Chapter Eleven.
Claire Redfield stood next to a tanker truck looking at a gauge. If it was broken, and she sincerely hoped that it was, then she might not be looking at the place where she was most likely going to die.
"What's the news?" a handsome Latino man said as he walked up behind her. He was dressed in a filthy pair of jeans and a long sleeved green shirt with a tattered Kevlar vest. Slung over his back was an AK-47 assault rifle.
Claire looked up to the top of the tanker. "I'm going to go up and look inside. If this gauge is right, we're looking at our last stand."
She climbed a rusty ladder to the top of the fuel tanker and went to the hatch on the top. She opened it and used a rod to prod the bottom of the tank. She knew it was useless, as she wasn't being overpowered by the stench of fumes. "Well?" the man said.
Claire climbed down before answering. "Bone dry," she said. "Now what?"
The man looked back at the dark yellow Hummer behind the tanker. "That's got half a tank left," he said. "Too bad we didn't find something with better mileage."
"We can't change what we've got," Claire said. "We've got food and water for a while. We could hole up over there maybe." She pointed to a nearby mesa, tracing her finger across her line of sight to outline what looked like a narrow little trail leading up the side. Carlos, the man, saw it to.
"That trail looks narrow," he said. "We could block it off pretty easily."
"What if that's the only way up? We'd be trapped."
"What if it's not? Then we'd be surrounded," Carlos said. "We ain't got a lot of options here."
Claire leaned against the dry tanker and crossed her arms, thinking. By nightfall, the first zombie would likely have made an appearance. It would be followed by more, and more, and more, provided the first hundred or so didn't kill them. Looking at the mesa, Claire saw it more and more as being a giant tombstone. A cap on the end of her journey.
The rear door on the Hummer opened and out stepped a blond woman wearing sunglasses. She was dressed like a Catholic priest who had seen better days and looked sweaty and annoyed. "Can we discuss this somewhere in the shade?" she said in a German accent. "We'll bake to death before the zombies have anything to say about it."
Claire looked up at the cloudless blue sky and wondered just where they were supposed to find shade. The woman who had gotten out of the Hummer was one of two. The other was a Japanese nun with a personality disorder. Claire had met them both in Antarctica, at one of Umbrella's facilities. Heinkel, the one complaining, was the more level-headed of the two.
The nun also exited the car and Claire was pleased to see she was wearing her spectacles and habit. That meant, out of the two personalities she had, Yumiko was the one in control. Yumiko was a calm, polite, sensible nun while Yumie, the other personality, was a murderous sociopath. Claire feared the heat might bring out the worst in Yumiko.
"We're out of gas," Claire said as the two walked over to the slight shade of the tanker. "We've what's in the Hummer and what's driving this rig here. It's not likely to get us far."
Heinkel looked to the mesa and rubbed her chin. She seemed to already be thinking what Claire and Carlos had been. "So we drive and hope to find fuel for another run, or we hold up on that cliff over there…obviously we must keep moving."
"What if we run out of gas on the highway before we find a station that isn't dry?" Carlos said. "We'll get swarmed."
No one said anything. All of them, even Carlos, was aware that the alternative was to die up on the mesa either by starvation or zombie attack. "You know what?" Carlos said. "To hell with it, let's just siphon the gas out of the big rig, fill the Hummer with it, and see how far we get."
They drew lots for siphoning duty, with Claire losing. She was spitting the taste of gasoline from her mouth when she looked down the road through the heat lines to see three black shapes shambling up over a hump in the road. Claire wasn't worried, but the sight depressed her all the same. They were always coming, no matter what. It was impossible to stop anywhere for more than two days without seeing one. One always became two, then three, and so on before it was time to put miles between them and the zombies before they formed a swarm.
Without a vehicle, forced to carry their food and water across the desert on their backs, the odds of being bitten eventually by a zombie, or something worse, multiplied. There was also the human element to consider. With the world becoming harder, the quality of people was on a sharp decline. Only the most ruthless and cruel were able to survive, and bands of them, however increasingly rare, were a severe hazard.
With the Hummer's gas tank as full as it was ever likely to be and the excess stored in the back, they drove down the road with Carlos behind the wheel. He kept his speed at 65 miles per hour, having heard once that was the speed vehicles got the best miles per gallon. About half an hour into their trip, as they drove past two walking emaciated corpses, there was a loud pop followed by the thwap, thwap, thwap, of a flat rubber tire.
"You're joking," Carlos said, looking up at the sky. "For real?"
"Do we have a spare?" Heinkel asked.
"I think that was the spare," Yumiko said.
Carlos stopped the Hummer, not wanting to bend or break the axle and further compound their doom. He pulled off to the side out of habit and got out along with the others. Claire saw that it wasn't the spare that had been blown, but another tire. All the tires were old and worn and Claire wasn't really surprised that this had happened.
"Maybe you two could, I don't know, pray or something?" Carlos said, looking to Heinkel and Yumiko.
"I'm going to go take care of the two zombies we passed," Heinkel said, pulling a fire axe out of the Hummer's back seat. "We'll spend the night here and hope too many don't show up. Maybe God will send something…who knows."
A rock had punctured the tire, and not a particularly sharp one, testifying as to how poor a condition the tires were all in. Carlos stood and stared at the flat front left tire while Claire tried to fan herself while standing next to Yumiko by the Hummer. "Glad you came to America with me?" Claire asked.
