Chapter 3
Claire Redfield didn’t know how long they had been walking, but it felt like they had traveled through miles and miles of underground maintenance tunnels. She didn’t even smell the lingering odor of sewage anymore, and she began to wonder if they were ever going to find their way out. But she didn’t say so, for young Sherry’s sake if for no other reason.
Sherry remained silent for most of their trek through the sewer system of Raccoon City, holding Claire’s hand as they walked, only occasionally making a comment or asking a question. Claire wondered how Sherry was handling the situation, since she didn’t have much experience with children. Sherry seemed outwardly fine, or at least she didn’t seem like she was freaking out or in the middle of a nervous breakdown. She just kept quiet most of the time, and Claire really couldn’t blame her for that. The poor girl had probably gone through emotional trauma much worse than Claire’s, and she was handling herself better than Claire expected. If Claire experienced something like this at Sherry’s age, she didn’t know if she could live with it at all.
A few steps ahead of them, Leon walked at a steady pace. He held his pistol at the ready, aimed at the floor but ready to raise it in an instant. He had walked like that the entire time they’d been down here, even though Claire had shouldered her shotgun long ago. There were no zombies down here at all, but Leon didn’t seem to want to take any chances. He moved down the tunnel like a police officer following a suspect, his eyes darting into every corner, ready to whip the gun up at a moment’s notice.
Claire wondered if she’d be alive right now if she hadn’t met Leon. Now that she had time to think about all that had happened, she realized how much he had done for her. At the very least, she knew that she wouldn’t have made it to the police station so easily, since it was Leon’s idea to get the car. It was Leon’s idea to sneak around to a side door, when Claire would have tried the front door. And when they ran into that first dog-like monster, Leon nearly got himself killed while allowing Claire to escape. And that wasn’t the only time he put himself in danger, Claire knew. He had saved her life more than once.
She didn’t really know him at all, though. In the short time she’d known him, they didn’t exactly have much time to talk about themselves. She didn’t know what Leon did for a living, where he lived, or anything else about him. She didn’t even know his last name.
But she knew that he was a good person. Most people, even good people, would not have acted so bravely and selflessly in the face of mortal danger. But Leon barely even hesitated before trying to save someone. He seemed like the kind of person who would run into a burning building just in case there was someone trapped inside.
If they made it out of here alive, Claire reminded herself to thank him. But right now, Leon didn’t seem like he needed or expected her thanks. He was just doing what he felt he had to do.
They walked down a short, wide tunnel with brick walls and a low, arched ceiling that was lined with metal pipes. Old electric lights, half of them burned out, occasionally dotted the walls. But some of the areas they traveled through had no lights at all, so Leon and Claire both carried old-fashioned oil lanterns that they found in one of the many disused storage rooms down here. The lanterns were covered in dust and cobwebs, but the small canisters of oil were still good.
“Claire, I’m tired,” Sherry said suddenly.
They stopped for a moment, at an intersection between two dusty hallways, one of them continuing forward and the other cutting off to the left. There were no lights down that way, so Leon lit his lantern and shined the light down the corridor, revealing nothing.
Sherry sat down on the ground with a weary look on her young face, her shoulders slumping down in exhaustion. Claire knelt down beside her and said, “I think we can rest for a little while. We’re safe here, for now.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Leon commented, looking down the dark hallway to their left. “But I think we can stay here for a bit so we can catch our breath.”
“I’m hungry too,” Sherry said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a candy bar, would you?”
Claire chuckled and rested her hand on Sherry’s shoulder. “Sorry, kiddo. I’m all out of candy bars.”
“Okay then, I guess I’ll have a sandwich instead.”
Leon smiled down at her. “I’ll buy you a pizza once we get back up to the city. How about that? You like pizza?”
“Yeah,” Sherry said. “But my parents don’t let me get pizza very much.” At the mention of her parents, Sherry’s smile faded. But she just sighed and added, “I don’t think they’ll mind this time, though.”
