Calm Before The Storm

Chapter Six

Rebecca Chambers didn’t remember anything about their escape from the lab. She remembered treating Barry’s gun shot wound, and she dimly recalled running down the hallway, and then the next thing she remembered was being on the helicopter heading back toward Raccoon City. It felt like waking up from a bad dream, but instead of being safe in her bed, she was laid out on the rear seats with Chris leaning over her, the inside of the helicopter barely lit by the tiny interior lights and the main control panel. The loud rush of wind made it impossible to hear what Chris was saying to her, and she forgot to ask him after they landed.

After their meeting with Irons, Chris took her to the hospital. They did some quick tests to check if she had suffered a concussion, but in the end it was nothing so serious. All she had was a bump on the back of her head. But the doctors warned her to return to the emergency room if she had any symptoms such as headaches or forgetfulness. By the time they left the hospital, it was almost morning, and Chris let her spend the night on his couch, rather than driving all the way across town to her own place.

“Thanks again,” she said. She sat against the arm of the couch in Chris’ living room, absentmindedly fidgeting with her hands.

Chris glanced up from the kitchen counter, where he was preparing breakfast. “You’re welcome, again,” he said. “It was no trouble.”

“And thanks for letting me stay here last night.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t want to be by myself either.” The toaster popped up and Chris took a pair of waffles out of the slots, quickly replacing them with two more and pushing the lever back down. He set the waffles on a plate and undid the cap on a bottle of syrup. “Do you want something to eat?”

“Yes, actually,” Rebecca said. She hadn’t felt hungry when she first woke up, but the scent of waffles was enough to make her feel ravenous. She hadn’t eaten anything almost all the previous day. Her last meal was a stale sandwich and cup of pudding, before she and Billy escaped the huge underground factory.

The thought of Billy briefly distracted her, but she pushed the thought away. There were other things to worry about right now without getting sentimental about him. She walked over to the kitchen table and took a seat.

Her police uniform was piled on the floor by the couch. When she asked if she could stay at his apartment, he let her change into some of his spare clothes. Now, she was dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants and a red t-shirt that was too big for her. Her hair was uncombed and she self-consciously ran her fingers through it, trying to make herself look a bit more composed. Chris didn’t seem to care, but she couldn’t help but worry about her appearance. It felt strange to be sharing breakfast with Chris at his place, even though she spent the night asleep on his couch. He didn’t seem to think it was out of the ordinary, and made her breakfast as if he had done it a dozen times.

He handed her a plate of waffles and set the syrup bottle on the table. “What do you want to drink?”

“Whatever you have,” she replied. “Milk, orange juice, whatever.”

“I have 2% milk.”

“That’s fine.”

Chris wore a white muscle shirt and black pajama pants. Until now, Rebecca had only ever seen Chris in his police uniform, so it was strange to see him dressed casually. She didn’t know he had any tattoos, but she saw two of them on his upper left arm and another larger one on his right bicep, but she didn’t look at them long enough to see what they were tattoos of. She felt weird staring at him, and usually looked away before he noticed.

He set two glasses of milk on the table, and then returned to the counter when the toaster popped up again. He took the waffles and set them on another plate and then came back to the table.

“How did you sleep?” he asked.

Rebecca shrugged and poked at the waffles with a fork. “Okay, I guess. I still feel tired, like I didn’t sleep for very long.”

“I think you were asleep for about seven hours or so.”

She cut her waffles and took a bite. “Did you sleep okay?” she asked.

Chris hesitated, pouring syrup across his plate. “Not really,” he said. “Tried to, but I only slept about an hour before I got up.”

“You only slept for an hour?”

“Yeah. I’ve been up since about nine. I was kind of surprised I didn’t wake you up, cause I was walking around the apartment.”

“I knew you got up before me, but I didn’t know it was that early.” Rebecca fiddled with her waffles some more but didn’t take another bite. “Did you ... did you have nightmares or something?”

“No,” Chris said. “I just couldn’t stop thinking. My mind was racing, you know? I couldn’t settle down long enough to fall asleep.”

“I understand,” Rebecca said, not knowing what else to say. She certainly hadn’t had that problem. She passed out as soon as she laid down on the couch.

