Chapter 15
“What do you think is going to happen once we get out?” Sherry asked. “Do you think we’ll be on television?”
Claire smiled and put her hand on Sherry’s shoulder. “I don’t know. The police will probably want to talk to us for awhile. But eventually, I think that we might get to do interviews or something.”
“People are going to want to know how we survived, right?”
“I think the whole world is going to want to know just what happened here,” Claire said. “Anyone who survived will get a chance to tell their story. I think Leon will have some really interesting things to say, if he’s right about what Irons told him.”
“Do you really think that Umbrella is behind this?” Sherry asked.
Claire knew that Sherry was just worried about her parents, but she chose to answer the question honestly. Sherry would probably know if she was lying anyway. “Well, Umbrella makes chemicals and medicines, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what my dad works on.”
“So, they probably were trying to make some kind of new medicine, but it turned out to be a disease instead. I don’t think they did this on purpose, but I do think that it was something they made.”
Sherry didn’t answer for a moment, and then said softly, “Yeah, that’s probably what happened.”
Claire wished she knew what Sherry was thinking, or at least knew of a way to help reassure her. Whatever was on Sherry’s mind, she seemed intent on keeping it to herself. Claire tried to think of how to ask her, but didn’t want to force her to talk about something she was uncomfortable with.
She was probably just thinking about her parents. Claire hoped that what she said was true, that the disease plaguing Raccoon City was a terrible accident, the result of a mistaken search for a new medicine or a new cure. It was surely the most likely scenario, but Claire knew that Umbrella was a corporation with its interests spread into numerous fields, including toxicology and possibly even chemical weapons research. Was the disease something they created intentionally?
Of course, for all Claire knew, Umbrella was doing research specifically to bring the dead back to life. It was pointless for her to speculate without any facts, so she abandoned that train of thought and focused on the present.
It was a terrible coincidence that Sherry’s parents worked for Umbrella, and Claire knew that the implications must have weighed heavily on the young girl’s mind. Was it possible that Sherry’s parents were involved in the creation of the disease that led to the epidemic? Claire hoped not, for the girl’s sake.
She decided to change the subject. “Hey, don’t you think that Leon should have been back by now?”
Sherry looked up and nodded. “Yeah, he’s been gone for a long time.”
“Come on, let’s go find him.”
She hopped off the stack of wooden boards and helped Sherry down, and they started down the tunnel. Sherry stayed right behind Claire, who held her shotgun in both hands, but she didn’t expect to run into anything. She was sure that if Leon encountered anything dangerous, he’d fire his weapon, or at the very least, shout for help. Since no sound came from his direction, Claire assumed he just lost track of the time.
“Where is he?” Sherry asked nervously.
“It’s okay, I’m sure he’s fine,” Claire said.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, there was the sound of rapid gunshots from farther down the tunnels. First a few shots, then a pause, and then another volley of fire, followed by even more shots that sounded like they were from a different gun. Claire froze and lifted her shotgun, and Sherry grabbed the back of Claire’s jacket in fear. There was also the sound of someone shouting, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“Claire!” Sherry cried out.
Claire looked down and Sherry and then ran forward to investigate. They ran down the unfinished dirt tunnels and soon came upon a connected hallway that led into a regular area where the construction was much farther along. There were tables with blueprints and yellow hard hats hanging on the walls.
Claire cautiously stepped onto the dirty white floor, Sherry close behind. She tensed up when she heard the sound of footsteps up ahead, and raised her shotgun just as someone burst from around the corner, running full speed in her direction.
It was a woman Claire had not seen before, an attractive Asian woman with long black hair, wearing black leather pants and a long-sleeved red shirt. She carried a pistol in her hands and another weapon slung over her shoulder, and she stopped dead when she saw Claire pointing the shotgun at her.
The woman held up her hands rapidly. “Whoa, whoa! Don’t shoot!”
“Who the hell are you?” Claire shouted.
“I’m not infected!” the woman shouted. “My name is Ada, alright? Don’t shoot me.”
“Where’s Leon?” Claire demanded.
“Who?” the woman said, and then she hesitated for a moment and swallowed hard, and then pointed back down the hallway where she had come from. “He’s back that way!”
“What were you shooting at?”
“It wasn’t me, it was someone else. This crazy woman was shooting at us, she must have thought we were zombies.”
“Then where is Leon?”
“How should I know? He must have run after her.”
Running off after someone who had just shot at him sounded exactly like the kind of thing that Leon would do. Claire waited for a moment and lowered the shotgun just a fraction of an inch.
“Listen,” the woman named Ada said, keeping her hands in plain view, although she still held a pistol in one of them. “Just let me out of here, alright? You want to go after your guy, then you go ahead. But I’m going my own way.”
“Oh no, you’re not,” Claire said forcefully. “You know where he is, so you’re gonna take us to him.”
“He’s that way,” Ada said with a gesture. “You can find him.”
“And what if we can’t?”
“That’s not my problem,” Ada said coldly.
Claire raised the gun again, keeping it aimed squarely at the woman’s chest. Whoever Ada was, Claire didn’t like her, and didn’t trust her. And by the way Sherry was gripping Claire’s waist, peeking out from behind her, Claire was pretty sure that Sherry didn’t trust her either.
Claire shook her head slowly. “No, I think it is your problem,” she said, an edge to her voice. “Now you’re going to turn around and show us where Leon went, and you’re going to do it right now. Trust me on this. You do not want to piss me off.”
Ada stared her down for the space of a few seconds. Trying to see if she was bluffing? The harsh look in Ada’s large brown eyes told Claire far more than Ada probably thought it would. Claire was no dummy, and she could read the calculated expression on Ada’s narrow face. It wasn’t the look of a normal person, it was the emotionless stare of a true sociopath. Ada, whoever she was, was not to be trusted.
“Okay,” Ada said smoothly, lowering her arms. “Follow me.”