So many wonderful comments this past week! I can't tell you how thrilled I am to see familiar faces still hanging around this dumpster fire, LOL. It's your support that's made it worthwhile for me to continue piling on the trash. I also wanted to thank all of the people who've reviewed anonymously, both in the last few days and during the long years of hiatus! Here's letting you know that I truly appreciate each and every one of your comments!
Happy New Year, my peeps!
Chapter 33 drops in exactly one week.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx-O-xxxxxxxxxxxxX
The culvert was wet, miserable and twisting. With no way to navigate accurately, they were forced to guess at their heading based on Harvardville's last known position in relation to them, but the culvert wasn't exactly cooperating. After twenty minutes of wandering the subterranean warren, Chris was soaked up to his knees and in desperate need of a smoke, a good night's sleep, and a bullet in Wesker's head if the universe felt like being generous – not necessarily in that order.
He concentrated on keeping in bearings, occasionally throwing a glance back at Wesker just to be sure the man hadn't performed his trademark vanishing act into one of the side tunnels. Nope, still there. For some reason. They pressed on another five minutes until the culvert opened into a large, damp vault. Chris shone his flashlight around. Ahead of him was a deep cistern and a foaming maelstrom of muddy water fed by massive culvert about twice the size of the one they'd just exited. Chris shot a look at the ceiling and found it crisscrossed with pipes, some old, some new, but could see noting in the way of an exit.
"How much further does this thing go?" he shouted, trying to be heard over the water.
Jill's lips moved, but no sound came out. She gestured to her ears.
Chris glowered and went back to combing the vault with his eyes. The big culvert was edged by a narrow brick walkway a little less than ten inches wide, not meant to be accessed unless the flow of water had been cut off at floodgate somewhere in the labyrinth. Chris squinted into the dark, the incessant spray beading on his face and twinkling in a myriad of rainbow colors. He couldn't see more than fifteen feet into the gloom, but surely there was a manhole up there somewhere, right? Either way, the choice was clear: chance the walkway or spend ten minutes backtracking to the last junction and hope it led to something better than a dead end.
Wesker bent and put his mouth directly against Jill's ear. She blanched, but nodded to whatever he'd said. Chris took a deep breath. He'd done some risky crap before, like leaning out of a moving helicopter without a harness, but this? Tonight was making the highlight reel, for sure. He made an agitated gesture towards the culvert. We going?
Jill gave him a tense thumbs-up.
Shivering in the damp air, Chris moved closer to the pit. It wasn't far to the ledge, but the concrete was slick and black with ice, gleaming treacherously in the light. He jumped when he felt Wesker tap him on the shoulder, certain he was about to be shoved into the churning water, but Wesker merely put his hand out and looked at him pointedly.
Chris stared him for a long moment before comprehending. It was a perfectly sensible offer – even he could see that on some level – but every atom in his body clenched, unwilling to surrender anything to the man no matter how reasonable it seemed. Wesker's gloved hand hovered between them, unmoving. Chris furiously slapped the shotgun into it. There! Make it easy on yourself, you sonuvabitch.
He shoved the little Maglite into his teeth and searched for a handhold. The tunnel was old, all rough concrete and calcium-crusted brick. Probably hadn't been up to code when they'd built it in the 1960s, let alone now. Chris puffed his cheeks, took a deep breath, and leapt for the narrow walkway. He reached it easily – far easier than he'd anticipated – and was nearly deep-throated by the Maglite. He grabbed at the pipes to steady himself. After a moment, he shuffled sideways into the roaring mouth of the culvert.
Jill didn't look into the watery pit. She backed up, took a running start, and leapt. A moment later she had her back pressed safely to the wall. Her damp cheeks were flushed scarlet, and her eyes had a bright, feverish look about them as she immediately grabbed an overhead pipe and extended towards Wesker with one hand outstretched.
Chris felt like beating his head on the wall. Jill! For God's sake, come on-
She leaned back holding the shotgun by the barrel, then sidled towards Chris. The Maglite was still in his teeth, and the light of it was bouncing and erratic. For a moment he was nearly blinded as it reflected off the wet shell of her parka. A shadow moved behind her. Yeah, now that we're marooned up here like jackasses, make sure you dart off into a side tunnel, open the cages holding your mutant snakes, or giant alligators, or whatever else you've got down h-
Damp blond hair gleamed over Jill's shoulder.
