Chapter 37
When they heard the explosion, Sherry jumped into the air and grabbed onto Claire’s arm for support. “What was that?” she cried out.
“I don’t know,” Claire said, putting her hand on Sherry’s shoulder. “I don’t know, but it must have been close by.”
At Claire’s insistence, they gradually made their way down to the ground floor. Sherry was too scared at first, but after their encounter with the creature inside the huge metal crate, she agreed readily to go wherever Claire suggested. She wanted to stay hidden when Claire first met her, but now she was anxious to get out of the building as soon as she could. And she held onto Claire’s arm tightly the whole time, as if afraid that Claire would disappear if she let go.
“Come on,” Claire said. “We’re almost out of here. We just have to find a door, or at least a window.”
“What are we going to do once we make it out?” Sherry asked nervously, looking around the hall as if expecting an ambush.
“We’ll get back to the car and drive somewhere safe,” Claire replied. She wrapped one arm around Sherry’s shoulders. Her other hand held a Beretta she had taken from a dead officer upstairs. There were only four bullets in the clip though, and Claire expected she would run out if they didn’t make it outside quickly.
They made their way down a couple of twisting hallways, finding them to be mysteriously abandoned. Claire expected hundreds of zombies down here, and so far they hadn’t seen any at all. Maybe the zombies left the building for some unknown reason?
Her question was answered as they walked down another hallway, passing a set of large double doors. Claire paused for just a moment, tilting her head as she heard something on the other side of the doors. Her breath caught in her throat and she quickly urged Sherry forward.
The doors smashed open in a rush and zombies poured into the hall like a flood, dozens of them squeezing through the double doors and spreading into the hall. Sherry screamed and ran for it, and Claire chased after her. They outran the zombies and turned the hallway, only to discover that there was another doorway into the same room, and more zombies were meandering in the hallway on that side. Sherry shrieked and kept running, zipping past the zombies before they had a chance to grab her. Claire ran forward and shot one of the zombies that blocked her path, running along the side of the wall, just out of the zombies grasp.
“Sherry!” she shouted.
There was a door at the end of the hall, and it was the only place they could go. Sherry opened the door and rushed inside, leaving it open behind her. Just as Claire made it to the doorway a few steps behind, she heard another scream from Sherry.
She burst into the room to find that it was one of the large detective offices. There were desks and cubicles lined down the center of the room, with chairs scattered around, and computer terminals lined along the wall, with papers and garbage lying everywhere. At the other side of the room was a separate office with a window on the door. The line of desks went right down the center of the room, and a crowd of zombies were standing on the other side, coming toward Sherry, who ran back toward Claire.
Claire slammed the door, although she knew that it wouldn’t hold the zombies for long if they tried to break it down. She had three bullets left, and had to use them wisely. Sherry ran behind her and cowered in fear as the zombies came around the line of desks.
Claire shot the first two zombies right in the head and they slumped to the ground. The zombie directly behind them tripped over their bodies and fell to the ground as well. The walkway in between the desks and the wall was too narrow for the zombies to walk around, and they stumbled past the fallen ones.
Claire grabbed one of the plastic desk chairs and hurled it right at the zombies, striking the one in front right in the face. He groaned and tipped over backwards, one of the chair legs cracking him right in the side of his head.
“Claire! Stop them!” Sherry screamed frantically.
“Come on!” Claire snapped, grabbing Sherry’s hand and pulling her away from the door. They ran around the line of the desks to the other side, keeping the desks in between them and the zombies.
“I need a gun!” Claire shouted. “See if there are any on the floor!”
Sherry ran toward the separate office and glanced inside before opening the door. Claire took aim with her remaining shot and squeezed the trigger, killing the zombie closest to the office. She took the empty gun and hurled it at one of the zombies, hitting it right between the eyes, although it wasn’t enough to knock it over.
“Claire!” Sherry cried.
She ran to the office as Sherry backed against the wall, her hands over her mouth. Claire rushed inside and was stunned to see a man sprawled on the floor behind the desk, propped up against the wall. Lying on the ground near his hand was a combat shotgun. Claire didn’t waste any time. She grabbed the shotgun and spun around as the crowd of zombies made their way around the desks, and began to surround the office. She braced herself in the doorway and opened fire, the gun recoil slamming into her shoulder.
