Chapter Twenty: Siren's Song
Here goes nothing.
Well, that wasn't exactly correct Drake decided as he stood staring blankly at his front door. He'd been rooted in place for the better part of twenty minutes now, long enough to feel safe in his assumption that the hallway fluorescents were giving him a nasty tan. More like, here goes everything.
Drake closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath as he fished around in his pocket. He closed his hand around the small square object there then quickly let go when he realized how sweaty his palm was. When he opened his eyes again the door was still standing there, the eyehole seeming to stare back at him, daring him to make a move.
Would that I could, bud.
All he had to do was take a step forward, place his hand on the knob, give it a spin and step inside. That was it. That was all. For the last twenty minutes and counting though, Drake Lincoln hadn't been able to bring himself to do that.
It was like someone had snipped the telephone wire in his brain. Messages were getting sent but not received. His feet stayed planted. His hands stayed glued at his side. Drake knew what he was dealing with almost instantly. He'd never experienced it before personally but he'd seen it happen to other men more than once.
Yeah, except there were usually bullets whizzing past their heads or bombs going off at their backs. He flipped the square around in his pocket. What's your excuse, pal?
Drake smiled and if he hadn't been so nervous he might have even managed a laugh at his own expense. There were some folks out there, Drake knew, who would have thought of him as a regular Billy Badass. After all, he was the same guy who'd hiked through deserts where every patch of sand could have concealed a scorpion, camel spider or anti-personnel mine. He'd spent days hiding out in the Arctic waste, watching the entrance to a bunker until his eyelashes turned to icicles. He was the same guy who'd slogged through the worst swamps in the world, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and all manner of creepy crawlies while the enemy could have been bearing down on him with all manner of automatic weapons.
Now, looking back, none of that seemed like it had been a really big deal. Just another day at the office. Could he walk through his front door though? Hell no. Bring on the scorpions and swamps and machete-totting guerillas.
Yep. Billy Badass. That's me. Drake shook his head, twirled the square between his fingertips. Christ. If only the guys could see me now. Afraid to walk into my own apartment.
Well, Drake supposed the guys couldn't see him after all. That was one of the drawbacks to being dead. He wasn't dead though. He was still here and by some bizarre twist of fate he'd been handed an opportunity that he never could have dreamed of back when he was worried about stepping on camel spiders or booby-traps. An opportunity to do something real. Something that mattered.
Not if you don't step through the goddamn door already. Come on, buddy. Sack up or shut up.
"Right," Drake blew out a heavy breath and pulled his hand out of his pocket to cross himself twice for good measure. He'd never been a religious man but - with what he was planning - Drake figured it couldn't hurt. He turned the knob, stepped inside and went down in a heap as someone buried a baseball bat in his gut.
He fell to his knees fighting to draw in oxygen that was suddenly absent. Drake felt like an astronaut who'd had his helmet torn off in the middle of a spacewalk. Behind him he heard someone slam the door, flip the bolt and secure the chain.
Gasping and wheezing, Drake staggered to his feet with his arms wrapped around his belly. Before he could turn the bat clipped him across the back of one knee, then the other. Drake collapsed to the hardwood and then onto his face when his unseen assailant butt-ended him in the kidney.
Drake lay with his face pressed to the floor, his arms curled tight around his stomach and his knees throbbing to the frantic beat of his heart. He lay there sucking in tiny, desperate breaths. His mind was too overwhelmed by the pain setting his body on fire to form a cohesive thought beyond the simple, primal understanding that he may have just walked into the last few moments of his life.
The agony in his gut fading to a dull ache, Drake found that breathing had become a little easier. He pressed his hands to the ground and found strength enough to lift his upper body up off the floor. The bat clapped him sharply across the shoulders though and drove him back into place.
Soft, smooth clicking noises sounded as a pair of shoes came into view. Black leather and polished to an almost mirror shine. Drake followed them up to an expensive looking pair of black slacks, a belt with a large gold buckle, a brown trench coat and a meaty pair of hands.
One of those thick paws gripped the handle of an aluminum baseball bat. The other was ringed by a gold and silver charm bracelet. Drake looked further up to a gargoyle's face with a deep scar running underneath one eye as hard and cold as black ice.
"You should have taken Mister McShay's offer," Charms told him before bringing the bat down across his face.
There was a harsh crack as he felt his nose give way. Blood spattered the floor and filled his mouth. He spat out a mouthful of it as his head was wrenched to one side. His skull bounced off the floor, his vision blurred and shook before snapping painfully back into focus.
