Chapter 9
Unofficially, the Umbrella Corporation Board of Directors were some of the most powerful men in the world. Umbrella was one of the most influential international corporations on Earth, although most people were totally unaware of that fact. Umbrella held three major facilities and scientific compounds in the United States; one in Raccoon City, one near Flagstaff, Arizona, and another newer facility and research development in the middle of rural North Dakota. Aside from their United States facilities, they had large sites in Paris, Cairo, Tokyo, Dubai, and Sydney, and other locations in Yakutsk, Russia; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Belmopan, Belize; and their newest facility in the middle of the Congo in central Africa. And of course the research facility in Antarctica, although that one was hardly used anymore.
Aside from those major locations, there were literally hundreds of smaller sites and research compounds spread across the world, from Australia to Iceland, in major cities like New York and Hong Kong, and more remote places like northern Finland and tiny islands off the coast of southern Argentina.
Umbrella exerted a certain amount of influence on the government of every single city and country that they were located in. Sometimes that influence was as complete as their control over Raccoon City, but that was usually the case only in smaller cities. Although in some cases, such as their facility in Belize, the national government was firmly in their pocket, not just the local government.
The Board of Directors were a group of seven men, each of them the top Facility Manager at one of the major locations. Although few people in the world even knew who they were, the Umbrella Directors commanded an ungodly amount of power, since the Umbrella Corporation had such massive influence worldwide. The Facility Managers from Arizona, Paris, Cairo, Tokyo, Dubai, Sydney, and Sao Paulo were about as powerful as a mythical society like the Illuminati.
Technically, there were eight members of the Board, but the Facility Director of their Antarctica base was a member in name only, and he rarely, if ever, took part in major board meetings such as the one taking place today.
Damascus Kelly took a deep breath and tried to remain composed as the computer screens spread out on the conference table in front of him blinked to life. He was seated at the head of the table, a set of folders laid out before him. Each computer screen was positioned at one of the other seats at the table, so Kelly could look at the faces on the screens as if they were people seated around the table. The eighth computer screen was blank, as usual, but the other seven revealed seven very important faces. Each of the men was seated at a desk somewhere else in the world, attending this meeting by satellite, since meeting together in person was both difficult and dangerous. And although Kelly was not a man used to being intimidated or easily frightened, the thought of being under the harsh gaze of such powerful men made him break out in a cold sweat.
“Gentlemen,” Kelly said gravely. “Thank you for speaking with me. By now, all of you know about the situation here in Raccoon City. I am here to give you the details.”
“Go on, Kelly,” the Director from Arizona said. Kelly was from the Arizona facility himself, so the Director there already knew him by name.
Kelly licked his lips and looked down at the list of notes in front of him. The Directors already knew that the Arklay facility was a loss and that reports were very bad, but Kelly was not looking forward to telling them just how bad they really were.
“We have over 120 casualties so far,” he said slowly. “That includes our own researchers at the Arklay lab compound, as well as security personnel and other workers from the surrounding complex. It also includes 47 civilian passengers of a local train that was somehow infected when it passed through the area.” Kelly paused for a moment and added, “It also includes at least five local police officers.”
“Excuse me?” the Director from Paris said. He was an ancient-looking man with thin gray hair and liver spots on his forehead. “Did you say police officers?”
“Yes,” Kelly said uncomfortably. “Five, so far. We’re still trying to track bodies in the surrounding woods.”
The Director from Arizona nodded and said, “Go on.”
Kelly looked down at the list again. “There are three major locations here, aside from the separate lab complex in Raccoon City itself. There is the main Arklay lab, the closed training facility nearby, and an industrial plant that served as a treatment and disposal facility. We’ve found numerous second-stage hosts at the main lab and the treatment plant. We’ve also found them at the training facility, but we believe all of them are from the passenger train, which crashed nearby.”
“How did it crash?” the Tokyo Director asked. He was a middle-aged Japanese man with a thin mustache.
“It derailed,” Kelly said simply. “We don’t know how or why yet.”
“And the hosts?” the Arizona Director prompted.
“The main lab was the primary infection point. Most of the hosts were scientists and researchers, but there were security personnel as well. The industrial facility was all security personnel, most of them local employees. But some of them were special security forces.”
“What do you mean?” the Director from Paris asked.
Kelly paused and looked down at the sheet of paper. “Several of the bodies at the treatment plant are from the special security force.”
“What? You mean the UBCF?”
