He shuddered, closing the door behind him. It was every kid's first set of fears, and had been his, too.
Monsters in the closet and the thing that lived under the bed, waiting for the careless child's ankle to come within reach.
And how old arw you now?
Chris shook off the case of nerves, embarrassed at his imaginative wanderings. He walked slowly around the room, looking for anything that might be helpful.
There was no other door, no path back to the main hall, but maybe he could find a better weapon for Rebecca than a can of bug spray.
Besides an oak table and bookshelf, there was the small, unmade bed and a study desk in the room, nothing more. He quickly rifled through the books, then moved around the foot of the bed to the desk.
There was a slim volume next to the desk lamp, the fabric cover untitled; a journal. And although the desktop was coated in dust, the diary had been moved recently.
Intrigued, Chris picked it up and flipped to the last few pages. Maybe there was a clue as to what the hell was going on. He sat on the edge of the cot and started to read.
May 9, 1998: Played poker tonight with Scott and Alias from Security, and Steve from Research. Steve was the big winner, but I think he was cheating. Scumbag.
Chris smiled a little at that. He skipped down to the next entry and his smile froze, his heart seeming to pause in mid-beat.
May 10,1998: One of the higher-ups assigned me to take care of a new experiment. It looks like a skinned gorilla.
Feeding instructions were to give it live animals. When I threw in a pig, the creature seemed to be playing with it tearing off the pig's legs and pulling out the guts before it actually started eating.
Experiment? Could the writer be talking about the zombies? Chris read on, excited by the find. The diary obviously belonged to someone who worked here, had to be meaning that the cover-up was even bigger than he'd suspected.
May 11, 1998: At around 5 A.M., Scott woke me up.
Scared the shit out of me, too. He was wearing a protective garment that looked like a space suit. He handed me another one and told me to put it on. Said there'd been an accident in the basement lab. I just knew something like this would happen. Those assholes in Research never rest, even at night.
May 12, 1998: I've been wearing the damn space suit since yesterday. My skin's getting grimy and feels itchy all over. The goddamn dogs have been looking at me funny, so I decided not to feed them today. Screw 'em.
May 13,1998: Went to the Infirmary because my back is all swollen and feels itchy. They put a big bandage on it and told me I didn't need to wear the suit any more. All I wanna do is sleep.
May 14, 1998: Found another blister on my foot this morning. I ended up dragging my foot all the way to the dogs' pen. They were quiet all day, which is weird. Then I realized some of them had escaped. If anybody finds out, I'll have my head handed to me.
May 15, 1998: My first day off in a long time and I feel like shit. Decided to go visit Nancy anyway, but when I tried to leave the estate, I was stopped by the guards. They said the company's ordered that no one leave the grounds. I can't even make a phone call – all the phones have been ripped out! What kind of bullshit is this?!
May 16, 1998: Rumor's going around that a researcher who tried to escape the estate last night was shot. My entire body feels hot and itchy and I'm sweating all the time now. I scratched the swelling on my arm and a piece of rotten flesh just dropped off. Wasn't until I realized the smell was making me hungry that I got violently sick.
The writing had become shaky. Chris turned the page, and could barely read the last few lines, the words scrawled haphazardly across the paper.
May 19. Fever gone but itchy. Hungry and eat doggie food. Itchy itchy Scott came ugly face so killed him. Tasty. 4 // Itchy. Tasty.
The rest of the pages were blank.
Chris stood up and slipped the journal inside his vest, his thoughts racing. Some of the pieces were finally fitting into place – secret research at a secretly kept estate, an accident in a hidden lab, an escaped virus or infection of some kind that altered the people working here, changing them into ghouls… … and some of them got out.
The murders and attacks on Raccoon started in late May, coinciding with the effects of the accident; the chronology made sense. But exactly what kind of research was being done here, and how deeply involved was Umbrella?
How involved was Billy?
He didn't want to think about that, but even as he tried to clear his mind of the thought, a new one occurred to him… what if it was still contagious?
He hurried to the door, suddenly desperate to get back to Rebecca with the news. With her training, maybe she could figure out what had been unleashed in the secret lab on the estate.
Chris swallowed heavily. Even now, he and the other S.T.A.R.S. could be infected.
EIGHT
After jill and barry went their separate ways, Wesker stayed crouched on the balcony in the main hall, thinking. He knew that time was of the essence, but he wanted to outline a few possible scenarios before he acted; he'd already made mistakes, and didn't want to make any more of them. The Raccoon Alphas were a bright group, making his margin for error very slim indeed.
He'd received his orders a couple of days ago, but hadn't expected to be in a position to carry them out so soon; the Bravo team's 'copter going down had been a fluke, as had Brad Vickers's sudden display of cowardice. Still, he should have been more prepared.
Being caught with his pants down like this went against his grain, it was so… unprofessional.
He sighed, putting the thoughts aside. There'd be time for self-recrimination later. He hadn't expected to end up here, but here he was, and kicking himself for lack of foresight wasn't going to change anything.
Besides, there was too much to do.
He knew the grounds of the estate fairly well and the labs like the back of his hand, but he'd only been inside the mansion a few times and not at all since he'd been officially transferred to Raccoon City.
The place was a maze, designed by a genius architect at the bidding of a madman. Spencer was bats, no two ways about it, and he'd had the house built with all kinds of tricky little mechanisms, a lot of that silly spy crap that had been so popular in the late sixties…
Spy crap that's going to make this job twice as hard as it needs to be. Hidden keys, secret tunnels – it's like I'm trapped in an espionage thriller, complete with mad scientists and a ticking clock.
His original plan had been to lead both the Alpha and Bravo teams to the estate and clear the area before he proceeded to the lower labs and wrapped things up. He had the master keys and codes, of course; they had been sent along with his orders, and would open most of the doors on the estate. The problem was, there was no key to the door that led to the garden, it had a puzzle lock and was currently the only way to get to the labs, outside of walking through the woods.
Which ain't gonna happen. The dogs would be on me before I could take two steps, and if the 121s got out…
Wesker shuddered, remembering the incident with the rookie guard who'd gotten too close to one of the cages, a year or so back. The kid had been dead before he could even open his mouth to call for help. Wesker had no intention of going back outside without an army to back him up.
The last contact with the estate had been over six weeks ago, an hysterical call from Michael Dees to one of the suits in the White office. The doctor had sealed the mansion, hiding the four pieces of the puzzle lock in a fruitless effort to keep any more of the virus carriers from reaching the house. By then, they were all infected and suffering from a kind of paranoid mania, one of the more charming side effects of the virus. God only knew what tricks and traps the researchers down in the labs had screwed with as they slowly lost their minds.
Dees had been no exception, although he had managed to hold out longer than most of the others; something to do with individual metabolism, or so Wesker'd been told. The company had already decided to call a complete wipe, though the babbling scientist had been assured that help was on the way.
Wesker had enjoyed a good laugh over that one. There was no way the White boys would risk further infection. They'd sat on their hands for almost two months while Raccoon suffered the consequences, letting the incompetent
