Shake me down,
Not a lot of people left around,
Who knows now,
Softly laying on the ground, ooooh
Not a lot people left around, ooooh. ooooh
- CAGE THE ELEPHANT
They walked and walked and even when Claire began thinking of it as trudging, they continued forging ahead. No cars, no trucks or any other damn vehicles this time though. Half of the ones they came across were broken down and the other half were out of gas. They mostly checked out of reflex, knowing that if by chance some engine gurgled to life, their group would have to make some daunting decisions on the subject of splitting up.
Out of the original sixty rescued from the deck of the Arcadia in their poignant white pajamas, almost half of the survivors perished. Still, the thirty which remained was a lot. Thirty was an oversized classroom in which children were neglected.
Umbrella had showed up fast, violent and unrelenting, eliminating any chance Claire, Alice and Chris had to regroup after Wesker's defeat. Since then, they had lost the ship, their refuge and, Claire suspected, a bit of their sanity.
With her memories fully recovered, she'd been thinking about the past. About the things she had done. The discrepancies between then and now seemed so wide. Whoever that woman in the desert had been, she was lost and what really pissed Claire off was that they all expected that Claire. A lot of the survivors already looked to her, Chris and Alice with exasperating reverence after they laid on a heavy assault on the Umbrella troops back on the Arcadia. To add to that, Kmart had been signing her praises to anyone who listened. But all of that wasn't as bad dealing with Alice. Fucking Alice. Always watching her when she didn't think Claire noticed, acting as some damn omnipotent guide for all of them when Claire took too long to throw in her decision. Always fucking there, judging Claire's conduct and having apparently too much goddamn class to actually say anything about it to her. She was too tactful and noble to even passively-aggressively remind Claire that she had saved her life by ripping that mechanical bug off her. No, not Alice. She was too perfect for that. Alice Abernathy; too perfect for T-Virus rendered mutations, too fucking perfect for human shortcomings and heartbreakingly beautiful. Lately Claire found that she wouldn't mind if Alice walked off into the sunset and never returned.
0o0o0o0o0
His name might have been Mirek. When everyone else was sleeping the sleep of the exhausted and the starving, one of those things got him. She should have seen it. Someone should have stumbled on it when they first scouted the morose, square computer store on the side of the road.
Mirek's screams woke up everyone really quick. Alice hadn't even sat up from her spot on the floor. Only yanked a gun out of her holster with that spooky fast swiftness, pointing it horizontally over her head and shot the thing between its white eyes.
At eighteen, Mirek was done for. If the bite didn't do him in, the intestines trailing out of his ruptured stomach surely would. Claire had seen worse and on younger. She was okay until the kid started calling out for his mom. He was delirious of course and in his agonizing confusion he had regressed to his native language. The words were foreign and yet somehow hit closer to the heart than if had he been crying out in English.
No one needed to listen to his torment and, with his guts hanging out, he deserved to be put out of his misery. Alice pulled herself up, gun in hand, features sleep-clouded but blue eyes alert. Even Chris shied away from jobs like that. Not perfect Alice though. She performed these duties not out of a sense of responsibility but because shooting an eighteen-year-old with a split stomach was the logical thing to do.
Muffled by thick styrofoam normally reserved for fragile computer monitors, Claire's gun discharged inaudibly into the boy's scull before Alice made it half-way to his prone form.
"You were taking too long," Claire said flatly in answer to the questioning look Alice gave her.
0o0o0o0o0
Four days ago, the group reached the city of Los Mochis along the Mexican border. A consensus decision had been made from the onset of their journey to follow the western coastline. For some reason traveling in constant view of the ocean had a calming effect on everyone. Incidentally, the breeze coming off the water was a refreshing reprieve from the white, hot Mexican sun.
Claire expected masses of the dead to be accumulated in the small, winding streets of the city. Oddly though, there weren't a lot of them and they were generally scattered and spaced out. Nothing like the swarms in L.A.
Starvation was currently kept at bay with military-grade Ready-to-Eats from the storage compartments on Arcadia. There had been very little salvaged on the way and they were quickly running out. So with the low numbers of dead in town, they agreed to shift further inland and search for food there. That was the plan until Chris spotted the villa.
Situated on a jutting cliff, the squat terracotta building with its two burnt orange, wavy-shingle towers was picturesque enough to be on a postcard. Within minutes of catching sight of it, everyone in the group clamored in agreement about spending at least one night there. In the end, what irrevocably convinced Chris, Alice and Claire was the eight-foot mortared rock wall surrounding the property.
"We need to secure the place fast. They're not going to be very patient," Alice said speaking about the group. Her eyes were already methodically searching the neighbouring area for movement.
