The Arklay Outbreak

Chapter Fifty

With an assault rifle in his hand, Billy was in his element. Rebecca immediately noticed the way his demeanor changed. He walked differently, spoke with a different tone in his voice. For the first time since she had met him, he was in a comfortable state of mind, letting himself slip back into his training. She felt instantly safer by his side.

Using the map, they made their way through some twisting, turning hallways. When a zombie appeared in their path, Billy quickly and efficiently took it out with a shot or two to the head. They encountered three so far, not including the one from the elevator, and Billy only fired four times. And to think, Rebecca was worried about conserving ammunition.

They followed the map precisely, but when they came to the stairway leading to the upper levels, it was blocked by scrap machinery piled floor to ceiling. They tried to climb or make their way through the junk, but most of it was too heavy to move. And so they had to go back the way they came, circling around to another staircase, which led them down a level, so they could reach another staircase to take them back up. Rebecca could not understand why anyone would build a factory this way. There were hundreds of rooms along the way, full of unused supplies and machinery of an unknown nature. And there were more disposal pits, some as full as the first one, and some that were completely empty. There were also long rooms of machinery overlooking stagnant pools of water. But they passed by most everything they saw, intent on finding the way out of the maze.

At the top of the stairway, a zombie greeted them. Billy returned the greeting with a blast from the assault rifle. The first bullet struck it in the chest, knocking it backwards, and the second shot entered through its eye and blew the top of its head off. Blood and gore rained down behind it, splattering across the wall. So far, Rebecca had not even needed her pistol.

This zombie, however, was not dressed like the others. He wore a plain blue uniform like a common security guard. He even had a plastic security card hanging from his belt. Rebecca took the card and put it into her pocket. It might come in handy later.

They were getting closer to the exit, and as their eventual escape became more and more a reality, Rebecca had to face the choices she would have to make when they made it out. She didn’t want to think about them, but she knew she had to.

She believed in Billy and trusted him with her life. If he said that he was innocent of murder, then she believed him. After what they had been through together, she could not emotionally afford to believe that he was a killer. But the rest of the world would believe otherwise. He was a wanted criminal, a fugitive from the law. It was her sworn duty as a police officer to arrest him. But if he was innocent, she had no obligation to arrest him, did she?

Billy would face prison for the rest of his life if Rebecca turned him in. Could she live with that, knowing that he was innocent and had saved her life so many times already? Could she send him to jail with a clear conscience?

And there was more to it than just that. There was a bigger choice ahead than whether to arrest him or not. If they escaped this place, Billy would surely not stick around for long. He would want to get away to ensure his freedom. But could Rebecca let him go?

She knew that in intense situations, people formed strong emotional bonds to those who shared traumatic experiences. It was textbook psychology. There were dozens of cases where individuals placed in extreme circumstances forged powerful bonds. People who lived through natural disasters frequently stayed in contact the rest of their lives. People taken hostage would sometimes fall in love with their captors. Rebecca knew this, but that didn’t mean that she was immune to it. Despite herself, she felt attached to Billy in ways she had never felt before.

She didn’t even know what to call it. She wasn’t in love with him, at least not in the romantic sense. But what they had been through, the risks they had taken to save each others’ lives, formed a powerful connection that she could not shake. She felt bound to him, as if he was some kind of soul mate. She knew deep down that she could never feel this strongly with anyone else. Billy, whether he liked it or not, was her new obsession.

She didn’t think he felt the same way, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t bear to see him leave now, not after everything they had done together. They entered a world of nightmares and horror and came out alive, together. Rebecca, even though she knew rationally that it was crazy, could not help but feel that they were meant to stay together.

So when they made it out, and Billy wanted to leave, what could Rebecca do? Could she let him go? Could she go with him and abandon everything here in Raccoon City? She had a responsibility to see this thing through to the end, to make her way back to the city and tell everyone what happened here. She couldn’t leave without doing her sworn duty as a police officer. She didn’t know if any of the other members of Bravo team were still alive; she might be the only one left to tell the world what happened. She owed it to all of them to get out and return to Raccoon City to tell them about this. But if she had to choose between Billy and her duty, she didn’t know if her duty would win out. She didn’t know what to do.

Somehow, she suspected that Billy was not having the same problem as her. No doubts were in his head as to what his options were once they escaped. He would try to get out Raccoon City, out of the state, out of the country if he could manage it. He wanted to get as far away as possible and make sure the police and the Army never found him. He wouldn’t stay here, not for a minute, even if Rebecca begged him to. Complicating matters, she felt that if she decided to abandon her life and come with him wherever he went, he would not allow her to do it. No matter how she imaged it, she couldn’t think of a way for the to stay together. Once they made it out, they would split up. They had to. Billy would not let her come with him, she was sure of it. And he would never agree to stay in Raccoon City with her. It was hopeless.

