Author: Panika feat. Pyres

Music: Resident Evil Biohazard 2 – The Underground Laboratory

Notes: Sorry, I took my time again. I've just been busy with school and everything. It seems like I have less and less time to read and write fics… And I love this fic because it's my first horror fic and I'm really putting a lot of effort into it. If you like this one, read The Swans Sing When They Die as well. I've been into one-shots a lot lately, so I think there'll be more of them too…

Reviewers: Thank you so much for your comments!

spider-bear: Well, he might be alive… Hmm… Wesker might've needed his dead body though, so you'll just have to wait until Jill uncovers the truth…

JoJo10: Thank you so much for saying that! I'm really trying to make it sound real, like the game because the game is so awesome that it deserves all the skill I have to describe all the horrors and still I need practice!

Selphiefan 89: Wow, thank you! I'm trying to make it even darker as it goes on.

jano: Thank you so much! It would be horrible if he was a zombie, wouldn't it? Could Jill even kill him if he tried to bite her, or would she just let him?

SpiritoftheDead: No more waiting, here's the third chapter!

puc: Thank you! I'm doing my best to write a good story and it's great to hear that I'm succeeding!

Barry, a Lock Pick?

What if he had turned into one of those inhuman warpages, those zombies that walked in the corridors and rooms of the house freely, searching only for food, fresh, new food? She felt the tears wanting to roll down her cheeks, feeling guilty for leaving poor Chris alone against them. His end had been quick and merciful, he hadn't died as a dinner for a zombie, but from the bullet of a friend… a friend whose feelings went deeper than just friendship. She comforted herself by thinking that even if the body of Chris Redfield would walk towards her in one of these creepy rooms, she would know that his spirit was in a better place, ignorant of it's body living even after death as a zombie without a heart or a mind.

She loaded her gun, taking a defiant expression on her face. If no one else survived in this mansion, she would and she would tell the rest of the world what had happened and who was responsible for all of it. These people who had been turned into zombies hadn't done it by themselves, something had triggered their brain to reactivate after death to become one of them and she wanted to know what it was.

Jill walked slowly to the end of the corridor, down the stairs past an old elevator feeling very unwelcome as the corridor became narrower and the lighting that was already dim, became dimmer and red, the old walls of the stairs were so close to her shoulders that she could feel the wetness of them. There was something red on them, maybe it was rust from the rusty door ahead, or then… she didn't even want to think about it. She knew that if she wouldn't control her thoughts, she would go crazy, anyone would. She needed to be one hell of an iron lady now.

She tried the door to the kitchen, closing her eyes and hoping that it was locked, wanting to cry, wanting to roll up in a ball and hide in a dark corner and cry and wait for the zombies to come and shoot them until she would run out of bullets and they would eat her like they had eaten Chris. But her will to survive was stronger than those feeble feelings, she knew that without looking for an exit, she would never get out. She heard the door made a clicking sound, telling her that it was locked and she sighed relievedly.

Jill almost ran back to the dining room, thinking that it was safe. Although she knew that no place in this mansion was safe, she felt relieved to have a large room around her with space to move around. But before she had even tried to calm herself down, she heard a zombie moan somewhere above her and as she looked there, there was a room above the dining hall with a hole in the middle to make the dining hall feel bigger and wider. And over there, blocked with a balustrade, was a zombie trying to get to her, holding its arms in front of it, moaning, swaying on its feet with bad balance. Its white eyes were looking into the distance, it really seemed as if it couldn't see her, but I smell her. She made a disgusted face, the chills running up her spine. There was a rotting corpse up there, wanting to come down and eat her.

Jill took her gun and aimed at its head and fired. The head blew up, spraying blood around and the zombie fell on the floor with a loud thud. Dust on the dining table flew on the air and floated back down gently in peace as if nothing had happened. She listened to the large pendulum clock tick slowly, somehow thinking that it was jeeringly ticking so loud to count the seconds she still had left in the house until a zombie would come and kill her.

She walked past it, glaring at it with hatred, wanting to spit on it.

"I'm not going to die in here… not going to die in here…" She chanted slowly, half to herself, half to the clock. Then she suddenly stopped, looking at its pointers on the dial like a round face covered with a mask. Without a thought she fired at the clock three times, almost growling: "You hear me!? I'm not going to die here! Not here!"

The gun fell from her hands to the floor with a sharp click, all the rounds emptying on the floor. She stared at the clock with growing horror; she knew she was going crazy. The clock couldn't have jeered her. It wasn't able to speak or talk, it could only tick mindlessly, following the flow of time with its pointers. She crouched to pick up her ammunition and loaded her gun again, realizing that she had only eleven shots left. If she couldn't find more bullets, she would be defenceless against those dead people walking around in the mansion.

