So now we've explored pre-five. Here were going to see what occurs between that and Africa. We'll find out a few things about what Sheva's been doing and how Chris ends up with her again in Africa.
Obviously I've tweaked the story a bit but it doesn't take the fun from five. Just makes it a little more juicy. I'm going to play with 5 and see where the story takes me. I'll likely edit out parts, play down other parts, and add my own twists on things to make it interesting. Don't flame me for changing the story in places, we all know this is how I role.
Thanks everyone for your dedicated reading!! I love you guys!
Chapter 11: If life gives you lemons…cram them right up its ass!
In the year that followed Jill Valentine's unfortunate death, Chris Redfield found he was capable of great, gaping, terrible caverns of bottomless rage.
Most of the people close to him eventually stopped trying to reach him, save for Claire who seemed unwilling to take the hint and leave him to his self destruction.
He took every dangerous mission in every remote place in the world. He always went under prepared, under gunned, and sometimes…a little drunk. He drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney, picked fights in bars with guys twice his size and worked out until he was pretty sure he was as big as a brick shit house.
Sheva Alomar was always on his mind. Always. It was likely the only thing that kept him out of the beds of the tramps that hit on him in bars.
He'd tried to contact her at first, after Jill's death, but the BSAA said she was in deep cover and couldn't be pulled. After that, he knew she'd tried to call him and he'd deliberately avoided her phone calls, too pissed at her to care. She hadn't been there for him in his greatest moment of need, what did he care if she was trying now to get in touch?
A few months ago, she'd stopped calling. Pretty much everyone had stopped calling.
He'd taken down more terrorists in the last year then he'd had over the entire course of his career. He was known in circles as "The Executioner" and the "Kamikaze". There was no mission too big, no mark too challenging or dangerous. He went in, he killed, he destroyed and he went back out to leave the BSAA to clean up the mess in his wake.
His reputation opened doors for him to do what he wanted within the organization. Higher ups, when speaking of doing things quick and dirty, called for a "Redfield".
He'd effectively alienated anyone and everyone who mattered to him. No one but Claire gave a damn anymore about whether he lived or died. His answering machine sat empty of messages from caring parties.
He was alone in the world and for the first ten months following Jill's death that had been just the way he wanted it. But in the last couple of months, he'd begun to feel the ache of loneliness. He could almost feel Jill in the great beyond shaking her head at him in disgust at what he'd become. He was a drunk with no friends. Taking away what made him Chris Redfield was just as effective as killing him. Had Wesker put a gun to his head and splattered his brains out all over the walls, it wouldn't have been any worse.
The Hummer he was driving sputtered a little over a pot hole in the dirt road he was driving. Chris gripped the wheel and glanced out into the scenery as he passed by.
Africa. The Serengeti spread before him in a safari of endless sand and sun and green leafy tree tops. He'd flown in to Johannesburg International several days before and met up with Barry at a bar there to discuss his latest assignment.
Even Barry had been cool to him upon their first meeting. It had taken several drinks for Barry (Chris had not had a single drink besides water) and Chris busting his old style of jokes for the other man to loosen up.
The mission was more straight forward then his previous ones. He was to head to Kijuju, a small out of the way village in South Africa, and rendezvous with Alpha Team to help them pursue a man named Ricardo Irving. Irving was supposedly privy to information regarding an ill informed terrorist attack currently referred to as "The Doomsday Project". Little was known about the attack but sources indicated that it was going to possibly be global in scale.
All Barry had for information was that Irving may have ties to the residual left overs of the WilPharma coporation. WilPharma had gone under with Kennedy and his sister's revealing of their corruption concerning the T-Virus vaccine and their misuse of the G-Virus sample left over from William Birkin's research in Raccoon City. Tricell had stepped in and cleaned up the mess but Chris knew for a fact that there were rotten tomatoes in Tricell as well. Someone within that company had been in cahoots with Wesker.
But Tricell was a key player in the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium which was a big funding source for the BSAA. So no one was about to start asking questions based on hear-say.
Barry had given him coordinates, general information, and sent him on his way. Chris had driven through parts of Africa that had looked as affluent as any in the States. He'd driven through dirt poor towns as down trodden as any in a third world country. He'd driven through the savanna and over grasslands recently tried by wild fire. He'd seen herds of gazelle, packs of lions, side striped jackals and bushpigs.
He'd enjoyed the shade beneath umbrella trees and slapped at the evil ants that ran rampant around the whistling thorns.
