Raccoon City : Demon's Gate
Chapter 7
Sleep is a strange thing.
People avoid it in the daylight as if it were the plague. They stay up late to keep from closing their eyes, ingest high amounts of caffeine just to keep them open. Yet when they succumb to their dreams, they refuse to wake up to the reality around them. Most of the time the people who decide to wake up the sleepers are met with a bane of fury from the one passed out.
Perhaps it was because their bodies savored the comfort and the ability to relax. To not worry about anything for at least a few hours. And perhaps somehow that comfort leaked from the body to the mind and brain.
Or perhaps it was that when you sleep, you can dream. The things you dream can be damn near impossible, yet they hold the fabric of reality in the mind. Things that you have yet to experience in real life, or probably never will, can be presented to you out of the clear blue.
And things that have happened in real life can be reversed if the dreamer so wills it. They could never have happened, or end happily...
So when Rowan's conscious faded from the warm feeling of being held in her mother's arms and entered into the darkness above her eyes, confusion clutched at her heart. Where was her mother? Why was it so dark?
And what in the hell was that buzzing noise?
Hazel orbs opened and slammed shut after nearly half a second, for they were struck by a blinding yellowish light that hurt her eyeballs. When she tried again, Rowan opened her eyes a crack to let them adjust to the sudden light after dark and once she assumed they were ready, opened them all the way.
The buzzing came from a half-dead light bulb above her, illuminating a light that was half as powerful as fresh bulbs. Why she heard that buzz sound was beyond her. Maybe it had something to do with why when she tried to move her head, an ice pick entered her temple.
She winced and squeezed her eyelids shut again, and at that moment heard something else. Rustling to her right. Somebody was in the room with her, but who?
When she looked up again, she was met with a half-smiling face of somebody she knew. His outlines were blurred thanks to the recent throb in her head and the pain that came with it, but after blinking to rid herself of the effect, she realized exactly who it was.
"Morning," Brad Vickers said in a voice meant to comfort and was thankfully soft against her super-sensitive ears. Then he frowned. "Well...very late at night. But you get the point?"
The smile on Rowan's face mimicked how she felt at this very moment. The very person who saved her life before, who told her to run for the sake of keeping her alive, and who had warned Kendo to warn Rowan not to make a move towards the police precinct was now leaning above her. The very person she had been hunting for before that bullet entered her gut...
The bullet! Rowan thought suddenly, her headache being the only thing keeping her from sitting bolt upright. That and the pain that would ensue from said wound, that is. Shouldn't I have...died?
How did she live through that? The sound of her scream and the thunder of a firing gun without a doubt captured the attention of the beasts lurking the streets. Her would-be assassin took off without lending a hand, even after he had, with that flicker across his eyes, realized in the last second that the person he shot was very much alive. She was left to bleed in the streets, passing out to become a very vulnerable meal for the zombies heading towards her.
But before she passed out, she remembered the sound of footsteps running towards her. Running. The zombies were in such bad states that they could not run.
So it had been Brad running towards her, saving her before she could be devoured.
But how did he get her in a safe spot when he had to worry about his own back, what with zombies lying around every damned corner? How did he managed to live when he was lugging dead weight around?
Dead weight...zombies...
City of the Dead...
Everything that happened only a little while ago suddenly flooded back into her brain, and the reality of it all slammed her hard. A moment ago she was not being held by her mother, not being told that everything was okay. She was lying in the middle of this bleak-looking room, in a city succumbing to the hordes of undead...and her mother was dead.
The gravity of it all was too much. She closed her eyes and for a second dozed off before she felt a hand touch her shoulder and a concerned voice ask, "You alright?"
Rowan mumbled something incoherent meant to be, "Yeah."
Brad was able to catch what she meant to say, She heard him sigh. "You're not alright..."
Despite herself, the young teenager opened her eyes to look at him. "I am okay."
He grinned. "If you were, you wouldn't have been passed out for a day and a half over a small bullet wound." Rowan blinked, and Brad went in to explain. "The wound wasn't major, and thankfully not close enough to any vitals. The most it is now is a very painful injury. I put salve on it, dressed it. It should heal within a few days."