Drake found himself looking into the apartment's kitchenette but the space that Jessica normally kept meticulously neat now looked more like the Hulk's punching bag. Cabinet doors were cracked and hanging off their hinges. The chairs at the counter had been overturned and shattered. Ceramic and glass fragments littered the ground like shrapnel on a battlefield, marking the places where dishes had tumbled from the cabinets overhead. The ratty old washcloth which normally hung securely around the oven's door handle now dangled limply from Jessica's pale fingers.
Jess? No...
Drake closed his eyes, squeezed them until they hurt. Charms must have really socked him one good. He must have been seeing things. That wasn't Jessica he'd been looking at. Just his eyes playing tricks. His head felt packed with cotton, stuffed with spiderwebs. He shook himself to clear them away.
Please, just let it be that. Slowly, Drake opened his eyes.
Jessica hadn't gone anywhere. She still lay among the wreckage of the kitchen she'd looked after with the discipline of a drill sergeant since moving in. Her hair formed a dark halo around a face that wasn't just pale but grey. So grey that it made her blue lips stand out even more.
Wrapped around her neck was a length of electrical cord, tied so tight it had bitten through her skin to draw a trickle of blood. That blood had formed a small pool on the hardwood next to another pair of polished loafers. Drake didn't have to look any higher to know their owner was a burly bald guy with a welt discoloring his neck.
"You made me choke," Cue Ball said and Drake could tell by the man's tone that he was grinning. "I figured your girlfriend deserved the same treatment."
Jessica...no.
No tricks. No deception. That was Jessica, that was his love, laying there cold and rotting on the floor of their home. Drake had seen horror and Hell - survived heavy doses of both in his life - but never before had he felt so lost, so trapped, in a living nightmare as he did now.
Jessica's dead. It was a simple statement - a simple thought - but the overwhelming finality of those words made it all but impossible to process.
Jessica's dead. Her laughter, light and quick, would never again tickle his ears when he tickled her feet. He would never again feel the soft rhythm of her fingers dancing across the back of his neck as they lay together in bed. He would never again wake to the sound of her humming, so loud it was laughable, to herself in the shower as she got ready for work each morning.
Jessica's dead. Never again would he see the light in her face when she smiled. Never again would he feel the warmth of her arms as she wrapped them around his waist when he walked through the door. Her light, her warmth...were gone. Forever.
She's gone, Drake knew, because of me.
Fredrick McShay had ordered her death, Charms and Cue Ball had carried out the killing but if they were the reaction then Drake himself had been the catalyst. Jessica was dead because of what he'd done, who'd he'd been. Who he was.
"She never knew," Drake sobbed, tears burning his eyes like acid, "she never knew."
He hadn't spoken a word to Jess about his run-in with McShay and his goons. He hadn't said anything about the offer McShay made, the threatens he had issued, the warning he had tried to give. How could he without raising questions he wasn't sure he could answer? Jessica knew him only as Drake Lincoln: dockhand, working stiff, blue collar Joe.
She never knew...because he had never told her the truth. At least not about himself, about what he had done before they met. Drake had tried to tell her. Early on in their relationship he had decided she needed to know who he really was but, in love, the mind always seemed to know things the heart would rather remain ignorant of.
She needed to know who he really was but Drake had been so afraid that if she did know - about the deserts and swamps and bloodstained snow - then she would have left him. So he'd selfishly kept his secrets boxed up and buried beneath layers of lies.
In the end, it seemed, his plan had worked. Jessica hadn't left him. Instead, she'd been taken away.
"She never knew!" Drake's cry was a ragged wail of biting loss. Tears burned down his face as some wicked shade thrust a barbed knife into the core of his heart. He gazed at Jessica's corpse and felt that same shade carving away the last piece of his soul - stripping away that tattered, bloody old thing.
"Guess she never will now, either," Cue Ball said. He stomped forward and drove the toe of his finely polished shoe into Drake's belly.
He rolled onto his back. The pain in his body a dull ache compared to the hot agony gripping his heart. Cue Ball and Charms stood over him now. The former looking down at him with his ape-like face twisted in disgust. Charms wore the hint of a grin as he lifted the bat above his head. Drake spat out another mouthful of blood.
"There's something...you should...know," he wheezed.
"What's that?" Charms sounded amused.
"Before this...is over..." He said, " you're both...going to die...very badly."
Cue chuckled. Charms laughed.
"It's already over," he said and brought the bat down.
"OUCH!" A sharp pain tore up Drake's leg, wrenching him from his dark daydream. He looked down to see Sarah had part of his jumpsuit - and a healthy portion of his skin - twisted between her thumb and forefinger. She let go at his exclamation but flashed him a look that was a little too satisfied for his liking. "What was that for?"