Before she could think about the clock any longer, she ran to the main hall, closing the large doors behind her. It seemed that even if she tried to stay sane, she was losing her mind, slowly, but it was slipping away from her steadily, piece by piece disappearing into the deep darkness of madness. She felt the tears forcing their way out of her eyes, running down her cheeks uncontrollably, she was panicking and afraid, her sobs echoed in the vast main hall, but she tried to wipe the tears away to hold herself together. She leaned against the door, inhaling and exhaling slowly, tightening her grip on her gun, ready to shoot anything that moved.

But it seemed that the mansion was waiting for her to come deeper into its dark and gloomy corridors to see what had happened, how it had seen everything happen and done nothing to help it because it had enjoyed watching those people die or get killed and then rise from the dead to kill those who were still alive. It was breathing quietly with an ominous echo somewhere deep in its structures like a panther lying in ambush; waiting for its prey to come close enough to attack it.

Jill was able to calm down by thinking about surviving and Chris, if she would die here, he would've died in vain protecting her. This thought gave her courage to fight against the zombies and the house, and worst of all, her own sanity.

After gaining control of herself, she visited the upper dining hall and the statue room, finding a map of the first floor of the mansion. It was huge and it was only the first floor of the mansion! She marked the rooms where she had been with the pen she always had with her to know where she hadn't found an exit. She circled the main hall and the door where she had come in just in case the dogs would go away and she could escape through there.

Jill decided to go to back to the hallway once more to try the door in the room where she had left Chris. Maybe she would run to his walking corpse, but at least she was ready and waiting for it. But even if she was ready, she wasn't sure could she kill him even if he tried to bite her neck. As she passed Kenneth's already cold body, she got the tape he was holding and continued her way to the next room.

She ran through the room, finding some familiar herbs she had seen as a kid. She remembered how her father had told her to use these if she cut herself and they would heal her wounds. What a blessing it was to have those herbs in that horrible building! Without them she knew she would've died sooner or later, but now salvation was looking closer and easier all of a sudden. She sighed relievedly as she picked the herbs up and put them in her pocket, hiding them inside her handkerchief, running up the old creaky stairs to the second floor.

In front of the yellow-greenish door was something glittering in the light of the swinging lamp. Jill ran to it, hoping that it was ammunition, but instead it was a lock pick that was used to open to simplest of locks. Her eyes widened as she recognized whose it was, the initials carved on its side BB could only belong to Barry Burton.

"Barry!" She picked it up gently, hugging it like a baby in her arms with an encouraging smile on her lips. "Barry, you're still alive… and… we'll get out of here alive."

It comforted her to know that Barry had at least been here; he had seen the same things she had seen and probably understood the same feelings she had. Maybe he had even fought against insanity just like she had. It made her feel so good to have someone who understood.

Jill placed the lock pick carefully on her belt resting on her lips and patted it a few times with a smile:

"It will all turn out all right, Barry, because you know machinery and I'm fast. Together we can make it, can't we?"

She waited for an answer for a while, but then snapped out of it. The lock pi

ck wasn't Barry and it wasn't sure that he was alive at all. He could be dead like Chris, disappeared into this mansion's hundreds rooms without a trace. What scared her was that she had tried to get an answer from it; she had spoken to it like it would've been a person, Barry himself hanging on her waist.

"It's not Barry, it's a lock pick, you idiot." She told herself, looking at the red lock pick disbelievingly, the thought of it having Barry's spirit somewhere hidden between the layers of metal was tempting for her sanity, but she wouldn't let herself believe it. She wouldn't go crazy. She would never let herself go crazy.

In the corridor was a body lying on the floor as if it had been running and suddenly just suffered a heart attack and died there. Even the expression was filled with horror, the white eyes staring wide-eyedly to the distance, the mouth curved to a scream of horror. Everywhere on the man's body were bites; pieces of flesh had been torn off. When she examined it closer, she saw teeth marks on one of the bones in his feet. The teeth marks didn't belong to an animal; they were a human's teeth that had gnawed the bone of its flesh.

She got up and left, disgusted by the man's appearance. As she walked through the corridor, she thought about the dead man. Every dead man she had met had been walking, but this one was even deader than them for sure. Had Barry killed it?

"Did you, Barry?" She asked from no one in particular, looking around, seeing all the old armour and the spears placed in two identical rows on both sides of the corridor. The she chuckled, playing with the thought of Barry really being there with her. But it was a little scary as well, because at times she really felt like he was walking behind her, his calm steps following her around, but when she turned around the corridors were always empty, booming with silence.

But there really was something there. And it wasn't Barry, because Barry didn't have eight feet.

Barry, a Lock Pick?

There it is, sorry it's a bit short, but it's better than nothing, right? By the way, if you're interested in participating in an interactive story, my cousin's writing one on her website. Check out Dark Moon Crystales's website (address can be found on her profile) if you'd like to know more.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I'd love your reviews!