The solemn ticking of a grandfather clock filled the
cool air, echoing off of shining black and white tiles.
He was in a dining hall, the kind he'd only ever seen
in movies about rich people. Like the front room, this
one had an incredibly high ceiling and a second floor
balcony, but it was also decorated with expensive-
looking art and had an inset fireplace at the far end,
complete with a coat of arms and crossed swords hung
over the mantle. There didn't seem to be any way to
get to the second floor, but there was a closed door to
the right of the fireplace.
Chris lowered his weapon and started for the door,
still awed by the wealth of the "abandoned" mansion
that the S.T.A.R.S. had stumbled into. The dining
room had polished red wood trim and expensive
looking artwork on the beige stucco walls, surround-
ing a long wooden table that ran the length of the
room. The table had to seat at least twenty, though it
was only set for a handful of people. Judging from the
dust on the lacy place mats, nothing had been served
for weeks.
Except no one is supposed to have been here for
thirty years, let alone hosted a formal dinner! Spencer
had this place closed down before anyone ever stayed
here.
Chris shook his head. Obviously someone had reopened it a long time ago ... so how was it that
everyone in Raccoon City believed the Spencer estate
to be boarded up, a crumbling ruin out in the woods?
More importantly, why had Umbrella lied to Irons
about its condition?
Murders, disappearances, Umbrella, Jill. ... It was
frustrating; he felt like he had some of the answers,
but wasn't sure what questions to ask.
He reached the door and turned the knob slowly,
listening for any sound of movement on the other
side. He couldn't hear anything over the ticking of the
old clock; it was set against the wall and each move-
ment of the second hand reverberated hollowly, am-
plified by the cavernous room.
The door opened into one side of a narrow corri-
dor, dimly lit by antique light fixtures. Chris quickly
checked both directions. To the right was maybe ten
meters of hardwood hall, a couple of doors across
from him and a door at the end of the corridor. To the
left, the hallway took a sharp turn away from where he
stood, widening out. He saw the edge of a patterned
brown run on the floor there.
He wrinkled his nose, frowning. There was a vague
odor in the air, a faint scent of something unpleas-
ant, something familiar. He stood in the doorway another moment, trying to place the smell.
One summer when he was a kid, the chain had
come off his bike when he'd been out on a ride with
some friends. He'd ended up in a ditch about six
inches away from a choice bit of roadkill, the dried-
up, pulpy remains of what once might have been a
woodchuck. Time and the summer heat had dissi-
pated the worst of the stink, though what had re-
mained had been bad enough. Much to the
amusement of his buddies, he'd vomited his lunch all
over the carcass, taken a deep breath, then puked
again. He still remembered the sun-baked scent of
drying rot, like thickly soured milk and bile; the same
smell that lingered in the corridor now like a bad
dream.
Fummp.
A soft, shuffling noise from behind the first door to
his right, like a padded fist sliding across a wall. There
was someone on the other side.
Chris edged into the hallway and moved toward the
door, careful not to turn his back to the unsecured
area. As he got closer, the gentle sounds of movement
stopped, and he could see that the door wasn't closed
all the way.
No time like the present.
With an easy tap the door swung inward, into a dim
hall with green flecked wallpaper. A broad-shouldered
man was standing not twenty feet away, half-hidden
in shadow, his back to Chris. He turned around
slowly, the careful shuffling of someone drunk or
injured, and the smell that Chris had noticed before
came off of the man in thick, noxious waves. His
clothes were tattered and stained, the back of his head
patchy with sparse, scraggly hair.
Gotta be sick, dying maybe.
Whatever was wrong with him, Chris didn't like it;
his instincts were screaming at him to do something.
He stepped into the corridor and trained his Beretta
on the man's torso. "Hold it, don't move!"
The man completed his turn and started toward
Chris, shambling forward into the light. His, its,
face was deathly pale, except for the blood smeared
around its rotting lips. Flaps of dried skin hung from
its sunken cheeks, and the dark wells of the creature's
eye sockets glittered with hunger as it reached out
with skeletal hands.
Chris fired, three shots that smacked into the crea-
ture's upper chest in a fine spray of crimson. With a
gasping moan, it crumpled to the floor, dead.
Chris staggered back, his thoughts racing in time
with his hammering heart. He hit the door with one shoulder, was vaguely aware that it latched closed
behind him as he stared at the fallen, stinking heap.
-dead, that thing's the walking goddamn dead!
The cannibal attacks in Raccoon, all of them near
the forest. He'd seen enough late-night movies to
know what he was looking at, but he still couldn't
believe it.
Zombies.
No, no way, that was fiction, but maybe some
kind of a disease, mimicking the symptoms. He had
to tell the others. He turned and grabbed at the
handle, but the heavy door wouldn't move, it must
have locked itself when he'd stumbled.
Behind him, a wet movement. Chris spun, eyes
wide as the twitching creature clawed at the wooden
floor, pulling itself toward him in an eager, single-
minded silence. Chris realized that it was drooling,
and the sight of the sticky pink rivulets pooling to the
wood floor finally spurred him to action.
He fired again, two shots into the thing's decaying,
upturned face. Dark holes opened up in its knobby
skull, sending tiny rivers of fluid and fleshy tissue
through its lower jaw. With a heavy sigh, the rotting
thing settled to the floor in a spreading red lake.
Chris didn't want to make any bets on it staying
down. He gave one more futile yank on the door and
then stepped carefully past the body, moving down
the corridor. He rattled the handle of a door on his
left, but it was locked. There was a tiny etching in the
key plate, what looked like a sword; he filed that bit of
information into his confused, whirling thoughts and
continued on, gripping the Beretta tightly.
There was an offshoot to his right with a single
door, but he ignored it, wanting to find a way to circle
back to the front hall. The others must have heard the
shots, but he had to assume that there were more
creatures running around here like the one he'd
killed. The rest of the team might already have their
hands full.
There was a door at the end of the hall on the left,
where the corridor turned. Chris hurried toward it,
the putrid scent of the creature - the zombie, call it what it is -
- making him want to gag. As he neared the door,
he realized that the smell was actually getting worse,
intensifying with each step.
He heard the soft, hungry moan as his hand
touched the knob, even as it registered that he only
had two bullets left in his clip. In the shadows to his
right, movement.
Gotta reload, get somewhere safe.
Chris jerked the door open and stepped into the arms of the shambling creature that waited on the
other side, its peeling fingers grasping at him as it
lunged for his throat.
Three shots. Seconds later, two more, the sounds
distant but distinct in the palatial lobby.
Chris!
"Jill, why don't you..." Wesker started, but Barry didn't let him finish.
"I'm going, too," he said, already starting for the door on the east wall. Chris wouldn't waste shots like
that unless he had to; he needed help.
Wesker relented quickly, nodding. "Go. I'll wait here."
Barry opened the door, Jill right behind. They
walked into a huge dining room, not as wide as the
front hall but at least as long. There was another door
at the opposite end, past a grandfather clock that
ticked loudly in the frigid, dusty air.
