The Mansion Incident

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Chapter Thirty-One

“I didn’t know what else I could do,” Rebecca said apologetically, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall. “I had no radio, and didn’t know the way back. I just kept walking until I found this place.”

“I can’t believe you’re still alive at all,” Chris said, shaking his head in amazement. “I didn’t think I would find anyone else alive down here.” He knelt next to her and looked up and down the empty hall. “You didn’t find any other survivors at all, then?”

“No,” she said quickly. “The last living people I saw were Enrico and Richard, when we split up at the train tracks. I’ve been on my own since then.”

“Jesus, that’s incredible,” Chris said. Rebecca glanced at him curiously and then looked away again, but Chris didn’t seem to notice.

“You haven’t seen them, then?” she asked sadly.

“No,” Chris said. “Just ... just Forest and Edward. I’m sorry, Rebecca.”

“I’m sorry about Joseph,” she replied. “But you said that the others made it to that house? They might still be alive.” She tried to sound optimistic, but she knew it sounded hollow. It was hard to be optimistic about anything when she just learned how some of her teammates died. Chris told her how he found Forest and Edward, but she guessed he left out some details. She left some major information from him as well, but for a much different reason, she suspected.

“They might be,” Chris said, “but I don’t know. I heard a scream that might have been Jill, but I never found a body. And I think that someone from Bravo went through one of the other buildings I found, because there were several dead zombies. But I haven’t seen anyone since I got separated from the others.”

“Do you think Brad is still out there somewhere?”

Chris just shrugged bitterly. “Who knows? We’ve been here for hours now, and the chopper doesn’t have enough fuel for him to fly around this long. But he knows what he did. He abandoned us here. He’d be afraid to go back to the station and admit that he left us here, but he’d also be too afraid to stay. I have no idea what that coward would do.”

“If he’s still here, do you think he would pick us up if he saw us?”

“Maybe. Probably, I guess,” Chris said, unsure. “Do you have something in mind?”

Rebecca set her hands on her knees and glanced up and down the hallway, as Chris did a minute earlier. They both kept expecting something to show up and attack them. It was hard to think they were actually safe here in the hallway, but Chris told her he had not seen any zombies for awhile, and the place seemed empty when she first got there.

“I was thinking about it when I walked around today. I knew I was lost, and I thought if I made some kind of signal, then someone might find me. We could light a big fire outside or something. At night, anyone could see it, even from far away. If Brad is still in the area, he would have to come and check it out.”

“It might work,” Chris agreed. “I mean, it would definitely work.”

Rebecca waited, but Chris said nothing more. “But you don’t want to try it,” she said, guessing at what he wanted to say.

“No, I think it’s a great idea,” he replied, shaking his head. “But I want to try to find the others first. I don’t want to leave without them.”

Rebecca understood Chris’s feelings, but at the same time, she knew how foolish he was being. She didn’t want to just abandon her teammates either, but what were the chances that they could find anyone else in this place? It seemed like a miracle that they even found each other. If there was a chance that they could contact Brad and get out, they had to take it. As much as it sounded like they were deserting the others, it was time to face reality. Their chances of getting out seemed pretty slim, and they needed to take whatever chances they could.

But she didn’t say any of that. She knew what Chris felt, because she felt it herself. She wanted to get out of this place very badly. After thirty or so hours of fighting monsters and running for her life, she would give just about anything to escape and return to Raccoon City. But she wasn’t going to earn her freedom by possibly leaving her teammates there to die.

“We should still check to see if he’s even out there, though,” she said. “He might give up and fly back to the city in five minutes for all we know.”

“Good,” Chris said. “Then they’ll bring back up.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea though?”

“Not really,” Chris said right away. “I don’t want them sending anyone else to this place. We’ve lost enough people already.” He stood up and took a deep breath, running his hand through his hair.

It was a hard decision to make. Should they stay and keep looking for the others? Should they just leave now while they might have the chance? Should they send Brad for back up? It might have been a moot point, since there was no real reason to think Brad was even still around. For all they knew, he might be dead too. Maybe he landed the helicopter somewhere only to be attacked by zombies or dogs, or who knows what else.

