Resident Evil, White Claudia
Part 1/7
By Fenris Ulf.
Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil or Silent Hill. This includes, but is not limited to: zombies, Jack's Inn, Sherry Birkin, the T-virus, or spooky fogs.
It had begun as an odd little package in the mail. A plain brown wrapper delivered by the postman. She had opened the package and saw a little red leather book with "Diary" on the front written in gold letters. She opened the book and written on the first page was: "A true account of the final days of Raccoon City."
Slowly, hesitantly, she found a more comfortable place to sit and she began to read.
Some time later, she put the book down. Growing up, she had held the cherished memories of her parents as any child would remember. How she longed for a time when they would be finished with thier work and they would become a happy family again. Now she was fully aware of the horrible legacy her parents had left her. Her father, Dr. William Birkin had worked for the White Umbrella organization. White Umbrella was the bio-weapons division of the "legitimate" Umbrella pharmaceutical company. He had developed the terrible G-Virus, an improved version of the T-Virus that had turned Raccoon City into an infested city of the dead.
A city full of citizens turned into mindless, flesh-eating zombies. A city full of horrible monsters that killed and maimed without pity. Including her own mutated father, infected with his own G-Virus by his own hands.
She remembered being a child in that liche city, hiding in the police station until rescued by Claire Redfield.
She stood up and looked out the window of her tiny studio. Both her parents were killed in the destruction of Raccoon City. As horrible as it was, it was probably for the best, she thought. Claire had dashed off to look for her brother Chris. Sherry and Leon Kennedy, Claire's cop friend, had been picked up by the Feds (though she never found out what organization they were a part of) for what seemed like months. Leon had eventually either escaped or had been allowed to leave.
Neither had taken Sherry with them or had made an attempt to do so. She had wished they had more than once, but she understood why they had done so.
She looked around at her studio. After graduating from college, she had set up a business. A consultant that specialized in identifying problems and solutions that companies and people just didn't want to see. She had a knack for making them see them. It sometimes surprised her how well it was doing. She wasn't really rich, but she was well off.
In spite of her parents many drawbacks, they had provided her with plenty of life insurance. Enough to get her through college and to start her business.
Enough so that she could shut off her life for a while, if she had to. She looked at the last page of the Diary. In a dark red ink, in a different hand from the rest of the pages, was a message: "Your parents' legacy is now made manifest in the town of Silent Hill." A legacy that included flesh-eating monsters and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
She pulled into the parking lot of Jack's Motel, a cheap rental in Silent Hill. It was a place that had probably looked cheap and worn when it was brand new. She took a good look around then reached into her jacket and felt the butt of the automatic pistol she had tucked into her shoulder holster. She didn't want to take a chance that this town was going to melt down like Raccoon City.
She trundled the luggage she had brought. Each one had some additional ordinance tucked away in secret compartments. Shotguns, ammo, assult rifles, even a sword. The thought "overkill" had briefly crossed her mind then was brutally squashed. When dealing with the T-Virus, there was no such thing as overkill.
"Hello," she said to the clerk behind the front desk. "My name is Cheryl Birkin. I have a reservation for today."
"Eh? Birkin?" He thumbed through a worn ledger. Sherry looked around. The window was open, letting her see out into the parking lot and street. There were hardly any people at all here. She frowned. Silent Hill used to be a thriving resort town, but in recent years, due to competition from other resorts and a general decline in the town itself, it wasn't as popular as it used to be. Still, it wasn't a dead town yet. She turned back to the clerk.
"Huh?" she cried out. He was no where to be found. "Hello?" she called out. She took a quick look around, her alarm bells ringing. No one here at all.
She was about to get the shotgun from her suitcase and take a look around when it hit her. A headache. A headache that started as an icepick stabbing behind her left eye and ballooned into a sledgehammer grinding her skull into dust. Everything went black.
"Ms. Birkin? Are you all right?" she heard.
"What?" she gasped out. She was standing up, leaning over the counter. She looked up and saw the concerned face of the clerk. "Was that a dream?" she muttered.
"Miss Birkin?"
She stood back up and shook her head. "I'm sorry, I guess I must have been more tired than I thought. What were you saying?"
