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There was quiet and then there was too quiet. After everything that had happened it was hard for Claire to be sure of what this particular silence meant as she hurried back to where she’d left Sherry.
She didn’t hear any zombies shuffling aimlessly behind closed doors, but she also didn’t hear Sherry or Annette. It was possible that the two of them were waiting in the room where Claire had left Sherry, but it was equally possible, if Annette wasn’t as badly hurt as she’d seemed that she’d taken her daughter out of the lab and vanished.
Claire wasn’t sure how she felt about that possibility. Annette had been in pretty bad shape, but she wouldn’t be the first person or thing to survive the impossible that night. Claire was honestly amazed that she had made it as far as she had given what she’d been through and what Sherry had endured and would survive thanks to the cure that Annette had brought to her.
There were enough bloody and dragging footprints on the floor that Claire couldn’t tell one set from another, couldn’t find meaning in their meandering paths except that one set might have been fresher than the others.
It could mean a zombie waiting for her around the next corner or it could mean nothing.
Whether she’d been right to send Annette ahead of her with the cure was far more than a lingering doubt. The woman had shown that she was more than capable of taking care of herself and her determination to see things through to the end was undeniable, but Claire didn’t trust her.
Though she was far from an expert on the matter, she knew that Annette was a terrible mother, and that her trying to make things right in the end didn’t mean anything after what Sherry had been through.
No little girl should have to suffer through what Sherry had that night, though when you got down to it, Claire felt that everything all of them had been through was something no one should have had to endure.
Never in her life had she imagined anything like what Umbrella had done.
The company was the one to blame, not the people who worked for it, or not exactly the people who worked for it, though the implication that the RPD had ties with Umbrella made her uncomfortable.
It was not something she wanted to be thinking about now though, she didn’t have time for that. Not when a recorded message was blaring over the PA system that the place would self-destruct. As far as she could tell the countdown hadn’t started yet and the warning that it would soon was appreciated, she didn’t like that it made picking up on other sounds difficult.
Which was why she stopped dead in her tracks when the final door opened, revealing that the hall was full of bodies.
Zombies, she reminded herself, as though that would make it less horrific. That it did said something about what she’d been through, though she wasn’t sure what.
Dead zombies, she decided after a second look. None of the bodies seemed in any condition where them getting back up was a risk. Some of them had been torn to pieces, making an exact count impossible, but it looked like a lot.
Or maybe not, she decided, as she stepped over a headless torso.
It was impossible to avoid stepping in the mess, yet another thing for her to not think about.
Zombies had been disemboweled, were missing limbs, or laying crumpled on the ground, the plaster of the walls cracked, dented, and smeared with gore.
The damage made her think of the thing in the trench coat that had chased her through the police station. She’d seen the thing pick up a zombie that got in its way and toss it aside as though it was nothing. If it was somewhere in here.
If it had survived and found Sherry…
No, there was no reason for her to think that way. She had to keep her focus on the here and now. The zombies were dead, none of them looked like they’d be getting back up, even if some of them were still twitching.
One body though, lying face down in the middle of it all was in better condition than the rest and maybe there was a risk of that one getting up, but only that one.
She had a clean shot to get in it the head, just to be sure and save herself the trouble later but it meant taking the chance that whatever had done what she was standing in the middle of would hear.
Did she want to take that risk?
Not until she was back with Sherry, she decided, or until she was sure the girl was out of harm’s way.
The problem was that meant walking past the body, close enough that it might reach out and grab her, and she didn’t dare try to run past it for fear of slipping.
One body in a lab coat looked like any other and she’d seen enough of them that night that there was no reason for her to give it a second look, if not for the fear that in might move.
She recognized the body, something about the blood matted hair, what was left of its face.
Annette had never made it back to Sherry.
She’d never know the details of what happened, but it was easy enough for Claire to guess.
Sherry’s mother hadn’t seemed like the most attentive person to begin with and it was easy to imagine that for what might have been the first time in her life, she was worried about her daughter and hurried, not paying attention to her surroundings. A zombie might have come around a corner and grabbed her, or she could have even tripped over one laying on the floor. The noise had drawn in others and then something else had shown up.
None of that mattered.
Forgetting that she also needed to be careful, Claire broke into a run.
The room she’d left Sherry in was empty. There was blood, more than there had been when she’d last seen it, but not enough for her to think that Sherry had been attacked, especially when there wasn’t even a body.
Not that that meant anything with zombies prowling the halls.
She backtracked, paying more attention to the bodies on the floor.
None of them were small enough to belong to a little girl, so that was a reassurance.
Maybe Sherry ran when she heard the commotion, or maybe when the PA system started up she went to look for a way out.
“Sherry!” Claire screamed, not caring about being quiet or avoiding notice. There wasn’t time to worry about that.
The PA stopped its warnings and in that moment the silence got too loud.