All in all, he'd enjoyed the rough hewn beauty of the Serengeti. The weather could be blistering and the evenings so cold it was amazing. The truth of the desert was really quite simple: when the days reached a hundred and fifteen degrees, nights in the eighties sometimes felt arctic to the human body. Chris kept hydrated and beneath the shade as much as possible.
As his car passed beneath the fluffy clouds of a clear blue sky, Chris Redfield found himself wondering with all the comrades he'd lost, all the evil he'd seen, all the sacrifices he'd made… if it was all worth fighting for.
The savanna spilled him into the epicenter of a small town. Thatched roofs and scantily clad bodies meandered around as he passed, some working out of stalls and others peddling their wares on the side of the road.
Kijuju reminded him a little of Gisan with its humble lines and crumbling buildings. But there was a promise of power long since fled in the buildings that had once stood proudly in heart of a budding Provence.
Someone had pumped money into this town once. It was clear in the architecture, in the towering buildings far from the huts he'd encountered in Gisan. It was poor here, no doubt, but it hadn't always been. It looked more like a town that had fallen on hard times. He knew that Kijuju had once been a hub for travelers and merchants. Though he figured it had been years since anyone had travelled here with any real financial purpose.
A glance down the back alleys of the roads showed him rotting animal carcasses alight with the hungry bodies of flies and bugs. The faces of the people he passed were creased with hard work and worry, their clothes stained with sweat and filth. He figured bathing was not a very necessary thing to people struggling just to survive.
He also noticed that he was the only white guy he'd seen in the last hundred miles. This was not always uncommon in countries where the BSAA sent him in to conduct business but it wasn't going to help smooth the political waters any either. Kijuju politics were pretty old and narrow minded. Not only was he white, he was American and these two things got him plenty of dirty looks from passersby as he drove into the small town.
Chris pulled the Hummer to a halt at the corner of a stand selling skinned animals and overly ripe fruit.
He climbed from the car and pulled a bottle of water from his back pack, taking a long swig before strapping it back in place. He was aware of every set of eyes for yards watching him with interest as he pocketed his car keys and pushed his map and binoculars into the back pack.
He wasn't armed at the moment, not wise exactly when in possibly hostile territory, but Barry had insisted that he not carry just in case he'd been pulled over by the local law enforcement. They didn't need a reason to throw an American guy in jail. And he did NOT want to anger them by being white, American, and armed.
A contact with the BSAA was meeting him and his escort at the butchery in town before they headed off to their destination.
It was good they were sending him an escort, he didn't speak Swahili and a majority of the people in Kijuju were of Bantu origin. Chris was fluent in plenty of languages (German, Italian, French, Russian and enough Spanish to get by) but Swahili was one of the hardest languages to master.
He pushed a hand through his sweat damp hair and glanced down at his tan desert gear. He was dressed in loose garb, allowing for the passage of air and giving him the freedom to move quickly but the outfit wasn't flattering at all. In fact, he stuck out like a sore thumb surrounded by the colorful clothes of the other people in town. Women dressed in saris of bright orange, red, and green were quite common around the small village. Men seemed more laid back, dressing in plain white tanks and dark print tops.
Chris took another long pull on his water and struck up a cigarette, watching a group of children playing not far from where he stood with a stick and a colorful ball. They were dressed in ragged green and blue shirts and shorts and seemed to be having the time of their lives. One girl, her hair neatly braided against her scalp, turned to meet his eyes and smile, clutching a filthy baby doll to her chest.
Chris smiled back and not for the first time in his thirty plus years kind of wished he'd taken the time out of revenge to have a few rug rats.
"Mr. Redfield, your reputation precedes you."
His heart fell into his stomach and tried to fall out his ass. His contact was-
"I'm Sheva Alomar." She had her hand held out to him, palm open, waiting to be shook.
She was acting so cool. As if they'd never met. As if he'd never had her under him, over him, been inside her and watched her face as she'd come. He didn't know what game she was playing but he'd play along.
He took her hand, shook it, "Just Chris thanks. I take it you're going to accompany me to the destination."
"Yes." She released his hand when he would have liked to have held on. "The government here is not keen on outsiders. That's why I'm here. To smooth things over."
"Yeah they really roll out the carpet for Americans." He wanted to touch her. Take her face and kiss her. He wanted to pick her up, throw her in the back of the Hummer and ravish her. The look on her face told him that if he'd dared, she'd knock him stupid.
Sheva smiled politely and turned to walk beside him as they started down the road. She was dressed in a shiny purple tank top and cargo pants. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a sleek ponytail.