“When we get out of here, we’ll have a big pizza party, okay?” Claire said. “You and your parents can come, and I’ll invite my brother Chris too. That way you’ll get to meet him.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” Leon said. “I have some good news. Your brother isn’t in the city at all. He left a few days ago. In all the excitement, I forgot to tell you.”
“I know,” Claire said happily. “I found that out too. But how did you find out?”
“I ran into the Chief of Police,” Leon explained. “He told me that your brother left Raccoon City a few days ago. It looks like you didn’t have to come here at all.”
“You talked with Irons?” Claire asked incredulously. “You mean he’s alive?”
“He was alive. But he ... he didn’t make it,” Leon said vaguely. “And he told me some other stuff as well. He told me how this whole epidemic happened.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that the disease that infected the city was created in a lab up in the mountains. It was some kind of research facility owned by the Umbrella Corporation.”
“Umbrella?” Sherry asked. “That’s where my parents work.”
“Really?” Claire asked.
“Yeah. They’re scientists, but they work here in the city. They don’t work in the mountains, so I don’t think they had anything to do with that disease.”
“Don’t worry, Sherry,” Claire said supportively. “Umbrella probably has thousands of people working for them. I’m sure your parents didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Sherry shrugged and looked away. Claire felt the urge to ask what was on her mind, but decided not to. She felt it was better to let Sherry talk when she was ready. She would be more willing to open up once they were safe.
Letting Sherry be alone for a moment, Claire walked over to Leon, who was staring down the long corridor. “How are you holding up?” he asked her.
Claire crossed her arms and shrugged. “I’m okay, I guess. How long do you think it will take to get back up to the surface? It feels like we’ve been walking for hours. My legs hurt.”
“I thought we could find an open ladder or some kind of access hatch,” Leon said, a trace of frustration creeping into his voice for the first time. “Awhile ago, we passed some circular doors up in the ceiling, but I couldn’t figure out how to open them. I’m pretty sure they led up to the city.”
“Well, there’s got to be another way,” Claire said. “How else did city workers get down here? They certainly didn’t walk all that way.”
“We just have to keep looking, I guess.”
Behind them, Sherry rested her head against the wall and sighed again, looking up at the grimy ceiling. Her stomach rumbled, and she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d eaten. All the talk about food just made her hungrier.
She heard a distinct clicking noise, and her head jerked down. Directly ahead of her, the other hallway loomed threateningly, a mouth of darkness just a few yards away from her. She squinted, but her eyes could not penetrate the darkness, and just when she thought she had merely imagined it, she heard the clicking noise again.
“Claire?” she asked nervously.
“Yes, Sherry?”
“I think I heard something.”
Leon stepped forward and
stood in front of her, raising his lantern again, its scattered yellow light piercing the inky blackness of the adjacent hallway. Leon held the lantern out with one hand, his pistol in the other. Sherry stood up and Claire led her away, neither of them glancing away from the corridor.
Leon took a cautious step forward, sending his light just a few inches deeper into the gloom. He heard it then, a clicking sound, like the sound of animal claws tapping on a tile floor, the sound making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Deep in the darkness of the hallway, he saw a glint of something reflect in the light of the lantern, but it was gone before he got a good look at it.
“Let’s go,” he ordered. “Let’s go right now.”
Claire and Sherry quickly walked away, and just as Leon stepped back to follow them, he heard a rapid scurrying, and dropped his lantern to take hold of his gun on both hands. Before he could even see what was there, he pulled the trigger, the gunshot echoing loudly in the cramped corridor, the flash from the barrel illuminating the hallway for a split-second, just long enough to fully reveal what was coming.
“Run!” he screamed, and immediately took off after them. Claire grabbed Sherry’s hand and they ran ahead of him, but Claire dared glance behind her as her hair whipped across her face.