A paved, swooping drive lead up to wrought-iron gates. They were rusted over in a few places but in good condition otherwise and swung freely back and forth when Chris tested them. Despite the fact that the property had gone through years of neglect, it appeared recently vacated. The drive went up and split around a circular talavera tile fountain. Upon coming on to the courtyard, Claire saw that the western side sloped and the villa stood at the top of this gentle hill. Its architecture was classically Mexican. Rounded columns stood at the wide entrance of the villa and the center building had a parapet roof. The two towers they had seen from the road were located on either side of this lavish structure like epic bookends. From the back, running along the rock wall, a garden had spread past its manicured area and grown beautifully wild.
Their preliminary assessment took fifteen minutes and Claire could tell from the way some of the survivors were already wandering around on the grounds that Alice was right. They weren't going to wait long.
"We can bring them inside the gates at least. That might make them less antsy," Claire suggested.
"There's still a horse stable on the other side," Chris said, clipping the quick release strap over his holstered Beretta. "I saw it through the trees."
"I'm on it," Claire told him, her lips hitched up in a confident smirk.
She too had noticed it and actually hoped something was lurking in there. At least she didn't feel completely futile when she could take care of some corpses. Her brother and Alice exchanged a meaningful look and Claire ground her teeth.
"I'll come with," Alice said to her.
Claire nodded stiffly, agreed at all because she knew it would be strange if she didn't. Chris knew better than to broach her on the subject of her recent slump. Although it wasn't so recent and it wasn't quite a slump but regardless, Claire could handle it and God help anyone who tired to help. Alice, of course, didn't give a fuck how Claire felt about the matter.
The two of them strode prudently down the meager slope and cleared the line of wild banyan trees just as the rest of the survivors began silently crossing the courtyard towards the main building.
"Over the hill and through the woods, to grandma's house we go," Alice commented when they got to the large breezeway doors of the dark-wooded stable. At first, they wouldn't budge. Claire wiped sweat off her hand on her ratty, bottle-green tank top before trying again. This time, they slid open with surprising ease.
The interior was relatively dark but so far quiet. If there were any monsters in here, they were not stirred by the noise of the door opening. Small, dirty windows were located on either side of the structure, letting in sparse amounts of the hot sun. Claire removed her aviators and tucked them in into her canvas belt. She detected Alice staring at her and chose to ignore it.
"You're starting to give up," Alice stated as if they'd been having a conversation about it all along.
She drew the shemagh scarf off her head so that pooled around her neck and removed her gun from her hip holster.
"Yeah?" Claire asked. "You and my brother have a little chat about that?"
She went past the shadowed threshold and instantly felt the change in temperature.
"Maybe," Alice replied, stepping in behind her but not going far beyond the entrance.
"Well next time, don't."
Claire didn't turn to look at her, choosing instead to draw the wide-blade hunting knife from her tactical leg-drop and eventually she heard the other woman's footsteps across the dirt floor. She took the right side of the stable and Alice took the left. Out of the corner of her eye, Claire could see as Alice moved efficiently, each step measured.
There was a repetitive lulling rumble which, Claire guessed, was the waves colliding with the rocky shore not far from the villa. Like the rest of the property, the stable must have been scrupulously maintained before hell opened up on earth. Everything was very tidy and clean and Claire wondered if the previous occupants might have escaped on the horses which had presumably been kept here. The first stall Claire checked was empty. There was a stout barrel curiously standing against the wall of the second one. Besides the stalls, there was also a grooming area and tack storage where Alice disappeared.
Dust motes lazily drifted in the sharp beam of light stretching in through a tall window up far in a shallow hayloft. A ladder ascended up to it and Claire only went up halfway before she was content it was clear. She hopped down the last few rungs and wanted to be gone before Alice came out of the tack room because some deep part of her sensed that she might let everything spill out if Alice asked again. She might let Alice in beyond all the recent shit, all the way past defenses that she, like most people, put up since becoming an adult. Because Alice had that in her, a sort of no-nonsense vulnerability that made a person want to reflect the same and it scared the hell out of Claire. A post-apocalyptic world had no room for emotions; only reaction.
Taking one last glance at the stalls, Claire bent to sheath the hunting knife and turned straight into a pointed gun. Alice always had amazing stealth. Claire was calm, intrigued even. She expected Alice to get on her case, drag out all the things Claire did not want to discuss, but not this.
"What's going on?"
Alice wasn't smiling. "I'm going to do what you're too afraid to do."