She handed him an earpiece that he slid into his ear to match her own.
Chris wanted to take her hand, stop her, and beg her to forgive him for avoiding her all those months ago. He wanted tell her he was an idiot, a fool, a moron for cutting her out of his life because he'd just been too fucked up to let her in. But he couldn't. He didn't dare. The look on her face said she'd slap him down if he tried.
His head set hissed, indicating an incoming transmission from HQ.
"Chris, Sheva, this is Kirk. How's the signal?"
"Comin in loud and clear dude. How's Stacy?"
"Pregnant as fuck and making sure I know it." Kirk and Chris were old buddies. He and his wife Stacy had been there to help Chris pick up the pieces after Jill's death.
"Women can't live with em-" Chris prompted.
"Can't shoot em." Kirk answered and they laughed together. Sheva merely rolled her eyes and kept walking. "Listen, the two of you are meeting your contact at the Pyamy Butchery at the edge of town. Get suited up and make your way to the town square to rendezvous with Alpha team. Got reports of Irving being sighted there at a black market weapons deal."
"Will do Kirk, thanks."
"Roger, over and out."
The towns people parted a little as they passed. A few men stood around kicking a filthy blood stained sack that lay motionless on the ground. Chris was hoping there wasn't what he thought there was in there but he didn't stop to find out. The last thing he needed was to get involved in somebody else's business.
Not far from the butchery they were pulled up short by a few guards at a check point.
The first man in question, toting a wicked looking machine gun, stepped up to frisk Sheva. He swept his hands down her arms and waist and slid them around to grab her ass and squeeze.
Chris had made a fist and taken a step forward before he caught himself.
Sheva, meanwhile, shoved the man away, "You don't have to get touchy!" She whisked out money and pressed it into the man's hand before she turned to Chris. "Let's go."
Chris nodded and passed by the rapist in training. The other man didn't back off and they were forced to brush against each other as they moved. Chris's arm brushed the other man's chest. He turned his head and met those dark eyes.
There was nothing sane in that look. It was the look of a man who'd long since abandoned reality. It made Chris think of the eyes of the things in Gisan.
Sheva led him down a narrow street lined with shops and empty buildings. A large sign told them they were close to the butchery. Halfway there a soft breeze began blowing and when Chris turned to look back at the town, it was mysteriously empty. Not a single person stood on the street from which they'd come.
Sheva shook her head when he gave her curious eyes. "It's getting close to dusk. The town people go in when the sun starts setting. The cold keeps them from congregating outside."
Chris hit the kill button on his com and grabbed her arm, pulling her gently to a stop. "Sheva, please. We need to talk."
She shook his hand from her arm and said under her breath. "Not now. Not here. There are eyes everywhere here. I'm known here. Let's go..partner."
She kept moving toward the butchery.
Partner…
He flashed on Jill and his chest ached. Shaking it off, he kept moving after her.
In the shadow of the back doorway to the butchery, he took her arm again. "Sheva…"
She turned, glanced down the street and up at the decrepit building beside them, satisfied they were away from prying eyes, she said. "Chris…nows not the time. We're on a mission. You of all people now that the mission comes first. Whatever you have to say can wait."
"I just wanted-"
"If you're going to apologize, don't. I don't care. I don't want to hear it. I get it. I'm not stupid. You met someone else. You moved on. End of story. Let's just leave it." She turned and opened the door giving him no time to retort.
End of story? Did she think that was what had happened? Did she?
He followed her into the shop.
Their contact met them. He was dressed in a turban and loose fitting white garb. His face was tanned and lined with sun and age.
"Good. You're here. Come with me I have your gear."
Sheva took the man's arm and hugged him. "Reynard. It's good to see you."
Reynard Fisher, Special Agent undercover, hugged her back briefly. "You too, matokeo ya utafutakiji kwa."
Sheva smiled at the Swahili endearment. She and Reynard had been friends for the many years he'd been stationed here undercover. She thought of him much like a father figure.
He led them back to a small room surrounded by strung animal carcasses and boxes of preserves. It smelled like rotten meat and vomit and something close to the zombies in Raccoon City.
"Here. Grab your weapons." Reynard gestured to a weapons case filled with ammo and a Beretta for each other them. There were also Kevlar vests and shoulder holsters for their guns.
Chris set his back pack up on the counter and withdrew his BSAA uniform. He shed his shirt and tossed it on the table. Shirtless, he listened as Sheva and Reynard exchanged information about the coordinates of the town square and Irving.
