Man I've got to stop with the new fandoms, but really I just couldn't resist! I've only recently seen the Resident Evil movies, but they've jumped quickly onto my top 10 favorite movies/series of all time I think. Between the action, weaponry, stunning cast members, and decent amount of humor thrown in, really what's not to like?

So, just to give you a head's up: this will in fact be OC centric, but don't worry, there's no romance intended here. Mostly I just had the bunnie smack me over the head at this point in Apocalyse, and before I knew it, Dannie had come to life and was damned insistent that she get a chance to tell her story. So here's hoping yall like it!

One quick warning, there will be some definite cussing happening. The movies ARE rated R for the most part after all.

As always considering this is a FANfiction site: I own nothing. I'm just a fan. Duh.

Chapter 1: Climbing Up and Falling Down

The two women didn't speak as they pounded up flight after flight of stairs, panting and puffing and all but whimpering at the horrific groaning sound of the monsters clamoring up behind them. Dannie clung to the stair rail, dragging herself up it and trying to land as gently as possible on the metal stairs in an attempt to protect her stocking-clad feet. She'd had shoes when she'd left her office, rather cute little mules actually, but when Tess had come screaming down the hall with the crowd of freaks right behind her, Dannie had kicked her shoes off immediately to run. It just wasn't worth keeping them; not when every little bit of speed and agility might mean staying alive. She needed all the help she could get frankly; she was in decent shape, but she'd never been a runner. That had actually been their reason for heading for the stairs: Dannie had hoped the climb might be a bit of a challenge for the shuffling things behind them. It had worked to a point... but only to a point.

Just a few steps below her, Tess tripped again in her own expensive and thoroughly impractical pumps, demonstrating the reason the pair of women weren't quite as far ahead of the pack as Dannie had hoped. Tess had refused to give up her own shoes, and the longer they climbed, the more Dannie had a bad feeling her secretary's shoe fetish might end up killing them both.

Not that in the long run, Dannie was doing all that much better than the other woman. Her pantyhose didn't exactly offer the best traction, and between her pencil skirt and her tailored blazer, her movement was definitely hampered. She spun around a landing and in that brief moment of rest on the flat surface, she found herself wishing that for once she'd watched the fucking news or at least the weather before she'd left her house like her neighbor Terri was always harping on her to do. Not that she thought there had been any word of this mayhem on the morning edition, but she might have at least avoided the long sleeves in response to the heat wave. She missed her next step due to the damned skirt and landed hard on one knee. That was definitely going to leave a bruise. Oh to be wearing pants, she bitched silently, saving her breath for the climb. Pants and boots. Her favorite pair of flat soled boots that she could do fucking cartwheels in. Those would have been very, very nice to have right about now.

She forced herself to ignore the fact that her knee was now bleeding and kept climbing back up the next flight of stairs. She paused at the top, wondering too late if the stairs had really been such a great idea. They were almost to the roof, and where they hell they'd go from there she couldn't even begin to imagine.

She glanced back over her shoulder to see Tess fall again, her heel having broken off completely. The idiot just sat there for a moment, practically mourning her shoe.

"Tess, come on! You have to fucking move!" Dannie shook her head and forced herself back into motion up the last flight of stairs. She reached the roof entrance and slammed into the door, wincing as it remained firmly closed. "What the? Locked?" she moaned in a panic, but then saw the keypad and rushed to it, praying her security codes would work on the damn thing. The code did work, to her infinite relief, and she ran back and shoved the door open, turning to check for Tess. She cringed at the sight that awaited her. Tess was struggling to climb up the last few steps and across the landing, shoving and hitting and doing everything in her power to get herself out of the grasp of the horrors that had finally caught up with her.

It wasn't it enough. Dannie knew she couldn't leave the door to help her; if she let go and it shut and locked again, they'd both be dead. Period, end of story. She reached out as far as she could, trying to yank Tess free of the hands pulling her back, but there were just too many. Dannie was looking right at her coworker when one of her attackers managed to lean in and sink its teeth into her arm. Tess shrieked with horror and pain and rage, and then as if the pain was a goad, she finally managed to wrench herself free, practically falling into Dannie and past her out onto the roof.

