Nemesis: Resident Evil III
Chapter Seventeen: Homicide Division
Clang-clang-clang! With two doors and a whole room between them, Jill could barely hear the monster's struggled to get out from under the fallen rows of lockers as her feet echoed across the main hall of the RPD. Her first thought was to unbar the front door and run back the way she came, since it was the quickest escape, but the radio that she needed in order to try calling for help again was the opposite way, so instead of going right out, the young woman took a hard left just before the doors, barging her way into the halls that would lead to Homicide Division.
Because of the way that the precinct was laid out, from the main hall she needed to go through Homicide, and then down the stairs into the basement in order to reach the parking garage… which was starting to look like the only way out. However, Jill had just passed through the side door of the main hall, only to have to stop in her tracks when the answer to her earlier question was finally answered… that question being where were all the infected? They were there… right there, gathered in the hallway on this side of the police station… dozens of them, mostly wearing police uniforms.
Just beyond a row of payphones and a flickering soda vending machine, this small horde of zombies was completely blocking all access to the corridors beyond, however, the wooden double doors that the young woman needed to use were right across the hall from the phones, giving her a few feet of leeway… and the infected officers were only now just starting to notice her. The only choices were to run toward them like an idiot in a desperate bid to reach the doors before they blocked them, or go back into the main hall and risk that monster… the Pursuer finding her after getting free.
"Oh God!" She exclaimed while starting to run toward them. "Oh God, oh God, oh God!"
The infected officers reacted faster than Jill hoped, immediately moving toward her when she went for the doors, but they didn't have a functioning human brain like she did. Instead of going directly for the doors, the young woman ran over to the payphones so that they would all gravitate toward that side of the hall, giving her just enough room to run to the other side and turn the knob. It was unlocked, so she pushed it open just as the snarling infected were starting to reach for her, and then there was a whack sound when she slammed it right into the first zombie's face, turning the deadbolt to keep it closed while the monsters on the other side clawed and groaned at it.
So far the Pursuer hadn't come after her, possibly still trapped while also not knowing which way she had gone, and with all those zombies in the way, there wasn't a way for the monster to track her down, well… unless it went right through them. Like Traffic Division, Homicide was set up with a series of long tables and workstation in the center, with lockers and filing cabinets along the walls… but no infected officers that she could see. Maybe there was some ammo or weapons in this room, so the young woman did a real quick search inside all of the lockers.
A bunch of personal belongings, some makeup, some scratch-off Lottery tickets, a large bag of what she was pretty sure was Marijuana; just like over in Traffic and up in the STARS office, there was barely anything lying around that was of any use. It was like they had intentionally hidden things around the precinct, but that was a stupid idea… no rational human being would have decided to do that. The only place left was to search the enclosed office over in the corner, so she quickly moved over to it, reading the words LT. TOBIAS LIQUID, DIVISION HEAD on the window before pulling the door open.
Hardly any of Tobias's personal things were inside, since the last thing he had done before being put into a coma was pack everything up for that failed operation in the mountains last spring, but knowing him as long as she had, Jill just knew that there had to be something useful left inside his office… there just had to be. The young woman was along once again, trying her best to not be affected by the gruesome death of Brad Vickers, but without something a little bigger than her pistol, there was no way for her to stand against that monster by herself.
A half empty bottle of Fighting Cock Bourbon was the only thing inside the filing cabinet, which Jill quickly took a drink of to calm her nerves a little before searching the desk, but aside from the personnel files of the people who had gone with Tobias into the mountains, and a bunch of past due electric bills in his name, there was nothing… nothing, damn it, nothing. With an angry growl she slammed the desk drawer shut, her last hope at finding anything to protect herself with resting on the locker that was in the corner opposite the desk, just like in Traffic Division.
"Please be something in here." She whispered to herself, putting her hand on the metal door before opening it. "Please, please, please."
Turning the handle, and opening it with a metal scraping sound, Jill was starting to feel like her luck was never going to change… but then she saw it. On the top shelf, behind a dried out pack of cigarettes, was a small box that was labeled Cartridges .12 ga. Shot-shell. Shotgun shells! The young woman's hands were shaking again as she put the pistol in her belt, and opened the chamber of the shotgun that had been slung across her back, her hands fumbling as she shoved the red colored shells into the weapon one at a time. There had only been six in the box, not enough to fill it all the way, but Jill was thankful for them, especially when she heard the commotion outside.