The closest zombie’s head disappeared in a red blur and its body keeled over. Claire swung the shotgun and blasted away, killing seven more zombies before the shotgun was empty. Four more zombies still remained, though.
“Claire! Here!” Sherry cried, handing her a pistol.
Claire gladly took it and finished off the rest of the zombies. She took a deep breath and lowered the pistol. The floor was littered with bloody corpses and the air stank of blood and decay. Claire’s heart hammered in her chest, and she felt so nauseous she thought she was going to throw up. But she swallowed and turned back around to look at the man lying on the floor.
He gazed up at her with weary eyes, his face dotted with sweat, his chest rising and lowering with his labored breaths. He was an African-American wearing a blue police uniform. There was a strip of cloth wrapped around his forearm, indicating where he’d been bitten, blood seeping through the cloth and dripping down his arm.
Sherry backed herself into the corner of the small office and held her hands up to her face, staring down at the man in disbelief. “It’s Officer Branagh,” she said, her voice trembling.
“You know him?” Claire asked, looking down at the policeman’s body.
“My school came here on a field trip a few days ago. He talked to my class.”
“Do you know his first name?”
“Yes,” Sherry said. “It’s Marvin.”
Claire didn’t know what else to do, so she knelt down by the man and reached out to touch his shoulder. He looked up at her but said nothing, his eyes squinting weakly, his breath coming in long, agonized gasps. Claire glanced down at his bloody arm and then back up at his face, unsure of what she could say. He must have known that he was going to die, and he surely realized that he was doomed to become one of the undead. What could she say to him?
She took a breath and leaned close. “Listen, Marvin,” she said, her voice heavy, “I’m sorry, but we can’t stay here with you. We’re leaving as soon as we can. I would take you with us if I could, but you know that’s not possible.”
Marvin blinked at her and then managed a short nod. “I know,” he whispered, his mouth barely moving.
“You know what’s going to happen to you, right?”
He nodded again.
“I’m so sorry. I wish I could help you.”
“You ... can ...”
Claire swallowed hard and clenched her teeth. Her eyes flicked down briefly to the pistol still in her hand. Marvin stared right in her eyes and blinked slowly.
“Sherry,” Claire said, not looking at her. “I want you to step outside for a little bit, okay? Go to the other side of the room and wait for me there.”
“Okay,” Sherry said. She stayed in the corner for a moment, and then stepped toward the door. She paused in the doorway, her hand on the wall, and spoke without looking down at him. “Goodbye, Marvin,
” she said. “I wish things were different. I wish you could come with us.” Her breath caught in her throat and she ran out the door, past all the dead bodies to the other side of the room, the muffled sound of her crying barely audible.
“Do you have a family?” Claire asked sadly.
Marvin’s head moved down, but he didn’t have the strength to go complete the nod. His gaze fixed on the gun in Claire’s hand. “Wife ... Jessica ... daughter ... Alesha ...”
“I’ll try to find them if I can,” Claire promised. “Maybe they made it out of the city too. I won’t tell them about this, I’ll tell them you were helping people.”
“Thank ... you ...”
“I need to ask you something,” Claire said. “My brother is Chris Redfield. He was on the S.T.A.R.S. unit. I came here to look for him. Do you know if he was here in the building at all, or do you know where he is?”
Marvin blinked. “Not ... here ...” he breathed. “He ... left … town ...”
“Okay,” Claire said quickly, touching Marvin’s arm. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
She took a deep breath and got up. Marvin’s breaths came slower, his eyes barely able to focus, the sight of him making Claire’s heart break. She remembered how Kendo told her about the man he tried to help, only to put him out of his misery in the end. Is this what Kendo went through? She didn’t even know Marvin personally, but it took all her courage and strength to raise the gun.
She felt absolutely helpless. One little bite mark was all it took to spread the disease. If any of the zombies she encountered so far had managed to bite her a single time, then it would be her lying on the ground, slowly waiting to die. She wondered why Marvin hadn’t taken his own life, but what would she have done in his situation? By the time it became clear what was going to happen, he was probably too weak to pick up a gun.
“Are you sure?” she whispered.
Marvin said nothing. He took a shallow breath and his eyes managed to focus on her. He didn’t have long, and there was nothing else Claire could possibly do. If she didn’t do what had to be done, then she would be dooming Marvin to rise as a zombie himself. And nothing in the world could be worse than that.
Claire aimed the pistol and closed her eyes. She pulled the trigger.