Standard disclaimer: everything Resident evil belongs to Capcom&pals, the rest to yours truly, k'thx!
Chapter 1: Little off-guard and unprepared
672.
Not months, not weeks, not even days. Six hundred and seventy-two hours. Or, roughly translated twenty-eight days. That's how long it had been. Contrary to what was often seen in popular culture, the siege wouldn't go on for years, it couldn't, there wouldn't be a post-apocalyptic world swarming with the undead. Simply because dead people were practically useless as weapons when it came to prolonged warfare. Zombies were great in a "hit and run"-type of an assault. They were easy to use for quickly causing a distraction, chaos, panic. Causing people to do stupid things and make things worse to the point of making dealing with "normal" humans more frightening than taking on a horde of the undead. But it wouldn't zombies were dead and literally rotting. Mother nature was taking care of the problem with maggots, flies and extreme temperatures.
Ingrid Hunnigan's footsteps echoed in the empty hallway as she made her way across the fortress that was the D.S.O. headquarters. Normally the building would've been bustling with agents, intelligence liasons, security personel, various secretaries from various sister organizations, but now it was empty. The evacuation order had come a few days after the initial chaos. Those few who hadn't been deployed or hadn't abandoned their posts to seek out family and friends had left the building then. All but Hunnigan.
She didn't have anywhere to go, no one to meet up with. She'd lost contact with her parents during the third day and hadn't seen or heard anything from them since. She had a pretty good idea of what had happened. So she'd stayed. Endlessly scanning the world via satellites and the copious amounts of webcams, and security- and traffic cameras still connected to the network. Most of what she saw wasn't exactly uplifting. Occasionally she spotted survivors and tried making contact, but her attempts had been fruitless. Still, she kept broadcasting messages on every known frequency and through every channel available to her, clinging on the hope that someone would respond eventually. So far she'd gotten only a few scattered responses from here and there. They never stayed for long. Either they had to move on or they got overrun if they didn't. Apart from clipped chatter from still functional military- and government operations, it was rather quiet. There was nothing to do but to wait. Alone.
A certain amount of isolation and solitude was something Hunnigan was more than familiar with. Nothing set a person apart from their peers quite like freak intellect did. She'd grown up with it, harboring the hope that it would get better once she was an adult and got to deal with other adults who wouldn't see her abilies as an unknown and therefore threatening. What a waste of energy that had been. Adults were even worse than kids.
Her way of thinking was so different from theirs that they were practically willing to label it mental illness because they didn't know what else to call it, how to understand it, how to even begin approaching it. At least the worst the kids could come up with were limited to such uplifting labels as nerd, geek, dork, dweeb, and what have you. Granted, the general public was so dumb these days that common sense was enough to call for a witch hunt, a genius-level IQ and ability to think outside every possible box wasn't even necessary.
Hunnigan was the first to admit that there were days when even she didn't quite understand her own thinking, but usually she made the connections eventually, the picture and her thoughts becoming clear after the fact. Like slowly revealing a plot twist that had been obvious to the main character all along while the side kick and the viewers tried piecing it together.
The HQ was a fortress, stocked up with decent medical supplies, some weapons and enough food to sustain a small army for over a year. For a single person it all would last easily over a decade or more and even if she were lucky enough to get some company, it would be all right. She had air filters, water filters, the building was powered by solar- and wind-energy should the main power grid fail and the backup generators run out of fuel. The HQ was like something out of a doomsday preppers' wet dream. She had everything from hot water and functional plumbing to little luxuries like tea and coffee, she had everything you could ever need in a situation like this... except the one thing she was craving for.
Hunnigan didn't think she'd ever wanted a cigarette so badly in her life. Not even during the first few days after she'd initially quit cold turkey three years ago as a 30th birthday present to herself.
"Low-carb, low-fat, non-smoking, non-drinking, and spent ridiculous amounts of time and effort simply to remain aesthetically pleasing, and all for what? Just to end up a zombie snack or a demented recluse," Hunnigan chatted to herself as she headed down the stairs. She made a short detour to the maintenance room to grab a screwdriver and then continued toward the locker rooms.
"Of course, with my luck, should I have adopted the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll-lifestyle, I'd be a four hundred pound addict and there wouldn't be a zombie in sight," she added then.