“Okay,” Chris said, making up his mind. “You’re right. Let’s see if we can contact Brad. If he’s out there, we’ll get his attention. We’ll just tell him to –”

Chris was interrupted by a crunching noise coming from far down the other end of the hallway. Rebecca immediately scrambled to her feet and yanked her gun from her holster. Chris drew his gun as well and they both aimed down where the sounds came from. The sound was like a slimy crunching, like the sound of an animal chewing. But it was louder than that and more sickening, and they could tell it was getting closer. It sounded like the amplified sound of bones grinding.

“I went that way earlier,” Rebecca whispered, her voice panicked. “There was nothing down there, I swear there wasn’t.”

“Well, it must have come from somewhere. It doesn’t matter,” Chris said. “But I don’t think a zombie would make noises like that.”

“Then what is it?”

“We’re about to find out.”

When the creature appeared at the end of the hallway, Rebecca’s heart froze solid in her chest. Her hand froze as well, and she was suddenly too scared to even pull the trigger. It was another monster, but not like the ones she saw before. It was worse. Much, much worse. It was the size of a tiger, all bloody muscle and sinew, and when it turned to look at them ...

Chris grabbed Rebecca’s arm and shook her awake. “Come on!” he shouted, pulling her away. She stumbled at first but soon regained her footing and raced after Chris.

Behind them, they heard the creature’s terrible roar, and then the crunching sound came after them, louder and faster than before. It was the awful sound of the creature’s own body as it moved, the sound of its exposed muscles and bones.

“Why didn’t we shoot it?” Rebecca gasped as they ran.

“Do you really think our bullets would hurt that thing?” Chris shouted back. He grabbed her arm again and pulled her along with him, as she was already falling behind.

Behind them, the hallway doors exploded inward, smashed off their hinges and ripped apart like they were made of cardboard. The beast landed on the floor among raining debris and howled again, shaking its disgusting body and turning to chase after them. Its open mouth revealed rows of glistening teeth like shards of glass, and a long, swirling tongue that thrashed about as it howled. Its four feet ended in jagged claws that made gouges in the linoleum as it ran, and the whole body seemed to pulse as its muscles and tendons writhed with movement.

Rebecca screamed at the sight and shook loose of Chris’s grip as she ran faster.

They came to a hallway crossing and Chris immediately turned right, pulling Rebecca with him. They bolted down the hallway and she shouted, “Do you know where you’re going?”

“I think so,” he shouted back as they quickly approached the doors at the end. They read “Power Generator Room – Authorized Maintenance Personnel Only” in bold red letters.

Chris and Rebecca burst through the doors and found themselves in a small anteroom with a series of dials and digital read-outs on the wall. There were also two small tables with old computer monitors on them, and a couple of chairs. To the right were a set of double doors so old that the plastic windows were smeared and glazed with age. The flat metal push handles, once silver in color, were dull black from millions of hands pushing the doors open over the years. Chris’s boots clanked on the metal grating on the floor as they ran through the doors into the power generator room.

The creature was right behind them. Almost as soon as they entered the generator room, the creature crashed into the anteroom, not able to stop its forward charge before it crashed into the tables and slammed headfirst into the wall. It shrieked horribly and thrashed around, its bulky body smashing the furniture to pieces and breaking most of the dials on the wall.

The generator room was hot and humid, a maze of rusty metal pipes going in every direction and loud, humming engines surrounded by puddles of stagnant oil on the floor. Old yellow light bulbs danged from wires in the ceiling, glowing dimly. The dark industrial setting was in jarring contrast to the bright medical setting of the rest of the labs. It was like Rebecca found herself suddenly returned to the treatment plant again.

They hurried through the gauntlet of twisting pipes and metal fixtures as the creature charged furiously into the room, coming right after them. Chris pulled Rebecca through a gap in the pipes barely a foot wide and pushed her roughly into a narrow space in between two dirty machines. He backed up until he was against the wall, about six feet from the gap in the pipes. He quickly pried a metal safety panel off a nearby machine and held it in front of him.

The creature came at them in an instant and slammed into the impenetrable gridwork of pipes and metal beams, roaring ferociously, flinging spittle at them from its thrashing tongue. It thrust its clawed arm through the gap, coming within inches of cutting Chris right in half. The metal panel would have served little protection against the razor-sharp claws, but that’s not what Chris was trying to protect himself from

Rebecca saw it coming. She immediately covered her face as Chris raised his gun and opened fire at the pipes directly against the creature’s writhing body. The pipes burst and then exploded in a blast of burning hot steam. Chris held the metal panel up in front of his chest and face to protect himself from the scalding heat, and Rebecca was protected by the side of the machine.

