Walk the Miles
Kasage Starrunner
Disclaimer: Resident Evil is not mine. Claire isn't mine either. Neither is Steve. I wish they
were, haha.
--------@
Claire pulled into the narrow drive of the small stone house on Blackburn Road. She pulled off
the government mandated helmet and put it on a seat when she dismounted her motorcycle. Her
worn blue jeans brushed against the weeds and high grass of the unattended lawn, passing by the
laf torn away sigh of Umbrella Repossession that didn't matter anymore. The local newspaper
said the government owned it now that Umbrella was under investigation--something about
misplaced funds and nothing about B.O.W.
It was Chris who had gotten her the permission to come here. He still had friends in the
government from his brief days terrorizing the sky in the Air Force. One call and she'd been
given the key for a day. The man who handed it over said anything uncategorized for auction
was hers, if she wanted to take it.
According to a message relayed from Rockfort, she was the only close friend of the Burnsides.
Claire climbed the steps to the porch and put the tarnished brass key in the door. She turned it
and listened to the lock click open. Ever since Steve had died, the red-head had come up with so
many unanswered questions about him. Her biggest guilt about the distant young man was what
she didn't know. She had sorely misjudged one who at the end of it all became her truest friend,
next to her own blood.
Her hand hestitated on the door, trembling. So many doors that were opened had led to peril.
The young woman feared that entering this holy shrine of Burnside could be more dangerous
than all the terror of her nightmares come back to life. Sorrow, heartbreak, a dull throbbing in an
empty place that could not be filled. So often she was alone, selfishly wishing to die and lay
waste to the sacrifice that one individual had made. An exchange of lives, impossible to fathom.
The door opened and the light poured in slanted rays.
You've been through hell, welcome to heaven.
Claire stepped in on the laminate floor of the entryway, hiking boots scratching across the slick
yet dusty surface. A door hung open in front of her, the stairway to the attic visible and to either
side the living room and the dining room. Boxes marked with item names littered the floor and
the furniture was tagged with stickers and numbers. The room just felt empty and cold. There
was a fireplace, but no ashes, and the screen was carelessly strung across it, half open and half
shut. The young woman twisted her lips--it felt like sacrilege.
She tromped up the stairs to escape the mess, but the attic wasn't much better. All that wasn't fit
for the auction had been thrown in the corners in disorganized piles of clutter. There was a box
full of scrapbooks and old pictures of the Burnsides, tossed to the side like worthless garbage.
The woman picked up the box tenderly and smiled at the hoard of priceless
memories--scrapbooks, yearbooks, notebooks--the books of Steve's life.
The redhead clutched the box to her chest and walked across the small attic to the open door that
could only lead to Steve's room. She tread in only to be surprised at how bare the walls were.
They sloped, which didn't help in hanging posters, but one had been hung onto the panelling with
a mass of duct-tape. Its presence startled her: the golden haired woman in armor charging
through fire, let me live. She touched the suede of her crimson vest, rubbing the collar between
her fingertips, box under one arm.
The woman backed up in the room, trying to find more pictures and fell onto the green comforter
of the twin bed. It was so sparsely decorated-- couple newpaper clippings, a Walkman, a beat up
dresser and desk, sketchpad and half used graphite pencils discarded on the floor. Claire pulled
the sketchbook toward her with her foot and picked it up.
Quaking hands touched the bristol paper and flipped through the graphite smudged and inked
pages, each with a quick signature: Steve Burnside, and the date. Every sketch was
deatiled--rapid practice drawings having as much quality of emotion as the finished tonal
drawings and carefully inked cartoons. There was a flurry of wings, scores of angels and
demons, ancient warriors, saints, fairies, monsters, children. One picture was of a woman bent to
the ground, weary and grief stricken. She reminded Claire of how she had so often felt, trying to
find Chris and losing Steve. The gesture line of the spine drug the drawing down with gravity
and held her riveted.
Steve drew this, she thought. He drew them all, here.
Gingerly, Claire put the record of the brooding youth's hidden talent in the box behind the
yearbooks. She leafed through the pictures piled in the bottom and smiled--five year old Steve
with a fish the size of his auburn head. He had caught it and his proud father stood behind him
with a smile that grew smaller and smaller as the pictures got more modern. Steve's dwindled
too. Happier days, happier family.
She stood and rummaged through the drawers, feeling like a tomb raider. Her hope was to find
more momentos to protect from oblivion--not let the pieces of that complicated young man
disappear. The clothes had been removed and there was little left to find, however, tucked
between the wall and the dresser, where it could barely be seen, was an unfinished canvas,
hidden in hopes that he might make it home again. She pulled the wedged piece of artwork from
behind the dresser and almost cried. The ghosts of Raccoon City stared back at her, vivid brush
strokes of crimson and black and grey-- a boy trying to make sense of a cruel world. It was a
forbidden masterpiece of fear and sorrow, as the angels from Steve's sketches bore away the
souls of those who had become the walking dead.
Claire had never known he was so deep.
As she picked up the canvas to try and place it in the box where it barely fit, a book fell out from
behind the cross bar of the painting's frame. It hit the floor and opened to the middle, on one half
writing, the other the empty pages of the future. It was a secret never meant to be touched, but
somehow it seemed to Claire that she was meant to find these things--that it was even dropped
for her to find, and gathering courage, read.
The words on that page leapt out to her--the last page of history Steve had scrawled before
Umbrella came and stole his life away:
"They'll take us now, thanks to my ass of a dad. I know they know, and there he was, risking us
for the sake of something he doesn't even have the guts to talk about. We're part of Umbrella's
dungeon now--something to be stuffed away and forgotten. There's no future now. I doubt there
ever was.
"The tragedy of life is we have to leave it. The only thing certain is death."
Claire squeezed her eyes shut. He had known after all--somehow foreseen that it was the
beginning of the end. She opened her blue eyes and glanced about the room one last time,
wishing that he would walk in and tell her about the things that she held in that box. The redhead
imagined the youth sitting up on the bed sketching furiously, eyes squinted in concentration as
she had so often seen him. The image fit.
She stood from the floor by the dresser and gathered the box to her. It was time to go and leave
borrowed time behind. The woman wlkaed to the door and paused. As an afterthought, she
snatched the 'Let me live' poster from tilted wall and rolled it up behind the canvas. Her feet
thudded softly across the floor as she left the room, down the stairs and out the door. When she
put the key in the lock she froze, knowing that she was shutting the door to a piece of what could
have been.
The lock clicked. That future was forbidden now. However, in her arms she held the journey of
Steve Burnside's life ... and she could walk the miles.
**FIN**