It was hard to look passed the big barrel of the Desert Eagle Alice was gripping, her lean arm extended, holding it almost against Claire's forehead. Anger replaced Claire's intrigue quickly.
"Get that fucking gun out of my face."
Claire's eyes darted down to the loops of leather strips hanging from Alice's fist. A horse's breeching strap possibly. There was a loaded stillness and then Claire knocked the gun out of Alice's hand with a backhand strike. Lashing back up and using the same arm, Claire came forward, aiming to make contact with Alice's jaw. Instead, Alice veered and directed Claire's arm downward in its swinging arc, wrapping her wrist rapidly in the leather straps she had been holding. Too late and too awkward of an angle for a kick, Claire twisted up, attempting an uppercut with her other fist. Again, Alice took a step back, this time pulling Claire by her trapped arm and throwing her off balance. Claire was spun around with the tied arm behind her back and Alice bound her other wrist just as fast as the first one. Then Alice shoved her ahead.
Powerless, Claire stood with her back to her, catching her breath, waiting for whatever Alice had planned. When she heard nothing, she turned around slowly to find the semi-automatic once again pointed at her.
"A long time ago, in the middle of a desert, I met someone incredible. Someone who managed to survive in that waste land and also made sure others around her survived. What happened to her?" Alice asked.
Claire laughed, testing her bonds. The leather was belted securely around both wrists with about a foot and a half of the strap hanging between.
"This really necessary?" Claire indicated her wrists.
Alice shrugged. "Figured it'd be the only way to get you to talk."
"You want to play therapist, go do it with someone else if you think you're so damn qualified."
There was enough slack in the breeching strap to easily allow Claire to cut it herself.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Alice cautioned when Claire stooped, swinging her arms to the left and trying for her knife.
Claire smirked and reached for the Bowie anyway. No sooner than had her hand landed on the hilt, Alice flew at her, bulldozing Claire backwards. Claire shuffled her feet hurriedly to prevent dropping on her ass. The aisle between the stables was short and all too soon Alice had her up against the wooden slats, elbow digging into Claire's windpipe.
"I warned you," Alice said.
Claire snarled, using her pinned arms to try rebounding off the wood at her back but the elbow kept her in place. She hated being beat. Especially by Alice with her damn know-it-all attitude.
"Now can we talk?" Alice asked sweetly, gun pointed at her with her other hand. Claire's upper lip curled like a snarling dog's
"Fuck you."
Behind her back, Claire flexed and relaxed her wrists, tugging at the lengthy bond. Typical, fucking, Alice believing she could just show up and put everything right.
"Guess not."
The gun's barrel dug into Claire's forehead and she stopped struggling.
"Shot in the head should do it," Alice said, leaning in and looking at Claire around the gun.
She was close enough for Claire to catch a hint of kerosene mixed with the smell of that oatmeal soap they had found stored on the Arcadia. Alice was as meticulous about cleaning her guns as she was about personal hygiene. Something about her scent and proximity formed cold ripples in Claire's stomach, sending them up through her chest.
Alice removed the elbow from her throat.
"No. There's always a chance the bullet won't cause the necessary damage," she said, lightly trailing the gun down Claire's face. The barrel caught on her lips, slightly parting them before Alice moved on and pressed it underneath her jaw.
"Here. Optimal angle. Clean shot. Exit wound straight through the top of the scull."
She pressed harder, forcing Claire's head up. Other than maintaining eye contact, Claire did nothing. Suicide had never been on her mind but she thought she understood the point Alice was making.
"Not a good spot either, huh?"
The gun moved again. Cool steel tracing the length of her neck, bumping her collarbone, going further still. Her tank top hung low and Alice deliberately drew the gun down her bare chest, coming to a stop at the swell of her breasts, right over top her heart. It beat madly under the gun's barrel.
"Maybe you want a poetic death. Shot through the heart. And the world's to blame," Alice said whimsically, quoting a song which belonged to a different age.
Except Claire had stopped thinking about death and apathy about nineteen heartbeats ago. Other thoughts, treacherous ones, began to creep in.
"Still not good enough?" Alice asked, seemingly unaware.
Traveling lower slowly, Alice ran the tip of the gun the length of Claire's taut stomach, jamming it in hard below her bellybutton where Clarie's tank top exposed skin. A burning wire twisted through her originating from the spot where the gun touched, ripping at her, causing that all too familiar tingling at her core and Claire almost physically arched up.
"How about the gut? Most painful way to go and maybe you think you deserve that," Alice said in a hushed voice.
Claire hardly heard her. That new dark, carnal urge wanted that steel barrel lower, hoped Alice would stick it somewhere else.
