“I’m Kennedy. What happened here?” Leon asked, his hand still on Branagh’s shoulder. A sickly heat radiated through the officer’s ragged shirt. “About two months ago,” Branagh rasped, “the cannibal murders .. . the S.T.A.R.S. found zombies out at this mansion in the woods. . . .”
He coughed weakly, and Leon saw a small bubble of blood form at the corner of his mouth. Leon started to tell him to be still, to rest, but Branagh’s faraway gaze had fixed on his own; the cop seemed determined to tell the story, whatever it was costing him. “Chris and the others discovered that Umbrella was behind the whole thing . . . risked their lives, and no one believed them . . . then this.”
Chris . . . Chris Redfield, Claire’s brother. Leon hadn’t made the connection before, although he’d known something about the trouble with the S.T.A.R.S. He’d only heard bits and pieces of the story—the suspension of the Special Tactics and Rescue Squad after their alleged mishandling of the murder cases had been the reason the RPD’d been hiring new cops. He’d even read the names of the infamous S.T.A.R.S. members in some local paper, listed along with some fairly impressive career records—
• and Umbrella runs this town. Some kind of a chemical leak, something that they tried to cover up by getting rid of the S.T.A.R.S.—
All of this went through his mind in a split-second; then Branagh coughed again, the sound even weaker than before.
“Hang in there,” Leon said, and quickly looked around them for something to use to stop the bleed-ing, inwardly kicking himself for not having done it already. A locker next to Branagh was partly open; a crumpled T-shirt lay at the bottom. Leon scooped it up and folded it haphazardly, pressing it against Branagh’s stomach. The cop placed his own bloody hand over the makeshift bandage, closing his eyes as he spoke again in a wheezing gasp.
“Don’t. . . worry about me. There are ... you have to try and rescue the survivors.. .” The resignation in Branagh’s voice was horribly plain. Leon shook his head, wanting to deny the truth, wanting to do something to ease Branagh’s pain—but the wounded cop was dying, and there was no one to call for help.
Not fair, it’s not fair— “Go,” Branagh breathed, his eyes still closed. Branagh was right, there was nothing else Leon could do—but he didn’t, couldn’t move for a mo-ment—until Branagh raised his weapon again, point-ing it at him with a sudden burst of energy that strengthened his voice to a rough shout.
“Just go!” Branagh commanded, and Leon stood up, wondering if he would be as selfless in the same situation, working to convince himself that Branagh would make it somehow.
“I’ll be back,” Leon said firmly, but Branagh’s arm was already drooping, his head settling against his heaving chest.
Rescue the survivors.
Leon backed toward the door, swallowing heavily and struggling to accept the change in plan that could very well kill him—but that he couldn’t walk away from. Official or no, he was a cop. If there were other survivors, it was his moral and civic duty to try and help them.
There was a weapons store in the basement, near the parking garage. Leon opened the door and stepped back into the lobby, praying that the lockers would be well stocked—and that there would be somebody left for him to help.
TEII
FROM THE BURNING ROOFTOP, CLAIRE moved through a snaking hallway littered with bro-ken glass—and past a very dead cop, a bloody testament to her fears about the station’s safety. She quickly stepped over the body and moved on, her nervous tension growing. A cool breeze ruffled through the shattered windows that lined the hall, making the darkness alive; there were shiny black feathers stuck in the streaks of blood that painted the floorboards, and their soft, wavering dance had her jerking the semiautomatic toward every shadow. She passed a door that she thought led back outside to a set of external stairs, but she kept going, taking a right toward the center of the building. The way the helicopter had buried itself in the rooftop was gnaw-ing at her, inspiring visions of the old station going up in flames.
From the look of things, maybe that’s not such a bad idea....
Dead bodies and bloody handprints on the walls;
Claire wasn’t happy about the idea of touring the station. Still, death by fire didn’t carry much appeal either, she needed to see how bad it was before she went looking for Leon.
The corridor dead-ended at a door that felt cool to the touch. Mentally crossing her fingers, Claire opened it—and stumbled back as a wave of acrid smoke washed over her, the smell of burnt metal and wood thick in the heated air. She dropped to a crouch and edged forward again, peering down the hall that stretched off to her right. The hall turned right again maybe thirty feet down, and although she couldn’t see the fire proper, bright, fiery light was reflected off the gray paneled walls at the comer. The popping crackle of the unseen flames was magnified in the tight corridor, the sound as mindlessly hungry as the moans of the zombies down in the courtyard. Well, shit. What now?
There was another door diagonally across from where she crouched, only a few steps away; Claire took a deep breath and moved, walking low to stay beneath the thickening blanket of smoke, hoping she could find a fire extinguisher—and that a fire extin-guisher would be enough to put out whatever blaze the crashed ‘copter had created.
The door opened into an empty waiting room—a couple of green vinyl couches and a rounded counter-desk, with another door across from the one she’d entered by. The small room seemed untouched, as sterile and quietly unassuming as she might have expected—and unlike just about everywhere else she’d been tonight, there was no lurking disaster in the mild shadows thrown by the overhead fluores-cents, no stench of rot or shuffling zombie. And no fire extinguisher. . . .
Not in plain sight, anyway. She closed the door on the smoky corridor and stepped toward the desk, lifting the entrance flap with the barrel of the gun. There was an old manual typewriter on the counter—and next to that, a telephone. Claire grabbed for it, hoping against hope, but heard only dead air through the receiver. Sighing, she dropped it and ducked down to check out the shelves beneath the counter. A phone book, a few stacks of papers—and then, half-hidden by a woman’s purse on the bottom shelf, was the familiar red shape she’d been hoping to find, coated with a thin layer of dust.
“There you are,” she murmured, and paused just long enough to stick the nine-millimeter into her vest before hefting the heavy cylinder. She’d never used one before, but it looked simple enough—a metal handle with a locking pin, a black rubber nozzle hooked to the side. It was only a couple of feet long, but it weighed a good forty or fifty pounds; she figured that meant it was full.
Armed with the extinguisher, Claire stepped back to the door and started to take short, sharp breaths, filling her lungs. It made her feel light-headed, but the hyperventilation would allow her to hold her breath longer. She didn’t want to keel over from smoke inhalation before she’d had a chance to put it out. A final deep breath and she opened the door, crouching her way back into the now noticeably hotter corridor. The haze of smoke had gotten thicker too, extending down from the ceiling in a dark and choking fog at least four feet deep.
Keep low, breathe shallow and watch your step—
She turned the corner and felt a bizarre mix of relief and sorrow at the sight of the burning wreckage right in front of her. She bobbed her head and took a small breath through the fabric of her vest, feeling her skin flush and tighten from the heat. The fire wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, more smoke than substance and not much taller or bigger than she was; the flames that licked up the wall in orange-yellow fingers seemed to be having trouble catching, stopped by the heavy wood of a half-smashed door. It was the nose of the helicopter that drew her attention, the blackened shell of the smoldering cockpit—and the blackened husk of the pilot still strapped to the seat, the melted mouth frozen in a yawning, silent scream. There was no way to tell if it had been a man or a woman; the features had been obliterated, running together like dark tallow.