Blue jeans
White shirt
Walked into the room
You know you made my eyes burn
It was like, James Dean, for sure
You're so fresh to death and sick as cancer
You're were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop
But you fit me better than my favorite sweater,
And I know
That love is mean, and love hurts
But I still remember that day
we met in December, oh, baby!
I will love you until the end of time
I would wait a million of years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby can you see through the tears?
Love you more, than those bitches before
Say you'll remember
Oh baby, say you'll remember
I will love you until the end of time
10. Promise
The sun rose in the horizon, bathing the Earth's surface with its usual orange glow. It was beautiful. Nothing extraordinary or new there, but it had been years that Alice didn't pay attention to it. She sighed and closed her eyes, feeling the moisture of tears behind her eyelids.
The morning colors reminded her of Claire – reddish and blue, her perfect combination, her best friend in the darkest hours, her happy place in such horrible wasteland. She wondered whether the convoy had already departed to Arcadia. Alice had secretly wished the Jeep would not work, and she promised herself she would take that as a sign and never consider leaving Claire's side again if it failed.
However, to her absolute dismay, the car started, even after all the problems it went through during her trip to Raccoon City. As the engines roared to life, Alice thought her fate was sealed; now she thought she was an idiot.
She could have jumped out of the car and ran back up that hill. She could be with the convoy on their way to Alaska. But no – duty always came first. That made her realize why she was so lonely and bitter in the first place. Before the apocalypse, she was that person too.
It had been a surprise to everyone when she volunteered to be the test subject in order to save others, but then her real reasons were yet obscure to her. It wasn't a matter of not caring about people; Alice simply existed, and she didn't care about herself, either. Maybe that gesture had been an attempt of redemption that just ended up in a bad way.
Nevada wasn't really far, and Alice was once again moving by instinct, following the tingling sensation that the desert facility would clear things for her – the beginning and possibly the end of everything. She was alone again, and she could just move non-stop until she got there, safe and sound, considering the fact that nature seemed unable to defeat her.
And there she was, all alone on the road. No one to tell her what to do, no one to watch over, no one to be jealous of… Shit. Alice had really not missed that life.
She had been wandering the country for years, without memory, living for the day, and then she had met Claire. It was difficult to go back to that after everything that had happened with the redhead.
"I love you," Alice repeated to herself. "I love you." Why is that so fucking hard to say? "Shit…" She shook her head in disbelief, actually surprised with her inability to be spontaneous. "I love you…"
Claire's voice echoed vividly in her mind. Her care, her gestures, even the way her breathing and heart speed up whenever Alice came closer… It all made sense now. Alice could still turn around and track the convoy. She was only a few hours away from them, and she could even give up on the Jeep and walk if she wanted.
But then the look of pain on Claire's face curbed her; she was sure the leader would not welcome her back after all that she had done. Alice didn't manage rejection well in the past, and this was another feature the t-virus had not changed in her. In Claire's shoes, she would have done the same. Jill had left her for the same reason, and even Rain had to pay a heavy price because of her.
Kaplan and J.D were dead. Angie was dead. She had killed them all. Maybe it was a good thing she had left Claire. This way, she might have a few more years, and the natural conditions of a ruining planet would beat her instead of Alice's mortal company.
"You shouldn't love me," Alice whispered, feeling the lump in her throat burn as she swallowed the urge to release her own pain.
XXX
Chris rubbed the sleep off of his eyes and blinked several times until he could properly see the faint outlines of the Arklay Mountains. The sun was not completely up in the horizon yet, but the chills of the night were gone, and he knew they would face another hot day.
They were better enjoy it while they still could, after all they were heading to Alaska in about one hour. He had sort of expected to hear Claire's raspy knocks on the truck's door, but as nothing happened he decided to prod Chase and jump out of the vehicle to start prepping things for their departure.
The cowboy moved slowly towards the mansion to wake up everyone else that was on the sleeping bags as he marched to the yellow Hummer. Chris frowned when he found K-Mart alone and wide awake.
"Morning, kid," he waved, peering briefly at the front seat. He didn't see his sister's gun, which indicated she was already up. The reason was no mystery to him; it was even possible that she had not slept at all.
"Where's Claire?" K-Mart asked in a sleepy voice, her hair all messed up. "Are we late?"
"No, we're on time," he told her. "I think she's walking around camp. C'mon," Chris offered a comfortable smile to the girl. "Last breakfast in Raccoon City."
K-Mart grunted something he didn't get, and the older Redfield decided to leave her alone to stretch and rant some about her hair. He really didn't know what a teenager's routine in the morning was. Claire usually woke up first and headed outside the house without breakfast to help their father with the cars.
The late Redfield owned a small repair shop just across the street in their hometown, and it was very common to run into a young Claire walking about the place until night, covered in filthy while her friends were all dressed up to club or something.
He met up with Chase and noticed people leaving the house with their few belongings, yawning and greeting the others. He saw Mikey come out last, and the urge to punch him had to be restrained for the time being. He wasn't in the mood to upset Claire some more by reviving last night's events.
