The Mansion Incident

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“I swear, Barry. I think she was trying to be friends with me,” Jill said, explaining her experiences with the mysterious woman.

Barry shook his head in disbelief. “That’s crazy. She certainly didn’t try to be friends with me. She came at me like a wild animal.”

“Did you shoot her?”

“Of course I did. At least four times, and it barely slowed her down.”

“I shot her twice, I think. Then she knocked me out and took me to that cabin.”

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Barry said, somewhat reproachfully. “More than lucky. I can’t believe she didn’t just kill you. She certainly wanted to kill me.”

“I can’t explain it,” Jill said. “I just wish she could have said something. I don’t think she even knew how to speak.”

“Whoever she is, Umbrella sure did a number on her,” Barry said. “They probably had her locked up in a cage her whole life. She had those chains on her arms for a reason. I don’t even want to know what kind of experiments they performed on her.”

Jill didn’t really want to know either. It was a tragedy what happened to the people who worked here, but at least they chose how to live their lives. They chose to work here at the lab and chose to work on whatever disease caused this atrocity. Jill didn’t think that the woman was given any choice at all. She was only a victim, while Jill could not help but feel that the scientists who worked here got what they deserved. It was awful to think that the scientists deserved to be turned into undead zombies, but they created the disease and been party to the terrible experiments that took place here. They were the ones responsible.

Thankfully, Jill and Barry did not run into any new monsters since reuniting with each other. The hallways were blessedly empty. They followed Barry’s map and encountered no resistance as they made their way to the elevator. Jill didn’t bother to look closely at the map itself, letting Barry serve as the navigator. Gradually, they made their way through the labyrinth of hallways and corridors. Barry still insisted on checking every door and lab room though, to check for possible survivors. But they would just glance inside and then move on. There was no need for careful investigation at this point.

They came to the end of yet another blank white hallway and saw a large sign posted on the wall in red letters. According to the arrows, to their left were the Sigma labs and to the right were the Theta labs.

Jill glanced down the hallway to the left and right. “Which way?” she asked.

Barry examined the map for a moment. “Sigma labs, I guess,” he said, pointing at it. He dragged his finger across the map. “Looks like we can get to that elevator either way. We’re pretty close now.”

“That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day,” Jill said with a grin.

Barry smiled back, but it seemed forced. Jill did not fail to notice that since their reunion, Barry was somehow distracted. He seemed happy to have found her and excited that they were able to escape, but there was something else behind his eyes that Jill could not quite understand. Barry was usually honest and up front about his feelings, so it was strange to see him trying to hide his emotions so unsuccessfully. Something serious was bothering him, but he was trying to act normal.

Jill said nothing about it, though. If Barry was upset or nervous about something that he didn’t want to share, then Jill would not pry into his business. The events of the past few hours were enough to make anyone act strangely. Jill guessed that maybe she was acting a bit weird herself, and Barry was merely concerned for her.

“Come on, then,” Jill said. “Let’s get out of here.”

They turned left toward the Sigma labs and began walking, but Jill stopped when she thought she heard something behind her. She put her hand on Barry’s arm and he stopped as well, looking at her curiously.

“Did you hear that?” she said.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

There was silence for a few moments, and Jill shrugged and shook her head. “I guess I was just imagining –”

And then she heard it again, and by the look on Barry’s face, he definitely heard it as well. It was a very muffled popping noise, very far away from the sound of it. Jill guessed that a loud sound could echo for quite a distance in these empty hallways. But the sound they heard was almost unmistakable, even far away.

It was gunshots.

Barry pulled out his Colt and led the way toward Theta labs. He didn’t have to say anything. He broke into a jog with Jill right behind him, heading down the hallway and through the doors at the end. They continued down another hall and came to a set of doors with warning signs plastered up everywhere.

“What in the world?” Barry muttered.

There were red and yellow signs warning of “Construction Ahead.” Signs announced “Construction Personnel Only” and “Hard Hats and Protection Equipment Required Ahead.” There was a plastic case on the wall full of pairs of safety glasses and hooks for hard hats. Jill and Barry looked at each other and Jill just shrugged.

They continued cautiously through the doors and found that the signs were not for decoration. Just beyond the doors, sheets of plastic stretched from the ceiling to the floor, and beyond them, the hallway disappeared.

Instead of the sterile white hallways they were accustomed to by now, Jill and Barry discovered dark, dust-filled tunnels supported by wooden beams, like the inside of a mine shaft. Single incandescent light bulbs hung from wires stuck to the beams with metal staples, and the floor was composed of wooden two-by-fours bridged between the wooden floor beams. Dust and bits of dirt trickled down from the uncovered roof of the tunnel.

“I don’t believe it,” Jill said softly. “This place isn’t even finished.”

“They were making more labs,” Barry replied with a grunt of disapproval. “They didn’t have enough already, so they were making more.”

“Is this on the map?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t say it’s under construction.”

“Maybe we should get hard hats.”

The unfinished tunnel split off to the left and right. Barry pushed the plastic sheet aside and glared down the dim tunnel. There were long extension cords bunched up along the floor, and a few crudely constructed tables covered in blueprints and tools.

“Which way should we go?” Jill asked.

“I’ll go this way. Yell for me if you find anything. If you get scared, come back here and wait for me. Okay?”

