Fandom: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Pairing: Eventual Alice/Claire

Rating: M (coarse language, graphic violence)

Disclaimer: See first chapter. (As a special note, however, the second part of this chapter is based quite a bit on Resident Evil 2 and S.D. Perry's novelization of it. I own neither of those). I also don't own "The Mission" by Puscifer, from which this chapter title is derived.

A/N: So from this point on, I will be alternating between Alice and Claire's perspective depending on which is necessary for that particular part (so basically, not by any set pattern). Claire, as we all know, likes her expletives, so there will henceforth be a lot of foul language. I apologize in advance. Also, if Claire's voice seems very different from Extinction, well, that's because she's still 24 here, and she changes (and grows up) a lot in the 5 years in between.

This also takes place in the context of the films, so graphic violence is unavoidable. If that bothers you, be warned.

Volume I: Apocalyptic Genesis

One: It's All Fire and Brimstone, Baby

xxx

The lights are red, but we're gonna keep dancing.

All the people are dead, but we're gonna keep dancing.

~Zombie, The Trucks

xxx

Claire Redfield had always loved working with her hands. She could never have spent her life in an office, twiddling her thumbs all day, because there was just something satisfying about putting in a hard day's work and seeing the physical product that resulted from it. Her favourite thing was when she finished a new bike – even if it were for someone else – and got to test it out. Human ingenuity fascinated Claire, and she loved being a part of it, even if only in a miniscule way.

Today, however, Claire thought that working in an office might not be so bad. A bizarre heat wave was working its way across the country, despite the fact that it was almost October, and Buffalo had not been spared. Her work jumpsuit was heavy and stifling, and part way into her shift she had zipped it all the way down to her abdomen, despite the fact that she had not bothered to clothe her upper body in anything but a black bra. It was just too damn hot, and she had damn good abs, so she had just said, 'Fuck it.'

She was leaning over an engine, in the process of trying to figure out why it was making a strange noise, when she heard Gus clear his throat, followed by his gravelly voice.

"Claire, how many times do I gotta tell you? This may only be a garage, but we've got the damn dress code for a reason. The jumpsuit isn't gonna protect you if it's not zipped up," he lectured, with a stern look on his aged face. It was not an unkind one, though: Gus liked to pretend he was a tough old bastard, but really he was just a big teddy bear.

As he came around to stand beside her, he said in a quieter voice, "Also, some of the fellas who work here aren't exactly gentlemen, and you remind me too much of my own little girl."

She would have scoffed at the 'little girl' bit, but arguing with Gus was really not worth it. And she knew that he meant it as a term of endearment, anyway. So she grudgingly zipped the jumpsuit back up, even though she could feel the immediate difference in temperature upon doing so.

He pointed a warning finger at her. "Don't let it happen again."

"Sorry Gus," Claire said, but from the look he gave her, she could tell that he knew it was not a genuine apology.

He shook his head and muttered gruffly, "Sorry my ass."

With a laugh, Claire went back to examining the engine. She figured out the problem not long after, and by noon she had returned it to working order. Break times were somewhat informal, but she usually took hers around then, so she headed to the small lounge room that was adjoined to the garage.

"Lounge" was perhaps too generous of a word: it consisted of a table with four chairs at it, a ragged old couch and armchair, a bar fridge, and a TV that had been past its prime in the 1980s. Zeke and Jones were sitting on the couch, fighting over whether to watch the news or a re-run of Law and Order. They were weird guys, but they were also the best friends that she had at the garage.

Jones eventually won, and he flipped the channel to the news. He had a strange fascination with the news, as well as a funny habit of coming up with the most ridiculous conspiracy theories while watching it. His current one was some spiel about the Umbrella Corporation doing secret research and selling weapons on the black market. She and Zeke had learned long ago to just nod along with him when he went on one of those rants.

"Hey, get a load of this, Claire," Zeke said, pointing at the screen. "Isn't that where your brother lives?"

Claire frowned and hurried over to the TV. Jones turned up the volume.

