Chapter Four

The Leak

Takes place while Sirius is meeting with Amelia Bones at the Ministry…

Spencer Estate, Raccoon Forest, New Jersey

They were finally able to stop running. Sweat was pouring down Chris, Jill and Barry's faces as their chests heaved while they tried to catch their breath. They had lost Wesker in the forest, and Vickers had abandoned them. The door creaked open and the trio jerked their weapons up, aiming towards the sound, only to be met with the sight of a disheveled Rebecca Chambers, looking simultaneously relieved and terrified. Relieved that there were other S.T.A.R.S. members that had found her; terrified at the guns pointed at her youthful face.

Chris, as the second in command after Wesker, took charge immediately, lowering his weapon and gesturing for the others to do the same. "Rebecca, glad you're safe. Where is the rest of Bravo Team?"

Rebecca's answer caused the bottom to drop out of the Alpha's stomachs. "Dead. Zombies got us just after we landed." The young girl looked as though she were barely holding herself together. The Alpha's felt their respect for her rise as they realized she wasn't breaking down. She looked haunted, and would no doubt have nightmares for months, if not years, to come, but she wasn't breaking down.

"All right, so we know there are, for lack of a better term, Zombies walking around in Raccoon." Jill said, "We can also assume that the … creatures… are the ones responsible for the rash of disappearances that have happened as of late. The question is, where did they come from and why?"

Barry spoke, his deep voice troubled, "Well, Chris suspects Umbrella involvement. Being a pharmaceutical company, they certainly are the prime suspect. It's not as though the average person has the know-how or chemical availability to turn human beings into the walking dead."

Rebecca nodded, "I would agree that it's Umbrella. Their lab is supposed to be somewhere near here isn't it? And wasn't this mansion commissioned and built by one of the founding members of Umbrella?" Chris nodded his agreement, his brow furrowed.

"So," Chris began, "the question becomes: What do we do now? We have a few options. First, we can head back out into the Forest, and try to make it back to Raccoon, hopefully finding Wesker in the process, and ignore what we know. I'm not too keen on that option, to be honest with you three. Our second option is that we can look around, try to gather whatever evidence we can before heading back. See what we're up against. Whatever the majority decides here, we'll do."

No one even hesitated before agreeing that they would stay at the Mansion and try to see what they could find. They were hoping they could find out what happened, as they all doubted Umbrella let the virus loose in Raccoon intentionally. Not if it was this hard to control. So, with that decided, Barry and Jill went one way, to search downstairs, and Chris went with Rebecca to the second floor.

It was eerie. The Mansion still had electricity, which said that the place wasn't as abandoned as they had been led to believe. Though quite a few of the bulbs weren't working properly, causing the light to flicker and dim. The carpet beneath their feet was expensive, but thick with dust, causing the echoes of their footsteps to sound oddly muffled. The smell of rotten and decaying flesh hung in the air, reminding them of what they were looking for. Rebecca and Chris were tense as they walked through the hallway, keeping their weapons raised. The silence seemed to scream around them.

There was a creak from around the corner. It sounded like someone stepping on a loose floorboard. Then they heard it. It was a sound Rebecca had heard before Bravo team had been massacred, the slow shuffling and moaning that the zombies brought with them.

The duo froze, raising their weapons higher and aiming where they thought the creature would be appearing. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as they waited. After what seemed like an eternity, the thing shuffled its way into view.

The flesh was torn open with ribbons of muscle were gleaming bright red in the flickering light. As the Zombie made its way towards them, they could see flesh sloughing off the bones with a wet sound. The Zombie didn't appear to notice, only adding to the horror of what they were witnessing. It stepped towards them, its feet not leaving the carpet, dragging as it reached up a sickly, rotting arm topped with fleshless fingers and reached towards them, a pitiful, soulless moan escaping from the desiccated lips.

Chris and Rebecca stood in a state fascinated horror as the Zombie shuffled its way closer to them, agonizingly slow, as their brains struggled to realize that this was not a hallucination, that this was not a dream, that they would not be waking up from a nightmare, drenched in cold sweat and tangles in their sheets, that this was real, there was Zombie coming towards them. A B-rated flick, flesh eating, rise from the grave because Hell got full Zombie.

Rebecca recovered first and fired a round into the creature's chest. It kept coming. She fired again, Chris firing with her, both rounds pumping into the creature's chest to no avail. It was relentless in its death shuffle. Finally, Chris fired and hit the Zombie in the head, and it hit the dust infested carpet with a wet, boneless sound. Finally no longer undead, just dead.

"Jesus Christ!" Chris exclaimed softly. "Zombies. I know we saw them in the forest, and you said Bravo Team was wiped out, but fucking Zombies! Jesus... "

Rebecca, meanwhile, was examining the body, being careful not to touch it. "Chris… This…guy…he's wearing a lab coat. It has the Umbrella logo on it." Her voice was heavy with regret as she spoke. He was a Zombie, sure, but he had once been a person, and he hadn't deserved this type of fate. "I guess this confirms the theory that Umbrella was involved, right?"

Chris nodded grimly, his mouth set in a tight line. "Yes, it does. I don't think we'll find anything of use up here. If that guy got up here from the Labs, then the labs are probably downstairs where no one would come across them by accident. We should head down there and back up Barry and Jill."

Rebecca nodded. "Right, let's go then. I don't think we should leave them alone down there for long."