"I was asking about your arm but you stopped answering my questions. It was more than a little annoying to be honest," Sarah said as she finished changing his bandage, wrapping the cotton tight around his forearm. She met his eyes and her expression softened. "Sorry. You got this faraway, tripped-out look and...I was just checking, you know?"
Drake nodded. He knew.
Just checking to make sure I'm still all here. Just checking to make sure I'm still responsive. Just checking to make sure I'm not about to get up and try to sink my teeth into someone's neck. Yeah, I know.
"Sorry about that," Drake said. "I just got lost in thought for a second there. What was your question?"
"How are you feeling?"
"Should have guessed," he smiled. "Fine and dandy. All things considered."
Fine and dandy - on the outside at least. Internally, Drake's mind was caught in a violent squall of gnashing terror and crushing regret. It was only through a Herculean display of self-discipline that he was able to restrain himself from curling up in the fetal position and crumbling into a gibbering mess. Drake could feel the icy claws of panic crawling along his spine with every breath he took. Reminding himself that each one could be the last he took.
In a few hours - maybe less - he would grow sick, feverish and mad. He would fall into a coma and when he woke he wouldn't be Drake Lincoln anymore. He would be something else - a walking, rotting corpse that would try and kill whoever was closest without thought or hesitation. He would die as man and rise as a monster.
That's if they let me wake up from that coma, of course.
Drake tilted his head, looking over to where Mike Gilson lounged against the far wall with his arms crossed. He wasn't surprised to find the hulking deputy already staring at him. Gilson's face was as dark as the night outside and as hard as the concrete walls which surrounded them now - save for his eyes. Drake could almost see the flames dancing behind them, Gilson's pupils smoldering like two pieces of molten rock.
Drake knew if he was interested in preserving his life even another second then he needed to tread carefully around that man. Gilson had been willing to kill Sarah - and had very nearly succeeded as well - in order to get to him. For whatever reason, Gilson had decided Drake was the cause of all the world's ills at the moment and the only way to fix that problem was to remove him from it.
He blames me for what happened to Tucker. Drake could tell that much from a cursory glance at the man. It was illogical - Drake had been trying to warn the other deputy - but logic no longer applied to the way someone like Mike Gilson thought.
He was cracking. That's what they had called it back in Drake's other life. He had seen it happen to other men countless times before. Men who had seen and experienced much less in their entire lives than Gilson had during his one horrifying night in Raccoon.
In fact, it's pretty remarkable he hasn't tried anything more...drastic...than he already has.
"You're sure?" Sarah asked, drawing his attention again. "You don't have any pain? Itching? Nausea? No nothing?"
"I'm sure." Drake nodded. "My arm doesn't even hurt that much anymore, however, my butt is getting a little sore." He pointed between his legs to the stack of crates doubling as sofa.
Michelle's ankle was swollen worse than she'd been letting on. Clarke insisted they were only a block from the station but, despite her protests to the contrary, the woman wouldn't have made it another foot without a rest. The group had ducked into a warehouse which, blessedly, had been unlocked.
Shelves lined the ground floor stacked with girders, pipes, poles and sheet metal of every shape and size. Huge machines whose purpose Drake couldn't even begin to guess at, occupied the spaces in between, humming softly. At the far end of the room a tall staircase led up to what must have been the foreman's office. A wall of windows overlooking the production floor below.
Danny had Marty and Hargreaves sweeping the lower level with Lieutenant Shitbird while the two detectives cleared the upstairs. The marshal himself had scrounged up a roll of duct tape - and a first-aid kit - from somewhere and knelt nearby, helping Homer tape up Michelle's ankle.
The woman was sweaty and pale. Drake watched her and saw the way the cords in her neck tightened as she clenched her jaw to keep from crying out each time Danny cinched the tape tighter around her foot.
Christ, she actually looks worse than me. Drake felt a pang of guilt for finding that reassuring.
"Your eyes look normal," Sarah told him as she seized his face and pried one of his eyelids wider. Then again, it sounded more like the girl was talking to herself. Girl genius, Drake reminded himself. It was easy to forget. Doctor Sarah Waxer looked like she should have been starting her freshman year. "Still no fever either."
Drake batted her hand away from his forehead. "Try not to sound too disappointed, would you?" He gave her a rueful smile.
She swatted at the hand he'd swatted hers with and pressed her fingers up under his jaw, rubbing down his neck. "Your glands aren't swollen either," she shook her head. "I'm sorry. I'm not disappointed. It's just I'm...you know what? I don't know what I am. This is just all really...unusual."