Sheva concentrated on what Reynard was saying, profusely aware that Chris was half naked and dewy with sweat two feet from her. The two men were now discussing the Uroboros Project, which was the meat of the matter for which they must locate Ricardo Irving.
She should have been focusing on the situation at hand. Instead, she was very aware that Chris was back in her life.
God she'd missed him. Each day apart from him had been hell. She'd cried her self to sleep in the first few weeks after he refused to take her calls. And then she'd dusted herself off and got on with her life to the best of her ability. It had been hard; harder at times because of…well because of lots of things. But she'd done it. She'd almost convinced herself she was done with him.
And yet the sight of him without his freaking shirt had just set back her self healing attempts to the very beginning.
It was pathetic.
Reynard took her hand and squeezed as she finished strapping on her shoulder holster and jacking a round into the chamber of her M93R.
"Be careful, Sheva. I do not like the way the town has become of late. I worry that things here are already escalating out of control."
"I will." She kissed his cheek as Chris shook his hand.
Together, they started out of the side door of the shop, stepping into the heart of the business districts back alleys.
A long narrow stairway spilled them down and had them stepping over a dead goat left to rot in the blare of the sun.
"Listen," Chris said as they stepped into a hoodoo shop lined with human skulls and filled with gris-gris. "No matter what else happens, we stick together."
"Don't worry." Sheva answered briefly. "I may not be as big as you, but I can still hold my own."
He knew that from personal experience. Hadn't she thrown him against the wall of his apartment and nearly knocked the breath from his lungs before they'd-
He stopped that line of thought right there. No reason to think about sex when they were headed into hostile territory. Of course, the sight of her ass in those tight pants didn't help matters.
The room opened up into another alley filled with boxes and a stairway leading up to an open door. Somewhere beyond that door, someone was screaming.
"Chris…"
"Yeah I hear it." And they were running.
They burst through the door in tandem, Chris high, Sheva coming in low. Their guns trained on two men forcibly holding down another. They were feeding him something, forcing it down his throat. The other man struggled, screamed and went limp beneath them.
"Hey!" Chris cocked the hammer on his pistol. "Up slowly, hands in the air."
The men turned and there was nothing in their gazes, an emptiness that was startling. They looked…well…dead. Except they were walking. One of them said something in Swahili and they laughed.
"Get on the ground," Sheva instructed, "Or we'll shoot you."
The man on the ground started having a seizure, distracting them from the two men before them. He convulsed, clawing at his throat and screaming. In the confusion, the two men disappeared and Chris was forced to let them go and grab the man on the ground.
"Hey…jesus…Sheva radio for help."
"Yeah." She touched her ear pierce and the man on the ground let out a gurgle, a rattle like death, and went still. Blood spilled from his eyes, from his nose and mouth and he stared blankly up at the ceiling.
Chris, still holding him, turned to Sheva. "He's gone."
"What was that? What did they do to him?"
"I don't know but-"
The dead man lunged at his throat and Chris shoved him away as something disgusting and slimy burst from his lips. It looked like…a large nasty flower with teeth, exploding out of his throat to whip wildly in the air before it slid back into his mouth.
The man rushed at them and Chris and Sheva opened fire at the same time, Sheva instinctively going for the chest but Chris…well…he'd survived Raccoon City. And he knew there was only one way to kill a zombie.
He shot the man clean between the eyes.
The impact of the bullets lifted him off his feet and threw him onto his back on the ground. He was dead for sure now, blood seeping from the hole in his head and chest to pool around him on the ground.
"Jesus…what was that?"
"It wasn't like any zombie I've ever seen." Chris met her eyes. It was in that moment they both knew they'd stepped into something similar to Gisan. They'd walked into trouble. And there was no backing out now.
The next few hours passed quickly enough. They found themselves on the run, sometimes for long periods of time, from hordes of the…things that pursued them. In fact, very little respite came after that first man had lain dead upon the floor.
They moved when they had to, shot when they had to, hid when they had to. The village of Kijuju was teeming with monsters and there was nothing to be done for it but run.
Panting, after a hurried run from a horde of the undead, Chris slammed a door and promptly kicked a full oil drum over in front of it, effectively sealing out the dead beating on the other side of it.
They couldn't be far from the town square now. They'd been on the move for what seemed like hours. His personal GPS system told him they were just a quick walk to the square.
HQ had politely informed them that they were to continue on with the mission. So what if the entire town filled with locals were hostile? Apparently locating Irving was more important then their own lives.