Oh, okay. Cages must be further in. Got it.
The Maglite was making his teeth ache, but Chris decided he'd rather keep both hands free as he crab-walked along the ledge one careful step at a time. Moisture dripped from the end of his nose and flattened his short hair to his skull. He really, really hoped the water gushing behind his back was just that and not untreated sewage. The cold air smelled clean enough at the moment, but maybe that was because the water to sewage mixture was relatively low. Chris shivered, tormented between the icy water dripping down his neck and the deep, sick heat in his core. At this point it was obvious that he was coming down with the flu, body aches and all.
Par for the course at this point, he thought sourly. He wondered if he was still infectious enough to make sneezing in Wesker's face a worthwhile endeavor. Wait, who was he kidding? It'd be worth it even without the flu, if only for the pleasure of watching him buff the snot off his sunglasses.
A low pipe brushed the top of his head, snagging at his scalp. Chris twisted beneath it, his heels sinking down into thin air. He swallowed the hard lump in his throat. The water was deafening, pressing against his eardrums until they itched from the force of the noise. Another ten steps. Fifteen. Twenty. His boot slid on a patch of ice. Chris spreadeagled against the side of the tunnel until he could steady himself. Dammit, how much further?
He took the Maglite from his teeth and carefully shone it down the culvert.
Darkness yawned back at him.
Great.
Something splashed far behind them, so softly Chris wasn't even sure he'd actually heard it. He quickly swung the flashlight back up the tunnel, the light trembling oddly on the water's surface and casting bright, squiggling lines onto the walls. After a minute of straining into the gloom, Chris realized he'd actually been expecting a dorsal fin to come sailing up the culvert after them. Jill gave him a questioning look. Her lips moved soundlessly. WTF?
Chris frowned at the darkness. Was that another splash, or just the gurgling water? When nothing came scurrying up the passage after them, however, Chris had to concede the fact that he was being paranoid. The city had only gone to shit a few hours ago. The sewers hadn't had time to fester like they had in Raccoon.
Probably.
He put the flashlight back into his mouth and moved on. After another five minutes of carefully inching along the ledge, Chris was suddenly aware of a much larger, emptier space extending away from him into the void. Encouraged, he shone the flashlight around. They'd reached another vault much like the one they'd exited ten minutes ago. There was no gurgling cistern for him to fall into, however. Here was the domain of narrow, rusted catwalks and even narrower ladders. Chris also thought he could detect the faintest glow of orange light, so badly diffused it was almost nonexistent. The scent of smoke burned in his nose.
He did one last visual sweep, then made the corner and hopped down. Jill quickly clambered after him. "You'd better hope there's a way out up here, goddammit," she growled, barely audible above the water – but even barely audible was a marked improvement.
She handed him the shotgun and Chris took it gratefully. Wesker immediately went to examine the maintenance ladder on the far side of the room, moving far more quickly and gracefully than the darkness should have allowed.
"Street access," he annouced.
He seized the rusted ladder and went up it straightway, too quick for Chris to voice an argument, or to remind the stupid prick that he was supposed to go first. He grabbed hold of the ladder, but didn't ascend right away. He shone the Maglite up the dark shaft, not so much to give Wesker any type of assistance, but to make sure he could still see the man. There was a heavy scraping sound and a circle of hellish light appeared at the top of the ladder. In one fluid movement, Wesker heaved himself out of the sewers and was gone, showering snow into the hole.
Turning his face away from the unwelcome dusting, Chris scurried up the ladder with a curse, emerging into a phantasmagoric world of firelight and dark, leaping shadows. Smoky air gusted into his face, warmer than the damp breath of the tunnels, but still bitterly cold. He climbed out of the hole, first to his knees and then to his feet, shivering in a way that was starting to become troublesome. To Chris' surprise he immediately noticed Wesker standing nearby, the same wind buffeting his collar against his chin.
"Do you know where we are?" he demanded.
"Give me a minute," Chris snapped, annoyed by the command he could detect in the man's voice. He looked up and down the street, searching for a landmark or anything that seemed familiar. Trees lined either side of the boulevard, their empty branches twisted and snarled like cancerous tumors. There were no streetlights, no welcoming glow inside any of the shops. How much of the city if out of power? Chris wondered.