"I'll take that to mean I'm unique." Drake grinned. "Thanks for the compliment, doc."
"Glad to see this hasn't dampened your spirits at least."
Drake shrugged. "Better laughing than crying right?"
Sarah grunted and looked away. When she turned back she had trouble meeting his eye and was chewing the inside of her cheek with such gusto it looked like there was a snake crawling around in her mouth. The girl - girl genius - had one one hand locked in a white-knuckled death-grip around the other.
Drake smiled. She might be a prodigy with an IQ the size of a jetliner but there were some things you just couldn't learn in a book. The girl genius wore her every anxiety as plainly as she wore her lab coat. There was something oddly...charming about her awkwardness.
"You want to ask me a question," Drake said for her, "but you're afraid how I'll react. Go on. You've already saved my ass twice since we met. The least I owe you is a little honesty."
Something I couldn't even give to the woman I loved the most.
That thought bit deep, cutting him to his core. Drake wasn't afraid of dying - why should he be? He had died the same day Fatal Freddy had Jessica murdered. He only regretted that now he would never be able to do anything about it. Years of planning and bloodshed...all for nothing now.
I was so close. He was but Fate was cruel and had conspired against him.
"I was just wondering," Sarah began slowly, clearly embarrassed about whatever it was she wanted to know. "No one's told me what it is you did to wind up wearing those." She nodded to the lone handcuff still dangling around his wrist. "You never mentioned it either - though I guess we've all had bigger problems to deal with. It's just...Danny says you're a killer and -"
"He is a killer." Drake looked up and there was Danny, sauntering over with his M4 cradled across his chest and a cold look in his eyes. "The worst kind of killer too. The kind who kills for money."
"Nice to see you too, Danny," Drake smiled. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to eavesdrop?"
The marshal grunted.
"So you're a...hitman?" Sarah asked and Drake was surprised to find she wasn't regarding him with judgement or fear or revulsion. She looked curious. She wasn't just looking at him anymore, she was studying him now.
Trying to figure me out, doc? Wondering what makes me tick, is that it?
"Something like that," Drake replied, looking away. "Danny makes it sound a lot more simple than it is." He gave the marshal one of the grins he knew irritated him so profoundly. "That's why you've never been that interesting, Danny. Everything's so black and white to you."
Another grunt. "You got paid to kill people, Drake. You got paid by a mobster to kill people. What's more black and white than that."
"There's a certain honesty to it. What I did for Romeo Capelli is probably the most honest thing I've ever done in my life."
"Murder for hire is murder for hire." Danny spat. "What you've done has always been murder, Drake, even back when you were killing for -" Danny trailed off, eyeing Sarah warily as if only just noticing that she was still standing there.
Drake sighed, shaking his head. Somewhere inside of him he actually liked Danny Cobb but the man's sense of propriety could be infuriating at times. Not to mention entirely out of place given their current situation.
"When I was killing for the government." Drake finished Danny's sentence for him, turning to Sarah. "That's what he was thinking of saying anyway. He didn't say that because - in addition to, I think, being slightly embarrassed by just how much he knows about me - Danny's not sure how much he wants you to know about me.
"I don't really think that should be much of a concern for you, bud," he said, turning back to Danny. "Considering I'm going to be dead sooner than later it's not going to matter much what she knows, now is it?"
"You were military?"Sarah asked and Drake nodded.
"Delta Force. I was part of a group that mostly handled black ops cleaning gigs. Wet work."
The girl raised an eyebrow. "In English, please?"
"I was someone who eliminated high priority targets."
"You were an assassin," Danny seethed.
"We preferred the term soldier but fair enough," Drake shrugged. "I specialized in comms and tech but...yeah, we ran assassination missions. Despots, warlords, arms runners, terrorism financiers - we took out a wide variety of scumbags."
It was the truth but not all of it. Drake wasn't quite as naive as he let on. He knew not every one of his targets had been a demon made flesh. Many had simply found themselves on the wrong side when political lines were drawn. They had backed the wrong players; supported the wrong causes. Such things happened when people saw only in black and white.
"You think working for Capelli was more honest than what you did when you were in Delta?" Danny snorted. "At least back then you were killing people who's crimes were even worse than yours. What you did for the mob was -"
"Justice," Drake snarled. He liked Danny but the man sure knew when to push him at the wrong time. He was going to be dead before dawn more likely than not. Wasn't that enough for him? "It was justice, Danny. In its purest form."
"Justice?" Danny hissed. "Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night? You're responsible for dozens of murders, Drake. People who -"
"People who what?" Drake laughed wondering if Danny would actually try to vindicate any of the people he'd put in the ground. "Name one of my 'victims', Danny. Go ahead."