"I said that I found your reservation. Here are your keys." He handed her a pair of metal keys. "Do you need any help with your bags?"
"No, thank you," she said. She took a look around the street visible through the window. There was a scattering of people there. Not very many, but there they were.
"Miss?" she heard. She looked at the clerk.
"Sorry, I'm fine now."
She settled in fairly quickly. She sat down at the desk to think. What happened to her? One moment she was talking to the clerk, then she was the last person on Earth, then she was back again. Was she sick, or was something else going on?
She stood up and got her gear.
First was a specially designed long coat. With it, she could stow her shotgun, plenty of ammo and the sword. She secured her other bags to make sure that they weren't searched. She then got out her special Personal Digital Assistant.
She didn't like to admit it, but there was a possibility that she might not make it. She would take notes with it and it would automatically upload back to the computer she had back at home. Hopefully, it wouldn't be trashed either, but there weren't a whole lot of options available to her.
She shrugged to herself. No sense in getting too worried. For all she knew, nothing might happen to her at all.
A light fog was rolling in from Toulca Lake. It gave the air a slight chill, which gave her the perfect excuse for wearing her coat. She pulled the edge of her long coat tighter.
"Gah!" she said, going to one knee as the headache swelled. Is there something wrong with me? she thought as the pain swelled to a thudding crescendo. Just as she thought she would black out again, the pain stopped.
She shook her head, the pain stopped as suddenly as it began. She looked around. It was too quiet. She opened her long coat. There was a tailored slit that let her access most of her weapons, but still...
She shook her head again. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end with the feeling of added danger coming in off the wind. The feeling that something could come out and get her at any moment. Most people would scoff at such a feeling, but she knew better. There were such things as monsters. She reached inside her coat slit and felt the reassuring bulk of the shotgun stock.
She firmed her mouth. Bad feeling or not, she was here to do a job. It was time to see it through. Her first stop was the local Toulca Lab, a research lab run by Umbrella.
She hadn't gone more than a few blocks when the feeling of danger had gone up, not down. The town was far too quiet. Not a person, or a dog, or a bird. No planes flying overhead, no cars running past. She took a quick look around. She took out her shotgun. If she was wrong, then the next thing she would hear would be sirens. She looked carefully at the shop window. The interior was dark.
She turned quickly as she heard the growling of a dog. She craned her neck as she tried to pinpoint where it was coming from. She held out the shotgun as she cautiously moved foward. It sounded like it was coming from the next street over.
"Ah!" she cried out. Her head felt like it was going to explode.
No, not trying to explode, said some distant, clear corner of her mind. Like something is trying to come in.
Then she blacked out.
She awoke slowly. "Where am I?"
"You're in the Silent Hill Police Station, Miss Birkin."
She sat up and took a look around. She was in a tiny jail cell. She looked down and noticed that she was wearing her regular clothes sans her weapons and other items.
"We were worried about you," continued the young police officer. "So the Sergeant went to get Dr. Morris."
"And why wasn't I taken to the hospital if you were so worried?" she asked him.
"I don't know. To be honest, that's what I was thinking, but when Sergeant Burton insisted, I went along with it."
The outer door opened and two people entered. One was a young woman in a police uniform. The other was an older man wearing a suit and carrying an old fashioned doctor's bag.
"Hey Sergeant Burton. She's awake."
"Dr. Morris," Sgt. Burton said, "please take a look at Ms. Birkin."
"All right."
"Let him into the cell," she ordered. "When he's done, and if he pronounces her fit, I want to talk to the prisioner alone."
She sat in the interrogation room for a while. Like most of the station facilities, it was small and worn but clean and servicable. She had not been cuffed. When the doctor had told the Sergeant that she appeared to be in good health and did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Burton had waved off his disclaimer that a blood test was needed to be sure and the first officer had escorted her into this room.
The steel door opened with a slight squeal and Sgt. Burton entered the room with a rather thick folder.
"Your name is Cheryl Birkin," she began without greeting or warning. "The only child of doctors William and Annette Birkin. You are also one of the few survivors of the Raccoon City incident. Raised in various foster homes until you petitioned for emancipation after gratuating high school at sixteen. You gratuated from college in an accelerated three-years and promptly settled in Chicago where you set up a trouble-shooting consulting practice.
