Captain Wesker…Where's Chris?

Chris eased his way back to Kenneth's body. He stood there for a long moment looking at what was left of his fallen friend. The surreal nature of his situation pulsed with each beat of his heart. This is what happened when you fought, he thought wildly, you fought and you died. Would he die here, in this house of horrors? Would he die here with his face eaten?

Kenneth twitched.

Chris jumped a little in surprise. Death throws?

Kenneth twitched again.

Chris knelt to put his hand on his neck and feel for a pulse. "Ken? You ok? Hold on, alright? Let me just…"

Kenneth twitched…and Kenneth rose. He sat up. He turned his head and they were face to face now. Chris' blue eyes…and Kenneth's white ones. White, filmy, dead.

Undead.

"No."

Kenneth dove for his face.

He spilled backward on the floor and Kenneth was on top of him. He snapped his jaws, he dribbled spit all over his face, he gnashed his teeth and grabbed his uniform to pull him closer. It was, without a doubt, the worst hug between two men…one undead…that had ever occurred.

Terrified, shoving and trying to scramble away, Chris Redfield –later to become the great legend of the bioterrorism field - didn't throw a haymaker at his former comrade. He didn't rise and break his neck. He didn't do anything but panic and shove those lunging shoulders and scoot backward on his ass away from him while making something, sound wise, that might have been a squeak.

Potentially.

His back hit the wall, his boots shifted beneath the groin of his dead friend, and he shoved. It wasn't perfect but it worked. The body of Kenneth was kicked clear of him. It went over onto the floor beside him.

Chris staggered, scrambled on all fours like a dog, and got to his feet gasping for air. He spun back and Kenneth was crawling along the floor toward him. Chris raised his sidearm…and it trembled. His aim trembled. His PERFECT AIM shook in his stupid hands. Baby, his mind said, COWARD. DO IT.

"I'm sorry." His voice broke like a fifteen year old boy in the throws of puberty. And he shot his old friend in the snarling face.

The BOOM was so loud. It hurt his ears in the narrow hallway.

He stood there with smoke curling out of the end of his pistol and trembled.

Big fucking hero, he thought, big fucking joke.

Chris kept his gun in one hand and stepped over the body of his friend. He said a silent prayer to the ancestors and to the lord and crossed himself. It couldn't hurt. It couldn't hurt right?

He opened the door at the end of the hallway and stepped into another. This hallway had started life as an armory or something. It was lined with spears. Ornate spears jutted up toward the ceiling in silver and gold. They sparkled in the flickering firelight of the lit sconces along the walls.

He moved slowly down the hallway, caught a glimpse of himself in a big gold mirror standing against one ugly beige wall, and saw a kid. A kid with wide eyes and a pale pallor beneath his golden tan. A kid with some dried blood on his chin and vest. A kid with no fucking clue what he was doing.

There was a garbled moan close to him. He turned and something in a butler's uniform lunged at his face. He didn't think. He didn't do anything but stumble back, grab one of those spears jutting up beside him, and jerk it free from the ground. The zombie moaned and snapped and Chris drove the pointy end of the spear right into its mouth.

There was a pop and squelch. There was a gurgle. And Chris pinned the thing to the wall with the spear. It thrummed and slumped, staring dead eyed at him.

"…fucking shit on toast."

A Redfield family special. Shit on toast.

And, because he was alone with no one to judge him, he muttered, "Shit, piss, turd, sloppy ass cunt of a whore. Cock knocker. Wet fart, asshat parade."

There. He let the fear out and felt a little better.

Supposedly.

He ducked under the spear and moved further down the hallway. A set of fat baby cherub sculptures were shooting their little cupid arrows at the ceiling on either side of the hallway. The whole thing felt…unfinished. There was a definite failure of the designer to finish this hallway. Paintings leaned against walls, sculptures just sat in odd places, spears were lying on the floor and in piles. Apparently, a zombie outbreak impacted worker's abilities to finish interior design.

One the cherubs looked like it had fired an arrow into the broken torso of the statue adjacent to it. The statue had died a sad, painful death. It was missing its head and its arm and legs. It was a mess. It had that arrow sticking out of its chest like a dart.