Before he could progress into whatever else he was going to say after the fact, Rowan said, "You said...I was out for a day and a half...?"
Brad nodded.
"What day is it?"
"The twenty-seventh. It's around...," he paused, looking down at his right wrist where a leather-banded watch was tied, "eleven thirty."
Rowan groaned and closed her eyes, hit with an exhaustion half-induced by the pain she was in, and the awareness that nearly three days have passed with Raccoon in this predicament.
Vickers took the initiative and added, "The reason you crashed was because you weren't taking care of yourself."
Again Rowan felt the need to defend herself. "I'm alive, aren't I?"
"If I didn't show up, you wouldn't be."
She didn't anything. He was right about that.
"When I found you, you looked like - pardon my French - like shit. You were pale as a ghost, you were weak, and after a while you took on the appearance of being dehydrated. The few times you woke up from your comatose state, I was able to get you to drink some water...and you would pass out a second afterwards. I didn't manage to give you food...so if you're awake for a little longer, I have some things you can eat."
The girl opened her eyes and watched the man turn around to rummage in some sort of duffel back lying on the ground behind him. While he looked, Rowan cast a glance around, taking in the crubmling off-white walls and a ceiling with the same color, save for the black speckles. There was no furniture decorating the walls as they had all been moved to her left, against a door to act as a barricade in case somebody unwanted should come a-knocking.
"Where are we?" she asked, her voice hardly above a whisper. The realization that there may be undead hunting for them in the outside hallway was enough to make her lower her voice.
Brad looked back and shook his head. "No need to whisper. We're on the second floor of an apartment building. All the nasties are downstairs and outside, and the elevator's dead." He turned back. "I locked the doors to the staircase, and just in case blocked them all up. I checked this floor for any of those creatures. All the rooms and halls are empty."
"How did you get me up here?"
"It was pretty hard," he said. "I took off like a bat outta hell. Carrying a little girl, a duffel bag, and a gun is a hard task to pull off. So I didn't stick around or waste any bullets on the zombies out there. I found an apartment building, but there were creatures swarming the streets. I was lucky to find a fire escape ladder hanging down, climbed up to the second balcony." He nodded to his gun. "The room I came into - this room - was empty. I left you in here and went to clear out the hallways and stairwells. Left the duffel bag, too. I figured that if you woke up...and if I didn't come back... at least you would have the supplies to survive."
Rowan was silent, then looked to her right and found that a window was boarded up. "So what's with the window?" came another inquiry as she gritted her teeth against the pound against her head from the movement.
"Birds," was the reply. His body swung around again, his hands loaded with items. In his left, two candy bars and a bottle of spring water. Not healthy, but if it would hold her stomach back... In his right hand, there were two pills. She recognized them as Excedrin.
Rowan all-too willingly snatched them from his hand, quickly undoing the lid of the water bottle and downing a swig and the pills before her head could get a chance to react by pounding. As she reached for a candy bar with a timid grin, she noted, "Last I checked, birds eat seeds and some eat small animals. Like mice. Not people."
She didn't expect Brad to sigh or his voice to suddenly become low and tired. "That isn't when they're infected."
Rowan paused mid-bite. "Infected?"
"Whatever it was that spread throughout the city, that got all the people here...it spread to other creatures. Like cats," he said, looking at her. Rowan nodded, remembering Sphynx. "And dogs. Birds too, apparently."
Rowan uttered, "Shit," under her breath.
"I couldn't believe it...but I should have. Jill did tell me that Forest was killed by crows..."
"Forest?" Rowan whispered, not having heard of this before. "Who's Forest."
Brad shook his head and went back to the duffel bag. "Listen, once you're feeling better, we'll--"
"Brad," she cut him off, "you never told me what happened."
The S.T.A.R.S. pilot hesitated.
"You left off with saying that it was a long story, what happened. That what is hurting the people in this town is a virus...and that your friends are in Europe. One is still in town."
Still nothing, and he still had his back to her. But he wasn't digging around in the bag, either.
"What happened, Brad?" she whispered. "I need to know...my mother...my family...my friends..."
He tensed.
"I need to know what - who - killed them."
