Chapter 15: Pump the Water, Break the Ladder

Rick sat in a comfortable chair, reading a journal. Claire checked the shelves, the desk, and its drawers for any information that could help them find a way out, locate a keycard for the garage shutter, or discover where Irons had taken Sherry.

From the man’s emails, she learned an Umbrella higher-up had ordered him to eliminate the survivors of the mansion incident. That meant her brother. And Rick.

The office was a sprawling, wood-paneled suite that reflected corrupted authority and a grotesque personality. It was deceptively grandiose, blending the formal dignity of a police chief’s quarters with the private den of a deranged hunter. Or, from what Rick was reading, a serial killer.

"He’s even more of a sick fuck than I thought." He turned a page as he spoke to Claire.

She closed a drawer and circled the desk to stand behind him. "What did you find?" Leaning forward, she tried to see the journal in his hands.

"Hunting huge predators didn’t do it for him anymore, so he turned to humans." He ignored her sound of disgust. "Preferably in their late teens, early twenties, female and blonde. Eight murders between August and September alone. The victims’ age went from eighteen to twenty-three."

A scowl marred Claire’s face. "And as chief of police he covered it all up."

"Yeah." Rick turned another page. "That’s not the worst of it. There were other murders, but these last eight… They were trophies. Hunting trophies."

"What do you mean?"

When she didn’t understand, Rick pointed without looking at the taxidermied deer head mounted on the wall.

"Oh god…" Claire whispered. "I think I’m going to be sick."

He replied callously, his focus still on the journal. "Do not vomit on my shoulder. Or on me. I am bare chested."

Not taking offense, Claire moved away. After a glance at the locked Heart Door leading out of the office, she stared at the unmarked door to her right.

"There is nothing else here. We should check this side room."

Rick closed the journal and stood. "Agreed. I have had my fill of this bastard’s twisted acts." He tucked the small book into one of his pouches.

She looked at him with surprise. "Why are you keeping it?"

"Proof. In case he dodges the bullet I plan to put in his head and escapes the city."

Claire considered this, tilting her head from side to side in a gesture of agreement. "Good call."

Taking point, she opened the door and was immediately confronted with a pouncing tiger. Her gun came up. She almost fired before realizing it was another taxidermy trophy.

"Really?"

Heat flushed her cheeks in embarrassment. She turned and scowled at Rick, who to her surprise did not look amused. His expression was grim. After glaring at him in silence for a moment, she huffed and gave up, choosing instead to head down the small corridor.

It led to a storage room cluttered with antiquities. Things she was sure Irons had acquired with bribes from Umbrella and other unsavory characters. She had found a ledger with detailed entries. The amount of money he had taken under the table was staggering.

To the side was a small alcove in the wall, barred by a metal gate.

"Look!" she exclaimed, moving closer. "A keycard!"

The very thing they had been searching for dangled by a strap caught on an empty wooden coat rack. As luck would have it, the gate was locked by an electronic mechanism.

Claire pounded it with her fist. "Damnit! How do we open this thing?!"

Rick caught her by the shoulder and pointed to an electrical box on the side. "Parts are missing. Maybe if we find them and redirect the current, the door will unlock."

Observing the panel, she saw two square holes where components should be. She let out a sigh and nodded. "More scouting and scavenging."

"It could be worse," Rick said, trying to cheer her up. She did not notice. Her anger flared.

"Yeah? How?!"

He let her anger roll off him and began to look around. "No keycard."

His short answer was like cold water. It calmed her. Sighing again, she helped him search. They found only a full box of submachine gun ammo. Then she noticed Rick examining a small painting, the size of a photograph.

"What is it?" The space was so narrow she had to rise on her toes to see over his shoulder.

Rick turned and showed her. His finger pointed to a red shape above two kneeling figures in worship.

"Are you thinking what I am thinking?"

Before Claire could answer with a “yes, the shape reminded me of the heart on the office door”, Rick turned the frame around. A small bolt held the backing in place. He unscrewed it, removed the back, and revealed a Heart Key.

"Jackpot." His tone held a rare hint of satisfaction.

Claire looked from the key in his palm to his face. His expression matched his voice. A small smile graced his lips. It might have been the first genuine smile she had seen from him.

