I panicked, my heart pounding against my chest. I heard gunfire – meaning Leon was still alive. As I felt another asthma attack coming on, I took a puff from it. I waited for a good half a minute before deciding to jump down into the hole, which was not that deep. On the ground, I saw a name tag with the name "William Birkin" on it. The name sounded familiar as it came out of the mouths, I worked with, but I was positive I never met him before.
But if… that thing was William Birkin then how in the hell did he end up like that? The two were still locked in a fight. I heard explosions and gunfire from Leon's end, and growling from what might be William Birkin. He had Leon cornered, ready to grab him once more. I grabbed the nearest object – a book lying on the ground – and threw it at the creature's head. Now it was looking at me, but I kept my hand on the trigger, ready to fire at it.
"Alina!" Leon shouted. "Aim for its eye!"
I hadn't seen it before, but the creature had developed a huge eye attached to its body as if it were a whole separate entity. I pulled the trigger, leading my shots as Leon told me before, shooting it straight in the eye. The creature screamed in agony and stopped moving for a moment while Leon kept shooting at it.
Leon threw a flash grenade, blinding and stunning it. He ran past it, grabbing me by the arm, and telling me to run. At first, I wasn't sure if this would end any time soon, but the creature was becoming weaker and weaker. I stayed close, reloading the gun and shooting at the eye anytime it opened. That seemed to make it angrier.
The creature grabbed Leon by the chest again. I couldn't find the eye to shoot at it, and when I did, I missed completely. Shit! No! I thought. I panicked, unable to think of what to do next. All I kept thinking of was the creature's real name. "William Birkin!" I shouted at it. The creature halted its attack on Leon as soon as I spoke its name. "I know your name is William Birkin." I flash him the name tag that was dropped on the ground earlier.
"Will…iam," it muttered.
I nodded. "Yes – that's who you are."
"Sher – Sher – ry."
Sherry? I thought, wondering who that was. "You don't have to do this, William." I put my gun away at my side, holding my hands up in the air. The creature dropped Leon, screaming but not in pain – at least not physical pain. Leon backed away toward me.
"Whe – re… is…" The creature shook its head, writhing in pain.
The creature screamed her name once more before diving off the platform. Leon and I exchanged looks, as I struggled to grasp what occurred. I thought I lost him back there. "How did you know his name?" Leon asked, breathing heavily.
"I found the name tag that fell off him during the confrontation."
"Well… it worked, and you saved me." He squeezed my shoulder, smiling at me in appreciation. "What about the name he kept shouting out? Sherry?"
"I don't know who she is. I think she's important to him. Are you okay? Are you… are you hurt at all?"
"I'm fine, just bruised all over," he said.
"That was terrifying," I said, before realizing I was trembling.
"You did great, though. Thank you."
"You saved me last time so it's my turn," I chuckled with him. Honestly, if the creature killed Leon, I wasn't sure what my next course of action would have been. My gun had no more ammo. Fuck. What a damn mess. I tried not to focus on what might have been, glad Leon was with me and alive at that.
Behind us, a ladder dropped down. For it to have dropped… someone would need to be above us. Leon looked perplexed at first but didn't complain. He climbed it and I followed him. The ladder led us to a small office overlooking the sewers.
William Birkin left a huge mess of corpses in his wake. There was blood every inch of one of the offices. Any part of it that did not have blood, was decorated with entrails. He might've regained a bit of humanity when I mentioned his name, but he was still extremely dangerous to us both. I closed my eyes to avoid looking at the bloodied corpses for too long.
Leon found the control panel to take us across the other side of the platform, much to my relief. "I hope we never see that thing again," he said, as we walked across the bridge.
On the ground, there was a small drawing of three stick figures with crayons. A mother, a father, and a child all holding hands. It looked like something a child might draw for their parents. At the top of the name was "Sherry" but on the back of it, there were a few blood drops stained on it. "Sherry is a child," I said, showing Leon the drawing. "His daughter."
"It could be. Hopefully, we can find her in this mess."
I folded the drawing up, carefully putting it away in my pocket. Just in case.
We continued to another similar office as the others. A ladder inside one of them prompted Leon to climb it first, opening the manhole cover and poking his head through, shining his flashlight at it. He shoved it aside, looking down at me with a thumbs up. "Coast is clear," he said.
