City Of The Dead

Chapter Nine

 

  Thanks to a van parked in the alley behind Kendo's, Leon's straight shot to the station had taken a few detours - through an infested basket-ball court, another alley, and a parked bus that had reeked from the sprawled corpses inside. It was a nightmare, punctuated with whispering howls, the stink of decay, and once, a distant explosion that made his limbs feel weak. And though he had to shoot three more of the walking dead and was wired to the teeth with adrenaline and horror, he somehow man- aged to hold on to his hope that the RPD building would be a safe haven, that there would be some kind of crisis center set up, manned by police and paramedics - people in authority making decisions and marshaling forces. It wasn't just a hope, it was a need; the possibility that there might be no one left in Raccoon to take charge was unthinkable. When he finally stumbled out into the street in front of the station and saw the burning squad cars, he felt like he'd been hit in the gut. But it was the sight of the decaying, moaning police officers staggering around the dancing flames that truly wiped out his hope. There were only about fifty or sixty cops on the RPD force, and a full third of them were lurching through the wreckage or dead and bloody on the pavement not a hundred feet from the front door of the station. Leon forced the despair away, fixing his sight on the gate that led to the RPD building's courtyard. Wheth- er or not anyone had survived, he had to stick with his plan, put out a call for help - and there was Claire to think about. Concentrating on his fears would only make it harder to do whatever needed to be done. He ran for the gate, nimbly dodging a horribly burned uniformed cop with blackened bones for fingers. As he clutched the cold metal handle and pushed, he realized that some part of him was grow- ing numb to the tragedy, to the understanding that these things had once been the citizens of Raccoon. The creatures that roamed the streets were no less horrible, but the shock of it all just couldn't be sustained; there were too many of them.

  Not too many here, thank God. . .

  Leon slammed the gate shut behind him and pushed his sweaty hair off his brow, taking a deep breath of the almost fresh air as he scanned the courtyard. The small, grassy park to his right was well lit enough for him to see there were only a few of the once human creatures, and none close enough to be a threat. He could see the two flags that adorned the front of the station house, hanging limp in the still shadows, and the sight resparked the hope that he thought he'd lost; whatever else happened, he'd at least made it to someplace he knew. And it had to be safer than the streets. He hurried past a blindly reeling trio of the dead, easily avoiding them - two men and a woman; all three could have passed for normal if not for their mournful, hungry cries and uncoordinated staggers.

  They must have died recently. . .

  . . . but they're not dead, dead people don't gush blood when you shoot them. Not to mention the walking-around-and-trying-to-eat-people thing. . .

  Dead people didn't walk. . . and living people tended to fall down after they'd been shot a few times with. 50 caliber slugs, and didn't put up with their flesh rotting on their bones. Questions he hadn't yet had time to ask himself flooded through his mind as he jogged up the front steps to the station, questions he didn't have the answers for - but he would soon, he was sure of it. The door wasn't locked, but Leon didn't allow himself to feel surprise; with all he'd been through since he hit town, he figured that it would be best to keep his expectations to a minimum. He pushed it open and stepped inside, Magnum raised and his finger on the trigger. Empty. There was no sign of life in the grand old lobby of the RPD building and no sign of the disaster that had overtaken Raccoon. Leon gave up on not feeling surprised, closing the door behind him and stepping down into the sunken lobby. "Hello?" Leon kept his voice low, but it carried, echoing back to him in a whisper. Everything looked just as he remembered it; three floors of classically styled architecture in oak and marble. There was a stone statue of a woman carrying a water pitcher in the lower part of the large room, a ramp on either side leading up to the receptionist's station. The RPD seal set into the floor in front of the statue gleamed softly in the diffuse light from the wall lamps, as if it had just been polished.

  No bodies, no blood. . . not even a shell casing. If there was an attack here, where the hell's the evidence?

  Uneasy at the profound silence of the huge cham- ber, Leon walked up the ramp to his left, stopping at the counter of the reception desk and leaning over it; except for the fact that it was unmanned, nothing seemed to be out of place. There was a phone on the desk below the counter. Leon picked up the receiver and cradled it between his head and shoulder, tapping at the buttons with fingers that felt cold and distant. Not even a dial tone; all he heard was the sound of his own heavily thumping heart. He put the phone down and turned to face the empty room, trying to decide on where to go first. As much as he wanted to find Claire, he also desperately wanted to hook up with some other cops. He'd received a copy of an RPD memo just a couple of weeks before, stating that several of the departments were going to be relocated, but that didn't really matter; if there were cops hiding in the building, they probably weren't concerned with sticking close to their desks. There were three doors leading away from the lobby to different parts of the sprawling station, two on the west side and the other on the east. Of the two on the west, one led through a series of halls toward the back of the building, past a couple of filing offices and a briefing room; the second opened into the uniformed- officer squad room and lockers, which then connected into one of the corridors near the stairs to the second floor. The east door, in fact the whole east side of the first floor, was primarily for the detectives - offices, interrogation, and a press room; there was also access to the basement and another set of stairs on the outside of the building.