The reporter was saying, "Earlier this morning, a bizarre wave of killings began sweeping Raccoon City, and it now appears to be increasing rapidly in severity. An alarmed citizen stated that 'it's as if people are just going mad,' and added, 'I saw a man take a bite clean out of a friend of his, like he was trying to eat him.' When we contacted them, the Raccoon City police were evasive about the issue, but they did disclose that a few weeks prior, there had been reports of strange activity in the Arklay mountains, and that it and the murders may have some connection to a known cannibalistic cult in the area. We'll be sure to keep you updated when we receive a proper explanation. In other news..."

Claire tuned the rest out. Cannibalistic murders in Raccoon City? Sure, Raccoon had its fair share of deviants... but cannibals? Something was definitely not right.

"Wow. Shit, man, that's intense," Zeke commented. "You should probably call Chris and, y'know, see if he's okay."

"He's fine," Claire insisted, shaking her head. But the more she thought about it, the more a feeling of dread began to coil in the pit of her stomach. "But I guess it never hurts to just check in on him. Make sure he hasn't given himself a heart attack on all that take-out he eats."

Jones laughed. "From what I know of the guy, that's a good idea."

"I'll be back in a bit, guys," Claire said, as she headed out to the employee locker room. After retrieving her cell-phone from her bag, she made for the exit of the garage, because it was way too loud inside to carry on a phone call. And she always got shitty reception in there, anyway.

"Where do you think you're going?" Gus called after her.

"I just need to call my brother," she replied. "Be back in a sec."

Once outside, Claire punched in Chris' number with unsteady hands. Like it or not, she was freaked out. She had not heard from him in about two weeks, she realized, and that was actually quite odd for Chris. Ever since their parents had died, he had made a point of looking after her. When she was in college, he had even helped to pay for her tuition. Now, he often left rambling messages on her answering machine or sent her strange, two-sentence e-mails, or when he was not as busy, called to tell her about whichever dipshit had managed to get himself stuck in the Arklay mountains that time. But no matter how he chose to communicate with her, he never just stopped like that. Not for two weeks, anyway.

The phone began to ring, and Claire bounced on her heels. Come on Chris, pick up. It rang, and rang, and then she got the generic robotic voice telling her that the number was unavailable at this time.

"Dammit," she cursed aloud. "Why don't you have a fucking cell phone, Chris?"

So she dialled every other number in Raccoon that she could think of. Nothing.

"Oh come on, someone has to be home."

But even the police station – whose number she had learned in case anything should happen to Chris – gave no response. That was not just weird; it was plain freaky. A major city like Raccoon should have answering machines.

All but in a panic, Claire went back into the garage and made a beeline for Gus. He looked up at her as she approached, and his features immediately contorted with concern, ostensibly at the expression on her face.

"Whoa there. Where's the fire?"

"I can't get a hold of Chris," she said. "Or anyone in Raccoon City. And with those strange killings that have been going on..."

He put a large, comforting hand on her shoulder. "Relax, Claire. I'm sure it's just some malfunction with the phone lines. But if you're really worried, take off the rest of the week and go check on him. You were due for some time off, anyway."

"Thanks Gus," Claire said, kissing him on the cheek. "You're the best."

"Damn right. And don't you forget it."

As Claire went to get the rest of her stuff and change back into her street clothes, she resolved to make the trip to Raccoon immediately. It would be about six hours to get there, maybe less if she hurried, but she had ridden for longer than that before anyway. At least once she got there she could find Chris and set her mind at rest. He would probably laugh at her for being ridiculous, but she would rather endure his teasing than be wrong and find out that something had happened to him.

She said a quick goodbye to the guys and hastened to the parking lot out back to get her Harley. She already had everything that she would need for the trip, so she decided not to bother with going to her apartment, figuring that it would just be an unnecessary delay. What she did not realize was that she would never see it or any of her friends in Buffalo again.

At present, however, as she started the Harley and began the long ride to Raccoon, a smile drifted onto her lips as she realized that she might even get to see Alice again, while she was there. Alice still owed her dinner at Che Buono. And after that, well, who knows.

xxx

It took only a few minutes upon entering Raccoon City for Claire to realize that something was very, very wrong: It was a weekday, but the city was dead.

Everything was eerily still, and it was a while before she even saw any people on the streets. They looked like they were drunk, stumbling about uncoordinatedly, but the weird part was how silent they were. Drunk people usually talked and yelled and made all kinds of commotion about themselves; these did not.