I climbed it, making my way to the top. We were now in the parking garage. The gate to get out was closed and behind it was a police car with the lights on. There were a few cars in the garage. I didn't have to travel far so I never took my vehicle to work. Maybe it would have been more useful to ring it.
Leon studied the parking pass machine. Swipe the card and the door opens. Except, I didn't have one since it was at home, and I never brought it with me anyway. "You wouldn't happen to have one of those passes, would you?" Leon asked.
"Unfortunately, no."
He cursed softly. "I guess we have to find one."
"There has to be one in here," I said. "We could try one of the cars."
Hearing a growling noise that could only belong to an animal, we turned around and saw a dog foaming at the mouth. It was one of the police-trained dogs, but I guessed that it either had rabies or… contracted the virus from a zombie. Its eyes were white and had blood on the snout.
Leon pushed me out of the way as a dog ran towards us. The dog was close to Leon's face. I was surprised the dog had that much strength, but Leon was trying to push it away. I saw his gun next to him, crawling to push it towards him. Before he was able to reach the gun, a shot from the distance killed the dog, which fell off him and onto the ground.
"Hey," a woman said, holding a gun as she approached us.
"Who is that?"
I started coughing, taking one more puff from my inhaler. My chest was tightening from the ordeal, which meant another potential attack. "Stay sharp," the woman warned us. Leon grabbed his gun, pointing it at her, and she did the same with hers. She had short black hair passed her ears with sunglasses covering her eyes and wore a light brown trench coat over her clothes. "Lower it," she demanded. She showed us a badge, revealing she was a part of the FBI. "FBI."
Leon lowered the gun.
"Surprised you two made it this far," she said.
"FBI, huh?" He stood up. "What's going on here?"
"Sorry," she replied. "That information's classified."
"Why is it classified if it's endangering everyone in the city?" I asked, still coughing.
"Do yourselves a favor: stop asking questions and get the hell out of here." I sighed. She didn't have to tell me twice. I didn't want to stay here any more than I had to.
The woman started walking away, heading into a room across the parking garage. Leon and I followed her, but when we got to the room, it was like she seemingly vanished into thin air.
We were in the jail cells. Not that it would do much good against the zombies. We couldn't find the woman anywhere.
There was someone alive in one of the prison cells. He was sitting down, smoking a cigarette. He stared at us and his eyes widened. "I don't believe it real humans…" the man said, getting up, and touching the jail cell bars. "Hello, humans!"
I had seen him somewhere before. On television. His arrest was all over the news. For what? I wasn't exactly sure. I didn't listen long enough to stay aware of it. "Ben Bertolucci," I said, crossing my arms in surprise."
"That's me but who are you?"
"Alina."
"Well, Alina, do you and this handsome fellow plan on getting me out?"
I chuckled. "I might," I said, shrugging. "If the handsome fellow and I had a damn key to get you out in the first place."
"Then you better start looking."
"You been here long?" Leon asked,
"Long enough! Are we the last ones alive?"
Leon shook his head. "No, no, there's a few of us."
Ben lit up a cigarette. "Oh, that's good, I guess. Unless of course, Irons sent you."
"Irons? You mean Chief Irons? Is he still around?"
I shook my head. "Better now," I muttered.
"Who cares? Hopefully, he's somebody's dinner by now."
"What do you mean by that?" Leon backed away from the cell, looking concerned at the man's hatred for the chief.
"He's the bastard that locked me in here."
"I'm sure he had a good reason."
Ben nodded. "He did," he said, taking a puff from the cig. "I was about to blow the whistle on his dirty ass."
"Not surprised at all," I said. "Worked as a receptionist at the station. I… heard all sorts of terrible things but I never knew what was true and what wasn't."
"So you heard he was accepting bribe money to botch an investigation, right?"
"What investigation?" Leon asked. I wasn't sure if he was buying what Ben was saying, but I doubt he understood what it was like to deal with Chief Brian Irons as a boss.
"Have neither of you two heard of the Arklay murders?" We both shook our heads. "Of course. There were a few survivors left, but Irons put them under house arrest." Like Claire's brother, Chris Redfield, she was searching for him. "I tried asking Annette Birkin about it but nothing I said would make her answer me."
"Annette Birkin?" I asked, noting the similar last name to William Birkin.
