Chapter 06: A History of Horror

Rick was pulling his ruined shirt back on while Claire rummaged through the office. She had done a decent job suturing his wound, applying the herbal mix and then bandaging it.

During the ordeal, Marvin had contacted them with good news. There was a way out under the huge statue in the Reception Hall. The catch was that they needed three medallions scattered throughout the precinct to reveal it. At least, that was what Elliot had believed. Whether it was true remained up for debate.

Fortunately, Rick knew where two of those statues were. One was in the Reception Hall itself, upstairs on the second floor, not far from their position. The second was even closer. They only needed to turn left outside the STARS office and go down the corridor. The location of the third was a mystery.

It sounded strange to Rick that Marvin, who worked in the station every day, didn’t know about the statues. He put it down to the virus spreading through the man’s body, stealing his mental faculties. It wouldn’t be long before Rick had to put a bullet, or his cleaver, into the officer’s head.

Tidying up the desk and the med kit, he packed everything back into his bag before helping Claire. In his eyes, she was more interested in finding information on her brother’s whereabouts than in supplies, and she might have missed things. He didn’t blame her for it. He understood.

“Since we’re in a safe place… you promised to tell me what you knew about… well, everything.”

Rick turned around and saw his partner leaning on a desk. It seemed she had either found what she was looking for or returned empty handed.

“I made no promises,” he corrected her. “But I did say I would answer questions. What do you want to know?” He sat down.

“Everything. How did it all start? Why do you think Umbrella is involved? How come you know so much when… Marvin said you raised yourself on the streets? No street kid knows what cervical vertebrae are or to hit there to paralyze someone. Same for the herbs.”

Rick let out a tired sigh, leaning back in the chair. “What do you want me to start with?”

Claire wanted to ask about him but thought it wouldn’t be well received. “The zombies?”

“Alright.” Rick took a deep breath and began. “Around the middle of May, gruesome murders happened in the Arklay Mountains. At first they were believed to be grizzly attacks. Bodies were lacerated, mutilated, missing parts. A few searches turned up nothing, and the number of deaths grew. Some victims had bite wounds. Of human origin.”

She stopped him right then with a question. “Zombies were already—”

“Probably. It wasn’t made public. I only know because Jugs told me after the incident.”

“What incident?”

Rick’s hands closed into fists and his face took on a lost but furious expression. Claire knew then that she was in for some rough shit.

“I was camping in the mountains at the time.” He wiped his face, as if trying to clear the memory. “Not really aware of the kind of danger I was in. With the police claiming it was a grizzly, I wasn’t too afraid. Then, on the evening of July 23rd…”

He paused, his eyes losing focus, staring at a stain on the desk.

“I heard this low growling outside my tent. Wet, guttural. Like a dog with something stuck in its throat. It made no sense. There are no wolves in the Arklays. I had my knife in my hand before I even knew I’d grabbed it. A right decision. The tent wall ripped open. The smell of rotten meat and wet fur hit me. This… thing, this dog, its skin was peeling off in patches, just… lunged.

I was lucky. The canvas collapsed on top of it, tangled its legs. I could hear it thrashing, snapping its jaws. I just started stabbing. Over and over. The sound… it wasn’t a yelp. It was this choked, angry snarl. And it wouldn’t stop. Finally, its head pushed through a tear in the fabric, jaws snapping an inch from my face. I saw its eyes. Milky, dead. I jammed the blade up under its jaw, into its skull. It went still.”

Rick shook his head, the disgust fresh on his face.

“But the snarling didn’t stop. It had friends. Three, four more in the dark between the trees. So I ran. Just ran. Didn’t look back. Branches tore at my clothes. I could hear them crashing through the brushes behind me. That’s when I almost tripped over Becca. Rebecca Chambers. STARS’s new medic.” He gestured weakly toward the med kit on the wall. “That’s hers. She was backed against a tree, a dead dog at her feet. Same hollow eyes, same rotting stink.

“Her team’s helicopter had been sabotaged. Crashed. Half of Bravo Team was torn apart by a pack of those things right after they landed. The survivors scattered. We just… partnered up in that second without a word. Ran together. Didn’t stop until we found a train stopped on the tracks. The Ecliptic Express. We climbed in, slammed the door. For a minute, we just leaned against it, listening to those things scratching and throwing themselves at the metal outside. We thought we were safe. God, we were idiots.”

Once again, Claire saw the lost look in his eyes. He finally reached up and pulled the medical mask from his face, discarding it on the desk. For the first time, she saw him fully. A strong, square jaw and a nose that looked like it had been broken once. He looked younger without the mask, and weary down to his bones.

‘Oh,’ she thought, a flicker of warmth amidst the chill of his story. ‘He’s kind of cute.’