They found an old service elevator that was not listed on the map, and used it to get to the next floor. Billy checked the map again. “We’re on the second level now,” he said confidently. “If we follow this hallway here and go through this large area here, it will take us right to this stairway. We follow it up and this hallway here should lead right to an exit,” he said, pointing at a small red E on the map. “Not far to go.”

“Let’s get to it then,” Rebecca said.

They passed by a room that looked like some kind of central command office located at the inside corner of a hallway turning left. Doors at each end of the room were propped open, but Billy and Rebecca looked inside through windows installed along the whole wall. Inside, two rows of computer screens and monitors suspended from the ceiling were all turned on, showing grainy black and white images. Unlike most of the rest of the plant, the room was not encased in dust. It almost looked like it had just been abandoned.

Rebecca walked inside. The desks and counters were clean, the computers and monitors all active. A paperback novel was turned face down beside one of the computers, and a radio was sitting in the corner with the volume turned all the way down. Next to one of the keyboards was a pack of cigarettes and a small Zippo lighter.

Billy spied a small refrigerator against the wall under a table covered in magazines. He pulled it open and a huge smile broke open on his face. “Dinner is served!” he laughed, pulling out some cold cans of soda and some sandwiches wrapped in ziploc bags.

Rebecca laughed in disbelief as he handed her a sandwich and reached back inside to pull out some plastic cups of pudding. He sat down at one of the desks and popped open a can of soda, gulping it down so fast that soda spilled down the sides of his face.

Rebecca tore open the sandwich and frowned to see that it was bologna. She disliked bologna, but she was so hungry that she greedily scarfed down the sandwich and opened a soda to wash it down. She hadn’t eaten in probably close to twenty hours and she was starving.

“This must be where the security team works,” Billy said between bites. “Those monitors all show views from security cameras, I bet. We’re eating their lunch. I guess they won’t be needing it now.”

It felt weird to eat sandwiches made by men who were now dead, but Rebecca ate hers anyway. Then she opened one of the pudding cups and tracked down a plastic spoon to eat it with. Billy opened a second can of soda and drank it down.

As ate some of the pudding cup, Rebecca looked at his arm and the swirling tattoo drawn there. In all their time together, she’d never really looked at it clearly. She thought it was just a random swirling pattern, like some kind of tribal design. Now, surprisingly, she realized that it was actually some words in a looping font.

“Your tattoo,” she said with a faint smile. “I didn’t realize it was words.”

“Yeah. It says ‘Mother Love,’” Billy explained. “It’s a song by the band Queen.”

“I like it. Does it have personal meaning for you?”

“Sort of. My mom loves the band Queen, and she swore that she’d disown me if I ever got a tattoo. So I got this one because I thought she’d like it.”

Rebecca laughed. “Did she like it?”

“Well, she didn’t disown me.”

They shared a laugh, and Rebecca felt almost giddy. She actually felt like they were safe. They were going to make it out alive.

“That’s the best meal I’ve ever had,” Billy said, brushing crumbs off his hands. “The bread was kind of stale, though. I bet those sandwiches are two or three days old.”

“They can’t be much older than that, or they’d have gone bad,” Rebecca said, licking her spoon clean. She set the empty pudding cup down. “That means that whatever turned them into zombies only struck here a day or two ago.”

“Makes sense. The train was infected last night. It must have started here first and then spread outward.”

“I wonder how the train got infected in the first place,” Rebecca said. “I don’t think a zombie managed to get aboard and infect people one by one.”

“I thought about that too,” Billy said. “And about the truck I was in. Something attacked the truck and somehow got inside it, and then killed the guards. The same thing must have attacked the train, gotten inside, and killed all the passengers at the same time. Someone must have just hit the emergency stop when it happened.”

Rebecca thought about it. With everything that had happened since then, she never really had the time to put it together in her head until now. It seemed possible. There was still a problem, though.

“So who sent out the emergency signal?”

Billy reached next to her to take the cigarettes and the lighter. He pocketed the cigarettes, but flipped open the lighter and lit it to make sure it worked. “What do you mean?”

