98

The empty hallways never seemed to end. Traversing the underground lab was like searching for a way out of a sterile, white labyrinth. At times, Jill felt that she was walking through a brand new hospital after all the doctors had gone home. Since she had made her way down to the labs, she had not encountered any zombies, or anything else. There was not even any evidence of what had happened in the mansion. All the labs and rooms looked as if the people who worked there had simply finished their work and gone home.

But despite the silence and solitude, Jill felt sure that a zombie or other monster was sure to leap at her from every opened door and turned corner. In some of the labs, Jill saw what were obviously experiment cages and isolation chambers. She saw notes scribbled on dry erase boards listing failed experiments and specimen numbers. One of the sealed-off chambers had what appeared to be dried blood spilled all over the floor. And so, despite the signs that this place was completely empty, Jill remained tense.

Jill felt sure that the zombies and dogs were just the beginnings of the experiments done here. And the woman from the cabin, the poor creature who looked as if she had grown up in one of these cages, was proof of Jill's suspicion. Jill was convinced the woman had been a prisoner here, experimented on like a white lab rat.

She could not get the woman out of her mind. Who knew what tortures and torments had been exacted on her? She looked older than Jill and yet she couldn't even speak. Her body was malformed and misshapen, probably due to years of imprisonment and systematic biological manipulation. And the manacles on her wrists ...

Jill felt sure she would never know what thoughts must have been going through the woman's head. She didn't even know why the woman had let her live. The two dead zombies in the cabin with her made Jill suspect the woman was surely not harmless. And Jill had shot at her, hitting her at least once. And yet, the woman had let her live, tried to befriend her, even given her a peace offering. Jill could not believe she had gotten out of that cabin alive.

Of course, if she ever wanted to get back to Raccoon City, she would have to get out of this lab alive, and then out of the Arklay Mountains alive. She doubted she would get lucky two more times in a row. Even if she didn't run into any more zombies, she wondered if she would ever find her way out of there. She hadn't seen a single "exit" sign since she had entered the labs. And even if she found one, that didn't necessarily mean she was safe, because without Brad and the helicopter, she would have to make her way out of the woods on foot, and she didn't know if she could make that trip. It might be a twenty mile hike to the highway, and she had no food or water. Plus, the skinless dogs would probably find her long before she made it to the highway. Or maybe another gigantic snake.

There was just no good news. She had found a telephone in one of the labs rooms earlier and was almost overcome with joy, until she picked up the receiver and discovered that the phone was dead. At some point, she had lost her walkie-talkie as well. She guessed it was when the woman had knocked her unconscious and taken her to the cabin. All she had was her gun and a limited supply of bullets.

She didn't know how long she had been in the labs, as she was too depressed to check her watch to find out. But it must have been over an hour, when suddenly, she heard a voice.

"Hello?" someone shouted from somewhere nearby. A deep, male voice.

Barry!

Jill took off down the hall and through a set of doors. She went through a corner lab to another hallway and burst through the doors to see Barry standing in a hallway intersection, gun drawn. He had heard her running footsteps, but didn't know what was coming toward him. As soon as he saw her, he lowered the gun as relief washed over his face.

Jill ran to Barry and hit him so hard when she embraced him that they almost fell over. She laughed and cried at the same time, holding him tightly, as if afraid he wasn't really there, and would disappear if she didn't hold on.

"Oh God, I didn't think I'd ever see you again," she gasped through tears of joy.

"Jill, are you okay?" Barry asked in stunned surprise. "How in the world did you get down here?"

"It's a long story," Jill laughed. She pulled away and looked up at him, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. "God, I am so glad to see you. When we got separated earlier, I was so scared."

"Yea, so was I," Barry said. "I would have come after you then, but I guess you could say I ran into some trouble. I found an elevator that brought me down here, and I've been looking around for anything that might explain what happened."

"Have you found anything?" Jill asked, sounding sarcastic. She felt so happy and giddy that she almost couldn't contain it. Everything she said came out light-hearted and silly.

"Not a thing," Barry said, and then he smiled back. He hugged her and she embraced him again, just happy that she had another person with her. She wasn't alone anymore. Somehow, just the fact that she and Barry had found each other in this maze made Jill think that maybe they would get out of there alive after all. Barry would get them out of there, he would figure out a way to get back to the city. Jill might not have been able to make it on her own, but there was no way that Barry was going to let her down.

"Have you seen anyone else?" she asked him.

He paused a second. "No. No, I haven't seen anyone else. No one alive, anyway."

"Edward was in the mansion," Jill said. "He was alive when I found him, but ... but he died. I couldn't do anything."

Barry closed his eyes and sighed. "I believe you, Jill. Was it like what happened to Kenneth?" he asked gently.

