Resident Evil: Exodus - The Tale of Elza Walker

Chapter 3 - Reunion

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When it came time for Elza to step through the rooftop door, she felt like she had walked into a well. More like an excavation, she mentally corrected, looking ahead at the large metal staircase in front of her. It rose up, following the building's front facade to her right, until it had cleared the far part of the third floor. At that point it made a right-angle turn and ran parallel to and somewhat above the top of the third floor before ending. The reason for this was that the rooftop helipad, braced by a large metal support structure, sat directly over most of the building's third floor. Also in front of her, a short distance away and under the stairs, was a single metal door. It apparently went to some part of the third floor she hadn't previously visited. She certainly didn't remember seeing it from the inside. Completing the impression of a well or excavation was a tall, tightly woven chain link security fence to her right, running from the left edge of the rooftop door all the way under the helipad and nigh to the edge of the door under there. The reason for the fence probably had a lot to do with a very large sign mounted beside the only gate in the fence, whose familiar-looking large printed legend Elza had no trouble reading: WARNING / HIGH VOLTAGE.

Elza immediately went to the gate in the fence. It was chained shut and padlocked. "Damn!" she swore softly to herself. She then looked through the links of the gate that barred her way. There were clusters of storage tanks both large and small, electrical cabinets, and other rooftop machinery both to her left and right. It was the large and long metal cabinet in the back corner of the walled area behind the fence that caught and held her attention. That had to be the building's emergency generator. It couldn't have been anything else, given its size. Elza had worked on enough motors and electrical components of various kinds, a spin-off of her motorcycling hobby, to recognize an industrial-strength generator cabinet when she saw one. There was also the fact that it sat directly across from two very large storage tanks located under the overhang of the helipad. They had to be either the generator's fuel supply or storage tanks for aviation fuel. "Avgas," she thought to herself. "That can run a diesel generator. I wonder ...." The generator was so close ... less than a couple dozen feet away ... and yet so far ... not to mention the padlocked gate between her and her goal. It didn't help matters any that sitting in plain sight atop one of the nearby electrical cabinets was a large crank handle with a hex head. She recognized it immediately ... and it was even closer to her than the generator. If only it weren't for that damn padlock! She felt like a cat being teased by its owner, with the treat she wanted always kept just out of reach. She clutched the chain link fence with both hands, looking longingly at both the generator and the crank handle ... and then she had an idea.

"I obviously can't go through this locked gate," she said to herself, "but maybe I can go over it instead."

Elza turned and trotted to the helipad stairs. She quickly ascended, and went all the way to the edge of the helipad landing. She then looked down. There was the generator in plain sight in the walled rooftop corner, with the electrical cabinet nearby and the crank handle on top of it.. Unfortunately, there were no real handholds for climbing down into the enclosure, and the height involved was too great to jump safely. There was a very real chance she would be hurt if she tried. So much for that idea.

Elza now looked up. She cast her gaze across the darkened buildings of Raccoon City, some of them still burning, and eventually found herself staring up at the sky. All of the rescue helicopters were either gone or wrecked, if what she had heard was true. She also knew that the Umbrella people still moving about within the doomed city were going to be no help at all, if what had happened at the university was any indication. The three of them were cut off and alone, trapped in the middle of a city swarming with the infected. Was there any hope at all of escape?