Crash! Out in the hallway beyond the locked double doors, it sounded like something heavy had fallen over, but once the young woman heard the loud heavy footsteps, and the inhuman growl that would forever haunt her dreams, she knew that it was time to go. The monster could be heard growling, and there was a commotion that sounded like it was actually… attacking the zombies that were in the way; groans and pained rasping heard with it as the Pursuer's growls got closer… and closer…
There was still a chance that it didn't know where she had gone, since there were a whole lot of other ways to go from that hallway besides into Homicide Division, so not wanting to lose the chance to escape undetected, Jill left Tobias's office and turned the knob on the door that would lead her toward the basement… only to find it locked. No, no, no, her mind screamed as the commotion outside started to die down. Any minute now the monster was going to come charging into the room with intent to do to her what it had done to Brad, so her first impulse was to shoot off the lock with the shotgun… which would lead it right to her.
Was there enough time to pick the lock silently? God damn it, why did Irons have to take her keys back when STARS was suspended? Slinging the shotgun over her shoulder, the young woman got on her knees in front of the door, trying not to panic as she took her lock-picking tool out of her picket and inserted it into the keyhole. Smash! The double doors at the other end of the room were knocked off their hinges as a heavily wounded zombie was tossed through it, and without thinking, Jill rolled backwards underneath the nearby long tables, hopefully before it saw her.
Growling as it ripped the last biting zombie off its shoulder and ripped its head clean off, the monster discarded the body, and then turned around so that it was looking across Homicide Division. Thud… thud… thud, its heavy slow footsteps shook the table a little as it made its way across the room, stopping to look briefly over the cabinets that Jill had searched, before finally entering Tobias's office… and that was when the young woman's heart sank. In her haste to get away, she had forgotten to take the lock picking tool out of the door, and now it was just kind of hanging there for all to see… including the Pursuer.
Thud… thud… thud, now the monster came back out of the enclosed office, its leather-clad legs stopping right in front of the table that Jill was hiding under, and all she could do was hold her breath and hope that it somehow didn't notice the tool… or her, for that matter. Silence again, only the squeak of the old ceiling fans as they spun around, and the young woman's hand on the shotgun in case she needed to start shooting. There was no guarantee that the larger weapon would work any better than the pistol, but it was all she had, and it wasn't like this thing was just going to let her go.
When it's legs finally moved, the shock was almost enough to make her gasp in surprise, which would have been really bad, but thankfully Jill was able to stop herself while the monster turned back the way it came, and started back toward the broken double doors. Thud… thud… thud, the table shook again as the Pursuer walked away; was it possible that it hadn't noticed the tool and simply thought that she had gone farther into the police station? It kept walking as far as the broken doors, where the remains of a half dozen zombies were lying motionless on the tile floor, now past them, turning right to continue down the hall, and then she could no longer hear its footsteps.
Now her lungs were about to burst from her actually forgetting how long it had been since she started holding her breath, breathing out heavily as she silently crawled back over to the locked door. Click-click-click, the young woman bit her lip, trying to concentrate and control her breathing while she worked the tumblers inside the door, nearly jumping again when the lock finally opened, causing her to turn around and see… nothing. The monster wasn't there, so she turned the knob as carefully as she could, locked the door from the other side once she crawled through, and then quietly closed it behind her.
Not daring to get to her feet just yet, the young woman turned left, and crawled across the concrete floor so that she was staying below the windows in case any more infected were outside, and not getting up until she was at the top of the basement stairs. So far the Pursuer hadn't picked up her trail, and Jill was just starting to relax, standing up in order to go down the concrete stairs down into the precinct's basement, when something crashed down the hall behind her.
"Sstarss!" The monster's voice yelled angrily as it started running.
The young woman didn't have to see what had broken to know that it was the door she had picked being broken down. Damn it, even if the monster hadn't noticed the tool the first time, it had definitely noticed when it was no longer there after coming back around, meaning that Jill could no longer be quiet as she ran down the stairs into the basement, toward the parking garage.