The creature’s terrifying scream of pain was loud enough to deafen them in the narrow space. It howled in unbearable agony as the steam blasted into it point blank at full force, scorching its entire body in a split second. It seared the monster’s muscle and tissue like a blowtorch, burning it at more than two hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

The creature flailed backwards, its entire body now a scorched ruin, and crashed into a row of digital read-out panels against the side of the next generator. It swung its massive arm in a pain-driven rage and ripped open the row of panels, causing the circuitry to spark and sizzle.

Chris dropped the metal panel, which was now so hot that it almost burned his hands. The area was still full of steam, but it cooled quickly once released into the air, and now it was no more hot that it would have been in a regular steam room. Rebecca got to her feet and Chris helped her climb up on top of the machine next to them. They used the pipes like ladder rungs and climbed up until they were on top of the wide generator, the creature still howling and thrashing around a few feet below them.

When it saw them, it screeched and leaped up into the air, trying to grab them. But the machine was blocked by support beams and more pipes. Chris and Rebecca ran along the top of the machine and stopped at the edge. There was no way for them to get down, since the creature was waiting for them.

“I think we’re stuck,” Rebecca muttered.

“We don’t have much choice now,” Chris replied, taking out his pistol.

They both aimed down at the monster and opened fire. It roared and made another frantic grab for them as bullets rained down on its head and torso, blasting apart the skull and fragile flesh of the face and neck. Blood spurted and splattered across the side of the generator, and finally the creature jumped away, crashing sideways into the next row of computer panels. It swung around in a mad fury, smashing the panels and ripping through the circuit boards and wires underneath, causing them to burst with sparks and acrid smoke.

“Keep shooting!” Chris yelled.

Rebecca did as she was instructed, emptying the entire clip into the creature’s head. When it clicked empty, she slid the empty clip out and immediately pulled the other one from her pocket. Both the gun and clip were taken from a dead commando at the treatment plant, and it was the only weapon she had left. She slid the clip into place and pulled the barrel back to load a bullet into the chamber.

She didn’t have to fire it though. As Chris continued to shoot, the creature finally crashed backwards in a death howl and stopped moving. Its claws twitched and went still, blood pooling quickly around its head, which was now a bullet-riddled ruin. Its long tongue hung out of its mouth limply. The burnt flesh still smoked, and the odor was enough to make them want to retch.

Rebecca swallowed hard and lowered the gun. Chris snickered to himself and did the same, sticking his gun back in the holster. They both breathed heavily for a few moments, despite the horrible smell, and just stared at the body.

“That thing is a lot stronger than a zombie,” Chris quipped.

“What do you think it is?” Rebecca asked, staring down at the hideous body.

“I think it’s called a licker. I saw a diagram of one earlier.”

“I can’t believe it took us so many bullets to kill it.”

Chris chuckled again and said, “Well, hopefully, we don’t run into any more of them. I don’t think we have enough ammo to do that again.”

Rebecca never told Chris the details of her encounters with the creature that used to be James Marcus, because to do so, she would have to mention Billy as well, and she wanted to keep him a secret if she could. Eventually, the military or the police would come looking for him, and Rebecca could only hope that they would assume he died somewhere in the labs or treatment plant.

But she realized that they only survived because Billy found that lighter and threw it at the leaking oil drums. If not for that, they’d almost certainly be dead. Shooting Marcus was completely ineffective, so their guns were useless. What if they ran into something else like that? What if they encountered a new kind of creature that bullets did not harm at all? She could only hope they didn’t.

“That was a pretty clever move with the steam,” Rebecca said as they climbed down off the generator.

“It just kind of came to me,” Chris said with a shrug. “I figured this would be a good place to hold it off. I walked by here right before I found you.”

They stepped past the licker, making plenty of room, just in case of a muscle spasm or one desperate final grab for them. They were sure it was dead, but still didn’t want to get too close to its razor sharp claws. As they left the room, Rebecca glanced at one of the digital readouts along the wall.

