Okay everyone, I'm back after my short break with the rest of this chapter. Hopefully you all didn't mind me taking some time off, but I really needed to recharge my batteries. Expect a new chapter or two each week like usual, I think I should be able to finish this pretty quick. There are only about eight chapters left.

Chapter 166

Hearing the sounds of gunshots, Ada went over to the window and glanced outside. The window faced an alley behind the police station, so she couldn't see anything. But she heard the gunshots, and then flinched when the sound of a horrifying scream reached her ears. She didn't think a human being could make a sound like that.

At the moment, Ada was stuck on the second floor. She wanted to go downstairs to the main floor, where she suspected the armory probably was, but all the hallways that led to staircases seemed to be full of the undead. She had been forced to retreat back in the direction she had come from, and was now wasting valuable time looking through offices for spare weapons.

Getting out of the city was going to be a problem, she realized, perhaps far too late. It had been a mistake to come to the police station at all, she knew. She should have focused her energy on finding another vehicle and getting out as fast as possible. She wasn't trapped in the police station, not yet anyway, but she suspected that every second she wasted there would make it ten times harder when she finally decided to escape.

But escape to what? She had failed in her mission, rather spectacularly. Her employees rarely tolerated such astounding failure, even in situations like this, so she doubted she would have much to escape back to. She had been sent to Raccoon City to meet up with a man from Umbrella who had information about their secretive experiments, and now it seemed those experiments had taken over the entire city. It was hardly a successful mission.

Ada stood by the window for a little longer, wondering what exactly she was going to do next, when she heard another inhuman scream coming from outside. She didn't know what could possibly make such a terrible sound, but she was glad it was out there and not inside with her. It was hard enough just facing zombies, she didn't need anything else showing up.

She walked back out into the empty hallway, standing uncertainly, looking in each direction. The hall was lined with small offices and supply rooms, the whole police station seemed to be a never-ending maze of tiny rooms and twisting hallways. She would need a map to find her way around at all.

She walked off, Beretta in hand, although she knew that there were no zombies in the immediate vicinity. The hallways were deserted and silent for the time being, although Ada had heard other muffled gunshots occasionally from inside. That meant there were other survivors in the building.

The last thing Ada wanted was to run into other survivors. Her mission was already a disaster, she didn't need to compromise her cover on top of that. If she ran into more survivors, and they managed to escape the city, they would surely mention her whenever they talked to the authorities. And then authorities would try to figure out who she was, but Ada Wong and Alice Cooper were both aliases. Ada didn't want anyone knowing she was even in the city.

The other problem was that she didn't have the time, or even the patience, to try to help anyone. If she ran into other survivors, they might want to rely on her to keep them safe. And Ada had no interest in anyone's safety but her own.

It put her in an inconvenient position. She was simultaneously trying to avoid any contact with both the living and the undead.

She walked down the long hallway, looking around for a map of the building. Usually, large buildings like this displayed maps showing the fire exits, but she couldn't seem to find one. She stopped when she saw the label "Weapon Storage" on a nearby door.

She tried the doorknob, and to her surprise it was unlocked. She pushed and let the door swing open, aiming her gun through the doorway. The room had no windows, and was lined with filing cabinets and had a small desk right in the middle of the room. Ada leaned inside the doorway and saw a caged-off area from the rest of the room, with a large safe behind it. She smiled at her good luck and walked into the room.

As she walked inside, the door moved and began to swing shut behind her. She turned to glance at it and screamed suddenly, lifting her arm up as a zombie dove at her from behind the door. It was an old man dressed in a police uniform, and it grasped her neck, opening its mouth to bite down hard right on her forearm.

Ada struggled and lost her footing, and the two of them tumbled to the floor. Her hand struck the corner of the desk and the gun went spinning. The zombie lay on top of her, its mouth attached firmly to her arm, biting down on the sleeve of her black leather jacket, its cold hands fumbling at her neck and face. She desperately pushed away, but the zombies jaws were immovable. Lifting up, keeping the zombie's face as far away from hers as possible, she struggled to get her free hand into her jacket pocket.

She found the revolver there and stuck it up under the zombie's chin, pulling the trigger. The blast blew a hole through the zombies neck, splashing blood up into the air. Ada turned her face to the side and closed her eyes tightly as two drops of blood landed on her cheek.

The zombie fiercely bit down on her arm again, apparently undamaged by the gunshot. The bullet had gone through its neck and not damaged the brain. Ada pulled the trigger again but the gun just clicked, and the zombie pushed down on her, groaning through its clenched teeth.