Behind Leon, enormous shapes burst out into the hallway, emerging into the light like creatures out of a nightmare, scraping and clawing across the brick walls with huge legs and swarming after them like a flood.
Spiders – gigantic spiders – with huge hairy bodies and bright glowing eyes. Half a dozen of them, each the size of an office desk, skittering after them on eight massive legs, their front mandibles snapping open and closed, dripping venom. They were so large, and the corridor so narrow, that they squeezed into each other, completely filling the hall, as if they were morphing together to form one gigantic creature.
Claire managed to slide her shotgun off her shoulder as she ran and carried it in her free hand, pulling Sherry along with her other one. Sherry shrieked in terror, desperately trying to keep up with her.
“Ahead of you!” Leon cried. “Look out!”
Claire gasped in fright as they reached the end of the tunnel. It appeared to just end in nothingness, like a road with the bridge out. She skidded to a stop and stared out across a rickety wooden railing at a huge open pit that led down into darkness, hundreds of feet below. Along all four walls, the ends of huge pipes stuck out and spilled waste water and slime from above, into the gaping abyss. Light filtered down from high above, and the walls of the enormous pit seemed to glow a ghostly blue.
A narrow wooden staircase was attached to the side of the pit, leading up to another hallway up and off to her right. Claire quickly ran up the shaky steps, her feet almost slipping on a coating of grime on the wooden boards, Sherry close behind her. The wood creaked and groaned, and Claire just prayed the stairs didn’t collapse. Leon appeared seconds later and followed them up, the entire staircase trembling with their combined weights. The stairs went to the corner and continued at a right angle up to the next section.
Leon took a step onto a rotted wooden board and his foot smashed right through. The stairs buckled as he crashed through the old wood, grabbing onto the sides desperately, his legs dangling above the bottomless pit below. Chunks of broken wood tumbled down into nothingness, fluttering into darkness like loose scraps of paper.
Sherry screamed and stopped in her tracks, too scared to go forward and too scared to run back for him. Claire moved her out of the way and brought the shotgun to her shoulder. As the huge spiders emerged into the pit and the first one scrambled along the stairs after Leon’s helpless body, Claire opened fire.
The shotgun boomed loudly and the spider’s body cracked in half, splattering green ooze across the wall. The top half , legs twitching wildly, teetered over the edge and fell into the pit. Claire racked another shell in and fired again as another spider came after it.
When Sherry tried to go after Leon, he cried out, “No, don’t! Your weight might bring the whole thing down!”
Even as he spoke, the stairs cracked loudly and the huge bolts attaching the wooden frame to the wall began to slide out. Leon hauled himself up carefully, trying not to shake the steps too much, even as more spiders jumped after him. He managed to get one leg up, as Claire’s shotgun blasted one spider after another, blowing their bodies apart. He pulled himself up and climbed across the remaining steps on his hands and knees.
“There’s too many of them!” Claire screamed.
Leon glanced back and saw more spiders coming out of the hallway, far too many for them to kill. There must have been fifty of the monsters hiding out in that dark hallway, and now they were coming out like a swarm.
Leon stumbled to where Claire and Sherry were standing, and yanked the shotgun out of Claire’s hand. He swung it forward and fired directly at the metal bolts holding the stairs in place. The wood disintegrated, and the entire frame creaked forward and broke right in half, sending the top portion plummeting down into the abyss, taking a couple of spiders along with it. The rest of them scurried across the bottom section, unable to reach the higher platform where their prey stood.
Sherry grabbed Leon and buried her face in his jacket, crying uncontrollably. “Oh God, oh God, I thought you were going to die! I thought you died!”
“Come on,” Leon said urgently. “Let’s go!”
Even as he spoke, the spiders seemed to hesitate, and then they began to crawl right up the side of the wall, their huge bodies defying gravity as they ascended vertically upward and then across the gap where the stairs used to be.
“Jesus Christ,” Leon swore.
