That said, I don't do this for myself, and when I think that might be the case, I realize that, if this were still happening anywhere in the world, whether it affected me or not, I'd be there in a heartbeat. I want to save everyone from this. Shit. If only that were possible.
I've asked myself if this is all worth fighting for, to see the future back to the way it was (if that makes any sense). The answer always comes as an obvious yes, because even when I doubt it, I know there's nothing I want more than to end all of this. Is that enough to make me a hero? I don't know, and honestly, if I could call myself that, I'd be more than proud. But by that logic, most of us are heroes: The people working to save the world from this, the people saving themselves, and everybody who isn't an egomaniacal madman. I shouldn't have to explain it. I guess this horror just turns citizens into heroes, when they're forced to be, but that fact conflicts the idea entirely. Nobody wanted this... Well, mostly nobody. I think there are only three kinds of people in this world: The oblivious, living their lives' day to day as if nothing is happening (I don't condemn that, I envy it), "heroes" like myself, and the crazy bastards who actually believe in this kind of a future.
I just want to know the answers to something, anything, just once. I want to respond to my own questions. I want to believe in myself.
Getting away from my emotional side for a bit, I should tell you it's only been a month, maybe more, since Kijuju, and I've already got work. Serious work, as in picking up a gun and preparing for the worst. Is it selfish, too, that I just want to rest sometimes? Is that too much to ask? If you're wondering, all of the team members we lost have been replaced. It seems too soon, but we need new men on the frontlines, twenty-four/seven.
Dylan Castro is the new commander of Alpha Team, and even though he's the cockiest jokester I've ever met, he's extremely capable to fit the position. He won't shut up about his number-one record at the target range, and that's not the first time you'll hear about it.
Alpha's new air support is some Cooper Burns kid. I doubt him, he's only twenty-one, but if he's made it this far, he must be pretty good at what he does.
I haven't met Dave's replacement yet, I think it was Jackson something. I hope he fills the spot okay, because even though I hardly knew Dave, if that, the guy saved my life on more than one occasion.
They hired a new girl, too (Well, she's been here a lot of years, but she's only just been promoted to the team), weapons specialist, Alicia Chase. She's got the second-place record at the target range, and it's kind of funny to hear her and Dylan fight about it. I think the two have known each other for a while, maybe that's why the subject bothers her so much. We've been working closely since she joined the ranks, and I have to say I like her. She's the kind of person who spits on the world then tries to save it. She can be a little too much of an extrovert at times, though, but it's not her fault. She's just really bad at hiding her emotions from anybody. They're ways we all feel, she's just the only one who can express them, and I don't blame her for that.
It's not the same, it'll never be the same, but... it's something. I know I wasn't particularly close to anyone on that mission, I don't even know who half of them were, but they were good people, and somebody was expecting them to come home the next day.
This is now. This is the world we live in. And I'm the one who has to protect it.
Resident Evil: Cold Blooded Chapter 01
Snow
Pellets of soft, white snow fell against the top of the Range Rover as Chris Redfield pulled up to the site. The storms had calmed for now, and he was grateful for that. Weather would be another complication, and in Alaska, complications would be inevitable. As Chris stepped down from the vehicle, he brushed the sleeve of his jacket, wishing biohazards didn't have to happen in places with such extreme conditions. Shortly, the only difference from Africa would be the snow, and he knew that. He feared that. Slaughter would find its way back to them again.
Apparently, a large percentage of the population had just dropped off the face of the earth here. Chris wished he knew more about this assignment. He hoped this didn't mean hostiles, but how could he be so lucky? Hope. He sighed at the word. It seemed hope was always wrong.
"Chris," Dylan greeted him, just seconds later, with a polite grin across his face. "Glad you're here."
"Would miss it," Chris responded sarcastically and shook the Captain's hand. He wished he could say every hopeless thing he felt.
Dylan Castro was a man in his mid-forties, who was starting to look it. His body seemed more bulk than muscle, and tufts of platinum blonde hair stuck out from under his baseball cap like little creatures trying to poke their heads out and look around.
He pointed a passive thumb behind him, but it didn't aim anywhere in particular.
"Tennet," he explained, "will brief you."
If only Chris knew who he was talking about. He decided he'd just ask the first person he didn't recognize.
"Tennet?" A shot in the dark.
