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… don't leave me, Uncle Brian. You said you'd keep me safe, that you'd take care of me. Think of what you could do now that everyone is gone and there's nothing to stop you… "You're dead," he whispered, but she kept talking, soft and insistent.
… nothing to stop you from being fulfilled, truly fulfilled for the first time in your life…
Tortured and aching, Irons slowly, slowly pulled the nine-millimeter away from his stomach. After a mo– ment, he rested his forehead against Beverly's shoul-der and closed his tired eyes. She was right, he couldn't leave her. He'd prom– Ised – and there was something to what she'd said, about all of the things he could do. His hobby table was big enough to accommodate all kinds of animals… Irons sighed, not sure what to do next-and won-dering why he was in such a hurry to decide, anyway. They would rest for a while, perhaps even take a nap together. And when they awoke, things would be clear again.
Yes, that was it. They would rest, and then he could sort things through, take care of business; he was the chief of police, after all.
Feeling in control of himself again, Brian Irons slipped into a light and uneasy doze, Beverly's cool flesh like a balm against his feverish brow.
NINE
Thanks to a van parked in the alley behind Kendo's, Leon's straight shot to the station had taken a few detours – through an infested basket-ball court, another alley, and a parked bus that had reeked from the sprawled corpses inside. It was a nightmare, punctuated with whispering howls, the stink of decay, and once, a distant explosion that made his limbs feel weak. And though he had to shoot three more of the walking dead and was wired to the teeth with adrenaline and horror, he somehow man– aged to hold on to his hope that the RPD building would be a safe haven, that there would be some kind of crisis center set up, ma
Not too many here, thank God…
Leon slammed the gate shut behind him and pushed his sweaty hair off his brow, taking a deep breath of the almost fresh air as he sca
They must have died recently…
… but they're not dead, dead people don't gush blood when you shoot them. Not to mention the walking-around-and-trying-to-eat-people thing…
Dead people didn't walk… and living people tended to fall down after they'd been shot a few times with.50 caliber slugs, and didn't put up with their flesh rotting on their bones. Questions he hadn't yet had time to ask himself flooded through his mind as he jogged up the front steps to the station, questions he didn't have the answers for – but he would soon, he was sure of it. The door wasn't locked, but Leon didn't allow himself to feel surprise; with all he'd been through since he hit town, he figured that it would be best to keep his expectations to a minimum. He pushed it open and stepped inside, Magnum raised and his finger on the trigger. Empty. There was no sign of life in the grand old lobby of the RPD building and no sign of the disaster that had overtaken Raccoon. Leon gave up on not feeling surprised, closing the door behind him and stepping down into the sunken lobby. "Hello?" Leon kept his voice low, but it carried, echoing back to him in a whisper. Everything looked just as he remembered it; three floors of classically styled architecture in oak and marble. There was a stone statue of a woman carrying a water pitcher in the lower part of the large room, a ramp on either side leading up to the receptionist's station. The RPD seal set into the floor in front of the statue gleamed softly in the diffuse light from the wall lamps, as if it had just been polished.
No bodies, no blood… not even a shell casing. If there was an attack here, where the hell's the evidence?
Uneasy at the profound silence of the huge cham– ber, Leon walked up the ramp to his left, stopping at the counter of the reception desk and leaning over it; except for the fact that it was unma
Claire probably came in through the garage… or through the back lot to the roof…
Or, she could've circled around and come through the same door he had – assuming she even made it to the station; she could be anywhere. And considering that the building took up almost an entire city block, that was a lot of ground to cover. Finally deciding that he had to start somewhere, he walked toward the squad room for the beat cops, where his own locker would be. A random choice, but he'd spent more time there than anywhere else in the station, interviewing and working through schedul-ing. Besides, it was closest, and the tomb-like silence of the oversized lobby was giving him the creeps. The door wasn't locked, and Leon pushed it open slowly, holding his breath and hoping that the room would be as undisturbed and orderly as the lobby. What he saw instead was the confirmation of his earlier fears: the creatures had been there – with a vengeance. The long room had been trashed, tables and chairs splintered and overturned everywhere he looked. Smears of dried blood decorated the walls, splashes of it in tacky, trailing puddles on the floor, leading toward…