“I’m still trying to put it together,” he continued. “There’s still so much that doesn’t make any sense. And I know it won’t make sense any time soon. But I can’t help but wonder what else we could have done. Maybe it would have turned out differently.”

“I don’t see how it could have,” Rebecca said, setting her fork down. “I don’t think we could have done it any differently. I think we should feel lucky that we made it out at all, instead of second-guessing ourselves.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Chris admitted. “But we’re not really done with it yet, you know. I mean, we made it out of that lab, but it’s not over yet.”

Rebecca nodded. “Chief Irons was lying to us, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, I think he was,” Chris said solemnly.

“Why would he do that?” Rebecca asked. “Why would he bother? It’s not like we wouldn’t find out soon anyway.”

“I’m trying to figure that out,” Chris said. “He must have some kind of reason. Maybe he was just trying to buy himself some time.”

“Time for what?”

Chris leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he’s waiting for more orders from Umbrella. He knows more than he told us, that’s for sure. But I think it has more to do with what we know about Umbrella. I think he was trying to shift the blame onto us.”

“What are you talking about?”

Chris pointed toward the living room windows. “There’s three news vans outside right now. I unplugged the phone and turned off the door intercom so they can’t bother us.”

“What?” Rebecca asked, stunned. She turned in her chair and went over the to the window, carefully pulling back the curtains just a few inches. Parked out on the street in front of the apartment building were a trio of news vans from the three major channels in Raccoon City. There were a dozen people milling around with cameras, and a group of curious spectators was lined up along the sidewalk.

When Rebecca looked back at Chris, he said, “Irons has been completely ignoring them all morning. The police department didn’t give the press any kind of statement about what happened last night.”

“Then how did they find out anything happened at all?”

“It was already front page news that Bravo never came back yesterday,” Chris said. “When we got back this morning, someone told the newspaper that only four officers came back. The reporters have been trying to get more information ever since, and Irons isn’t talking. So they found out who was on the S.T.A.R.S. teams, and they used the process of elimination to figure out who those four officers were. They’ve been staked out front there for the last couple of hours.”

“That’s crazy,” Rebecca said in disbelief. She wanted to look out the window again, but was afraid someone outside might see the curtain move. “Do they even know we’re here?”

“Probably. My car’s in the parking lot, and someone might have seen us come in this morning. I have a dozen messages on my answering machine already from news stations and newspapers asking for a comment on what happened last night.”

“Did you tell them anything?”

“Like what? That Umbrella created some kind of disease that makes people come back from the dead?”

“But what about Irons? Why won’t he tell them anything?”

“To put pressure on us,” Chris said. “All he has to say to the press is that there’s an investigation going on, and he can’t comment during an investigation. So they assume that means that we’re the people being investigated. Anything we tell them at that point becomes a defense.”

“But there is no investigation,” Rebecca said.

Chris shrugged. “What difference does it make? If we tell the press that there’s no investigation, then they’ll just keep asking us what happened. And there’s no way we could tell them. They would never believe it. But if we tell them we have no comment, they’ll take that as confirmation that there really is an investigation going on.”

“I don’t believe this. Are you saying that we’re trapped?”

“Basically,” Chris said, far more calmly that Rebecca would have thought possible. Chris was so loud and angry in Irons’ office, and now was calmly accepting the fact that Irons had lied and they were stuck in defending his lie. “The only thing we can say is that we have no comment, but that only implicates us.”

Rebecca sat down at the table and looked at her waffles, which were now cold. Besides, she had lost her appetite. “How long are they going to stay out there?”

“I don’t know. Hopefully not too much longer. They’ll give up eventually.”

“Have you tried to call Jill and Brad?”

“Yeah, I called them both and left messages. They probably have their phones turned off like I do. Hopefully they call me back on my cell phone some time today.”

“So what are we supposed to do now? Just wait for the media to leave us alone?”

Chris set his elbows on the table and sighed. His breakfast was still untouched. “Well, I was still thinking about Irons. About why he would allow the reporters to hound us like this. Obviously, he wants us distracted and occupied. Like I said, I think he wants to buy some time.”