"I think that maybe you're liking this a little too much," Claire said, defensively and out of breath.
Drawn-out seconds ticked by. The prodding gun at her belly disappeared, Alice's arm dropping to her side. On the inside, Claire let out a sigh of relief. If Alice kept going, Claire might have been tempted to act on that animalistic impulse which was still throbbing through her veins.
Alice uttered a short laugh. She was not looking at her, focusing instead on the dirt-covered floor of the stable.
"Something funny?" Claire asked, straightening up and reaching for her knife again.
"I was," Alice said, briefly making eye contact with her. "I was enjoying that too much," she finished, chuckling again and holstered her gun.
Claire left the knife alone, staring at Alice. Moving quickly, she stretched the breeching strap to its full length behind her back. She swung her arms forward, hopped up, tightly tucking her knees in and was able to bring her hands to the front. In the next instant, she flung her bound hands over Alice's head and drew them down until she could hook the leather strap under Alice's rear. Alice accepted this with the calm confidence of a woman who has conquered every obstacle placed in her way. Using the strap as leverage, Claire hoisted Alice up. Alice accepted this as well and wrapped her legs around Claire's waist out of sheer need for balance.
"If you wanted to blow some steam, you could have just said so," Claire told her, attempting to make it sound trivial even though it very much wasn't; she couldn't remember the last time she was so aroused. Had she really wanted Alice this badly and never stumbled upon it? Claire readjusted her grip, bouncing her up for a better hold and it brought their faces intimately close making her heart skip a beat.
"I didn't want to just blow off some steam," Alice said, her lips teasingly dodging, almost making contact with each word. "I want you."
Blood ran hot, thrumming under Claire's skin, echoing in her ears. Emotions clashed inside her forming a wild storm Claire couldn't handle. She surged forward, kissing Alice's mouth hard. She bit at those shapely lips, wanting to bruise them, split them open because Alice was lying. Had to be lying.
Stumbling to the oak barrel she knew was in one of the stalls, Claire accidentally bumped Alice into the stall's gate and it slammed against the wall with a clang neither women really heard. Powdered dirt rose off the ground trailing them and drifted in the sunbeams trickling through various gaps in the wooden wall.
Despite the other woman's light weight, Claire's arms were starting to ache. The lip of the barrel was higher than she anticipated and Clare balanced unevenly, lifting Alice on it. Alice raised her legs, allowing Claire to extract her tied hands from under her. They came together again, Alice stretching up to reach her lips. What she said was still reverberating in Claire's head but Claire dissuaded the thoughts.
Alice's thigh high stocking-clad legs hung over the side of the barrel and her heels bumped the curved wood with each surging kiss. Both of her tied wrists lay loosely in Alice's lap and Claire boldly ran her fingers over the material creases there. She traced the center seam of the shorts Alice had on, pressing in where she felt her heat. Alice's chest rose and fell with shallow breaths at the contact.
Popping the button fly wasn't difficult even with her bound wrists. Neither was unclipping her gun belt. Claire slipped a hand into the shorts, the other laying trapped, nearby on Alice's knee. Alice sighed, letting her eyes drift shut and her head drop. Her body gently began to sway in time with Claire's hand.
Annoyingly though, she stayed quiet. Even when Claire's fingers touched her slick center beneath the cotton, Alice scarcely made a noise, choosing to breathe in sharply through her nose.
"Not good enough for you?" Claire challenged, inexplicably angry because this was what Alice claimed to want and she apparently wanted it from Claire and suddenly Claire needed it to be true. Hoped it was true.
Alice sat up and yanked Claire down to her level, her arm hooking around her neck. On instinct, Claire withdrew but Alice grabbed her hand, directing it back between her legs.
"Guess I've become too used to keeping quiet," she said with her lips pressed into the shell of Claire's ear, her voice a shaky whisper because she was guiding Claire's fingers deeper. They both shuddered, as if a fissure opened, pulling them both in, and making them slaves to the same rhythm. The sounds she fed into her ear caused the throbbing between her own legs to become sweetly unbearable.
"Claire . . ."
Her name came out broken sounding and desperate as Alice's hips bucked into those pistoning fingers. Claire's heart screamed and something inside her unknotted. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than for Alice to kiss her and as if reading her mind, Alice turned to her. Alice's mouth opened under hers and Claire shivered, drowning in her ultimate perfection. Drowning in her like Narcissus drowned in himself.
The barrel creaked, thumping lightly against the wall as Alice rocked into Claire's hand. Her nails jabbed into the barrel's metal lip as her climax crept up. No longer being able to focus on her or keeping queit, Alice threw her head back and let out a gruttal moan, coming down hard several times onto Claire's fingers as she rode the waves of pleasure.