Claire didn’t believe her own eyes. It was impossible, simply impossible. Her feet felt frozen to the floor. Leon grabbed Sherry and hoisted her up onto his shoulder and then grabbed Claire’s arm, shaking her from her panic.
They ran full speed down the hallway, with Leon carrying Sherry, her body bouncing up and down on his shoulder, staring in horror behind them as the spiders made it across the gap and reached the entrance to the corridor. She screamed for them to hurry, and Leon ran even faster, leaving Claire a few steps behind, trying to keep up.
Up ahead of them, the corridor ended in a T-intersection and Leon ran to the right without even slowing down. Claire prayed that he made the right decision, but as soon as she followed him, she cried out in desperation. Her heart pounded and her lungs burned with the exertion, and she knew she couldn’t keep running like this forever. Sooner or later, she would slow down or fall, and then the spiders would catch her.
The hallway was barely lit at all, with just a few random lights still working, casting long shadows down the entire length of the tunnel. And far at the end, Claire glimpsed a rusty metal door. It was the only way out.
Leon swung the shotgun up, racked a shell with his free hand, and fired at the door without even slowing down. The door shuddered and the handle blasted apart into chucks of metal. He ran up and kicked the door open and jumped into the room beyond, with Claire only a few footsteps behind him. She flew into the room as Leon slammed the door shut right behind her. Then she spun around and both of them pushed against the door.
Moments later, the spiders reached it and began scratching and pushing. But thankfully, the spiders couldn’t push on the door with much force, so holding it closed was relatively easy. Leon pressed his foot against the bottom of the door and allowed his arms to slip down as he fought to catch his breath. Claire was too scared to let go, and continued to push against the door with all her might. The spiders squirmed on the other side, their mandibles clacking, their hairy bodies rubbing against the door as they tried to push it open.
Inside the room, it was pitch dark and they couldn’t see their surroundings. “Sherry,” Leon said, still panting for breath. “You have to light the lamp and see where we are. We need something to block the door with.”
Claire’s lantern
was tied to her belt, and it somehow had not fallen off during their frantic escape. Sherry fumbled in the dark with the small canister of oil and the lighter to get the lantern lit, and it took her a few minutes to figure it out.
The room came into view as Sherry increased the oil flow, and they discovered that they were inside a tiny supply room with a couple of rusty metal shelves and a long wooden work table. The room was barely ten feet square, and would have been a complete dead end with no way out, except for one thing.
The side wall was completely gone, the floor littered with crumbled brick and debris, and the gaping hole led to a tunnel carved directly into the dirt and rock on the other side of the wall. Sherry held up the lantern and stepped over to the hole, but the tunnel headed off at an angle and all she could see was about fifteen feet of roughly-carved tunnel, with dirt and chunks of rock all over the floor.
“Where does it lead?” Claire asked.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Leon said
Claire stood aside as Leon pushed over one of the metal shelves in front of the door. It was not very sturdy, and would not hold against a strong push on the other side, but the spiders could not easily to push the door open, so the shelves were enough to hold it closed.
“This is really weird,” Sherry said, her voice still a bit unsteady. “It looks like someone was digging a new tunnel and broke through into this room.”
“Why would anyone be digging down here?” Claire asked. “Do you think it was the subway project or something?”
Leon looked into the tunnel. “Maybe, I guess. It doesn’t make much sense though. If it was some kind of city project, they would have known about the sewer tunnels. They wouldn’t have just accidentally broken through here.”
“Maybe they were connecting this section with another area?”
“It’s possible,” Leon said with a shrug. He checked the shotgun and frowned, shaking his head disappointedly. “We have three shells left. And I only have a few bullets left in the pistol. Somehow I don’t think we’re going to find more ammunition down here, so we better hope we don’t run into anything else.”
“Are we going in there?” Sherry asked uncertainly.
Leon handed the shotgun back to Claire and then drew his pistol again. He walked to the edge of the broken wall, on the threshold of the dirt tunnel.
“I don’t think we have much choice.”