The Mansion Incident

Chapter Thirty-Two

Jill knelt helplessly by Enrico’s body and sobbed to herself, her head in her hands. Too late again, she cursed herself. She was too slow. She failed Enrico just like she failed Kenneth. If she reacted faster, if she was more careful, if she was a better police officer, then maybe Enrico would still be alive. She sat on the floor and blamed herself, tears dripping down her cheeks.

Barry, meanwhile, took his anger out on the wall. He kicked the unfinished wall so hard that clumps of dirt trickled down like a miniature avalanche. “There’s no one else here!” he roared. He checked out the other room completely and found it empty. Granted, there were several pieces of machinery to hide behind, but Barry was certain that no one was in the other room. Whoever shot at Enrico and Jill was gone now, completely disappeared.

Jill wiped her face and stared down at Enrico’s body. When she first realized that someone was shooting at her, she ran back to the safety of the tunnel. She abandoned Enrico there to be killed, and she hated herself for it. She practically forced herself to come back into the room to help him. Her first reaction was to save herself. And now he was dead, shot in the few moments that Jill was too scared to defend him.

“I’m so sorry,” she whimpered pathetically.

“You had to have seen something,” Barry urged, standing over her. “You must have seen the shooter. Just a glimpse. You must have seen him.”

“I already told you,” Jill said weakly, shaking her head. “I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t even tell where the shots were coming from.”

“You didn’t see anything?” he asked. It wasn’t just a question, it was more like an accusation.

“No,” Jill said for what felt like the hundredth time. “I just tried to shoot where Rico was shooting. I couldn’t see anything in there.”

“The room is empty, Jill. There is no one there.”

“Well, someone was there!” she shouted defensively. “Someone shot him! There must be a hidden door or something!”

Barry clenched his fists and bit back another comment. He glared down at Enrico and then turned away, his whole body seeming to tremble with rage. Jill closed her eyes and fought back the tears still flowing down her face. Deep down, she knew that Barry was not mad at her, could not be mad at her. Barry took his grief over Enrico’s death and channeled it into fury over the fact that the killer escaped. But Jill blamed herself for it, and directed Barry’s anger squarely at herself.

Suddenly, Barry was lifting her up onto her feet. “Come on,” he said, his voice more steady, but still with the undercurrent of anger and grief tinging his words. “We have to get out of here. We have to keep moving.”

“What about Enrico?” Jill asked weakly.

“We can’t do anything for him,” Barry said, his voice restrained. “We’ll have to leave him here.”

“Just like Kenneth. And Edward.”

“Just like everyone else,” Barry said. Jill gazed down once more at the body, and Barry shook her shoulders a little to make her look away. “We can’t do anything right now. We’ll just stick to the plan. We can get to that elevator and get the hell out of here.”

“And then what?”

“We find a way back to Raccoon. We tell everyone what happened here. We make sure that the people responsible for this pay for it. But we can’t do any of that until we get out ourselves. Now, come on.”

He took a hold of her arm and began to walk out of the room, back down the tunnel. Jill hesitated at first, and then wrenched her arm and shook free of Barry’s grip. Frustrated, he reached for her again, but she avoided his grasp.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said. “I’m talking about the traitor. Enrico said there was a traitor. He wasn’t just killed by someone who worked for Umbrella. Someone we know did that, someone we trusted!”

“You think I don’t realize that?” Barry snapped. “All the more reason for us to get out of here as fast we can, before the traitor comes after us as well.”

“But who could it be?” Jill asked desperately.

“Put it together, Jill. Who’s left alive?”

Jill was stunned at the directness of Barry’s question. Who was left alive? Kenneth and Edward were both dead, and now Enrico as well. Joseph was dead, as well as Chris. Who did that leave?

Wesker? Her boss might not be the most friendly or sociable person in the world, but Jill did not believe for a second that he could be responsible for something like this. He was a ten-year veteran of the S.T.A.R.S. team. The entire police force respected him. He was one of the most decorated officers in the entire department. He might be rude and humorless and unforgiving, but he was one of the most hardworking and dedicated police officers in the entire RCPD. There was no way he was involved.

Brad? At first, Jill discarded him immediately. Brad was a nice guy, but more importantly, he was clumsy and foolish and rather cowardly. She simply could not see him being a traitor, because he didn’t seem smart enough. But he was the one who abandoned them in the woods when those dogs attacked. Did he know about it in advance? Did someone pay him off? Could Brad be a traitor?

