head just exploded was someone named 'Doug'.

"He was a fat, lazy, annoying piece of shit." Elliot described him when they first saw him as a zombie, clawing away at a vending machine. "The only one in the station who would remember the birthdays of everyone in the station. Goddammit was he annoying…" his voice started to shake before the detective gulped his grief down and steeled himself for many more of these moments.

The shotgun they found on the corpse only had two shells and so, not wanting to waste it, Elliot strapped the gun to his back and stuck to his M19 while Claire still kept her SLS gripped tightly as she entered into the West Office, her and Elliot's flashlight shinning through the dark to reveal bloodied desks, broken lights and decorations along the ceiling. Though it was hard to see Claire could see papered yellow letters with blue paper circles surrounding them. 'Welcome Leon!' it said and Claire felt a tug on her heart, 'Don't blame yourself Leon, there's nothing you could have done.'

There was no time to feel sad however, "Mind telling me why we're here Detective?" she said to Elliot who was currently searching the desks for bullets, avoiding the hopefully dead corpse on one of the desks. She shined her light on the name next to the desk and saw the name, 'Neil Carsen'. This entire trip for the medallion so far felt like Claire just remembering the names of everyone that died in this station cut-in between taking care of said dead officers.

"Ammo mostly." Elliot finally responded as he finally finished searching the desks and opened up the lockers on the corner opposite of the entrance door to the office. "Here, these should be useful." He tossed her a box of high caliber .45 rounds. The box itself was half empty, having only about 6 bullets inside, and the bullets themselves wasn't something Claire usually used as she preferred 9mm but these still would probably prove to come in handy in a pinch and so she stuffed them in her back pocket.

"Nice, we got our ammo. Can we go now?" she asked in annoyance.

"Patience Redfield, I think I got another thing for you."

"Whatever you say Detective." She rolled her eyes.

For a second there was a loud noise coming from somewhere else, it wasn't much to notice but Claire could still see him jumping from every little click and clack that wasn't right in front of them.

"What's with you? I thought after so much time you'd be used to those freaks by now."

For a moment he stared at her with icy eyes, it was the first time she'd seen him look like that. Soon his stare melted and was replaced with a look of scornful pity, "Right, I guess you've only really been here for more than an hour." If there was some ill will meant in those words Claire didn't care enough to acknowledge it. "Whatever made those… things… it didn't just affect the people, it affected the animals too… and kids as well…" once again his voice began to shake. "But good God I wish that was the worst of it."

As Claire stared at Leon's welcome sign, she heard a slight click sound and turned to the lieutenant's room where Elliot was leaving with something in his hands. Almost forcefully he took Claire's own hand and placed something in her palm and as she looked down she saw a speed loader for a revolver. Elliot's cold eyes were still fixed on her however.

"I know what I am Claire. I've never had any delusions of it nor does my own goddamn pride allow me to look past it. But don't try to look down on me when I know that you haven't seen half of the shit I have seen in this city these past few days."

After they left the West office Claire followed Elliot without any more comments. 'He thinks I'm mocking him…' she thought. In reality, Claire couldn't deny she thought of him less seriously than say Leon or Marvin. He was a coward, there was no denying it, he didn't deny it for God's sake. Once they were out of the West Office, she continued to follow the detective into the door opposite, this one being a steel door with a barred window on the top. Almost without thinking Elliot opened the door and stormed inside and the door nearly slammed Claire in the face. 'And now he's trying to ignore.' Her guilt was slowly fading and being replaced with annoyance again but still, first it was Leon and now Elliot.

The room was what Claire remembered to be the locker room she spotted on the map Marvin had showed them. She almost couldn't spot Elliot at the end of the room standing in front of a locker much larger than the other ones in the main section of the room. When she walked over she saw a gated locker with a grenade launcher on the inside. In a fluid motion Elliot slid in the keycard Marvin had given them and the gate opened. He didn't even bother to look at her before leaving the locker as well as the launcher alongside three grenades with a fire symbol on them, she assumed this meant they were Incendiary grenades. 'Why would cops need a freaking grenade launcher'. The thought didn't linger too long however as she picked up the grenade launcher, loaded it with a grenade, placed the remaining grenades in her hip pouch and slung the gun over her shoulder.

After a few more moments of silence Claire could begin to hear the rain washing everything away from the outside. She didn't try to question Elliot anymore, simply following behind him.

Outside the locker room the two of them went on ahead to the next hallway leading to the west staircase. Once again a zombie tried to grab Elliot behind a barred window and once again the detective jumped in fear, though Claire noticed he tried to play it off as surprise the zombie itself was visible all the way from the beginning of the hallway. There was no going around it, no matter what the circumstances are she could see how much those things shook him.

After the quick encounter Elliot went up the stairs two steps at a time, making haste and not even noticing the dead female police officer lying hunched over on the corner with a spray of blood covering the area around her. While she was still following him, Claire made a mental note to keep an eye out for any "dead" corpses lying around, she would have to be both of their eyes since Elliot was looking to be more and more stubborn with every new step.

