Resident Evil:
The Whole Story.
Chapter Thirty-Six
It had all gone so damn wrong, Richard was almost certain that it had to be some kind of bad joke. They had somehow managed to lose Edward and Rebecca and they weren't able to get back in touch with them and they were stranded in the middle of nowhere with cannibal murderers waiting to jump out of them from every shadow, at least that was what they had thought at first.
When they had found the mansion for a moment Richard had thought that maybe their luck was starting to change, sure they might have been walking into the hideout of the cannibals but at least it meant that the mission hadn't been a total disaster. He had been dreading what Bertolucci would write about them when they finally got back to the city if they had crashed their helicopter, lost two of their members and didn't even find anything while stumbling over one another in the dark.
But honestly right now, he would take any number of stupid and insulting headlines if it only meant that he was going to be be able to get back to the city alive. Hell, he'd even wear a dunce cap for the rest of his life as well so long as he still got to have one which right now looked like it was less than likely to happen considering all that had happened.
The Mansion was massive, the main entrance hall alone was so huge that Richard was fairly certain he would be able to fit his entire apartment inside it, times fifty. There was no way that between the four of them would they be able to cover enough ground as they all went in one group so it had been decided that they would split up and each take a different wing and floor of the house.
He hadn't seen them since that decision and he hoped they were still alive, though if they had encountered even half of what he had up to now then the chances of that were low. Richard was certain that the only reason he was still alive was due to sheer dumb luck, there was nothing in there training that had ever covered anything like this.
Richard had been trained how to deal with armed terrorists, extreme religious zealots and bomb threats. He had been in shot outs and had gone under the knife when he needed to be saved from wounds he had suffered in the line of duty. No one could call him a coward but this mission was not like any he had ever been on. This had to be some sort of hell.
He had found the first one tucked in what seemed to be a small officer on the second floor of the east side of the mansion, at first Richard had thought that he was just a normal person who was cowering in the corner. He had thought that perhaps he had heard the helicopter crashing outside in the woods, it had certainly made a loud enough noise to be heard from even within this labyrinth of thick walls.
He had called out to the man who looked like he was shaking, not pointing his gun at him but not pointing it away either. He had not seemed to hear him and so Richard had tried to call for him again but he had just stayed hunched in that corner, shaking. He had stepped towards him and rested his hand on his shoulder and the man tilted his head back to look at him.
For as long as he lived, he was never going to get the sight of his face out of his mind. It's skin had been white as a sheet and cracked, around the lips and the eyes like something had sucked out all of the moisture out of him. His nose was gone, a dark ragged hole where it should have was in it it's place and his mouth was covered in blood, he hadn't been cowering in the corner he had been kneeling over his meal.
The room had been too dark for Richard to make out what he had been eating in any great detail but he could see what could only be an arm laying in a pool of something dark. For half a moment he thought someone was playing some sort of stupid joke on him. He had simply stared at the man had gotten up on his feet like a drunk and that was when it had gotten worse.
His entire upper chest was stained with blood and his stomach was...there was just a ragged hole where his stomach should have been. Something dark and wet and slipped out from it and a wave of nausea had rushed over Richard when he realized that it was the same lumps of flesh that he had been eating just moments ago. The monster let out a low moan like a damned soul and slowly began to stumble over to him, his hands reaching out towards him like something out of a late night horror movie.
Richard had emptied his entire clip into him and it hadn't been able to stop him, it just kept coming and had barely seemed to feel any of the bullets at all. Richard had turned and ran out of the room and made his way back to the hall but there was no sign of any of the others, perhaps the thickness of the walls had absorbed the sounds of the gunshots but Richard had no idea who he was meant to go after.
In the end, he decided to go and find Enrico. He had gone to the east side of the mansion as well but on the first floor. He replaced his empty clip with a full one and hurried the double doors that his captain had gone through. What was waiting for him could only be described as a small art gallery, half a dozen paintings hung on both walls with a light above them and a statue of a naked woman with a bowl of water flowing down from it, all carved out in marble.
Richard normally considered himself quite a lover of art and any other time he might have stayed to take a closer look at the paintings but he didn't feel that this was the perfect moment to do it. It was then that he realized something was wrong, the Spencer Estate was meant to be abandoned and boarded up years ago when Spencer had spent too much money in building the place and the upkeep had become too much for Umbrella to handle.
But the lights above the paintings were still on, which meant that this place was still getting some electricity and Richard had no idea what that meant. In truth at that moment he was too scared to even try and figure it out, in that moment all he had wanted to do was to go and find Enrico and then they go and find Ken and Forrest and then all of them could get out of the madhouse they had wandered into.
Richard had then gone to the door on the far wall behind the statue, there was another passage way that was framed by thick red curtains but he doubted that Enrico had gone that way, he surely would have heard him open the door to the gallery if he had gone that way, and thus he opened the door which lead into a long L-shaped passage way.