Jill switched over to the remaining members of Bravo. Forest, Richard, and the new girl Rebecca were still unaccounted for. Forest was everyone’s friend. He had a wife and a son who Jill met on several occasions. He could not be involved, Jill was sure of it. Neither could Richard, because Jill knew that he become a police officer right out of college and had been a member of S.T.A.R.S. since its inception. Only Barry and Wesker had the experience and seniority that Richard had. He could never have betray them.

But what about Rebecca? Jill wanted to discount her as well because she was so young, but what did she really know about Rebecca? The new recruit had only been with Bravo for a little over a week. She seemed quiet and shy, but Jill expected her to warm to her new comrades and open up soon. Could she be involved? Jill had to admit that of all the remaining S.T.A.R.S. members, Rebecca seemed the most likely suspect. She was new to the force, and could have been planted there by Umbrella to work as a spy. She was also in Bravo, which may explain their mysterious chopper crash. But if Rebecca was the traitor, why would she crash the helicopter she was riding in? That didn’t make any sense.

And Jill didn’t even know if any of those people were still alive at all. Forest, Richard, and Rebecca could all be dead. Even Brad could be dead by now.

All of this flowed through Jill’s mind in a few seconds. She stared at Barry and saw something strange in his eyes. He was angry, that was obvious, but it was more than that. He looked like he was waiting for her to say something that he wanted to hear. Did he already know who the traitor was? Did he suspect someone?

For a moment, Jill had the paranoid thought that Barry suspected her. Did he think she might be the guilty one? But she was with him when they first heard Enrico’s gunshots, so there was surely no way he could think she was involved. Could he?

“Let’s just go,” Barry said suddenly. There was a strange tone in his voice, like he was pleading with her to go.

“What’s going on, Barry?” Jill asked, her heart racing.

Suddenly, panic gripped her like a vise. When she faced off against the zombies, it terrified her, but the fear she felt now was even worse. She saw Enrico get murdered right in front of her eyes, and the knowledge that perhaps one of her own teammates betrayed them made her too scared to even think straight. A million terrifying possibilities opened up before her, and she suddenly felt that she could not trust anyone. Even Barry.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked warily.

“I told you. There’s an elevator marked on the map.”

“Where did you get that map, anyway?”

“I found it.”

“You found it? Or did someone give it to you?”

“I found it,” Barry repeated, more clearly.

Jill stared at him, unsure of what to believe. It was hard for her to think that any member of S.T.A.R.S. could even be a traitor at all, much less imagine that Barry could ever betray her. She trusted Barry like he was her own father, but now she was practically accusing him of lying to her. She felt ashamed.

Her suspicions slowly faded as she realized how she was behaving. Was she just sensing Barry’s fear, and letting her own uncertainty twist her judgment? Was she so afraid about the identity of the traitor that she doubted the one man on the police force that she knew she could trust? If Barry was the traitor, or was in league with the traitor, then Jill would already be dead. She knew for a fact that he could not have been the one who killed Enrico. Was she just being paranoid?

“Please, Jill,” Barry said, his voice much softer. “I want to get out of here. I just ... I just want to see my family again.”

There was such pained sadness and fear in his voice that she could not argue with him. Obviously, he wanted to be reunited with his family. Every cop on the force knew how devoted Barry was to his wife and two daughters. The look in his eyes was a look of a man afraid that he would never see the people he loved again. How could Jill have ever doubted him?

“Okay,” she said finally. “I’m sorry, it’s just that ...” She looked over her shoulder and gestured feebly at Enrico’s body.

Barry gently touched her arm. “I know, Jill.”

“How could someone do this? How could anyone do this to us?”

Barry shook his head wearily and shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. Maybe they were promised money. Maybe they just knew what went on here and want to keep it a secret.”

“Who do you think it is, Barry?”

“I don’t think we should try to figure that out,” Barry said. “We don’t know enough to start accusing anyone. We can’t even be sure that it’s a S.T.A.R.S. member. It might be a regular cop, or even someone else who works in the department. It could be anyone. There’s no point in speculating until we know more.”