“Okay,” Rebecca said. “But time for what?”

“Right. What’s he waiting for? Eventually, the media’s just going to turn back at him, asking for more info about this fake investigation. He can’t just blockade them forever. They’ll figure out pretty soon that there is no investigation after all. Maybe someone at the department will tip them off.”

Rebecca tried to think about it, but she had no idea what Irons might be up to. Chris had obviously spent a lot longer thinking about this, so she just said, “I have no idea what he’s waiting for.”

“This is what kept me up,” Chris said. “I was thinking about all those monsters and zombies running loose out in the mountains. Those skinless dogs and creatures like the thing that attacked us in the generator room. We didn’t kill them all. There’s still dozens of zombies probably wandering around out there, and who knows what else? All those zombies are infected with that disease, and it has to be contagious in some way or another ...”

“Oh my God,” Rebecca whispered.

Chris nodded. “Yeah. I think that’s what Irons is waiting for. I think he’s waiting for some of those zombies or some of those monsters to make it all the way back here to Raccoon City. Cause it’s going to happen, probably sooner than later.”

“We have to do something,” Rebecca said urgently. “We have to tell someone, we have to ...”

“Tell them what? What could we say that wouldn’t get us thrown in a psych ward? Who could we talk to? How could we warn anyone?”

Rebecca felt her heart constricting in her chest. It was the most horrible feeling in the world to know something bad was going to happen, and not be able to tell anyone about it. But Chris was right. No one would ever believe them, no one would take them seriously. Especially not when they were supposedly under investigation by the police department. Rebecca wracked her brain trying to think of some way that they could tell people of the danger, but nothing seemed like it would work. And even if they managed to find a sympathetic ear, what could be done at this point?

The zombies and the skinless dogs were running wild out in the forest, less than 20 miles from the outskirts of the city. And they had no way of tracking them, no way of knowing where they all were. Even if they somehow managed to make people believe their warnings, what could they possibly do? Send out search parties to look for zombies?

It was impossible. They would need guns to fight off the zombies and skinless dogs, and trying to cover that many square miles would take weeks. They could never track down every single creature that escaped from the lab. Even organizing a group of people large enough to attempt such a wide search would take days, and by that time the infected creatures could be miles away from the lab complex.

“What are we going to do?” Rebecca heard herself whisper.

“I don’t know about you,” Chris said gently. “But I’m going to pack up my things and get out of town.”

“You’re going to leave?”

“I can’t accomplish anything here in Raccoon City. It’s far too late for that. The only thing I can do now is keep my promise to Barry. I’m not going to let Umbrella get away with this. I’m going to find proof of their guilt, and I’m going to make them pay.”

“But how?” Rebecca asked helplessly. “How could you ever get that kind of evidence?”

“I still have some friends in the Air Force and I know people in other branches of the military. I can get in touch with a couple of guys I know who went freelance. They’re mercenaries now. They can help me get started. Then its just a matter of tracking down Umbrella and going up the chain of command until I find someone who knew about the experiments they were performing here. Someone out there knows the truth, and if I can track them down, I can get the evidence I need.”

Rebecca could see now why Chris seemed so calm about Irons’ deception. Irons was no longer a concern to Chris. He had already set his sights much, much higher. Chris had no room to worry about Irons now, when he was already planning to go right to the top of Umbrella to find out the truth.

“What about you?” Chris asked suddenly. “What are you going to do?”

The question took her off guard. What in the world was she going to do? Staying in Raccoon City was not an option, but she had no real roots there anyway. She only moved there for her job, and right now seemed like the perfect time to hand in her resignation. She could easily move back home with her family and start fresh once more.

But her thoughts again drifted back, almost unwillingly, to Billy Coen. The last time she saw him, he was walking off into the forest and out of her life. But now, thinking about the horrible future in store for Raccoon City, she felt the overwhelming need to know that he made it out okay. It had not occurred to her that maybe he had encountered some new danger before making his way out of the mountains, but now she felt terrified that he not made it out at all. She had to know that he was okay.

“I think I might try to get in touch with some old friends,” she said quietly.

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