20: An Extra Passenger
Most people in Amber Bernstein's situation would have been a gibbering, terrified mass of post-traumatic stress disorder by now.
She'd spent the past few days trapped inside the police station with her fellow police officers, desperately trying to keep the zombies out. But they'd found a way inside in the end, and her colleagues had been slaughtered before her eyes; she'd barely escaped with her life.
As if that wasn't horror enough, Amber had also run into her younger brother, Jason, and found him chewing on the limp form of Sid Ziegler, the former owner and proprietor of a downtown record store.
A bullet through the head had granted her poor brother the mercy of death. Hopefully he could now rest in peace.
In spite of all this, Amber wasn't frightened. She'd been through fear and come out of the other side. She was nervous – she'd have to be crazy not to be nervous – but she wasn't frightened.
After a recent run-in with a group of zombies, she'd discovered a valuable piece of information. You didn't need more than one bullet to kill a zombie, as long as your aim was perfect.
And her aim was perfect. She'd come second in the Raccoon Police Department's Annual Marksmanship Contest, very narrowly beaten by Chris Redfield, one of the STARS members.
There was just one zombie left now. The others lay dead, twitching slightly as their blood dyed the asphalt a darker shade of black. Amber's aim had, as always, been spot-on, so there was no chance of them getting up again. Just one zombie left; it wouldn't be difficult to take it down.
Only one problem remained. She was out of bullets.
And now she was frightened…
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"Now where?" said Jack.
"This way, I think," said Lisa.
She turned right and drove down a long street, most of which was on fire. There was another barricade at the end, and they ducked automatically as they broke through it.
Zombies flashed past their eyes, gone in an instant as the car passed them by. Somehow they didn't seem like so much of a threat any more. In fact, Lisa was just starting to calm down a little –
Hissssssssssssssss!
Lisa nearly jumped out of her skin. At first she couldn't figure out what the noise was, and then she saw that Jack had turned on the radio. It was tuned to local radio but Raccoon FM was broadcasting only static, possibly because no-one was left alive to run the station.
"It bring a whole new meanin' to the words "dead air", dunt it," Jack commented.
"Turn it off," said Lisa. To her, the noise of the static was an unpleasant reminder of what had happened, not just to the people at the radio station, but to everyone else in town as well.
"Can I put the CD player on?" said Jack.
"If you must," Lisa sighed. "As long as it's not some lame boy band. I hate boy bands."
"Yeah, they suck," Jack agreed. "They all sound the same. It be me, or you think they use the same kind of song over again? It be either "I wanna be with you", "I be with you" or "I ain't with you no more"."
"That's very true," said Lisa. "And their songs are so sweet and bland and boring as hell. They're all so darn wholesome, it makes me sick – there's absolutely no violence, profanity, or unpleasantness of any kind. Not that a song has to have that stuff to be a good song, of course," she added hastily. "But it sure livens things up a little, don't you think?"
Jack looked amused – and, Lisa suddenly thought, very sexy indeed.
She quickly broke off eye contact and turned away, ashamed of herself. She kept her eyes firmly on the road as she tried to shut out all the forbidden thoughts that she knew she shouldn't be having about her best friend.
Wow. He really does have beautiful blue eyes – shut up, Lisa, shut up now, you're meant to be concentrating on getting out of this town alive, not wondering if your best friend is possible boyfriend material! Get a grip, girl…
They drove on in silence. Minutes passed.
"I thought you wanted to put some music on," said Lisa.
"Oh, yeah," said Jack, suddenly remembering. "I forget all 'bout it. I be too busy tryin' not to laugh at what you say 'bout boy bands. I always think you uptown girls like that kind of junk, so you kind of take me by surprise when you say you hate it."
"Well, I'm not like all the other girls," said Lisa.
"I know," said Jack. "I notice. You ain't just another Calvin Klone, some dumb blonde in expensive clothes who pretend to be pretty. You dunt need to pretend."
And that brought a smile to Lisa's face. How could she keep herself from smiling, when he was being so utterly charming? It was amazing how someone so nice could turn into a ruthless zombie-killer who was willing to do whatever it took to survive.
That's Jack for you, Lisa thought. As sweet as anything, but when we're in danger he suddenly turns into one of those tough guys you see in the movies. It must be a guy thing. What is it with guys and danger, anyway? They're either reduced to nervous wrecks or they turn into Action Man. Crazy. I'll never understand guys, as long as I live…
Jack turned on the CD player and grinned as heavy metal music issued from the speakers.