Chris had to admit he was slightly afraid that she would kick his ass when they met; even though he never admitted it to her face, Chris knew Claire was damn strong. However, what worried him most was to find her disappointed at him for being Alice's accomplice after all his sermons about how they should not move along the blonde's lines and promises.
He went down the incline to the lake, half expecting her to be smoking by the wet rocks or pacing furiously out of the convoy's eyes. Chris sighed when he reached the lake edge and didn't find her there.
"Claire?" he called out. There was no sound other than the water running and the echo of his voice. "Claire, we have to leave!"
"Hey Chris?"
He looked up. It was Rick.
"What?"
"You wanna come up here and see what Ernest found."
Chris felt his shoulders tense. When people told you to sit down or suggest you see something with your own eyes, it usually meant you would not like it a bit. And he was goddamn right when he saw the man holding his sister's cap. Ernest was fumbling with it in his hands, looking slightly disheveled when Chris approached him. The older Redfield took the item from him and stared down at the dust covered green fabric.
"Where did you find this?" he asked quietly.
Ernest hesitated for a moment. "Down by the road. Along with this," he removed a flash lamp from his jeans pocket. "I saw footprints, so I just followed."
"How do you know they weren't Alice's? She left last night," Chris said, completely aware that he was trying to make excuses to avoid the complications of that situation.
"Her pack of cigarettes was on the ground too," Ernest muttered. The rest of the convoy had approached them now, clearly noticing their leader was missing. "And down there… There are more than two sets of footprints. You can count three or four more. And also-"
"What?" Chris urged. He felt K-Mart next to him.
"There are too many tire marks for one Jeep," Ernest breathed. "And they went to opposite directions."
Nothing of that made the slightest sense to Chris. All the vehicles that belonged to the convoy were there, and no one heard anything during the night. Something was missing, and it was impossible to connect the dots. Chris did not like any of the ideas his brain was formulating.
"Claire would not have left us," he said categorically. He didn't like how the suspicious expressions were slowly appearing among the convoy members' faces. "My sister would never do that to this convoy! We're family and Claire has always cherished that above anything else!"
"Hey, no one's saying otherwise," Chase patted his shoulder carefully. "We all know Claire, buddy."
"If she didn't leave us, then what happened?" Lucinda asked folding her arms.
Chris sensed K-Mart flexing her muscles. He looked down at the girl and could have sworn she was growling at the brunette.
"Isn't it obvious?"
Everyone turned their gazes to Mikey.
"What's obvious?" Rick spat at him.
"We all saw what that woman is capable of," he said arrogantly. "Is it possible that I'm the only one here who's not completely in love with her magic tricks?"
"Well, you're biased to hate her because she totally took your place, Mikey," said Janet, a young woman they had rescued back in Arizona a few years ago.
No one had ever spoken so openly about Claire's relationship with Alice until now, and some people were hypocrite enough to look surprised with that statement. When general murmur and parallel conversation started, Chase called everyone's attention.
"Not the point and not our business, people," the cowboy said. "This is a democracy, and we're going to do this the way Claire would. Is there anyone here, apart from Mikey, who believes Alice would have persuaded Claire to leave?"
"What if she abducted Claire?" Mikey interrupted again.
Chase rolled his eyes. "Or believes she would've taken her against her will?" He added.
The convoy members exchanged looks for a while, but no one expressed concern regarding Alice's character. It was a stupid assumption and everyone seemed to realize it; even if the footprints meant a fight between them, the tire marks ruined that theory.
While they debated about it, Chris allowed his mind to go back to the conversation he had with Alice two nights previously. She had opened up to him about her suspicions that someone was messing with her.
"Claire was not supposed to know Alice was leaving," Chris finally spoke. "No one was supposed to know it," he threw a murderous glance at Mikey. "Why would she plan to go without my sister's knowledge if her objective was to kidnap her or even convince her to leave as well?"
"Remember when those things attacked us when we were searching for supplies?" Rick pointed out. "Claire said she had a feeling Umbrella was behind it. She said she thought they had set us up."
"Alice thought she was being tracked, too," Chris added. "That was the reason she was leaving. She didn't want to risk our safety, and she wouldn't return again until she found out what was happening."
"Then what do we do now?" Janet asked.
"We have to find Claire," K-Mart spoke for the first time, her voice ringing like a warning to everyone.
"How the fuck we're finding her if Umbrella's behind it?" Lucinda argued.
"First, we don't know if it's Umbrella that's got her," the teen spat back. "Second, we have Alice."
"Which part of 'Alice left' you didn't get, K-Mart?" the brunette retorted.
"Which part of 'Alice is not dumb' you didn't get, Lucinda?" she snarled. "She has a radio. We're calling her back and having her help us find Claire. Too difficult or do I have to draw it for you?"
Chris felt a sudden rush of affection for K-Mart that he almost hugged her, but instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets.
"Are we agreed that, for now, Chris is in charge? And that we're staying here until we reach Alice?" Chase asked to the group. There was general nodding and he looked satisfied. The cowboy removed his hat. "Go quilt your guts with some food. We'll think about something."
"Thank you," Chris muttered to him as most of the people moved to work the fire again and set the food they had separated from the supplies stocked for the trip.
"Not a problem, Redfield," Chase pressed his lips into a faint smile and left.