His eyes slid over a Mountain Mike's Pizza and nail salon ostensibly named Tootsies. Both establishments seemed unoccupied, but Chris could just make out several unfinished pizzas and overturned chairs inside the restaurant. "I think we're on East Hale," he ventured after minute.
"You think, Redfield?"
"I'm sure," Chris bit back. He pointed down the street to the intersection on the far end. "That's Fifth down there, so we've got another fifteen, twenty minutes' walk before we even hit Santificado. You good, douchebag, or should I rustle you up a map?"
Wesker threw him a look over one shoulder, his thin, tight mouth quirked up at the corner. It was an unnerving expression to say the least, not the least of which was its sudden, horrible familiarity: the telltale sign that he'd escaped murder only because he'd done something the blond found mildly amusing. Chris snapped his mouth shut with a click, his stomach turning over against his spine. Jill's head materialized out of the darkness of the open manhole-
-then disappeared again with a startled yelp.
"Jill!"
"I'm okay," said the darkness. "My foot slipped."
Chris waited, his heart jackhammering against his ribs, as Jill reemerged from the hole and reached up to take his hand. Chris muttered something crude, but gratefully pulled her up to stand next to him, trying to unstick his heart from his tonsils. Am I really so cooked that I expect mutant frogs to leap out of every dark hole? He tried to tell himself it was a reasonable worry to have, but it did little to cool the prickling heat in his cheeks. I need to get a grip. Except for our buddy "Ivan" back there, there's no reason for BOWs to be in the city. There's no facility, no rooms full of shit-covered cages. Not that Wesker doesn't have cages, just not here. Not in this particular city. Not tonight.
"Which way?" Jill puffed, looking around.
"Fifth's down there," Chris grumbled. He looked sideways at Wesker. Unless he had the cages shipped in on the back of truck, he added silently. Make the night a little more interesting.
"Cover the hole," Wesker ordered. "I would rather not send my men to comb every inch of sewers with incinerators because one of the infected found their way down there."
Good idea. Unfortunately. Chris handed his things to Jill, then bent and hooked his fingers beneath the pitted manhole cover. Muscles bunched and rippled, and with a grunt he rolled the heavy lid back into place. Why is he acting like this, like we're back at STARS? It's messed up. Does he honestly think he's got the right anymore? Or does he just figure it still works so, hey. Screw it. Kept them in line once, didn't it? Why reinvent the wheel?
Chris scowled at the back of the man's head. After Judgment Day had come out in theaters, comparisons had been natural and unavoidable. At some point, the joke had gotten so tired that Wesker had threatened to feed Joseph to a wood chipper, but even the risk of bodily injury hadn't been enough to keep the office from comparing Wesker to the T-1000 Terminator, an ineffably lethal wad of metal Play-Doh programmed to replicate human appearance, sunglasses and all. If only they'd known then how accurate the comparison really was. The T-1000 was an infiltrator unit, after all. It could even pretend to have emotions if the situation called for it.
Unwilling to face the demons, Chris rearmed and hurried to the front of the group, roughly knocking the man's shoulder as he passed. "I'll take point," he muttered.
Wesker said nothing, but Chris could feel that insufferable smirk burning into the back of his head.
Chris had never seen Harvardville so empty. The town was a tourist trap, stuffed to the tits with candle shops and furriers, and corner bistros with slogans like Dam Good Burgers advertised by a stuffed beaver holding a chalkboard. In the summer, the streets were clogged with mountain bikers looking to hit the trails. In the winter, it was skiers and snowboarders looking to hit the slopes. Right now, Chris didn't even see any of the locals. An icy wind sighed up the street, shivering the bundles of faux autumn foliage attached to every storefront. The snow was early this year.
"How safe are we if the T-virus was released into the air?" Jill asked.
"Even if that was the method of release, which I highly doubt, the virus is extremely unstable when exposed to oxygen," Wesker replied. "It decays at a rate of 0.7 every ten minutes, rendering it inviable within the hour. To survive longer, it requires an organic environment – such as that found inside the human body. We are in no danger of inhaling the virus, even if we walked right through the epicenter of its release."