"Luka Tonzi," Danny said without hesitation. Drake wasn't surprised. He knew Danny and Danny knew him. The marshal would have read over the list of the dead until it was all but branded on his brain.
"Drug dealer," Drake replied without missing a beat. Without blinking. "Wife-beater."
"Johnathan Shorfer."
"Pimp."
"Gregory Greene."
"Drug dealing pimp."
"Carl Summers." Danny was starting to turn a dark shade of red. "He had a wife and two kids."
"Arms dealer," Drake countered. He could feel the vein in the side of his head starting to throb angrily. "He had a trunk full of C4 for sale when I shot him."
"Mary Burke." The muscles in Danny's neck were bunched tight, looking ready to burst through the surface of his skin.
"Mary Burke?" Her name made Drake laugh. "She was a pimp too...one who sold children into slavery overseas. She was one of the biggest contributors to Fredrick McShay's bank account thanks to years selling off kids to work in sex clubs across Europe."
Drake pushed himself off the stack of wooden boxes so that he stood nose-to-nose with Danny Cobb. "You knew all of this already though. You know who my victims were and just how many victims they left behind.
"There aren't any nuns or saints on my list. Just gangsters, pimps and other pieces of garbage. I did the world a service by taking them out and that's what you really hate about me. That's why you want to get inside my head so badly."
"You don't know what you're -"
"Don't I?" Drake shook his head. "You hate me because I was able to do something you have never been able to - no matter how badly you wanted to. I saw something wrong and made it right. No warrants, no Miranda rights, no politics and no bullshit. I did what needed to be done when it needed to be done." He smiled a knifing grin. "How's that for black and white, Danny?"
The marshal opened his mouth to say more but Drake was done listening. He strode away, leaving Danny and Sarah to gape after him. He looked down to the bandage wrapped around his arm and shook his head. Let them think whatever they wanted. He wasn't about to waste the rest of his now exceptionally finite life locked in a circular debate with Commander Danny Cobb.
You told me I was going to spend the rest of my life rotting in prison. Drake tore his eyes away from the bandage and looked over to where Mick and Clarke came hurrying down the staircase. Looks like I got the death penalty after all. You should be thankful, Danny. The thing that bit me just saved the taxpayers the trouble of a trial.
"Find anything?" Drake asked and the two cops froze halfway to the ground. They looked surprised to have been addressed by a man still wearing handcuffs.
"Not a lot," Mick replied before reaching into his jacket pocket and taking out a box of .44 cartridges, "but it's safe to say our friend the foreman might have had some trust issues when it came to his employees. Found these in his desk drawer." The old detective tucked his shotgun under his arm as he went about reloading his revolver.
"Found these too," Clarke added holding up a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter. He removed one of the smokes and lit up. Mick gave him an odd look as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
"I thought you quit?"
"Yeah. I did quit. Past tense."
"Hey! Hey guys!" Sheesh came barreling around one of the banks of shelves, skidding to a halt. His face was pale; eyes wild. "You need to see this."
You need to see this, he said. Not you want to see this.
"Show me," Danny said, already moving to follow his deputy.
Sheesh led them towards the center of the warehouse before darting behind one of the numerous rows of towering shelves. Drake stepped around the corner with the others to where Briggs and Hargreaves stood across from each other, staring at the mess covering the cold concrete floor.
"We smelled them before we saw them," Sheesh said, swallowing thickly.
Drake counted eight or nine bodies - at least. It was difficult to tell how many corpses there were exactly. Each man lay in pieces and each man's pieces lay scattered across the ground in a confused, chaotic ring of torn, bloody flesh. Arms, legs and heads had been strewn across the floor like the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle the Devil had grown bored with.
Holy shit...
"Zombies didn't do this," Drake said as he studied the hideous human tapestry.
These men hadn't just been killed. They had been savaged.
He noticed bite marks on their bodies but there were other wounds that had been made by...something else. Something that had carved cleanly through flesh and bone. Something that had separated heads from spines with little trouble. Something that had torn these guys, literally, limb from limb.
Something like a machete...or a massive set of claws.
Drake had thought he'd seen all of Death's many faces during the Dark Delta Days. He'd watched as friends and foes alike were shredded and cut down in the swamps, the deserts, the frigid snow...but even his stomach turned into a churning, clenching pit of agony at the sight of what was before him now. Never before had he witnessed anything with this level of animalistic brutality.
And I thought I had been dealing with monsters before...