Chris turned to K-Mart, and he was surprised to see that the fire she had in her eyes a minute ago was gone. She looked positively petrified.
He took a deep breath. "I promise you we're going to-"
"I'm tired of people promising things to me and never sticking to it," K-Mart cut him harshly. "My parents, Alice… Don't make me add you to the list. I'm so sick of you people…"
Chris tried to hold her back when she started to walk away, but she shoved his hand off her shoulder pretty much the same way Claire did.
"Leave me alone!" she hissed in a strangled voice. Chris let her go and noticed she took solace inside the Hummer. Deciding to respect her and give her space, he asked Janet to save some breakfast for the teen. He knew sooner or later she would come seeking food.
XXX
K-Mart slammed the door of the car angrily. It took her a while to notice she had sat down on the manual radio. She was so mad that she didn't even think it was weird the device was detached from the dashboard. Closing her eyes, the blonde tried to remember any noises from last night, any evidence that Claire had really left the car on her own accord.
She was so pissed at Alice that, if Claire had followed her, she was ten times more pissed at the redhead. Why people kept abandoning her like that? Yeah, she was sounding like an immature, ungrateful brat, but well surprise, she was a teenager, and she was tired of acting like a grown up.
K-Mart wanted to drink and get wasted like her friends did when they were mad at their parents. She wanted to throw her iphone at her body-length mirror, and she wanted to be grounded for that, even if by now she was too old for that. What K-Mart didn't want was to sit alone inside the Hummer, thinking Claire would die in Umbrella's hands.
Then she remembered there was a way to be sure whether Claire had left or been forced to leave. She projected her body to the back of the car and frantically patted her hand under the seats. K-Mart closed her fingers around the duffel bag when they made contact with the fabric.
Her heart dropped to her stomach; that bag seemed to mean a lot to the redhead, and the fact that it stood there was not a good sign. She pulled the cords apart and split the opening, expecting to find the weird items at the bottom, but instead she saw the red notebook and a camera recorder.
Frowning, she collected the electronic device and pressed the power button. Alice's face appeared on the small screen with a bleeding nose. The image was slightly bluish, but K-Mart could recognize that it had been recorded in Kansas.
"Day one," the blonde said. "My name is Alice, and this is what is left of the world after the virus outbreak. I worked in the U.S Army, and apparently I was part of a resistance group that wanted to take Umbrella down. I have no idea what happened to the rest of them, except for Rain."
She made a pause and sighed deeply, looking slightly bothered with something.
"She's working for Umbrella, in the Nevada facility, located in the desert. I think I killed her."
K-Mart quickly understood Alice was talking about the soldier who had almost captured them. The Alice in the video searched for something on the passenger seat. When she retrieved her arm, she had a cigarette in her hand; Alice lit it and stared long back at K-Mart.
"I still have to figure out… many things, staring with how we knew Umbrella was doing illegal research. Next, how come they caught us. And finally… Why I was the only one they didn't kill or enslaved." She looked sideways. "I'm headed to New York now. There's a facility there, and I'm going to scavenge it, and then destroy it." Alice stared out of the window one last time and then returned to the camera with a whisper. "Signing off."
K-Mart was completely taken aback with what she had found out. She was about to leave the Hummer and show it to Chris when another entry started to play after a few seconds of static.
"Day two," Alice closed her eyes for a moment and let out a loud breath. "I fucking hate journals."
The screen went blank. K-Mart shook her head. She could not have expected anything different from Alice.
XXX
"Are you sure?" Jill asked, one hand on her hip and the other shading her eyes from the sun. "It looks abandoned."
"That's the idea," Carlos said, stopping next to her as they both contemplated the rusty fence of a gigantic military camp. It looked like it was left to rot just as most places in the country. "Everything runs underground, and it shouldn't be different here."
The main entrance pavement was all cracked and several blocks of asphalt stood up in weird angles. Jill squinted suspiciously.
"There's a lot of tire marks on the sand by the end of the road," she pointed her thumb over her shoulder "Do you think they had to leave in a hurry?"
"It's possible," Carlos agreed, also gazing intently at the vestiges of what looked like a minor earthquake.
"I really don't wanna waste ammo on stupid undead to find a facility someone already nuked. NY was bad enough," she said, still glaring at the shattered ground. That looked slightly familiar. She shook her head. It couldn't be-
Carlos looked down at Jill. He had half expected her to kick him out of her car a few weeks back, but it turned out she accepted his company without actually telling him that. She was centered and he liked that about her; they had wasted a lot of gas and time going to New York, only to find out the facility in Manhattan had already been taken care of.
It had looked like recent work to him, but neither Carlos nor Jill liked to talk about that. That was the one and only similarity between them, and probably it was what had kept them together for so long – they never looked back or overanalyzed anything.
"What the fuck are you doing?" she asked when he pushed his body up the fence and started to climb the wired steps.
"Only one way to find out if it's taken care of," he tilted his head towards the hangars as he struggled to hold his weight still so Jill could finish her rant before he got to the other side. She snorted – a clear sign that she was not going to talk more – so Carlos just jumped.