With a sigh, he gave in. The young man swung around so that he was facing Rowan and lowered his head. "Fine... You'll need to know anyway. If I don't make it out, you'll be left in the dark."
"You'll make it out," Rowan said with a firmness she never knew she had.
Brad offered a smile, but said nothing to counter her words. "Jill Valentine and I were both part of the S.T.A.R.S. team. As you know. The team was split into two groups - Alpha, containing me, Jill, Chris Redfield, Barry Burton, Joseph Frost, and Albert," his face scrunched up, "Wesker; and Bravo, with Enrico Marini, Rebecca Chambers, Edward Dewey, Richard Aiken, Forest Speyer, Kevin Dooley, and Kenneth Sullivan. Each of us had a special attribute that allowed us to become the S.T.A.R.S. team. Enrico was the acting leader of Bravo. Wesker was the Alpha's leader.
"Our job was never really easy from the start. There would always be problems happening in the city limits - drug lords needing to be taken down, prostitution rings to be disbanded, hostage situations, robberies, killers...so on. Just like an ordinary city. But the problems of this city had less magnitude than those of other cities. At least most of them... That was before July of 1998 rolled around."
Brad held his head.
"None of us expected it to happen...
"Weeks before the whole ordeal occurred, there were murders and kidnappings occurring here and there. Well, not kidnappings. People vanished, only to be found later mauled and...partially eaten. Most of the victims were humans, but occasionally a dog or a cat would turn loose and be found maimed. At first, everybody suspected that it was a cannibal murderer, that there was somebody in the forest waiting for victims to come within his reach. Officers began to block the entrances into the Arklay Forest at the beginning of July, but the murders continued.
"The panic got hold of the people. By near the end of July, the people and the mayor of Raccoon himself turned to the police chief, Brian Irons. He gave in to their demands and sent the S.T.A.R.S. team out to the forest to investigate the situation.
"Studies traced the Spencer Estate, a massive mansion plotted in the middle of the Arklay Forest, to be the epicenter of the attacks. That didn't mean that it had anything to do with the attacks - just that they seem to originate from the area. On July...23rd, I believe, the Bravo Team was sent in to investigate and control the situation. If they couldn't handle it, or needed help, Alpha would follow them and do what they could.
"Things didn't go so well. Their chopper began to malfunction as they drew closer to the mansion, and soon all contact with them was lost.
"The Alpha team waited for any kind of signal to come form the team, but after nearly a day passed and nothing was received on our end, it was time for us to move in. I revved up the 'copter and flew the others to the mansion. The first discovery we made was grim. Rising from the ground in the dead of night was a plume of dark smoke, and beneath it was the wreckage of their chopper. Not really wrecked, but damaged badly enough so as not to fly again.
"I landed, and the others left the chopper to investigate whatever was inside, to see if anybody was hurt. I heard on the radio that they didn't find anything...except for the remaining body of Kevin."
Here, Brad paused. He took a deep breath, and it seemed agonized.
"He wasn't killed by the crash."
Rowan blinked. "Then what...?"
"There were scratches and bites...all over him. The others said that it looked like he was attacked by a wild animal. A minute after that, we knew exactly what attacked him...because then it - they - got Joseph.
"As soon as the group returned to search through the forest to find any survivors of the Bravo Team, Joseph was attacked by dogs. Dobermans, the others had told me. But they looked...rotten. Dead. Like the ones that are wandering the streets now."
"They were infected," Rowan whispered. Brad nodded.
"Before Joseph was attacked, I heard things moving around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. Something in the woods, watching me. I could barely make out their shapes, but something about the way they stood waiting, something about the growls I heard from them, reminded me of dogs. I had a flashlight, turned it in their direction, and I caught a glimpse of one of their eyes reflecting the light. It was pale, milky...
"Hearing the scream from Joseph the next minute did little to calm my nerves. Nor did the flashes of gunfire ahead, and the yells of the others. Seeing the creatures I caught a glimpse of tense up as if to attack snapped whatever was holding me back from running away. I didn't want to die, didn't want to experience whatever the others were witnessing. I wanted out. I wanted to go home.