"Good point, other Hunnigan," she continued chatting to herself after a short pause. She knew people considered talking to oneself a bit nutty, but it was better than not talking to anyone at all. Besides, as long as she didn't consider the "other Hunnigan" (she'd begun jokingly referring herself to as when she answered her own questions) an actual person, she figured her mental health was as good as it could be under the circumstances.
Hunnigan entered the locker room and paused by the door with her hands on her hips. She'd left people's personal lockers alone even after they were long gone and undoubtedly had taken whatever they'd considered important enough with them. She'd done so because she hadn't needed anything and mostly out of respect. But now... desperate times called for desperate measures and respect had stopped meaning as much.
Hunnigan stepped to the first locker and inserted the bump key she'd carefully crafted her own locker key into earlier. She then pulled it back until she felt a couple of clicks and hit it with the handle of the screwdriver.
"I've gotten a little rusty," she muttered to herself as she twisted and pushed the key. Contrary to what anyone aware of her lockpicking abilities always assumed, the reason she possessed said skill set wasn't questionable; she hadn't broken into anything without permission ever before. It was just another thing she'd taught herself because she'd wanted to know how it worked.
Computers, locks, household appliances, you name it, she could take it apart and put it back together again... at least most of the time. It was what she did; figured out what made things tick. Things and tech were easy, every piece had a reason for being where it was and performing the function that it did, the trick was figuring out the logic behind it all and you could see the thousand small pictures forming the big picture and how to piece it all together.
People were different, difficult, emotional rather than logical. Hunnigan appreciated the irony of herself thinking like that considering that just a few months ago she herself had risked practically everything she had just because of her own emotional attachment to Leon and Helena. Just because she'd had a feeling. A feeling that told her to trust the two of them. She hadn't been wrong in trusting them before, why should she have felt otherwise?
"Sometimes I wonder what it is that makes me tick."
"That's something you can ponder on later in the mandatory therapy sessions you'll undoubtedly be subjected to once this is over."
"Good point, other Hunnigan."
"All right, agent Carpenter, let's see if you are..." Hunnigan then started to say as the lock gave in and the locker opened.
"...were a smoker," she corrected herself and began going through the few items in the locker. Agent Malory Carpenter, forty-two years old, ex-Navy, looked as butch as a woman could without actually being a man, and had the thickest Boston accent Hunnigan had ever heard in her life. Smart, funny, occasionally scary, overall a good person and an excellent agent. Also, to many people's surprise, married to a man. Current status: deceased.
"And apparently a non-smoker," Hunnigan sighed and moved onto the next locker.
Agent Thomas Jefferson (no relation to the former U.S. President, merely a victim of parents with an odd sense of humor), thirty-one years old, a skinny man who appeared humorless and introverted... until getting a drink or two in him at the office Christmas parties. Non-smoker, but possibly a binge-eater judging from the amount of candy bars and empty wrappers stashed in his jeans' pockets. Current status: deceased.
"Deceased... unknown, unknown, deceased..." Hunnigan listed as she made her way through the double-tier lockers.
"Agent Leon Scott Kennedy, current status unknown. Where are the titty-magazines? I am disappointed," Hunnigan tutted, shaking her head as she flipped through the pages of a motorcycle magazine. She felt the pockets of his leather jacket stored in the locker and pulled out a lighter. Promising, but no cigarettes to go with it, just a pack of gum. Nothing she needed there. She moved on and paused when she reached the end of the row.
Agent Helena Harper. Twenty-four years old, an impatient hothead who constantly questioned authority, but at the same time, one of the most passionate and loyal people Hunnigan had ever known. And judging from the contents of her locker, she enjoyed reading cheesy romance novels during downtime between missions. Current status: unknown.
"Well, this is certainly girlier than what I'd ever expected from you," Hunnigan smiled as she read the back cover of the book before putting it back into the locker. She reached to feel the pockets of the hoody hanging in the back of the locker and inhaled sharply when she found a treasure, a pack of Marlboro Gold 100s.
"I don't know what I was expecting, when have you ever let me down?" Hunnigan chuckled as she weighed the pack in her hand. It was light, most of the contents already smoked by the pack's rightful owner, but that was all right, one was really all Hunnigan had wanted anyway, anything excess was an added bonus.
"I'll reimburse you for this, I promise."