Dannie was only a step behind her; she paused only for a second to try to slam the door closed again, but it was a futile effort. The freaks were stumbling out and almost on top of her before she could do anything to stop them. Dannie skipped and skidded aside and out of reach of grasping hands and biting teeth with the skill she'd painfully perfected when doing her internship in the children's ward of a psych hospital. It wasn't an experience she'd enjoyed; kids could get vicious when they were pissed and in the midst of psychosis. It was actually helping her now though; she'd learned to dodge the kids, after all, and they had been a hell of a lot more agile than the freaks that tried to attack her now.

She followed Tess across the roof, both of them flailing fists and screaming bloody murder at the monsters around them. Dannie didn't even know what she was shouting frankly; she was too far gone in the panic that had finally overtaken her now that there was no where left to run. Tess shrieked again, this time in shock, and Dannie turned and slammed to a halt as she realized they'd reached the edge of the rooftop.

She'd been wrong to panic before: now there was really no where left to run.

Dannie turned back around to make one last stand against the freaks still lunging for them both in a relentless hunger. She shoved them to either side and past her frantically, desperate to use their weight against them, forcing them to tumble past her and over the edge of the building to plummet god only knew how many stories to the ground below.

Suddenly, a sound forced its way through the haze of terror and her own screams. Gunshots rang out, and both Dannie and Tess stared up in shock and awe at the unmistakable figure of a man hurtling, weapons first, from a helicopter some 40 feet above them. He fired rapidly and he wasn't missing either: all around them, their attackers were dropping like flies, each felled by a single bullet.

"He's insane," Dannie whispered, more than a little impressed by the sheer recklessness of the move. The few remaining freaks seemed to realize they were under attack, and as the man snapped to a halt on his rappelling cord a bare foot above the roof, they turned away from the pair of women still huddling on the edge of the building to face their new enemy. The stranger stood and unhooked himself, sliding the pair of pistols he'd been wielding so accurately back into holsters at his back and then proceeded to finish of the last few freaks with a violently efficient and almost effortless display of martial arts. Behind him, the helicopter lowered only long enough to drop off another three commando looking men, and then lifted off again.

"Hey! Hey are you alright?" The first man approached, arms and hands out as if to soothe a skittish horse. Dannie took a faltering step toward him, picking her way carefully around the corpses littered in front of her. "Step away from the edge and over to me," the stranger called, and Dannie turned a little to see Tess still standing on the edge.

"Tess? What..."

"Everything's OK," the dark man said soothingly, but Tess just shook her head.

"No it's not. I've seen what happens to you once you've been bitten."

Dannie felt her knees grow weak as she realized what Tess must know about the freaks and how the madness was spreading. Tess's arm...

"We can help you," Dannie heard the man try again to talk her coworker off the ledge, but it was no use.

"There's no going back," Tess said and then turned and threw herself from the roof. Dannie screamed out Tess's name and lunged to try to catch her, almost overbalancing herself, but their rescuer, with a shout of his own, lunged just as quickly to stop her and pull her back from toppling over the edge.

"Tess..." Dannie trailed off, staring over the edge at the crumpled form that had landed on the parking garage. She'd really killed herself. Dannie trembled, her mind shuttering away from the sight, even though it was one she had seen before. Some of her patients, both state-side and international, had made that same choice, but it never got easier to see. The pair of hands gripping her arms shook her firmly, and she realized the man was saying something and trying to pull her back farther from the edge. She let him lead her back, and then turned and looked up a good 6 inches to meet the tall man's worried eyes.

"I said are you alright?" He ran his gaze and hands over her, patting her down for any injuries with an impersonal touch. "Have you been bitten?"

She shook her head slowly, shivering a little as shock tried to set in. No, she wasn't alright, but she hadn't been bitten either. He gave her shoulders a comforting squeeze, and smiled grimly, clearly understanding both answers she'd silently given him. One of the other men, a lanky redhead, stepped up to their side, and asked the question she couldn't even begin to contemplate yet.

"What now?"

So sorry it was a short first chapter, but really it just felt like it needed to end right here. I promise the next chapter will be much longer!

BTW, Carlos and Nicholai TOTALLY think you should review. Uh huh.. they said so.