Chapter 3:
Leon and Veronica decided to move on with their exploration of the station. This was only one small section of the entire place and they still had other floors to go through. They still didn't quite understand the clues that Elliot had left behind yet, but they would in due time. Moving from the office, they decided to head down a long-marbled hallway towards the stairs. This part was unexplored, so they treaded carefully. At the end of the hallway was the base of the winding staircase lit by an exposed window.
To their right, Leon noticed a lone door and after looking at the map, he realized it was a dark room. He led them to it and carefully opened the door. The room was dark, but they quickly found it to be empty. Veronica closed the door and locked it while Leon turned on the light. It was small and plain, but it was safe.
In the middle of the room was a desk with a book and a lone typewriter sitting in the middle unused. There were lockers sitting against the wall and a coat hanger with dusty jackets hanging from it. Another big black box, similar to the one in the main hall, sat in a corner. Since the walls were concrete and that the metal door could be locked, they considered it a safe room to go to. It felt like they were in some sort of fucked up video game.
On the other side of the room was an entryway that led to the darkroom. It was very small compared to the room it was connected to and, of course, dark. There was a lone red light shining down onto a sink holding the components to expose unused film. A potted plant with red leaves sat on a cabinet containing different chemicals, which they thought was strange but ignored. Veronica took out the film they found from her pouch and looked at her companion.
"Know how to develop photos?" she asked.
"I don't. Do you?"
"Kinda. My friend is a photographer. She showed me some basic stuff, but let's see if I can remember any of it." She took off her jacket and elbow pads before handing it to Leon to hold then rolled up the sleeves of her flannel. Luckily, she found some rubber gloves to use in a random drawer. After finally tying up her hair, she got quickly to work and tried to the best of her knowledge to develop the photo. At her command, Leon turned off the light, engulfing her in red as she hung it up. Once she was done, they left the darkroom and stood in the other.
"Hey. Can we like, sit down? I need a small break, and besides, we need to wait for the photo to do its thing anyways," she sighed as she was handed back her things.
"Tired?"
"A little. I'm not as physically trained as you. Not to mention I haven't rested for like a couple of hours now. Just for like 5 minutes?" He nodded in response.
"Sure. I could use the break too." They both took a seat against the wall, taking out the candy bars Leon had gotten them to eat. After a moment of silence, minus the chewing, Leon looked over at her.
"So, do you live around here?" Veronica turned to glance at him before shaking her head.
"No. I actually live in Los Angeles."
"Wow! Really? What are you doing all the way over here?"
"I came to visit one of my best friends. Decided to road trip it. She moved here after we graduated from college, so I wanted to see her new place and her new dog," she looked down at the candy bar in her hand. "Then the outbreak happened." Leon frowned.
"I'm sorry." She shook her head.
"The thing is, I don't even know if she's dead. My car broke down just outside of the city when the sun was barely setting. It wasn't even raining yet. No one answered their phones when I tried calling at a gas station before my car stalled, but I just thought they were busy. I had no idea what had happened until I walked here. I had been hiding and avoiding those things ever since."
"Jesus! You've been walking around the city for that long? And alone?" She nodded and leaned her head back against the wall tiredly.
"Any type of shelter that I found wouldn't let me in and they were already rare enough. It was obvious that they were terrified of letting those things in considering that most of the city has turned. The PSA's that were playing told me to come here and instead of safety, things look just as bad," she paused as the thought of home. "God, my family doesn't even know what's going on. What if I never see them again? Will this spread? What if my friend is dead? I-I-," She felt a hand grasp hers gently, stopping her in her rambling.
Turning her head, she found Leon sitting up and leaning over slightly with a concerned expression. She took a deep breath before releasing it as she felt him squeeze her hand reassuringly. It was nice and warm compared to when they first met. It was comforting.
"Sorry. I got a little stuck in my own head there for a second."
"It's alright. Just breathe," he assured her, the two locking eyes. "We're going to make it. Both of us. I promise." She could see the conviction in his eyes, but also a gentleness that made her feel like she truly mattered to him. It was a nice feeling and it made her believe that he was going to fulfill that promise. She could only hope.
"No matter what?" she uttered softly.
"No matter what," he echoed with a small smile. She mirrored it with a soft squeeze of his hand.
"What about you? Where are you from?"