"Today, you checked into Jack's Motel and was later found downtown, unconscious, holding a 10-gage shotgun. A search of your person revealed a Baretta 9mm handgun, enough ammunition for a war and a sword, of all things. Ms. Birkin, what did you intend to do with all that hardware?"
Sherry looked at the serious woman across from her. There were a few ways she could play this, but the fact she hadn't been immediately sent to a hospital in a strait-jacket made her cautiously optomistic.
"Before I answer that Sargeant, I need to know if you know what really happened at Raccoon City."
Before she could answer Sherry's question, there was a knock at the door, which was then promptly thrown open.
"Sarge, the mayor's on the horn. He said he wants to talk to you right away and he sounds plenty pissed."
Burton gave the young man a dark and dirty look. "Ms. Birkin, I'll be right back."
She left the room.
It was a few seconds after that that the headache hit Sherry. This was different from the other ones in that it felt like an icepick behind her left eye and it stayed at that level. The room faded and grew dim until everything was dark. She had the momentary impression of seeing someone across from her when the room slowly came back into focus.
"What on Earth...?" she murmured as she took a look around the room. The first thing was that the modern fluorescent lamp had been replaced with an old cheap overhead that barely cast enough light to show the table underneath it. The table itself looked old and weathered with nameless stains spread over its surface. The walls were stripped of its paint in uneven blotches with grafitti scrawled over its surface.
She looked to her left and was surprised to see that the heavy door was no longer there.
She stared at the gaping egress for a few moments before giving her arm a pinch. Either she was dreaming or she was in ten times as much trouble as she was in Raccoon.
Only one thing to do. She calmly walked out the door. "Hello?" she called out. "Sargeant Burton? Dr. Morris?"
No one answered her call, and exploring the station provided less clues, not more. With the exception of a lack of dust, the whole station looked as though no one had inhabited it for years.
She opened a door marked 'Evidence Room' and saw something a bit odd. It was her long coat mounted on a dressmaker's dummy. Her sword, a Japanese katana of recent vintage, was propped up against the wall. Her coat, sword and the dressmaker's dummy all looked like they were in pristine condition.
Practicality won out over amazement and she did a quick search of her coat. She found her PDA and shoulder harness, but her firearms and ammo were nowhere to be found. She shrugged herself into the coat and strapped the sheath of the sword into the coat. She then drew the blade.
She turned on her PDA. It appeared to be working fine, but it couldn't get a connection to her home computer. She looked around at the decrepit station and didn't feel the least bit surprised.
A further search refused to yield her other weapons or anything the police might have carried. She also tried to look at the hardcopy police files, but the filing cabinet was filled with noisome flakes instead of paper.
She looked at the front door of the station. No zombies, Lickers, Tyrants or other monsters: good. Also, no people, no cars and no phone: bad. There was no way around it, she wasn't going to find out what was going on in the station.
With sword in hand, she cautiously opened the door and looked outside. There was a heavy fog over everything. She couldn't see more than a dozen feet in front of her. She stepped out and cautiously looked around. Her game plan was simple now. Get as far away from Silent Hill as possible.
The most obvious thing to do was to get a car started. As she made her way to one of the cars parked across the street she heard a scream. She looked around. It was hard to tell but she thought it came from up the street. She began to jog towards the sound.
She was close enough to hear someone yelling: "Go away!" She turned the corner and froze at the sight that greeted her.
It was a zombie. Not just any zombie either. The monstrosity of rotting flesh was easily seven feet tall, dwarfing her own sixty-four inch height. It was closing in on a cowering man on the ground.
She steeled herself against the sight and silently charged in. There was no way she would be able to get a lethal blow in to the head, so she had to cut him down to size. It turned as her footfalls echoed on the pavement. It was slow and the blade easily sliced through the withered leg. It gracelessly fell back and hit the ground with a thud. Sherry quickly reversed the sword and thrust the point into the middle of its broad forehead.