Chris pulled the arrow free. It made a click sound and the tip fell off and landed on the floor. Curious, he knelt to pick up the arrowhead. He palmed the heavy jade in his hand and put it in his cargo pack. Why? It seemed to fit something besides the arrow shaft it had fallen from.

He moved down the hallway again and found two doors mirroring each other in the little alcove there. Curious, he tried the first and found it locked. The second was locked as well but he could unlock that one. So, he did and he cleared out the door onto the balcony that over looked the dining room.

A zombie was waiting for him, happily shambling around and moaning. Chris shot it between the eyes and watched it stumble, tumble over the hand carved railing and thunderously fall onto the table below, and go still there. It spilled congealed blood like goop from the hole in its forehead. It remained there like the world's worst offering of food.

Chris said, quietly, "I'd skip that fucking dinner party."

He heard a shot from somewhere behind him in the hallway he'd left behind. He jumped. And he wondered if he'd ever stop jumping.

Damn this god forsaken place.

He turned back and back tracked down the hallway. He listened and there was another gunshot. Jill? Barry? Wesker? Who the hell knew in this place. He stopped at a door and…he smelled it. As a boy, he'd played in the woods plenty. His parents cabin was the perfect place for a curious little boy to find bugs and rodents and snakes.

Snake.

You never forgot the smell of snake. It was musty and murky and dirty. His nose twitched with it. And his hand turned the knob in front of him. The door was slightly broken and locked.

There was a gasp from the other side of it.

Chris called through it, "Who's there? Identify yourself!"

And a tiny voice came back, "Chris? Chris, is that you? It's me! It's Rebecca! Hurry!"

Chris leaned back, reared up, and put his boot against the crumbling door. It flew open under the assault and smacked the far wall. He cleared as he came in but found no danger. There were…cobwebs. Thick, thick, thick cobwebs everywhere as far as the eye could see and the carpet literally plumed up dirt and dust as he moved.

Rebecca was crouched on the floor holding on to something.

She was dirty, smeared with old blood. She smelled vaguely like oil and gasoline. And she didn't look so young anymore. She didn't look innocent. There was a hardness to her, a strength, that said she'd survived while her team had run and scattered and maybe died.

She looked…tough.

Rebecca encouraged him from the ground, "Chris! Hurry, come here! Please."

He did, quickly. He knelt and there was Richard Aiken in her arms. He was a mess. He was bloody and gasping and missing pieces of his uniform. His face was covered in wounds that wept and seeped blood and fluids onto his torn skin. His left arm was destroyed. It was ripped up and gushing. Rebecca was binding it as best as she could with the few things in her medic kit.

She lifted her eyes to him.

"Oh Chris. Oh god. It's bad. It looks like a snake bite. How is that possible? The diameter of the fangs is as big as a man's fist! How is that possible?"

Chris held her gaze for a long moment. "What is happening here, Rebecca?"

She shook her head. Richard was breathing hard and watching them. He finally gasped out, "Demons, Chris. Demons. Chris, get out of here. Go. Hurry. Run. The snake…the SNAKE…it's horrible. It's horrible. It's here now. It will kill us all. Please…get out."

He was slightly delirious from the poison coursing in his body.

Rebecca leaned him against the far wall and covered him with an emergency blanket.

"We don't have much time here, Chris. He won't survive another hour without something to inhibit the spread of the venom. Down stairs, in the short hallway I was in when I arrived, I found a medical supply room. It's full of things. I loaded up with what I could but I didn't know I'd need to make an antivenom. I need to get back there."

She rose and Chris rose with her. She eyed him a little.

"Come with me," She turned to the door, "I have so much to tell you. So much. It's worse than you think, Chris. It's really bad. And it's not just zombies."

They moved out into the hallway. She was quick on her feet. He followed her, watching her face.

And she started talking. She started telling him a fairytale. No…a nightmare. She told about finding the dead in the woods. She told about separating from her team. The attack of the dogs which she called Cerebrus, the run through the woods to the train. The train was over run with the dead. The train was filled with infected. The train had the survivor of the ambush in the woods.

She didn't call him by name.

She just said…he. She was protecting the man who'd helped her it seemed.

She talked about Edward Dewey dying. She told about the train derailing and landing them in a horrible place. Horrible.