"I live a state over from here. It's a small town and you've probably never heard of it compared to infamous L.A," he said while twinkling his fingers when he said the city's name. She chuckled at that.
"Really? That's kind of far from here for wanting to work here. I'm surprised you don't live closer. How did you get saddled with that?"
"I actually requested to come here." She raised an eyebrow at his response.
"How come?"
"Well, I was hearing about those really crazy murders that had been happening over the past couple of months and it piqued my interest! I love a good mystery!"
"Oh yeah! I heard about those! They were all over the news even where I live! The cannibals, right?" He nodded then opened his mouth to say something when something clicked in his head.
"Cannibals," he scoffed in realization then looked around the room.
"What?" He looked back at her to find her looking confused at him.
"This zombie thing has been happening before the outbreak even started," he responded. She scrunched up her eyebrows as she thought about it before coming to the same realization.
"Those people were eaten and they never found out who killed them. That means someone had already let loose whatever this was, but it didn't spread till recently and that happened a while ago. Why didn't it happen then?"
"Maybe something happened recently that whoever did this decided to just let it infect the city. But it's too big of a deal that it could only be one person. This feels more than that."
"I agree. You don't just make zombies out of nowhere. Based on every zombie movie I have seen, that takes time and effort and science...or dark magic, but I'm going to say that's not the case."
"Whoever it is, we need to be careful. This case just got a whole lot more complicated." She nodded and sighed at such an intense realization. It was exhilarating, but also terrifying.
Deciding that they had rested enough after, the two crumpled up the candy bars to save for later and stood up. Once they were back on their feet, she went back to the darkroom to look at the photos and found it to be developing pretty fast.
"Wow! What are these made of 'cause I think this doesn't need that much longer," she said walking back out. They began putting their equipment back together and searched the forgotten lockers for any supplies. There was a lone ink ribbon can in one and a blue gunpowder can in another. Leon put it in one of his pouches to keep for later. Looking over the desk, Veronica noticed the book that sat there talking about medicinal herbs. She read through it and tore out the page to keep.
"What's that?"
"Apparently, there are herbs around here that could be helpful in speeding the healing process with minor injuries," she explained, showing him the page. There were pictures showing three different colored herbs that were useful. "The green one heals basic injuries, the blue treats poisons and the red one is only useful when combined with the other two. It basically makes the other two stronger but doesn't do anything by itself." Leon studied the pictures then looked up in realization. He walked back into the darkroom and came out with the potted plant he saw.
"Is this the red herb?" She glanced between the picture and the plant.
"Looks like it. Now that I think about it, I've seen the green plant dotted around the station. I think there's one right outside the door!" They both walked over to the door, unlocked it and carefully looked outside. It was still quiet and empty for the moment. Down on the floor, there was indeed a green herb plant sitting by a pile of wooden planks.
Leon quickly picked up the plant and walked back inside. The two picked leaves off of both plants and crushed them into a small plastic bag that Veronica found in the darkroom. She let Leon hold onto it since she had the spray in her bag.
"I'm going to need another pouch soon," he said, zipping up his own.
"Hopefully we can find one around. This is a police station. There has to be more."
"Hopefully." He took out the map from his pocket and laid it out onto the table for the two of them to see. Unfortunately, it was only to the first floor, and it seemed like almost every room they've been in on that side of the building was clear minus the ones they couldn't get into. They were going to have to go into the other floors blindly until they could find a better map.
Before they could leave, Veronica decided to take a look at the photo and found it almost completely developed. The photo was of a white statue of a king with a jeweled scepter in one hand and a red book in the other. Comparing it to the notes in Elliot's book, it didn't add up.
"Seems like a waste of time," she said, folding it up and shoving it in her back pocket.
"I don't know. Something tells me that if it was important enough to take and lock up, then it has a purpose." Taking one last look at their things, the two glanced at each other then nodded before heading towards the door.
Carefully, they stepped out into the hallway and looked around. There was a soft gurgling sound of a zombie coming from above them, but from which floor they didn't know. As Leon glanced down the hallway to make sure it was clear, Veronica's foot accidentally tapped against the wood panels on the floor they saw earlier. She bit her lip as she thought of any uses they could be of when she realized the nearby window wasn't boarded up. Remembering the zombie crawling in from before, she picked them up and set them on the stairs. To her luck, some tools were left in a box under the stairs hidden by some boxes.