She removed the katana from the corpse and stepped back. She then sat down on the ground and realized how hard she was breathing. She had taken Kendo classes to learn how to use the sword. She had visited the firing range to learn how to use a gun.
She had thought that Raccoon City had prepared her, but nothing could really prepare her.
"Miss? Are you okay?" she heard.
She looked up to see the man looming over her with a concerned look on his face.
"I'm fine," she said. She got up, wiped the sword clean then turned to look at the man she rescued. He was an older man wearing a white long-sleeve shirt and black slacks. "I'm Sherry Birkin," she said to him.
"Don Hamilton," he said, holding out his hand. "Thanks for the save. I was walking home when this creepy fog just moved in from the lake. Before I knew it that thing was moving at me."
She was about to reply when a stabbing headache blindsided her. This is getting old, she thought quickly before her world greyed out.
She found herself kneeling on the ground. It was pitch black. She could feel the metal grating under her hand.
Her attention was then taken up by the wild animal cry she heard nearby. It was the familiar wail of the mutant creature that had haunted her dreams and nightmares for years.
"Father," she said before another wave of pain flooded her brain.
She came to. She was kneeling on the ground, the fog swirling around her. She looked around her. It appeared to be the same place she was in before.
The main difference was that the corpse of the giant zombie was missing, as was Don. "Mr. Hamilton?" she called out.
There was a dark spot in the concrete road where the zombie had been. It was high time to leave and get reinforcements. She was about to break into one of the cars when she heard the once familiar moan of the wounded and dying.
It lurched from a nearby alleyway. It was once again taller than it should have been. She paused in the midst of smashing the glass of the car. The viral zombies were slow, but strong. If it got to her before she got the car started, it was possible that it might be able to get her. Also, it was too risky to engage it while armed with just a sword. She backed away and sprinted as it began shuffling towards her.
After about a block, she seemed to have lost the monster. She paused for a moment while looking around her. She was in the downtown area and had ended up near a gas station. Perhaps she could get a map of the town or maybe even get a working car that she could steal without being hassled by another monster.
"Maybe I could wish for the shotgun they keep beneath the counter, while I'm at it," she muttered to herself. There was no harm in looking at least. Probably.
She cautiously entered the station. The garage area didn't have a single car inside. The attendant area was a bit more fruitful. On the counter was a map of the town. It was a fairly complete map with fold up sections highlighting the popular lake area as well as the amusement park.
Someone had taken a red pencil and had highlighted three locations on the map. She quickly memorized the closest way out of town then tucked the map into her coat. If she survivied, perhaps she could come back to check those places.
Then again, she should have her head examined again for thinking about coming here again.
The nearest exit point was the Interstate highway. All she had to do was follow Bachman Road until it met up with the highway overpass. So far the journey had been easy. No giant zombies so far. The swirling fog made it hard to see very far. Occasionally, the odd sound would make her tread cautiously, but nothing attacked her out of the fog.
When she first saw it, she didn't understand what it was. She had simply attributed it to the way the fog masked distances and obscured detail. She then gaped in open amazement as she neared it. What it was was a gaping chasm that was where Bachman Road was supposed to intersect the interstate. She stood as close to the edge as she dared.
"This can't be happening," she said out loud as she tried to stare across the void to whatever was on the other side. She tossed a loose piece of tarmac into the depths as she debated about climbing down the side. She heard nary a sound from that stone.
She shook her head. It was time to accept what was going on. She was stuck in a town where something stranger than the T-virus was afoot. Her first attempt to escape was a complete bust. She stood up. The first thing she needed to do was to get some serious armaments. Preferably a fully automatic machine gun, but she would settle for her Baretta back. Next was to test each exit from town. One of them might not be blocked by an impossible geographical disaster.
Then there were the marks on the map. She took out the map. The next available exit was off of Barker Ave. One of the red marks was on the way. She didn't think that it would shed any light on what was going on, but it might be useful.
She stared at the structure in dumbfounded amazement. Right there in front of her was the Toulca Labs, the place that she wanted to see in the first place. She looked down at the map in her hand. How was it possible that a map found on some gas station counter would have one of the places she had originally wanted to see?
