Chapter 13
Chris’s first order of business was to find Barry, Jill, and Wesker. They must think he was dead already, and he couldn’t blame them for that. But if they thought he was dead, they might leave the mansion or have Brad come pick them up before Chris could get to them. That is, of course, if they could get Brad to land the helicopter at all.
But they came here for a reason – to find Bravo team – and Chris was not going to abandon their mission just yet. They came to rescue Bravo and any other civilians they could find. The others would not call Brad until they searched this mansion and found out what was going on. And so Chris was not in a hurry to find them just yet. Knowing Barry and Wesker, they would split up to cover the most ground. For now, Chris decided he might as well just keep investigating and he would find the others eventually.
He left Ozwell Spencer’s office and went back into the hallway. He already checked out the right end of the hallway, so he walked back past the room with the dead zombie and went to the left end. On his right were two doors leading to restrooms, according to the little icons of a man and woman on them. He tried the only door on his left and found it locked.
The door at the end of the hall was not locked, however. Chris turned the knob and pushed the door open, backing away with his gun drawn, but there was no one on the other side. The door led to another hallway, brightly lit by fluorescent bulbs, with a hardwood floor and simple white wallpaper on the blank walls. The hallway he was in now, by contrast, was carpeted, dimly lit by lamps instead of overhead lights, and the walls were maroon and covered in paintings. Chris could not help but wonder about the interior decoration choices.
He went through the doorway and looked to the left and right. This hallway, like the other one, was in the shape of a squared-off U, only much longer. What crazy architect designed a mansion like this?
At the end of the hall to his right, he saw a glass door at the corner where the hallway turned left. He walked toward it, not liking the way his boots stepped loudly on the hardwood floor, and saw that it appeared to lead to another balcony outside that overlooked the rear yard of the mansion. When the hallway turned to the left, Chris saw that it was a staircase heading down to the first floor. He decided against it for the moment, wanting to explore the rest of the second floor before going downstairs to find the others.
He opened the glass door and looked expectantly up into the night sky. No sign of a helicopter. He should have at least heard it flying above if Brad was anywhere near the mansion. That meant Brad either landed the chopper, which was highly unlikely given Brad’s record, or he completely left the area. Chris had a nagging feeling it was the latter.
The balcony stretched off to his right to an area with some patio tables and chairs with large umbrellas above them. Perfect for spending a leisurely lunch break during the summer, Chris thought. Down below he saw a gravel path heading into the back yard, which stretched off as far as he could see. Down the center of it was a wide cement courtyard with large potted plants and a small fountain. It reminded Chris of images of lavish courtyards during the middle ages, where kings and queens and lords and ladies mingled and danced while the royal court gathered. This whole mansion was like an artifact from another era.
To his left along the balcony was a small corner with a single table and two chairs. One of the chairs contained a body. Chris let the door close and raised his gun immediately, not expecting any corpse to stay that way after his experience earlier. The body was draped in shadow from the corner of the building and Chris eased forward to see it more clearly in the dim moonlight.
The body was dressed in dark cargo pants and what appeared to be a padded yellow vest. From its belt hung a holster and a walkie-talkie. A Glock was on the cement ground beside the chair. And on the front of the vest was a shining metal badge.
Chris’s hands trembled and the gun lowered on its own.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “Forest ...”
At the sound of his voice, the body of Forest Speyer jerked up like an animated robot. It staggered up out of the chair and took a shaky step forward, emerging from the shadows. Chris felt his stomach churn and bile rise in the back of his throat. Forest’s face was almost completely gone, ripped or chewed away by something Chris couldn’t even guess. All that was left was a bloody, eyeless skull.
Chris stepped backward, his throat tightening so that he could barely breath. He tried to speak and found his voice was gone. Forest had been a member of S.T.A.R.S. far longer than Chris, and he was one of the members who helped train Chris when he first joined. Chris worked with him during his short time as a member of Bravo, and he went bar hopping with Forest and Kenneth Sullivan dozens of times. He knew Forest’s his wife and son. Forest wasn’t just a fellow police officer, he was a friend.
He was dead. Whatever happened at this mansion, whatever fate befell Bravo, Forest was now another victim. Like the man in the rec room, something infected him and brought him back from death. The body staggered forward like a poorly controlled marionette, mouth open, empty eye sockets facing nothing, arms outstretched in a desperate reach for the source of the sounds.
He was less than three feet away when Chris squeezed the trigger, putting a bullet right in the center of Forest’s head. The zombie groaned and fell over backward.
Chris stumbled to the railing and leaned over it, closing his eyes tight as his dinner came back up. He vomited twice over the railing and then dry heaved so forcefully his legs went weak and he slipped to the ground next to Forest’s body.
It took him several minutes to regain his composure. He put his gun back in its holster and got to his feet, spitting a few times to get the foul taste out of his mouth. He ran a hand through his hair and stared out into the darkness, taking a few deep breaths in meditation again.
He reached down and pulled Forest’s walkie-talkie off the belt clip. “This is Chris, can anyone hear me?” he asked. “Is anyone there? This is Chris Redfield of S.T.A.R.S. Alpha. Come in, over.”
He pressed the button again and shook the walkie-talkie. The red receiver light would not come on. The walkie-talkie was dead. Just like Forest. Chris tossed it over the railing.
He knelt down and fished Forest’s wallet out of his back pocket, and unpinned his badge from the vest. Putting them both in his own pants pocket, he walked over and retrieved Forest’s gun off the ground. He tucked it in the back of his belt and walked back to the glass door.
There was nothing else he could really do. When he found the others, he would tell them, but until then he planned to keep it from his mind. He took some more deep breaths and went back inside, leaving Forest’s body where it fell.
He walked past the stairs and went back down the hallway. There was a door on his left, but it was locked. Chris considered that for a moment, and decided that he really didn’t care about making noise or being careful. He wanted to break something, he wanted to find something to take his anger out on. And this door was it.
He raised his gun and fired twice, blowing the doorknob clean off. The door broke open when he kicked it. Inside was a small anteroom that came into view when he turned the lights on. Built into the wall was a honeycomb of slots and spaces filled with folders and assorted papers, like an office mail room with slots for each staff member. A table beside it was also covered in papers. There was another door in the room which led back to the U-shaped hallway Chris started in.
Chris ran his hand along the stacks of print outs and folders and pushed them to the ground in an avalanche of paper. He didn’t have the time or the interest to try to read through them. He was looking for some kind of useful evidence to use against Umbrella to prove what must have happened here, but he didn’t even know what to look for.
He saw Forest’s eyeless skull coming for him every time he closed his eyes. The man in the rec room was bad, but seeing a friend of his become a creature like that was a thousand ti
mes worse. Forest was alive and healthy just the day before. Now, all Chris could think of was the dead body shambling toward the sound of his voice, something terrible and inhuman.
He left the room and headed to the end opposite the stairs. There was another locked door on the right, which Chris ignored, but the door at the end of the hall opened easily.
Chris went through and found himself overlooking a huge, sparkling lobby complete with an enormous chandelier hanging from the ceiling and a red-carpeted staircase leading up to the second floor’s inner balcony. The sight stunned him for a moment, even though he should have expected a mansion like this to have an elegantly decorated lobby.
He looked around and noticed that the bottom of the stairway bannister was shattered on one side. And looking more closely, he saw what appeared to be splattered blood here and there on the shining marble floor.
He was about to take a closer look when he heard something back the way he came. A loud, muffled thump or boom. It might have been anything, but Chris spent most of his adult life around guns and he knew a shotgun when he heard one.