The man who turned to face him looked about his age, with creepy black pupils and a head of gelled auburn hair that had clearly been tried too hard at.
"Jackson Tennet, at your service."
Thank God.
He nodded, smiling as if he had done it too many times today. "You're Chris?"
"Right."
"We've only been set up for an hour or so, so we don't have much information," he explained, wasting no time, and asking no more questions, "but we do know the population is, at this point, down to less than a third, and we are dealing with hostiles."
Of course, Chris thought. Damn.
"I hate to pass you off again, but maybe you should talk to Lana." He pointed to his left, Chris's right. "Over there."
Chris glanced over in the woman's direction, then back at Jackson, both strangers.
"All right," he said. "Thanks."
Only halfway between the two, someone tapped on his back and caughed an exaggerated caugh. He recognized the tone immediately.
"Hey," he chuckled, grinning as he turned around, and his breath rose into the frozen mountain air.
Alicia Chase was a skinny girl, slightly shorter than Chris, with a full chest, which gave her the burden of being bothered by every horny, deprived teammate on the job. Specks of snow were evident in her short hair, and on her eyelashes. She wore a black tee, a tan vest, blue jeans, and a pair of black suede boots. She looked different than everybody else. Chris knew she was afraid of being the same. At least, that was what she let on.
Alicia smirked to one side and tilted her cap, somewhere between straight and sideways. She blew a jet lock out of her face, but it moved back anyway, before she could even get a word out.
"Just wanted to say hi," she justified her interruption, still smiling, and although Chris had seen her a handful of times, when her blue eyes hit his, something seemed off about her. "Got tired of waiting."
"Sorry," he lauged, although he knew they were both joking. It wasn't something worth apologizing over, and Chris had only been on the field for a few minutes. Their back-and-forths were just that way, mainly because he could be a dork at times, and she was bad at acting her age. "You okay?"
"Yeah," was the answer, but neither believed it, "just cold."
Chris found himself bothered by whatever was wrong for a moment more before he realized it was nothing more than fear. It was everywhere around him; they all felt it. Once again, he thought she must have been a vessel for the rest of them to feel through, because she was the only one with enough of herself left to realize this job didn't mean dehumanization.
"You... seem to have prior engagements, so I'll let you be. Just be careful with Dr. Egotistical Jerkass."
Chris didn't have time to ask before Alicia walked away, leaving him hanging. But when he found Lana, he knew exactly what she meant.
"Doctor Lana Fitzgerald, Delta Team, head biologist," she introduced herself like a life story, and shook his hand.
What Alicia had called her made Chris smile for a second, but he stifled himself before the Doctor took notice. The woman had only said one sentence to him, but he could already tell she lived and breathed her own scent, even though she was honestly no more than an one-in-a-million, and she was aging terribly. Chris just didn't like those kinds of people; did he have to like everybody he worked with?
"Chris Redfield."
"What do you need, hon?" Lana asked and tried to smile at him, but Chris was much more focused on the dark grey bags under her eyes. She couldn't have been more than forty-something, but her physical age suggest ancience.
"Jackson wanted me to ask you what's going on," he told her, hoping to speed through this conversation.
"What, in the world, Mexico, or here?"
Instead of hooking her in the face and walking away, Chris forced a chuckle.
"Lot of people dead, lot of people just gone. We only just here, we don't know much."
"So I've heard. Any idea who's responsible?"
Remember, Chris: Wesker is gone. Wesker is gone forever.
"This time," Fitzgerald informed him, "we aren't dealing with a 'who'. We've found small traces of Plaga underground. That's all we know right now."
"Shit," Chris cursed at himself, at her, at this, at Alaska, at the whole damn world. "Well, thanks anyway."
"No problem, darling."
Chris found his gear and removed his jacket to strap on a bulletproof vest. He returned the coat to its place before slipping his handgun into the holster at his side. Just as soon as he finished, Alicia approached him again.
"Hey. What's up?"
"Dylan's sending us out into the town together," she explained, forcing an uncomfortable smile. "You ready?"
As badly as Chris wanted to say no, that he had something else to do, he nodded the truth.
When Alicia turned to leave, he stopped her with a hand to the shoulder. "You okay?" he repeated, hoping it wouldn't tick her off.
"Fine," she assured him, but didn't look back. "Let's move."
.~.