Claire could hear the blood pounding in her ears, the scratching of a zombie’s nails against the floor as it tried to move, and something breathing heavily down the hall, just around the corner and out of sight.
Something.
There was no reason for her to investigate rather than try to get out, not when there was no way that Sherry could be alive, not when her mother had been mauled by zombies right outside of the room where she’d left her.
The thing was, Sherry couldn’t have gotten far with all the locked doors and it was a mystery that Claire didn’t think she’d be able to live with if she didn’t at least look.
Around the corner and down the hall, maybe to the cafeteria. That was the farthest Sherry could have gotten anyway.
Slowly, in the way one moves when they already something bad was about to happen, Claire turned down the hall, towards the source of the sound.
A soft, snuffling noise that reminded her of the labored breathing of the things that skittered on the ceilings. She looked up, no scratches or smears of blood there and anyway, the sound was coming from near the floor.
She looked down.
Smeared, bloody footprints, as though what had made them was dragging its clawed feet.
Maybe it had been hurt during the fight with the zombies.
That would be good, because she’d have to kill it if she wanted to finish her search for Sherry.
It was just around the corner, in the little alcove there. Getting by it wasn’t an option so the best choice was to make it come to her. At least then she’d be able to deal with it on her terms, no sudden surprises.
“Come out and get me!” She yelled, handgun ready.
There was a howl, something stood up in front of her, catching her so badly off guard that her shot went wide, missing by inches and hitting the wall.
Thankfully.
At the absolute last second she’d recognized the jacket wrapped around the thing, her motorcycle jacket.
She’d found Sherry.
The thing with her jacket draped over its shoulders wasn’t a little girl, far from it.
Eyes, bloodshot from crying, met hers and it shied away.
“Don’t hurt me,” it growled, clawed hands coming up to cover its face, while another, smaller set clung to the jacket, holding it in place.
“I’m,” Claire’s voice caught in her throat. The thing didn’t sound like a little girl, the words more of an animal’s growl, and it didn’t look like one, nearly as tall as her with the gangly proportions of a teenager, slick gray skin and too many arms.
Peering out at her between its claws it whimpered, a shrill, inhuman whine, “I waited and didn’t make any noise like you said. I knew you’d come back, but it hurt so bad and then I heard a scream. Mommy... they were attacking my mom. I tried to stop them! Claire I really did! But…”
She looked at its claws again, stained dark and sticky with drying blood, the crescent bite marks on its arms that were already half healed.
The thing that should have been Sherry, if there had been anything right in the world, let out a bubbling sob.
Whatever it looked like, it certainly acted like a little girl, though Claire was glad that she hadn’t arrived earlier and seen what had happened. Then she was sure that things would have turned out far worse. She probably wouldn’t have been able to save Annette and by the looks of things it had been too late for the vaccine well before that.
Sherry screamed and lurched forward.
“This is my fault!”
Claire managed to step back, never lowering her handgun, even if her finger wasn’t on the trigger anymore, as the thing fell to its knees and squealed like it was dying.
“I said that I hated her, that I wished she was dead and it’s my fault,” its face contorted into a pained grimace, because at least it had a face. Not quite human, certainly not that of a little girl, but more recognizable than Birkin had been at the end.
“It’s not your fault,” Claire said with anger, unable to manage sympathy just yet, not for something that looked like that, before she made her decision and holstered the gun.
She wracked her brain, tried to come up with some reassurance beyond that, but what was there to say? Things wouldn’t be alright, they were so far past that point that it was laughable. Both Sherry’s parents were dead, which might have been for the better. The way Annette had been talking when she first encountered her, Claire didn’t think she’d have much sympathy for her mutated daughter. Hell, she’d not hesitated to try and kill what was left of her husband, something that Claire had previously regarded as being a point in her favor. She didn’t think that Annette would have tried to kill Sherry, especially not with the way she was acting, but it was easy to believe that Annette was lacking enough in compassion to regard her own daughter as nothing more than a research subject now.
Or maybe she was just shifting the blame onto Sherry’s mother, where at least part of it lay, a large part of it. Not that it was helpful to think that way. That wasn’t what Sherry needed, but what else was there for her to say that wasn’t a lie?
The PA system saved her by choosing that moment to announce that there were ten minutes left to evacuate before the self-destruct system activated.
“We need to get out of here.”
Sherry looked up, sniffed loudly and nodded.
She got to her feet, following meekly behind Claire, which she didn’t like, but there was no way for her to tell Sherry that she had to take the lead, that having something like that behind her made her nervous.
There was no time for that, they needed to get out, and fast. Fortunately she’d seen enough maps of the building to have figured the fastest way out, unfortunately that meant going back through the hall where Annette had died.
Immediately after turning the corner Sherry inhaled sharply and stopped, “I can’t.”