"Cannibal Corpse," said Lisa instantly. "Very appropriate."
"You like metal?" said Jack, only a little surprised.
"Sure. Better than boy bands. My mom hates it, but it's not like she's home that much anyway," said Lisa. "And - "
There was a bloodcurdling shriek ahead of them. Jack and Lisa looked up sharply, and saw a young woman being attacked by a zombie. It hadn't bitten her yet, but she was struggling to escape from its clutches.
"Hey!" Lisa yelled.
The zombie turned its head to look at the oncoming car, and let go of the young woman, who immediately dived out of the way. The zombie gave a groan, and tottered towards the car…
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When Amber looked up, she saw that the black convertible had come to a complete stop. The zombie, she noticed, was no longer a problem. It was dead. She didn't think that being hit by a car would be enough to kill it, but the zombie had fallen to the ground and landed awkwardly, and its neck had broken. A quick death. There were worse ends than that.
Amber gradually became aware that the car's occupants were whispering furiously.
"She be a cop."
"Yes? And?"
"I hate cops."
"Why?"
"You be arrested twice for no damn reason, an' you no would like 'em either. Plus we be drivin' a stolen car without a licence, we just hit somethin', we got guns an' we be breakin' the speed limit. She prob'ly gonna arrest us or somethin'."
"Don't be absurd. Who's she going to report us to? Everyone at the police station's probably either dead or zombified. Besides, she might be useful to have around."
Amber couldn't believe that they thought she'd arrest them; now, when the dead were walking the streets and feasting on the flesh of the living. Under these circumstances, arresting them was not only pointless but terminally stupid, when her only chance of escape now rested in their hands.
She got to her feet, silently thanking the world for helping her out for once, and went over to the car. The whispering stopped instantly, and both of the car's occupants looked up.
After three years in the police force, Amber had a tendency to look at people and mentally take down their details, as if she was composing an incident report in her head. The suspects in this case were both juveniles – one white male, aged sixteen, medium build, about 5'9", blond hair, blue eyes; one white female, also aged sixteen, slightly built, 5'3" or thereabouts, long dark hair, brown eyes.
Guilty of car theft, driving without a licence, possession of unlicensed firearms, exceeding the speed limit, and having committed at least one hit-and-run offence. But right now, well, quite frankly I don't care if they shot JR. I just hope they'll help me…
"Need a ride?" said the girl.
"Yes, please," said Amber quickly.
"Hop in."
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Lisa glanced back at the woman sitting in the car. She was young and quite pretty, with long strawberry-blonde curls and green eyes. She wasn't much good at telling people's ages, but guessed that the young woman was about twenty-four or twenty-five.
"So who are you, anyway?" Lisa asked her.
"Lieutenant Amber Bernstein, RPD. You?"
"Lisa Hartley. And this is my friend Jack Carpenter."
"Jack Carpenter? I've heard that name before," said Amber.
Jack scowled.
"Yeah. You people arrest me twice already."
"Why? What did you do?" said Amber.
"Nothin'. It just that I be a skater an' los verdes be too lazy to go an' find anyone to arrest, so they pick on us instead. We skaters make easy targets. Easier than real bad guys," said Jack, with a snort.
"I have to agree with you there," said Amber. "Most of the clans don't give much trouble, but the Chief doesn't see it that way. He hates skaters, I mean really hates them, and the gang wars were just the excuse he needed to start picking on them. Man, that guy's a creep. I hate him. He's a complete pervert. He's always leering at the female officers, and he actually tried to pinch my ass once. Can you believe that? I told him if he ever pinched my ass again then I'd sue his. And he has seriously odd taste in art. The pieces he's been buying recently totally freak me out. Like in the storeroom behind the briefing room, there's this horrible painting over the fireplace, of a nude being hanged. I don't know who's more screwed-up, the artist for painting it or the Chief for buying it."
"What a weirdo," said Jack.
"And that's not the half of it. He's into taxidermy as well. You know, stuffed animals? You should see his office. And he doesn't just buy them, he does his own too," said Amber.
"Eeew," said Lisa, making a face. "That's gross."
"Tell me about it," said Amber. "I think he's dead now, though. Someone said he was after a few zombie heads to hang on his office wall. He was tangling with a bunch of them when I saw him last."
"I wouldn't give much for his chances, then," said Lisa.
"Me either," said Amber. "By the way, where are we going? If you want to get out of town, you're going the wrong way."
"I know," said Lisa.
"And we're going this way because… why?" said Amber.