"I'm not sure there was a better option," Yumiko said, looking down the road as Heinkel neared the two zombies. "Helping you find your brother was the right thing to do, and I'm glad we tried."
Claire smiled and turned her gaze to the hot asphalt. Tried had been the key word. Once again, she had not been able to find her brother Chris. It seemed every time she went looking for him, she wound up in Umbrella's mess. She had hoped at least this time, with the world ending, she would be reunited with him. "But no, here I am in the desert," she muttered.
"What's that?" Yumiko said.
"Nothing."
"No, I mean, what's that?" She was pointing down the road in the direction Heinkel had gone. Claire squinted, worrying Yumiko had spotted a mutant and Heinkel was about to be attacked
It wasn't a mutant, but a motorcycle. Heinkel had felled the two zombies and was standing in the middle of the road, the axe in hand as the motorcycle slowed to a stop. The rider was wearing a hood or a cowl and Claire couldn't tell much more than that. Heinkel and the rider spoke for a few moments before Heinkel jumped into the cluttered sidecar and rode down to the broken Hummer.
The rider was a woman wearing a long brown coat over a white top. She had brown shorts and kept her legs protected from the road by long stockings that fastened to her shorts. She took the hood she was wearing down as she dismounted from her motorcycle, revealing short, dirty blond hair that was as in need of a wash as any of theirs. "Hi," she said. "My name is Alice. I've met Heinkel, here."
"We saw," Claire said, shaking hands with Alice. "I'm Claire. This is Carlos and that's Yumiko." Claire was sure Yumiko's second personality would come up sooner or later, but it could wait. "We're pretty much dead, but it was nice meeting you."
The joke fell a little flat, but Alice forced a smile. "Flat tire or no gas?"
"A little of both," Carlos said, who was looking at Alice more so than was polite. "That tanker you passed was ours. We ditched it not half an hour ago. Siphoned its tank and now a flat tire."
Alice went to her sidecar and began digging through her supplies. She pulled out a fine-toothed saw for cutting metal and handed it to Carlos. "See if you can't widen your wheel wells. If we're lucky, we can fit the truck tires onto this thing. Are they all bad?"
Claire nodded. "Bald and worthless."
"What about the truck?"
"Slightly less bald and worthless," Carlos said. "I'll saw."
"I'll go with you," Claire said. "There's a jack and a tire iron in the tanker."
Claire made room for herself in Alice's side car as she turned and drove back towards the tanker. With the wind and the sound of the engine, there was little opportunity to talk but plenty to wonder and suspect. Was this Alice woman a scout? She had been carrying a lot of supplies for that to make sense, but Claire had seen stranger things. In any case, unless the woman was a scout or an outcast from a larger group of people, she had to be capable to survive on her own for as long as she looked to have had.
They stopped by the tanker and found that about five zombies has already stumbled across it at were moaning around the cab. Alice drew two curved blades from under her coat and made short work of the zombies, cleaving their skulls and severing their heads.
"Nice," Claire said. "Yumiko and you might have things to talk about."
"That mousy nun?" Alice said. "I mean…"
Claire laughed and explained Yumiko's mental condition. Alice's reaction was as Claire had expected. "Vatican agents," she said. "Out here?"
"It's a long story," Claire said. She told it as they got the jack out and began removing tires from the tanker. Claire had Alice help gather rocks to keep the axles from bending when they let the jack down, in case of the remote chance they hit upon a load of gasoline and would be able to refuel the tanker.
Claire explained her own dealings with Umbrella from Raccoon City, to Rockfort Island, to her brief time helping the Iscariot organization carry out covert operations against Umbrella. She told her about Carlos's involvement with Umbrella, quickly getting to the part where he was betrayed and began work taking the company down.
After Claire had run out of explanations to make, Alice stopped and looked at her. Her eyes seemed to pierce her and the expression on her face was one of flat astonishment or disbelief.
Great…Clair thought. I've made her think I'm crazy. Too much information, should've shut my mouth…
"I've heard of you," Alice said. "You're Claire Redfield. Your brother's name is Chris."
"How…how do you know that?" Claire asked, wondering just who this Alice person was.
Alice blinked as though coming out of a mild trance. "I've had dealings with Umbrella, too," she said. "They did something to me. Made me a test subject."
Claire unconsciously took a few steps backward, looking for spines or extra arms to come popping out of Alice. "Why didn't you say anything before?" Claire asked.
"I wasn't sure who you were," Alice said. "Everyone I meet out here is either ignorant of Umbrella's hand in this or a neo-barbarian cannibal."
"We're neither," Claire said. "We're just a bunch of wandering losers."
"Losers?"
Claire held her hands out and looked around the desert on both sides of the highway. "Look at this," she said, letting her hands flop to their sides. "We were all fighting to stop Umbrella. Me, the Vatican, ex-STARS…even some agency in England was after them, but look at what happened anyway."
Alice shrugged. "I blame the people. Everyone knew well enough what Umbrella was up to in time to stop them, but they didn't. Greed, laziness…whatever it was, we're all equally to blame. It's over now, so I don't care. Let's get these tires back and see if they fit before it gets dark. I've got a little something I'd like to run by you all."
Claire nodded, feeling slightly ashamed at her speech. It was true, they had lost, but being sorry wasn't going to make it better.
To be continued…