Jill shook her head. "No, it was something else. There's more than just zombies in this place, Barry." It was then that she noticed the long slash across the front of his red vest. She ran her finger across it and felt how whatever had done it had not just cut the vest, it had actually cut into the kevlar vest underneath.

"Yea," he said. "There's a lot more than just zombies here."

"What are we going to do?" she asked. "We can't keep fighting off monsters forever. How are we ever going to get out of this place?"

Barry reached into his pocket and took out a folded up sheet of large paper. "We're going to use a map," he said casually, unfolding it for her. "I found this in a supply room a little while ago. I figure we can use it to find our way out of here."

Jill laughed again, almost overcome by all the good news at once. "That's great! So where do have to go?"

"We're right here," Barry said, tapping a location on the map. "Or pretty close to here, as far as I can tell. There's at least three separate lab complexes, according to the map." He slid his finger to another location. "This here is an emergency elevator. We can take it to the surface. At least I hope we can."

Jill didn't look too closely at the map. She would let Barry lead the way, so it didn't matter that much. "How long will it take to get there? Do you think we could use the map to get back to the mansion instead?"

"Do you really want to go back there?" he asked.

"Well, not really," Jill admitted. "I was just thinking out loud."

"It says that this elevator leads to a place called the Outlook. I'm guessing it's some scenic point where you can look out at the Arklays. If we go there, I might be able to get my bearings and figure out where in the mountains we are. Maybe the highway or another road is close by."

"You've sold me," Jill said. "Lead the way."

The two of them headed off down another hallway. Barry folded the map back up and stuck it in his back pocket. "To get there, we have to take a detour through one of the other lab areas. I'm not sure how long it will take to walk there. Half an hour, maybe."

"That's okay, as long as we get out of here," Jill said. "I just want to stay alive. I want to go home and see my family."

"Yea," Barry said softly. "Me too."

"How are you on ammo?"

"Not too great. I've got a full chamber and eight more shots."

"Okay. My gun's full now, and I have one more full clip."

"I guess you'll be doing the shooting then, huh?"

"If you want," Jill chuckled. Barry was a much better shot than her, and they both knew it. If anything, they should just switch guns, but Jill knew that Barry trusted his Magnum above all others. But Jill had seen nothing since coming down into the labs, so maybe they would get lucky and not run into anything that needed to be shot at.

"Why were you calling out back there?" she asked Barry. "I mean, weren't you worried that by making noise, you would just attract any zombies near you?"

"I had to take that chance. I called out a bunch of times since I made it down here, just to see if anyone was alive who could hear me. I didn't want to risk not finding a survivor. I was trying to find someone who worked here, but I was hoping to find you or Wesker, or even someone from Bravo."

"I didn't even think of that. I was being as quiet as possible."

"I figured that if anyone was left alive, they would be hiding, and I wasn't about to search every single room looking for survivors that might not exist. So if I was pretty sure there were no zombies around, I called out and waited to see if anyone called back."

Jill knew that no one had. "I don't think anyone was left alive here, Barry," she said, trying to sound apologetic about it. The people here didn't die because the S.T.A.R.S. unit hadn't arrived fast enough. They had all been long dead by the time S.T.A.R.S. had arrived on the scene.

"I know," he said. "But I had to make sure."

As they continued down one identical hallway after another, Jill could not help but feel vastly inferior to Barry. In the back of her mind, she had always know that he was a better police officer than her, and it had never really bothered her to admit it. She had no problem in admitting she wasn't as good as someone else. But Barry was more skilled in part because he had so much more experience. It made sense to think that Barry was a better officer because he had been doing it so much longer than her. Jill had always believed that when she reached his level of experience, she would be as good as he was.

But now she didn't believe that quite as strongly. Jill had seen some horrific things this night, and until Barry had arrived, she had been absolutely terrified. Looking for survivors had been the last thing on her mind. She would never have called out the way Barry had, for fear of attracting more zombies or something even worse.

But Barry had seen the same things she had, maybe even more frightening things, and he was still concerned with finding survivors down here. Even when a zombie or some mutated monster might be around every corner, he was willing to call out and risk his safety, just in case there was someone else alive down here. He was willing to risk his life to find people that might not even exist.

Jill didn't know if she would call that brave, because it really wasn't very smart. But it was completely selfless. The odds of an Umbrella employee being alive down here were too low to even consider. And it would have been easy for Barry to stay quiet as he made his way through the lab. But he called out anyway, just in case.

Jill would never have done that. And when she realized that, she knew that she would never be as good a police officer as Barry was. In a normal situation, where zombies and giant snakes did not exist, she would risk her life to save someone if they were in danger. She was a S.T.A.R.S. member after all, and it was part of her job. But in an out of control situation like this, her responsibilities went right out the window.

Honestly, she was too scared to be a good cop. She was too scared to be as good as Barry. She was too scared to save someone else.