“What was in that train…” He let out a shaky breath. “It wasn’t empty. There were… things. Leech monsters, swarming. The air was thick with the smell of chemicals and decay. We fought our way through, ended up in some derelict Umbrella training facility buried in the mountain. More horrors. Giant spiders dropping from vents. It was a nest. A testing ground. We learned enough to know Umbrella was engineering viruses. Turning living things into weapons. The murders in the forest? Their infected guard dogs escaped.

We rigged the place to blow and got out as it came down around our ears. Dawn was breaking. We were on foot, no radio, exhausted. We saw the Spencer Mansion on the hill. Thought it was a shelter. We were such fools.”

“Why?” Claire asked softly.

“Oswald Spencer, the owner, is the co-founder of Umbrella,” Rick said, his voice flat and cold.

“Oh.” The syllable was heavy with understanding.

“We found it empty. Just… opulent and silent. After the night we’d had, we were dead on our feet. Found a study, barricaded the door, and passed out. When I woke up, Becca was gone. I searched the whole damned place, calling for her. That’s when I found the others. Jugs, your brother, Barry, and that son of a whore Wesker.”

He nearly snarled the last name. The hatred was a physical thing in the room.

“They’d been sent as a rescue mission after Bravo Team went dark. Their own landing went to hell. Zombie dogs, men dying. Their pilot, Vickers, panicked and left them there. I told them everything Becca and I had seen. Told them the place was a death trap. They didn’t listen. They split up to search. And of course, they found the mansion’s residents.

Zombies in lab coats, the researchers who’d worked there. A giant snake that could swallow a man whole. Sharks big enough to capsize a boat in an underground aquarium. It was a house of monsters. Then Jugs and I… we found a secret passage. An elevator that went down into a lab.”

Rick’s gaze was a thousand miles away, in that underground lab.

“It was all there. The proof. The virus is called the T-virus. It doesn’t just kill. It reanimates the nervous system, turns people into aggressive carriers. Spreads through blood, saliva… bites. And that was the tame version. The things they were grafting together down there…” He trailed off, visibly forcing himself back to the present. “Wesker turned out to be a traitor. A double agent working for Umbrella. A higher up. The mansion, the training facility… It was all a test. He was using STARS to field-test their bio-weapons.”

“And Chris didn’t arrest him?” Claire’s voice was tight.

“Wesker was killed by his own pet project. A… thing. Imagine a seven-foot-tall man, built like a brick house, who can eat a .357 caliber round to the head and keep advancing like it’s a mosquito bite. Jugs had to blow it up with a rocket launcher to kill it.”

Claire felt a cold dread settle in her stomach. She prayed that nothing like that was in the city.

“Vickers, the coward, came back with the chopper as the place started to burn. We got out. Jugs and your brother took the evidence to Chief Irons.” He let out a bitter, hollow laugh. “The saintly Chief Irons. The man who gives toys to orphans at Christmas. He took one look at it and told them to bury it. To shut their mouths forever.”

“He covered it up?” Claire’s voice rose in anger.

“He’s Umbrella’s lapdog, so not much of a surprise. The guy appears kind, sponsored the city’s orphanage and did other good public deeds to appear as a good and competent police chief but he always made the hair on my neck raise. Never trusted him and I was proven right.”

He took another long drink from his water bottle, his throat working.

“After that, it fell apart. Barry took his family and vanished into some hideout. Becca left the city, said she was going to get her PhD, and tried to fight this from the outside. Your brother… he just disappeared. And Jugs… Irons put her under house arrest. For her ‘safety’. I went to check on her three days ago. Her apartment building was a on fire. I’ve been looking for her ever since.”

Claire tried to offer a thread of hope. “She’s a STARS member. She’s tough. I’m sure she’s safe.”

Rick’s smile was faint and pained. “Oh, she’s alive. I know that much. But safe?” He shook his head slowly. “No one in this city is safe.”

“How did it get here, Rick?” Claire asked, steering him back from the edge of his memories. “How did the virus spread to the city?”

“I don’t know for sure. It started… around the 23rd? 24th of September?”

“A week ago?”

He nodded. “It’s too fast. It has to be in the water supply. Or the rats. Maybe both.”

“But how? If the virus was contained in the mountains—”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rick stood up with a pained grunt, his hand going to his bandaged side. “Raccoon City is Umbrella. Its headquarters, its factories, its money. You think they don’t have a lab right under our feet? This whole epidemic… I think it’s another test. A bigger, messier one. Or maybe it’s just cleanup. Burning the evidence, and all the witnesses with it.”

He picked up his bag, his expression hardening back into its familiar, guarded mask. The moment of shared history was over. Claire knew the time for questions had passed, and she stored her more personal ones away for another, less fragile time.