"Fuck me," she grunted, hooking her boots in the gaps and hoisting her body up. Jill dismissed Carlos's hand when she got at the top of the fence. "Are you serious? I've been to more boot camps than I can count – hold this for me," she threw her pack of cigarettes at him.
Carlos rolled his eyes and grinned. "Why would you need smokes now? We're working, Valentine!" he said playfully.
"Yeah," she puffed as she landed on the hard ground. "Just in case there's nothing better to entertain me in there. Shooting undead is getting really old."
The man merely shook his head, leading the way through a long corridor of dust. There were hangars on both sides and nothing inside any of them. Both had their guns at ready, but the 'alert cop' entrance they were pulling seemed really unnecessary – dust and useless carcass of cars were not a threat to anyone.
"Should we split?" Jill asked him, watching their surroundings carefully.
"Meet you by the end of the row," was his quiet answer.
The brunette took the right side, entering a small corridor between two hangars. Jill moved stealthily, still grasping her gun firmly. These past months her life had been resumed to that drill – hit the road, hit the ground, lock and load, and run back to the car.
It could be exhaustively boring sometimes, and it was good to have Carlos with her. Usually he kept her entertained with his annoying jokes, but she knew he wanted time to pass faster too, and that was his way to help her.
Some nights she still woke up with the echo of a shotgun. Jill could remember Alice's trembling hand, the smoke coming out of the barrel, and Angie on the couch. She had thought that, after watching her hometown fly into pieces, nothing would shock her much, and well, wasn't she wrong. Jill liked Carlos, but she definitively missed Angie. She was so clever and embarrassingly more mature than many adults.
Jill was not surprised that she missed Alice too, even though the way they separated could have said otherwise. The silent exchanges, the sense of constant safety around the most instable person on Earth, and even her rude manners had kept her mind in check.
That day Jill had lost them both, and even though Carlos could speak for two, it was not the same anymore, except for that pointless excursion over the country. The only change was that she was starting to have fun with the explosives Umbrella left in their facilities - 'to sanitize', if it came to that.
The back of the hangars was empty like the front corridor, and after a few yards she met the end of the perimeter. There was only dust there, remnants of campfire and dry vegetation. Carlos was a short distance away, watching the lengthy fence that surrounded the area.
She approached him slowly, and noticed he had a preoccupied air as he stared at a far house in the middle of the desert, outside the camp.
"What's wrong?"
Carlos looked at her. "It's in there."
Jill followed his gaze across the sandy landscape. "You're kidding me."
The house – or at least it looked like a house from that far – stood a few miles across the desert from that point. It was difficult to tell once the sun usually played tricks with their eyes in the sand with zero reference marks.
"It's your call," Carlos said, sticking his gun back to his belt. "I just think that, as we came all this way to get here-"
"I think you're right."
He looked at Jill. "You think I'm right?" There was a hint of sarcasm on his voice that the brunette didn't miss.
"Don't get too used to that," she said tersely but with a smirk on her lips. "So, up to the fence, again."
"I have a better idea," now Carlos's grin was slightly wild, and that made Jill frown.
"Oh, God…"
"Wait here," he said, ignoring her. Carlos turned around and sprinted back to the entrance gate's direction.
She rolled her eyes and decided to give him a chance. A few minutes later Jill heard the car engine as it drew near. Carlos hit the brakes of the vehicle and honked lightly for her to climb. The brunette actually chuckled as she walked towards the car and entered.
"Fasten your seat belt, baby," he said, pressing the gas pedal a few times.
"It's just a rusty fence, Olivera, not the China Great Wall."
"Jesus, you're no fun, Valentine," he smiled despite himself, and accelerated. The car quickly ate up the distance to the grates and easily crashed the ruined metal barrier. A huge cloud of sand lift off and surrounded them, entering through the rolled down windows and blurring the sight.
"Fuck!" Carlos heard Jill's muffled voice. "Slow down this shit, Carlos!"
He turned off the ignition and sighed. It took several minutes until the dust settled back down. He turned carefully to Jill. "I think we're against the wind."
"You think?" she hissed, folding her arms. "You're such an optimistic…"
"If you knew it beforehand, weather girl, you could have said something," he spat back.
Carlos was never grumpy, and it surprised Jill a little when she caught the tone of real annoyance on his voice. "All right, I didn't mean to sound like a bitch. Sorry."
He grunted in acknowledge and shrugged.
"Here, have a smoke," Jill rolled down her window as she handed a cigarette to him.
He accepted it in silence and lit it with a match. Jill kept throwing glances at him, but Carlos didn't look like he was going back to his talkative mode so soon. "Okay, how far you think we are from the house?"
Carlos threw the cigarette butt out of the window and studied the patch ahead of them. "I can't precise it. About a mile or two. But I'm an goddamned optimistic, it might be ten or fifteen."
"Cut some slack, Carlos! I already said I'm sorry!"
"What can I say, Jill? You hurt my feelings." She chuckled when she saw the grin back on his face. "So, why do you ask about the distance?"
"Roll up this window and hit the gas pedal. Keep an eye on the odometer," Jill said with a smug smile.
"Oh, I like that," Carlos laughed. "You ready?"
"To agree with your shitty plans? Always," she nodded in agreement.