She lifted her eyes to his face. "It was a mirror of this place in one hand. It was…a facility. A training facility."

Chris covered her as she opened the door to a small room and started grabbing glass bottles from the walls. She was mixing and talking, mixing and talking. "A training facility for what?"

And now she reached into her back pocket and pulled out a diary. It was clearly hers. She'd filled the pages full of what she'd seen. She gestured at the small cot in the corner. "You better read that. And you better sit down. This will take me a minute to concoct an antivenom."

Chris sat down on the cot and opened the little book.

But he would never be prepared for what was inside of it.

The nightmare was about to get worse then he could have ever begun to imagine.

….

Jill grabbed the shotgun off the wall in the small study where she stood. She'd found a variety of weird shit in her exploration. She'd found plenty of those stupid zombies. She'd found a room filled with papers and cluttered mess. A quick toss of the room had told her that something bad had been going down in this mansion.

The papers kept referencing a lab.

Where was the lab?

What was in the lab?

It kept mentioning. Lisa. Lisa Trevor. Who was Lisa? Did she live in the house?

The questions kept building and there were no sure answers.

Now she stood in a study surrounded by books and a desk. The desk had a dead guy sitting at it. He didn't die a zombie. He'd shot himself in the face. It was horrid but had to be better than dying eaten alive.

There was a shotgun hanging on a couple of hooks above the chair where he sat. She picked it up, heard the hooks click up and lock, and checked it. It was fully loaded, which was totally awesome as she was out of rounds for her Beretta. It was a single barreled Ithaca pump action. It was a good gun. Why was it just dangling there?

She glanced around to see if removing it had activated some kind of trap but the room was quiet around her. The low lighting of a lamp revealed useless volumes of books on shelves. It showed a diary of the dead man that catalogued his spiral into madness and finally his death.

The last entry said he had started to really turn into one of them before he'd swallowed a bullet and ended his misery.

It mentioned a coworker and the dogs they'd seen. The experiments were going awry. Things were falling apart. People were missing. It was hot in the room. He was bitten by Bob at the kennels. Not a dog…BOB. BOB had bitten his hand. Why!? And then it got worse. He started to imagine eating faces and flesh. He was HOT. He was BURNING. He was HUNGRY.

HUNGRY.

The last entry in the diary said: 4/ itchy…tasty.

That's it.

Gibberish.

But what it looked like to make a rapid descent into being undead.

He'd killed himself afterward. Or maybe someone else had ended him. His gun was missing after all. But he'd been dispatched with a clean shot to the eye. Wesker?

Barry?

Hard to say.

Jill took the diary and poked it in her pack. She opened the door to leave the study and stepped into a little square vestibule. It was beautiful. It was marble and streaked with obsidian along the glistening walls. She took a step into the room and the ceiling clunked.

It jerked.

Her eyes turned up, slowly, horror movie slow…and the ceiling shook dust down on her.

And she figured out too late what taking the shotgun had done.

A trap after all.

A trap after all.

Oh…GOD.

She turned to go back and the door was locked. She ran to the far door and it was locked. The ceiling shuddered and started coming down. It was a horrible moment. Horrible. She'd, literally, killed herself here. She had a shotgun and no way out.

She kicked the far door, making a small mewling sound in her throat. She kicked it again. It wouldn't open. It shivered on the hinges.

Where was fucking Chris when she needed him to kick down doors?

She tried shouting, "CHRIS! ARE YOU OUT THERE! CHRIS! HELP ME! OH GOD!"

She raised the shotgun to blast the door and a voice answered. Not Chris. But good enough.

"JILL! GET BACK!"

The ceiling was inches above her head now. She ducked as it came toward her and promised to turn her to pizza on the floor.

"BARRY! HURRRRRY!"

The door rustled and opened, hitting the far wall. The ceiling dropped below the frame of it and started crushing toward the floor. Jill grabbed the outstretched hand and Barry jerked her free through the two foot opening that was left. She slid across the floor, hit the wall beyond, and heard the ceiling hit the floor where she'd been with a rustle, a burst, and a CRUNCH of compression.

She got to her feet. Barry was watching her face.