‘That look suits him. He is hotter like this.’

She blinked, quickly chasing away the traitorous thought. Snatching the key, she strode back into the chief’s office, followed by a confused Rick who wondered at her sudden mood change.

Past the now unlocked door, they faced a choice. To their right was a shutter. From memory, it connected to the art room and the waiting room where they had used the Spade Key. A path they could not take. Next were the stairs. Up to the third floor, or down to the first.

They exchanged a look and spoke simultaneously.

"Up."

"Down."

An awkward silence settled. Rick broke it first.

"Down. It's just two rooms. If we go up, the balcony might trap us. We could be stuck, unable to get back here."

Claire opened her mouth to argue, but no sound came out. "You're right. The balcony slipped my mind. We could get stuck inside the precinct again."

Taking point, she headed down. She recognized the blockade on her left leading to the flooded bathroom, and the barricaded door with a crack overlooking the conference room. She jumped when something hit a window on her right.

Rick was already pulling wooden planks from her backpack in a hurry, moving to seal the potential entrance. Fortunately, the zombie was not persistent. By the time it broke the glass, Claire was hammering the final nail.

"That… was weird," she said in confusion.

"I agree." Rick inspected the blockade, then turned.

At the end of the wall was a Heart Door. The corridor turned left. Cautious, gun in hand, he looked around the corner. No threats. Just a locker and a door marked with a club.

"Clear," he told Claire, walking to the locker. Inside was a grenade. "Weirder and weirder." He muttered to himself and rejoined his partner at the Heart Door.

The room was an interrogation chamber. A table stood in the middle with a chair on each side. Low lighting, a camera on a tripod by the door, and the classic one-way mirror.

Claire immediately checked the cluttered desk to the left. Rick crossed to the other side to search the lone shelf.

He found a strange blue jewelry box. Something that had no place there. When he reached for it, a loud cracking sound came from behind. He drew his gun and turned.

A Licker burst through the one-way mirror.

Both Claire and he froze in surprise. That stillness might have saved their lives. A single sound-making movement and the creature would have torn them apart.

Rick signaled her not to move. Slowly, he crouched to retrieve the knife from his boot. The Licker had landed on the table in the middle of the room and had shattered it. Now it swayed its head, listening.

Rick took a silent step. Then another. He switched his grip to a reverse hold, ready to stab downward. At jumping distance, he pushed off with all his strength and stomped onto the Licker’s back. His weight pinned the creature. He grabbed it by the back of its neck and stabbed its exposed oversized brain repeatedly. Screams of pain tore from the creature until it fell limp. Rick did not relent, stabbing a few more times for good measure.

"Holy shit…" he whispered, standing up.

Claire kept her voice low. "I nearly had a heart attack."

She went to Rick and checked him over, especially his wounded shoulder. A sigh of relief escaped her when she was sure he was alright.

"I'm sorry. I turned around and the bag hit the camera."

"Don't sweat it. We had no reason to think a licker was on the other side. The observation room is locked. It shouldn't have been in there in the first place."

"Maybe someone led it there?" she offered.

Rick pondered for a moment, then nodded. "That, or a zombie in that room mutated into a licker."

Claire blinked. They knew nothing about how these monsters came to be. "That is… a good point. Also absolutely terrifying. If all zombies could turn into…"

She let the implication hang in the air. It was a nightmare scenario. The entire city was crawling with zombies. If they could all become Lickers, every survivor was doomed.

To pull their minds away from the apocalyptic thought, he showed her his find. "Come here." Rick walked back to the shelf and held up the box. "I think we finally know what the red gem is for."

Claire put her bag down and rummaged through it. "You think it will unlock it?"

"At this point, I'm one hundred percent certain. I've seen stupider locks."

She placed the gem in the slot on the box’s top. It was a perfect fit. She opened it and pulled out a S.T.A.R.S. badge.

"That is it? All that trouble for a badge?" Her face was pure incredulity.

Rick took it. "It's the key to the case we found the suppressor in."

"It's useless to us, then."

He turned the badge over and pressed a button on the back. A USB port was revealed. "I think… It's the key to the S.T.A.R.S. armory."