“We got a call from the train saying they had an emergency. That was why we were sent there. But if this thing attacked at once, who would have been left to make the call?” She tried to remember back to when they first boarded the helicopter and Enrico told them the situation. It seemed like ages ago. “They never said anything about monsters attacking or people being killed. Whoever called us said that the train hit something and was stopped.”

“That’s weird,” Billy said.

It was weird, Rebecca realized. She had never thought about it, but looking back, she saw that the whole train incident didn’t make any sense. Whatever happened on the train happened immediately. There had been no survivors, none on the train and none in the forest. It must have occurred very rapidly, leaving no one left alive. But if no one was left, who made the call?

Someone must have known about the train. It couldn’t have been a passenger, or they’d have been dead. Rebecca caught herself looking suspiciously around the control room. Could it have been someone here at this plant? Someone working for Umbrella? Did they discover that their zombie plague had struck the train, and then called in the local cops to clean up the mess?

But they lied about what happened. Why would you call the police and then lie about the situation? It was almost as if they were expected to fail. And then the helicopter malfunctioned and stranded them all here, making the situation even worse. If the helicopter hadn’t broken down, they could have used it to get out of there once they discovered the zombies.

Whoever made the call must have known about the zombies, but they obviously didn’t want that information revealed until S.T.A.R.S. arrived. But once they arrived, they were sure to find out and take the helicopter right back to the station. So the fact that the helicopter’s engine failed worked right into the unknown caller’s plans. Almost as if he or she had planned it that way.

“We were set up,” Rebecca whispered, almost unwilling to believe her own train of thought.

Billy looked curiously at her. “What do you mean?”

“Whoever made the call knew about the zombies, but they didn’t tell us about them. If our helicopter hadn’t crashed, we would have flown to the train and discovered the zombies, and we probably would have left right away once we saw what we were up against.”

“Okay,” Billy said. “But that doesn’t mean you were set up.”

“But it’s too much of a coincidence,” Rebecca said. “They checked the helicopter two days ago and it was running fine. But the engine malfunctioned on the way to the train. Whoever made the call didn’t want us to fly back to Raccoon City, because we’d tell everyone about the zombies. So they sabotaged the helicopter to keep us from getting away.”

“How could they do that? They’d have had to sneak into the police station and sabotage every helicopter there.”

Rebecca had to admit Billy was right. “But what are the odds that the helicopter would crash on this mission? Why would anyone even bother to call us in if they were trying to keep evidence of the zombies a secret?”

“What makes you think they were trying to keep it a secret? Maybe whoever called you knew about the zombies but was trying to expose them. Think about it, Rebecca. If someone called the police station and reported that an army of zombies attacked a train, the police would hang up in a heartbeat and think the guy was a crank caller. Maybe he lied about the situation to make sure you actually came. Maybe the malfunction was just a coincidence.”

Rebecca didn’t know why, but she was certain that she was right. There was nothing wrong with Billy’s reasoning, it was completely possible for his version to be the truth. But Rebecca just didn’t trust it. Someone called Bravo team in under false pretenses and expected them to fail. To make sure of it, they somehow sabotaged the helicopter to prevent their escape. It sounded right to her, but she couldn’t explain why.

Almost without thinking, she reached into one of her pockets and pulled out some crumpled up papers she put there earlier. She unfolded them and found the paper with the list of names. At the bottom, the name “A. Wesker.” It just felt like too much of a coincidence.

“Come on,” Billy said, standing up. “Let’s not waste any more time here. I want to get out as soon as I can.” He snapped the Zippo lighter closed and put it in his pocket with the cigarettes.

Rebecca stuffed the papers back in her pocket and finished the last of her soda. Billy picked up his assault rifle and the two of them made their way out of the control room and down the hall. For the moment, Rebecca stopped thinking about conspiracies and concentrated on the task ahead of them. Namely, getting through the last two levels of this maze.

The went down the long hall at a brisk pace, invigorated by the meal and the knowledge that they were so close to their goal. If they hurried, they could be out of the plant in fifteen minutes. They turned right at the next T intersection and went down that hallway at a quick jog. No zombies were anywhere in sight.

The hallway ended in a large metal door covered in spots of rust. Through the rust, they could make out the words “Caution: Authorized Personnel Only” painted in red. On the wall beside the door was a small panel with a green button. Billy pressed it.

“We have to go through this next room to get to the stairway to the top level,” he said.

“Why do you think it’s sealed off like this?”

“I have no idea. On the map, it’s just labeled a containment area. It’s pretty big though, bigger than the disposal pits.”

“That makes me nervous.”

