It had been two years. We thought it was over. We thought we could have peace.
We couldn't have been more mistaken.
-Chris Redfield's diary, April 23, 2011

Resident Evil 6: From the Shadows

Chapter 1: Attacked

The sun was just beginning to drop in the sky when the woman on the motorcycle drove into town that Friday afternoon. The town was laid out in neat blocks across the flat plains, with slightly more urban elements including a hospital, a small hotel, a series of apartment buildings, and a street lined with stores. However, it was still rural enough to be considered quiet, peaceful, and the perfect place to go to leave behind your days of chasing after bio-organic weapons and their makers.

At least, that was how Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine had felt. After recovering from Kijuju, the two had spearheaded the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance's effort to make sure no trace of Uroboros still existed. After that, all suspicious activity related to B.O.W.s died down and then seemed to vanish entirely. They had resigned with the sincere well wishes from their superiors and enough money to relocate to a quiet area; after leaving with the assurance that they would return to service if it ever became necessary, they had come to this town on the advice of Barry Burton, who had moved there a few years earlier.

However, Claire Redfield was not driving her motorcycle towards the eastern side of town, where Chris and Jill's houses were, nor towards the northern outskirts, where Barry's family lived. Instead, she was headed for the apartment building in one of the center blocks.

Claire was dressed for riding, wearing her red leather jacket over her black clothes, as well as a pair of boots. Her suitcase sat firmly in the bike's luggage rack, because she was intending to spend the weekend with her brother. The first order of business, though, had to do with the letter she held in her hand.

She had been shocked to hear from Sherry Birkin after all these years. More surprising still was the news that Sherry had moved into an apartment in the same town that Chris lived in—and had gone visiting her Redfield neighbor only to discover that the one she knew wasn't there. Her letter indicated that she was doing well, and it had gone into some detail about how she had fared over the years. She had ended by inviting Claire to visit her the next time she was in town.

Claire checked the name on the front of the building against the address on the letter, and then she parked alongside the apartment. It was going to be strange seeing Sherry again. Even knowing how much time had passed, she couldn't help but think of her as the little girl she had met in Raccoon City. She didn't even know what had become of her after their escape, as she had lost contact with her after renewing her search for Chris. She hoped Sherry didn't hold it against her.

From her letter, I doubt she holds a grudge against me for anything.

She got off her bike and opened the door to the apartment building. Having never been in there before, she wasn't sure if anyone could walk in or if visitors needed to be let in by the residents. She had responded to Sherry's letter telling her when she expected to be in the neighborhood, so hopefully she had remembered.

The doors opened right into the lobby, however, so she kept walking, looking around as she went. It looked like a nice place, although all of the desks were currently vacant. She looked down at the note again. Sherry lived in Apartment 217. She crossed the room to press the button for the elevator, wishing that she had seen at least one other person in the lobby. The Raccoon City incident and everything that had followed it had left all of them a bit paranoid. The elevator doors opened, and after glancing out the window at the sunshine for reassurance, she entered the empty elevator.

The trip to the second floor was a short one, and when she stepped out into the hallway, she took a deep breath and braced herself to meet someone she hadn't seen in over a decade. She walked down the hall, noticing as she did so that some of the doors were ajar. Just another thing to make her nervous…

The door marked 217 was one of them, and when she knocked on it, it swung open entirely. She looked in. The lights were still on in the apartment, revealing a neat living room and a small kitchen area beyond it. She didn't see Sherry.

"Hello?" she called, lingering near the door. "Sherry? Are you home? It's Claire."

She was just about ready to turn back and try again another day, when something unusual about the kitchen table caught her attention. The floor around it was littered with items—cans, cookbooks, and even a flower vase. The table itself was entirely clean, except for what looked like a pad of paper in the center.

It looked too deliberate, as though it was intended to draw attention to the paper. Thinking that Sherry might have stepped out and left her a note, Claire walked across the living room over to the table. The top sheet of paper did have a note on it, written in the same handwriting that had been on the letter and addressed to her. It was very short:

Claire,
They're coming.
Sherry

"'They're coming?'" she read with a frown, picking up the note. What sort of a message was that? It sounded like a warning.

The apartment door slammed shut, and she whirled around, heart pounding. No one was there. She looked around, trying to judge if anyone could have hidden in the time it had taken her to turn around. A slight breeze touched her arm, and she realized she was just being paranoid again. It happened all the time back at her place, doors slamming shut on their own when the windows were open.

