Chapter 13:
Breathing Room
(MAT)
Mat flicked his wrist, causing the magnum's cylinder to swing out. Another flick of his wrist, and the empty .44 casings flew out, clattering to the stone floor of the precinct. Mat didn't look up as he fished more .44 cartridges out of the blue colored box in his pocket and began to load them, one at a time, into the weapon.
He was breaking all kinds of training rules by burying his head in the weapon while he reloaded it, but at this point, Mat figured he could afford to let some of his training slide just a little. His sides burned, his whole body ached, and he was very tired. He just wanted to find some place to die.
And he was having a hard time looking at Jill.
She thought she could just show up at the station, and everything would be okay? How many people were dead because she hadn't been here in the first place? Mat shook his head, slightly because of the aching in his temples, at the thought of what might've been, had Jill Valentine found it in herself to be at the station when she'd been needed most.
But no, Jill had been off doing something else. Mat flicked his eyes at her for a moment. The way she was dressed…Mat hoped she'd at least bee having a good time, wherever she'd been. It certainly looked that way.
Mat slid the last round into the magnum, then flicked the cylinder back into place. Then, with a practiced motion, he spun the weapon in the palm of his hand, offering the grip to Jill. "Here" he said quietly. "I think Barry would want you to have this."
Jill looked at the magnum, then at Mat. "Are you sure-?"
Mat nodded. "Yeah. I'm gonna see what else is left here. Maybe help myself to something a little more manageable than this monster. God, I miss my nine mil. Between this and the .45…" He grimaced, remembering he was chatting idly with Jill, and he was supposed to be mad at her. "Well, are you coming, or were you planning on just standing there all day?"
Jill looked taken aback by his attitude, as if she wasn't used to him, or anyone, talking to her that way. Too bad Mat thought coldly.
"What's the game plan?" she asked, shoving the Silver Serpent into the waist band of her skirt, before unslinging her cut down Benelli. "Do you have a specific objective you're wanting to accomplish here? Know where there's some ammo hidden away? Where other survivors might-?"
ARRRRRRRGH!
"Holy fuck!" they both exclaimed, within seconds of each other, both jumping back as something large and heavy slammed into the doors, causing them to shake.
"I uh…think we should adjourn this little meeting" Mat stammered, feeling his eyes widen to truly humongous proportions on his face.
"Seconded" gasped Jill, as they both hurried away from the still rattling door.
They found themselves in a small waiting room. It was here Mat had picked up the Umbrella recruiting poster a few weeks earlier, and here he'd seen the WANTED poster for Billy Coen. He wondered briefly about the former Marine, and Rebecca, hoping they were both safe.
The room was empty, aside from an old wooden bench lining one wall, and a large metal chest the purpose of which Mat couldn't begin to grasp. Mat unslung his P90, clicking the fire selector switch to 1. He turned to Jill, keeping the weapon close to his body, his upper torso hunched over the weapon. "Point?" he asked quietly.
Jill nodded, readying the shotgun. "I'll watch our backs."
They made their way into the next narrow hallway. Mat remembered running into Brad here almost a month ago, remembered getting briefed in on the STARS mission back in July, remembered chasing Michael Guthrie down this hallway after he'd murdered poor Heather. The RPD had moved her down to the morgue; Guthrie had simply gotten thrown outside, but he'd apparently been infected when Rebecca canceled his ticket. None of the zombies would touch the bastard; so far as Mat knew, he was still there.
Mat led Jill to the stairs near the dark room, motioning to their right. "We need to clear the watch room before moving upstairs" he told her.
Jill nodded. "I'm good if you are."
The first thing to hit Mat when he swung the door to the records room open was the smell. It stank worse than anything else he'd ever experienced in his entire life; coming from someone who once spent the night in a zombie infested mansion, that was saying something.
The first zombie turned to face him, an absurdly obese police sergeant Mat had seen maybe half a dozen times. Fisher, or Foster, or something like that. The big man let out an honest to God belch, stretching his sausage-like fingers toward Mat as he lurched forward.
Mat brought the P90 up, his finger slipping over the weapon's over large trigger, gently pressing it. A single bullet leapt from the SMG's muzzle, the gun's loud report sounding in his ears. Then the bullet put a hole .224's of an inch in the infected officer's head, and he fell on his back, a snarl still on his already revolting face.
Mat heard a noise to his right, and swung in that direction, silently cursing himself for not checking his corners, grateful the other two infected hadn't been closer to the door.
