A/N: Thanks for everyone who has gotten this far! Finally getting a decent amount of this story done from rough draft, so hopefully everything continues as it has recently. Reviews are always appreciated, as I'm always looking to improve. Enjoy!
Everything ahead was quiet. Chris decided to check the next couple rooms, still silently cursing himself for getting separated from Jill.
There's no way you could have known the door was going to lock, he reminded himself, and besides, Jill can handle herself. It may have been true, but didn't make him feel much better.
The first room was tiny and occupied only by a bust of a tiger with a blue gem for one eye. Spencer sure had a strange interior decorator. Seeing nothing of use, Chris moved across the hall to the next room, the entire time keeping an eye on the corpse at the end of the hall.
Inside he found a small bedroom, maybe for one of the staff. In one corner was a sloppily made bed with stained sheets, but stained with what Chris refused to guess. On the other side was a desk covered in books, and a small closet. A quick peek into the closet revealed exactly what he expected to find – clothing. No zombies, thank god.
Turning around, one book caught his eye. A thin hardcover with no apparent title sat in a disturbed area of the thick dust coating the desk. Guessing it had been moved recently, Chris curiously picked it up, feeling the worn leather before opening to where a ribbon had marked its pages. It was a journal, the words scrawled in black ink on the thick paper. Chris began to read.
May 9, 1998
Played poker tonight with Scott and Alex from security, and Steve from research. Steve was the big winner, but I think he was cheating. Scumbag.
Chris chuckled a little at that, skimming over more mundane details of the writer's day before getting to the next date.
May 10, 1998
One of the higher-ups assigned me to take care of a new experiment. It looks like a skinned gorilla. Feeding instructions were to give it live animals. When I threw in a pig, the creature seemed to play with it… tearing off the pig's legs and pulling out the guts before it actually started eating.
An experiment? Did that mean that the zombies were also some sort of experiment, maybe gone horribly wrong? And whatever this gorilla creature was, it sounded like something he would rather not run into. He kept reading, now even more interested. There was definitely more to this mansion than met the eye.
May 11, 1998
At around 5 AM, Scott woke me up. Scared the shit out of me, too. He was wearing one of the "space suits," the hazmat uniforms we have in case of a biological spill. He had another and handed it to me, telling me to put it on. Said there'd been an accident in the basement lab. I just knew something like this would happen. Those jackasses in Research never sleep, even at night.
May 12, 1998
I've been wearing this damn space suit since yesterday. My skin's getting grimy and feels itchy all over. The goddamn dogs have been looking at me funny, so I decided not to feed them today. Screw 'em.
May 13, 1998
Went to the infirmary because my back is all itchy and swollen. They put a big bandage on it and told me I didn't need to wear the suit anymore. All I wanna do is sleep.
May 14, 1998
Found another blister on my foot this morning. I ended up dragging my foot all the way to the dogs' pen. They were quiet all day, which is weird. Took me a while to realize some of them had escaped. If anybody finds out, I'll have my ass handed to me.
The dogs in the woods, perhaps? They had all appeared to be the same breed, but Chris still wasn't certain. Regardless, it was looking more and more like this accident in the basement labs the writer had mentioned may have caused all of this somehow. Were these the same secret Umbrella Corporation labs that appeared in Billy's documents?
May 16, 1998
The company has ordered that no one leave the facility, and they disconnected all the payphones. Rumor's going around that a researcher who tried to escape the estate last night was shot. I've been confined to bed. My entire body now feels itchy, and I'm sweating all the time and feel feverish. I scratched the welling on my arm and the skin just came right off. It wasn't until then that I noticed the rotten smell coming from myself, and when I realized it was making me hungry, I got violently sick. Scott brought me a bucket and some more water, but I can't keep the water down anymore.
The penmanship had become extremely bad, unevenly spaced words written at a slant across the paper. Chris had to concentrate to make out the last few lines. There was no date. It just read:
Fever gone but itchy scratch hungry and eat doggie food itchy itchy scott came ugly face so killed him itchy tasty.
The writing trailed off into nonsense and scribbles, then abruptly ended. All the pages after were blank. Some of what he read made sense, too much sense. All this took place not terribly long before the murders started. Given the distance of the mansion to Raccoon City, the timeframe could easily be feasible.
Chris then shuddered at one thought.
If this was some disease or toxin that was making these people act like the living dead, causing the flesh to rot right off their bones and making them kill and eat people, how was it spread? Was it just by contact, like the movies, or was it airborne? Were all the surviving STARS members already infected, just walking time bombs waiting to go crazy?
Chris realized he couldn't entertain those thoughts, at least not until he knew more. If they were infected or whatever this was, it wouldn't do any good worrying about it. But Chris knew, as his stomach sank, escape wasn't going to be so simple anymore. They would have to make their way down to this lab the journal had told of and find out more about what they had been researching to make sure that if they did get back to town, they wouldn't end up spreading some zombie plague.
He knew one thing for certain as he tucked the journal into his vest and headed back out to continue his search. This night had just gotten a lot longer.