He had gone through it, jogging so he didn't spend to long in there and made it through the door at the end of the passage. A metal door was a little further down the wall but it had been locked when he tried to pull it open and so he had hurried down the passageway till he found another door. This one was thankfully unlocked and lead into a bathroom.
That was where Richard had finally ended up, he knew that he had to try and find the others. To warn them about what he had seen in that study and yet for some reason he wasn't able to force himself to go out of the door. The bathroom was clearly for someone important, the bathtub was marble and the taps were golden and there was a curtain that hid the toilet from view from the rest of the room and the door had a lock which could be turned on with a button on the knob, which Richard had used once he was sure the bathroom was empty aside from himself.
A part of him just wanted to curl up in the corner, he could do that while he waited for Alpha team to come and get them. They could all fly back in the helicopter and they would be back in Raccoon City where they would all be safe. But Richard knew that he couldn't do that, the shame of it would kill him before anything else had the chance to do it. He wasn't like Chickenheart, he had to go and face them. Find the others.
Richard took in a deep breath and stared at his reflection in the large mirror before he picked up his gun, made triple sure that it was loaded before he unlocked the door and stepped out of the bathroom, not really ready to face the horrors that might be waiting for him but not going to leave his comrades on their own. He carried on down the passageway where another choice was presented to him.
A pair of double doors on one side, a single door on the other side. He had no idea which way Enrico would have gone so he was left with the old fashioned method of tossing a coin. It came up heads and so he walked through the double doors and was met with pitch darkness on the other side. He grabbed his flashlight from his belt and the beam landed on a rotting face that was only a few feet away from him.
This one did not moan, this one snarled and lunged at him and Richard's flashlight fell out of his hands as he put them up to try and stop the monster from sinking his teeth into his throat. It was a big man, he had at least a head on Richard and his arms strained with effort as he tried to keep him away from him, but it was too strong.
It's rotten breath blasted into his face and Richard felt the nausea building inside of him once again, it was getting closer and closer and Richard, in a moment of blind panic, jammed his gun under the chin of that rotting face and pulled the trigger. His grip on the gun had not been as tight as it should have been and it jumped out of his hands when he pulled the trigger but the bullet went where he had aimed it, the man's head snapped backwards as the top of his skull was blown away and he fell backwards away from Richard.
Richard stood there in the darkness of the hallway for the moment, just taking a moment to relish in that fact that somehow, after all of that, he was still alive. And more importantly the monster was dead, it had to be. He had emptied an entire clip into the one that had been in that study and yet that one had kept coming but this one, a single bullet to the brain had put it down.
Richard didn't feel good, no one would feel good to be where he was now but he felt better than he had done only moments ago. He was still alive and while he was still trapped in a house filled with rotting murderers, he was not trapped in a house filled with unkillable rotting murderers and right now that was better than nothing.
Another hungry moan cut through the darkness and all of the better mood that Richard had been feeling drained away like it had never been there to start with. The room was pitch black and he had dropped the flashlight and he had no idea how far away the monster was away from him. The flashlight had been lit and it's beam was shinning on the opposite wall and Richard, without thinking, feel on his knees and scooped up the flashlight and pointed it down the end of the hallway.
It was at the end of the hall, this one was a woman whose long blond hair fell around her face in ragged strands and was wearing a black suit jacket with a black skirt, her left leg was covered in ragged bite marks and when she turned to face him, her eyes were milky white and her mouth fell open to let out another hungry moan and it was then in that moment, Richard remembered that he had dropped his gun.
He swung the torch left and right, his breath catching in his throat as he tried to see where his gun had gone but it was too dark, there were cupboards and chairs at either side of the hallway where it could have gun under and the monster was getting close with every heartbeat. Richard cursed then and rushed forward, using all his strength to push the monster down as he moved down the hallway and threw himself through the nearest door, slamming it shut and pressing his body against the door once he was through.
Another hallway, this one bright as Richard caught his breath and he wanted to curse himself for being so stupid. He had lost his goddamn gun, any safety he might have felt mere moments before when he realized that with one careful aimed shot that he could kill the freaks wandering around this place was gone now.
Soon enough, he could hear the one he left on the other side of the door groaning and crawling, trying to get in.
Richard knew that he had to move, but for whatever reason he couldn't make himself move away from the door and it was hard to breath. He soon found himself sliding down the door as the...zombie, clawed at the other side of it. Relentless in trying to get to her meal. Richard pulled his knees up and rested his head on them, closing his eyes.
He had to go and find the others, he wasn't safe here and he had to move but he would go in a minute or two.
Just as soon as he had caught his breath, and stopped shaking.
Richard couldn't say how long he had stayed that way, but he knew it was longer than he should have done. He got to his feet, shook himself slight and slowly but surely made his way down the small corridor. There was a staircase that lead up to a balcony at the end of it and he could see a few doors up there, it reminded him of a frat house, and there was a small door tucked behind the stairs.