He fired too quickly, too, four shots, two of which drove into the wall, the other two popping the undead civilians' heads like water balloons full of chili, bloody brain matter splashing across the gun metal grey containers. Both collapsed, one managing to knock over a stack of slides, the big metal wheels clanging together on their way down.
Mat made a face, looking back to make sure Jill was still following him, then turned to move into the watch office.
This one had the half-finished trappings of a party strewn everywhere: party hats sitting in disordered stacks, several two liter bottles of soda on a far table, two rather sad looking Mylar balloons anxiously scraping the ceiling, as if they wanted to get away. A banner half-hung from a rafter, one end trailing the ground.
WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY, LEON
That's right Mat remembered. They're sending that guy up from Boulder today. He couldn't remembered the guy's last name. It was a dead President, he knew that much. Truman or Hoover or some such thing. It wasn't important now. Looks like your party's been canceled, buddy he thought grimly.
"Oh my God!" Jill exclaimed, stepping past Mat and rushing over to the only person in the room, a badly wounded man leaning up against the wall, his chest rising and falling from his ragged breathing. He had a single, nasty slash across his chest; his bare arms were covered in numerous bites. Mat knew it was a testament to the man's fortitude that he was still human, and not shuffling around mindlessly like everyone else.
"Marvin!" Jill exclaimed, shaking his arm, trying to rouse him. She looked over at Mat. "What happened?"
"I don't know" Mat said, stepping toward her, his weapon held easily in front of him. "We went looking for him when we left, but by the time we found him, he was already infected. I'm amazed he's still alive after all this time." He shook his head, then raised the P90 to his shoulder and fired a single bullet, the high velocity round smashing through Marvin's skull, the wall behind it, and finally driving partially into the floor.
Jill looked from Marvin to Mat. "Guess he won't be waking up" she said lamely.
Mat shook his head. "No. Not like that, anyway. I…hope I don't have to do that again, all the same." He shrugged, then gestured over his shoulder with the SMG. "C'mon."
(JILL)
"I knew you guys had some good stuff up here" Mat said, eying the contents of the STARS weapons locker. Fortunately, the STARS office had been locked, so the RPD hadn't moved any of these weapons around. Even better, Jill still had her ID card, meaning she could get inside her old office.
The weapons locker held a motley assortment of weapons: two Benelli M3 shotguns, alongside an M110, an M79 grenade launcher, a Colt Python .357 magnum, and another weapon Jill didn't recognize. It looked like a glorified piece of PVC pipe, with extra tubes lining it. Mat reached in and took that weapon, cracking it open gently and expertly, expecting the breech and chamber.
"Hmm…" he muttered. "Not loaded. Must be shells around here someplace, though, otherwise why would it still be here?"
"What is that?" Jill asked, pointing to the weapon.
Mat smiled a little sheepishly. "This is the reason I made sergeant so quickly out of the Academy. Kenneth Dooley called it the HKp, although I can never remember the reason why. It's a custom-made grenade launcher he and Barry designed for the Special Weapons and Tactics units when we were all in SWAT together. I got to help design a new type of breaching round, using acid to melt doors. There are a bunch of test shells, but I could never get the composition just right. Kenneth was going to bring Rebecca in on the project after she joined STARS, but we never got the chance to finish." He paused, aiming down the weapon's adjustable sights. "The acid shells were too lethal for police use, but it can fire standard 40mm shells just fine. I think I'll take this with me."
Jill looked at him in confusion. "I thought you wanted an easier weapon to control?"
Mat shook his head. "A little, but this has more than enough versatility to make up for that. Think about: if I can get my hands on the rounds, this baby is basically a Swiss Army knife. There won't be a situation I'm not equipped for." He clipped a strap to two built-in mounts, cracking the weapon open and loading in a shell he found on the bottom shelf, putting three more in his pocket. "These things are heavy, but I imagine they'll be useful."
"Why does it only chamber one round?" Jill asked. "Why didn't you give it a bigger internal magazine, like the Arwen or the MGL?"
Mat shrugged. "Don't look at me; Barry designed the thing. I thing it has something to do with the back blast from the acid shells corroding the other rounds in the chamber. This has been built specifically to handle shells like that, although we did reinforce a couple of the M79s to use the acid rounds too. The things just got too heavy with all the extra plating we had to give them; this is much lighter and has a stock."