The spark of a flashbulb and rapid-fire click-click-click of a shutter interrupted his thinking. Tommy Chan leaned over his shoulder, his finger doing a tap-dance on the shutter button. Just another vulture come to feast on the carrion on the floor. Drake grimaced with disgust and shoved the smaller man back a step.
"How about a little respect for the dead, asshole?" Clarke spat from where he stood behind the photographer.
"No," Sarah said slowly, stepping forward. Her words were soft, her eyes transfixed on the carnage. "No. Let him document it."
"Doc?" Hargreaves asked with his eyebrows climbing towards his hairline. "You sure you're feeling all right."
"I'm about ten states over from all right...but I was thinking. If - when - we make it out of here, even if we tell everyone all the things we've seen they still might not believe us. Hell, I'm not sure I even believe half of the stuff we've seen.
"The world knows the virus is dangerous but they don't know how dangerous. They haven't seen the mutations. They haven't seen the pure horror of it." Sarah brushed her hair out of her eyes, the action seeming to allow her to finally tear her gaze away from the human ruins on the floor. "Barnes told me the CDC, WHO and Umbrella are all part of a committee trying to decide how to deal with this mess...but they don't have the right information. All they've seen are statements and reports - words. Words won't tell them what's really happened here. Words can't capture the insanity that's taken over this city."
Slowly, Sarah turned to face Tommy. Slowly, she nodded. "Pictures can. Document it, Tommy."
Seeming more shocked than anyone that Sarah had taken his side, Tommy nodded and set to work, his camera continuing its familiar dialogue of flashes and clicks. Drake looked over at Sarah as the photographer went about his grisly business. Even though the girl had given Tommy the go-ahead, he saw she still looked ready to be sick each time the flash flared and the shutter clicked.
"Who were these guys?" Gilson grumbled, surveying the wreckage of broken bodies with dark eyes.
"I think I can answer that," Hargreaves replied. He slid his toe under the hips of one body that was short a head and a leg. He rolled the corpse over onto its stomach.
The cadaver was decked out in military gear: combat boots, kneepads, tactical vest. A symbol was stitched onto the back of that vest in bold colored thread. A pair of swords criss-crossed an unmistakable hexagonal shield of red and white. A shield recognized around the world as the logo of the Umbrella Corporation.
"Here's your UBCS, doc." Hargreaves grunted. "I thought you said they weren't going to be entering the city?" He glanced back down at the red mess streaking the floor and grunted more sourly. "Doesn't look like they'd be much help in getting us out of here anyway though."
"That's what Barnes told me," Sarah said absently, eyes on the dead, brow furrowed in thought. "They must have been given the all clear to go in and search for survivors. That might mean the barriers outside the city are secure again."
"Excuse me," Drake held one hand aloft as if he were a student who didn't quite understand the homework he'd just been assigned. "I hope none of you mind if I ask a question. UBCS? These were the guys you mentioned back at the bus depot?"
Hargreaves nodded. "Umbrella Bio-hazard Countermeasures Service. Mercs. They run containment and quarantine ops when there's a biological threat."
"These guys friends of yours?"
"I already told you," Hargreaves shook his head, "me and these guys play for the same team but we don't share a clubhouse. I'm simple security. The UBCS are the special forces of the viral warfare world.
"They're also some of the hardest motherfuckers on Earth. Umbrella has facilities all over the world - including in some pretty rough neighborhoods. Africa, the Middle East, South America - you get the idea. Guys like this run security there and make sure everyone plays nice around corporation property."
"They're also good at keeping the locals away," Tommy added, fiddling with his camera. "I did some freelance shooting for a documentary company working down in Latin-America a few years back. It was a piece on corporate greed, malfeasance, the evil of the American dream - that kind of granola bullshit.
"Umbrella was building a chemical research and development lab in the middle of a jungle that just happened to belong to a group of tribesmen. We heard Umbrella was using the UBCS to scare off the natives. We weren't able to catch them in the act but we heard stories about rapes, beatings, intimidation tactics - even some killings."
"They're tough motherfuckers like I said." Hargreaves replied casually. "To see an entire squad of them just...wiped out like this...we don't want to run in to whatever did this."
Drake was a little unnerved to see Hargreaves didn't seem at all put off by Tommy's story. In fact, the security guard had just nodded as if it was accepted fact. Hell, maybe it is, Drake realized. He'd know them better than any of us.
That wasn't entirely true though. Drake had never met a member of the U.B.C.S. before but he knew their type. They were the same type of men who were attracted to any kind of mercenary work. The type that no longer cared about the suffering of others or, worse yet, enjoyed it. He had seen plenty of both back in his old life.