XXX
She squinted when she spotted the growing dust ball in the middle of the desert. It seemed to approach her location at considerable speed, and it only took her a few seconds to realize there was a car underneath all the sand.
Alice somehow knew she was going to find out who was the sick bastard that was trying to fuck with her mind. She had the Jeep very well concealed – it had exploded once she got out of it, and now all that was left of the car were large chunks of metal that were still on fire.
Apparently, seeing the camp and reviving everything she had with Claire there was too much for her unstable brain. Never her psionic blast had been so responsive and fast. Maybe she could choose particular memories to control its intensity, but now she didn't have time to test that theory. She had business to attend to.
The adrenaline ran in her veins and pumped her heart faster than the t-virus did, giving her the dangerous sense of being the immortal at bay, waiting her moment to start a vicious hunting game until she decided to spare her prey and finally end it.
Alice hadn't felt that way the past few months, and she knew it was mostly due to Claire's presence. The redhead somehow forced her to focus on simple matters instead of attacking any living thing – except for Mikey, but he had asked for that.
The blonde sneaked back to the house after kicking sand to put out the faint sparks popping from the destroyed Jeep. She had been there for about an hour, and following the tingle in her blood, Alice approached a worn out wooden table that stood in the middle of the decaying room. The piece of furniture split in half and slid to different directions, forming the large entrance to a vertical tunnel. A few seconds later, a metal platform came up and stopped at ground level.
It had actually been the roaring outside that caught Alice's attention, but now that she knew what it was about, she stepped the elevator and descended. Slowly, the suffocating heat from the desert dissipated and her skin shivered with the soft blows of cold air.
The way down took about a minute, and when she finally faced the real facility, she understood why there were so many ducts of air conditioning and white lamps over the place. It was not inhabited, but a lot of equipment and computers were functioning over desks and lab counters, depending on electricity and the cold temperature.
She had no idea what happened there these days, but she knew it was the place K-Mart had escaped from after years being held hostage. There were several beds with cuffs, white sheet stained with blood and many signs of fight in there. The nearest monitor reported the amount of gas running in the ducts, and when she read the name of the substance – P15 – memories of her final days in the Army returned to her.
Along with the t-virus, the P15 was a nerve gas still in development, used to contain major riots and violent crowds or, in the case, people that tried to mess with Umbrella.
XXX
Alice woke up from a deep sleep with the noise of an explosion and the trembling of her bed in the infirmary.
"Shit hit the fan! They know!" Rain hissed, throwing a rifle to her after unceremoniously shaking her by the shoulders. "They fucking know! We have to get out of here! Move, Abernathy!"
Alice took off the IV feds from her arms and sat up, closing the white lab coat around her naked chest. She was still slightly doped, but she followed her friend out of the hospital wing. She knew Rain would carry her if that was what it took, but she had to regain control of her legs if she wanted to avoid them both from being killed.
The icy corridor was dark and empty, but Alice could hear firing and howls outside as well as flashes of light from the explosions. One quick look through the window allowed her to see Umbrella's insignia on helicopters, vans and on the back of many soldiers in black.
"What happened to Kaplan and J.D?" the blonde whispered, still struggling to keep up the pace with Rain.
"Worms' food," the brunette said.
Alice rolled her eyes. "You're all heart, aren't you?"
"Says little Miss Sunshine," Rain snorted. "Get in the locker room. You need to change."
The blonde didn't take long to locate her uniform. In between blurs, her sight seemed a lot more accurate in the dark than it had ever been before. She felt a lump in her throat once she had the time to fully acknowledge her friends had been eliminated.
She didn't even want to think what Rain was feeling. The brunette and J.D had grown up together, and despite the fact that she always gave Kaplan a hard time, she liked him a lot. Alice shook her head. She could not afford to waste a second on feelings now. Rain was still alive and she had to get her friend out of the base.
When she exited the room, Rain was just about to call her out. "C'mon, Alice."
"Who sold us?"
"That stupid boy Kennedy," Rain checked both sides of the hall before crossing it. "He wanted to help us with the information he had, and your fucking boyfriend convinced Leon to share it with him! He said he was with us!"
"Spencer?"
"That ass tried to sell the t-virus, for fuck's sake! Umbrella caught him, of course, and he gave them our names. I swear to you, I'm so killing him if Umbrella didn't do it by now-"
"And just for the record, he's NOT my boyfriend!"
"I know," Rain snickered. Alice rolled her eyes again. "So, gorgeous… How you feeling with this shit in your system?"
"There's no difference, I guess," the blonde said, but cringed slightly when she felt a pang in her right temple. It escalated from a throb to the sensation of a hot needle piercing her skull. "Fuck-"
She fell on her knees and dropped her gun, covering her ears and yelling in pain. Alice felt Rain squatting next to her, urging her to get up, but her voice was just a faint echo that kept mixing with the loud booming outside. She felt her friend's hand on hers, trying to pull her up, but it was too late.
Escorted by twenty Umbrella soldiers, Ada Wong marched towards them in her red dress. She looked calm, given the situation. Leon and Spencer were cuffed, both being held by two guards each. She heard Privet Kennedy speaking desperately to her, but she could not distinguish his words any better than she could Rain's.
