5 Chapter 4 - "One Helluva Night"

-Somewhere in the R.P.D. West Wing-

Claire ventured towards a spiral staircase leading upwards to the darkness. Clearing every corner with her handgun drawn, she cautiously approached the stairs. The pale moon lit hall constricts around her with untold horrors. As she approaches the stairs, a fishy bitter smell lingers in the air. A droplet of white fluid splatters itself onto Claire's right shoulder. The same thick smell invades her senses Then a sudden bang on the window scares Claire to draw her gun towards it. A male infected groans on the other side of the window, smearing his blood stained mouth and hands across the pane.

"Shit." Claire quickly makes her way up the stairs before the infected man could get through the window. When she arrived on the second floor, Claire looked in terror at the mess it was.

Thick white bodily fluids plastered the wall, pooling down onto a lone female officer whose clothes have been torn to shreds. Every hole the officer had was drenched in the spunk of god knows what. The officer was motionless in the puddle of semen devoid of any male infected near her. To the left of the officer, a metal gate is sealed off with a muffled groan of whatever god damn creature was on the other side.

Claire covers her mouth, repulsed at the horrid sight and smell. She takes a moment to recollect herself while taking small steps away from the scene. A ghostly moan from the open staircase above snaps her out from her disgusted trance. She quickly draws her gun up and ready towards the noise. An infected male lifts his head up the stair guard rail, peering up to lock his milky white eyes with Claire's lively blue eyes. He stands tall, revealing a throbbing erection from his pantless bottom. Thick white goops of fluids trail down his veiny dick.

Her finger lays heavily on the trigger, just at the threshold of pulling it but then the zombie man slips on his own sex fluids and falls over the rail guard, falling down to the bottom floor with a triumphant thud. Claire takes a deep breath, but chokes on the musky scent lingering in the air. Her vision hazes a bit and her crotch unconsciously begins secreting its sweet feminine lubricants. Shaking her head violently, she snaps out of her weird trance and regains her vigilance.

Recalling something her brother taught her about how to clear a room, Claire decides to head into the mens bathroom first to make sure every room is cleared first before heading up to the third floor. Last thing she wants is an infected sneaking behind her. She peers into the bathroom to find a broken pipe leaking hot steam out into the tight room. She looks past the cloud of violent steam and finds a large hole in the wall. She looks at the pipe once again and finds the handle missing.

"Who takes the handle off of this?" Claire shakes her head but ultimately concludes that this room is clear and nothing would be crazy enough to get past this hot steam. She lets out a sigh of relief and leans against the locker next to her. Recollecting herself, she gets off the locker, ready to take on whatever fate throws at her, but little did she know, fate is a cruel mistress. The locker Claire was leaning on pops open with an infected in it. Claire is no way prepared or even indulge the idea that one of them was hiding in a locker. The infected falls on top of Claire, pushing her down under his weight. His face buries itself between her crotch as the rest of him lands on top of her legs.

Claire screams out in horror as she thrashes herself away from this limp infected. Her heart threatens to break out of her body as she scurries away from the still body. Her breathing is ragged and she hugs herself instinctively to provide whatever comfort to her fate. Her brain barely functions and reminds her that she has a gun on her side. Her shaky hands struggle to pull out her handgun from the holster and hardly manages to calm itself enough to aim properly at the ambushing zombie. Claire manages to hold the gun at the body, but it is still like a rock… dead like a rock. Claire shudders out a painful sigh and her heart rate settles down a bit. She wipes off the cold sweat off her forehead.

"Fuck." She curses out. Exhausted from the constant burst of adrenaline, she weakly gets up off the floor and calms her nerves. She is going to make it out of this. She needs to make it. Marvin is counting on her. Leon is too… wherever he is. God… she misses Chris.

Arriving at the third floor, Claire has had enough and confidently clears the corner with her gun raised regardless of there being a shadow. Lucky, this time it is only a small statue casting a shadow against the wall (And the spade key), but Claire knows not to underestimate this place. She continues onwards into the outer hall of the storage room. The creaking wood door closes behind her and the cold darkness of the hall welcomes her. A window at the end of this hall ominously shines with the haunting light from the moon. Her footsteps are silent and tense and her gun is raised as she walks down the hall. Out of the edge of the window, a thing, no, a monster scurries across and like a phantom it disappears.

Claire instinctively lowers herself and raises her gun at the window. Her pulse beats like a drum and her palms sweat. "What was that!?" She whispers to herself as she tries to logically make sense of whatever the hell is going on around this nightmare filled place. Her pace slows to a crawl as she inches closer to the window. Her breathing grows impatient and her grip on her gun slowly slips from the sweat. She fixes her grip once again and when she gets to the edge of the hall, she quickly clears the corner with her sight up high.

The middle of the hall is blocked with debris and random pieces of furniture. Claire sees the door to the storage room and begins turning the doorknob when something catches her attention. A blood stained memo note is on top of the makeshift barricade. She tenses up but knows that the more info she has, the better her odds are at making it out of this hell hole of a place.

The Note

"To any survivors,

Consider this a gift for anyone still unfortunate enough to be alive.

Keep your eyes peeled for those creepy fucks that look like they were skinned alive- "lickers," we call 'em. They're blind as bats, but their hearing more than makes up for that.

So long as you don't run around like a total idiot, guns a-blazing, you should be able to slip right by them… probably.

Either way, make like my grandma and creep around as slow as possible around 'em yeah?

"Anyway, not that I wanna go, but duty calls. That, and I've got a friend to avenge.

