The Mansion Incident

Chapter Fourteen

After a time, Jill managed to get to her feet. Strands of hair slipped into her eyes and she wiped them back with surprisingly steady hands. She believed she could still feel the touch of the dead man as it pressed against her, straining to bite her.

He was a zombie, she thought. They weren’t just dead men, they were undead men. A science-fiction horror come to life.

Some blood, not hers, was smeared on her arms and chest. She stared at it, not noticing it before now. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she could become infected with the same disease that turned those men into walking corpses, but the thoughts stayed in her subconscious. If she thought too much about them and allowed them to occupy the forefront of her mind, she might lose all control completely.

She stepped over to the bathroom sink and mechanically washed her hands and exposed arms, unable to do anything about the blood on her clothing. Then she picked her gun up off the floor and looked at it before sliding it into its holster.

Almost reluctantly, she looked in the mirror above the sink. The woman who looked back at her was unfamiliar. She had a haunted, terrified look in her eyes, an almost imperceptible tremor in her stance, ready to flinch at the slightest sound. There were bloody streaks across the front of her blue shirt. She didn’t look like a real police officer, she looked like a coward at a costume party.

She could stay in the bathroom, she thought. It was safe there, or as safe as she could expect to be anywhere in this death trap of a mansion. Maybe she could just stay there a little while in the hopes she might hear someone looking for her. If she just stayed put, maybe she’d remain safe.

Just like Kenneth. He cornered himself in that small room for hours, probably, until he heard Jill and Barry in the dining room. And then a zombie got him anyway.

She could still see the zombie, reaching for her, clawing at her, its teeth snapping shut inches from her throat. Its dead eyes gazing hungrily at her. If she didn’t face that horrifying image and conquer it, she would never be able to leave this room. Barry was gone now, separated from her, maybe dead. Jill wondered if she should go back and try to find him.

If Barry could come after her, he would. Of course, he wouldn’t know which door she went through. Maybe he came looking for her but went to the door at the end of the hall instead of the one to the right. Maybe Barry ran all the way back to the dining room to escape the dog. Maybe he went upstairs. Maybe he thought Jill was dead and went on without her. Maybe he found something else, something even worse than the zombies or the dogs.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Jill swallowed hard and forced herself to believe that he was still alive but just could not come after her. She needed to believe that.

Staying in the bathroom was not an option. She wasn’t going to cower in fear all night while Barry and Wesker were gone, maybe fighting for their lives. Some of the members of Bravo might still be alive as well. She took a deep breath, drew her gun once more, and went out into the hall. Her hands only shook a little bit.

The door leading back to the zombies was across the hall to her left, and there was another door directly across the hall from her. To her right was the door to the mens’ room. A heavy metal door at the end of the hall was slightly ajar, which bothered her. To her left, the hallway branched to the left out of sight farther down, with one door on the right near the corner. Too many choices. Where should she go first?

She tried the door right across from her. It led to another hallway going straight ahead, with two more doors on the right side and another on the left. There must be a million rooms in this place with all the doors. She tried to keep track of where she was. She might need a map to get back out.

She touched the door on the left and flinched when something scratched the door from the other side. She heard more scratching and a wet, gurgling growl. She realized that the hallway went in a circle. This door led back to the hallway where the dogs attacked her and Barry. She wouldn’t be going in there, then.

She looked down the hall and froze when she saw a foot sticking out from around the corner. A human foot, wearing a black boot.

It wasn’t moving, but that didn’t mean anything anymore. Jill swallowed her fear and crept down the hallway, gun drawn, slowly approaching the body sitting in the corner. She saw that the hallway ended here and turned around to a staircase heading up to the second floor. She glanced up at the stairs and then back down at the body as she came past the corner.

It was Edward Dewey, the helicopter pilot for Bravo. He was slumped over, asleep or unconscious, his chin resting on his chest. His right leg below the knee was wounded somehow, his pants soaked with blood from his knee to the top of his boot. Blood was pooled on the floor. His shotgun was laying on the floor beside him.

