Chapter 10

Next Stop: City of the Damned

The bullets went flying all through the house on the outskirts of Harvardville. The bullets were met with the swipes of 4 blades knifing through the air like a blowtorch through butter. It almost seemed as if these 2 weapons were having a conversation: the 9mm rounds calling the bladed hand out, and the claws responding with more than the bullets expected.

None of this mattered to Chris at the time. All he wanted was Krueger out of his house and in pieces. The S.T.A.R.S.-issue Beretta, that had been with him ever since he'd gotten out of the Spencer estate, but not when he went out to Rockfort Island, was the only immediate weapon he had on hand to beat the dream demon. Even so, Chris had no idea how he broke out into the real world with his powers intact, or how he was even able to. All Chris knew was that Krueger had come back to kill him, and he shouldn't let happen.

Another shot rang out from the Samurai Edge's barrel, which was swiped away with lightning-fast speed by the steel claws of Krueger's hand. "That little pop-gun of yours ain't gonna help you any longer, Redfield", he taunted in that ungodly snarl of his. It was then that Chris noticed that Krueger had gotten worse in the years: his skin was dark-red, his teeth razor sharp, and his eyes blood-scarlet in hue. He was no longer a master of the nightmare, he was an absolute demon.

The Beretta had fired its last bullet. Quickly checking the magazine and finding no remaining bullets, he threw it off to the side, then remembering that his old Bowie knife lay in the holster under his shirt. Chris grabbed for it under his green Under Armor shirt—

- just as Krueger swiped his shoulder, 4 cut marks raking down and stopping midway to the elbow. Chris reached for his shoulder with his left arm, a look of pain crossing his face as a gasp escaped his mouth.

But Krueger wasn't done yet.

Chris looked up to see the claws reaching for his face. Feinting toward the ground, Chris's right hand came away with the knife in its grasp as he delivered a roundhouse kick, centering his weight as the right leg chopped for Krueger's legs—

-but they never made contact, as Krueger jumped toward Chris, avoiding the kick that may have brought him down. Claws spread wide and poised to the striking point, Chris could hear the air whooshing past Krueger as he jumped.

Just as the thought went through his mind, the clawed arm swiped down toward Chris. He rolled to the left, away from the talons as they buried themselves in the floor. He could hear the sharp ishhnnk/i as they buried themselves in the tile, then the mortar underneath. Seizing the opportunity, Chris changed his hold on the knife and buried it in Krueger's shoulder, driving the blade through skin and muscle before the tip made contact with the bone of the shoulder. A small glimpse of –what Chris thought it was—agony crossed Krueger's burnt, wasted face. But it didn't stay there, quickly being replaced by a demonic grin and just as hellish laughter, as Krueger's left arm reached for the knife and swiftly pulled it out, the cut healing faster than Chris could comprehend, almost as if the stab had never existed in the first place.

Still with the satanic smirk on his face, Krueger launched the Bowie knife straight for Chris's heart. Chris launched himself up, but he was a bit too slow this time, as the knife buried itself in its back, right behind where the heart would be. Shock began to spread through Chris's body as the life, slowly and painfully, eased out of it. His vision doubled, tripled, and went misty as Krueger walked up to him with a calmly ironic look on his face. It remained there as one slick, black shoe-clad foot launched itself at Chris's head, and the recoil was enough to push the knife a centimeter deeper into his body. But it was enough.

"I think you've got the point", Krueger cracked as he stepped over Chris's body, leaving him to die in his own scarlet pool. All those long, hard years of fighting against the darkest powers, had seemingly been all for nothing in the end.

Christopher Redfield was no more.

Thankfully, Chris's house in Harvardville wasn't horribly far from the nation's capital, and Ash's Oldsmobile Delta 88 made it there in record time. For looking quite old, beat up, going through 3 attacks by the evil dead – one of them including a crash landing - the car still ran like it was still new, with a speed that exceeded its original specifications.

Jill allowed herself to be thankful for that, but she wouldn't allow herself to feel completely safe until she knew that Chris was alright. But just before the Delta managed to pull up into the driveway, Jill caught a look at the Dream Master – Jacob's – face, and it didn't look hopeful, especially when he shook his head when he saw Jill.

I've gotta keep my hopes up; Chris is a fighter, and he may come out beat up, but… I'm sure he'll survive.

