The Arklay Outbreak

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Chapter Twenty

Wesker hit play on the video monitor and leaned against a desk, folding his arms. Birkin sat in a chair beside him, upset and impatiently waiting for the video to start. Wesker insisted that he watch it first, before they discussed anything. Birkin didn’t understand Wesker’s insistence until he watched the tape in its entirety. When it was over, he rewound it and watched it again. After the second time through, static filled the screen but neither of them bothered to turn it off.

“How is it possible?” he whispered, so low Wesker almost didn’t hear him.

“I don’t know,” Wesker said. “If this happened ten years ago, I might have a theory for you. But not now.”

“I mean ...” Birkin sat back in his chair and lifted his hands to his face. “He looks younger, much younger. Maybe it isn’t him and we’re just imagining things.”

“It’s him all right. I’d bet money on it. I don’t have the slightest idea why it took this long for him to appear, though. If he was still alive, he would have made his presence known years ago.”

“He can’t be alive.”

“You know what I mean,” Wesker snapped, annoyed by Birkin’s frightened reaction to the video. He’d worked at Umbrella as long as Wesker had; this was no more horrifying than any of the other experiments they’d performed in the last decade, although it was much more confusing. The video didn’t scare Wesker so much as frustrate him, but Birkin looked like he was about to start freaking out.

“Was he experimenting on himself, for God’s sake?” Birkin asked.

“I don’t know,” Wesker muttered, finally turning the monitor off. “We didn’t exactly have time to ask him what he’d been doing. I had to piece together most of the research from his notes, remember?”

“The T-virus must have done this, but how?”

Wesker sighed. “At this point, I don’t even care.”

Birkin looked at Wesker and his face softened. The look of fright receded and his eyes sharpened. He lowered his hands, and Wesker was glad to see that they were not trembling. He let out a steady breath and stood, running a hand through his hair, taking a moment to collect his thoughts.

“You’re right,” Birkin said. “It doesn’t matter now. Who cares what brought him back? What we have to worry about is how we’re going to stop him.”

“Stop him?” Wesker asked, his voice hinting at sarcasm. “Stop him from doing what, exactly?”

“Well, stop him from ...” Birkin said, gesturing toward the blank video screen. And then he realized what a foolish statement it was. The labs were both completely overrun with zombies and animals mutated by the Progenitor and T-virus as well. There wasn’t much left for them to stop. The damage had already been done.

“I wish I’d come here sooner,” he said.

“I don’t,” Wesker said. “You would have gotten in my way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve already taken steps to contain this disaster,” Wesker explained. “But I know you. You would have tried to stop me from doing it my way. So I’m glad you weren’t here.”

“That’s the whole reason I came,” Birkin shot back. “To stop you from doing it your way.”

“It’s too late, anyway. It’s already started.”

“What has? What have you done?”

“Not me,” Wesker said with a slight shake of his head. He went to the computer and switched through several screens to select another security video. This one showed the side of a lone building with a fence visible in the background. Birkin didn’t recognize it. Suddenly, a familiar figure walked out the door of the building and moved his arm. The image from the camera went black.

“Is that what I think it is?” Birkin asked.

Wesker nodded. “It’s the main entrance building to the treatment plant. He left the building a little over an hour ago. So he’s out in the open now. As long as he stayed inside, there was a tiny chance of containing the spread of the virus. Now, we have no chance.”

Birkin felt his blood go cold. “He might come here,” he said, his voice suddenly quavering. “He could come right here and infect everyone in the entire lab. We wouldn’t be able to stop him from getting in. Wesker, what the hell are we going to do?”

“It’s worse than you think,” Wesker said. “Much, much worse.”

“How could it possibly ...”

“On another camera, I caught a glimpse of him heading west from the plant. That means he was walking away from us. There isn’t anything west of the plant except forest. But there are some railroad tracks that go through the mountains.”

Birkin didn’t know what that had to do with anything. “Railroad tracks?”

“Our radio system picked up a very brief emergency alarm. Just for a few seconds. We only picked it up because we were close to the source. I doubt the signal even reached Raccoon City. It was from a passenger train called the Ecliptic Express. It takes weekly trips around the Arklay mountains for tourism and sight-seeing. According to its schedule, it comes right through this area on its way back to the city. And as of right now, its late coming back to the station.”

“Oh my God,” Birkin groaned. “How many people were on that train?”

“Who knows? Twenty, fifty, a hundred? Why he went after the train, I have no idea, but we should consider ourselves lucky. It could be even worse that that. He could have gone right into Raccoon City and infected an entire apartment complex.”

A sickening sensation flooded through Birkin’s body and he had the urge to break down and cry in despair. He couldn’t even imagine something like this in his worst nightmares. The thought of innocent people dying such horrible deaths made him want to vomit. And the worst part was that he knew that there was nothing any of them could have done about it. If the Umbrella commandos couldn’t stop him, then what chance did the rest of them have?

At that thought, it occurred to him that so far, he had only seen Wesker since he arrived at the Arklay lab. None of the other scientists were here to see the video. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, but now it seemed strange that he and Wesker were apparently alone.