“Edward!” Jill blurted, trying to whisper but almost screaming anyway. She stuck her pistol into its holster and knelt beside him, touching his shoulder hesitantly. His head lolled back and he gazed up at her with glassy, half-open eyes. His face was covered in a thin layer of sweat. He breathed heavily for a second and then smiled weakly, blinking in a comically slow way.

“Sarah?” he mumbled. “Where are we?”

Sarah was Edward’s wife, Jill remembered. She met Sarah once at a Christmas party, but Sarah looked nothing like her. How could Edward confuse them? What was wrong with him?

“Edward,” Jill said, trying to keep her voice steady this time. “It’s Jill. Jill Valentine. From Alpha team.”

Ed’s smile faded and he tilted his head forward, as if to get a closer look at her. Sweat dripped from his eyebrows and chin, and his collar was soaked with it. She touched his forehead and it felt incredibly hot.

“Jill, you shouldn’t be here,” he said slowly.

“We came to find you,” Jill said. “To find Bravo. Ed, what happened to the rest of the team? How did you get injured?” There were so many questions she wanted to ask that she couldn’t even think of them all. Edward was sick, some kind of infection probably, and was burning up with a fever. He needed medical attention and he needed it fast.

“They brought them back from the dead,” he said.

“Yes,” Jill said, an image of zombies reaching for her flashing in her mind. She shook it away. “But where are the others? Where are Enrico and Kenneth and the rest?”

“Don’t know. I came here with Ken. Don’t know where he went.”

“You’re hurt, Ed. We need to get you out of here.” But how exactly was she going to get him out of there if he couldn’t walk? The only way she knew to get back to the lobby meant going through more zombies or dogs, and she couldn’t do either if she had to carry Ed the whole way. And besides, how could she get Brad to even land the helicopter if he wouldn’t answer the radio?

“Can’t get out,” Ed said, pointing feebly at his bloody leg. “The snake in there bit me.”

“A snake?” Jill asked, suddenly feeling even more scared. Snake bites, to her knowledge, did not result in massive blood loss. She pulled out her combat knife and cut away Edward’s pants leg to reveal a large puncture wound right in the meat of his calf. It looked like someone jammed an ice pick in his leg. “A snake did this to you?” she asked, her voice quavering.

“Big snake. Monster, like the others. Poisonous. I tried to kill it, but it bit me.”

“Where is it now?”

Ed gestured at the room next to them. “In there. Came in through the window, I think. Maybe it left.”

Jill tried to imagine what size a snake would have to be for one its fangs to inflict puncture wounds of that size. It would have to be as big around as a dinner plate, and who knows how long. A snake that large didn’t exist, except for maybe pythons or boa constrictors, but they didn’t bite their prey. And Jill was sure no snake like that existed in the Arklay Mountains. Edward was definitely hallucinating, but the venom was probably causing the hallucinations. Could he have imagined it? If so, what caused the wound in his leg?

“I think everyone is dead,” Ed mumbled, his head drooping. “I think they killed everyone ...”

“Who killed everyone?” Jill asked, touching Ed’s cheek to prop his head up.

“It’s a big snake,” Ed whispered, and he lapsed into silence. His chest rose and lowered with each rasping breath he took, but Jill doubted he would say anything else. She was amazed he remained lucid this long. The wound on his leg was scabbed over and surrounded in dry blood. The snake probably bit him hours ago.

Jill picked up the shotgun and stood. Could he really have been bitten by an enormous snake? On any other day, Jill would have chalked it up to hallucinations caused by the fever, but after seeing mutated dogs and the living dead already this evening, she was ready to accept anything. And on any other day, she might not have cared, because her primary concern would be getting him to safety and to medical attention. But in this mansion, nowhere was safe, and there was no ambulance coming to get him.

Jill knew some first aid, but she didn’t know how to treat snake bites. Working on his leg served no purpose, since it stopped bleeding long ago. Whatever damage the snake venom did, it was too late to fix now. Maybe if she found a first aid kit she could get something to lower his fever, but she didn’t know if it might react with the snake venom. There was simply nothing she could do for him.