Why would Sherry have left the window open if she was going out? she wondered. Thinking also of the way the door had been left open, she put the note back on the table and walked in the direction of the breeze. It was coming from the bedroom, and while she didn't want to be snooping around Sherry's apartment, she stuck her head in just to see.

The outside wall had a window that gave a nice view of the immediate neighborhood, including a garden marked off for use of the apartment tenants. It would have been a nice view, except that the window had clearly been broken. A few shards of glass still remained on the edges.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled. This was getting weird, and she knew it wasn't just paranoia this time. It was time to get out of here and maybe even call the police. She started to back up, and then a groan from the other side of the bed froze her in her tracks.

"Sherry?" she asked. There was no answer. She wanted nothing more than to leave the apartment as quickly as she could, but if that was Sherry back there, injured from whatever had happened here…

She took a cautious step into the bedroom, moving slowly around the bed. She looked to see what had made the noise—and a cold hand grabbed her leg.

Claire yelled and kicked her way free, backing up as the zombie groaned again and got up off the ground. She looked at the decaying flesh and the jerky movements and wondered how it was possible, when the T-virus hadn't been seen for so many years. Why it was here, though, didn't matter at the moment.

She grabbed a lamp from the nightstand, planning to use it as a weapon in case any more of them were around, and then she turned and ran out of the bedroom. A closet burst open as she ran for the apartment door, and a zombie lunged for her. She hit it as hard as she could with the lamp and ran into the hallway.

The open doors now looked far more ominous than they had earlier, and she heard squeaking hinges as she raced to the elevator. After hammering the button, she looked over her shoulder and saw two zombies lumbering down the hall towards her. A third one was emerging from a door across from her.

She looked back at the closed elevator doors, willing them to open. She looked back at the zombies and then took off in the direction she hoped the stairs were, silently cursing the elevator. A zombie shuffled out of an apartment in front of her, trying to grab her when she approached. She dodged it and kept running, only to hit another one when she rounded the corner.

It grabbed her, and she smashed the lamp into it as hard as she could. The zombie fell away from her, momentarily stunned, and she hurried past it. She could see a sign for the stairs now, at the end of the hall.

The apartment building, which had been too quiet when she entered, now seemed too noisy. The groans of the zombies punctuated the eerie cadence of screams from the apartments that ended too quickly as the tenants were attacked and infected.

A quiet, peaceful little town, Claire thought grimly, as she made it to the end of the hall and started down the stairs. It wasn't peaceful anymore. A group of zombies were waiting in the lobby, but she forced her way past them and flung open the doors to the outside.

Before she could even catch her breath, shots rang out. She dropped to the ground and let go of the lamp as the wall behind her was riddled with bullets. She could see people lining the street, aiming at the building's doors.

"Don't shoot!" she shouted. "I'm a human!"

Her words had no effect. If anything, the intensity of the firing continued. Keeping low to the ground and trying to stay in the shadow of the apartment building, she crept in the direction she had left her motorcycle, going as quickly as she dared. She could hear shouts coming from the shooters, some asking if anyone could see her and others ordering that they couldn't let her get away.

Claire's heart, already pounding, skipped a beat. The people shooting knew she wasn't a zombie, and they were trying to kill her anyway.

She had reached the side of the building and her motorcycle, and she knew she wouldn't be able to hide any longer. She would have to be fast. She jumped up, got onto the bike as quickly as she could, and got it started. All she could hear over the rumble of the engine was people shouting, and then she shooting began.

A bullet singed her jacket, coming too close for comfort, but then the motorcycle started moving. She rode faster than she ever had before, not caring that she was breaking the law. If the police stopped her, at least she would have some help. She hoped her attackers would be more concerned about the apartment building, but the shouts behind her indicated that at least some of them had followed her.

She turned sharply around a corner and then turned again at the next corner she reached. Going this fast, she could barely see what she was doing; she would barely have time to react if anything got in her way. She turned again, intending to eventually head for Chris's house, but mainly focusing on losing her pursuers.

She could hear screams and shouts throughout the neighborhood now, no doubt in response to the shooting. She wondered if any of the people had any idea of what was happening in the apartments. She shuddered.

Sherry had escaped, that much she believed. She had somehow known that they were going to be attacked, and she had left the note to try to warn Claire as well. Claire hadn't seen a zombie that looked like her, so that had to mean she had gotten away—unless she had been shot while escaping.