Complexly absorbed in her, Claire watched her body tremble. When it subsided, Alice swallowed thickly, her head leaning on the wooden slats behind her. Her skin was covered in a light sheen of sweat both from the stuffy heat of the stable and the exertion . Claire had to fight the urge to taste it, to deeply kiss her again, to bring her to climax again.
"How long?" Claire uttered, defeated, finally asking.
"Since the first night, out in the desert," Alice said.
Claire squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to let that in, not wanting it to grow roots, afraid of not being miserable. Because if she stopped being miserable, what else was there to be? She was empty inside and if she even entertained the idea that she might have felt the same way about Alice for a while now, there would be horrible consequences.
Looking at her struggle with this, Alice said nothing. With her khaki shorts splayed open and strands of dark, blonde hair sticking to her forehead, Alice crooked her index finger and beckoned Claire to her.
Claire assented and her heart leaped at the intensity with which Alice kissed her, burying her fingers in Claire's red hair.
"Your turn," Alice said against her lips.
Claire smiled and shook her head. Unsatisfied need was burning her inside out but roguishly, she wanted to deny Alice in this more than she wanted to deny herself.
"Next time," she said.
Alice's eyebrow rose.
"You're planning a next time?" She asked while buttoning up the shorts.
Once she was done with that, Alice doubled up the breeching strap and unsheathed Claire's knife. She sawed through the leather loop and flipped the weapon in her hand giving it, handle out, to Claire who strapped it back in.
"Wouldn't mind checking out the view from the hay loft up there," Claire told her.
The purplish lines on her wrists weren't too bad when she peeled off the strap. They'd probably go away within a few hours.
"You know, hay isn't as cosy as they make it look in movies," Alice said, taking one of her marred wrists and massaging it.
Claire smiled at her, giving her the other wrist to knead. Despite the temperature, Alice's hands were cool and soothing. Claire let out a long breath at the relieving touch.
"Think they know what we were doing in here?"
"Yup," Alice answered. "After fifteen minutes, your brother most likely sent one of the guys over here to check on us."
That was a disturbing thought. Not that Claire was embarrassed but the idea that anyone saw them during a private moment, their moment, pissed her off. She made a mental note to shoot anyone who leered at either of them.
Since their usage of it, the barrel had shifted over to the corner of the stall. When Alice hopped off, her boots produced a very distinct, hollow sound. Both women froze, staring at the spot where Alice landed. She tapped the surface again with her foot and this time both of them saw an outline of a trap door jounce out of the ground.
Pushing the barrel further out of the way, Alice crouched down to find its latch hidden in the dirt.
"Someone could be down there." She paused, glancing up at Claire.
"It's possible," Claire said, hand going instinctively to her leg-drop holster.
But there wasn't. Amazingly, the small hole in the ground led a good six feet down a wooden ladder. The solitary light bulb hanging from the ceiling of course didn't work when Alice yanked on its silver chain. Claire clicked on a slim flashlight and shone the bright beam around revealing shelves of canned goods, dry cereals and even a few jam jars. Claire's mouth started watering at the unbridled thought of a marmalade smeared piece of toast. Of course there was no bread but hell, Claire could just as easily accept eating the marmalade on its own. After ensuring there was no danger, Claire quickly turned the flashlight off to preserve the batteries.
"Should we tell the others?" Alice joked, her blue eyes sparking in the dim light drifting through the opening at the top.
"One thing first."
Claire reached for the marmalade jar that caught her eye. She unscrewed the lid and ungraciously dug two fingers in the orange goop, scooping some out and plopping it in her mouth.
"Sorry," she apologized for her uncivilized actions, mouth still full.
"No problem," Alice said, moving to her.
She took her hand and stuck the same fingers in her own mouth, sucking off the remainder of the marmalade then going to Claire's mouth.
"You really want me to regret saying no earlier," Claire said when they broke apart.
"Yeah, I do," Alice said. "Come on, we should get this into the main building before nightfall."
Claire nodded, placing the jar back on the shelf and following Alice out of the shelter. She smiled thinking about all the things they could do once night fell.
A/N: I was having a conversation with a friend about RE and during this enthusiastic chat I sort of, you know, casually mentioned the existence of Claire/Alice fanfiction. He laughed and asked if it included 'Alice masturbating Claire with a gun' and then we both had a nice laugh. Then this happened. Oh and I realize the lyrics to the Bon Jovi song are actually 'and you're to blame' but I figured I didn't need to explain why Alice changed it to 'the world'.
Thanks for reading :)