Two of them took away the only thing that ever mattered to me. For a moment, Drake no longer saw the ragged, dismembered bodies of the Umbrella team laying before him. He saw Jess laying in their place - her face cold and closed, lips blue, blood wreathing her face in a nightmarish halo. Two of them took away my heart and soul.
Remorse twisted a cold iron in his stomach. He had been so close. So close.
"Guess that explains all the hardware they were packing," Briggs muttered. Weapons lay scattered with body parts. M16s, unless Drake's eyes were already starting to fail him. "Good thing too. We could use the ammo."
"No!" Sarah held out a hand to halt the Ranger as he made to grab for one of the assault rifles. "No. There's too much blood around them. If these guys were killed by someone - something - infected with RS then their blood could be contaminated too. Those weapons could be crawling with the virus. Nobody touch anything."
Drake couldn't stop the amused smirk that pulled at the corners of his mouth.
"I appreciate your concern for the group, Doctor Waxer," he said, "but sounds to me like I'm the only one here with nothing to worry about."
Without waiting for her approval, Drake crouched next to the pile of gore and scooped up a handful of spent shells. He rolled the metal casings between his fingers, nodding.
"They're cool," he said, bouncing the shells in his palm. "This whole...situation...probably went down a few hours ago. These fellas have been dead awhile." Something in his periphery caught his eye. "There's also whatever that is."
Drake pointed a finger towards one of the shelving units. Droplets of a thick, inky fluid were sprayed across the metal struts and wooden crates. The dark substance ran the length of the shelf, winding around the corner. Drake would have thought it was motor oil from one of the machines but the liquid was too dark.
Can't be blood, he thought, studying the fluid. At least not human blood.
"The fuck is that?" Briggs, who stood closest to the spatter, leaned in for a closer look. "Grease?"
"My guess is it's from whoever or whatever got into a disagreement with these gentlemen here." Drake let the casings fall and rose back up.
"Christ," Michelle hissed from where she stood next to Homer. "You think that thing is still in here with us?"
Drake noticed that comment had eyes turning towards the ceiling, necks twisting in every direction and hands gripping guns more tightly. Sheesh quieted them all with a shake of his head.
"I don't think so," he said and shook his head again when he was hit with a barrage of inquiring looks. "I'm not psychic or anything. I noticed the black stuff too. That's the second part of this little sideshow here. Come check it out."
Sheesh led them around the corner, following the trail left by the dark stain. It swept around the shelves and moved onto the floor. Here it was thicker and darker, leaving the ground streaked in patches of greasy blood. There were puddles and pools of crimson spotting the walls and floor as well. More shell casings jingled underfoot as the group walked down the corridor toward a battered steel door at the end.
This is where the fight started, Drake realized. The hallway turned off to the right, branching off into another long corridor. They found another body here also sporting UBCS gear and insignias. The mercenary's head lay a foot from his body. His arms had been chewed to the bone. They got ambushed coming around this corner. What we found was their last stand.
"Check it," Sheesh said leading them to the door.
The metal was heavily scarred, covered in gouge marks and slashes that had peeled away layers of paint and steel. Again, Drake was reminded of the impressions left by a machete or other long blade as he studied the cuts in the door. He followed the marks down to where the doorknob should have been but all that stood in its place was a mangled hole.
"They cut the fucking handle out," Sheesh said as he reached down and retrieved a warped hunk of metal, holding it up for the group to see before chucking it down the hallway. "I took a quick look outside. There's more of those black streaks covering the pavement out there but no body. Whatever carved up the U.B.C.S. team did it's work then took off. From all the blood we found they must have hurt it pretty bad."
"Put that on their headstones," Clarke muttered morosely, taking a final drag on his cigarette before stamping it out.
Drake shook his head. "There's too much blood here for it to have all come from just one source."
"Those things that attacked us in the subway, maybe?" Homer offered and Drake shrugged.
"It's possible."
The zombies were inhuman and horrifying but those creatures in the tunnels had been truly monstrous. Drake's stomach twisted painfully as he remembered the darkness where their eyes should have been. The pulsing mass of their exposed brains. The way their tongues snaked and lashed through the air. The way Scaggs' head had vanished in a red spray when one of the beasts sank its jaws into his face...
What had Sarah called them? Mutations. RS victims whose DNA had been altered, transformed, by the virus. Drake looked down at the bloody bandage wrapped around his forearm.
I guess I've still got that to look forward to. Provided I can keep Gilson from putting a bullet in the back of my head the next time I turn around.
"Who gives a shit what did this?" The muscular marshal boomed, stepping forward with his arms still solidly locked across his chest. "If those things got in here then God only knows what else could be waiting to shake hands with us. Personally, I'd rather not be around for that meet and greet."