"So I lifted off. I left the rotors and the engine running, so it took me a few seconds to get in the air. I managed to pull up just as the creatures I saw began to run for me. One jumped for the helicopter and missed by a scant few inches. Another actually made it into the chopper. Somehow I was able to open the door on my side and lean back just enough so that it went flying out of the helicopter and onto the ground below.
"And as I left, I realized my mistake in moving. The rest of my team was still moving down there. By that time I realized they were missing one person. I didn't find out until much later that it was Joseph. Despite the fact that I heard them calling for me, both from on the ground and through the radio...I couldn't go back. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to go out being torn to pieces. Despite the yearning I had to help them, my instinct to run from danger was stronger."
"You left them to die," Rowan asked, her eyes considerably wider than they were a second ago. Her tone had shifted, going from terrified, to awe-struck.
Brad held a hand up. "Before you accuse me of anything, yes, I realize that what I did was foolish. Had I returned to the ground to give them time to hop into the chopper, we would have all made it home safely. but something about the whole situation didn't seem right to me. I had to flee, not only because I wanted to. It seemed to me, at the time, to be the right thing to do. The time it seemed right was only for about two second. By the time I decided that I should turn back, they were already making a beeline towards the mansion, and the dogs were too close to them to grant them time for me to land and the team to get in."
He winced. "No...I'm making up excuses," he said after a moment. "I was afraid...and that was that. there was no greater meaning... I just ran away. Ol' Chickenheart at it again..."
"Brad," Rowan whispered, wanting to comfort him. But he was already moving on with the story.
"I didn't circle back until it was too late. As I said, they were heading for the mansion. By the time I flew back to the spot where I originally landed, they were inside it... I thought, 'That's good. They'll be safe in there.' At the time, I didn't realize that the building housed enough traps to rival the mob of dogs outside, nor did I realize that the people who were actually inside were no longer among the living..."
"The mansion was filled with infected people?" Rowan half-shouted, horror-stricken.
"It was the source. Mostly, from what I was told later."
The look on Rowan's face was priceless.
"In the next few hours," Brad continued, "I circled around the mansion, hoping and praying for some glimmer of life from within. Chris, Jill, and Wesker still had radios to contact me with, but for some reason, every message I got from them was broken up, and every one that I sent out was never responded to. Soon even the efforts they made to get ahold of me died down and stopped completely, but I still circled the mansion.
"By the time dawn was beginning to approach, the helicopter's fuel was getting low. If they were still in the mansion and needed to get out...they needed to hurry, or there would be no helicopter to get them out. So I tried to get ahold of them one last time. I said that if they were still in the estate, to give me some sort of signal.
"At first, I got no response. But then I heard Jill's voice on the other end, sounding as angelic as ever. The message was still broken up, but I heard her give an affirmative. I replied, and although she didn't respond something told me that she heard me.
"So I circled around again, waiting... A half-hour after that hopeful message with little over a quarter of a tank of fuel to spare, I saw it. A flare in the sky. I followed and found that it led to a helipad where Jill stood. A second later I saw Barry, Chris, and Rebecca Chambers enter the pad and make their way towards the center. I started to lower the chopper, but something else decided to make an entrance.
"Even after Jill explained it to me, I still don't want to believe what it was, or even why it was."
He trailed off. Rowan stared at him for a moment, giving him a second to get a breather, then said, "And?"
Brad gave a nod to himself and continued. "It could have been classified as a human, had it not been for impossibly rippling muscles and pale skin...or the fact that it stood nearly six and a half feet tall and had a monstrous, exposed heart. Or a clawed arm and various exposed arteries pulsing up and down its body."
Rowan gaped. "What...?"
"Jill told me later that it was called a 'Tyrant'. It was, at one point in time, a human that had been injected with the virus running amok in the city right now, but it was of a different strain. It affected the person in such a way that it transformed the person completely, rather than making him, or her, into a mindless, flesh-eating human like those outside. However, it still seemed to have a taste for blood, because it went after the others with such a fury that it's only purpose had to be to kill.