She looked behind her and was tempted to try and hotwire a fourth car. There was a lack of viral zombies on the way over, so she had tried to hotwire a car. Hotwire three cars. Failed to hotwire three cars. She wasn't sure that she would succeed, but she was unable to get the engine to turn over. She wasn't even sure that the batteries in the cars had any power in them. In the end, she decided that unless she got a hold of a manuel that said, "How to hotwire a car," she was going to give up.
She was about to walk up to the building when she heard the low, feral growl of a dog. She drew her sword and began to slowly make her way to the building.
She was almost to the door when it emerged from the fog. Half of it were like the dogs of Raccoon City. Muscular with dark fur that seemed to be permanently covered with a dark ichor. The other half was completely skinless, with the muscles and bone showing quite plainly.
Instead of immediately attacking her, it lifted its muzzle and began to howl. It was immediately accompanied by several other howls, some near, some far.
That was a big enough clue for Sherry. She sprinted the last few feet to the door while the first ghoul dog began chasing her. She reached the door and almost cried in joy as the latch smoothly opened for her. She entered the darkened room and pushed the door shut behind her. First she heard the click of the lock, then a muffled thud against the door.
It didn't repeat.
The room was very dark. The only source of light was what looked like a nightlight about twelve feet away. She cautiously walked toward it. It was one of those emergency flashlights, the ones that went on when the power went out. She pried it out and turned it on. The first thing she did was to try and turn on the lights. Nothing happened when she flipped the light switches, but that didn't surprise her in the least.
The next thing she did was to tuck the flashlight into her front pocket so she could have her hands free. She had wanted to search Toulca Labs and here she was. Most of the offices on the ground floor seemed to be dedicated to a sales unit, as did the second floor according to a small map of the building. The "lab" part of Toulca Labs seemed to occupy three rooms on the second floor consisting of a "cultivation room," whatever that meant, an actual laboratory and an office.
She cautiously made her way to the second floor. The building seemed to be a bit rundown, but in good condition overall. The office was at the very end of the hall flanked by the lab and cultivation room. She stopped by that last one. "What on earth is a cultivation room?" she asked out loud, looking at the innoculous plate on the door. She turned the knob on the door and entered the room.
It seemed to be some sort of greenhouse. The roof and outer walls were made of thick, glass tiles and let her dimly see outside. Most of the space was taken up with beds of dead, withered plants. That's not what surprised Sherry. What surprised her was that in the middle of the plants was the upper half of a mannequin. The mannequin was clothed in a pink, denim vest and was holding a crossbow in one of its hands.
Sherry stared at the vest in dumbfounded amazement. It was more perplexing and unreal feeling than anything else that had happened to her since she had arrived in this creepy town. She took a look at the back of the dummy. Sure enough, the familiar angel holding a bomb was there, as were the words: "Made in Heaven."
When Claire Redfield had helped her escape from Raccoon City, she had given her this exact same vest. She remembered feeling braver and stronger when Claire had given it to her. She had lost the vest in one of the foster homes she had been in. She touched the vest, remembering one of the few shining lights in her unhappy childhood.
She smiled wryly as she put her hand down. Few people could understand how a simple vest given to her while trying to survive the monsters in Raccoon City would be so uplifting.
She turned her attention to the crossbow. She wasn't really familiar with this type of weapon, but she would take any sort of distance weapon at this point. A quick search of the greenhouse turned up two items of interest. One was a quiver that held thirty crossbow bolts. It was a bit like an extra long ammo pack that was belted around the waist.
The other was a manilla folder. On the front, in bold print, was: Project White Claudia.
That looked promising. Sherry pulled up a chair and began to read it.
"The White Claudia is a plant that grows only in the region of the town of Silent Hill," the report began.
A locally produced narcotic, PTV, is derived from this plant. This drug appears to have psychotropic and hallucinogenic properties. Of specific interest to White Umbrella are certain other effects of note. When test subjects were exposed to the drug, they began to effect thermal and electromagnetic changes in thier environment while in the midst of hallucinogenic episodes. These changes were very slight and only noticed due to the sensitive nature of the equipment used. It is theorized that the drug is enhancing the psionic abilities of the individual as a side effect.