To his disgust, Chris absorbed the information with a kind of morbid curiosity. Knowing that Wesker was connected to some maniacal bio-weapons company bent on world domination was one thing. Hearing him actually talk about those deadly viruses, his peculiar voice low and confident, was another thing entirely. There was a soft, muffled thud from a nearby storefront, but it was only the OPEN sign flapping against the glass. Chris flexed cold fingers around the shotgun. He wondered how many people had been infected and decided the number was relatively low – at least in places not directly exposed to the virus.
"Where did the bombs go off again?" he grunted.
"I don't know... someplace downtown, I think," said Jill.
"Downtown," Chris repeated flatly. "Exactly where we're heading?"
Her silence told Chris everything he needed.
"Oh, well that's just great," he muttered. He patted his jacket, checking for the reassuring protuberance of the shotgun shells he'd tipped into his pocket. Low numbers, Chris – fifteen/twenty zombies max. Not a big deal. You've hosed down bigger shit before.
"So I'm assuming the hospital went down because everybody hurt downtown got trucked there?"
"That's about the gist of it, yeah," said Jill quietly.
Chris turned the situation over in his mind. Even to him, the blood and chaos seemed excessive; this was no accidental outbreak, no spilled petri dish and a long, slow descent into grubby carpets and corpses rotting in the muggy summer heat.
"If the Soviet prick hates you so much, why'd you keep him around? Why not bus him over to Rockfort and milk some combat data out of him?" Chris asked darkly. Even if he was going to be generous regarding Wesker's involvement tonight, there was still no shortage of other things to blame the man for.
"I was aware of his dislike for me, but I was well used to the sentiment," said Wesker. "He made frequent attempts to undercut me even during my time at the Training Facility, therefore I saw no change in the status quo despite my acquisition of Umbrella."
"You fucked up, you mean," Chris observed. "And now he's got you by the balls."
"Chris…" said Jill warningly.
"I don't need a lawyer, Valentine," said Wesker curtly. "Pay attention to your surroundings."
Geezus Christ, thought Chris. They turned left at the end of the boulevard and headed down Fifth Street, past more abandoned shops and dark, gaping alleyways. The glow of fire from the next block painted the world in muddied, bruise-like colors, but did not provide nearly enough light to see by. Every five minutes or so, Chris would sweep the sides of the street with his flashlight, checking for any potential threats. Once, a pair of greasy silver eyes gleamed at him from the bookstore, but it was only the taxidermied owl perched inside the window. Creepy-ass thing.
Fifteen minutes later, they reached the bridge. It was a small thing, barely more than a touristy footpath bowed over the swollen gurgle of the creek. Chris crossed it carefully, straining his ears for anything out of the ordinary, but the only thing that reached him was the icy skitter of the wind. He clapped a hand over his ear and rubbed until it felt raw. Then he did the same on the other side, trying to stimulate the circulation he could rapidly feel himself loosing.
Jill offered him her hat.
He swiftly turned it down.
Negotiations over use of the accessory were about to break down when Chris froze and held up his hand. "Shhhh! Everybody quiet!" he said urgently. Jill snapped her mouth shut. Wesker went stiff, his head cocked – listening into the wind.
"I hear it, too," the blond confirmed.
Really?
Chris tilted his head in an imitation of what Wesker was doing, straining to pick out something, anything above the muted gurgle of water. The sound he'd initially heard, the one that'd immediately caused his bowels to tighten, was gone. Maybe he'd never heard it at all. Dammit, I was so sure-
Wesker slowly unholstered his gun, thumbing the taclight slung beneath the barrel, and Chris heard it again: the deep, slavering growl of a dog. Fear trickled into his chest like cold water. He'd been growled at by dogs before, but there was something special about ones that'd already died, something that set the hairs of his neck on end. He wasn't Wesker, but he'd skimmed enough moldy papers to know that the T-Virus left only the most basic, animalistic portions of the brain active – leading to murderous aggression and hunger. And even a family dog would kill if left to starve.
Chris popped the safety on his shotgun.
"Stay close. Keep moving," Wesker ordered in a low voice.
"No shit, Sherlock," Chris rejoined, but he put his back to the man anyway.