"Chris was hit first. The thing slammed its arm into him so heavily that he went flying clear across the roof. It knocked him unconscious. Rebecca and Barry started firing at it to keep the creature from going anywhere closer to Chris, and Jill started to help. But for all the bullets they used, they didn't even make the damn thing waver. Jill was using a grenade launcher, Barry a magnum, Rebecca a beretta, but the thing didn't stop, didn't hesitate...
"I decided there was only one thing to knock this beast down. And I had it in the helicopter. We never really used it - it was only brought with us in case of some sort of colossal, massive emergency. And given the case I would say this was one of those emergencies. So I set the helicopter to hover for a moment, ran back and grabbed the item, and shoved it out of the side door of the helicopter. Jill was closest, so she picked the beast up."
"What was it?" Rowan asked.
Brad returned her question with a sheepish-looking grin. "A rocket launcher."
Something about the comment made her chuckle.
"It only took one shot to take the Tyrant out. I was able to lower the helicopter safely. Jill and Rebecca loaded in first, then Barry with Chris. I lifted off, and as soon as we were a safe distance away from the mansion, Jill decided to fill me in on a self-destruct sequence that was set there. We were out of the line of fire by the time the sequence ended."
Rowan nodded, remembering watching that event unfold before her very eyes. Half the people of Raccoon City had scrambled out of their houses at the sound of an explosion. Even from across town one could have seen the towering cloud of smoke and debris rising into the air above the forest. A few could even make out the helicopter fleeing from the scene.
Once Brad finished recounting the events of the mansion as he had seen them, he took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling for a moment longer. Rowan now knew what he had seen...but she did not know the cause, of the entire ordeal...or of the pandemonium that swept the city. What happened in the mansion? What happened to the rest of the team members?
She didn't need to mention anything before he started to explain, his voice now haggard and weary. If she didn't know any better and didn't see him right in front of her, she would have assumed him to be well into his sixties by the very tone.
"At first, everybody viewed me with scorn, which was natural considering that I ran out of them in their time of need. They ignored me, threw me cold looks whenever I went to apologize or ask a question. Despite the attempts I made to make it up to them, there really is no way to repair the wounds made by dooming comrades to die in that mansion, and around it.
"The cold shoulder lasted for a week and a half, right up until Chief Brian Irons began to question them all after giving them considerable time to mourn. Actually...he didn't really interrogate them at all. He berated them, scorned them. He accused them of being drunk at the time of the mission, therein setting the mansion on fire and, when it hit a gas line, causing it to explode. He seemed to ignore the fact that the explosion of the mansion seemed to eradicate the cannibalistic murders. the press forgot, too. They got hold of the accusation the chief threw off, and soon they were published in papers everywhere. Wherever my teammates and I went, there was always somebody watching us with a hateful glare.
"Out of all the people in Raccoon, however, some did come up to say thank you to us. Those select few noticed how the murders stopped with the mansion's death and decided that, even if it was all part of some drunken escapade, it saved the lives of the civilians.
"To get back on track, whenever Irons called a meeting for us, he always fired off a barrage of insults at my comrades, and strangely not one of them was fired at me. Most likely because I had nothing to do with the events as I had fled at the time. Jill and the others made that clear the very second we returned. Either way, no matter how many times Irons demanded information, Jill and Chris and Barry and the others refused to let on anything, pulling off a whole story that they couldn't remember any of it. I could tell by the way they looked at each other and to me that they were lying. They didn't want Irons to know something, and I was determined to know what."
"Irons never said a thing to you?" Rowan questioned.
Brad shook his head. "Nah. Like I said, he didn't think I did anything wrong. While the others were expelled from duty, I still retained my pilot job as the last S.T.A.R.S. team member. After the mansion incident, I flew a couple of missions for the chief...but I otherwise steered clear after that. Irons hadn't been acting like himself after the whole incident. Well...he was still as bitchy as ever, but moreso and retreated to his office whenever something seemed to go wrong for him. His temper got out of control, and more than once I heard his secretary worrying whether or not he was going to do harm to her.
"Every time I would try to cut into the one-sided argument, though, to tell the chief that I saw that damned Tyrant with my own eyes and was quite sober at the time - I did fly us back, after all - the others would shoot me looks before I could get a word out. Initially I thought that they didn't think I deserved to have a say in anything...but there was something else.
