… and didn't I leave five carriers still walking around in here when I came through before?
Ada paused just outside the large and open room, looking back in from the narrow connecting corridor that led to the back stairs. Had there been five? She knew she'd capped a couple on her first visit; the rest had been too slow to hassle with, and she thought there'd been five of them. And yet she'd only had to knock off three when she had returned for her im– promptu break.
There were five. I may not be at peak, but I can still count.
She wasn't in the habit of doubting her ability to keep track of such things, and the fact that she'd only just noticed was a sign of how tired she was; two days ago, she would have made the observation immedi– ately. There was no way to tell if the additional corpses had been shot or had simply disintegrated on their own without exposing herself to contact – they were too messed up; but it would be wisest to assume that there were still a few survivors wandering around.
Not for long, one way or another…
Whether or not the zombies managed to break through, Umbrella would act soon, if they hadn't already. What had happened in Raccoon was a share– holder's worst nightmare, and Umbrella certainly wasn't going to ignore the problem; they'd probably already worked up a fail-safe disaster and prepared their own spin to feed to the press. And it was a foregone conclusion that they'd try to salvage Birkin's synthesis before putting their fail-safe into effect, which meant that she'd have to be very careful. Birkin had apparently been somewhat secretive about his work, and Trent had relayed that Umbrella would eventually send in a retrieval team… with Raccoon in ashes, that eventuality had probably been moved forward a few notches.
A team of human beings, hopefully. I can handle that. A Tyrant, though… I don't need that kind of pain.
Ada turned away from the room, walking toward the closed door that would lead her to the basement steps. Tyrant was the code name for a particular series in Umbrella's organic weapons research, a series that embodied the most destructive applications of the T-Virus. According to Trent, the White Umbrella scien– Tists – the ones working in the secret labs – had just started tests on a kind of humanoid bloodhound, designed to hunt down any assigned scent or sub– stance it had been encoded for with relentless and inhuman capabilities. A Tyrant retriever, a nearly indestructible construct of infected flesh and surgi-cally implanted wiring – just the kind of thing that they might send in to find, say, a sample of the G-Virus… Once she collected Trent's sample, she was history, paid and drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere. And anything she might or might not feel about it, about how many innocents had died or what Trent wanted the G-Virus for – it was just one more thing to put on her list of things the job didn't call for. Her defenses safely in place, Ada started for the basement to see if she could find the troublesome reporter.
Leon stood in the ransacked basement weapons locker, adjusting the holster straps and thinking about where Claire might be. From what little he'd seen so far, the station wasn't too bad. Cold and dim and stinking of the bodies heaped in the hallways, but not as actively dangerous as the streets. It wasn't much to be grateful for, but he'd take what he could get. He'd killed two of his fellow officers and a woman in the tatters of a traffic patrol uniform on his way to the basement – the cops upstairs and the woman just outside the morgue, a few yards from the small room that housed the RPD armament. Only three zombies since he'd reached the station, not including the few he'd been able to avoid in the detectives' room, but he'd passed over a dozen corpses on the short journey and had been able to make out the bullet holes on about half of them, through the eyes or directly to the temple. Between the cleanly "dispatched" creatures and the number of weapons missing from the lockers, he dared to hope that Branagh had been right about there being survivors.
Marvin Branagh… probably dead by now. Does that mean he'll turn into a zombie?If Umbrella's really behind all this, it has to be some kind of a plague or disease, they're a pharmaceutical company – so how do you catch it? Is it a contact thing, or can you get it from taking a deep breath…
Leon dropped that train of thought, fast; as cool and humid as the basement was, the thought that he could be infected by the zombie sickness made him break out in a sudden feverish sweat. What if all of Raccoon was still hot, and he'd caught it just driving into town? The cluttered shelves of the storage room seemed to close in just a bit, in an anxiety flash of epic proportions. But before real panic set in, he heard his mind's voice remind him of the reality – and the acceptance of the reality came with it, allowing him to let go of the fear.
If you're sick, you're sick. You can eat a bullet before it gets bad. If you're not sick, maybe you can survive to tell your grandkids about all this. Either way, there's probably nothing you can do about it now – except try to be a cop.
Leon nodded to himself, sighing. A better plan than worrying about it, and he now had the equipment to boost his chances. The electronic lock for the weapons store had been shot through, saving him from having to go searching for a key card or shooting it himself; the door had obviously been pried open, the external locks and handle practically shredded. On his first dig through the room, he'd been disappointed, and not a little freaked. There had been no handguns at all and very little ammo left in the dented green lockers – but he had found a box of shotgun shells, and after a second, more desperately thorough search, he'd un– covered a twelve-gauge hidden behind a high stack of boxes. There were a couple of shoulder harnesses for the Remington model still hanging on a wall hook, as well as a bigger utility belt than the one he already wore; it even had a sidepack deep enough to hold all of the loaded Magnum clips. With a final cinch on the harness, he decided that it would be best to start searching the most obvious places first, every connecting corridor from every possible entrance. He'd head back to the lobby first, find something to leave a note on… Bam! Bam! Bam! Shots fired, close, and the echoing tone said it was the garage just down the hall. Leon yanked the Magnum out and ran for the door, precious seconds wasted as he fumbled at the mangled handle. The hall was clear, except for the dead traffic cop on the floor to his right. Straight ahead was the entrance to the parking garage, and Leon hurried toward it, reminding himself that he wanted to go in easy, that he didn't want to get shot by a panicked gunman.
Take it slow, get a good look before you move, identify yourself clearly…
The door, set into the wall to his right, was standing open and as Leon darted a look into wide and open space, his body shielded by the concrete-block wall, he saw something that startled him into forgetting about the shooter.