Slowly, they made their way across the street, sweeping every dark corner and murky alcove. Despite the increasing density of businesses and retail lining Santificado Way, the phalanx of trees was thicker than ever. "Keepin' it rustic", as the mayor had said the previous summer. Chris blew his breath out slowly, trying to focus on the cold and not the memory of the July heat gluing his shirt to his back. This was not then. This time, he knew what to expect.
"How close are we?" Wesker asked.
Jill scanned the street in an attempt to find their bearings. "It's at the end of the block," she said confidently, pointing into the gloom. "Half a mile- maybe a little more."
As they moved, Chris caught a glimpse of the Cracker Barrel where Claire had worked before she'd spent the summer in Wesker's little French chateau. Probably wearing a maid outfit and getting weird with "Alex", Chris thought venomously, but he pushed the thought aside before it could surface verbally. The dog growled again. Maybe closer, maybe not. He couldn't tell. They passed beneath a traffic light, suspension cables creaking softly in the wind. The fire was nearer by about half a block and the stench of smoke was heavy in the air.
A shadow detached from the side of a parked car. Chris tracked it with the shotgun, his control of the flashlight limited by the bulky weapon. Red, animal eyes gleamed in the darkness. The dog growled again, and this time Chris was close enough to see its lips curl back from its teeth. Unlike the sleek Dobermans that'd pursued them through the forest, this dog was tall, buff-colored mutt with a terrier's floppy ears. Half the animal had been burned to a crisp, exposing ribs and leaving its wiry fur glued to its side in bloody, matted patches. A neon pink leash dragged from its collar.
"Fuck me," Chris muttered.
The dog took one more careful step, hind legs tensing-
-and Chris pulled the trigger. Chunks of fur and flesh peeled off in a gory spray of blood, blew the tire out and put several holes in the side of car. The dog flopped to the snow without a sound. Chris slowly let the trigger reset. Hasta la vista, baby, he thought grimly.
Nobody moved, and in that moment Chris realized they were all waiting for the exact same thing. Far in the distance, they heard a moan; soft and wet, stirring a nauseating feeling of revulsion deep in the pit of Chris' gut. He held the shotgun a little tighter. "Anyone got eyes on target?" he asked in a low voice.
"Negative," said Wesker.
They moved further down the street, walking as quickly as they dared. The glow of the fire was becoming stronger, the walls dancing with flashes of red and blue light. Eighty feet ahead, Chris could finally start to make out their destination, its blocky architecture reflecting the rhythmic flickers of light. The front windows were completely dark. Shouldn't there be a light on somewhere? I mean, if this is where he's supposed to be hiding out…
"Targets, 2 o'clock," Wesker rumbled as they reached the Dunswick intersection.
Looking in the direction indicated, Chris was greeted to a scene straight out of a nightmare. About fifty feet distance, an explosion had torn the crosswalk in half, blasting the windows out of every storefront. A mangled heap of cars blocked the intersection, half looking as though they'd been caught in the direct blast, the others piled up as though they'd swerved to avoid it. Fire had long since burned them to husks. An ambulance was parked nearby with its bay doors left open. Its light bar was still active, pulsing in utter silence. Here and there, humanoid figures shuffled against the backdrop.
"Jesus. Where's the goddamn cops?" Chris demanded, feeling his hackles rise.
"They hit the police station, too, I think," Jill replied, checking behind them. "Clear this way."
"Move towards the cathedral," Wesker ordered.
Chris wanted to disobey, wanted it so badly, but he'd crossed the point of no return. There was nowhere else for him to go, not unless he wanted to stand in the middle of the street squeezing his peter like a young child left in the middle of the supermarket. Gritting his teeth, Chris backed towards the massive parking lot that fronted the church.
The Steel Cathedral truly was an ugly piece of work. Several stories tall, it was a conglomerate of boxy shapes and deeply folded steel protrusions, giving it the look of something a kid had cobbled together out of Duplo bricks. All of it was built, not of brick or wood, but of steel and glass, lending the entire building an oddly luminescent quality, if not a pleasing one.
