RESIDENT EVIL PIERSHERRY

Chapter 1

THIRTY THOUSAND HOTEL rooms in the city of Chicago, and
Sherry Birkin managed to find one next door to a couple having a sex
marathon.
"Yes! Oh yes! YES!"
Sherry pulled the pillow over her head, thinking--as she had been
thinking for the past hour and a half--that it had to end sometime. It was after
three o'clock in the morning, and while she certainly had nothing against a
good round of raucous hotel sex, this particular round had gone beyond
raucous and into the ridiculous about fourteen "oh-God-oh-God-oh-Gods"
ago. More important, even with the discounted rate they gave federal
employees, overnights at the Peninsula weren't typically within the monthly
budget of an assistant U.S. attorney, and she was starting to get seriously
POed that she couldn't get a little peace and quiet.
Bam! Bam! Bam! The wall behind the king-sized bed shook with
enough force to rattle her headboard, and Sherry cursed the hardwood
floors that had brought her to such circumstances.
Earlier in the week, when the contractor had told her that she would
need to stay off her refinished floors for twenty-four hours, she had decided
to treat herself to some much-needed pampering. Just last week she had
finished a grueling three-month racketeering trial against eleven defendants
charged with various organized criminal activities, including seven murders
and three attempted murders. The trial had been mentally exhausting for
everyone involved, particularly her and the other assistant U.S. attorney who
had prosecuted the case. So when she'd learned that she needed to be out
of her house while the floors dried, she had seized on the opportunity to turn
it into a weekend getaway.
Maybe other people would have gone somewhere more distant or
exotic than a hotel three miles from home, but all Sherry had cared about
was getting an incredibly overpriced but fantastically rejuvenating massage,

followed by a tranquil night of R&R, and then in the morning a brunch buffet
(again incredibly overpriced) where she could stuff herself to the point where
she remembered why she made it a general habit to stay away from brunch
buffets. And the perfect place for that was the Peninsula.
Or so she had thought.
"Such a big, bad man! Right there, oh yeah--right there, don't stop!"
The pillow over her head did nothing to drown out the woman's voice.
Sherry closed her eyes in a silent plea. Dear Mr. Big and Bad: Whatever
the hell you're doing, don't you move from that spot until you get the job
done. She hadn't prayed so hard for an orgasm since the first--and last--time
she'd slept with Jim, the corporate wine buyer/artist who wanted to "find his
way" but who didn't seem to have a clue how to find his way around the key
parts of the female body.
The moaning that had started around 1:30 A.M. was what had woken
her up. In her groggy state, her first thought had been that someone in the
room next door was sick. But quickly following those moans had been a
second person's moans, and then came the panting and the wall-banging
and the hollering and then that part that sounded suspiciously like a butt
cheek being spanked, and somewhere around that point she had clued into
the true goings-on of room 1308.
WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA ...
The bed in the room next door increased its tempo against the wall,
and the squeaking of the mattress reached a new, feverish pitch. Despite her
annoyance, Sherry had to give the guy credit, whoever he was, for having
some serious staying power. Perhaps it was one of those Viagra situations,
she mused. She had heard somewhere that one little pill could get a man up
and running for over four hours.
She yanked the pillow off her head and peered through the darkness at
the clock on the nightstand next to the bed: 3:17. If she had to endure
another two hours and fifteen minutes of this stuff, she just might have to kill
someone--starting with the front desk clerk who had put her in this room in
the first place. Weren't hotels supposed to skip the thirteenth floor, anyway?
Right now she was wishing she was a more superstitious person and had
asked to be assigned another room.
In fact, right now she was wishing she'd never come up with the whole