The station lobby was empty. Rebecca had wished for the entire RPD to be here, ready to fold her and Jill into the response effort. But no, just more bloody smears on the floor, spent shell casings, shelter items and equipment broken out and placed haphazardly. No signs of life, only death.

Before she and Jill had gotten distracted with each other, they'd made much headway into their investigation of Umbrella Inc. Jill had done some file-room spelunking and now suspected the company had built a number of secret laboratories right under the city, at least two, with several more auxiliary sites scattered all over town. For her part, Rebecca had leaned on her medical expertise to suss out what kinds of things Umbrella might be playing with in secret. Things it aught not to be, that was for sure, but what she didn't know yet was how the viruses the company was studying spread. They had ordered all kinds of personal protective gear, items that covered everything from bites and bodily fluids to airborne pathogens.

She knew it was a virus causing people to seemingly die then go shambling around, hungry for flesh. What she didn't know was how it spread, how long it took for someone to turn, if there was any vaccine or cure. How wary should she be of getting a scrape? Was the blood all over the floor and walls infected blood? How long could the virus survive outside a host? Was it airborne? Oh, god, how many times had she touched her face? She had to find a sink, wash her hands. The bottoms of her shoes were bloody. She might as well have rolled in it given all the micro-droplets she'd kicked up and covered herself in, maybe even inhaled!

They went through the west office, walked under the welcome decorations for the rookie she remembered hearing about the city having hired. In the rearmost office lie a dead officer, slumped against the back wall. His face was too bloated and purple for them to tell who he was, his name tag covered by putrefying blood. They didn't linger, exiting the office with their guns drawn.

"Let's check the evidence room first," said Jill. "Some of the weapons we confiscate are better than the ones we're issued."

"Hopefully someone confiscated some hand sanitizer," said Rebecca, worried her skin looked pale. "This whole place is a hazmat zone."

The door to the evidence room was locked. "Hope my PIN still works," said Jill, hitting the buttons on the door's keypad. "Damn it. Damn it! What the hell?"

While Rebecca couldn't help but notice Jill kept hitting seven buttons when her PIN couldn't have been more than four, her thoughts were mostly on how much bacteria each key harbored, and how many bloody, infected hands had probably touched them in the last twelve hours.

"What's yours?" Jill said.

"Mine? Uh..." Rebecca had known RPD officers to share everything from toothbrushes to underwear, but never, ever their PIN numbers, not when the evidence room lock kept a log.

"Rebecca, we've both been fired and everyone is a zombie. What's your number?"

"Oh! Yeah, it's..." she gave Jill her number, then heard a wet thud from down the hall, by the main stairs. As Jill punched the code in, Rebecca peered around the corner. It was too dark to see the entire hall, but just outside the lighted alcove near the end she saw something move. Red, sleek, it skittered over the floor towards her with alarming speed. "Jill! Get in, get in!"

They ran into the evidence room just as the thing, whatever it was, let out a high screech. Through the window slat they saw it crawling up the wall by the west office, its enormous claws hooking into the plaster.

"What the fuck is that thing?" Jill whispered.

Rebecca could only shake her head. Whatever it was, it had no skin or fatty tissue, a brain on the outside of its head, and a mouthful of elongated, pointed teeth. Its head turned about as if it were listening for them; it was then they realized it had no eyes.

They closed the slats and made sure the door was shut tight. It had been built to keep out the most determined and desperate of Raccoon City's junkies, so neither feared the monster breaking in, but they were quiet all the same as they stepped away.

"Alright, let's hope there's something in here we can use to blast that thing," said Jill, quietly.

Their wishes in that regard were met right away; someone had been holding an honest-to-god grenade launcher, only to have it taken by police along with a few boxes of rounds. Less impressive, but still appreciated, was an over-and-under twelve-gauge shotgun, plus a few boxes of shells to go with it. Some were buckshot, others slugs.

"Hey, these are from that raid last year, remember?" said Jill, holding up two frag grenades. "And is that the Park Slasher's knife? This stuff shouldn't still be here, I'm going to have to tell... uh, never mind. Somebody's green herb stash. Yeah, that was grown in a Raccoon U dorm room, definitely."

Rebecca bit her lip. A tightness filled her chest. Part of it was from listening to Jill's litany and seeing through the horror of the moment to what had been lost, but most of it was from seeing brownie crumbs left around a note inside one of the evidence boxes. "IOU" it read. "One plate of herb laced brownies! Baked in Hell, of course. Ha ha."

She stood up straight, clenched her fingers, and licked her lips. "Jill, come see this," she said.

Jill came over, saw the note. "Oh, god... we ate half a plate each. How long ago was it?"

Rebecca shook her head. Time kept holding its breath on her, keeping still, then flashing by when it exhaled. "What are we going to do?"

"We'll... we'll just wait it out," said Jill, her breath coming fast. "It'll peak and then we'll be fine."

Rebecca wasn't so sure about that. Ever since the mansion incident, since the plant, their minds hadn't been working right. That's how they'd ended up having sex for days on end when they should have been going after Umbrella... or getting the hell out of town. Half a tray of herb brownies was going to hit them like an atomic bomb.

"We've got to head it off," she said.

"How?" said Jill.

Their lips met. A shot of something gold and hot flashed down their spines, lighting them both up and fusing them into each other. Jill pulled Rebecca to the back of the room, stripped off her shirt. Jill's blouse came down, up came her skirt. They kissed and caressed until each knew the other was ready.

There was a banging from outside, in the hallway further down. The monster outside let out a screech and went skittering. A horrible bellow shook the walls. It was the thing that had chased after Vickers. The skinless monster let out another screech, then a horrid squeal. It ended with a wet crunch.

They scrambled to their feet, Rebecca picking up the over-and-under and loading it with slugs. The door was kicked off its hinges by the monster's heavy boot. It ducked under the doorway, rose to its full height and stared them down. Thick, purple tentacles slithered down from under its leather sleeves.

Jill fired the grenade launcher. The monster raised its arm in time and took the blast. Rebecca pointed the shotgun at the thing's left knee and fired both barrels. It stumbled. Rebecca breached the shotgun as she ran behind Jill, who pulled the pins on both grenades. She tossed them at the monster's feet as Rebecca ran around the center row of lockers, sliding two more slug rounds into the barrels as she bolted for the exit. The grenades went off. The monster howled, not in pain but in rage. She closed the breach as she went around the lockers, saw the monster had dropped to one knee, its tentacles waiving in the air all around it. She fired both barrels at its back, hoping to slow it more, maybe get lucky and kill it.

It was starting to its feet when Jill grabbed her, pulled her from the room. They raced towards the stairs, each knowing they stood a better chance of losing the creature in the upper floors than they did by going back the way they'd come in. Not that it would matter much in the long run.

Vickers had been right, it wasn't safe anywhere.