Despite the chaos a mere sixty feet way, the parking lot was packed. Thirty or forty cars lay buried beneath the snow. Chris hurried between them, taking the cathedral steps two at a time. Several of the zombies had swiveled in their direction, staring after the scent of living blood. Chris ignored them and moved right side of the door. Jill swept into place at his back, and Wesker took up position on the other side. Just like the good old days, he thought bitterly. A dog howled on Santificado, slavering and revoltingly wet. Chris immediately jerked his head around to look back up the street, then decided he wasn't going to wait around and see.
"Ready?" he grunted, ignoring the twist in his gut.
Wesker nodded and put his hand on the door. A moment later, he flung it open and Chris swiveled inside with the ease of many long hours, shotgun held at the ready. He was met with the thick, indolic scent of jasmine and something else, something antiseptic. The beam of his flashlight swept over veined marble floors and blood-red carpeting, and he could feel the immense space pressing out around him. A huge reception desk stood opposite him, framed on either side by fluttering pinpricks of fire. Candles are burning. Where is everybody?
His guts cramped again, sharper this time. Vertigo seized him and Chris went into a stumble, nearly tripping over his own feet. Half a second later, he'd gone down to one knee, clutching at the sudden agony in his chest. Blood filled the back of his mouth. He retched it up into his hand. What the hell? Not again-
"Chris!"
"Get the door, Valentine."
"But-"
"The door! Find some way to keep it locked."
Through the haze of pain, Chris was aware of Wesker crouching down next to him, filling his lungs with saddle soap and dark sandalwood spice. He felt the man reach for him in the gloom. Chris furiously batted his hand away. "Don't you touch me, you- urk."
Another gout of blood heaved from his lungs and dripped between his fingers. With a frustrated snarl, Wesker seized hold of his chin and pushed his head back, fingers moving to pry open his left eye. Half a second later, Chris' world exploded into a blaze of incandescent fire as Wesker shone the flashlight directly into his face. He let out a pained snarl and socked the bastard in the gut, but the angle was poor and his knuckles folded mushily against the man's abs.
"Imbecile," Wesker growled, shifting his painful grip to Chris's other eye. God, it hurt. Like somebody was driving a needle into his brain.
"Oh, god… what's wrong with his eyes?" Jill's voice had gone thin with horror.
"Second stage growth," Wesker responded cryptically. He let go and Chris doubled forward onto the carpet, blood and spit oozing from the corner of this mouth. Wasn't this what a heart attack was supposed to feel like? Abnormally hot, leather-clad fingers pulled down his collar and pressed something to the side of his neck. His skin pinched, pierced by a flower of needles, and something icy cold spread through the clenched muscles of his neck. What'd you just put in me!?
The thought galvanized his limbs. Chris lurched up and away, pushing himself away from the man until his back collided with something hard. "You-" His voice pulled. He spat out blood and tried again. "You keep that shit away from me!"
"It's a little late for such sentiments, Chris," Wesker told him flatly. He lifted one hand and the light twinkled on an empty helix syringe. "Without the dose I gave you earlier this evening, odds are you'd already be dead- or worse. Or perhaps that is preferable to you. You seem to enjoy wallowing in your misery, after all. I apologize for not having liquor nearby for you to imbibe."
The odd words caught in his brain like a hook. "I- I don't drink!" Chris spat, outraged.
"Of course not. Your toxicology report must have been mistaken."
Jill went to crouch down next to him, a pale blue wraith outside the glow of Maglite.
"He doesn't need a nursemaid, Valentine!" Wesker barked. "Go and check the perimeter."
Jill froze, caught by his tone of command and the ingrained urge to obey it. Then, slowly, she lowered herself all the way to her knees. "No," she said defiantly. "I've had enough of this shit! I want to know what's wrong with him, and I'm not doing anything until you tell me what's going on!"
Wesker gave her a look of cold, apocalyptic fury, the kind that could freeze the caldera of a volcano and make it apologize for even existing in the first place. Chris went to match it with a glare of his own, but the muscles across his chest leapt and contracted, so hard he nearly hurled from the pain. He drew both knees up and hugged himself, trying to curl into something resembling the fetal position while still remaining seated. His neck had gone completely numb at the injection site, deadening his muscles even as it made the ache in his bones redouble.
"How can I help?" Jill asked desperately, reaching for him.
