A/N
I kinda took issue with the portrayal of the T-Virus' ability to render much of the planet a wasteland in Extinction (the impact of which I was pleased to see was put in a more realistic context in DeCandido's novelization) but the imagery was still effective, hence why I recorded the idea for the oneshot after seeing the movie, the recent trailers of Resident Evil 5 having spurred me to post it. As for the POV...it isn't given, but it isn't hard to work out, especially given the presence of a certain line.
Disclaimer: Resident Evil is the property of Capcom.
Blood of Gaia
Dying…the planet's dying.
I can see this everywhere we go, everywhere we run to stay alive. From coast to coast, to sea from shining sea. Everything's dead, on its way to death or undead. All in all, it's hard to say which state is the worst. Many declare that they would rather die than become "one of them" but who's to say that path isn't fate, a new order?
There's altruism amongst us to be sure. Claire wouldn't have taken us aboard otherwise. But it won't work. Once, in the old world, altruism was a response to natural selection, a method to ensure the survival and propagation of a species. Over time, although it was maintained, we lost the need to be altruistic, along with the need for many other things. We separated ourselves from the world and now that the world and we are in the same shit heap together, many have fallen back on our old values.
Do the undead need a moral center to function? Of course not. The T-virus drove mutation, propagating the life and unlife that will exist on Earth. It isn't natural selection that drives this process. There's no middle ground, no hurdle that determines who lives and who dies. It's simply all or nothing, but without the all aspect. In death, there is nothing. In undeath, there is nothing also. There's no future for the world or its inhabitants.
It's strange really. Poetic justice would suggest that we would be the first to fall to the onslaught of the virus. I doubt Umbrella foresaw its true potential, simply another substance that could regenerate skin cells in the corporate sector and act as yet another biological weapon in the sector that involves screwing up humanity and the world. If they did understand what it was capable of, they probably just ignored it, safe in their belief that they were in control. Ashford's creation could have changed the world but they stopped that from happening. They never saw that, like us, the T-Virus' properties were two sides of the same coin. It could cause as much destruction as it could good.
We're not fighting a battle against the T-Virus' or its creations. We're simply fighting a battle to survive, one that's doomed to failure. We created the doomsday weapon, the weapon that took down Gaia. And in her death throes, she brought us down with her. All things considered, I can't blame her. What else was to be expected?
We fucked up the world. So the world fucked us back.