Chapter Six: Barry's Burden

Barry hadn't said much else since he saved Jill. Though, Jill honestly didn't feel like talking right that moment. As they walked the darkened corridors, disposing of the undead wherever they lumbered toward them, something about Barry seemed tense-tenser than she had ever seen him before. Well look at the situation, Jill reminded herself. Still, that didn't seem to explain why Barry kept pausing every now again, his face scrunched up in deep thought before he sped off toward another door.

"You thought you heard something?" Jill asked as they climbed a stairwell. She heard shuffling footsteps on the landing above, and the moan of a zombie.

"Yeah," Barry said, though he said it quickly and quietly, as though he weren't paying attention.

"What kind of noise?"

"Some kind of…bang."

Jill cocked her head. Maybe he had heard the cogs of that ceiling falling. Or maybe he's lying, she thought. Eventually, they opened a door into a room so small that they wouldn't be able to stretch their arms out without hitting each other. Two doors stood on either side of the room. Jill opened the door to the left.

"Nothing in here," she said. "Just a bedroom."

Barry tried the right door, only to find it locked.

"Little help here?" he asked. Jill came over, kneeled, and took the lock picking set out of her pocket.

"So…how you learn how to do that anyway?" Barry said as he watched her insert the metal instruments into the door's lock. A flush of heat raced through Jill.

"I thought you knew all about that?" She asked, not daring to look him in the eye.

"Oh, I've heard things here and there," Barry said nonchalantly. "You know how rumors fly around the office." (Rumors always end up flying around, Jill thought.) "Just thought I'd ask from the horse's mouth."

"From my time in the Army," she said, if a little too quickly for her liking. Jill held her breath, waiting for Barry to inquire more on her story.

"Didn't know they taught lock picking in the Army," he replied. "I'm an Air Force man, myself. They didn't teach us that in basic. But, 'course, how many locked doors you come across in the air?"

Barry chuckled, and despite herself, Jill found herself smiling.

The door's lock clicked, and Jill opened the door. Like the bedroom, the room was vacant. A desk stood at the right-hand corner with papers scattered across its surface and the floor, as though someone had left in a hurry. The only light came from the fluorescents within a fish tank filled with dead fish.

"Think someone had a bug fetish?" Barry asked, examining a display on the wall of pinned butterflies. Jill walked over to the desk, running her hands over the papers and scanning the contents. There had to be something, anything, that would shed light on this mess. Her fingertips grazed over a tan file folder. She opened it to a series of sheets paperclip-ed to the folder. Jill skimmed over the first page:

Special Instructions when Disposing Dead Bodies:
We have new information regarding those "beings". They may appear to be dead but in fact they are able to come back to life. However, there are ways to prevent them from becoming active again.
Currently there are two known methods to cease their resurrection.

INCINERATION

DESTRUCTION OF THE HEAD
If further methods are discovered, they will be notified immediately.
Meanwhile to those of you who still have the will to live, oil has been placed on the first floor of the mansion. Take as much as you need.
You'll need something to light it with, which you'll need to find by yourself.

"What do you have there, Jill?"

Jill turned to find Barry staring at the folder in her hand. His forehead crinkled, as though he were thinking of something that caused him great distress.

"I'm not sure," Jill said. "Looks like some kind of memo about these things…"

Barry held out his hand for the file. Part of Jill didn't want to hand it to him. This is Barry, she thought. The loveable dad of Alpha team. Still, she couldn't shake that feeling in the back of her mind that something was wrong. Nevertheless, she closed the file and handed to him. Barry opened it and glanced through it. After a few seconds, he closed the file and tucked it into his vest.

"Someone, ah, should hold onto this," he said, his eyes seemingly refusing to look at Jill. "For when we get out of here…show someone who can handle this…"

Jill opened her mouth to protest, but he turned with his head sunk low. For as long as Jill had known him, he always held his head high—usually cracking a joke in the process. But now, it was as though another layer was being pulled back; raw and exposed for Jill to see. It was almost as though he were ashamed.

The rest of Jill and Barry's search wasn't nearly as fruitful. The doors leading off from corridors were either locked or led to other corridors. It was as though they were wandering through a labyrinth of corridors, ushered on by the shadows and the moans of the undead. The atmosphere weight down on Jill. Walls began to press against her. The only way was forward, and if she didn't move quickly enough she would be crushed.

Just like back then—when the only way out of her life was into the army.

That, or jail.

Barry opened another door, and the two walked onto the second floor of the entrance foyer.

"Damn," he muttered. Jill sighed as well. Here they were again; At the beginning. Barry shook his head and wandered to the railing. "Hang in their girls." The last sentence was uttered so low as first Jill wasn't sure if she had heard correctly.

"Girls?" Jill asked.

Barry glanced over his shoulder, eyes wide as though he had been startled.

"Oh, yeah!" He said. "Sorry, was just thinking out loud. My girls are probably in bed by now."

Barry laughed a little too loudly, running a hand through his short brown hair. He reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a warn photograph. He gave it a hard look, and then passed it to Jill. It showed Barry with his wife and two little girls. All three stared back from the photo, smiling at the photographer.

"This is my wife, Kathy," Barry said, pointing at a woman with a heart-shaped face and dark hair at his side. Then he pointed at the girls. One wrapped her arms around his neck as he held her in the nook of his arm, while the other stood between Barry and Kathy. "And these are my girls, Moria and Polly."

"They're beautiful," Jill replied.

"That they are," Barry said, taking the photo back. "I don't know what I'd do if anything ever happened to them."

A far-off glaze came over his worn eyes. It was as though, for that moment staring at the photograph, he wasn't there in that mansion, but at that park with "his girls" once again. Jill felt a pang of guilt run through her for thinking less of him. Of course, Barry was acting differently—he was worried that he would never see his family again. What had been his last words to them before he left for this mission? Did he kiss Polly or Moria as they left for school? Did he fight with Kathy? The thoughts only deepened the pit of guilt in her chest.

"Hey," Jill said softly. "You'll see them again, Barry."

"Yeah," Barry said, though it wasn't almost as though he wasn't addressing Jill, but just giving a vague utterance for the universe in general. "Could you give me some time alone. I just…need to work out some things."

"Sure," Jill replied. She patted Barry's shoulder, but if he noticed, he gave no indication. Barry just leaned over the railing and stared at the photo. Jill turned away and walked through the door they just came.