Wesker angled his chin, a tense, unconscious gesture that popped the vertebrae in his neck. "You can't," he said bluntly. "He's been infected with a parasitical organism, an organism which I am certain that Sergei was a carrier of and whose contamination resulted in the accidental death of the second T-103. I don't fully understand the nature of the parasite, but numerous autopsies show that it grows to maturity in the chest cavity and winds tendrils around spinal cord of the host."
Chris felt as though Wesker had kicked the teeth out of his mouth.
"Wait, what? I've got something inside me?!" he yelped. The spasms in his chest redoubled their slippery twisting. Oh, God, I'm dying. I'm going to turn into a zombie, or a pile of ass-rape tentacles! His gorge rose; the scent of jasmine was making him sick. All at once, the Russian's snide comments made perfect sense: How's your man, hnn? Not having any problems? That vill change in a few hours…
"I knew this was your fault!" Chris groaned, unzipping his jacket so he could dig his knuckles into his chest.
Wesker pierced him with a killing look.
"So, he's dying!?" Jill cried. "But the shots you-"
"Are suppressing the growth of the parasite, nothing more," said Wesker. He looked at the empty vial in his hand, then flung it away in disgust. "Before this little fiasco, I intended to move him to Mont St. Michel for surgery before the parasite could develop further. Now we're on an even tighter deadline, and I'm forced to waste precious time arguing with you fucking imbeciles at every turn!"
Oh, he's pissed, thought Chris automatically. It was rare for Wesker to lose his cool, handling most situations with a cold aplomb that Chris had once envied, but when he did finally snap, the first seal of the apocalypse was usually his sudden use of language.
"We don't have the luxury of indulging in these Q&As of yours!" Wesker continued furiously. "So you had better pull on your big-boy pants and start cooperating, because I swear, if you hold me up one more time with your idiocy, I will murder the both of you with my bare hands! Do you understand?"
Silence fell over the church. Outside, the wind howled and pressed against the massive windows – windows that might have been stained glass, if there'd been any sunlight to reveal the patterns. No, he's not pissed, Chris amended. He's freaking out.
The idea crystallized in the back of his head like a tumor. Wesker was insanely difficult to read, but not impossible, not entirely – and this wasn't even the first time he'd heard that sharp tone in the man's voice. Memory pulled like a wounded Achilles heel, and Chris was suddenly drowned by the remembrance of a freezing, brutally clear spring day about 5 years into his tenure at STARS. It was supposed to be a normal training exercise, but the granite had been brittle, and his piton had splintered right through it… no, Wesker, he hadn't put it in improperly! Yes, Barry, he had secured his footing before attempting to put weight on it!
It was easy for Chris to swap the pain in his chest for the pain of a fractured collarbone, easy to exchange the nausea in his gut to the nausea of having plummeted thirty feet down the mountainside and left to twirl like a worm on the end of a line.
"Chris!"
"Jesus Christ! Chris! Chris, can you hear me?!"
"I'm coming down to you!"
"Stay right where you are, Burton! All of you stay! Frost, secure yourself before he pulls you off the fucking mountain with him!"
The words had been just about as distant as they were now, until Chris had finally regained enough sense to realize that Wesker had belayed his way back down thirty feet of crumbling granite and had pinned him to the mountain with his own body, boots placed wide on narrow, treacherous toeholds.
"Redfield. Chris– goddammit, wake up."
"Sir… my shoulder…"
"Deal with it. Do you see that ledge about fifteen feet below? We're going to reach that, understand? Do you understand?"
Chris stared groggily up at Wesker, trying to reconcile the memory with the man in front of him now, because in that moment it occurred to him that Wesker actually still cared. That's insane. He doesn't care. He never did. It was all just an act so we didn't notice him crawling deeper into our ass!
Wesker reached into the inner pocket of his coat, then brusquely lobbed a handkerchief into Chris' lap. Jill picked it up and moved as if to wipe the blood from his mouth. Chris quickly snatched it away, his cheeks coloring furiously, and spat the disgusting copper film from his tongue – under his own power, thanks very much. Jill looked up at Wesker.
"How much time does he got?" she asked tightly.
"Four, maybe five hours," Wesker rumbled. "After that, the parasite will have grown too large to make traditional surgery a viable option – not without immense risk."