"What are you doing?" Leon asked in a low voice coming up from behind her.
"We should board this up. I don't want any more of those things getting in," she replied, picking up a plank. "Especially now that we've cleared this floor."
"Are you sure about this? It's going to be loud."
"We have a room we can hide in if those things turn up. After hiding from them all day, I learned that once you're out of sight and quiet for a good while, they'll forget your there and walk away. We can handle the ones inside, but do you really want to handle the ones outside too?" He contemplated it for a moment before realizing she was right and grabbing the other end of the plank.
It didn't take long to put them up, but it did capture some unwanted attention. A zombie woke up from its spot on the second floor and was starting to rise from where Leon could see. Hammering down the last board, they made it in time for another zombie to slam against the window, but it wasn't getting in.
Veronica decided to take some extra nails and the hammer with her. You never know when you would have to board up another window. Plus, the hammer was just another weapon. The zombie was of a woman police officer with a disfigured face. It took quite a few bullets with her since it was hard to shoot on a weird slope.
Once she was down, they made their way up to the second floor, to find another one coming from the third floor. They backed away on the stairs to give themselves space then watched to their amusement as the zombie fell over the railing and hit the bottom floor with a splat. Peeking over, they waited for it to get up again, but it didn't. Leon aimed his gun and shot at the head, just in case, where it exploded from the momentum. It definitely wasn't going to get back up again.
Back to exploring the place, they found more ammo and a red herb that they put the leaves into their pouches to crush up for later. The only other thing on the second-floor stairwell was a door leading to the boy's locker room. As they approached it, Leon looked over at Veronica with a smirk.
"Ma'am, this is the men's locker room. I'm afraid you can't go in. Naked guys and all that," he joked. She cracked a smile and sighed dramatically.
"Alas! The only thing that can possibly stop me! Men's asscheeks!" They laughed wholeheartedly at that, both glad to know they still had the ability to at all in this situation.
"Don't worry officer. I'll cover my eyes. Promise!" she joked before taking the door handle in hand. "Ready?"
Leon nodded while aiming his gun at the door. She quickly twisted the knob and shoved the door open, quickly getting out of the way. The room was small as it was meant to be the changing area, but there was a loud hissing noise that filled the room. The pair soon realized it was because the water heater that was in the actual shower room was punctured, blowing hot steam out and blocking the pathway forward. Next to that doorway was a pipe that looked like it could fix the issue, but the handle to control the pressure was missing.
"Must be here somewhere, right?" Leon questioned. Veronica nodded in response as she examined the lockers next to them. One of them had a padlock on it that needed a code. She opened the one next to it and found nothing. Leon opened the one next to that only to shout in surprise as a body fell out onto him.
He quickly shoved it away and aimed his gun at it. She toed at the crumpled body to see if it would move, but it looked to be properly dead. Aiming her flashlight into the locker, she found it was drenched in blood.
"It looks like he was stuffed in there. How did he end up like that?" she questioned curiously. "Do you think what happened to him, happened to the guys downstairs?"
"It's possible, but what could've possibly been able to do it?"
"At this point, I'm willing to believe anything." Leon exhaled nervously, putting his gun back into his holster. "You ok? Get a little spooked there?"
"No, yeah I'm fine!" he replied trying to seem like he wasn't just scared out of his wits. He puffed out his chest and began walking to the other lockers, only this time, opening them quickly and backing away. The only thing left in them was a box of shotgun ammo. "Well we know where that is, so let's just leave it here until we get it."
As Veronica was looking through a rack of towels, she found a small box with buttons on it. Curiously, she pushed a button causing it to beep loudly and one of the lights on it glowed up. Leon walked over and looked at it then at a paper that was taped to the wall.
"What is this thing?" she asked, pressing more buttons.
"It's a portable safe. 'The buttons must be pressed in a certain order. Pressing a single button out of order will cause all of the lights to go out and you will need to start the sequence over again,'" he read on the wall.
"There might be something useful in it. Can I try to open it?"
"Go ahead."
She tinkered around with the buttons for a minute and found it kind of fun to do. It was like a puzzle and she was in some fucked up mystery game. After a minute, the lights were all lit and the box beeped a short song before it opened itself.
"Got it!"
"Great job!"