The village had fallen completely silent, and no hostiles revealed themselves as the pair made their way through row after row of abandoned buildings. The wind blew through cracked windows and open doors, muted, deadly.
Chris touched at his headset. "Area is empty. No signs of life. Orders?"
After a burst of radio static, Castro responded, a loud, fizzy noize in the silence. "Take a look around. Report back in ten. Over."
"Roger that. Chris out."
"Help me search the area," Chris ordered, to Alicia, taking a short look around them.
She nodded in complience and started off towards the right side of the street.
"Oh, and Alicia?"
"Yeah?" She peered back over her shoulder. There was something in her eyes; something wrong.
"Be careful."
She nodded.
In one of the houses, Alicia pressed her hand to the still intact window and stared out through the fogged glass to see Chris across the road, finding nothing as well. There couldn't have been anybody left in the town, at least, not living. So far Alicia had found six or so bodies, and through checking in with Chris, she knew he had seen a handful as well. This whole thing seemed fruitless.
She heard a rough grunt behind her and spun to see a man standing and staring at her, brown-grey hair, a short beard, and a ripped red flannel shirt.
"Sir, are you..."
She trailed off when she noticed the axe he smacked against his palm, agiain and again, slicing into him over and over, without him seeming to notice. Small drops of blood were sent from skin to blade, and flung everywhere inbetween.
Oh, shit, he's one of them!
He flashed his angry teeth and swung his weapon towards her. She caught the handle before it could cleave her in two, holding it back with all of her strength, which pushed her down at an angle to stand with bent legs. The man hovered over her; she could see the red in his eyes.
"Chris!" she exclaimed, not in a desperate, come-save-my-life kind of way, more in the way one cop would to another after finding the body, informally.
Soon a bullet caught her attacker's head and sent a stream of blood out, the lifeless form crashing to the floor with a bang of flesh against hardwood.
Alicia stood straight to see Chris in the doorway, stowing his pistol again.
"Thanks," she said while collecting herself, wishing she could smile at him.
"Don't mention it."
"Well, it's clear we're dealing with B.O.W.s." Alicia sighed with her mouth shut and stole a glance at the twice-dead corpse. "Shit, and I thought somebody would actually be left alive."
"It's never that convenient," he replied. He smirked, in the half-smile manner that he always did, but it wasn't the same. It was dark.
"What strand is it?" Alicia didn't want to get away from business. She ignored how bad she felt and knelt over the body.
"Plagas."
She looked up at him, still on the floor, to listen.
"Dealt with it in Africa a few months back," he continued. "Lost a lot of teammates."
"You're a busy man, aren't you?"
Chris scoffed and slipped his thumbs into his jean pockets.
"Busier than I'd like to be."
Alicia stood and brushed the dirt from her knees. After studying the cadaver one last time, she followed Chris out of the house.
"Keep your guard up," he warned.
"Won't happen again," Alicia promised and readied her pistol. She knew Chris was a big deal among the BSAA, and she had to step her game up.
A heavy crash resounded in the distance, a sound they both heard. Chris nodded ahead of them, a signal to run. Alicia came in close behind, then beside, him.
The building from which the noise had come wasn't far ahead. Chris pushed his back to the door, gun raised, and waited, silent, for a second before gesturing to his partner and flinging it open.
Alicia ran in immediately after him with her arms outstretched, ready to pull the trigger. She knew she couldn't be caught off-guard again. She had to show this guy that she was capable, and above all, she had to survive.
A woman, red eyes flashing against the swinging cieling lamp, wheeled around and revealed her crimson-crusted teeth. A fresh pool of blood rested on her cheek, her hair matted to her face with it, along with sweat, and her fingers covered in the fluid as well.
"Don't shoot her!" a voice pleaded a second before Chris would have done just that.
A man stumbled to stand from the pile of desk remnants into which he had clearly been thrown.
Chris ignored him and raised his handgun to her head agian. It was clear that he'd been through this too many times in his career.
"Fuck, I said no!" the man continued to shout.
The infected woman ran at Chris and clawed the gun out of his hand just as he fired, sending a bullet into the wall behind her.
Alicia ran to hold the hostile's protector back from tearing Chris into livid pieces, or at least trying; he was a scrawny thing. He kicked and twisted in a rage-fueled attempt to escape her grasp, but she didn't take much mind, consumed in watching the action go down.