The angry shouts were getting fainter, so she risked slowing down. Keeping a wary eye out for danger, she made her way to the eastern end of town, where things were still quiet. Chris's house was easy to find even if she hadn't known the address, as it was the only one on the street with green siding. She left her motorcycle in his driveway and climbed the steps to the door.

She realized that she was shaking from what had happened. After all this time, she had thought the nightmare was finally over. Was it a coincidence that this had happened in the town where her brother and Jill lived, or was someone targeting them?

She knocked on the door, knocking harder when no one answered right away. The outbreak was blocks away. He had to be all right. She raised her fist to knock even harder, when the door opened and she nearly punched Jill in the face.

"Claire?"

"Jill!" she gasped, lowering her hand and nearly falling inside.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm…" She wasn't quite sure how to answer that.

"What is it?" Chris asked, running into the room. "Something's wrong with Claire? Claire! Claire, are you all right?"

"Zombies," she whispered. "They're swarming all over Sherry Birkin's apartment building."

"None of them got you, did they?" Chris asked. He looked terrified of hearing her answer.

"No, I got away fine. I was almost shot, though," she added.

"Shot?" Jill asked.

"There were gunmen waiting outside the building. I don't know who they were, but they didn't want me to get away. They knew I was human. They were trying to kill me."

Chris threw open a closet door and began digging through it. For someone who had resigned, he sure had his arsenal close at hand. Claire looked from his grim frown to Jill's too-pale face and knew that the paranoia had been even worse for them during these years of supposed peace.

They armed themselves, and Claire was surprised when Jill handed her a gun. She was even more surprised when Chris handed her a piece of paper. She looked at it and saw a list of names and phone numbers.

"Stay here," he said. "Call everyone on this list and tell them what happened. The B.S.A.A. needs to know about this."

She opened her mouth to argue that she wanted to go with him, and then she closed it again. He was right. He and Jill were better fighters than she was, and someone had to tell the B.S.A.A. "All right," she said, "but be careful."

"You be careful too," Chris said, running out the door. Jill threw a sympathetic look behind her, and then she closed the door, leaving Claire alone in the house.

It suddenly seemed too empty and too quiet.

The phone sat on an end table by the couch. She edged over to it, glad to have the gun even in a place that should have been safe. The paranoia felt justified after what had happened. She sat down and placed the gun beside her, well within reach.

She dialed the first number on the list, but the line was busy. She moved on to the second, deciding to go back to any she missed once she reached the end. However, that line was also busy, and there was no answer at the one after that. She continued down the list, dialing number after number with no success. When someone finally did answer, she was so startled that she almost dropped the phone.

"Hello?"

Claire looked to see where she was at on the list and felt a wave of relief. She had never met Sheva Alomar, but she knew she had been Chris's partner in Africa and could be relied upon. "Hello? This is Claire Redfield. I'm at my brother's house."

"Is it the T-virus?" Sheva asked without waiting to hear more.

The lines being tied up now made a dark sort of sense. "There have been other incidents tonight?"

"It's an international crisis."

"Chris and Jill are out there fighting. There's more than just zombies; there are people with guns on the other side, too!"

"Don't worry. We're sending help."

Claire finished the calls numbly, getting through to only a few other people. The urgency of contacting them had faded. Help was on the way, and the reappearance of the T-virus was not something the B.S.A.A. needed to be informed about. They already knew.

An international crisis.

When she had given up on reaching anyone else on the list, she hung up the phone and walked over to the window, looking outside. Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought she could hear sounds from the battle. She tightened her grip on the gun and wondered if she should go out there to try to help, even if Chris had told her to stay there.

There was a time when she would have done so without a second thought. Now, however, she thought about what it would do to Chris if he returned and found his sister missing. She wondered if he knew what it would do to her if he never came back.

She stared out the window and prayed that they would both return safely.

Author's note: Well, here I am, with my first serious Resident Evil story! I know the title is a little pretentious, but don't worry...I'm trying very hard to make the story live up to it. The rating is there just in case; this IS a horror story based on an M-rated game series, after all. There is mild shipping of my favored pairings and some OC involvement. I love reviews, your questions and comments, theories and ideas... and I dearly hope you all enjoy reading this story as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

Update: Well over a year later, I have finally decided to give this story a title, to avoid confusion with the canon RE6.