“Where are the others?” he asked warily, feeling a cold dread sweep up his back. “Have you shown them this?”

“I have not.”

“Why in the world not? You can’t keep it a secret from them. You have to ...”

Nothing in Wesker’s facial expression or his body language gave it away, but somehow, Birkin knew immediately that the other scientists were already dead. He knew it with absolute certainty, as if by divine inspiration.

“What have you done, Wesker?” he whispered, staring at him.

There was not an ounce of regret in Wesker’s voice. “I did what I had to do.”

“You killed them.”

“I released the Progenitor into the lab. It was the only way.”

“The only …?” Birkin muttered in disbelief. He rose from his chair and raised his hands in a futile gesture of bewilderment. “The only way? Are you out of your mind? You killed them, you murdered them!” he shouted. He suddenly stepped forward, feeling his hands ball into fists.

Wesker crossed his arms and squared his shoulders, as if daring Birkin to confront him. He radiated a cold wave of ruthless malevolence, and it stopped Birkin in his tracks. The last time he and Wesker had physically collided, the episode ended with Birkin on the floor with a bloody mouth. Birkin remembered it well, and Wesker surely did too.

Birkin tried to stare him down, but it was no use. He was impossible to threaten or intimidate, and Birkin was no match for him physically. Getting in a messy fist fight would solve nothing.

“How many people are going to die, Wesker?” Birkin spat, glaring at Wesker in undisguised contempt. “How many have to die before you feel even a sliver of guilt? You don’t care at all about those innocent people. You’re just going to let more of them die, aren’t you?”

“I’m not just letting them die,” Wesker replied, “I’m sending some of them to their deaths. Because that’s the only way we’re going to contain it. You can’t stop the infection from spreading, you can only slow it down. You can’t destroy it, you can only distract it.”

Birkin shook his head as if trying to shake off some horrifying mental image. “You’re wrong, Wesker. You can stop this. You just don’t want to sacrifice yourself and your precious work to do it.”

“Would you do it?” Wesker snapped, pointing at him. “Would you throw away everything you’ve worked for? All the work, all the research, everything you’ve accomplished in the last fifteen years? If the virus got loose on your watch, would you throw everything away just to save them?”

“I’m working to save lives!” Birkin shouted. “All of your work is just how to make bigger and more violent monsters! My work is going to save people!”

“So if you had to choose between protecting your life’s work, and saving the lives of a bunch of ignorant fools that you’ve never even met, which would you do?”

“This isn’t about me, this is about you!”

“What would you do?” Wesker shouted angrily, stabbing a finger at him, forcing Birkin to back away.

Suddenly, the tide had turned and Birkin discovered that he was floundering. How had the argument turned on him? How had Wesker managed to manipulate the conversation and make Birkin feel guilty, when Wesker was the one letting people die? The question – the accusal, really – finally got to him and he listened almost against his will. He was shocked to discover what the answer to the question was.

“You would do exactly what I’m doing,” Wesker said flatly, not letting Birkin respond. “You’d justify it by telling yourself that your work is important to mankind, and if a few hundred people died, or even a few thousand, then it was worth it because your work could save millions.”

Birkin was stunned silent. Those exact words had been right on the tip of his tongue, and Wesker turned them against him as well. He sat down and covered his eyes, too weak to argue any more. Wesker had already won.

Wesker didn’t let it end there. “In the end, you and me are the same, Will. I know you like to think that you’re more noble and more humane, but nobility and humanity have no place in our line of work. This isn’t about them, it’s about us.”

His voice leveled out and he looked away from Birkin. “Right now it’s about me.” He set his hands on the nearest desktop and leaned heavily on it.

Birkin, in defeat, fell back into his chair, his arms hanging limply at his sides. He looked around the room forlornly. Is this really where all their years of hard work and dedication had led them? When they joined Umbrella, they both had such potential. And look where it got them. Birkin still wanted to be an idealist, his hopes and dreams pinned on some noble goal. He wanted to believe the best about himself, so the sudden realization that he was truly no better than his worst enemy was like getting shot in the heart. There was no more fight in him.

“We’re doing it my way,” Wesker said, sounding tired. “I don’t want to do all this by myself, but I will if that’s what it takes. I’m offering you a chance to be involved. You’ll have to settle for that.”

“Yes, I’ll have to,” Birkin muttered weakly. He lifted his eyes to Wesker like a beaten dog looking sadly up at its master. “So what do you want me to do?”

“I have to head back to the police station soon to keep my coworkers from getting too curious about what’s going on. I’ll have to muddy the waters quite a bit. While I’m there, you have to stay here and keep an eye on things. When was the last time you slept?” he asked.

“I slept last night,” Birkin said. “I’ve slept at home two nights in a row, actually.”

“I bet your wife was overjoyed,” Wesker muttered. “I’m going to sleep when I get back, then. I’ll need you to hold the fort tonight.”

“I can handle it.”

“I should hope so. I don’t anticipate anything going wrong, but if there’s a problem, you can wake me up. Otherwise let me sleep.”

“If you want me to recognize any problems, you’re going to have to actually explain to me what your plan is.”

“Ah, yes,” Wesker said. “I guess I will.”

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