He went for the door first before trying the stairs, it was a little storeroom and it looked as though someone had been trying to use it as safe house. A wooden crate, just big enough to fit under the door knob, was to the side of the door atop which sat an oil lantern, it was lit and was casting the room in a warm glow which soothed Richard's nerves some what, and in the far end of the storeroom were a few old blankets which had been thrown on to the floor.
A simple push moved the crate under the doorknob and then he was moving to the blankets, falling back on police training to search a scene. Something insane had been going on in this house, something not normal, and he was going to find out what. It had to be connected to the murders, they had been cannibal attacks and these people, these zombies, had to be the ones behind it.
A horrifying thought over took him then, these people had been normal, sane, alive once. Something had made them this way and they were not contained to the house, if even one of them managed to get to the city...
He couldn't thing about that now, and so he set his mind to searching the blankets.
His instincts were right, tucked between them was a leather bound journal which Richard opened, the few entries were nothing really relevant. Talking about meetings with department heads, how the owner of the journal's boss was a frigid bitch, something to do with DNA sequencing that Richard had no hope of understanding.
So, he flipped forward towards the end of the journal and that was when he found something that might have actually been more useful to him.
June 18th, 1998
Some weird shit is going down, apparently some kids got themselves eaten at a lodge somewhere in the woods and there's some whispers that it might have something to do with the virus but how can that be? There hasn't been any leak, if there was then we would have heard about? I'm probably worrying about nothing, we don't make all the monsters in the world.
June 23rd, 1998.
We just heard, apparently the RPD is going to be leading an investigation into whatever happened to those kids and that put a lot of people's teeth on edge. The forest and the mountain range are massive but this estate is known to exist in an official capacity. Officially, it's abandoned and if they decide to look for a place where a group of freaks could hole up, surely this would be the best place to start?
Goddamn it, I was only meant to be here till just after New Year. Director Henri took some interest in my work, apparently she wants me to be part of her own personal research team at Loire Village. Getting out of this dead end shithole, working with people who aren't at the end of their carers and working in France? It was all going to be so perfect.
It can't be taken away, it can't.
June 27th
Something's happened, it must have done.
We can't get into contact with the lab and we can't call outside either, I went to the bathroom for a piss in the night and the hallways are abandoned. There is always someone up, always. Someone else going to the bathroom, someone going to go and get a snack, someone unable to sleep because they've got another theory they want to test.
There is always someone.
Except now. Everyone's locked themselves in their rooms, to terrified to come out.
June 30th
Well, shit.
It's loose.
There was nothing else on the page after that, Richard assumed that the "it" referred to the virus that whoever the journal had belonged to had mentioned before but he clearly had seen no need to elaborate on it.
July 6th
Hey guess what, I'm back and not dead. Thought about using my belt to hang myself a few times but decided against it. See, I'm a dead man walking. I know that, but I am not going to die quietly. I went to the kitchens, thankfully didn't run into any of the infected, and got enough food to last me for a good long while in this storeroom.
I didn't want to stay in my room, this storeroom doesn't have a lot but it is out of the way and I can block the door. It might not be that safe, but it feels safe and right now that is good enough for me.
So, I hope an FBI agent is reading this. Let's talk about what the fuck is going on here.
Umbrella, you know them right? Probably make your kids chewy vitamins, well. They also make bio-weapons. We make monsters and sell them to the highest bidder, terrorist groups, warlords, drug cartels. Anyone who forks up enough money, and it is a lot on money. Oh, and it isn't only this one lab by the way, it's something they've done for decades and it's worldwide.
I've cut people open while they were still alive, I made people into monsters with full knowledge and no regret. I've done it all, and why did I do it? Cause I could, cause I was so brilliant.
Why am I confessing, cause I am going to die and I am not going to die alone. Umbrella brought me here, wasted my talents here and they are going to pay for that I promise them.
July something or other.
There's no more food. No more water. Had something of a gorge the night before.
I think I am the last one left, in the early days there was screaming, pleading, gunshots and the sound of running feet. Now, there's just moaning. God that moaning.
I don't want to starve to death, I'm going to try and get down to the labs and from there to the emergency elevator. If I can get to the heliport then maybe I can use the radio equipment to call for a ride.
Maybe.
Wish me luck.
That was the last entry and Richard had no idea what to think, for a moment everything piled on him and all he wanted to do was lie down, everything seemed to be spinning. The blankets looked so tempting that he just crawled on top of them and closed his eyes. He was so, so tired all of a sudden. Crashing from adrenaline, probably.
He would go and find the others and tell them what he had learned, once he had taken a nap.
End of Chapter Thirty-Six
Another chapter done and dusted, we will back with Billy and Becca for the next one.
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A ton of love,
DiscordantSymphony