The Arklay Outbreak

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jill came into the command center and looked around the room, her hands on her hips. Chris was at his desk, typing at his computer. Barry was at his desk as well, cleaning and reassembling his gun, and he looked up at her when she entered. Enrico and Richard were out on a mission, and Wesker, as always, was nowhere to be found.

“What’s the news from Bravo?” she asked. “They’ve been gone for a long time and they haven’t given us their status.”

“They haven’t been gone that long,” Barry said. “Maybe they’re not there yet.”

“Where were they going? I don’t even know.”

Barry shrugged with a frown and slid the oiled cylinder into the revolver, spinning it as he set it in. He began rubbing the gun with a rag. “They got out of here quick. I didn’t hear where they went either.” Jill could tell by the tone of his voice that it bothered him too, he was just less likely to state his concerns out loud. “Chris was here when the call came in. Maybe he knows.”

“Didn’t hear a thing,” Chris said, continuing to look at his screen. “The speaker wasn’t on when Rico took the call.”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“No, he ran out of here in a hurry as soon as he hung up.”

“So where are they?” Jill asked, visibly frustrated. “Why haven’t they called back?”

“I have no idea,” Chris said. “I thought Wesker was handling it.”

“And where is Wesker?”

The door opened abruptly behind her and Wesker came in. “I’m right here,” he said in a low, tired voice. His white shirt was wrinkled unprofessionally and his fatigue was evident in the way he moved. “What’s the matter?”

“Where’s Bravo team?” Jill asked, lowering her voice to sound less annoyed. Wesker was her boss, after all, and she didn’t want to sound like she was making some kind of forceful demand. And somehow, his appearance restrained her anger; the way Wesker looked, a strong breeze could have knocked him over.

He sat heavily in his chair and let his arms flop to his sides. “They’re on an assignment right now,” he said wearily.

“They haven’t called in.”

“Yes, they have. It just didn’t come in over the common band.”

“What are you talking about?”

Wesker sighed and rubbed his eyes under the dark sunglasses he always wore. He rolled his chair closer to the desk and set his arms on it. “I don’t want to keep this a secret, but it can’t leave this room, okay? I shouldn’t even be telling you about it, Jill, since you aren’t a senior member. But you’re here, and I’m too lazy to make pointless distinctions.”

Barry set his gun on the desk and tossed the greasy rag into the garbage can. “What are you talking about, Wesker?”

“Bravo team is on an undercover mission,” he said, looking at his desk. “We received a call from somewhere out in the mountains. I can’t tell you where, except that it’s a government location. They had an emergency situation there, so Bravo team went.”

“A government location?” Jill said. “You mean like a military installation or something?”

“I mean a secret government location hidden in the Arklay Mountains. Emphasis on the word ‘secret.’”

“You can’t be serious.”

Wesker looked up at Jill bitterly. “When am I not serious? Do you think this is something I would joke about?”

“Why would the government call a local police force for something like that?” Chris asked, turning around in his chair to face Wesker. “They have their own troops to handle emergencies.”

“Don’t ask me to explain it,” Wesker said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand it any more than you do. Any other time I would have thought it was a prank call or something. But Chief Irons okayed the mission.”

“Irons okayed it?” Chris asked. “Since when does he authorize anything we do?”

“Never, since I always take responsibility for it,” Wesker said. “But this time I needed verification that this was legit. And even now I don’t know if we should have sent them on the mission. I didn’t know what else I could do.”

“But they called in?” Jill asked, more concerned about the team than the mission. “They let you know everything was okay?”

“Yes,” Wesker said. “They called in about half an hour ago to say that they arrived and were being briefed on what they had been called for. They couldn’t give me any details, though.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Barry stated, his deep voice silencing the others for a moment. Even though Wesker was the actual leader of Alpha team, Barry was the most authoritative member when he wanted to be, and his voice was a demonstration of that authority. When he spoke in that tone of voice, everyone knew that there was no playing around. “The government would never call in a citizen police force to handle a secret mission. We aren’t trained for that kind of work, and they know it.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Wesker asked, his voice all nerves. “You think I like what’s going on? Why do you think I checked it out with Irons before I sent them out?” In the entire time Jill had been a member of S.T.A.R.S., she had never heard Wesker sound nervous or frightened, and now he sounded both. He was always the very definition of cool and composed, and now he looked at the end of his wits. If Wesker was having trouble dealing with it, then Jill realized just how serious it must be.

Chris must have noticed it too, because he tried to defuse the situation. “It’s okay, man,” he said supportively. “It’s just kind of a shock, that’s all. If Irons gave it the go-ahead, then we can ask him what it’s all about.”