-David" (Note found in RE:2 remake 3rd floor of the RPD)

Claire shivers as she finishes the note. She conveniently got some answers and some advice to deal with these 'lickers' she just saw, but it is another thing she needs to worry about. She goes into the storage room and the first thing she notices is how quiet and still everything is. It is as if time is frozen here. Even the dust in the air is stuck in place.

Like a sneaky cat, Claire quickly slips around the ancient storage room, clearing every corner along the way. She stops at a motionless zombie man hanging from the ceiling hole. Her gun is up and her aim is true. As she nears close, the body begins to drop. Claire quickly dashes back and reorients her aim back at his head, but the body stops from falling completely. Locking onto the target for a few seconds longer, Claire finally lowers her guard, deducing that there are no threats in this room. She sees a statue similar to the lion statue at the main lobby but it is behind a wall of bars and the only way in is boarded up with wood planks.

"Who… Why…" Claire shakes her head as she tries to understand the reasoning on why someone would block this off. But then she looks deeper into the bars and sees several bodies laying there on the ground. "Oh…" Then she shifts her attention to an explosive strapped to the wood planks that block her way to another key. "Okay…" There on a table next to the explosives is another note. "Ooohh… What the…" Claire puts down the note before the insanity of it all consumed her mind.

Leaving the note behind, Claire enters the library from the third floor. The library is surprisingly grand for a police station. Though there are some infected eating each other out, Claire couldn't help but walk across the bridge and admire the library's beauty.

"Claire, it's Marvin. How fast can you get back here?" Marvins static voice calls out from the radio on her hip.

"Why, what's up?" Claire looks down at the infected down below but it seems too engrossed in his meal to notice her.

"I've got something to show you. It's important."

"Alright, I'm on my way." Claire makes her way down to the second floor and sees a female on the far corner. Puddles of white fluids stained with red leaks out from her cold body. Her features are masked with bodily fluids and her body is disfigured.

A shiver runs down Claire's spine as she quickly makes her way to the clover door. Though there is a rather big zombie resting himself next to the door, he seems to be out of commission, allowing Claire to sneak past them and make her way back to the main lobby.

Marvin's eyes glow as he sees Claire at the top of the steps. A smile breaks across his face as he sees that nothing bad has happened to Claire. "There you are… Come here." He quickly breaks out the laptop on his side to pull up security footage.

"What is it?" Claire says as she carefully goes down the steps.

"Take a look." He quickly pulls up a window to show live footage.

"Oh my god, he made it?" She exclaims joyfully

"You know him?"

"Yeah. It's Leon… uhhh, Kenedy, I think?"

"Ah, the rookie. Thought he looked familiar."

"You can make it to that courtyard through the second floor, east side."

"OK. Thanks Marvin, I'm on it." Claire quickly goes back up the flight of steps and enters the east side.

As she makes her way there, Claire makes sure to clear each corner before progressing any further. The hall is long and narrow and the pale light from the moon is overpowered by the light of the helicopter spotlight. Claire is making her way towards the door to the courtyard when suddenly, the noise of the helicopter grew nearer. Before she could react, a loud crash thundered throughout the whole building, causing her to stumble. Claire quickly regains her footing and walks out the door to inspect the crashed helicopter. Her flashlight bounces around the ruined aircraft, looking for a sign of life.

"HEY!" A man's voice calls out to her from behind. "CLAIRE!?"

Claire looks below her and sees a familiar hunk. "LEON!?" Claire can barely hold back her excitement as she is just grateful to see another living human. "I'LL BE RIGHT THERE!" She quickly runs down the steps to greet her savior.

"Come on…" Leon grunts out as he tries to fiddle with the gate door closing him out from the station.

"Leon! We really gotta stop meeting like this." Claire teases as she finally gets to see his face properly.

"Are you alright? Police chopper… It just, came out of nowhere…"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Their eyes lock as they see each other, communicating feelings far more than their words.

"I take it you don't have the key…" Leon says futilely.

"No, I don't… It's good to see your face, though. How are you holding up?" Claire flirts. She engraves the image of Leon into her eyes as she wishes she could just tear open the gate.

"I am… hanging in there." Leon says as he welcomes the change in atmosphere.

"Helluva night, huh?"

"Yeah. You find your brother?" He says as both of them unconsciously get closer to each other.

"I did actually, he's-" The helicopter behind Claire suddenly explodes with a fantastical show of fire.

"Just when you think it can't get any worse..." Claire sighs as her chance to get closer with Leon is cut short. Off in the distance, Claire notices a swarm of zombies pushing against the outer fence. "Leon, you should get going."

"Don't worry about me. Just... get yourself to safety." He sweetly says as his eyes doesn't want to break away from Claire's.

"No, Leon, seriously, they're getting through the fence!" Claire says in a panic. "Please, just go!" She doesn't want to be separated from him but there is little choice.

Leon turns around and sees the zombies all around him. His feet move instinctively but then he stops and turns around to look at Claire one final time."We're gonna make it. Both of us." Their eyes lock for a final time, conveying secret emotions to one another. Leon breaks away first and begins running for his life.

Claire sighs as her mind goes to a dark place. Doubt builds up and hope dwindles more the longer the night goes on. "Hey, Marvin. This is bad." She radios as she tries to make out the situation. "I've got zombies everywhere!" She says while making her way to the door next to her. "Marvin…? Marvin, are you there!? Marvin!?" Fear seeps into her mind as many different scenarios play out in her mind. "Oh, god, you gotta be kidding me…!"