"Good thing I like to do puzzles," she told him as she opened the safe. Inside was a small white square button. It took her a second before she realized what it was for. "Oh! It's for downstairs! For the keypad!"
"The safety deposit room!"
"That means there must be another one somewhere in the station too. Should we go put it in now?"
"Might as well before we head upstairs."
They both made their way out of the room and down the stairs towards the safety deposit room. Leon scanned the lockers for options to decide which space to put the button in. It could only do one space, so they needed to pick wisely.
"I say we put it in 2. There are more lockers with that number." She inserted it on the spot and inputted the numbers Leon told her. He came back with a lone jar of gunpowder, but she was confused since she opened two.
"Where's the other one?"
"It was shotgun ammo. We'll have to wait till later to get it."
"Got it! Let's head back upstairs. We have another floor to go to!" They quickly ran upstairs towards the third floor. On it, they found some more ammo for Leon and another padlocked locker with a code at the end of a blocked-off hallway. The only way through was through a wall that looked like it was bulldozed through leaving a giant hole.
As they walked closer to it, there was a shadow of someone standing in front of a light against the wall. It almost gave the young girl a heart attack. Carefully, they approached the hole and peeked in, only to find that it was a tiny mannequin sitting in front of a desk lamp. They sighed in relief that there was nobody there as they walked in.
It looked to be like a small office with a desk and bookshelves. On said desk was a key with a teal-colored spade on the end. It looked familiar. Veronica picked it up and studied it for a second, racking her brain for a connection, the lightbulb in her head going off as soon as it did.
"This must be for those doors!"
"What?"
"I saw a couple of doors with shapes on them that were locked. A green club and-."
"A blue spade! Like down in the west office!"
"So this must open doors with that shape on it! Which makes getting to the main hall easier!" she pointed out, placing it into a pouch. "Considering that there looks like there's more than one shape, that might mean there's more than one key."
"More things to keep an eye out for then. Hey," he gently elbowed her arm, "You're really good at this." She smiled at him shyly at his compliment.
"You're not too bad at this yourself," she responded before walking to a door that would lead to another part of the floor. She slowly opened the door to a dark cramped hallway, light only coming in from the window near the end of it. It was really dusty and cold, the only sound being the wood creaking beneath their feet.
As they neared the window, something large and fast crawled across it snarling like an animal. Stopping dead in their tracks, they heard whatever it was break a window somewhere in the building, meaning it was inside. Veronica grasped onto her partner's arm in fear. That was a big...whatever it was.
"What in the-!?" Leon gasped. They stood there for a moment quietly to see if they could hear anything else but was met with only silence. Whether it was better or worse, they didn't know. Carefully, they turned the corner relieved to find the hallway empty and blocked off by boxes. Near a cart of books to their left, stood a door leading them forward. Leon took a second to check the blockade for anything first and picked up a slip of paper.
"What does it say?" Veronica asked from behind him. He turned and read aloud.
"'To any survivors, Consider this a gift for anyone still unfortunate enough to be alive. Keep your eyes peeled for those creepy fucks that look like they were skinned alive- 'lickers'," we call 'em."'
"I'm sorry. WHAT?!"
"'They're blind as bats, but their hearing more than makes up for that. So long as you don't run around like a total idiot, guns a-blazing, you should be able to slip right by them...probably. Either way, make like my grandma and creep around as slow as possible around 'em, yeah? Anyway, not that I wanna go, but duty calls. That, and I've got a friend to avenge. - David."' Leon folded up the paper and put it in his pocket.
"What the fuck is a "licker"?!" Veronica hissed, terrified out of her mind of having to deal with something else besides zombies. Leon turned to her, shaking his head.
"No idea. This is the first I've ever heard of it."
"Geez, what else do we have to worry about in this city!?"
"I'm praying nothing else, but it seems to prove us wrong every time," he said making his way to the door. Inside they were met with a trashed up room that smelled of musty cement and the decay of bodies. The ceiling looked as if it could fall down on them with how many holes there were. It was a mess that was made as if it was to be under renovation but then the outbreak must've happened before they could fully finish. The people must have tried to use the room for a hiding place as well.