He nodded. "I'm guessing you don't who she is."
"She's… connected to William Birkin?"
"How would you know that if you had no idea about the Arklay murders?" Ben asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion. "Never mind that right now… Get me out of here and I will tell you everything." He held up a pass to get out of the parking garage. "There's no way outta that parking garage! Believe me!"
"Sorry… I can't do that. I have to talk to the chief first."
I turned to Leon in surprise. "Wait – seriously? After everything he told you about him?"
Leon sighed. "I know, Alina but I get the feeling there is more to it than that."
"Look we're all prisoners in this station," Ben said, "so either we play nice and help each other out -_" He stopped when we all heard a loud noise coming from the other side. "Shit. It's coming."
"What – what's coming?"
Ben kept backing away from the front of the cell. "C'mon – c'mon don't be an asshole, okay? You need this! Just get me the fuck out of here!" He backed up until he hit the brick wall.
Behind him, a huge fist punched through the wall, grabbing Ben's face. Leon aimed his gun at it, and I covered my mouth in horror, unable to help him. The fist tightened its grasp on Ben's head until it exploded. My hand over my mouth trembled as I continued to look at what was left of his body. One eye was out of its socket, and the rest of his skull was crushed and shattered.
"Oh my god," Leon whispered, sounding just as shocked as I was. He looked over at me, grabbing me by the arm gently, and pulling me close to him. "Don't look." I still couldn't believe what just happened, and what the hell was that thing that killed him?! I felt Leon's arm around me, as I slowly reciprocated the hug.
"Well, isn't this cute?" a woman's voice said, followed by high-heeled footsteps. Leon quickly put me behind him, aiming his gun at the woman. "It's just me, so you can put that thing away."
Leon lowered the gun. "I don't even know what happened – it just happened so quickly."
She placed her hands on the cell bars, as she looked at the corpse. "I told you both to get out of here. You wouldn't want to end up like Ben, would you?"
"You knew him?"
"He was an informant. Had information of use to my investigation." He sure did talk a lot for an informant, I thought. Also, the woman looked extremely conspicuous with the clothing she wore and not even a drop of blood on it.
"So, what he said was true?" Without a word, the woman began walking away until Leon grabbed her arm. She pulled away from him, almost looking revolted. "You can't keep walking away from me. I don't even know your name." Now he was sounding almost as annoyed as she was with us both. "I'm Leon Kennedy, and this is Alina."
She looked at both of us. I couldn't tell if she was glaring or not behind her sunglasses. "Leon, Alina, find a way out. Before it's too late… Then we'll talk. Name's Ada." She flashed him a quick smile with her full lips and continued walking away until she disappeared around the corner.
Leon turned his attention to the parking pass hanging around Ben's neck on the other side of the jail cell. "Well, I guess the deal's on." I didn't know what to say… after seeing all of that happening just now, I was certain we were never going to get out. Not if that thing that killed Ben was still out there.
How was I supposed to keep going on like this? "I… I'm not sure how much more I can take," I said to him.
"What do you mean? We gotta find a way to get the parking pass and then we can get out of here."
My voice trembled when I opened my mouth to speak. "Just everything that's happened the past several hours… I don't know if I can take another person dying the way he did."
"You want to see your parents again, don't you?" I nodded. He touched my shoulders, looking at me in the eyes. "It'll be hard, but we have each other, okay?"
I bit my lip, looking into his blue eyes, and after some time of silence, I nodded. "Okay. I'll go with you," I said. How could I not trust in his word? If he wanted me dead, he'd let me die to the zombies but so far, he kept me alive. Other than Marvin, that was the most anybody had ever done for me during the whole apocalypse.
He held out his hand for me to take it and I did. He pulled me up. "I'm sorry about not believing that guy when he spoke about the Chief. If I had, Ben might be alive."
"He would have died anyway from whatever killed him."
"I just feel bad you witnessed it."
"It won't be the last," I said, brushing my sweaty bangs back.
"I know." He crossed his arms. "What do you think of that woman – Ada?"
"She saved us," I said. "Those mongrels nearly tore you in half. But… she seems a bit fishy to me. I don't know. Maybe it's the whole situation we are in."
"Yeah, I hear you," he affirmed and patted my shoulder again. "Sticking together is our best bet just like Marvin told us."