She said, "Thank you. JESUS. I'm glad you were there."

"Shit, me too. You're ok?"

"I'm good. Great."

"You were almost a Jill sandwich."

They both laughed mirthlessly. Jill rubbed his big arm. She replied, "If I'm gonna be in a sandwich it better be Brad Pitt on one side and Tom Cruise on the other."

And they both laughed again.

She studied his face. He didn't look good. He looked pale beneath his big red beard. And his eyes kept darting around. What had he seen? Barry didn't spook easily. He was spooked as hell now.

"You ok, Barry? You look nervous as hell."

Barry laughed a little and pulled a slim black case from his back pocket. "I'm fine. Really. If a guy can be fine in a mansion full of zombies."

"Right? Good point."

"Here." He set the case in her palm. "I found this in one of those rooms. It's no use to me. But I just bet it is for you."

She opened it up and found a beautiful lock picking set. She said, with delightful, "Barry – this is the Rolls Royce of lock picking kits. This is like Christmas and my birthday and sex with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise combined! You are a god amongst men!"

Barry chuckled and patted her shoulder. "That's what my wife is always yelling too."

Jill snickered. And his face again. It looked so scared. What was in his mind's eye right now?

He seemed like he wanted to say something to her. She waited, watching that face. He glanced left and right and left and right and finally smiled. "You find Chris?"

"I did. He's on the other side of this huge bitch somewhere. You find anyone else?"

Barry licked his lips and glanced around. He opened his mouth…hesitated…and shook his head. He patted her arm again. "I'm gonna keep looking. You…be careful ok?"

"Barry…what the hell…you want to split up again?"

What was the deal with him?

He shook his head at her. He glanced down the hallway. "Wesker is around here somewhere. I know that. I haven't found anyone else. You find anything useful information wise?"

"Nothing so far. Just some gibberish about a lab. You find a lab?"

Barry shook his head at her. "Nope. No lab. Just some empty rooms. Nothing interesting."

Jill waited, brows lifted into her hat. "You ok, Barry? You seem panicky or something. You sure you want to split up again?"

"Yep. Better to cover more area." Barry backed down the hallway away from her.

She eyed him with mass confusion. He wasn't normally this squirrelly. He was acting like Brad. Like a chicken. It was weird.

"Chris and I are supposed to meet in the foyer in ten minutes. Do you want to come with me?"

"No. Better not to stay together. Bad idea to do that, Jill. We need to clear this mansion and make it safe right? I'll meet you there for the second check in time. Another hour?"

"…um…sure?"

"Great. See ya." He turned through a door and disappeared.

Jill lingered, blinking.

What a weirdo. Chris had said he was unflappable in the service. Admittedly, this was fucking clown shoes…but why was he freaking out so bad? There was something wrong with this picture besides undead and conspiracies and labs in weird mansions in the middle of the forest.

Jill moved toward the long hallway to make her way to the foyer.

She arrived, typed her name and the time on the type writer, and waited.

Twenty minutes after check in time, she knew he wasn't coming. And her heart fluttered in her chest with fear. She added a tiny message on the type writer for him…just in case.

Garden – landing – staircase.

She was telling him where she was going.

She hurried to the door at the landing and opened it with a rusty peel of sound. It spilled her out into the waiting heat. She could feel the heavy press of humidity here. It made you feel wet just walking in it.

She crossed over the broken cobblestone walk beneath her feet toward the graveyard that waited. The headstones were all in Greek…literally. She couldn't read them. They were everywhere and some were broken and falling over. The wrought iron fence surrounding the dirty little cemetery was all that stood between her and the night beyond. It wasn't safe to stay out here for too long. Not with those damn dogs running around.

She hurried to the far side of the cemetery and found a large stone mausoleum. It was built into the side of the graveyard and had a fat, happy cherub carved on it. She tilted her head, studying the stone work.

The cupid had a happy face that looked almost insane. She shuddered and lifted her eyes to the missing arrowhead on his bow. She touched the impression of it and pushed.

Nothing.

She pushed the baby.

Nothing.

Jill glanced around and said, "Booga Boo. Open sesame."

Nothing.

She poked the fat baby in the belly. Nope.

She tried again, "….Eeny meeny miney mo!"

