Nemesis: Resident Evil III

Chapter Twelve: Traffic Division

The fastest way through to the STARS office was through Traffic Division, and since the monster outside hadn't made any noise in the past few minutes, Jill figured that it was safe to start moving, as long as she and Brad stayed quiet. An elevator would have made the trip a lot faster, and she had heard that there were plans to install one in order to meet new city codes or something, but she had also heard that the funds for that had been diverted in order to build a the giant statue of Mayor Warren at City Hall.

Click, squeak, the door closest to the reception desk was the one they needed, and thankfully it was unlocked, since the young woman had been forced to turn in her precinct keys at the same time as her badge when she and the others got suspended after the Spencer Estate, and now she could see that things were a little… different than she remembered. The long tables and computer work stations were still there, as well as the reception window for talking to people who were in the waiting room on the other side, but there were streamers hanging from the ceiling, and sodas and party hats on the table nearest to the door, as if there was about to be some kind of celebration.

Looking around in the nearby lockers and cabinets, again the young woman didn't find any weapons or ammo, but she did find a card on the table that was made out for someone named Leon Kennedy. It contained the usual stupid nursery rhyme, about how the senior guys were going to torture and pick on him for a year until he was no longer a Rookie, as Jill had gotten when she first joined the RPD, but this didn't help her much, so she set the card back down and continued on her way.

"Great time to join the force, Leon." She said to herself, laughing a little. "Welcome to Raccoon City, I guess."

Squeak… squeak… the old, wobbly ceiling fans provided the only noise in the room that didn't come from her or Brad as they moved to the far end of Traffic Division, where a self-contained office sat in the corner opposite from the door that led into the evidence room. SGT. MARVIN BRANAGH, DIVISION HEAD, was written on the glass window of the door in bold black letters, just like the office of every division head, and although his desk and personal belongings were inside when the door opened, there was no sign of the man himself.

Must have been sent out with all the others to man the barricades, the young woman thought as she looked around the desk and nearby wall locker. All of the drawers were locked, as was the locker, but Marvin always kept the keys underneath the support of a picture frame next to his computer. That picture was of himself and all of the other administrators of the RPD; he was on the far end, Chief Irons was in the center, and the rest consisted of Captains Wesker and Marini of STARS, Sergeant Proske of Burglary, and Lieutenant Liquid of Homicide.

"Wesker." Jill hissed to herself, remembering her late Captain's betrayal last summer. "Son of a bitch got what he deserved."

Turning the picture face down so that she wouldn't have to see his stupid, sunglasses wearing face, the young woman grabbed the keys so that she could open the desk, but the only thing useful inside was Marvin's hidden supply of Snickers bars and beef jerky… his guilty pleasures. The candy bars that she had taken from the warehouse were long gone, and there was no telling how long it was going to be before being able to eat again, so she divided up what was there between herself and Brad, and the pilot must have been even hungrier than she was, because he actually stopped trembling long enough to eat it.

Please be something useful inside, she thought to herself while unlocking Marvin's wall locker, please be something there… yes! With a strong sigh of relief that came from knowing that her luck was finally changing, Jill had a smile on her face as she reached into the locker and pulled out a Remington 870 12 Gauge Shotgun. It wasn't loaded, though… God damn it… okay, no problem… most people didn't store loaded weapons, so she just had to find the box of shells, and… no shells.

"No shells in there?" Brad asked, moving so that he could look inside the locker. "Why the fuck would he keep a shotgun in here but no shells?"

"Relax, there's probably some up in the STARS office." She replied, not sure but hoping. "And keep your damn voice down so that thing outside can't hear us."

Honestly, the best place to find ammo would have been down in the armory in the basement, but as mentioned, Jill no longer had any of her keys, and she wasn't about to spend all night trying to find another one. Plus, they were going to the STARS office anyway to use the radio, so there was no reason for the pilot to panic just yet… not that it mattered to him. The shotgun had a shoulder sling attached, so she put it across her back, and together the two of them went over to the door to the evidence room.

Putting her ear to the door, and then sharply shushing Brad so that she could listen for anything moving on the other side… she was glad when there was nothing but silence. Motioning for the pilot to follow her through, the young woman opened the door, and made sure to peek around all the rows of lockers and small storage units for any threats, but again there weren't any. Nothing in this room but a bare concrete floor, dozens of lockers that were all opened with different keys, and a small desk with a chair in the back for reviewing materials.