“No, I mean the … Umbrella Security Service,” Kelly said, unsure exactly what else he could call them. Technically, the USS was a specialty division of the UBCF, but in reality, they were a completely separate military organization, under the authority of the Directors themselves.
“Jesus Christ,” the Dubai Director grumbled. Despite being located in the Middle East, he was an American with a slight southern accent. “You mean those black ops commandos? How in the world did they get sent without us knowing about it?”
“We’re working on that, sir,” Kelly said weakly. “We don’t know exactly when they were sent here, but we’re trying to find out.”
The Dubai Director narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “Just who was in charge over there, anyway?”
“The Facility Director was a man named Ozwell Spencer,” Kelly said.
He could see the Directors from Arizona and Paris nodding their heads slightly, but the other Directors didn’t seem to recognize the name. Kelly had never heard of the man either, but a quick background check before the meeting showed that Spencer had quite a history with Umbrella. When Kelly read up on the man’s history, he was surprised that Spencer hadn’t been on the Board himself.
“Have you found his body?” the Dubai Director continued.
Kelly shook his head. “No, we haven’t. We also haven’t located the Research Project Manager, a man named Albert Wesker. So far, both of them are missing.”
The Director from Arizona looked at Kelly knowingly. “Do you find that suspicious?” he asked.
Kelly made a noncommittal shrug. “Much of the underground lab was destroyed by fire, which we are also investigating. We’ve barely begun to dig through the wreckage, so we may find their bodies there. But ...” he paused uncomfortably. “There is some evidence that could be incriminating.”
“Such as?”
“Spencer’s car isn’t here either,” Kelly said. “We’ve checked the parking garage and cross-referenced all the vehicles. Spencer’s car is missing. Also, Spencer’s office appears to have been ransacked. Whether this was done before or after the outbreak is unknown.”
“What do you mean, ransacked?” the Tokyo Director asked.
“I mean his desk had all the drawers pulled out, things were thrown around everywhere. There was a wall safe that was left open. We don’t know what the safe contained, but it seems unlikely that anyone but Spencer knew the combination to it.”
Kelly let them think about that. Spencer’s desk ransacked, his wall safe emptied and left open, and his car missing. It certainly
sounded suspicious to him.
“What about the Project Manager?” the Dubai Director asked. “What was his name again?”
“Albert Wesker. There’s a car registered to him in the garage, and so far we’ve found two offices that we believe were his. It appears that he didn’t have one primary office in the lab, he had several small ones. But we haven’t found anything out of the ordinary so far.”
“Enough about them,” the Arizona Director said. “What about the experimental creatures at the lab?”
Kelly read through the long list of creatures and specimens that the lab experimented with. It was a sizeable list, including a few creatures that he had never heard of before. The researchers doing the clean-up work at the lab found several infected dogs running loose, as well as infected monkeys, and a few sharks in the destroyed aquatic lab. Plus a handful of hunters, several of them dead already, as well as lickers and stingers, and even some rarer specimens like the jumpers. There were also a few wild mutations like the enormous snake they found with its head blown off. And of course, the Tyrants.
“One of the Tyrants was found outside the lab, correct?” the Arizona Director asked.
“Yes,” Kelly said. “It was found destroyed near an exit elevator to the surface.”
“Destroyed how?” The Tokyo Director asked, curious again for more information. Kelly wished the man didn’t ask so many questions, because Kelly didn’t like giving them the answers.
“A rocket launcher, sir.”
The Director paused and leaned forward. “What?”
Kelly tried to explain as calmly as possible the sequence of events as he understood them, as the researchers had explained it to him. Much of the lab directly beneath the scenic area, where the elevator was, was thoroughly destroyed by fire. But they believed that the Tyrant was grown in a lab room not far from the elevator entrance. Somehow, it made its way up the elevator shaft, completely destroying the elevator in the process, and was destroyed by a rocket launcher before it made its way to the surrounding forest. They found the empty launcher at the edge of the concrete patio, along with cases of other weaponry.
“Were there any bodies found near the Tyrant?” the Arizona Director asked.
“No, sir.”
The Dubai Director finally interrupted. “Just what are trying to tell us, Mr. Kelly? That a random hiker passing through the area just happened to stumble on an escaped Tyrant and happened to have a rocket launcher in his backpack? Nothing you just told us makes any sense at all. How could the Tyrant climb up a closed elevator shaft? Wait, forget about that. How did the Tyrant even escape the lab when the entire place was supposedly on fire? And just who in the hell shot that rocket launcher?”