The last thing Jill wanted to do was go off on her own again. After finding Barry, she hoped to stay with him until they got out of the labs. But she just nodded and pulled out her pistol. Barry knew she was afraid, but she didn’t want him to worry about her. She forced herself to be confident and brave, even if it was difficult for her. She survived the dogs, the zombies, a huge snake, and the woman in the cabin. Walking down a tunnel should be a piece of cake.

She pushed the sheet out of the way and stepped into the tunnel. The wooden boards creaked under her weight and the dim lights and dust in the air made it hard to see very far ahead of her. Holding her gun out, she walked cautiously forward. She wished that she thought to look at the map before heading off, but she didn’t want to go back and ask Barry. Hopefully, the tunnel ended soon and she could go back.

For a moment, Jill relived an unwelcome memory of her battle with the gigantic snake in the dark storage room. She tried hard not to imagine something even more terrifying coming out of the darkness of the tunnel ahead of her. For all she knew, there was an entire crowd of zombies lurking right around the corner. Or maybe something worse, some other mutated monster like the snake, or another wild experiment like the woman from the cabin.

Jill paused in the tunnel and forced herself to take a deep breath. There was no reason to believe that this empty, unfinished tunnel held any new dangers for her. Besides, if there were zombies here, they would probably stumble off the uneven boards and fall down, or trip on the numerous extension cords and wires lying everywhere. Jill felt sure she could take care of them before they could get to her.

Suddenly, another gunshot rang out, very close by. Jill tensed up nervously and then hurried down the tunnel, gun aimed forward, stepping as lightly as she could on the wooden boards. She was pretty sure that the shot came from up ahead, although it was possible that it came from the other end of the tunnel, where Barry went.

The tunnel turned sharply to the left and then split again, one way going to the right, and the other ending in a larger area far to Jill’s left. She heard a scraping noise to the left and carefully snuck forward. The larger area was apparently an unfinished room, illuminated dimly by more plain light bulbs, and slumped in the far corner of the room was a body. It was wearing dark pants and an orange vest with white sleeves, an outfit that seemed oddly familiar to Jill. The person was holding a gun as well, aiming it unsteadily into the darkness at the other side of the room, which Jill could not see.

“Who’s in there?” Jill called, keeping her voice steady. “This is the RCPD. Identify yourself!”

The person on the floor swung the gun in her direction, but then shuddered and immediately aimed it back in the other direction, into the darkness Jill flinched as he fired twice more into the shadow at the other side of the room. Jill could not see what he was shooting at because the room extended past the edge of the tunnel.

“Freeze!” Jill shouted. “Drop the gun!”

The man fumbled at his chest with his free hand and flung something out into the center of the room. For a split second, Jill thought he threw something like a grenade at her, and she prepared to duck for cover. But the light glinting off the shiny metal surface of the object revealed it as a police badge. Jill was almost too confused to react.

A badge? But who else ...?

Then the realization struck her right in the face.

“Enrico!” she cried, and ran into the room. She turned instantly and aimed her gun where Enrico was aiming his. The room extended for a space and then ended in a wide hallway heading to the right, and another room parallel to the one they were in. The other room, however, was completely dark.

Jill knelt down next to Enrico and lifted her hand to her mouth in shock. He was smeared with blood from his neck to his waist on the left side of his body. Looking closely, Jill saw how pale his skin looked. He stared up at her helplessly with wide, frantic eyes, his forehead dotted with sweat and his teeth firmly clenched against the pain. Enrico was slowly bleeding to death.

“Jesus,” she whispered, glancing nervously back into the darkness. “What happened?”

Blood trickled from the edge of Enrico’s mouth when he tried to speak. The words came out as stifled grunts. “Shot me ... traitor ... shot ...”

Enrico fired once more into the dark room beyond and Jill spun around, gun drawn. She didn’t know where to aim but she opened fire anyway. She just fired randomly into the darkness, squeezing the trigger five times. The flashes from the guns burst erratic light into the darkness, but she saw nothing there.

Enrico gasped and his arm slumped down. He touched Jill arm feebly and mumbled, “Careful ... Traitor ...”

“Who?” Jill cried. “Who’s a traitor?”

Suddenly, there was a small thud above her head and dirt rained down on top of her. Two more sounds and the dirt wall right next to her burst apart in tiny explosions. Handfuls of dirt burst away from the wall each time. She could just faintly hear a clipped whistle coming from the dark room.

Jill fell backwards, swinging her gun up once more. Someone was shooting at her with a silenced weapon! She fired twice more and scrambled for the cover of the tunnel. Enrico lifted his gun and fired once as well, but the effort seemed too much and his arm fell back down right away. Jill cowered in the tunnel for a moment, torn between her desire to help Enrico and her fear of getting shot herself.

She could not stay there, she had to do something. She had to save Enrico.

Jill ran back into the room and stood right in the center, firing her gun into the other room until it clicked empty. She still could not tell where the other shooter was hiding, but if she fired randomly, they would have to take cover. It would give her a few seconds to grab Enrico and drag him into the tunnel to safety.

She hurried to Enrico and tucked one arm under him, grabbing the front of his vest in her other hand. “Come on, Enrico,” she gasped, so scared that she was out of breath. “Come on, I’m going to get you out of here. Come on!”

But Enrico didn’t move. It wasn’t until Jill caught a glimpse of the red smear on the side of his head that she realized she was already too late.

Enrico was dead.

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