A light on the floor lit up that side of the room, revealing more giant scratches on a pillar, much to their horror. On a dresser, Leon found more gunpowder and more planks of wood on the floor. There also looked like there was old art and pictures lying around, including a creepy looking jester doll. Comforting. Turning a corner, they were met with a dead man hanging down from the rafters of the ceiling in front of a lit-up door. As they passed it, the body slid down a little causing the two to gasp in surprise.
When it didn't move, they continued around the room and cleared it of any threats. Leon shoved his gun back in his holster safely to free his hands while they searched. They walked around looking for supplies, which Veronica luckily found ammo on a random shelf.
"Leon!" She handed him the box and watched him pull out the gunpowder cans that he had in his pouch. She watched in amazement as he worked some magic to create more handgun bullets. He explained to her how to do it in case they were separated for any reason, which she hoped wouldn't happen. Putting the new bullets in his bag, he looked at Veronica with a sigh.
"I'm running out of room. If we find anything else, you mind taking it?" he asked. She nodded, checking her own pouch for a status on its space. Leon walked towards the section of a room that was barred off and found that inside was a statue of a lady standing under a light on one side of the space. Peeking to the right, there was a pile of dead officers lying around looking like they went through a massacre.
At that side, the cell was boarded up with a plethora of giant planks of wood. Smack dab in the middle was a small pile of explosives taped to it, but with no way to detonate it. Something about that statue seemed to be familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He turned to Veronica to ask, but found her reading a piece of paper with a hand over her mouth in shock.
"Veronica?" She looked up at him in disbelief at what she was reading. She held out the paper out for him to read with no response, putting him on edge. He took it and began reading to himself, eyes furrowing halfway through.
'Damn those corporate assholes! They cut me off! After all I've done for them! But if that's how it's gonna be, so be it. I'm gonna have a little fun of my own as the world goes to shit. I boarded all those filthy pigs up in a steel pen, and set some C4. All I gotta do is detonate it and it's "sayonara suckers"! But it's no fun if it's over too soon, so maybe I'll give that one raving loon something to really squeal about. Yeah maybe I'll give him a little toy and tell him, "Kill the guy next to you and I'll spare the others." I wonder what he'll do. You yell about "justice" and "pride" but how many times did you go against me, your own superior? Yeah, you're such a good cop...So good you had to die. Man is this fun. I need some music for this.'
"Leon, what the fuck!?" she hissed as he set the paper down on the dresser it was sitting on. The young officer shook his head angrily looking back at the bars where the bodies laid.
"I don't know! He must've been a psycho." He turned his head back to her worriedly. "Listen, I don't know who that was, but it sounds like he was a high ranking officer, so it couldn't be Marvin. But we have to be careful if we meet any other officers, ok?"
She could only nod in response, trying to take her attention away from the words on the page. How could anyone turn against their own like that in a zombie outbreak?! Some people really were just psychos.
"We should move on."
"Right. There's a statue in there," he pointed out with a nod of his head, gesturing to it. "Does it look familiar to you?" She walked over towards the bars and looked over the beautiful marble art piece. In the middle of the lady's belt was a bronze circle that looked like something she had seen before. Leon suddenly gasped softly as he realized what it was.
"Wait! Hand me the little book with the clues!" She quickly reached into her pocket and handed it to him. He flipped through it and glanced from time to time up to the statue. "That's it!"
"What? What's it?"
"A part of the way out! That medallion goes into the goddess statue downstairs!" He handed the book back to her.
"Great! So how do we get in then?" Leon looked at the explosives on the wall.
"We find the detonator!"
"Leon are you crazy?!"
"There are enough explosives on it to only blow up the boards, not the room. They're too big and too heavy to pull down by ourselves. It'll be quicker that way."
"Are you sure?" she asked, clearly nervous at the idea. He placed his arms on her shoulders, squeezing reassuringly.
"I'm positive. Do you trust me?"
"Of course!"
"Then trust me when I say it'll be fine!" She pondered it for a moment before nodding.
"Ok. We'll have to go find it. That and the other statues." He dropped his hands and began walking to the lit door they saw earlier
"I'm sure those will be easier to find being statues and all." Veronica followed while looking in the book again. After a moment of studying the images, she realized where she had seen one of them.
"Actually, one of them is! I remember there is a lion statue in the main hall on the second floor. I noticed it before, but I got distracted by everything else that was happening!"
"That's great! We know where two of them are, leaving only one more! Let's go!"