Then there was the gas. She saw Rain fall next to her, and for a moment she thought she had just imagined it, but the brunette had actually fired from the cold floor and taken about five men down.
Suddenly everything seemed to slow down and fall silent. Alice felt the pain go away, and her tense muscles pulled her on her feet. Faintly the sounds and the movement came back.
"Fucking RUN, Alice!"
And Alice ran. She had to take the proof of Umbrella's vicious acts out of the line of fire. She ran to the parking lot, forbidding herself to look back and stare at her best friend for the last time. She was hit by bullets, but nothing seemed to hurt her anymore. Alice saw a grenade fly right past her shoulder. She ducked and threw her body under a Jeep, and then everything went black.
XXX
The wooden board floor creaked underneath Jill's boots. Her blue eyes ran the small area as she held up her gun, but there seemed to be no threat in there. Carlos was right next to her, doing the same, also certificating that the room was empty.
"Are you sure this is even a facility?" the brunette asked with one hand on her hip.
"Yeah," he paced around with a deep frown as he stared at his feet. "We always heard conversations about the facility in Nevada. It used to be like Siberia. No one wanted to be transferred here when they asked for back up, and usually the ones that came never went back."
"And why is that?"
"Rumor has it that this was like a torture chamber, and when they ran out of testing subjects, the Umbrella scientists started to use personnel too."
Jill chuckled. "God, your sense of humor is becoming morbid."
"Well, believe it or not, I'm not joking this time," Carlos said with a worried expression, watching their surroundings carefully. "And if I'm not wrong, there's a secret passage here that will lead us underground."
"You're serious, aren't you?" Jill asked in low voice, resting her hip on the table and folding her arms. "You really think- Shit!"
She felt Carlos's hand pulling her back as the old table actually moved and its surface parted ways, revealing a very dark tunnel. Jill watched stunned when, after a few seconds, a platform came up to their feet.
"Fuck me," she whispered.
"Are you okay?" he asked with a hand on her shoulder.
"Yeah…" she looked up and met his courteous dark eyes. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"Good," Carlos nodded. "Let's go, then."
They stepped the square platform and after a moment descending, the air around them began to chill. There was a low hum coming from below, and it was not until they actually got there that Jill understood what it was. Monitors and a lot of machinery were still functioning, just as if the employees had left for lunch and would return in a bit.
Jill felt goosebumps erupt in her arms and on the back of her neck as she glanced around the place, still firmly grabbing her gun. The bluish light and the cold air gave her the idea of a refrigerator in a bad horror movie. There was blood on the glass walls, and bloody footprints towards the end of the corridor.
"It looks intact," Carlos said with a grimace.
"I wish it had been taken care of," Jill hissed, hating the discomfort she felt. She didn't like to sound weak or scared, but that place just seemed too much. The brunette wondered how many people had died down there, and the thought didn't help all that much. She was resolved to reduce that facility to ashes, but every second felt longer, and her urge to leave only seemed to grow.
Not to mention the weird sensation that someone was watching her.
"What is it?" Carlos asked frowning, stopping next to her. Jill didn't respond immediately as she kept staring over her shoulder.
"I think there's-"
Something went past swooshing in the other direction, and this time Carlos noticed it too. They spun on their heels with their guns at ready, but they saw nothing more than creepy shadows.
"Let's find the purge device and get the hell out of here," Carlos grunted, turning away from her. They walked through the corridor together, the man marching backwards to watch the rear as Jill took point.
She felt once again the chill going down her spine as she moved further. Ignoring it as much as she could, Jill focused on what they had to do. The explosives were usually set up at random places, concealed by a fire hose or behind the electric power switch panel.
They would need controls and access codes in normal days, but Jill had learnt to cheat past the security systems – to Carlos absolute exasperation – with a hair pin.
Everything was controlled by chips, so she didn't have to be a bomb expert or even touch the wires. All she needed was to get the password.
It had been easy to locate the explosives in Miami. The facility was a large plant under the sun and above the Earth's surface, and most of the rooms still had name signs by the doors, so it was not complicated to find them and nuke the complex. They even had gotten extra dynamites to stock in case of emergencies.
That seemed to be a case like that, except that the bombs were up there, inside the car. Jill stopped at the end of the corridor and felt Carlos thud softly against her back. She looked to the right and to the left, but both directions looked exactly the same thing to her, and she had no idea which way to turn.
"Don't think, Jill," Carlos assured her. "Follow your instincts."
"Well, we should run, then," she grunted, taking the right. He was right behind her, but not even that kept the shivers away. "Fuck, I need a cigarette."
"Move on, Valentine," he urged. "The sooner we finish the sooner we can-"
"RUN!" Jill yelled, turning around and pulling him along. Carlos had a second to glimpse a horde of about twenty or more undead coming after them before he started to run.
All they could care about was to find the elevator, and suddenly the laboratories looked larger and maze-like. They ran over desks and chairs, leaving behind turned furniture, paper, pens and clipboards on the floor.
Jill and Carlos had the unspoken agreement of never shooting until it was the last resource; the firing could attract more of them and from different directions, and surely they didn't want to be cornered by those things.
