Chapter 12
The Umbrella Corporation Research and Training Facility near Flagstaff, Arizona was little more than a one-story office building about the size of a small town high school, constructed of shining stainless steel and bright glass. During the day, the building probably sparkled and shone in the harsh Arizona sun, but right now the facility was dark and half-hidden in shadows since the sun had gone down. It sat alone in the middle of the desert, north of I-40 in between Flagstaff and Winslow, accessible only by a series of dusty roads winding their way through the rocky hills. Few people in the area even knew that it existed.
At night, few of the windows were illuminated, indicating that most of the staff had gone home for the night. But a careful observer would notice that even during the day, there were only a handful of cars in the parking lot, which seemed far too small for a building of that size, and almost none of the scientists or other workers who were glimpsed going outside during the day ever seemed to go home at all. A careful observer would notice that, and Chris Redfield was a very careful observer.
Chris lay on his stomach in between a pair of large rocks, peering at the dark facility through a high-powered set of night vision binoculars. He scanned the perimeter of the building, his vision glowing with an ugly neon green coloration. After a few minutes, he set the binoculars down and scribbled the time of day and a quick note in his notebook. He then took a much-deserved gulp of water from his canteen and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as a few drips rolled down his chin.
He had been scouting the facility for two days now, watching people come and go and staying far out of sight of the security detail, which was impressively thorough. But Umbrella’s armed guards were on the lookout for lost hikers or curious sightseers. They were not prepared to find a man dressed in desert camo and well-hidden, watching the facility from over a mile away. In fact, two guards walked within fifty feet of Chris on his first day, and didn’t even noticed him. Chris felt confident that he picked a good location for his observation, although the occasional low-flying helicopter flew overhead during the day, and there was always the possibility that one of them might spot him. He kept his supplies safely under an outcropping of rock, and his desert camo would hopefully keep him from being seen easily.
He gathered up his notebook, canteen, binoculars, and other equipment, and tucked them into his backpack before sliding backwards on his stomach until he was on the opposite side of the hill, no longer in sight of the facility. He crouched low and hurried across the barren desert, running almost directly south, barely making a sound as he ran across loose sand and rocks, running almost blind in the near complete darkness
An hour later, he reached the highway, and followed it west until he found his motorcycle stashed in a ditch surrounded by bristly shrubs. When no cars were visible coming down the highway, Chris started it up and drove off for Flagstaff.
He rented a motel room there, and as soon as he went inside, he unloaded his gear and took a nice, cold shower. After a day spent lying in the blistering sun, a cold shower was the greatest thing in the world. Afterward, he sat in front of his laptop computer and rubbed his hair with a towel, checking his email while the television played in the background.
The destruction of Raccoon City was still the biggest story in the news. Chris turned to watch the news reports for a moment, finding himself unable to ignore the images of the smoking crater that had once been his home.
He went over it in his head a million times, but no matter what he tried to come up with, it always ended the same way. Could he possibly have changed the outcome? Could he have warned them, maybe prepared them? Could Chris have done anything more to try to save the people of Raccoon City from certain death? As much as he wanted to think so, as much as he wanted to believe that he could have done more, it just didn’t seem possible. In the end, Chris had done very little, but even that was as much as he could have ever done.
He knew that no one would ever have believed him. There was simply no way that Chris could have convinced anyone that the city was in danger. At best, they would have merely ignored him as some kind of weirdo, and at worst, they may have arrested him and thrown him in a mental ward. And then he would most likely have died with the rest of them. He tried to think of every possible scenario, every possible way he could have warned them. But nothing would have worked. He knew that, but he wished it was not so.
He consoled himself that at least Jill, Brad, and Rebecca made their escape as well, even though he didn’t actually know for sure that Jill and Brad left the city. They both said they were going to, but the infection struck much sooner than they expected. Chris tried not to think about what might have happened if they had not left like they planned. The only other person who knew the truth was Chief Irons, and Chris wondered if he left the city as well.
He tried to push it from his mind. He could not focus on the past, he had to keep his mind focused on the future. And the future was his continuing investigation of Umbrella, and hopefully, the proof he needed to make sure that the people responsible would go to jail.
It didn’t matter that Umbrella successfully managed to hide the truth for now, or at least cover up the more horrifying aspects of the infection. They all but admitted they were at fault anyway. To Chris, all that mattered was finding solid evidence that the upper management at Umbrella knew of the extreme dangers of their research and were breaking the law in order to work on it. If Chris could find that evidence and reveal it to the press, there was nothing Umbrella could do. The public would revolt against them, especially in the aftermath of Raccoon City. And although no one would ever have listened to him before, he knew that everyone would listen this time.
So he started at the bottom. Do surveillance on an Umbrella facility, find out who works there, track them down and investigate them, figure out a way to gain leverage, and then gain access to the facility. It might take months of hard work, but Chris was prepared to spend years if necessary. He didn’t even know if he would find success at this facility in Arizona, but it was a good starting point.
His email inbox was full of information from his friends and contacts in the military. He already had a solid lead on one of the researchers at the lab, having traced his license plate number the day before, using a friend of a friend who worked in the Arizona DMV. There were other emails with responses to his numerous inquiries and other leads for him to follow. Now that the events of Raccoon City had unfolded, Chris found that people were more than willing to help him on his quest.
There was also an email from his parents, which he hesitated reading. He had emailed them in the morning, contacting them for the first time since he had left the city, to let them know that he was okay and he would talk to them later. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to tell them, although his mysterious disappearance was not so mysterious now that Raccoon City was all over the news.
Finally, he resigned himself to reading their email, not knowing exactly what to expect. Would his parents be angry at him? Scared for him? Would they demand that he come home right now? He didn’t know what to expect.
The first line of the email jumped out like a slap to the face.
Chris, when you didn’t return our calls, Claire went to Raccoon City to look for you.
The breath caught in his chest and he rocked back in his chair, a freezing shiver running down his spine. He managed to swallow nervously, and continued reading.
Don’t worry, she’s okay. We spoke to her this morning. She’s in New York in some kind of hospital, recovering from what happened.
Chris slumped down in the chair, his heart pounding. “Jesus Christ, Claire,” he said out loud, wiping his hand across his eyes, “What in the hell did you think you were doing!?”
He couldn’t believe that she came after him, and felt even more shocked that she survived the infection. He felt a million emotions at once, and quickly read through the rest of th
e email, trying to understand what had happened. He read it six times, letting his heartbeat return to normal.
Please contact us as soon as you can, the email read. We love you and we want to hear from you. Whatever happened to you, we want you to know that it’s okay. Please call soon.
Chris took a deep breath and wiped his eyes, which had teared up. He still couldn’t get over the fact that Claire came to Raccoon City to talk to him. He couldn’t imagine a more terrible coincidence happening, and he felt painfully guilty that he didn’t warn them not to come. He should have told them he was not in the city anymore.
His sister was nothing if not obstinate, and he suspected that she would have come for him wherever he was. But at least he could have kept her from going to the one place on earth that he wanted them to avoid. He could not believe that she went to the city and then somehow managed to escape. It all seemed to be too much.
He reached out and closed the laptop. Whatever work he planned on doing tonight would have to wait. He found his cell phone and dialed a number, and waited a few rings for someone to pick up.
“Hey, Mom,” he said quietly, “It’s Chris.”