Sherry paused for a moment as she reached the end of the page. Why didn't they simply ship a few samples of the plant to a regular Umbrella facility?
Certain parties have expressed concern over the cost of building a new facility over simply transporting a few viable samples to a regular White Umbrella test facility. The main reason for this approach is that all samples that have been transported perish when they are taken out of the Silent Hill area. There are even unconfirmed reports that the PTV becomes inert outside the vicinity of the town as well.
Sherry frowned. It looked like the last page was missing from the report. The page that had the name of the person who wrote the report. A date stamp on the folder indicated that the report was a few years old.
She rolled the document up and stuffed it into a coat pocket as best she could.
The next thing to check out was the lab. She slung the crossbow across her back and drew her sword. Not her first choice for the narrow corridor, but better than the unfamiliar crossbow.
The lab was surprisingly clean and neat. There was even a live potted plant. Sherry looked at that last for a surprised moment. A potted plant in a lab does better than plants in a greenhouse. Sherry supposed that this was a semi-decent lab for botany and pharmasuitical company. There were a few innocuous documents. Logs, records, experiments, but nothing that looked interesting.
Next stop, the office. She paused as she approached the door. She hadn't noticed in the dark corridor, but the name plate on the door had been ripped off. She gripped the katana and tried the door. It slowly opened up.
She almost lost her lunch. The room was covered in blood, body parts and miscellanious bits of flesh and other, less identifiable, pieces. Directly across from the door was a computer monitor. On its screen was a red symbol of some sort.
Now that the door was open, the familiar and unwanted scent of rotting flesh was washing over her. Putting a sleeve over her nostrils and hoping that none of the dismembered corpses rose up, she gingerly stepped into the room. As she got closer, the symbol became more clear, but it didn't look like any symbol she had ever seen before. It looked like two concentric circles with three smaller circles around the center. Strange writing was around the border while strange symbols were sharing space with the smaller circles. The whole thing was in red.
Then she heard a beep coming from her PDA. As she reached into her pocket for it, she noticed the symbol on the screen melting away, pixel by pixel, rather quickly. She got out her PDA and saw the symbol being reconstructed on the screen.
After a few moments, the computer was blank and her PDA had the red symbol on it. She looked at the computer monitor with some suspicion, then she gingerly prodded a few gore covered keys with the tip of her sword. She then dragged out the monitor cable. As she thought, it wasn't even plugged in.
"Of course its not plugged in," she muttered as she left, trying not to gag. She tried to wipe the blood from her shoes, sword and anything else she thought had blood on it.
She then looked at her PDA. The odd symbol showed up as an icon on her main menu. When she tapped it, all that appeared was the symbol. It took up space and it seemed to be real, but it didn't seem to do anything. She shrugged. It might be important later.
Just as she turned around to leave the room, a familar headache overcame her. She grunted with the pain and clutched her head.
The pain swelled and receded, but it didn't get bad enough for her to loose consciousness. That was when she heard it. It sounded like the ordinary bustle of an office building. The gore slowly vanished from the room. Athough it was still dark, she could see two men in the room.
"We haven't heard anything for several weeks," the man seated at the desk said. He sounded faint, as if he was talking from the bottom of a well.
"We haven't either. Don't worry about your job or anything like that. Contact me if you learn anything, even if it seems trivial to you."
"Hey, can you see me?" Sherry asked them, even as they faded away.
She was once more in the gore-encrusted office room. "Was that a memory, a hallucination, or something else?" she asked herself. She looked at her PDA. The crimson symbol still filled up the face of the little computer.
"I'm not in Silent Hill anymore. I'm someplace else."
She walked out of the office and thought about it some more. "Am I in Hell?"
That seemed to be possible.
"If there's a way in, there must be a way out." She looked at the symbol again. "And you seem to be the key."
She looked at the map again. Trying to get out of Silent Hill through the logical and reasonable ways weren't working. It was time to try something unreasonable. The next closest circle was on the Midwich Elementary School.
"If I find more symbols, I might be able to find a way out of here."
It was not totally logical or reasonable, but it gave her hope. She knew, better than most people, that hope was something powerful that could not be denied.
To be continued...
Part 2 - Remorse