They wore uniforms like prisoners and seemed faster than the poor walking corpses that usually wandered the streets.
"Fuck it," Jill grunted, spinning around and pulling the trigger. Carlos quickly followed her, and easily they eliminated the first row from the group, but others sprouted from adjacent corridors and doors, and they knew there would not be ammo enough to kill them all.
"We have to get back to that elevator!" Carlos shouted over the shooting.
Jill merely nodded. For the first time, panic was the only emotion she could feel. Carlos and she would be slaughtered by those creatures. Instead of the milky irises, they had their eyes completely black and evil, and they had a sense of hunt that the normal undead didn't have. Their teeth looked sharper and they growled a lot less.
It had been an ambush, and Jill and Carlos were surrounded by a group of intelligent monsters that could be silent when they were not supposed to be heard. She was losing hope before she ran out of ammo, but when her pistol jerked empty, Jill knew it was the end.
Even if they made it to the elevator, many undead would be able to follow and climb onboard with them. She heard Carlos curse next to her as he threw his useless gun away; he ran one arm around her shoulders a second before she closed her eyes. But nothing happened. Not to them, anyway.
A furious howl came ripping through the air, and she recognized the noises of necks being snapped successively. Jill opened her eyes and saw the cold lamps flashing above their heads. There was a dark figure moving at inhuman speed, jumping over the tables and kicking walls to get impulse.
Little by little, all the lights faded except for the emergency ones, and it was even more magnificent to watch the fight with little illumination flickering. Jill had no idea how or when they did it, but they were both on the floor, resting against the wall and gasping for air. Carlos seemed enthralled with the show as well.
Jill chuckled nervously when she caught a flash of blond hair. She was just about to let relief fall over her, when a strong hand caught her by the collar of her shirt and pulled her up from the ground. Choleric green eyes stared back at her and her face was greeted by puffing, hot breaths.
With the corner of her eye, Jill saw Carlos stand up and attack the blonde, but the woman was a lot faster and sent him crashing against metal drawers. The brunette swallowed as much as she could with the fingers in her throat, and she noticed the red hue fade from those beautiful green orbs.
The blonde's breathing was going back to normal speed, but she had not released Jill yet. She frowned and really stared back at Jill, finally recognizing her, just as if she had come back from a trance.
The brunette felt the immediate relief when the taller woman unclasped her shirt, looking scared at what she had done.
"Alice," Jill whispered, massaging her throat. "It's okay. It's okay, it's me."
Alice pressed her lips, looking extremely angry with herself, and to the brunette's utter disbelief, she took one step forward and hugged her. At first Jill thought Alice was trying to strangulate her again, but then she noticed her lanky arms around her waist and the complete lack of restraints as she left no space between them.
Jill patted her shoulders lightly, reciprocating the gesture, and chuckled somewhere near Alice's jaw line. "Glad to have you back, Wonder Woman," she whispered, not noticing that Carlos was standing up and approached the pair with a confused look on his face.
"Glad to have you back," Alice said in a raspy voice.
"So you two know each other," Carlos said, rubbing the bump he got in the back of his head. Alice and Jill stared back at him. "Damn!" he grunted with a grin. "It's you! The outsider woman! Do you remember me?"
"Yeah, I… remember you," Alice nodded, pretending she didn't notice the way Jill was looking at her. "I'm sorry for-" she pointed the corner she had thrown him at.
"Don't worry," he waved a hand and turned to Jill. "We met years back, on the road, when Matt was still alive."
The brunette was no longer paying attention to him; her eyes were on the many corpses that stood around them and then back at Alice. "What happened to you?"
"I could ask you the same," the blonde said with a smirk Jill finally recognized.
"I'm into explosives now," she answered with a smirk of her own.
"Was it you who destroyed the facility in Miami?"
"The two of us," Carlos corrected her, but as neither of them seemed to register that, he just slumped down at the nearest desk. "Fine. I'll be sitting here while you two talk and ignore me."
"You've got a possessive boyfriend," Alice teased her with a frown. Jill snorted and rolled her eyes. "But anyway, we have to get out of here. There are a lot more where those came from, and I see you're out of bullets. You have to come with me, Jill. I've ran into this group of survivors and they're heading to Arcadia."
"So it really exists?"
"We don't know but… they took a chance."
"And why did you stay behind?"
Alice looked down at her boots, feeling the pain in her chest hit her once again. "I wanted to finish Umbrella and try to find you along the way."
Jill smiled, not exactly sure of how and why Alice sounded so different when she didn't seem to have changed in the slightest. The blonde still was rude and brute, but now it really looked like she allowed people more easily around her.
"So… You said there's a group-"
"I left them about a week and a half ago," Alice lowered her eyes. "And it finally feels like I can go back to…" she smiled briefly as thoughts of Claire flooded her mind. "If it's you nuking facilities, I guess I have nothing to worry about anymore. Besides, there's someone in the convoy that you-"
"Alice."
The three of them spun around, the blonde pointing her gun at the direction the voice came from. It was just a monitor – one of the last that remained functioning after she made the energy crash. There was a Chinese woman on the screen, and Alice recognized her immediately.