Chris, without a weapon, threw a straight punch into the hostile's face, then, as she bent over, kicked her chest. She flew backwards and tumbled to the floor, dead by the looks of it. It had to hurt, coming from a guy as big as Chris Redfield.
The man slipped out of Alicia's hold and wasted no time, darting toward's his wife's (most likely) murderer. Before he could reach Chris, Alicia compulsively, without thinking it over, shot. A smoking hole in the back of his head, he fell down on top of his dead woman, a pile of bodies.
"Appreciate it," Chris thanked her as he stepped closer.
Suddenly Alicia was staring at the floor, holding her pistol too tight in shaking hands.
"Hey, you okay?" he asked, concerned.
"I... He..." Alicia swallowed a lump in her throat that seemed to be keeping the words away, so that she could answer him. "He wasn't infected."
"He was hostile anyway."
"But... Chris... I've never..." Her teeth latched onto her bottom lip.
At first, he had no idea what she was talking about, but after a moment of thought, he understood. His mouth hung open just barely, surprised at how hard this hit her; he had never seen anyone react like this before. He reached a protective hand out to her shoulder.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know..."
"It's just... I've never... I... It's a moral thing," she choked out, the guilt already eating away at her stomach.
"He would've been dead, soon, anyway," Chris tried, he really did, and although it was appreciated, it didn't help much.
"It's different," was all she could say.
"Alicia-"
"What if it had been you, Chris? And your sister was standing there ready to eat you alive, and even though you knew there was no going back, you couldn't bear to hurt her. Then someone you've never even seen before just breaks in and kills her."
"But it wasn't." Chris removed his hand and placed it back on his holstered handgun. "You keep thinking that way, you won't be able to do this much longer."
Alicia nodded, realizing she needed to grow up about this and move on. She wiped her eye, that had been so close to shedding a tear, but she couldn't have done something like that in front of a guy she hardly knew. It would've destroyed her pride.
"Come on," Chris said matter-of-factly. "We need to go."
.~.
It didn't seem possible. An entire village is abandoned, and at the sound of a few gunshots, hostiles manage to pop up out of nowhere. It seemed like they could materialize out of snow and leftover blood. What used to be a quaint little town was now a warzone.
"These things just come out of the woodwork, huh?" Alicia shouted over the firing of handguns and backed up closer to her partner.
"Crazy, isn't it?"
Chris moved as well, so that the two were pressed back-to-back. It made Alicia realize how much of a twig she was, compared to him.
"You got ammo?" she asked as she detatched her clip.
"Here." Chris passed a box of bullets to her as quickly as possible, then continued shooting.
She clicked the loaded piece back into the 9mm and fired a hole through a hostile's forehead, that had been less than a foot away from ripping her neck apart.
Another came at Chris, but caught a fist in the face before he could even open his mouth.
Alicia didn't see the shovel aimed at her side until it jammed through her skin and retreated with a new stripe of blood. She, angry and in pain, turned to look at its handler before she sent him to the floor. Chris wasn't aware of it, and she knew she couldn't let it hinder her, so after touching at the slit, she returned to business.
When the last of the horde fell to the white ground, face-first, the two separated, and Chris reloaded his handgun.
"There's a lot of them," Alicia observed, staring at the array of corpses scattered in a circle around them.
"Whole town goes missing, they got to go somewhere. At least we know now. It used to catch me by surprise, and then I'd have to handle this alone."
Chris stopped himself when he realized he was talking too much, and getting too personal. He stopped when he realized he felt like he had back then, ten years ago, when he realized he saw that kid lost in a nightmare again.
"You've been through a lot, haven't you?"
He just smirked. "More than you know."
Alicia winced and felt her wound again, and as much as she tried to keep it from him, Chris took notice.
"You all right?" he asked, eyes locked onto the blood-stained portion of her shirt.
"I'll be fine," she responded and stood to assure that fact. "I've been through worse. Much worse."
Chris nodded, understand, before he pressed his earpiece a second time. "Locals are hostile, no survivors yet. Requesting a mission update."
This time it was headquarters, not Captain Castro, or even the team, who answered. "Roger that," came through. "Alpha Team has already infiltrated the area. I've sent coordinates to your PDA."
"Understood. Out." The headset disconnected. "Let's hope they're still alive."