"We're not leaving town without my parents," said Lisa. "They're scientists and they work for Umbrella Pharmaceuticals Incorporated. We're going over to Umbrella's headquarters to look for them before we leave."
"Umbrella, huh?" said Amber. "I'd quite like to take a look around myself."
"Why?" said Jack.
"Because they're up to something," said Amber darkly. "And I know they've got something to do with the zombies."
"What? But they make medicine an' stuff, dunt they?" said Jack, looking bewildered. "How they be connected with zombies?"
"Do you remember the newspaper reports a few months back? About the attacks in Raccoon Forest?" said Amber.
"Yeah, I remember," said Jack.
"The STARS squad were sent in to check it out. I expect you heard the stories about what they found."
Jack nodded. He remembered the article that Marco had read out to the rest of the Street Rats, the day that Valerio died:
"This is, of course, a ridiculous rumour that the Mayor an' RPD have been tryin' to quash ever since August, when the RPD's STARS squad returned from an assignment claimin' that zombies were loose in Raccoon Forest an' that they had been created by a virus in a secret mansion laboratory belongin' to the pharmaceuticals giant Umbrella Incorporated."
"A secret mansion lab or somethin'," he said.
"That's right. A mansion laboratory up in the Arklay mountains. Full of monsters. Zombies and giant snakes and killer plants and all sorts of dreadful creatures. And do you know how those things got there?"
"Some kind of a virus, right?" said Jack.
"Right. The T-Virus. Turns living creatures into undead, mutated monsters. And Umbrella created it."
"That's crazy," said Lisa, frowning. "Umbrella just makes vaccines and medicines and things like that. They don't make diseases! That's just a stupid rumour."
"And I'm the Bride of Frankenstein," said Amber shortly. "Stupid rumours don't wipe out half the STARS team, kid. My best friend was on the STARS Alpha Team, and she and the other survivors have proof. Documents. Photographs. I know for a fact that Umbrella has been experimenting with bioweapons and genetic technology since the Sixties. I've seen the evidence with my own eyes. Unfortunately I was the only one in the police force who believed Jill and the others. Everyone else dismissed it as some kind of crazy hoax."
"Why not you?" said Lisa.
"Because I've been doing a little research of my own into the Arklay mansion incident. And what the STARS team said checks out."
"So how come no-one believed them?"
"Umbrella employs a lot of people from this town, Lisa. No-one wanted to believe them. And big companies have a lot of influence. Umbrella practically runs this town. Yesterday I found out that the Chief of Police has been taking bribes from Umbrella, which might explain why he ordered me to call "case closed" on the Arklay incident. I didn't, of course."
"Why not?"
"My boyfriend Joseph was on the STARS Alpha Team too. He never came back from that assignment."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"Jill and the other survivors were worried about what might happen if the T-Virus ever got loose. That's why they tried to bring down Umbrella. Look around you. See the zombies? That "mystery virus" they talked about on TV is the T-Virus, and look what it's done to this town."
Lisa nodded. Amber was right. The evidence was everywhere. People had turned into zombies after becoming infected with a mysterious virus. And there had been zombies in the mansion where a virus had been created. The two had to be linked. Maybe the STARS members weren't as crazy as people said they were…
"That's why Umbrella has to be stopped. This can't be allowed to happen again," Amber finished.
"Why would it happen again?" said Lisa.
"Like I said, I've being doing some research these past few weeks," said Amber. "And Umbrella are up to something. They're working on some new project that's going to make the T-Virus look like the common cold - as if they haven't done enough damage already."
Lisa suddenly recalled what the mysterious caller had said:
"Dr Hartley, the L-Project is dangerous. You have to end it now. I don't care what the others say. If it isn't stopped, it'll destroy everything."
The L-Project. Was that what Umbrella was working on now? What was it? And how were her parents involved?
"So you want to find out what Umbrella have got hidden in their headquarters?" said Lisa.
"Damn right," said Amber. "I promised the STARS survivors that I'd help them take out Umbrella if it was the last thing I ever did. Whatever they're doing now, I'm going to find out what it is and put a stop to it."
"Me too," said Jack suddenly. "My aunt die 'cause of that T-Virus. She prob'ly be walkin' round town eatin' people's brains an' stuff, an' I wanna find out whose fault it be."
"What about you, Lisa?" said Amber.
"Yes. I want to know why my parents have been so busy at work lately. I'd quite like to find out just what my mom and dad do for a living…" said Lisa grimly.