"I'm going to kill you," she hissed, approaching the device as anger boiled inside of her.
"I think you may want to hear me first. You have to know that the Umbrella satellites have been following you for years and before you try, there's nowhere to hide."
"Is that a threat?"
"No," Ada looked over her shoulder. "It's a simple fact. And you're not the only one Umbrella's been tracking."
Alice felt a chill go down her spine. "The convoy?" she hissed menacingly, just as if she could actually hurt Ada. Jill and Carlos had come closer and she had them both beside her.
"The Terra Save has been on Umbrella's radar for years, now, but Wesker has recently developed interest for one person in particular," she calmly recited. "He thinks that he can get to you through her."
"He's a dead man if he touches-"
"She is inside a chopper, on her way to Umbrella Prime," Ada watched the blonde's expression turn blank. "She was tricked with a voice simulator device. They sent a transmission to her, pretending to be you. The soldiers surrendered her and abducted her in the middle of the night. Wesker wants you to come after her."
"How come Alice will know this is not a trap?" Jill asked when she noticed that her friend seemed paralyzed. Back in her day at S.T.A.R.S, she had heard nerve-wrecking stories about famous Albert Wesker and Ada Wong.
"It is a trap. But not a lie. For a week she was held hostage in a cell in Detroit, and then I picked Claire Redfield and drove her to the helicopter myself. You have to go find the rest of the convoy and lead them to Arcadia. You'll need to gather as many people as you can, and make sure they can shoot and fight. You'll need help, and I'll do my best from here."
"Why are you helping us?" Carlos asked.
"I have my reasons and they do not concern you," Ada said simply. "But Albert Wesker took something really important from me, and I want him as dead as you want. If you choose not to believe me, it's your loss. If you decide to take this mission, I'll instruct you further once you get to Alaska."
Jill's mind was spinning. Claire Redfield. There was only one Claire Redfield she knew, and she was Chris's sister. Was it him that Alice meant before? She wanted to ask the blonde, but she looked past beyond shocked to speak.
"I advise you leave this facility as soon as possible," Ada spoke again, looking over her shoulder one more time. "Project Tyrant is still running in the lower laboratories, and I'm not sure it'll stay down there for much longer. I assume you have a radio in your car?" she asked Jill, who nodded. "You can broadcast on the emergency frequency and you'll find the convoy. They will confirm what I said about Claire. And Alice… For God's sake, control your brain and stop burning electronic stuff," she scoffed. "Good luck." With that, the screen went blank.
Jill held Alice by the shoulders. "Come on. Let's get the hell out of here."
Alice simply went along with them towards the elevator, unable to speak, let alone think. She felt Jill keeping a firm grip on her arm; that was probably what kept her from being defeated by the sensation of a free fall. Carlos had an arm around her waist, and the three of them were lifted to ground level once the power was restored.
It felt good to see the sun again. Jill's dusty car was parked only a few yards away from the house, and Carlos detached from them to get the explosives in the trunk. Jill stared at him, appreciating what he was doing, and then she turned back to Alice, squeezing her eyes because of the clarity.
"Carlos and I will help you get there. It's going to be all right," the brunette promised her friend. She wasn't sure if they should create expectations, and she was not even sure if they would make it, but she had to try. Alice needed her, and somehow the idea of meeting Chris Redfield again was something closer to going home.
Carlos left the house with the detonator in his hands. "It's all set up. We have ten minutes once I activate it."
Jill offered him a short nod and lit a cigarette. "You ready?" she asked Alice.
The blonde shrugged, scanning their surroundings, Claire's scent swirling around her just as if the breeze carried it. The lump in her throat was definitively bigger than before. She withdrew for a second to collect her duffel bag that lay forgotten on the ground and turned to Jill. "I'll be a minute," she muttered hoarsely.
Alice looked up at the sun and then closed her eyes. Claire's smiling face invaded her thoughts, leaving the tent with her messy red hair. The blonde clutched her hands around the duffel bag and felt different contents there. She parted it open and removed objects that, at first, had no reason to be together. Then she understood.
It was Claire's – she had kept the screwdriver and Alice's shirt. She recognized the blood in the front from the night Claire punched her after a fight. Alice swallowed hard and looked up again as every unshed tear blurred her sight. The bright sky started to darken. Clouds gathered to hide the sun, and within seconds, rain was falling over her.
She knew it wasn't her doing it. Alice heard Jill's and Carlos's muffled exclamations. It had been years since it rained for the last time and they even jumped out of the vehicle for a moment, arms stretched to greet the water.
"Alice, come on! The bombs!" Jill called out over the thundering noises, her black hair plastered to her face.
The blonde put the items back on the duffel bag and slung it over her shoulder. She watched the dark blue sky for a second longer and then entered the car. Jill stared back at her with a reassuring smile. Carlos hit the detonator button and turned the key on the ignition.
When they stood about a mile from the house, it flew through the air into pieces, the fire contrasting beautifully with the storm. Alice rested her head on the window and brought the duffel bag to her chest.
"Claire," she whispered. "I swear-"
This is the final chapter, BUT NOT THE END. Thank you all for sticking with me until now. Sequel's already on the making.