“And that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Barry said, standing up. He stuck his pistol into the sleeve on the front of his red vest and stalked out of the room.

“I don’t like it at all,” Wesker said as soon as Barry left. “I don’t like it any more than Barry does, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. We can’t call them back.”

“Can you tell us anything else?” Jill asked, trying to ask gently, given how shaken Wesker appeared to be. “Where they went? What they’re supposed to do there?”

Wesker shrugged and spread his hands helplessly. “I can’t tell you where they went and I don’t know what they’re doing. It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. He sat at the desk for a moment and suddenly dug into his pockets for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He fumbled with them and lit a cigarette with clumsy, nervous speed, as if he hadn’t smoked one in days and desperately needed the nicotine. He inhaled deeply, and immediately, his features relaxed.

“You know you can’t smoke those in here,” Chris said lightly, making it sound like a joke.

“Let them fire me,” Wesker grumbled, and it did not sound like a joke at all.

An extended, uncomfortable pause followed. Jill stood in the center of the room indecisively, not knowing whether to stay there and talk with Wesker and Chris, or to go after Barry and confront Chief Irons. Chris had abandoned whatever he was doing on the computer and seemed to be just staring into space. Wesker fixed his gaze on his desktop and smoked his cigarette relentlessly. He let the ashes fall to the floor.

Finally, Jill couldn’t stand it anymore. “I’m going to see if Barry found out anything,” she said, and hurried out of the room.

Chris got up a moment later and made for the door, before hesitating and turning back to Wesker’s desk. “Hey Wesker, if you want I can –”

Wesker waved him off. “I’ll be fine. Go after them, but Irons probably won’t tell you anything.”

Chris left without another word. When the door clicked closed behind him, Wesker leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. His cigarette was down to the filter, so he took it out of his mouth and crushed it right into the S.T.A.R.S. logo that decorated the top of his desk.

He congratulated himself on his acting ability. If anything, his fatigue from lack of sleep and fear of being caught in a lie only enhanced his performance, since he really was stressed out and scared, just not for the reasons he stated. And they bought it too, especially Jill and Chris. Barry was too angry to be critical of the details, but he would come around as well. Especially after Irons told them nothing, which is exactly what he would tell them. Wesker had already purchased his compliance. And so at the moment, everything was going according to plan.

In a strange way, the mystery man had done him a favor. His unprovoked attack on the Ecliptic Express passenger train gave Wesker the perfect opportunity to send in the emergency call to Bravo team. Otherwise, he would have needed to come up with some other false emergency to bring them out to the mansion. When he made the phone call, he spoke in a deeper tone of voice and Enrico didn’t even realize it was him.

Bravo team could not call back to home base at all, because their radio didn’t work. Wesker had done performed some careful maintenance to it earlier in the day, along with a simple act of sabotage on the helicopter. Once the chopper landed, it would not be able to take off again, stranding Bravo team. They would be cut off from the outside, and if Wesker’s opinions about their ability to handle a truly dangerous situation were valid, none of them would make it out of there alive.

They would hold the infection back, at least for a few hours. They would fight the zombies that by now had surely taken over the unfortunate train, and hopefully some of them would make their way to the mansion. Wesker couldn’t afford to worry about how far they’d get, because he was too busy planning the Alpha team’s eventual departure to the mansion as well, where things would get complicated, because he had to go with them to complete the illusion of innocence. He knew what this meant. For a little while, he would be just as exposed as them, and in just as much danger.

But he knew the mansion and the labs like the back of his hand, and his teammates didn’t even know the place existed. He was confident that he could infiltrate the zombie-infested compound and make his way back to his private labs without getting killed or infected. Besides, Birkin was at the lab keeping an eye on things. As for the others, they would just have to fend for themselves.

They were his diversion. They would keep the zombies in check, at least in theory, and serve as bait to keep them from getting away from the mansion compound. They might even kill a few of the zombies along the way. They would also attract the attention of the nameless man from the video and direct his attention away from Wesker.

While the S.T.A.R.S. members blundered their way around the mansion, keeping the zombies and the mystery man busy, Wesker could finish up his work at the lab and leave without a trace. It might be a bit more difficult with Birkin nosing around, but all of the most sensitive research was beyond his reach. Wesker had to perform three stunts at once; lead Alpha team to their deaths, pull a fast one on Birkin, and get out of there unscathed in the bloody aftermath. Birkin wasn’t really a necessary part of the plan, and so Wesker really didn’t care what happened to him. If he made it out alive or if he got caught in the crossfire, either way was fine with Wesker.

But if any of the S.T.A.R.S. members somehow discovered his secret or made it down into the lab to confront him? Well, in that case, he had a plan for that too. He always left himself an opening. In the end, they were all going to die. One way or the other.

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