She went to the door and turned the knob with one hand, holding the shotgun firmly against her shoulder with the other, her finger on the trigger. She cast a nervous glance at Ed, wondering if she was doing the right thing. The door squeaked gently as she pushed it open. She half-expected something to come out and attack her, but nothing happened.

Two small lamps in opposite corners provided the only light, spreading dark shadows in every direction. The room appeared to be some sort of storage room, with built-in shelves on the left wall holding dozens of cardboard boxes and other things like coiled garden hose and metal gasoline cans. At least half a dozen large wooden crates took up space haphazardly on the floor, some with their lids pried off, but they all seemed to contain metal objects packed in sawdust. Two windows were on the back wall, and sure enough, one of them was broken. There was also an open door in the back right corner, presumably leading to another storage room.

Jill’s breath seemed to catch in her throat as she scanned the room. The room was too large for her taste, with too many places for a snake, even a large one, to stay hidden. She closed the door behind her to make sure nothing snuck out, effectively trapping herself alone with it.

She stepped around some burlap bags dumped on the floor and looked around some of the crates. She wished there was an overhead light so she could see better, because the lamps practically made things worse. The shotgun felt heavy in her hands, as if it was made of solid concrete.

And then she heard it. A low, shuffling sound came from across the room, making the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She gripped the gun tighter, taking another step to her right, trying to get a look at whatever was there. More boxes stacked up near the wall made it hard to see anything, but she caught a glimpse of movement between some boxes. She backed up almost involuntarily, the shotgun’s stock pressed tight into her shoulder, heart pounding intensely.

The slithering noises seemed to come from every direction. Jill saw a greenish-gold blur move behind a crate back to her left and her finger pulled back. The boom almost deafened her and the bright muzzle flash brightened the room for a split-second, but she held her ground as the powerful recoil slammed into her shoulder. One of the cardboard boxes stacked against the wall blew apart like a party favor and something flashed toward the back of the room. Jill barely reacted in time to pump the shotgun, racking a new shell into the chamber, before the snake slithered between two crates straight ahead and came right at her.

She shrieked loudly and pulled the trigger again. The snake’s body was as big around as a bike tire and probably thirty feet long. The shotgun missed, but some of the shot must have hit the snake, because it hissed like a ruptured air hose and slithered frantically to the door in the back corner. Jill racked another shell in, the spent cartridge flipping up over her shoulder with a trail of smoke behind it. The snake’s tail whipped back and forth, smashing one of the crates open. She fired again, hitting its tail and taking a chunk of scaled flesh off. It thrashed madly as it slithered into the adjacent room, splattering blood across the wall.

Jill circumnavigated the room until the door was directly across the room from her. She walked forward until she was halfway to the door when the snake rushed out at her. Its head lifted off the floor until it was over her own head, and its mouth opened wide, fangs pointing down like two enormous steak knives.

Jill pulled the trigger once more and the snake’s head disintegrated. The body lurched forward and crashed to the floor like a downed tree, a sickening gush of blood erupting from the neck.

Jill did not waste any more time. She staggered over the body, a wave of vomit rising in her throat, and ran back through the door to the hallway. She slammed it after her and tossed the shotgun to the ground. She thought her encounter with the zombies was bad, but that was nothing. She pressed her hands against her sides to keep them still.

Ed was slumped over on his side. Jill went over to him and froze. Ed’s eyes were wide open, staring at the wall, and his chest was not moving.

“Ed! Oh, Jesus!” she cried, kneeling beside him. She got him onto his back and prepared to give him CPR, but after a moment, she just placed her hands on his chest and lowered her head in defeat. What was the use? The snake’s venom killed him, and no amount of CPR or mouth-to-mouth would bring him back now. He stayed alive just long enough to talk to her.

