Chapter 8
Chris stood up and very calmly slid his pistol back into the holster. He took deep breaths to slow his heartbeat, to ease himself back into a relaxed state. It was like meditation. He’d been using it to calm himself down since he first joined the Air Force after high school. It didn’t always work, and it wasn’t about to work right now, but it made him feel better. That was something.
One bullet to the thigh. Two in the chest, one in the shoulder. One in the head. It took five shots to bring the man down. It was possible to survive several gunshots, Chris knew. There were numerous cases of people surviving a dozen shots or more if they all missed vital areas. But Chris’s shots did not miss vital areas. And the man not only survived them, he barely seemed to notice them.
Chris shot him right in the center of the chest. Right in the heart. And the man kept coming. He wouldn’t believe it if he didn’t see it with his own eyes. It was straight out of a horror movie. How could anyone keep moving with a bullet through their heart?
Chris used his boot to nudge the body onto its back. The man was certainly dead, but he looked like he’d been dead for days. His skin was pale and dry, his eyes filled with blood and dry around the edges. And he didn’t smell too good either.
Chris methodically reloaded his pistol. His belt pouch contained a spare clip, and a pack of twenty extra bullets was in his pocket. He used the bullets to refill the clip and loaded it back into the gun.
There was no way he could deny his own eyes. The man lying dead on the floor in front of him was a zombie. There was no other word for it. He was dead but walked like he was alive, and only a bullet to the brain was enough to stop him. If the man succeeded in grabbing Chris and taking a bite out him … well, Chris didn’t want to think about that.
He read enough books and watched enough low-budget horror movies to know a zombie when he saw one. Until now, he always kind of liked zombie flicks. Things like vampires and werewolves he always thought were silly, because they were so different from humans and obviously supernatural in nature. But zombies were just like humans, except they were dead. Take a dead body and perform some mysterious medical procedure, and you’ve got yourself a zombie. He could actually imagine zombies existing in the real world. And now, it seemed that they did.
If this was some kind of secret government installation, then it seemed obvious what must have gone on here. Secret genetic or medical research, the kind that was popular with conspiracy theorists and associated nut jobs, the illegal and unethical kind. They must have created some new drug or some terrible disease and were dumb enough to let it get loose. And it infected everyone there. And instead of calling in the national guard, they called the local cops.
That was the part that made no sense. Government employees never trusted local law enforcement. Chris had been in the Air Force for ten years and knew that like he knew his own name. Even rookie FBI agents tried to create an air of importance and mystery by withholding “need to know” information and “top secret” information as if it was the meaning of life. If a disaster like this occurred, there is no way they’d just call the local cops. They couldn’t trust them to keep quiet about it. They’d bring in some special ops or black ops commandos to deal with the situation.
So why call S.T.A.R.S. in? Chris would have to figure that out eventually, but not right now. His first order of business was to get out of this room with the zombie, just in case it rose from the dead again. Second order of business was to find Wesker and the others and find out a way out of here.
The hallway was empty. Chris walked out very cautiously, testing the floor to make sure no old boards squeaked and gave away his position. He edged his way down the hall, ignoring the fancy paintings on the wall and delicate, expensive-looking vases and figurines on the ornate mahogany end tables all over the place.
The hallway was in the shape of a squared-off U. He went down the right side of the hall, passing two doors until he came to the door at the end. He tried the doorknob and found it locked. Why should it be locked? Were they trying to keep someone out or keep someone in? Chris debated on whether to just shoot the lock but decided not to waste bullets, and thought about kicking the door open but doubted he was strong enough. Besides, better not to make noise if he didn’t have to. His gunshots from before probably alerted every zombie in the whole place.
He tried one of the other doors and found it conveniently unlocked. He eased the door open and peered inside, gun ready. He tapped on the doorframe with the gun and nothing came after him, so he carefully reached inside and turned on the light. It was a small office with some more fancy furniture and a big desk. Chris turned the light back off and went to the next door.
It was open as well, but the light was already on inside. It was a small office like the other room, but with a door to his right and three small chairs against the wall. The nameplate on the desk said “M. Thompkins.” There was a large calendar on the desk covered in notes, and a personal planner as well, filled with lists of appointments and names of visitors. Chris flipped through it, not intending to discover anything important, and was stunned to find the name “M. Warren” scrawled on one of the pages. Michael Warren was the name of the governor of Raccoon City. It seemed like an awfully strange coincidence. The appointment log ended two days ago.
He looked at the door and saw a shining brass nameplate attached to it. It said “Ozwell Spencer.” The name sounded vaguely familiar. Chris ran it around in his head but couldn’t quite place it. Ozwell Spencer. He couldn’t decide where he remembered it from.
He opened the door and found a much larger office beyond, like what he imagined a famous CEO’s personal office might look like. Bookcases lined each wall, covered in thick hard covers and expensive-looking antiques and trinkets. Forty feet away was a humongous wooden desk behind two chairs. Against the wall beside the desk was an open cabinet with a television screen built in. It was turned on, but there was no sound and no picture except static.
The desk was a mess. Drawers pulled out and dumped, papers and office supplies scattered everywhere. Someone had ransacked the desk looking for something. Chris doubted a zombie could do something this deliberate, so it must have been a living person.
Whoever Ozwell Spencer was, he must have been important around here to get his own personal secretary and a big office like this. But where was he now? Was he some management bigshot who took off as soon as everything hit the fan? Chris felt a curious need to know why the desk was ransacked. What were they looking for?
He picked up a piece of paper and saw the Umbrella Corporation letterhead printed on top. That was a disturbing surprise.
Chris was born and raised in Virginia, and only moved to Raccoon City after his hasty retirement from the Air Force, when Barry Burton offered him a job with the S.T.A.R.S. team. He guessed that longtime residents might be so used to the presence of Umbrella that they didn’t actively notice it anymore. But Chris noticed it. Every day he saw their logo splashed on some new product or their name mentioned in a news broadcast. Everyone knew there was an underground medical laboratory in town, although no one seemed to know exactly where it was located. A couple of public parks were named after the company. Barry once told him once that some members of the city council used to be on their payroll. It was rumored that the company owned huge portions of the city, and owned controlling interest of any number of businesses and industries within the city limits.
Chris, as an outsider even though he’d lived there for years, noticed all of this and was mildly disturbed by it. There were probably hundreds of towns across the country that were still thriving because of some local business or company kept them afloat, such as steel mining around Pittsburgh and the automotive industry around Detroit. But Chris never heard of a town so deeply ingrained with a faceless, multinational corporation. It was almost like Umbrella owned the whole town.
And they ow
ned this strange mansion in the middle of the Arklay Mountains as well, it seemed. And since Umbrella was mostly known for their medical and pharmaceutical research, Chris found it terribly easy to imagine them accidentally creating some horrific plague at a secret lab here in the mountains and having it get loose.
But the big question still remained. Why did they call S.T.A.R.S. in to clean up the mess? How could they possibly be prepared for a catastrophe like this? How could anyone?
Most of the papers and junk was scattered behind the desk, since whoever dumped the drawers out just pulled them out and flipped them over, but one stray piece of paper was on the floor in front of the desk, lying face up. Chris saw something written on it.
He picked it up and read the note in a glance. If the thought of Umbrella being involved in this made him concerned, what he saw on the paper outright frightened him. If the mayor of Raccoon City could have been a visitor in this office, anyone could have been here. It was simply too much of a coincidence for him to disregard.
The note was addressed to someone called Wesker.