Chris let his head fall back against the desk, staring at the bloody handkerchief. So that's where I would have ended up if I'd gotten on the evac chopper, lying on a gurney with my chest sliced open. Ready to be shipped off to a Tyrant program somewhere. The thought was savage and bitter, but even as it occurred to him, he realized that he didn't quite buy it. There were still too many questions, too many things that didn't click – and no time to ferret out which was which. He glowered at Wesker. Why the hell didn't you just explain all of this earlier?
That's what he wanted to accuse, but somehow, he already knew the answer: Because it wouldn't have made any difference. But you told Claire, didn't you? Back there in the hospital when she got upset… when the two of you were…
He was too afraid to finish the thought, and so he turned his attention to the room instead. Nobody had come to investigate the sound of their voices. Except for the candles flicking on the desk, the church gave every indication of being empty, but Chris wasn't believing it for a second. Arklay had seemed abandoned, too – right up until it wasn't. He took a deep breath, then forced his shaky legs beneath him. Jill urgently tried to grab his arm.
"Chris, no. Let's just rest a minute, okay?"
"Looks like I don't have a minute," said Chris gruffly. "And neither does Claire."
Jill opened her mouth to protest.
"I'm okay," said Chris, even though he felt anything but. He bent and scooped the shotgun off the floor, stuffing the blood-spattered handkerchief into his pocket. "Let's go."
He advanced into the perilous dark and waited for the others to follow, their footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. Steel-girded pillars as thick as trees trunks reached soared to dizzying heights above their heads. Chris looked up with the flashlight and saw a massive iron chandelier hanging from chains thick enough to moor a boat. To his surprise it was ringed by dozens of candles in frosted glass cups, groveling so low as not to throw any light. Chris wondered if it were Sunday, then wondered if it even mattered. The stacks of leaflets and glossy handouts wallpapering his front door were cryptic at best, but he'd skimmed them enough to gather that the Church of Los Illuminados didn't exactly subscribe to classical notions of worship. In fact, he wasn't even sure what they worshiped at all. Could have been Barney the Dinosaur, for all he knew.
They reached the perimeter of the room unmolested and Chris carefully panned the flashlight back and forth. To his disappointment, he saw numerous doors and porticoes – many more than he'd anticipated – and knew they were going to have to check each and every one. There was no need to stop and debate; STARS had trained incessantly on how to clear a building, hoofing it up and the down the aging passageways of the RPD before the rest of the precinct had even gotten in.
Chris put his hand on the doorknob of the first room and swept it open, leading with the barrel of his gun. The room beyond was crammed with metal shelves and a rack of blood-red cassocks. "Closet," he grunted, leaving the door ajar.
The silence inside the building was deafening, but Chris couldn't shake the familiar prickle of dread on the back of his neck. I swear to God, I see one empty socket begging for a crest, or find one stupid keyhole… He swept one of the more ornate porticoes open and was greeted by a long, dimly lit hallway. Dozens of outside-facing windows lined the left side of the passage, allowing murky orange firelight to filter in.
They stepped into the hall, moving at a steady clip, but not nearly fast enough for Chris. He struggled to stomp out the impulse to run, as Wesker's little speech about "deadlines" had instilled an uncomfortable feeling of urgency in his gut. How much time did he have before more than just blood came pouring out of his mouth? And what about Claire? Chris tried to remind himself that his baby sister wasn't alone out there, but if Wesker didn't have complete confidence in her safety, then how in the hell was he supposed to? It wasn't lost on him that the man on the phone hadn't called back with news, and that couldn't possibly be a good sign.
"This is taking too long," he growled. "We're going to be here all night!"
The hall was carpeted in the same deep crimson as the lobby and lined with dark display cabinets containing shards of pottery, crumbling fossils and other obscure curios. Chris jumped when his own shadow swept across the cabinet, startling him more than he'd like to admit. A heavy door stood at the end of the passage. It's probably just another offic-
The window behind them exploded inward with a deafening crash. Chris leapt and whirled, bringing the shotgun up to bear as a pale shape leapt in onto the carpet. He had the briefest glimpse of buff-colored fur and a mutt's endearing face, the vault of its skull opened by a shotgun blast, before the animal swiveled towards them with a snarl. It twitched and arched, as if trying to rid itself of something that had latched onto its fur-
-before a bloody seam burst open along its spine and dark, sinuous growths exploded out to squirm.