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Wolves Among Sheep
"So...we're being a wolfpack...in every sense of the word."
"Come again cub?"
Hector "Beltway" Hivers was surprised that Lupo had heard him. Not only was he talking to himself rather than any member of Team Wolfpack, but combined with the drone of the helicopter and Vector continuing to give out orders, it was unexpected that anyone had heard him. Either way, it was a moot point. Lupo was the "Wolf Mother" of the USS team, and as one of her 'cubs,' he was obliged to answer.
"These orders..." the demolitions expert murmured. "They're not what I expected..."
"And what did you expect?"
Lupo wasn't letting this go. Damnit.
Still, at least her question came off as being somewhat rhetorical, which gave the former engineer corpsmen time to gaze out over the fires of Raccoon City-the hellhole that Wolfpack was to deploy into. The hellhole that had eliminated the RPD, the UBCS team sent in a few days earlier and had kept the Army and National Guard at bay. The hellhole that, swarming with undead, was Hell in every sense of the word.
And we're not going to do a bloody thing about it.
"I...didn't really expect anything..." Beltway murmured, still gazing out over the city, the light from numerous fires allowing the shadows of the undead to stretch along the bloody streets. "Only that...our objectives might be a bit more...humanitarian?"
Lupo let out a snort, her visor getting slightly cloud as a result. "We're USS, Beltway. You think that we're here to play nursemaids? That Umbrella would play the good Samaritan after cutting their precious baby in half?"
"The biblical references don't suit you Wolf Mother."
"Nor does your need to play Remus instead of Romulus."
Ah, more 'wolf' references. In this case, kill any poor bastard that got on the wrong side of the line of the city you were creating. Or destroying, in this case.
Wolfpack had been sent in to clear up the "chemical spill" that fellow USS members had caused...or William Birkin depending on who Umbrella was intent on blaming in its inner circles, let alone dealing with the public backlash that would result when people realized that they were responsible for the (un)deaths of 100,000 human beings. And by "clear up," Beltway was to follow the objectives of removing any evidence that might further implicate Umbrella in the outbreak and eliminate any poor sod who got in their way-Special Ops, RPD or otherwise. Beltway knew that he wasn't joining saints in the Umbrella Security Service, but even so...eliminating evidence was one thing, but killing innocent people? He'd killed before, but mostly within Umbrella itself, not outside of it. This...wasn't right. Plain and simple. Corporate morality aside, there were some moral standards that people were always aware of...even if you didn't conform to them.
"You're still troubled specialist."
"I am..." Beltway answered truthfully, meeting Lupo's steely gaze. "I...don't like being a wolf among sheep."
"But you are a wolf," the former French Special Forces trooper pointed out. "Wolf among sheep who are stumbling around without their shepherds to guide them. We land, we take out any sheep that gets in our way, and if the shepherds try to intervene, we kill them too."
"Only we aren't here to take out sheep," Beltway pointed out, not liking the analogy too much, considering that zombies were even less intelligent than sheep, and were once potential shepherds themselves in life. "We're ignoring the sheep and going straight for the shepherds. This isn't predation. This is...murder."
Lupo shrugged, clearly unmoved. "Moot point specialist. The shepherds have lost control of their flock and it's turned on them. We're only putting them out of their misery."
Beltway remained silent, not having anything to say. And given the voice of their pilot, that was perhaps just as well.
"Approaching drop zone. ETA twenty seconds."
A silent but noticeable change swept over Wolfpack. Vector sheathed his blade, Bertha readied her anti-virus shots, Spectre slid a round into his rifle and Four-Eyes slipped into "mad scientist in the field mode." Lupo remained stationary however-her little talk had probably been all the preparation she needed. As for Beltway...
...well, as Wolfpack disembarked from the helicopter, he couldn't help but reflect that nothing had prepared him for this.
A/N
A take on material from Operation Raccoon City and probably one with a few liabilities, considering that it's unlikely that Wolfpack will be anything less than sociopaths. Still, looking at their bios, Beltway struck me as the least outright immoral, hence choosing him as the protagonist.