She didn’t know how long she sat there. No longer than a few seconds, probably, but it felt like hours. She got to her feet and pushed her hair out of her face, looking sadly at Edward’s body. There was nothing she could do for him, she told herself again, but she still hated herself for it. Edward would remain there until they came back for him. Just like Kenneth. And Joseph and Chris. Four members of S.T.A.R.S. dead, and maybe more. Jill wondered about the rest of them, about Enrico and Richard, and the young girl Rebecca. Would they find the rest of them dead as well?

Feeling terrible about it, she rummaged in Edward’s cargo pants pockets for more shells for the shotgun and refilled it, putting the extra shells in her own pocket.

She did not want to go up the stairs, she was sure of that. So instead, she walked back the way she came, back through the door at the end of the hall to the adjacent hallway where the bathroom was. Facing the bathroom, the door immediately to her right led back to the small library where the zombies were. Down the hall to her right, the hallway turned a corner, and something made her uncomfortable about going that way. To her left was the metal door, which remained ajar. Some light shone through from the other side.

Jill went to the door and debated whether or not to hold the shotgun. If she encountered another zombie, she did not want to waste shells that she might need later on, if she ran into another enormous snake. She slung the shotgun over her shoulder and drew her Glock instead.

She nudged the door open with her boot and braced herself for anything that might come at her. The room was lit by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, and Jill caught an unpleasant whiff of gasoline and mildew. The room looked like some kind of gardener’s supply shed, with bags of mulch and fertilizer on the dirty floor, along with cans of gasoline and a weed-whacker hanging from a hook on the wall. Another door was right across the room.

And laying in the middle of the floor was a dead body, wearing what appeared to be a white lab coat. Jill swallowed hard and tiptoed forward, aiming her gun at the body until she noticed that it was no longer a threat. The back of its head was missing, and the splatter of gore on the far wall told her what must have happened. Someone shot it in the head.

Beside the body was a pistol just like Jill’s, but it was empty. She picked it up, but it could have been anyone’s. Maybe even Edward’s, but she doubted that, since he carried the shotgun. Jill already carried two pistols herself, so she left it on the floor.

She cautiously opened the next door and was stunned to find that it led outside. She almost tripped over the dead body in her haste to get through the door, fumbling with her walkie-talkie as she ran into the moonlight. There was no one outside that she could see, and she was too excited about finding her way out to look very hard.

Calling Brad proved fruitless, as she feared. He didn’t answer her any more than he answered Wesker back in the lobby. Dejected, she stuck her walkie-talkie back onto her belt and looked around the huge back yard. She saw a wide cement courtyard with woods on either side, outlined in pale blue.

Where should she go? She didn’t want to go back into the mansion, but being outside made her nervous. She expected to hear dogs coming at her any moment. Outside or inside, it really made no difference. There were dangers either way.

She heard something from the mansion, a muffled thump, and decided to go back inside to investigate when she heard a cry and jerked around. Someone came running at her from the left, from another door leading out of the mansion. Jill raised her gun instinctively, even as she realized that zombies could not run, but before she could decide whether or not to fire, the person was upon her. She dove to the ground and rolled onto her back as the person jumped past her.

At least she thought it was a person. It didn’t move like a zombie, and it cried out like a human. Only it moved like a gorilla, running on all fours and dragging its arms along the ground. Long dirty hair whipped around its face and it wore a filthy blue shirt and brown pants. Long, broken chains hung from its wrists.

It sailed over Jill and skidded to a halt in the damp grass as Jill got to her feet and aimed her gun unsteadily. “Don’t move!” she screamed, but the person came right at her like a wild animal. She fired three times, her gunshots sounding incredibly loud in the quiet twilight, the muzzle flashes like fireworks in the pale gloom. The person, or creature, or whatever it was, jerked and staggered with the shots but did not fall down.

Jill saw its face for just a split-second, but that was more than enough. She turned and away as fast as she could, sprinting across the courtyard and running desperately for the woods. She could hear the creature coming after her, shrieking like an animal, the chains rattling terribly like the sounds of a ghost.

Jill didn’t know if she screamed or not, but she dropped her gun along the way. She didn’t even make it to the trees before something struck her in the back of the head and darkness descended completely.

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