After they've set their feet firmly onto the 2nd floor she first noticed a locker with a lock on it with three dials. It looked similar to the ones that were on Leon's desk though she assumed there was no hint at how to unlock that one without wasting time on trial-and-error ways to break through it, and she wasn't intending to waste ammo in the attempt to force her way through it.

"Not much longer now. If we cross through here we should be at the lounge in no time." Elliot said as the two of them went through the showers, she expected the entrance to be blocked with steam from a faulty pipe as Marvin told them but it seems they lucked out and the pipe that was leaking the steam could be turned off with a valve to the side.

For what seemed to be the tenth time now they were in another hallway. Footsteps creaking on the wooden floor boards and the rain lightly tapped on the windows slowly starting to drown out their footsteps as they came closer and closer to them. Like all the other rooms of the station there was blood everywhere, 'It's almost comedic in a way' Claire thought as she observed a streak of blood being dragged on the ceiling 'can't imagine any zombie doing that.'

When she shined her flashlight on the ceiling Elliot couldn't help but notice it as well, though as usual their reactions to it were extremely different. She could see his throat begin to convulse in disgust and his hands start to shake again. "Claire…" he turned to her, "… what I mentioned before, about the zombies."

"They don't affect just humans yeah. Listen if I was being annoying then I'm sorry…"

"No hear me out. I never managed to finish what I was going to say." He looked her in the eyes again, this time not with contempt or pity but with that fearful look that was always on him. "The zombies aren't the only thing here. There's something else, something… wrong."

Claire raised her brow and crossed her arms to the detective's words, 'What could be worse than the literal dead rising up and eating people.'

"I don't know how to describe them besides just looking wrong in every sense of the word. Their skin is inside out, they don't have eyes and half their head's just a swollen brain leaking blood. They're the reason the station got overrun."

Whilst walking through the hallway Claire could hear what she thought was the rain begin to tap on the walls faster suddenly, but it was only for a second. Elliot didn't seem to notice, too focused on what's in front of him to jump at a random noise for once.

"And they move faster than you can even see them. It was only three that I saw a few days ago but I wish I didn't. They tore through us in only a few seconds, and that was all it took for our entire operation to go south and now here we are." He pointed his flashlight to the ceiling to once more stare at the gush of blood. "The ones that got lucky…"

Again, she heard the rain outside speed up but as they were passing a window, she noticed the rain outside hadn't become denser at all, everything was exactly the same as it was a few moments ago. And yet for a moment she swore she could see a flash of red across the window, this time Elliot didn't let it go unnoticed and both drew their guns out of their holsters. "Me and my goddamn mouth." Elliot murmured to himself as moans of death and rotting flesh became clearer from the next room.

Before they reached the end of the hallway Claire could see two other doors before the one they were currently in front of. She was too focused on the windows to see what exactly was written on them but one of the doors had a sign above, it was probably nothing too important. The second door she got a better look at but it wasn't going to open any time soon as the door had a scarlet diamond symbol on it emblazoned with a crest of gold in a circle formation. She saw another door like it opposite the entrance to the West Office, instead of a diamond however it was in the shape of a blue spade. Whoever this Chief Irons was that Marvin mentioned he certainly wasn't thinking ahead enough to give his officers the keys to the freaking station.

Elliot pushed his ear against the wooden door to listen in, she didn't know why exactly it was obvious that there were zombies on the other side. 'Maybe he thinks he can find out how many of them are there.'

After a second or two of silence Claire could hear the pitter patter outside again. 'That's not rain' she pointed her gun towards the window, expecting one of the things Elliot described to suddenly just jump out and attack them but her focus was broken with Elliot tapping her shoulder.

"There's bound to be at least two of them in there. I need you to watch my back." He said as Claire turned around, taking one last glance back to the windows before turning her attention to the door. "On my mark…"

He raised his right hand with three fingers in the air. 1… 2… 3… and with a kick he slammed the door open to the scene of two zombies feasting on an officer's corpse. Both of them didn't waste a second before opening fire on the two, Claire took pot shots at the heads and while she tried to keep her hands as steady as possible she wasted a bullet that strayed a bit too far from the target's head. By the time she unloaded her entire clip into the zombie, minus one, the zombie was staggered from the sheer force and its entire face was nothing but a bloody mush of bones, blood and skin but still it lived or rather it was still limping towards her.

Elliot spaced his shots more and aimed for the left zombie's ankles, every shot making the thing stagger more and more until eventually one of the legs got torn off under the pressure and the zombie was on the ground. Meanwhile Claire had to act fast, she pulled out the speed loader from her back pocket and emptied out her revolvers chamber, soon the gun was reloaded and she trained her sights on what was left of the zombie's face. She waited until the zombie was just in front of her before unloading three bullets and with that she assumed the zombie was down for good as they fell on the ground limp and even more lifeless than it already was.