No such luck.

Maybe it didn't want a password. She had a feeling she wasn't getting into that mausoleum without that missing arrowhead. She tried one more time for good measure, "Cheese and rice!"

And, naturally, got the shit scared out of her for it.

"Them's my words, Valentine."

Jill leapt two feet in the air and spun around. He saw the shotgun come up, caught it in his hand, and jerked it from her. She dropped her knife into her hand before she realized it was Chris.

He lifted the gun in one hand and his other to show it empty.

"Sorry, sorry…don't kill me."

Jill eased her knife back in the holster…but she smacked his chest for scaring her to death. "Asshat!"

"I also answer to Chris."

"You butthole. What the fuck are you doing sneaking up on me?"

"I wasn't aware I was sneaking. I followed your note though. I generally don't STOMP around in dangerous locations though. Although I guess I can start shouting next time and alert the world to my presence so you don't tinkle in your panties, if you want."

UGH. His humor. She hated it.

He flashed a grin.

Her mouth twitched.

He chuckled.

And she smiled.

Damn him.

He said, "You ok?"

"I'm fine. I found Barry. He was…weird. But ok. What about you?"

Chris shifted and sighed. "So, I found Rebecca and Richard. Richard was bitten by something pretty bad. It was a huge snake, he says. Rebecca is with him upstairs treating him with antivenom. But it doesn't look good."

Jill sighed, watching his face. "That's not all."

"Not even close. Rebecca found out a lot of things Jill. She's been running around since Bravo went missing yesterday. They're making things..."

"Things?"

Chris shifted, "Weapons. Umbrella? They're making weapons. Bio-organic weapons. BOWS. They're creating monsters. Rebecca found their training facility and discovered Marcus, one of the founders, went nutso. He went insane. He was working with Spencer, the guy who owned this fucking mansion, to make weapons of the military at first. And then for personal use? It's sketchy. Spencer had him killed. He didn't die...or he did and came back. And caused the outbreak here. But there was rivalry between two of the researchers. The names weren't anything more than first names…William and Albert. We don't know much else. But this mansion? I think it's got the answers."

Jill held his gaze now. "Holy fuck. Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack, sweetcheeks. It ain't good. What's happening here is so much bigger than zombies."

Jill and Chris held eyes. His hand shifted and moved. They touched fingertips. It was brief and over quickly. It resonated anyway.

He intoned, softly, "You're really ok?"

Jill replied, "As one can be with conspiracies and global pharmaceutical companies trying to create monsters."

"Right? Right. In their own backyard…what a bunch of dicks."

Jill turned back to look at the stone baby. Chris stepped up beside her. She shifted and touched his fingers again. He wove them together, brief, and it was like a hug. And then he made a sound. Like a gasp of surprise.

She glanced up and he dug into his pack. He pulled out a piece of green jade.

She lifted her brows at him.

And he said, "Watch and learn, Valentine. Watch and learn."

He pressed the piece of green into the arrowhead impression. Jill waited. And heard the CLICK and CLUNK of gears rotating. Chris backed up, she followed, and they both held their pistols on the receding stone baby.

It rolled back on itself to reveal a stair case lit with torches. Shadow and light flickered down the winding steps. The smell of something wet and coppery filled their noses.

Jill said, softly, "I don't want to go down there."

Chris laughed a little. "Me either."

"I'll give you a million dollars to go down there."

He considered it and said, "Valentine, you ain't got a million dollars. You're poor. You don't even have a can of SPAM."

"I have eight dollars in my glovebox in my car. It's all yours along with the sixty-two cents in the cupholder that may…or may not…be stuck there with old soda…if you go down those stairs."

They glanced at each other and he laughed. He just laughed. He laughed in the middle of the worst night of their lives. Jill grinned at him.

And he mused, "I'd rather have a hand job."

Jill laughed. She laughed and loved him. "Now? You wanna just lean on the wall and let me grab that donkey cock of yours and start pulling?"

Chris seemed to consider it. He studied her face. She lifted a brow. And he shifted himself around with his hand.

Jill raised both brows. "You dirty perv. You got hard from that? In the middle of a zombie apocalypse, you're sporting wood because of a joke?"

