Still Alive
(part II)
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"For how long
must I wait?
I know there's something wrong..."
- Lisa Miskovsky – Still Alive
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When they'd climbed into the helicopter that night, all those years ago, they'd promised they'd never return to this accursed place. It was here that the nightmare began, that their perfectly ordinary worlds shattered and faded away in the wind like the dried golden leaves of autumn. That night changed them forever...
"And yet, here we are," Jill observed, pushing her palms into her spine to alleviate the ache that burrowed deep in her back and stared down the empty Raccoon City streets.
Despite the bright summer sun and cloudless sky, the wind whirled eerily as it blew through the Arklay Mountains and deserted streets. In the parks, chains jingled in the breeze, swings swaying slightly. Toys lay abandoned in the sandbox and strollers lay overturned beside splintered benches. Jill thought she could hear the forgotten laughter of the children that once played here, but knew it was only her imagination and too many horror movies.
Far from the epicentre where the government had dropped the bomb to neutralize the city of infectees, buildings stood with peeling paint and dusty brick. Shattered windows exposed the dark innards of shops and cafes with rundown appliances and broken Welcome signs. Customers' meals sat, mouldy, on tables, glasses overturned. Stuffing oozed from cushions and chairs and stools lay scattered on the floor. Mannequins seemed to watch them with dead eyes from store windows and cars remained parked as they had been originally, testaments of the thriving city Raccoon City had once been.
"Twenty years," Chris stated as they moved onto the sidewalk, if for no other reason than instinct. "Has it really been that long?"
Jill nodded and after catching sight of a child's discarded teddy bear, looped her arm through his and walked just a little closer. Her belly bumped against his elbow, and almost in response to the accidental poke, the slumbering child within objected with a jab of its knee. Were she still a single, childless agent, the dead city would have disturbed her. As an expecting mother, it downright frightened her. She was glad Chris had come; his sheer manliness and status as husband and father, made her feel safer somehow.
"Hard to believe, isn't it? Some days, it seems to far off, so...bizarre – as odd as that sounds – to have been anything more than a dream. Other days, the memories are so vivid, so real...it's like it was only last night that we were seeking refuge in that mansion." She thought about that night: the coolness of the evening, the obscure, starless heavens, the heavy fog. It was supposed to be a routine investigation. Internal disturbances, nothing too bizarre. Who knew taking on the assignment would have led to everything it did?
They were amazed to find their old S.T.A.R.S. headquarters still standing, though in a severe state of disrepair. The brick structure stood darkly among the flanking shops with its barred windows and heavily secured doors. Chris approached the side door that led into an alley filled with old cardboard boxes and an overflowing, green dumpster that smelled worse than a rotting carcass and buzzed with flies. The little box hanging beside a maze of pipes sparked as it swayed on drooping wires, inoperational. The door, however, remained permanently unlocked and gave way with a firm shove of his shoulder.
The station was in as much disarray as the rest of Raccoon City's fine establishments, likely knocked about by the blast of the bomb. Walls had been demolished and doors hung loosely in splinters on squeaking hinges. In the break room, the food in the fridge had long since expired, a carton of cream now solid and crumbling like cottage cheese. A half-eaten sandwich was green and fuzzy and ants had built a small hill around spilt sugar. A cracked pot of coffee, with the brown liquid still inside, sat in the coffee maker surrounded by crusty, brown rings.
After exploring the old rooms, remembering the people who'd sat in the chairs, read the reports, talked to her over snacks in the break room, Jill wandered into what had once been Chris' office. It wasn't much, but he'd been new at the time. His wasn't so much an office as it was a cubicle, a sectioned off space for all of his reports and files.
He stood with his back to her beside the overturned desk, standing upon scattered papers. The contents of his desk – paper weights, pencils, pens, a solar-powered calculator – lay on the floor beneath a thick layer of dust and dirt. His computer had smashed, the screen in pieces, with tangled wires strewn about and the keyboard upside down with the keys dislodged. Filing cabinets sat with their drawers open and his chair had rolled clear across the room. She noticed after a moment, that he did not walk about as she did, noting the damage that had befallen the place, remembering... or the time that had immortalized it as a museum of sorts. Instead, he stood as though transfixed, and as she approached, she noticed a glimmer of gold in his hands.
"Old photo?" she asked and her voice appeared to startle him from some world of memory. He nodded slowly and she rose up on her toes to glance over his shoulder. Despite herself, her stomach plummeted when she saw the old image, and her heart began to race.
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to be continued...
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Disclaimer: All Resident Evil characters are property of Capcom and their individual creators.
Notes: All the chapters are short. Sorry about that. I originally had the next two chapters as one really long chapter, but I thought that it might cut away from the intensity of the story if it was too long. Besides, I don't expect this story to be all that long anyways. Might as well make it seem that way with a lot of short chapters!
Hopefully, the site will let me do this since I believe they're affiliates (the set up is exactly like this site). I've opened an account on to post samples of novels I'm working on. I'm terrible with making choices and focusing, so I'm hoping that readers will be able to tell me which ideas they like best. To read, please see: .com/u/709958/ (if the link doesn't work, search "Evelyn Adams Fictionpress" on Google and it'll be the first link).