Meanwhile, Barry and Jill were having a much harder time of it. They were I the lower levels of the Mansion, where it stopped being the Mansion and started being the Umbrella Labs. Hordes of Zombies had come at them when they opened the door, their cloying, rotting scent invading their senses, gagging them, distracting them. They fired and fired, pumping round after round into the heads of the undead, but they kept coming. It was endless, and so they turned and ran. Thankfully the Zombies were slow. As they ran, they collided with Chris and Rebecca. They stopped to help them up before yelling for them to run and hurrying back up the stairs.

"Wait!" yelled Rebecca, "We might as well see if they're capable of climbing stairs. That could give is an idea of how long it takes before becoming infected with whatever did this to turn into a Zombie."

The others were obviously reluctant, but waited anyway. The Zombies came pouring out of the door, there were dozens of them, and they were all dressed in clothing that had the Umbrella logo on it somewhere, a sort of macabre reminder of who created this real life horror film. As if by radar, they made their way towards the stairs…

And stopped. They Shuffled and moaned in hungry frustration, but couldn't climb the stairs. Rebecca nodded once, firmly, but still looked mildly upset about something. "Guys… Did you come across any Zombies before you opened the door?" Barry and Jill shook their heads in the negative.

Rebecca bit her lip before continuing. "Well, they obviously can't climb stairs, and we can assume they can't use doors either… and Chris and I ran across one Zombie up here," She gestured back down the hallway, "..So obviously whatever turns them into Zombies isn't instantaneous. It takes a while. We're going to need to make our way down into the labs to find any files we can on it."

Chris took over, "It seems like they move slow. But they can track us, based on something, so I don't think we should try and sneak by them. If we do, we could find our only way out blocked on our return. We should assume that the lab is set up with that door being the only way in and out of the area."

The others nodded, and Jill spoke, "We have a fair amount of ammo. And they can't get to us while we're up here, so should we sho-"

Her words were cut off by a strangled, disgusted scream. They turned and looked quickly, in time to see a Zombie that had approached silently grabbing for Rebecca, its rotting fingers scraping over her shoulder as it tried in vain to grab her and bring her living flesh closer to its dead gaping maw. Her hand was pressed against its neck, holding it off as revulsion played across her features. Chris, who was closest, aimed at the creatures head, yelling, "Rebecca, turn your head!"

As Chris fired, Rebecca did as told, closing her eyes and mouth tightly to prevent any spray from the gunshot from infecting her. The Zombie fell backwards, thankfully, and hit the floor with a wet thump. Rebecca immediately turned and retched, the meager amount of food in her stomach decorating the carpet with a spatter, while Jill hurried forward and dumped a liquid that smelled strongly of ammonia over her hands. At Rebecca's questioning glance, Jill explained, "There was a sealed bottle of bleach in the corner there. Do you think it will be enough?"

Taking a shaky breath to get her bearings, Rebecca nodded. "It should be. Bleach kills almost everything. As long as I don't rub my eyes or put my fingers in my mouth until I can get a clean scrub in. Let's get these things down so we can do this and get out of here. The longer we stand here, the easier we are to find."
The others nodded, as shaken by the incident as Rebecca was. Between the four of them, they quickly took down the dozens of Zombies that were in the room and made their way downstairs and entered the lab.

Their footsteps sounded unnaturally loud on the metal floor. Blood splattered the walls and ceiling, evidence of the struggle that had occurred. By common agreement, they peered in the windows of the rooms they passed, seeing that nearly all of them contained an infected of some form. Eventually, they found an empty lab room, with a computer, and Jill picked the lock to get them inside, closing the door firmly behind them.

They double checked the room and found it clear of any infected, and so Rebecca sat at the computer. "Here it is I found the files! Let's print them out so we can get out of here." As the files were printing, an alarm began to sound. A cold mechanical voice sounded over a hidden loudspeaker.

"The self destruct sequence had been activated. All employees have five minutes to evacuate the premises and maintain a safe distance of 500 feet. The self destruct sequence has been activated…"

As the files printed, Rebecca looked at Barry, Chris and Jill, and knew she was thinking the same thing they were.

Shit.

Lower Level, Umbrella Lab.

Albert Wesker hit the Self Destruct Button, watching Alpha Team and the remaining Bravo on the monitor as they waited for the files to print out, knowing they wouldn't make it to the minimum safe distance before everything blew and all the evidence was lost.

But he would. He had a copter waiting, and he would take it to Umbrella headquarters and give his report on how easily the Subjects were defeated by soldiers. He would point out their weaknesses and strengths and then he would collect his pay and move to a new area, where he was unknown, with a new identity. Those were his last thoughts before the explosion and darkness claimed him.

Lab Room

The files had finally finished printing as the robotic voice said, "Two minutes to achieve minimum safe distance of 500 feet." Not pausing to talk, the foursome fled the room, barely seeing the Zombies that had come from the newly opened rooms as they shot them in the head. They ran faster than they ever had before, even faster than they had in the Forest, at the beginning of the hellish nightmare. They burst through the front door of the Mansion and into the Forest. It had started to rain and Rebecca jammed the files into her jacket to keep them safe. They ran and felt the earth trembling beneath them as the labs beneath finally detonated and blew up, throwing them violently forward. It was over quickly, and they had gotten out. They turned and looked back at the flaming Mansion, disheartened. They had the files, but all the physical evidence they had supporting it was gone.

Rebecca sighed. "They must have built in explosives, in case something like this ever happened. They covered their tracks."

Jill voiced the question they were all thinking, "Do you think it's over now?"

Chris shook his head as they all turned as one and headed back to Raccoon on foot. "No. We've just seen the beginning."

AN: Well, there it is, another chapter. Hogwarts next. Let me know what you guys think. :)