Or at least that was what Claire thought she said, between fangs and how horrified she sounded it was hard to tell.
What she did know was that Sherry wasn’t moving and she’d already decided that she wasn’t leaving her behind.
“Close your eyes and follow me.”
Claire had meant that she’d talk Sherry through things and that she could navigate by the sound of her voice, she hadn’t expected claws to close around her arm. Fighting back a scream she looked down at the hand holding onto her. It was one of the smaller set, only four fingers, the claws not that long, and otherwise almost human looking.
Sherry was shaking, but even then her grip was still too strong for Claire to pull away.
Near the end, right before Claire bent down to take Annette’s security pass, Sherry’s teeth started chattering
“Shit,” Claire hissed under her breath and of course Sherry heard.
“Sorry,” she said, in a noise half way between a mutter and a snarl.
Immediately Claire was angry at herself. It was obvious that Sherry wasn’t about to manage a repeat of what she had to have done when she’d heard Annette getting attacked. It seemed that one outburst of violence was all she had in her and now, despite everything, she was just a frightened little girl.
“Don’t worry about it,” Claire sighed, “We’ve been through a lot, but if we make it the elevator we’re as good as out of here.”
Or so she hoped. The place was falling apart thanks to William’s rampage and there was no telling what the self-destruct system or damage might have shut down. For all she knew she was leading them to a dead-end.
Once they got past the hall Sherry let go of her, thankfully, though she moved so that she was walking alongside Claire, which wasn’t much better. Sherry was about the same height as her and walking next to something that had more than a passing resemblance to something that had repeatedly tried to kill her was unnerving to say the least.
There were differences though, Sherry wasn’t as malformed looking. She was symmetrical, there were no spurs of bone, no exposed muscle or random fangs and eyes everywhere. After seeing so many monsters and reading files about the G-virus’ failures Claire wondered if what had happened to Sherry was what success was supposed to be like. That something with more of a resemblance to the unstoppable thing in a trench coat might be a success was horrifying, but at least Sherry was talking.
Claire glanced at her, trying to get used to the thing that Sherry had become, because getting out of the building wouldn’t be the end of things. If she was lucky she’d be able to meet up with the clueless cop Leon, and they’d be able to get away from the city together.
After that she wasn’t sure, but having someone else to help her figure things out would be appreciated.
Getting onto the elevator was rough, knowing that she’d be trapped in an enclosed space with Sherry on the way down was horrifying, even if she tried to tell herself that it shouldn’t be.
Sherry seemed to pick up on this and leaned against the wall, looking nervously at her.
“Really, it’ll be fine,” Claire said, mostly for her own benefit.
Sherry nodded, the claws of one of her larger hands moving to a lump on her side near a faded bite mark.
“Don’t scratch that,” Claire said hurriedly, not wanting to think about the damage Sherry might unintentionally do to herself. If she clawed herself hard enough to hurt and then panicked…
Sherry flinched and looked away. A thin slit on the lump opened up and an eye there stared at her. The eye blinked and then closed, “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Claire said again, wishing that she meant it, “You’re doing good so far.”
Sherry looked at her out of the corner of her eye and then back down at her claws.
“It feels weird,” she growled, “But not in the way it should. I’m bigger, right? And stronger?”
She looked at Claire as though those were questions that genuinely needed an answer.
“Yeah, you are bigger,” Claire said, trying not to think about the zombies torn to pieces or smashed against the walls, “And probably stronger.”
“It doesn’t feel that way. It’s like everything’s smaller and lighter and I’m just all clumsy. I can’t even tell which arms are supposed to be my real ones, unless I really think about it,” Sherry wiggled her claws and let go of the jacket long enough to wave with her smaller set of arms, “It hurt a lot when these…”
Sherry trailed off and slumped down against the wall, sobbing.
This was not what Claire needed. This was so far removed from what she needed that there was no choice except to go over and put her arm over Sherry’s shoulders.
“Okay, maybe things aren’t going to be fine, but we’ll get through them anyway,” Claire said, “As long as we keep focused on what we have to do we’ll make it. You think you can do that?”
Sherry looked at her mistrustfully, not that Claire could blame her. Just about everyone Sherry knew had let her down so far and she was a smart enough kid that she had to know that things weren’t going to get any easier from here.
“I…” Sherry looked at her claws, both sets, then nodded, “I’ll try to be brave like you.”
Claire nearly corrected her. She’d spent most of the time since arriving in Raccoon City terrified, but explaining that wasn’t going to help. The thing was, there were times that no matter how frightened you were, you had to keep going.
By the time the elevator stopped Sherry had stopped crying and was able to get to her feet with Claire’s help, even managing a nervous smile.
Things probably wouldn’t get any easier for them, but for the first time since arriving in Raccoon City and end was in sight. They’d make it, no matter what they had to face on the way.