Chris chuckled and he didn't look the least ashamed, "Looks that way, kid. So maybe I go down those stairs and get an IOU on the handjob."

Jill smacked his ass. "There. A handjob."

Chris pursed his lips, "More like a gip job. But I'll let you make it up to me later."

"Old lecher. Go first and I'll let you grab a tit after."

Chris snorted out a laugh. He answered, drolly, "Deal. Wait here."

He started down the stairs. Jill watched him move and finally went down with him. He glanced at her in surprise. She bumped into his back as he stopped at the curve.

She twisted her mouth to the side. He lifted a brow.

And finally, Chris mused, "Your hand is on my ass."

Jill looked down and realized he was right. She'd been stuck to his back like glue with one hand in his back pocket. She blinked…twice. "I'd apologize. But it seems to have been there for awhile. And I'm fairly sure you like it."

Chris considered this and said, "I do. Stay close."

Jill curled her fingers into the butt in question, halting him as he started forward again. She whispered, "I'm facing my own wimpiness here, Redfield. It ain't pretty."

Chris turned his face over his shoulder to find her looking up at him. He figured they could take just this one moment to be real with each other. And he responded, gently, "I killed Kenneth. Sorta. He rose…I panicked. I fell down and crab walked away from him. I may…or may not…have squeaked a little."

Jill's eyes were wide. The firelight flickered in the pale blue of them. She twitched her lips..twice. "You're just saying that to make me feel better."

"Possibly. But it's still true. This shit sucks, Jilly Bean. It's ok to be scared. And it's ok to wimp out. Just don't give up."

God damn she loved him. It rolled in her chest and stole her breath. A coward? No. He was a gift. He kept her head on her shoulders instead of up her ass with fear. What would she do without him?

Jill whispered back, "Redfield, you big squish, I'm on to you."

Chris laughed again, just a little, and dropped his shoulder. He rotated his head and Jill lifted hers. He dipped his face under her beret and touched his forehead to hers. She wanted to kiss him. And they were standing on the stairs surrounded by the undead.

So, she didn't. But she felt a hundred times stronger just standing there with him.

And then he said, "Only for you, Valentine. Keep that hand on my ass and cover it while you're at it."

"Deal."

She laughed, feeling the tingle in her fingers that told the story of her love for him. They moved down the stairs to the bottom.

The chamber was small. There wasn't a threat waiting. There was, however, a coffin suspended from the ceiling by chains. Below it were busts in strong marble. Jill moved toward them to see what was missing. Upon a closer look, she realized that one of the busts was missing a mask. It needed eyes and a nose and a mouth. The others were complete.

She opened her pack to pull out the mask in it.

Chris lifted a brow at her.

Jill said, "So I was in this room earlier. It had these suits of armor in it. They kept…popping away from the walls. I kept pushing them back. Eventually, I figured out they wanted me to push them in the right order. When I did that…I got a little box with this mask in it."

Chris was watching her.

She gave him a long look. "What?"

"You're kinda smart, kid."

And now she eyed him wryly. "Gee whiz, Red. Thanks. I try."

Chris eyed the coffin above them. "You ever get the feeling somebody is playing us here?"

The silence was his answer. Jill said, "When this over, we're drinking like fish. I will tell you stories...you will not believe some of the shit I've seen."

"That makes two of us, kiddo."

Jill laid the mask on the final bust. There was a clunk, a grind of metal, and the chains on the coffin burst and clattered. The lid opened and blood gushed. It gushed. It WHOOSHED and gushed onto the floor beneath it.

And a zombie spilled out with the blood.

It splattered to the floor and rose. It wasn't shambling. It didn't moan and stumble. It started running. It snarled and screeched and ran right at them.

Chris put two in its face and didn't even slow it down. It hit him in a full body tackle. Jill shouted. Chris hit the wall and went onto his back trying to keep the savage thing from ripping his throat out. He lost his gun, grappled for his combat knife, and Jill shouted.

It dived at his face and missed by a breath. His muscles kept it from getting him. If he'd been smaller, thinner, weaker…he'd have lost his nose. Jill was trying to find a shot. She watched it lunge for his throat and miss as he rolled left and it bit the top of his vest.

OH GOD.