Chapter 32
Hearing the sounds of gunshots, Ada went over to the window and glanced outside. The window faced an alley behind the police station, so she couldn’t see anything. But she heard the gunshots, and then flinched when the sound of a horrifying scream reached her ears. She didn’t think a human being could make a sound like that.
At the moment, Ada was still stuck on the second floor. She wanted to go downstairs, where she suspected the armory probably was, but all the hallways that led to staircases seemed to be full of the undead. She was forced to retreat back in the direction she came from, and now wasted valuable time looking through offices for spare weapons.
It was a mistake to come to the police station at all, she now knew. She should have focused her energy on finding another vehicle and getting out of the city. She wasn’t trapped in the police station, not yet anyway, but she suspected that every second she wasted there would make it ten times harder when she finally decided to leave. Other survivors were trying to get to the police station as well, if the gunshots outside were any indication, and more survivors would just draw more zombies to the already-massive mobs of them roving the building.
She had to escape, but escape to what? She failed her mission, rather spectacularly. Her employers rarely tolerated such astounding failure, even in situations like this, so she doubted she would have much to escape back to. Her mission in Raccoon City was meet up with a man from Umbrella who possessed information about their secretive experiments, and now it seemed those experiments had taken over the entire city, and Ada had literally nothing to show for it.
Ada stood by the window for a little longer, wondering what exactly she was going to do next, when she heard another inhuman scream coming from outside. She didn’t know what could possibly make such a terrible sound, but she was glad it was out there and not inside with her. It was hard enough just facing zombies, she didn’t need anything else showing up.
She walked back out into the empty hallway, standing uncertainly, looking in each direction. The hall was lined with small offices and supply rooms, the whole police station seemed to be a never-ending maze of tiny rooms and twisting hallways. She would need a map to find her way around at all.
She walked off, Beretta in hand, although she knew that there were no zombies in the immediate vicinity. The hallways were deserted and silent for the time being, although Ada heard other muffled gunshots occasionally. That meant there were other survivors in the building as well.
The last thing Ada wanted was to run into other survivors. Her mission was already a disaster, and she didn’t need to compromise her cover on top of that. If she ran into more survivors, and they managed to escape the city, they would surely mention her whenever they talked to the authorities. And then authorities would try to figure out who she was, but Ada Wong and Vanessa Cooper were just aliases. Ada preferred that no one see her in the city at all.
The other problem was that she didn’t have the time, or even the patience, to try to help anyone else. If she ran into other survivors, they might want to rely on her to keep them safe, and Ada had no interest in anyone’s safety but her own. It put her in an inconvenient position. She was simultaneously trying to avoid any contact with both the living and the undead.
She walked down the long hallway, looking around for a map of the building. Usually, large buildings like this displayed maps showing the fire exits, but she couldn’t seem to find one. She stopped when she saw the label “Temp Storage” on a nearby door.
She tried the doorknob, and to her surprise it was unlocked. She pushed and let the door swing open, aiming her gun through the doorway. The room had no windows, and was furnished with filing cabinets and a small desk right in the middle of the room. Ada leaned inside the doorway and saw a caged-off area from the rest of the room, with a large safe behind it. She smiled at her good luck and walked into the room.
As she walked inside, the door moved and began to swing shut behind her. She turned to glance at it and screamed suddenly, lifting her arm up as a zombie dove at her from behind the door. It was an old man dressed in a police uniform, and it grasped her neck, opening its mouth to bite down hard right on her forearm.
Ada struggled and lost her footing, and the two of them tumbled to the floor. Her hand struck the corner of the desk and the gun went spinning. The zombie lay on top of her, its mouth attached firmly to her arm, biting down on the sleeve of her black leather jacket, its cold hands fumbling at her neck and face. She desperately pushed away, but the zombies jaws were clamped down hard, like an attack dog unwilling to let go. Lifting up, keeping the zombie’s face as far away from hers as possible, she struggled to get her free hand into her jacket pocket.
She found the revolver there and stuck it up under the zombie’s chin, pulling the trigger. The blast blew a hole through the zombies neck, splashing blood up into the air. Ada turned her face to the side and closed her eyes tightly as two drops of blood landed on her cheek.
The zombie fiercely bit down on her arm again, apparently undamaged by the gunshot. The bullet went through its neck and missed the brain. Ada pulled the trigger again but the gun just clicked, and the zombie pushed down on her, groaning through its clenched teeth.
Ada forced her leg up and kicked the zombie off of her, although it kept its mouth tightly attached to the sleeve of her jacket. She tossed the revolver away and reached with her free hand to grab the Beretta. The zombie let go of her arm and lunged at her face, and she swung the pistol up to shoot it right between the eyes.
