***A/N Ok it's been way too long folks, with holidays, and frigid weather, and illness things got sidetracked, but thanks to Dawn, I now proudly present what hopes to be a fairly lengthy Chapter 4.

Chapter 4 - Is Anyone Out There?

Chris backed away and evaded the zombie and ran back through the dining room to the main hall. As soon as he walked through the double doors he noticed that nobody was there, he tilted his head to look on the upper levels of the room, no one. "Wesker?! Jill?!" Chris yelled as he resumed walking around the main hall. "Where did they go?" Then he noticed a handgun on the floor where Jill had been standing when he previously exited. Chris picked up the gun and decided to search for his lost teammates through the door directly opposite the dining room, and be as far away from that. thing in the other room as possible.
Lifelike portraits and photos lined the walls of the room. They seemed to stare at Chris as he walked passed. There was also a statue in the middle of the room. According to the plaque it was of a "Woman Drawing Water". While looking up at the statue he noticed a rolled up piece of paper sticking out of the jar the stone woman was holding. He saw a small dresser across the room and pushed it over to the statue. He hoisted himself up and reaching into the jar and opened the paper to reveal a map of the first floor. 'Why would someone hide a map in a statue that is out of reach?' Chris wondered, 'Then again why would someone own a mansion in the middle of nowhere filled with cannibalistic dead people and rotting zombie dogs?' Chris stopped his mental wanderings and went to check out the small hallway he had gained better access to while moving the dresser in the back of the room. The hallway hooked around in the shape of a U and seemed to be for storage of what else art supplies!
At the end of the short hallway there was a bookcase with a dagger on the shelf. 'I wonder what this is doing here, not very artistic now is it?' he thought. However he decided to take the dagger because it could come in handy with those.zombies around. 'Though I really hope they don't get close enough for me to use this' he noted as he rounded the corner on route to the main hall. As his focus lay elsewhere for that brief time he rounded the other corner and nearly ran smack dab face first into a zombie. Startled he retreated backwards yet again, but this time he tripped. As he fell on his butt he though about Jill. He quickly recovered as the hungry man approached. Chris backed away trying to think of what to do until he bumped into a bookcase, then he remembered the gun he had picked up and quickly proceeded to shoot the zombie five times in the chest before it grabbed him. The stench was unbearable even to the point it might knock someone unconscious, he had to something quick before he became the latest on the zombie menu. He pulled out his newfound dagger and promptly stabbed the zombie right in the side of the head with it. The dagger went in with a sickening crunch and the zombie collapsed, a pool of blood quickly surrounding the fallen creature.
He rushed back to the main hall and collected himself, trying to regain some of his sanity, but only some, he decided to go back through the dining room. As he went by the dining room table he noticed there was considerably much less pie then there was before. 'That's weird, creepy.and I don't think I want to know' he thought. When he entered the room with Kenneth's body, he immediately looked for the zombie that had been snacking on him earlier. He spotted him down the hall way on his far right, so he decided he would brave the left. As Chris passed his fallen comrades body he saw that he was holding something in his hand. He kneeled down and saw that it was a tape. He took the tape and went through the door on the left.

The room was eerily silent. Directly in front of him was a birdcage with a dead raven inside it which was quite odd. He eyed a body on the floor and watched it warily as he walked by, half expecting it to make a grab for him. While his gaze fell downwards to the floor he saw two small green plants at the bottom of the stairs. 'Wonder what these are for?' he pondered. He took them anyway, they could be useful. Chris proceeded up the stairs and through a new door.
This led him to a hallway about mid-step forward he caught glimpse of the corpse sprawled on the floor he nearly stepped on. A pitiful moan echoed down the hallway alerted him that he had disturbed someone else in the room other then the man lying inches beneath his boot. Slowly, very slowly he heard his would be assailants footfalls approaching, trying to find the source of the noise. He waited until he could clearly see the zombie then shot it in the head. The zombie collapsed in a pool of blood on the floor. Chris stepped over him and continued down the hall until he came across another statue, and again there was something that caught his attention in it. He got closer to inspect the shimmering object that drew his eye to begin with, it was an arrowhead but it didn't look like it quite belonged there. He removed it very easily and put it in his pocket.
Moving down the hallway he came to two doors, he made for the left but it was locked. 'Guess I'm going in door number two then' he thought trying to ease his nerves a bit.
He recognized where he was but this was a new perspective on things. He was in the upper tier of the dining room in a rectangular corridor overlooking the long table below. He looked up when he heard what was becoming the familiar moaning of a new zombie come to rip him to bite size shreds. He avoided the zombie deciding it wasn't even worth the bullets when the zombie seemed to be more inclined to walk into the railing then the walkway to get to him. He proceeded around his 'friend' here until he hit a new set of double doors that led back to the main hall. 'Here again? I feel like a lost rat in a maze' he thought as he went down the stairs. On the way down he noticed the door on the top of the first flight of stairs. He hadn't noticed it was a door before because it almost perfectly blended with the picture that surrounded it. He twisted the handle and pushed open the door.

***That's all folks, for now anyway, wanna thank the usual readers for support and awesome conversation, and welcome Spider-Bear and SxyGrkDude to the lack of sanity that you two have become involved in. Side note to Spider-Bear, I really like your stories, Burning Flames of Love and Hate is great, I anxiously await more on that =)!!!! Ok next chapter will be here sooner, can't promise I'll spoil you with a 1k plus word chapter next round though.