"So I managed to confront Barry in a bar some weeks after the event. We tried to get into normal conversation, but it was hard. He was honestly the only one I could talk to. Chris was so pissed off at me that he wouldn't bother to spare a glance. Jill was only half-sympathetic, and whenever I tried to talk to Rebecca she either burst into tears or came close to it. Barry had a helluva lot of sympathy and empathy and was generally easy to talk to. It may have had something to do with him living with a wife and child, or maybe he just felt bad for the way I was being cast out.
"The very weak conversation we had switched over to him asking me if I really wanted to know what happened. I said that I did, and he told me to keep an eye on the mail. The next day I got a package. It had all these files and journals inside, even had a CD that, when I viewed...had Kenneth's last moments."
Brad shuddered, and Rowan sympathized.
"I needed to hide the box after I saw what was in it. If anybody else found those files...it would put my teammates and I in a very bad position..."
Again, he trailed off. The young thirteen-year-old blinked at him with all the patience in the world, tilting her head and waiting. A minute passed before he kept on.
"The things those letter, memos, journals told of... The things they mentioned... Good god, it was so hard to comprehend that such a thing was possible. But that Tyrant on the roof of the mansion was real enough to prove it was more than fiction... The people in that mansion...what they created...what they worked with..."
Brad sighed, casting a glance up to the girl before him and wondering if he should continue. She was young, and hearing what he was about to say could make the whole world around her crumble. Too late...she's lost everything but her life... The oddly vacant expression on her face told him so.
"It was a virus," he finished. "They created a virus in there, some years back. In the sixties or seventies, around the time of the old LSD Experiments - you probably don't know what that is."
"A virus," Rowan repeated.
Brad nodded. "It was such that it could contaminate any living, and probably dead, being, and attack the immune system. It could keep the living alive even when their vitals became near or at death, and would only provide..." He hesitated and rubbed his eyes. How the hell was he going to explain this all to a girl in middle school, who more than likely hadn't even gone into chemistry yet? He wasn't good at it himself!
"Hell," he muttered, spinning around and diving his hands into the duffel back. Where was that old letter? A gleam of familiar writing met his eye and he snatched it out, holding it triumphantly in the air for a second before lowering it to Rowan's hands. "Here...it can explain better than I ever can. It doesn't have many details...but it's enough."
Confused, Rowan took the paper and stared down at the hastily scribbled letter with a bland expression on her face. The words flowed and circled around in her mind as she took them in.
It was a letter, dated on June 3, 1998, nearly three months ago.
My dearest Alma.
Let me first apologize for not being able to call you. A man wearing
sunglasses didn't permit any phone calls. Sorry Alma.
I sit here trying to think of where to begin, of how to explain in a few
simple words all that's happened in my life since we last spoke, and
already I fail.
I hope this letter finds you well, and that you'll forgive the tangents
of my pen; this isn't easy for me.
Even as I write, I can feel the simplest of concepts slipping away, lost
to feelings of despair and confusion -- but I have to tell you what's in
my heart before I can rest. Alma, please believe that what I'm telling
you is the truth.
The entire story would take hours for me to tell you, and time is short,
so accept these things as fact: last month there was an accident in the
lab and the virus we were studying leaked.
All my colleagues who were infected are dead or dying, and the nature of
the disease is such that those still living have lost their senses.
This virus robs its victims of their humanity, forcing them in their
sickness to seek out and destroy life.
Even as I write these words, I can hear them, pressing against my door
like mindless, hungry animals.
Alma, I have tried to survive only to see you again. But my efforts
only delayed the inevitable; I am infected, and there is no cure for
what will follow -- except to end my life before I lose the only thing
that separates me from them.
My love for you.
In an hour I'll have entered my eternal sleep where there is peace.
Please understand. Please know that I'm sorry.
Martin Crackhorn
Even as she read the last few lines, Brad's voice seeped back through her ears.
"I was told through the memos that it was called the T-Virus. It could affect virtually anything, living or dead. When I managed to speak to Jill about the subject later, she mentioned that there was a plant thriving within the mansion that was affected by the same virus! It seemed impossible...but there it is. Here it is...all around us."