As soon as Ash smacked on the brakes, Jill threw open the door of the Olds and barged through Chris's front door, not waiting for the others. "Chris! CHRIS!" The call rang out through the walls, the rooms, up the stairs of the house, but it went unanswered. When nothing but the almost dead silence of the upper-middle-class house greeted her with a reply, Jill racked the recesses of her mind in exhaust to find some sort of explanation of why Chris wasn't there.

Maybe he's at the Emmy's Diner in Harvardville, or he got called for a B.S.A.A. excursion at the last minute and wasn't able to tell me…he can't be dead…can he?

Fighting the tears that were working their way up to her sapphire eyes, Jill looked through every front room, from the living room to their bedroom. She saw no sign of him, but he did see that the top of the bedside table, where he usually set his Beretta, was now empty. Mentally storing that tidbit of information, Jill went to the kitchen.

But she wasn't alone. Ash was standing in the entryway of the kitchen, a stony look on his face. Jacob was holding Rebecca in his arms a few feet away, looking up toward the ceiling. Angela was sitting on the couch another few feet away, her face in her hands, Leon holding her in his arms. All of this put together a post-funeral picture for Jill, but she wasn't ready to give up hope just yet.

Jill made a path for the kitchen as Ash begrudgingly let her through. She could she why he was so uneasy as the horrifying sight lay in front of Jill's eyes.

Chris Redfield was lying of the left side of his back, a pool of deep scarlet blossoming around his limp, lifeless body. His eyes, normally the brightest shade of green, were now dull with a surprised look in them, mouth agape. Motioning around him, Jill could see why the pool formed: Chris had died hard, had died trying to live.

On his muscular right arm were 4 parallel cuts that extended themselves down before stopping in the middle of the biceps and triceps. A pit in the tile, caused by the same knifes that cut through his skin, lay in a powdery mess next to Chris. But what Jill saw as the ultimate cause of his death was the crown jewel of the unspeakable carnage.

His old Bowie combat knife, the same weapon that had been with him since the first T-virus outbreak, lay embedded in his back, the hilt sticking out at an unnatural angle. She didn't need a doctor's prognosis; Jill knew that this must've been the killing wound. She could almost see the irony behind it: the most beloved weapon had turned against its wielder in the last battle against evil.

And yet, she couldn't bring herself to believe it: Chris Redfield, the man who she had fought by for all these years, her saving grace against the iron clutches of Albert Wesker, was gone for good.

She fell to her knees, her jeans soaking up his blood as she collapsed on Chris's body and cried her eyes out until she thought they'd burst apart from all the pain and sorrow. Why, Krueger…WHY?

She buried her face into part of Chris's shoulder that was still clothed, hoping against hope that he'd come back to life just so she could hear his voice one last time.

Then Jill felt a warm, smooth, strong hand on her left shoulder. Jill, lifting her slightly reddened eyes, looked at the hand to see that it was very slightly dirty, and followed the arm until she was looking at Ash's face. Instead of the stony lonesome look that she had seen earlier, it was now adorned with a look of saddened compassion and understanding at what had happened. Even the gaunt eyes seemed to be decorated with this same feeling. She lifted herself away from Chris's body, encoiling her arms around Ash, more tears flowing onto his shoulder, as she felt Ash's chin lightly resting on the top of her head. Jill, even though she barely knew him, took comfort in the fact that he was trying to console her, as she let the tears keep flowing.

"I know, kid…I know", Ash whispered as his hand of flesh tenderly stroked Jill's back for a while, his gauntlet hand resting a few inches above the back of her waist. As he did, she gently pushed herself a couple of inches away from him to look into his blue-green eyes. They seemed to shine with an almost unearthly bright light, even as they stood up, still in each other's arms.

At the sound of a short scuffle, they turned toward the entryway to see the rest of the gang standing there, waiting patiently for them to compose themselves. When they showed that they did, Ash's flesh hand now in Jill's' right in a considerate manner, Jacob looked at them and said, "Alright, guys, no more grieving…cause we've got a dream demon to take down."

At this, they remembered the mission at hand, and they all headed out for Ash's Delta. But Jill, still with a grip on Ash's fingers, pulled him back. "What's up, Jill?" She said nothing, but crouched down beside Chris one last time and pulled the Bowie knife out of his back, wiping the blood off of it with a gauze pad she had in her back pocket. She then stuffed the knife in a hip pouch – she'd had her equipment with her for some time – and looked down at Chris as she stood back up.

"I'll make him pay for what he's done, Chris." At her determined voice, the grip on her hand Ash hand squeezed once so that he got her attention. They looked into each other's eyes for another moment before leaving as Ash amended…

"We'll make him pay, Jill…we ALL will."