  Claire probably came in through the garage. . . or through the back lot to the roof. . .

  Or, she could've circled around and come through the same door he had - assuming she even made it to the station; she could be anywhere. And considering that the building took up almost an entire city block, that was a lot of ground to cover. Finally deciding that he had to start somewhere, he walked toward the squad room for the beat cops, where his own locker would be. A random choice, but he'd spent more time there than anywhere else in the station, interviewing and working through schedul-ing. Besides, it was closest, and the tomb-like silence of the oversized lobby was giving him the creeps. The door wasn't locked, and Leon pushed it open slowly, holding his breath and hoping that the room would be as undisturbed and orderly as the lobby. What he saw instead was the confirmation of his earlier fears: the creatures had been there - with a vengeance. The long room had been trashed, tables and chairs splintered and overturned everywhere he looked. Smears of dried blood decorated the walls, splashes of it in tacky, trailing puddles on the floor, leading toward. . .

  "Oh, man. . . "

  The cop was sitting against the lockers to his left, his legs splayed, half-hidden by a smashed table. At the sound of Leon's voice, he weakly raised one shaking arm, pointed a weapon vaguely in Leon's direction - then lowered it again, seemingly ex- hausted by the effort. His midsection was awash with oozing blood, his dark features contorted with pain. Leon was crouching at his side in two steps, gently touching his shoulder. He couldn't see the wound, but there was so much blood that he knew it was bad. . . "Who are you?" the cop whispered. The soft, almost dreamy tone of his voice scared Leon as much as the still oozing wound and the glassy look in his dark eyes; the man was slipping, fast. They'd never formally met, but Leon had seen him before. The young African-American beat cop had been pointed out to him as sharp, on the fast track to detective, Marvin, Marvin Branagh. . . "I'm Kennedy. What happened here?" Leon asked, his hand still on Branagh's shoulder. A sickly heat radiated through the officer's ragged shirt. "About two months ago," Branagh rasped, "the cannibal murders. . . the S. T. A. R. S. found zombies out at this mansion in the woods. . . "

  He coughed weakly, and Leon saw a small bubble of blood form at
the corner of his mouth. Leon started to tell him to be still, to rest, but Branagh's faraway gaze had fixed on his own; the cop seemed determined to tell the story, whatever it was costing him.

  "Chris and the others discovered that Umbrella

  was behind the whole thing. . . risked their lives, and

  no one believed them. . . then this. "

  Chris. . . Chris Redfield, Claire's brother.

  Leon hadn't made the connection before, although he'd known something about the trouble with the

  S. T. A. R. S. He'd only heard bits and pieces of the story - the suspension of the Special Tactics and Rescue Squad after their alleged mishandling of the murder cases had been the reason the RPD'd been hiring new cops. He'd even read the names of the infamous S. T. A. R. S. members in some local paper, listed along with some fairly impressive career records. . .

  . . . and Umbrella runs this town. Some kind of a chemical leak, something that they tried to cover up by getting rid of the S. T. A. R. S. . .

  All of this went through his mind in a split-second; then Branagh coughed again, the sound even weaker than before. "Hang in there," Leon said, and quickly looked around them for something to use to stop the bleed- ing, inwardly kicking himself for not having done it already. A locker next to Branagh was partly open; a crumpled T-shirt lay at the bottom. Leon scooped it up and folded it haphazardly, pressing it against Branagh's stomach. The cop placed his own bloody hand over the makeshift bandage, closing his eyes as he spoke again in a wheezing gasp.

  "Don't. . . worry about me. There are. . . you have to try and rescue the survivors. . . "

  The resignation in Branagh's voice was horribly plain. Leon shook his head, wanting to deny the truth, wanting to do something to ease Branagh's pain, but the wounded cop was dying, and there was no one to call for help.

  Not fair, it's not fair. . . "Go," Branagh breathed, his eyes still closed. Branagh was right, there was nothing else Leon could do, but he didn't, couldn't move for a mo- ment - until Branagh raised his weapon again, point- ing it at him with a sudden burst of energy that strengthened his voice to a rough shout. "Just go!" Branagh commanded, and Leon stood up, wondering if he would be as selfless in the same situation, working to convince himself that Branagh would make it somehow. "I'll be back," Leon said firmly, but Branagh's arm was already drooping, his head settling against his heaving chest.

  Rescue the survivors.

  Leon backed toward the door, swallowing heavily and struggling to accept the change in plan that could very well kill him, but that he couldn't walk away from. Official or no, he was a cop. If there were other survivors, it was his moral and civic duty to try and help them. There was a weapons store in the basement, near the parking garage. Leon opened the door and stepped back into the lobby, praying that the lockers would be well stocked - and that there would be somebody left for him to help.