“We’re not exactly sure,” Kelly said as calmly as he could manage. “The most likely scenario is that the police were responsible. We did find several bodies of local officers, as I said.”
“If you found dead cops, then why aren’t there more cops there right now, arresting all of you? If the police knew about that lab, they wouldn’t just go away and not tell anyone.”
Kelly pushed his folders aside and took out the newspaper underneath them. It was the Raccoon City paper from the day before. “Actually, sir, I think that’s exactly what happened. We don’t have a lot of information right now, but it seems that the local police did come here at some point during the outbreak.”
Kelly read them details from the newspaper report, although the details were admittedly sketchy and incomplete. Two days before Kelly and the other scientists had arrived, approximately three days after the initial outbreak, a special team of police officers came to the mansion. The paper did not say that, it only said they were sent on a special mission of some kind. When the team did not return, another team was sent the following day. It appeared that four members of that team came back from the failed rescue mission on the same day that Kelly had arrived. They probably left the site just hours before the first Umbrella investigative teams came onto the scene. Kelly’s team determined that those four officers were the ones who destroyed the Tyrant, just before leaving by helicopter. It was speculation, but the facts seemed to fit.
“Alright,” the Arizona Director said. “So the police were involved. But if that’s the case, why aren’t they investigating this further? Why haven’t they returned to the lab yet?”
“I think that some high-ranking members of the police department or the local city government are keeping this confidential,” Kelly said. “We’re trying to find out which individuals in particular might have been working for us, but most of Dr. Spencer’s files are disorganized and we think some are missing. I suspect the local Chief of Police is probably responsible for keeping this under wraps so far.”
“Sounds plausible. Recruiting local authority isn’t unheard of.”
Kelly nodded and tucked the newspaper back under the folders. He slid out another small stack of notes and tapped the edge on the table to line the pages up.
The Paris Director spoke up. “Whatever the reason, we can’t expect it to last very long,” he advised. “Sooner or later, the public will demand answers, in particular the family of the dead police officers and any other employees that lived locally.”
“Very true,” Kelly said. “But I’m afraid there is still more bad news. It’s the real reason that I asked for this meeting, as a matter of fact. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about an upcoming police investigation any time soon.”
“And why not?” the Paris Director asked.
“Because the town of Raccoon City is at risk of infection. If our estimates are even close to accurate, the virus will spread to the city no later than eight days from now.”
Kelly sat upright and looked at the faces of the men on the seven computer screens. The Director from Arizona, who was Kelly’s direct manager, already knew that part of the meeting and could only look away. All of the other Directors said nothing, but they did not avert their gaze, each of them staring forward right at Kelly, as if daring him to change his mind. The Director from Dubai, the southern American, finally broke the silence. His voice was dark and threatening.
“You sure about that, Mr. Kelly? I mean, are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes,” Kelly said. “Without a doubt. Far too many infected hosts, human and otherwise, made it out into the open for us to contain the infection at this point. We’re still finding second-stage hosts out in the forest. By now, they’ve spread the virus as far away as four miles from the lab site. We cannot contain something that widespread.”
“What are your recommendations?” the Arizona Director said quietly, his question merely serving as a prompt.
“First,” Kelly said, “We have to stop all work at the central Raccoon facility. Our time is short, so we need to send units as soon as possible to take possession of the intellectual property. Escort the employees out and close the location. Try to save whatever we can before its too late.”
“And second?”
“Lock down the city. I already have several units of UBCF here on site, but I’ll need authorization for at least twenty more units. We have to keep the city quarantined to prevent anyone from leaving. When the virus hits, we have to limit its infection to this city alone. If it gets out of the city, then I don’t know what we can do.”
“You have a UBCF Commander on site, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Are these his recommendations as well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there anything else?” the Paris Director asked.
Kelly nodded. “I hate to say this, but in the event of failure to contain the infection, I think we have to authorize the use of final decontamination measures.”
“As a last resort, of course,” the Arizona Director added.
“Of course,” Kelly said.
It was impossible not to notice that the Board of Directors was seriously opposed to the idea, but none of them were
about to vote against it. There was simply too much at stake, too many lives at risk, too much damage already done for them to hesitate. Kelly knew that he had the support of the Arizona Director, and that made it easier for him to make such a request. Final decontamination was just that, a final solution to prevent the spread of the virus in the case of a massive, uncontrollable outbreak such as the one they had on their hands right now.
In the end, the Board voted in favor to authorize its use as a last resort.