Looking down at the desk and its sign in/out sheet, the young woman remembered the last time she had needed to review evidence for a case; it was just a month before getting selected for the new STARS unit, when some freak had gotten the idea to rape and kill a bunch of co-eds over at Raccoon City Community College. With no visible motive or pattern, aside from all the victims being attractive, slender brunettes, Tobias Liquid had come up with the idea of using Jill as bait by having her go undercover as a college student.

The trap worked perfectly, with the freak revealing himself to be a teacher who attacked his victims when they came to work on a late night project. She had gotten careless though, expecting the killer to confront her directly, and ending up getting stuck with a syringe full of GHB from behind. What the freak didn't know was that Tobias was also there, posing as a night janitor with a fake beard, and his reward for drugging the young woman was getting shot in the chest with a .45… no big loss.

Hard to believe that times like that, when she was helpless and scared out of her mind, could seem simple compared to this T-Virus outbreak that was happening now, and Jill actually found herself longing for the days when a single deranged killer was the worst thing she had to worry about. Shaking her head and moving on, the next door, right near the desk, opened into a long hallway with a tile floor. The design contrasts in this place were left over from back when it had been a large museum, with each area of exhibits having a theme around them so that patrons wouldn't get lost, but that was before her time.

The walls in this area looked like carved white stone, which helped reflect light since honestly, the small fixtures along the one wall were spaced way too far apart for their low-wattage bulbs, and there was a window at the end where the carpeted stairwell started, allowing at least part of the corridor to be flooded with sunlight. There was something else there, too… a woman who was clearly infected, with her discolored skin and blood covered mouth, who was just kind of… standing there, facing the other way like it didn't know what to do.

"I'll get this one, Jill." Brad whispered, aiming his pistol while making sure to still stay hidden behind her. "She won't even know we were here."

"Are you crazy?" The young woman sharply whispered back, pushing his pistol down. "Or do you want that thing outside to know where we are? No shooting, okay? I'll handle this."

Keeping a tight grip on her own weapon, Jill crouched down and started to silently creep her way toward the female zombie. Part of her mind told her that she was the crazy one, not Brad, for trying what she was about to do, but then again it felt kind of nice to be the one doing the hunting for once. Soon she was right behind the monster, listening to it rasp and groan to itself while raising the pistol as high up as she could… and then bringing it down. Crack! The zombie let out a surprised groan as the weapon's stock split its skull right open, but the young woman wasn't finished yet.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Grabbing the infected person by the back of her shirt so it couldn't fall or turn around, Jill just kept slamming her pistol into the back of its head again and again until the monster finally collapsed in the pool of its own foul-smelling blood that was flowing out from the back of its head. This had been overly brutal, sure, but almost no noise had been made, and the young woman would have been lying if she said that destroying the zombie like that hadn't made her feel a little better.

Brad wasn't looking too good, though, as if watching this event had somehow disturbed him even more than everything else he had seen in the city so far. Some of the color had drained from his face, and he was trembling again to the point where he didn't respond the first time that she motioned for him to follow her. Jesus, even Rebecca, who was like, eighteen during the Spencer Estate, had been brave enough to do what needed to be done, and that girl had faced way more horrible things than old Chickenheart Vickers.

"Brad." She whispered sternly, pointing to the floor in front of her. "The zombie is dead… so get your wimpy ass over here right now, or I'm going to leave you here."

Jill never would have left him there, or anyone for that matter unless there was no choice, like with the people at the warehouse, but the threat of being on his own again was apparently harder to deal with than watching her beat a zombie's brains out, because as soon as she said it, the pilot seemed to come back to life. Not staying nearly as quiet as she had been, Brad was over to her side at lightning speed, but since nothing else was moving, the sound of his overly loud footsteps must not have been enough to attract any unwanted attention.

"We're almost there, all right?" The young woman assured him while also looking out the window. "As soon as we get to the radio, we can call for help, and then all we have to do is sit on the landing pad and wait to be rescued."

It was a good plan, or at least the ideal one, and since there wasn't anything they needed inside the old darkroom underneath the stairs, all they had to do now was go to the second floor and get to the STARS office, and this would all be over.