Jill outfitted herself with one of Barry's shoulder holster rigs, a double one with a holster specifically designed for the Silver Serpent. The other holster was made to fit Barry's custom Beretta 96 with its built-in compensator, but Jill put Brad's Samurai Edge in it instead. Her whole ensemble was the result of some admittedly bad luck, but Jill was learning to make the most of it.
Mat was looking to the right, at a small stack of rather squished cardboard boxes sitting next to a file cabinet. Hanging from a wooden hook above them was a small, white shoulder bag, a big red and white cross on the front.
"Mat?" Jill asked. "You still with us?"
Mat started, then nodded slowly. "Yeah. I was just…thinking about something."
Jill didn't know what to say to him. She hadn't seen Rebecca since that night at Emmy's, and was honestly a bit irritated at the STARS rookie for not taking a more active part in their little resistance movement (that Mat might feel the same way about Jill never crossed her mind).
"Mat…" she said again. They needed to get a move on; there was no telling when that thing might break through into the station, and Jill would rather not fight it indoors if she had to.
Mat reached out and took the bag off its hook, running his thumb over the clothe for a moment. Then he reached inside and pulled out two off white aerosol cans, smiling faintly. "Rebecca picked these up in the Mansion. I guess she never remembered to take them out when we got back. I'll bet she forgot she had them." He shoved one can into his back pack, tossing Jill the other. "All yours."
Jill rolled the can around in the palm of her hand for a minute. She remembered this stuff; the spray-on first aid chemical that had first put Umbrella, and with it, Raccoon City, on the map back in the mid seventies. She'd never used it herself (the stuff went for $50 for a much smaller can than what she held right now), but it was supposed to be the best medical breakthrough since the disposable bandage. Jill unzipped her side pack and managed to squeeze the can inside. "You ready to go?"
Mat nodded. "Yeah…" He took a last look around the room, a look that seemed to encompass the entire precinct. "Until we come back" he said after a moment. "Until we retake the city, anyway. Until then, I just want to get out of here."
Jill was a bit surprised. It had never occurred to her that they'd have to come back into the city and clean it out. She'd just been concentrating on getting as far as humanly possible from Raccoon City as she could; that Mat was anticipating the city's liberation said a lot about their outlook on life…or their differing degrees of realism.
Jill wasn't especially interested in having that discussion with Mat at the moment.
"Let's go" was all she said.
They didn't say anything as they made their way back down the hallway, walking along the wooden panels in silence. Jill cradled the M3, Mat having slung the grenade launcher across his back in favor of the more familiar SMG. Jill's mind was elsewhere, already planning their next move, when she heard a crash from the floor below.
"What the hell?" she exclaimed, casting a glance at Mat. "What was that?"
Mat shook his head. "Nothing good" he replied. "Come on!"
They sprinted the last fifteen feet, rounding the corner and coming to the stairs. Down below they could see a brand new hole in the wall of the precinct, early morning sunshine coming in rather incongruously on the drab and blood stained floor.
And standing in the middle of the rubble, massive shoulders heaving, was the Tyrant, a long metal tube held in one hand. Its soulless eyes jerked up, seemingly focusing on her and Mat. "STARS" it growled, raising the tube to its shoulder.
Mat let out a startled laugh, shaking his head in mild hysteria.
"Oh God" Jill breathed, her eyes widening. "Is that a-?"
"It's just not fair" Mat said, his voice slightly high.
There was a whoosh and an honest to God rocket streaked out of the launcher on the monster's shoulder, heading straight toward them. Jill shoved Mat to the right and dove in the opposite direction, the rocket slamming into the wall and blasting another hole. The Tyrant growled angrily and pumped the weapon in the air. There was an audible clank as a new shell slid into place.
"Shit" Jill muttered, scrambling up. A few feet away Mat did the same.
"Now what?" he asked, the whites of his eyes clearly visible in his terror.
"Split up!" Jill replied, dashing for the stairs. She heard Mat call out in confusion behind her, but couldn't spare him a backward glance. She ran full tilt at the monster, who actually seemed to smile, one massive hand opening and reaching down for her…
Jill ducked at the last second, using her momentum to slide across the hardwood floor. The monster spun around surprisingly fast, but Jill was already on her feet, sprinting toward the records room. She kicked the door open, hearing it crack on its hinges, along with the heavy clump of the monster's boots and frantic sound of her own breathing. Jill kicked in the door to the main watch room just as the monster crashed into the records room behind her. She hurried on, hoping to but as many obstacles as she could between herself and the creature.