Ada forced her leg up and kicked the zombie off of her, although it kept its mouth tightly attached to the sleeve of her jacket. She tossed the revolver away and reached with her free hand to grab the Beretta. The zombie let go of her arm and lunged at her face, and she swung the pistol up to shoot it right between the eyes. It flopped to the side, blood splattered across the side of a few filing cabinets.

Ada gasped for breath and quickly unzipped her jacket, yanking her arm out of the sleeve, terrified of what she was going to see. She ran her hand over the bite mark, seeing a tiny row of indentations in her skin, but nothing more than that. The leather sleeve had been too tough for the zombie to bite through. The zombie bit down so hard that her arm was sore, but still it had not broken the skin. She would get a bruise, but nothing more.

She got up, her legs unsteady, and went over to the caged area, which was unlocked as well. The zombie had probably been the guard on duty here, she thought. Inside the caged area were several locked drawers that probably contained pistols. But for the moment, Ada was not concerned with those. She was more interested in the large safe, with its thick metal door swinging open, conveniently unlocked as well.

Ada took out a combat shotgun and a plastic belt of shells, slinging it over her shoulder. There were several shotguns inside the safe, but she could only effectively carry one. She loaded the shotgun with ammo until it was full, and then racked one into the chamber. Behind the other shotguns in the safe, she spied another weapon.

"Oh, I like this," she said to herself, gingerly pulling it out.

In her hands was a M79 Grenade Launcher, its gray barrel scuffed up and wooden stock scratched and worn over years of use, its dark green shoulder strap frayed at the edges. It looked like a relic from the Vietnam War, but it still worked. It wasn't a very complicated weapon. The launcher was built like a break-action shotgun, with a hinge that opened up the chamber, which held one round at a time.

Sitting on the bottom of the safe was a small belt of four explosive grenade rounds, also linked to a shoulder strap. Ada grinned and slung it over her shoulder as well. She didn't think that she would find much use for it in an enclosed area like the police station; an explosive round at close range would probably kill her as well if she wasn't careful. But once she got out in the open, such a weapon would be a wonderful way to clear out a mob of zombies.

She stuck her Beretta into her back pocket and took the dead zombie's Beretta as well, sticking into her belt. With the grenade launcher, grenades, and the belt of shotgun shells, she walked out of the room, feeling a little bit more confident about her chances.

There were zombies in the hallway, coming from around the corner down at the end of the corridor. Drawn by Ada's screaming earlier, a group of eight or ten zombies shuffled toward her, arms outstretched, fingers grasping empty air. Most of them wore police uniforms, the others were dressed in office clothes.

Ada considered her options. Shoot them all, wasting ammo she might need later? Or just run away from them, leaving enemies behind her to get in her way if she came this way again? She opted to just go the other way, rather than use up ammunition.

She turned and went down the other side of the hall, shotgun held tight to her shoulder, the grenade launcher bumping against her backside as she walked. She passed more empty storage rooms and offices and came to a T-intersection, the hallway splitting off to the left and right.

"Damn," she muttered, stopping when she realized she had left her leather jacket back in the weapons storage room. She didn't want to go around in just the red long-sleeved shirt she was wearing, in case another zombie tried to take a bite of her. The jacket had saved her life once already, she didn't want to leave it behind.

She turned and walked back down the hall, only to see that the crowd of zombies had already reached the room, blocking her way. More zombies had joined the crowd as well, increasing their number to more than twenty.

Ada raised the shotgun, aimed carefully, and pulled the trigger. In the enclosed hallway, the loud blast from the gun rang in her ears, and the kick from the gun knocked her shoulder back. Three of the zombies fell over backward, two of them with heads blown apart. Ada racked another shell in, the spent shell flipping into the air, trailing a thin line of smoke. She gritted her teeth and fired again, blowing two more zombies away, the spread from the buckshot taking several out at once.

From the corner of her eye, she glanced quick movement down the left side of the hall from the intersection. Spooked, she turned and fired quickly, shooting before she got a close look at whatever had moved.

But it wasn't a zombie coming up behind her. As she pulled the trigger, the person standing there dove for cover around the corner, and the shotgun blast took out nothing but a corkboard attached to the wall. Ada only got a glimpse, but it was a man with reddish brown hair and black clothes.

"Jesus! I'm not a zombie!" he shouted. "Don't shoot!"

"Shit," Ada muttered, lowering the shotgun. She backed away from the oncoming crowd of zombies, glanced down the hallway, and decided to abandon her leather jacket after all. She turned and took off down the hallway to the right, leaving both the zombies and the fellow survivor behind her.