As she was done with her target Elliot had holstered his gun and embedded a knife in the downed zombie's skull. "Word of advice Redfield, try to conserve your shots." He said as he pulled the knife out of the corpse and put it back on his person.

"Well you may be jumpy detective but don't let anyone say you're not resourceful." She said with a grin and to her surprise Elliot actually smiled back for once.

The two corpses were now sufficiently dead, at least Claire hoped so. Only now did she take the time to observe her surroundings, they were in the lounge right now, if she remembered the map correctly. Unlike most of the station this room had working lights and the entire room had an orange tint to it. There were two coffee tables opposite each other with nothing interesting besides one having a clipboard while the other a decorated vase. The point of interest was the statue in the shape of a unicorn. The unicorn itself had a hoof on a massive metal police badge with a small circled hole where Claire assumed the medallion was. Below the badge was the same type of three-point combination the locks in the West Office had, instead of letters however it had symbols. 'Who the hell designed these things?' she thought.

"Finally." She said, "You got the paper detective?"

"Right here" Elliot pulled out a piece of paper with the combination to obtaining the medallion scribbled onto it.

Two fish, a scorpion and a jug. That was the combination and once Elliot had put it in the small crevice opened up to reveal the bronze unicorn medallion. "Alright!" he said, a smile finally coming upon Elliot's face as he put the medallion in his hip pouch. "Let's go Claire, I don't wanna stay away from the main hall any more than we have to." And to his words she simply nodded in agreement.

As fast as they could Elliot and Claire ran back to the hallway since the other door to the lounge lead to the library and if they had a key they might have even had a shortcut back to the main hall but luck wasn't on their side this time.

Suddenly Elliot halted to a screeching stop as his and Claire's radios started to turn on. "MARVIN, ELLIOT, CAN YOU HEAR ME?! A CHOPPER'S FLYING TO US RIGHT NOW!" she recognized the voice over the radio as the senior officer Leon seemingly knew, David she remembered his name was.

An even bigger smile started creeping on Elliot's face, "Wait, seriously? Alright then we're-" he was interrupted however by the older officer.

"IT'S N-… EDW… STATION!-… HEAR ME?!" after that their radios started to experience static more and more and soon enough they couldn't get even a single word out from the other side. Elliot started banging the radio in anger but surprisingly that didn't do anything to fix it.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked, the radio still in her hands.

"Damn this is being jammed, probably the storm outside. Dammit all, come on we should-…" he once again stopped himself mid-sentence, "You hear that?" he asked.

"Yeah." The sound of a helicopter started to become louder and louder as time started to go on.

"Come on, let's get to the main hall before getting our hopes up." And so the two began to jog up the hallway again with Elliot taking the lead.

The helicopter's rotors started to be louder and louder however and once again Elliot stopped himself when they were halfway down the hall. "What's wrong?" she asked the detective as Elliot slowly began turning, a revelation in his eyes the Claire could figure out. With every second the rotors began blaring louder and louder and suddenly that same realization started to come to her as well.

"GET OUT THE WAY!" Elliot shouted as he showed Claire out of the way and jumped back as far as he could. The helicopter crashed down with a roaring sound of broken debris and shattering walls.

The force of impact made Claire fly away even farther and hit her head when she fell on her back. The impact made her dizzy but only for a few moments before her senses came back to her. Barely on her feet, she still couldn't quite gain perfect balance when Elliot's voice came from the other side of the broken helicopter, now firmly stuck in the building. "Claire! Claire you there?!" he shouted.

"Yeah!" she called back to him while looking at the wreck of the crashed helicopter. Inside was the pilot and in the back were three U.S. military looking soldiers. All of them were dead, but something told her that it wasn't the crash that killed them.

"Dammit the path's blocked. Claire listen I'll head back to the main hall and meet back up with Rita and Marvin! You can get to the 3rd floor through the library and then cross to the west side, you can probably meet up with David and Leon that way!"

"Alright, I'll see you there detective!"

"Be careful Redfield…"

And with that she unholstered her revolver once more and reloaded 3 bullets back into her cartridge. 'We will make it out of this, I promise.'


AN: Just a quick little note to admit some minor plot discrepancies from the actual game in terms of Chapter 2.

The East Storage Room was not located on the 3rd floor of the East side as Marvin said in the beginning and this has been updated/fixed to fit in line with where Leon and David are by the end. Instead, the maiden medallion is on the 3rd floor of the west area above the S.T.A.R.S. office.

The shutter door leading out of the Watchman's Room where Elliot was eaten does not lead to the stairs between the 3rd floor of the East Wing and the lower floor into the Interrogation Room. This is simply me forgetting the map layout (I know, I know heretical by RE2 standards but there's not much I can do for this).

And, of course this is not really that important but my autistic ass cares;

The corpse on the west hallway leading out of the main hall does not contain the shotgun. This change is pretty obvious as I didn't want Leon and Claire to get their extended armory from the same places as well as the same way as in the game and so the shotgun and the Lighting Hawk are there from the beginning.