The door hummed loudly and began to open from the bottom like a garage door. Humming all the way, it rose to the top and stopped with a hiss. Billy and Rebecca wasted no time stepping through into the containment area, but they stopped in their tracks as soon as they were inside.

The containment area was the size of a school gymnasium. A host of unpleasant odors assaulted them, a disgusting combination of biological and mechanical decay. Gasoline and disinfectant combined with sewage and rotting meat. The walls were twenty feet high and ended with narrow catwalks around the edge of the area. The ceiling was another twenty feet above that, lined with support beams and thin girders.

As for the containment area itself, it was part storage area and part junkyard. One corner was filled with stacked crates, some wood and some plastic, most of them broken. One stack had collapsed, spilling machine parts across the floor. Piles of garbage and assorted refuse were everywhere. In the corner nearest Billy and Rebecca, there were a few dozen rusted oil drums, some of them knocked over. A huge puddle of dirty oil was spilled around most of them. Against the far wall were half a dozen large machines that Rebecca didn’t recognize, sitting there like old cars in a scrap yard. Grime covered the floor and walls, and puddles of stagnant water were all around, probably caused by dripping pipes.

Billy was the first to start walking toward the other end of the room, where another large door was closed. As soon as Rebecca started to follow him, the door behind her hummed loudly and began to close. Rebecca was taken off guard, wondering how the door closed on its own. Was it programmed to close after a delay, or was there some motion sensor telling it that people had walked through? Curiously, she looked back at Billy, who was already crossing the center of the room. She jogged to catch up with him.

He made it to the other door and pressed the button. The door hummed and lifted up just a few inches before stopping with a jerk and going back down. They stared at it for a moment and Billy tried again. The door raised up and then shut back down for now reason.

“Why won’t this stupid door open?” Billy asked, slapping the button console in annoyance.

“I don’t like this,” Rebecca said, trying to keep her voice level.

“We have to get through here. It’ll take us an hour to go around the long way.”

“The other door already closed behind us.”

“What?”

They walked all the way back across the containment area and tried to open the door they had entered from. When they tried to open it, it would not work either.

“We’re trapped,” Rebecca said, gripping her pistol with both hands and looking around the area. “I think someone knows we’re here.”

“No one’s here but zombies,” Billy said, but the tone in his voice told Rebecca that he didn’t believe it. He cradled his assault rifle and began to look around as well.

Rebecca cast her gaze up along the catwalks above them. Was it her imagination, or did she sense someone up there, looking down at them? Someone closed the door behind them and was keeping them trapped there. Rebecca could feel it in her bones.

And then she saw him, crouching in the darkness of a long shadow in the very corner. She gasped and grabbed Billy’s arm.

He followed her gaze up into the catwalks and saw the man as well. He raised the gun but did not open fire yet, although his finger twitched on the trigger.

For a few tense seconds, no one moved.

“Who are you?” Billy called up, his voice harsh.

The man in the corner very slowly stood up and took two steps out into the light. He was wearing nothing but a filthy pair of pants and his long black hair hung almost to his waist. Rebecca was stunned. It was the man from the train, and this time he looked like a man again, not the monstrous creature that had attacked them three times now. His skin was pale and glistening with moisture. His chest and arms were chiseled with muscle that seemed to ripple as he moved. His face was masked by shadow, but his eyes seemed to glow as he stared down at them.

“Jesus,” Billy whispered.

The man walked along the edge of the catwalk, staring down at them with a disinterested look on his dark face. His hair seemed to glide behind him like a cape. His body seemed to bear not a single mark or scar from the times they had shot him.

“Let us leave,” Rebecca said loudly. “We don’t want to fight you. We just want to leave this place.”

The man paused in mid-stride and set both his hands on the catwalk railing. He looked down at them, studying them, and then slowly shook his head.

“Who are you?” Billy asked again.

The man tilted his head, as if confused by the question. His eyes shone brightly, but the look on his face was not violent or angry or any other negative emotion Rebecca could comprehend. If anything, he looked gentle and serene. He looked calm and harmless.

“My ... name ...?” he said slowly, as if forming the words for the first time.

Rebecca’s hands shook. The man’s voice was low and haunting, like the voice of a ghost. But it was not a human voice. It looked like a man, but Rebecca knew for certain that although it might have been human once, it was no longer. The beast that had attacked them so ferociously was not human, and just because it had changed shape into something more natural, it was still a monster.

“My ... name ...?” he said again, testing the words.

Rebecca could almost see comprehension dawning on the man’s face. He knew what they meant, and he remembered. His eyes sparkled brightly.

“My name ... is James ... Marcus ...”

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