"The work of a madman's dream," Rowan whispered, staring down blankly at the letter. Her vision seemed to blur a little, but it had nothing to do with the headache. That was fading and nearly gone from existence. When she brought up her hand to wipe at her suddenly burning eyes, it became wet with tears. This was all too surreal...
Her tone suddenly low and bitter, Rowan muttered, "Who did it?"
Brad stiffened. Here it came...
"The very company that helped to found this city. The very company that provides medicines to the sick, and healthcare to those in need of it. The company that helped humans in need so much was underhandedly using them as guinea pigs."
Rowan glanced up, her face hard. She knew where this was leading. Her teachers had crammed so much history about Raccoon City into their heads...
"Umbrella," they both whispered at the same time, their voices oddly at the same level in the same, harsh whisper.
"They specialized in healthcare and genetics...," Brad murmured. "And in that field they were able to freely manipulate the human body, screw with the genes and cells... They could create viruses to aid in the rebirth of skin cells, and viruses that could destroy all living matter."
Disbelief washed over Rowan. how could that be? The company helped so many people in the decades it was alive? How could it spin around and stick a needle into the backs of their unsuspecting victims?
"How could they be unnoticed?" she asked to herself, not really knowing she said it aloud.
"Umbrella has money, and that's all that matters in this goddamned world nowadays. Money rules over human and animal rights...and most of everything else. They also had power. They could shield certain events from the government, or the people all around the world, courtesy of clever cover-ups and people who work to enforce it." He grimaced. "That, and other companies would pay top-dollar for a creation like that. Those companies could help...and carry on the legacy if a certain sector of Umbrella should fail."
"Invincible," she choked out.
"They try to be."
"Aren't they?"
"We're alive, aren't we?" Brad replied firmly. "As long as somebody stands to oppose them... Even Chickenhearts can go lion once in a while."
Rowan was scarcely aware of more tears trickling slowly down her face until some reached the tip of her nose. Before she could react to it, Brad reached over and wiped them away, a look crossing his face that reminded her of the fatherly features of Roid...and his eyes slowly becoming watery.
She sniffed. "What happened...to the others?"
"They," came his voice, "all died... Kenneth...he was attacked by a zombie in the mansion. Forest was attacked by crows." With each person he mentioned, his voice got heavier. The water in his eyes grew thicker. "Edward was killed by a dog, Richard was poisoned by an infected snake. Enrico...he..." Brad closed his eyes. When a lone tear slipped down his cheekbones, he was not ashamed. "Chris and Jill met him below the mansion, in a catacomb structure. The mansion had numerous trap-doors and underground facilities, mind you. he was wounded...but still kicking enough to try to inform Jill and Chris. He started to mention that one of our teammates had turned traitor, but when he started to mention who, somebody form the darkness shot him. Fatally.
"Jill and Chris didn't find out until much later that the assailant was Barry."
"Barry?" Rowan hissed, her tone raised. "But...but he-"
"He was being used, manipulated like a damn puppet. The person pulling the strings threatened that his family would be on the line if he disobeyed. That person forced him to kill Enrico, very nearly got him to wipe out Jill...but Barry was cunning. He snuck up on said person, gave him a blow to the head, and aided Jill in the shock that ensued. It turned out that said person was the one who was helping them out throughout the mansion. It was Albert Wesker." Rowan noticed that Brad's voice suddenly became low and dangerous. An anger shook his body from head to toe. Blinking, the girl took another bite out of the candy bar and threw the empty wrapper aside.
"Wesker was working for another corporation called White Umbrella. It was an illusive comrade to the main Umbrella corporation...and Wesker was obsessed with it. All along, he was working with the company that provided the virus creating the monsters. The creatures that he himself had to fight in order to obtain his goal, which was swiped from him anyway."
"How?" Rowan asked.
"He woke up some time after being knocked out. Sadly, he survived being unconscious in a dark, dank corridor. Jill encountered him in a laboratory near the helipad, standing in front of various tanks that held all sorts of distorted looking beasts created to be Umbrella's new toys. The one he held in reverie most was the tank holding the Tyrant. He began to rant on about how it was the most magnificent creation as he drained the tank of the stabilizing fluid entombing it. He was so...caught up in his own speech, that he didn't notice the Tyrant wake up until it was too late.