When they had been in the Special Tactics office, a computer terminal sat beside the locked armory gate. He had tried to open it to access the ammunition and weapons inside, but the program required a key. They had regretfully abandoned the idea.

Claire’s expression shifted from annoyance to excitement. She had seen a powerful semi-automatic magnum and a submachine gun in there. "We're not leaving the precinct until we get everything."

"That's what I thought."

Rick pressed the button again, retracting the port. He tucked the badge into a pouch and went over to the Observation room. The only thing he found there was the safe code for the Waiting Room on the second floor.

They returned to the stairs and climbed to the third floor, bypassing the second. There, they found another flashbang which Claire took, more wooden planks, and a dozen 9mm bullets which Rick put in a pouch with the others he already had.

He chose to check the balcony instead of the storage room, despite the icy rain. He picked a blue herb from one of the patio tables. The wrecked helicopter still burning in flames below.

"Hey!"

Claire’s call made him look. She was pointing down at a ladder in the small courtyard.

"I checked the storage room. It's a clustered mess, pitch black, and I heard groaning. At least two zombies in there, from what I could tell. I think we should go down here and deal with this fire. If we can—"

Rick finished for her. "We would have access to the rest of the station, including the S.T.A.R.S. office."

"Yes. Also, look," She pointed at a huge pipe running up the wall. "That looks like a water main."

"And it goes right above the helicopter. Things are looking up."

"Yeah."

Claire jumped from the balcony, the drop not far down, and Rick followed. He landed, bending his knees to absorb the impact, and his shoulder jolted with pain. A sharp grunt escaped his clenched teeth.

"Damnit!"

He looked up to see Claire frowning at a lever she had pulled, attached to the pipe.

"What is it?"

She faced him. "The lever pumps water, but not into the pipe we need."

"Well… It's part of the water system. We follow the pipes to the source and maybe we can redirect it there?"

With the only other option being the infested storage room, Claire agreed. It did not take them far. Across the courtyard, down more stairs. They put down two zombies, discovered and took one green herb each, and finally found the valve controls.

"It's… insanely stupid to—" Rick suddenly sneezed, a loud sound that startled Claire while turned the valve to redirect the water.

She looked at him with worry. It was the middle of the night, cold and raining, and Rick was bare chested. She could see his breath now. His lips were taking on a bluish tint, and his body shivered slightly.

"Sorry," he said, acting as if nothing was wrong.

Claire’s voice was caring and she put her hands on his arms in comfort. "We'll get you some warm clothes as soon as we can."

Rick shrugged and started back toward the stairs. "I was saying… It's very unsafe that the water system doesn't irrigate the entire station at once."

"Yeah, who thought of that? What if there is a fire in a dry section and you cannot reach the valve?"

Back at the lever, the water now flowed through the correct pipe. It was busted above the burning helicopter, and the cascade snuffed out the flames.

"Good. Now let's get you inside."

Without thinking, Claire gently took his hand and pulled him toward the courtyard door. Inside, she let go to pick up a red herb near the entrance. They turned right at the intersection. As they neared the helicopter, they stopped. Something big was behind it. The thing grabbed the wreckage and shoved it aside with one hand.

Rick’s fight-or-flight instinct took over. He grabbed Claire and ran back toward the courtyard without a second thought. Disoriented, she followed, trusting his judgment implicitly. She knew that if Rick was running like his life depended on it then it was probably the case. Her curiosity and the questions she had in mind could wait.

"Go, go, go!" he shouted, letting her climb the ladder first.

Claire didn’t need to be told twice and obeyed. Rick was climbing right behind her. The ladder could not hold them both. It was not made for that much weight and broke. Claire, already at the top, only lost her footing. Rick fell back to the ground.

"Rick!" she yelled in panic from above.

"GO! Find Sherry! I’ll catch up to you!"

"But—!"

"That's the rocket guy!"

The realization hit her. The only "rocket guy" they shared common knowledge of, was the massive monster he had fought in the Spencer Mansion and told her about. The one that had required a rocket launcher to kill because bullets were useless.

Bitterly, she shouted, "You better survive!"

As she fled through the door back to the third floor, she saw from the corner of her eye a seven-foot-tall man, built like concrete, in a long black parka and fedora, stomping with terrible purpose toward Rick.

‘God, help him, please.’