Jill hadn’t thought about that. Enrico said it was a traitor, not that it was someone from Alpha or Bravo. It could be anyone in the entire RCPD. It might be Chief Irons himself for all they knew.

Jill allowed herself to be led from the unfinished lab back to the regular hallways. She didn’t want to think about it anymore, she just wanted to get out. After four or five hours of wandering aimlessly through identical hallways, Jill didn’t have much strength left, and the episode with Enrico drained what little stamina remained. She felt suddenly, thoroughly exhausted.

They went back to the wide hallway where they first heard Enrico’s gunshots, and followed the sign toward the Sigma labs. Jill wanted to know how far they were from the emergency elevator, but didn’t want to ask again. She probably asked him twenty times already, and for now did not want to bother him again. She still felt bad about doubting him earlier, and wanted to stay quiet for a little while.

She didn’t even know what they were going to do once they made it outside. Neither of them carried a working walkie-talkie. Barry said he might be able to figure out where in the mountains they were once he got his bearings, but Jill doubted that he could get his bearings this late at night. It would be too dark to see where they were. And even if Barry knew exactly where they were, would they just try to hike out of the mountains on foot? What if they ran into more of those skinless dogs?

And even beyond that, Jill did not know how they were going to tell everyone what happened. How could they expect anyone to believe them? The whole thing sounded insane, like some bad ghost story told around a campfire. If Jill and Barry went to Chief Irons and told him that zombies and mutated monsters from a secret science lab killed the rest of the team, would Irons believe them for even a minute? Would anyone? Jill didn’t even know if she would believe it herself, in their situation.

And what if they didn’t believe? What then?

They would have to come back to the mansion and investigate the deaths of so many police officers. Jill felt sure of that. Even if they threw Jill and Barry into a mental institution, they would have to come back to the mansion to see for themselves what occurred. And they would learn for themselves that Jill and Barry weren’t crazy after all. But how many more police officers would die there before they figured it out?

And what of the dead S.T.A.R.S. members? A terrifying vision entered her mind of the police descending on the mansion, only for Chris and Joseph to come back to life as zombies and attack them. Would they be able to shoot and kill a former police officer, even if they were now one of the undead? Jill didn’t even want to know how they might handle a situation like that.

They walked in silence for awhile, each lost in their own thoughts. They approached an intersection and Barry stopped to pull out the map. He inspected it for a moment and looked down the hallway in front of them and the other going to the left and right. Jill came up beside him and glanced at the map herself.

“Which way?” she asked softly.

“Give me a second,” Barry muttered, tracing his finger along the hallways on the map. Jill wondered vaguely how Barry figured out his own position on the map in the first place. After all, having a map would not be very useful if you could not find your own location on it. Did it have a red arrow marking “You Are Here”?

“This way,” Barry said, pointing to the left.

Jill smiled wearily. “Lead the way.”

Suddenly, both of them froze when a faint sound echoed down the hall. Not gunshots like before, not anything that sounded human.

“Jesus,” Barry whispered, pulling out his Colt and looking around. “What was that?”

“Sounded like a scream or something,” Jill said, drawing her own weapon. She held her breath, resisting the urge to cry out in despair. There was no way she could not handle another fight again, not now. She was too tired to battle for her life once more. She barely managed to keep it together this long, but now she was officially at the end of her rope. She couldn’t take any more.

The sound came again, but they could not even tell what direction it came from. It was surely a scream, but it didn’t sound like it could have come from a human throat. They could not even tell if it was a cry of anger, or of pain. Just a wailing, inhuman scream coming from somewhere nearby, echoing down the empty corridors until it faded into disturbing silence.

With Barry leading the way, they went down one of the other hallways, and found that it ended in three large lab rooms, all of which were empty. They retraced their steps and tried another direction, but did not find anything there either.

“Let it go, Barry,” Jill suggested. “I don’t think I want to find whatever made that noise. Let’s just keep going.”

“I don’t want to find it either,” Barry said. “But it has to be screaming for a reason. Maybe it found someone alive and is trying to get them. Someone might be in danger.”

They kept going down the hall, but did not encounter anyone. They thought they heard the scream once more, much fainter than before, but Jill wasn’t sure. Another minute later, they thought they heard gunshots, which only increased Barry’s pace. A scream might mean a monster, but gunshots definitely meant survivors. Jill secretly wished otherwise. The last time they heard gunshots, things turned out very badly.