She paused and took a closer look. There were half a dozen smell red lights above the panel, and all of them were blinking rapidly. She looked at the numbers on the readout and saw that they were climbing slowly.

“Um, Chris?” she asked.

He looked at the readouts as well and then looked around. The two computers out in the anteroom were smashed to pieces from when the licker ran headfirst into them, but there was another computer set up inside the generator room. Chris wiggled the mouse and the screen slowly came into view.

There was a menu for different controls and power settings, but Chris ignored them. In the top of the screen was a flashing red window. When he clicked on it, a warning sign flashed onto the screen.

“Interesting,” Chris said, with Rebecca looking over his shoulder. “Looks like the generators are overloading.”

“What?” Rebecca asked. “How?”

“How do you think?” Chris said, motioning toward the licker. All the control panels it destroyed were still smoking and sizzling. They could only guess what damage it did to the system.

“What can we do about it?”

“Nothing, unless you know how these things work.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, neither do I,” Chris said, stepping away from the computer. “So I guess we better get going.”

“Will it explode or something?” Rebecca asked, looking at the screen. There were columns of numbers all labeled with different abbreviations, but she didn’t know what the abbreviations stood for. Some of the numbers were slowly going up and others were going down. She noticed that it was only the data for one of the generators. One of the other generators might be the one that was overloading. “How long do you think we have?”

“I have no idea,” Chris said.

Rebecca thought about how the treatment plant burned down, and wondered if they could do the same thing here. What if they triggered the generators to explode and burn this lab down as well? It seemed like a long shot, because according to Chris, the labs covered a huge area. Rebecca doubted that these generators could explode with enough force to destroy this entire lab. But the explosion might start a fire that could potentially burn down the lab, and that would be just as good. If a creature like Marcus could be destroyed by fire, then Rebecca was sure that the zombies would be destroyed as well.

She told this to Chris, and almost to her surprise, he seemed to like the idea. She expected him to be reluctant to destroy the labs, just in case there were still survivors remaining. But just because he liked the idea, didn’t mean they could pull it off.

“Causing an explosion like that would be just the thing to get Brad’s attention,” he said. “But I don’t think we can just program it to explode faster.”

“We could damage more of those computer panels,” Rebecca suggested.

“That might make the whole thing just shut off. At some point, the generators will just stop working at all. Right now they still work, but they’re damaged enough to cause a problem. We should probably just leave it alone.”

“I suppose so,” Rebecca said.

“Besides, they’ll probably explode on their own without us having to help them along,” Chris said. “And just in case, I’d like to be far away when they do explode.”

They left the generator room and headed back down the hall. Rebecca glanced down at the tile floor, which showed deep gashes from the licker’s claws. She could not believe they managed to escape it, much less kill it. Of course, what would happen now if they ran into another one? Would the same trick work twice?

The main hallway intersected with another corridor, giving them four directions to choose from. One direction led to the generators, one led back to the exit where Rebecca re-entered the labs, and one led back to the labs Chris came from. Rebecca started walking back down the hall leading to the exit, when Chris stopped suddenly.

He turned around, facing the fourth hallway. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

Rebecca froze at the thought of something else coming after them. She looked down the hall and drew her gun. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“No,” Chris said, gesturing toward her gun. “I think I heard voices.”

“Voices?”

Chris headed down the hall at a walk and then increased his pace, with Rebecca following right behind him. She didn’t hear any voices, but she’d been lost in her thoughts and really wasn’t listening, if she was being honest with herself.

The hallway split to the left and right. There was a large sign that read, “Theta Labs,” and other sign that said “Construction Ahead,” with an arrow pointing to the right. Chris paused at the intersection and waited. Rebecca, her gun still drawn, looked nervously down the hall in each direction.

“I could swear I heard something,” Chris said softly.

Rebecca said nothing. It was entirely possible that Chris heard something, but did they really want to find out what it was? After their encounter with the licker, she didn’t want to stay down in the labs any longer. She was not interested in doing any more searching or investigating. She just wanted out.

And then she did hear a noise, and before she could even react, Chris was already halfway down the hall in that direction. It wasn’t a voice she heard, or a growl or a moan, or any other sound a monster might conceivably make. It was the sound of a door banging open, and a clatter of hurried footsteps coming their way.

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