In theory, that was a good plan. In practice…
Jill realized she'd made a fundamental error in judgment, a potentially fatal miscalculation. She'd assumed the monster would try to go around the big desk in the center of the room. In 20/20 hindsight, Jill realized that was a clearly stupid call to make, since the monster had clearly shown no hesitation about blowing holes in things with its rocket launcher.
In fact, it was the rocket launcher that first clued Jill into her error, when a round slammed into what had once been Marvin Branahh's office, blasting it to pieces, vaporizing the former RPD captain's body, and flinging Jill to the ground, showering her in debris.
Jill lay on her back, shaking her head as she tried to clear it, her whole body on fire, fresh cuts on her bare arms and legs stinging, her ears ringing from the close proximity of the explosion. Slowly her vision cleared enough for her eyes to focus on the Tyrant as it smashed through the desk and charged forward. Jill tried to scramble away like a crab, but the monster was just too fast. With one massive hand it simply reached down and snatched her up off the ground, squeezing her throat in its tightening fist. Jill gagged, her eyes bulging, her legs kicking frantically as she was suddenly lifted off the ground. Her vision went red, her lungs burning, but she saw Tyrant's other hand approaching her face, the stinger in its palm ready to plunge through her brain-
Something slammed into the monster, causing it to roar in pain and spin around, the noises oddly muffled as Jill's ears fought to recover. She dropped to the ground at the monster's feet as it whirled to meet the new threat, only for a second impact to slam into its face. The monster bellowed in rage, lowering its shoulders and rushing forward, barreling toward a figure at the other end of the room, one that stood its ground until the last second.
Mat (Jill's eyes had focused enough for her to see who it was) fired again, another of his special acid shells slamming into the Tyrant's face. The monster snarled in blind rage, intent on smashing Mat into the wall, but Mat sidestepped just before impact, and the Tyrant slammed its head into the wall. Drywall buckled, cracked, and collapsed, burying the monster in a small shower of white powder. It lay there, unmoving.
Mat slid the barrel on the grenade launcher forward, discarding the spent shell, before loading in a fresh one and locking it back in place. Then he headed for Jill, stumbling a little, one hand clutching his side, a grimace on his face.
Jill sat where she'd fallen, still trying to catch her breath. Her ears hadn't quite recovered enough for her to hear normal-level human speech, because Mat had to shout three times before she understood he was asking if she was okay.
"Yeah" she said, standing shakily.
"Come on!" Mat shouted for her benefit, motioning to the door behind them. He said something else too, not loudly enough for her to hear, but it looked like "…he gets up again."
Outside, a few dozen zombies had stumbled toward the precinct, apparently curious about all the gunfire. Mat nonchalantly put down four with the Colt, not even pausing as he shot a path through the rabble of undead, a hideous mosh pit that threatened to close in. Jill followed, her ears still ringing a little, her shotgun head close. Finally, they reached a street corner about a block away. There Mat turned to face her.
He was still speaking too quietly for her to hear him, but she could more or less figure out what he was saying by reading his lips.
"See what I mean?" he mouthed, gesturing toward the station. "That thing is like a frigging bloodhound. It's going to keep coming after us no matter where we are. We have to split up."
"Where are you going to go?" Jill asking, the act of opening her mouth relieving some of the pressure in her ears, if only a little.
Mat shook his head. "Anywhere that isn't here." He paused, thinking for a minute. "There's an extraction point I heard about at the Arklay Lookout. If I'm going to find Rebecca, I should probably start by looking there." He started to walk away.
"Why?" Jill asked. "Mat, she abandoned us. How do you even know she's still in Raccoon City? Together, we have a chance to kill that thing; way better than we could alone." Mat ignored her, still walking away. "What do you owe her, anyway?"
Mat whirled around, anger on his face. "What do I owe her?" he shouted. "Jill, what do I owe you? You show up here after everything's already gone down and everyone's already fucking dead and expect it all to be okay? Rebecca came back, Jill. She was here for everything. Rebecca, with almost no combat training and zero experience, stayed around and fought. Where were you, Jill?" His fists were clenched, and trembling. "Where the fuck were you?"
Jill stared at him for a minute, comprehension slowly dawning. He blames me for all this she realized. "Mat, I'm sorry about what happened. About everything. But please, I'm asking for your help here. I…we have to do this together. Okay?"
Mat shook his head, sending her a look more full of disgust than any words he could ever speak. But the look wasn't enough, because he added one sentence. "Fuck you, Jill." And walked away.