“Let’s try the other way,” Barry said, turning around.

Jill sighed and lowered her shoulders, exasperated. “The noise could be coming from anywhere. The sound echoes so much in these halls, we might never find it.”

Barry stopped at another intersection. “You’re right,” he said. “Maybe we need to make some noise of our own. Maybe they can find us.”

“You can’t be serious. If it is a monster, then we’ll be drawing it right to us.”

Barry took a moment and checked his map once more. He seemed sure of something, and stuck it back in his pocket. “We’re pretty close to the elevator right now. If something does come after us, we could probably outrun it. I know you don’t want to bring any monsters down on us, but we can’t just give up.”

“I don’t even think we heard gunshots at all. Maybe that thing was screaming because it was hungry.”

Barry looked Jill right in the eye and tried to sound understanding. “Listen, I know you’re scared. But we can’t stop looking for survivors now. And I know you’re upset about Enrico, but if anything, that only means we should try even harder. If we were two minutes faster, maybe we could have rescued him.”

“I know that. But if we’re not careful, we’re going to get ourselves killed. We won’t be much good if we don’t survive ourselves.”

“I’m sorry, Jill. But I’m not giving up just yet.” Barry took a few steps away, so that he was right in the middle of the intersection.

He took a deep breath and shouted loudly, “Can anyone hear me?”

Jill closed her eyes and waited for the worst. She expected to hear the scream right away, just moments before some new abomination attacked them. But she heard nothing.

Clearly disappointed, Barry tried once more. “Can anyone hear me?” he shouted, his deep voice reverberating down all the hallways.

“Happy now?” Jill said quietly. “Can we just get out of here?”

Barry looked down each hallway for another moment and shook his head. It was as if he was seriously expecting some other result, like he thought that everyone who was still alive would just materialize at the sound of his voice.

“Just be glad we didn’t attract any monsters,” Jill said.

“Had to take the risk,” Barry said. “Don’t forget that you found me because I yelled for survivors.”

“Actually, I did forget that.”

“Come on, then,” Barry said. “If there was anyone within earshot, we would have heard them by now.”

Jill could not shake the feeling that Barry somehow expected to find another survivor, like he knew someone was hiding and was trying to track them down. She wondered why he checked the map again before calling out. In the back of her mind, she recalled asking Barry if someone gave him the map, and now she wondered if maybe someone did. She said nothing about it though.

As they made their way down the hallway, Jill wanted to hurry. The elevator was not far according to Barry, and Jill could not wait to get there and get out of the lab. She finally gave into her need to rush, and went past Barry at a light jog. He looked at her funny, but she shrugged at him and pushed her way through the doors at the end of the hall. However, almost as soon as she did so, she heard other footsteps in the hallway. The hall split off to the left, and someone on that side of the hall was coming their way.

Jill back-pedaled and pulled out her gun out of habit. But she realized immediately that the footsteps were not the aimless shuffling of zombies, or the clicking claws of dogs. They were the sounds of a person running toward them.

Jill almost fainted in shock when, against all logic and belief, none other than Chris Redfield magically appeared at the end of the hall. Chris stopped in his tracks and stared in outright amazement at Jill. Her breath caught in her chest, and she stumbled backwards into Barry, who barreled his way through the doors.

“Chris!” Barry shouted enthusiastically, almost knocking Jill off her feet. He rushed forward and wrapped Chris in a mighty bear hug, practically lifting him off his feet. Chris whooped for joy and returned the hug. It was like watching two long-lost brothers reunited for the first time in years. They laughed and shouted clapped each other on the shoulder like two fraternity jocks during homecoming celebrations.

But how could Chris still be alive? Jill’s mind reeled at the sight. She saw him fall to the ground and get attacked by the dogs. How could he possibly have escaped?

And then an even bigger surprise. From around the corner emerged Rebecca Chambers, staring in shock at Barry, just as Jill stared in shock at Chris. They looked at each other in complete and total disbelief.

Somehow, despite the immense size and mazelike quality of the lab complex, they managed to all find each other there. They were reunited now, four survivors instead of just one or two. And with the end in sight, the emergency elevator so close by, Jill almost allowed herself to feel optimistic about their chances of making it out alive.

But there was still the traitor to worry about. And for all Jill knew, the traitor might be one of the three people with her.

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