Danny nodded slowly. "We keep moving. It's not safe here. Clarke, how far to -"
The bulky marshal trailed off and Drake could almost see the man's ears picking up. Drake had heard it too. The noise was distant but closing quickly.
It was a sound as unmistakable as the Umbrella corporations red and white shield. It was a sound branded onto Drake's brain. A sound that, at one time, had told him needed to be elsewhere and fast.
"Sirens," he said.
"Police sirens," Danny nodded. "Coming this way."
Danny gave the door's mutilated carcass a shove and piled through with Drake close on his heels. The door swung out into a side parking lot. Rainwater runoff pooled in the grooves of the uneven pavement. A dumpster pushed up against the side of the warehouse was packed to overflowing. The smell wafting from its confines reflecting the weeks of uncollected filth stacked within. A trio of undead milled about listlessly nearby. The smell wafting from them was even more putrid.
A cruiser came whipping around the corner, lights flashing. The squad car fishtailed wildly for a second before gripping the road again and continuing, screaming, up the street. It was followed by two more cars, also with red and blues blazing. A convoy of SWAT vans sped past next, flanked by another pair of cruisers. The vehicles streaked up the street. apparently heedless of the crowd gawking at their passage.
Drake watched them go and felt a completely, utterly misplaced sense of hope flare in his chest. Hope was probably the wrong word to describe it but he had to admit it was reassuring to know there were other survivors in Raccoon. Until that moment he'd been convinced that their motley crew was all that was left.
Let's see how reassuring you find that in an hour when your heart stops beating and you start having an intense craving for brains.
He shut the thought out. He wasn't dead yet.
"Clarke!" Danny barked though his eyes were still on the red and blue lights blinking in the distance. "Are they heading toward or away from the station?"
"The precinct's that way," Clarke answered excitedly. "They're heading for it!"
"Then so are we," Danny said turning to face them at last. "Michelle, can you make it on your own?"
"I'm game," she replied, her face a stony mask of determination. "You should worry about Sheesh keeping up with me."
"Either way is good for me," Sheesh said, grinning - Drake saw they were all grinning now. "I never had a problem watching you from behind, Mitch."
Drawing his sidearm, Danny started across the parking lot toward the sidewalk. The two closest infected turned his way with arms outstretched, inviting the marshal into a deadly embrace. He dropped them each with a single shot through the forehead. The third zombie was too far away to be a threat to any of them. Danny left the creature where it was and took off up the pathway.
Drake made to follow but reeled back as a thunderclap burst in his ear. He staggered back and would have fallen if Homer hadn't caught him. He winced and groaned, instinctively pressing a hand to the side of his head. It did nothing to quiet the frantic ringing rattling the inside of his eardrum. A shiver of pain tore through the side of his skull.
He looked up to see Mike Gilson standing a foot away and grinning wolfishly, a hideous, ugly smile that revealed all his teeth. A thin finger of smoke trailed from the barrel of his pistol, quickly blown away by the soft breeze. The final creature lay in the middle of the street, blood leaking rapidly from a hole in the top of its skull.
"Sorry about that," Gilson chuckled maniacally before running after Danny.
Drake touched a finger to his ear and it came away wet with blood. The shot, so close to his head, had probably blown out his eardrum. Sarah approached, her face a storm cloud but Drake shook his head.
"Let him go," he told her. "We don't have any time for this now."
He took another look back at the blood on his fingers before lifting his head to watch as Gilson raced up the street. Drake narrowed his eyes, nodding to himself. I need to be more careful around that one.
He ran with the others. They chased after the flashing lights. They followed the wailing cry of the sirens' song.
As they ran, Drake had a sudden vision of himself, sitting at his high school desk again. One semester he had taken Greek mythology as his elective - more as a lark than anything else. That semester he had learned about sirens too.
A siren's song always leads men to their deaths.
Sarah ran at his side. Her eyes were fixed on Gilson's back and it was a wonder the man didn't have to stop to pick the daggers out. He glanced once more to the bandage covering his bite. The bandage she had tied with care and Drake knew then that Sarah would try and save his life.
She would do it because she had failed to save this city. She would do it because she thought he had saved hers. She would do it because he was her patient. She would do it because she thought she could even if she didn't know how.
Let's hope for your sake, Doctor Waxer, that's really just a myth after all.
Author's Note: I'm back! I hope you all forgive my protracted absence. I also hope there are some of you out there STILL reading this! If you are, let me know by leaving a review. Another update will follow soon...I SWEAR IT!