"By the time he tried to back off, the creature jammed its claws through him."
Rowan winced mentally and physically. Brad only frowned at the thought. He may have been noted as a coward, but when it came to this particular subject he was as fierce as he would ever be.
"Deservedly death," Rowan hissed. there was a slight pulse of anger rushing through her veins. Although she was no at the mansion when the events happened, she could feel the pain and agony the scientists working there must have gone through in their last moments...and she could understand the woe and despair felt by the S.T.A.R.S. members who encountered it.
He nodded and opened his mouth to say something, but at that very moment was cut off by a loud bang on the opposite side of the door. It came from somewhere in the hallway, far enough away from the apartment they were stowed away in. But it was close enough.
Rowan shot a look over to Brad, her face a distorted mixture of confusion and anger, of excitement and blind fear. "I thought you said that you cleared the floor?" she hissed, trying not to attract more attention from the creatures making their way to their floor. A second bang, followed closely by a third. There was more than one zombie.
Brad nodded, speaking even as he stood and rushed to the duffel bag, quickly ramming everything he took out back in. As Rowan stood, he grabbed up the blanket he covered her with when she was still out cold and tried to shove it in with the various other things in the bag. "I did! The elevator is dead...the stairwells - shit!"
"What?" Rowan snatched the beretta lying at her feet.
"I only blocked the stairs leading down! I forgot about the one leading up!"
The girl vaguely wondered how in the hell the zombies that were upstairs didn't hear the noise downstairs. Obviously Brad had been quiet as a mouse when he entered the apartment building, save for the gunshots he fired off when he cleaned house upon arrival. Then maybe the creatures pounding on the stairwell door outside for the now eighth time didn't reanimate until after he showed up...
That was the least of their concerns, for with the ninth and tenth slam against the door in the hall came the sound of hinges breaking and the slam of the door falling to the ground.
And the moans of the dead barging through the open space, searching for the sounds of the living they heard through the floor above.
Not a split second later both Rowan and Brad, with the duffel slung over his shoulder, were making a mad dash to a fire-escape exit. As they blasted past the boarded up window and through the exit, they could only hope that the zombies couldn't climb ladders. The sound of their feet on the metal grating of the escape was dimmed out as the undead in the hall managed to pinpoint their scent and sounds. They were pounding on the door of the room they were in seconds ago.
They heard wood cracking the moment they stood over the rungs of the ladder, and by the time they were both on it the sound increased. Then, like the other door, it fell off of its hinges and struck the makeshift barricade that was against it. The larger thud gave the fact that the dresser that made up most of the barricade was down. Moans grew louder, melding with the noise of feet scrambling across fallen wood.
Brad, as the first one on the ground, looked up past Rowan to see the first zombie - a women who looked to be around twenty, with long blood-soaked blonde hair, tumble through the fire-exit. Her foot caught on the grating and like a projectile she flew to the other side and flipped over the railing. Two more followed, one actually staying on the landing, searching blindly for the two live humans. Hands stripped of skin and dotted with coagulated blood began to burst forth from the window with a shatter of glass and wood.
Rowan's feet hit the ground. She removed herself from the ladder and immediately began to sway, her legs not used to the effort after a day and a half of laying almost lifelessly on a floor. A guiding arm from Brad wrapped around her shoulder and steered her left, to a nearly desolated street with one or two stragglers shuffling here and there.
The two were moving away from the scene even as two more zombies flipped over the railing and made impact with the concrete below. Another slipped through the hole over the ladder.
Brad looked back at the ravaged building and then back again to the child he was helping. They locked eyes, and Brad offered a grin. "How was that for a rush?"
Rowan laughed.
Watching it all from above was a single narrowed white eye.
First of all, sorry for the long delay. one thing you guys might have noticed about me is that I have a tendency to procrastinate.
I have two major projects to work on in the coming week, so there won't be updates for a while.
Thankfully, I quit my job. I have more time on my hands now.