Still, she had not come to gawk at drunk people, so Claire continued on. She was keen to find Chris, but she had been on the road for so long that her ass was killing her, and she never had eaten lunch. Her stomach growling loudly at her settled it: She would stop by the cafe first. Alice had said that she was usually there on Sundays, but there was always the off chance that she might be there now.

As Claire pulled up in front of the cafe, however, she changed her mind: She hoped to God that Alice was not in there. The front windows were smashed and blood smeared the broken sections that remained. From outside, she could see that the tables were upturned and everything was in a state of utter disarray.

She cut the Harley's engine and hopped off. With dread welling in her chest, she stepped carefully around the splintered door, which hung askew on its frame.

It looked like a horror movie set: blood doused the room – so much blood, and yet no bodies. She searched through the collapsed booths and overturned tables, her heart beating harder in her chest each time she did. When Claire was adequately assured that Alice was not there, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Claire cast a glance at one of the leather chairs: It was scratched and torn, as if someone had been ripping at it with his or her nails, and pieces of stuffing were sticking out in odd places. It was hard to think that not so long ago she had been sitting in one of them, while the cafe buzzed with life.

"What the fuck happened here?" she wondered aloud.

Generally, at least to her knowledge, murder scenes tended to have victims. Or something.

A curious* wail came from behind the counter, and Claire gave a start at it. It sent a shiver down her spine, because if a person had made that sound, whoever it was had to be seriously fucked up.

Claire had seen enough horror movies to know that this was the part where the poor, unsuspecting character went searching for the sound, just to meet with an untimely death. But this was real life, not a movie, and there might be someone in trouble back there. So she steeled her shoulders and approached the counter.

She put her hands on top of it and leaned over to see behind it.

"Holy shit," Claire gasped, her eyes widening.

It was one of the employees: the girl who had served her almost a month ago, to be exact. Her eyes were covered in a white film, and half of the skin on the right side of her face had been shorn off to expose glistening bone underneath. A gaping hole looked as if it had been bitten out of her throat, and another gurgling wail issued from somewhere inside it.

Then the girl was rising brokenly to her feet, her hands reaching out for Claire, and Claire almost fell over backwards in her haste to get away.

Since when does Raccoon City have fucking zombies?

Her feet slid in a puddle of blood as she hurried out, but she managed not to fall. Out on the street, she scraped the bottom of her boot off on the curb until it was almost clean again.

Farther down the road, she could see another drunken group of people lurching about. Except they were not drunk: they were zombies, too. For as they got closer, she could see that each one had great rips and tears in his or her face and body, and they all made that horrible, disturbing moaning sound, which the roar of her Harley had drowned out before.

Without a second's hesitation, Claire climbed back on her motorcycle and started the engine, and she made sure to give the horde a wide berth as she drove around them. Her mind was reeling, trying to figure out what she needed to do; if the rest of the city were like this, Chris could be almost anywhere.

Before she could find him, though, she figured that she had better get a gun or something to defend herself with. She searched her memory and after a moment recalled that there was a weapon shop just a few blocks away from where she was, so she turned down another road and headed in that direction. The further into town she went, the more she noticed the afflicted people. Whatever it was that had happened, it must have happened fast: The scale of the disaster was far beyond what the news had suggested.

Claire was happy to find that the street on which the weapon shop was located was abandoned – for now, anyway. She parked her Harley out front of it and was just getting off when she noticed something moving in her peripheral vision.

She turned to look at it.

Or rather, at her: It was a blonde woman dressed in what appeared to be a hospital gown and a lab coat, clutching a shotgun unsteadily in both hands. Her feet were bare, and she was stumbling with every step. However, she was not zombified like the others.

Claire noticed that it looked as if one of her knees were about to give out, so she hurried over to the woman. Her timing was perfect, for she just managed to catch the stranger in her arms. But as the blonde turned her head up to look at Claire, she realized that it was not a stranger at all.

"Christ," Claire breathed in disbelief. "Alice? What happened to you?"

*If you see me write the word "curious" in a context like this, where it might not make sense with its usual meaning, keep in mind that I'm using it to mean "strange." The same applies to the word "queer," should I happen to use it.