She gasped for breath and quickly unzipped her jacket, yanking her arm out of the sleeve, terrified of what she was going to see. Her arm hurt from the inhuman pressure of the zombie’s jaw, but she felt a surge of relief when she saw no blood. Her hand brushed over the bite mark, but all she saw was a white mark from her sleeve indenting her skin. The leather jacket was too tough for the zombie to bite through. It bit down so hard that she would probably get a bruise, but her skin was miraculously unbroken.
She got up, her legs unsteady, and went over to the caged area. It was locked, but the key was conveniently attached to a keychain hanging from the zombie’s belt. It had probably been the guard on duty here, she thought. Inside the caged area were several locked drawers that probably contained pistols. But for the moment, Ada was not concerned with those.
She was more interested in the large safe. It was locked with a combination lock, but a thorough search of the desk revealed the combination written on the back of a notepad.
“Great security, guys,” she said to herself, opening up the safe door.
She took out a combat shotgun and a plastic belt of shells, slinging it over her shoulder. There were several shotguns inside the safe, but she could only effectively carry one. She loaded the shotgun with ammo until it was full, and then racked one into the chamber. Behind the other shotguns in the safe, she spied another weapon.
“Oh, I like this,” she said to herself, gingerly pulling it out.
In her hands was a M79 grenade launcher, its gray barrel scuffed up and wooden stock scratched and worn over years of use, its dark green shoulder strap frayed at the edges. It looked like a relic from the Vietnam War, but it still worked. It wasn’t a very complicated weapon. The launcher was built like a break-action shotgun, with a hinge that opened up the chamber, which held one round at a time.
Sitting on the bottom of the safe was a small belt of four explosive grenade rounds, also linked to a shoulder strap. Ada grinned and slung it over her shoulder as well. She didn’t think that she would find much use for it in an enclosed area like the police station; an explosive round at close range would probably kill her as well if she wasn’t careful. But once she got out in the open, such a weapon would be a wonderful way to clear out a mob of zombies.
She stuck her Beretta into her back pocket and took the dead zombie’s Beretta as well, sticking into her belt. With the grenade launcher,
grenades, and the belt of shotgun shells, she walked out of the room, feeling a little bit more confident about her chances.
There were zombies in the hallway, coming from around the corner down at the end of the corridor. Drawn by Ada’s screaming earlier, a group of eight or ten zombies shuffled toward her, arms outstretched, fingers grasping empty air. Most of them wore police uniforms, the others were dressed in office clothes.
Ada considered her options. Shoot them all, wasting ammo she might need later? Or just run away from them, leaving enemies behind her to get in her way if she came this way again? She opted to just go the other way, rather than use up ammunition.
She turned and went down the other side of the hall, shotgun held tight to her shoulder, the grenade launcher bumping against her backside as she walked. She passed more empty storage rooms and offices and came to a T-intersection, the hallway splitting off to the left and right.
“Damn,” she muttered, stopping when she realized she had left her leather jacket back in the storage room. She didn’t want to go around in just the red long-sleeved shirt she was wearing, in case another zombie tried to take a bite of her. The jacket saved her life once already, and she didn’t want to leave it behind.
She turned and hurried back down the hall, only to see that the crowd of zombies had already reached the room, blocking her way. More zombies joined the crowd as well, increasing their number to more than twenty.
Ada raised the shotgun, aimed carefully, and pulled the trigger. In the enclosed hallway, the loud blast from the gun rang in her ears, and the kick from the gun knocked her shoulder back. Three of the zombies fell over backward, two of them with heads blown apart. Ada racked another shell in, the spent shell flipping into the air, trailing a thin line of smoke. She gritted her teeth and fired again, blowing two more zombies away, the spread from the buckshot taking several out at once.
From the corner of her eye, she glanced quick movement down the left side of the hall from the intersection. Spooked, she turned and fired quickly, shooting before she got a close look at what she was aiming at.
But it wasn’t a zombie coming up behind her. As she pulled the trigger, she saw an uninfected person standing there, and lifted up the gun just enough to miss her shot. The person jumped for cover and the shotgun blast took out nothing but a corkboard attached to the wall. Ada only got a glimpse, but it was a man with reddish brown hair and black clothes.
“Jesus! I’m not a zombie!” he shouted. “Don’t shoot!”
“Shit,” Ada muttered, lowering the shotgun. She backed away from the oncoming crowd of zombies, glanced down the hallway, and decided to abandon her leather jacket after all. She turned and took off down the hallway to the right, leaving both the zombies and the fellow survivor behind her.
Resident Evil Legends Part Five - City of the Dead Page 38