Chris leapt down from a small cliff to find himself behind a house at the edge of the town square. He turned to see if Sheva needed help getting down herself but she was already on the ground and moving toward the open back door of the hut.
He should have figured she'd be apt to touch him as little as possible. Seriously…she thought he'd found someone else and that was why he had cut her off. God she was such a…girl.
They both heard the shouting when they entered the hut. It sounded like a rally outside the walls of the house. A glance through the dirty window showed them a large mob of the infected locals cheering around a suspended dais high above the rest of the town. A man stood atop the dais, shouting into a megaphone. Chris couldn't understand what was being said but he understood the man was inciting a riot.
A huge, hulking beast of a man stood off to one side wielding an axe longer then a man with a blade as big as Chris. The edge of the blade was crusty with dried blood.
Sheva let out a gasp, "Chris…is that-"
Chris put his hand on his arm to stop her and maybe..well…for comfort. The crazy mob had Reynard Fisher on his knees on top the dais. He was shouting in rage at them while two of them held his arms and pushed him down.
"Oh god…" Sheva struggled against Chris's grip as the axe man lifted the giant blade high into the air. "We have to help him! Chris! Let me go!"
"We can't. There's hundreds of them, Sheva. We're out numbered."
"Reynard!" She whispered it with such grief that it broke his heart to hear it.
The axe blade came swinging down, Sheva turned into his arms and buried her face against his chest with a tiny sob. The blade swished and thunked against the stump, cleanly severing the man's head from his body. A spray of blood splattered the surrounding crowd exciting them beyond belief. Reynard Fisher's head rolled across the platform, his face frozen forever in a mask of rage.
Sheva hadn't watched, couldn't. But Chris had. Because if he could die like that, god damnit, Chris could damn well watch it.
Sheva gripped her hands into Chris's vest and shook like a leaf in the wind. "Oh god, oh god…oh god."
Chris cupped the back of her head and held her. "I'm sorry, honey. I'm sorry."
"He was my friend."
"I know." He wanted to keep holding her. Wanted to offer her some kind of comfort. But the man on the dais had spotted them and was now shouting into the megaphone. Faces began turning toward them, one, two, a hundred. And all of them were hungry.
"Sheva…"
"Chris…I want to tell you something…"
And he wanted to hear it. He did. But now…definitely wasn't a good time.
"Honey…we can talk later. But right now…we gotta move."
Sheva turned and gasped in disbelief. The mob outside was moving toward them. They were outnumbered, out manned, and out of time.
Breaking apart, they both ran back into the hut, glancing around in frantic desperation.
"Sheva! Block that door." Chris threw his shoulder into a book shelf, sliding it across the floor to block the nearest window facing the public assembly.
Sheva mirrored him, forcing another in front of the door. The back entrance they'd come through was still open and naked to the mob but as barricades went, it was the best they could do.
He had a mother fucking hand gun with two extra clips and no chance to make it out of this alive.
"Kirk, come in. We're trapped in the town square. We need back up and we need it now. The locals are hostile; they've spotted us and are converging on us right now!"
Kirk's voice crackled over the head set, "Roger. I'm on my way. Hold out as long as you can, Chris. I'll be there as soon as I can."
Sure. Right. No problem. Cake right?
The book shelves started rattling from the force of people beating against the door and window. It wouldn't hold long. Not nearly long enough to protect them until Kirk arrived.
"Chris…god."
"I know. We have to try to hold until he gets here. We don't have any other choice."
The bookshelf in front of the window tumbled forward with a shattering sound of glass. Chris fired before the first face cleared the window and fired again into the opening. Sheva echoed him, moving to range herself beside him.
They couldn't shoot fast enough, not nearly. The bookshelf in front of the door tumbled down and the front door burst inward under the assault of the man beyond it.
Sheva turned her focus, Chris kept his. They fired, retreated, fired, retreated and eventually hit the back wall of the hut.
They were dead. They both knew it. But they kept fighting anyway.
Sheva clicked empty, holstered her gun and pulled her knife. Chris did the same.
He rushed the few men in front of him, taking them all together into a pile onto the floor. Sheva executed a round house kick, taking a large man in the chest.
Chris came up from the pile slashing like a man possessed. The knife hit flesh, dug deep, hit bone and kept on going. Screams peppered the air.
"Help!"
He turned and was already running toward her voice.
They'd dragged her outside the hut into the open. One had her by the hair, dragging her toward a rotted out corpse of a bus. The rusty skeleton of the burned out bus was like his beacon in the darkness.
Chris slashed at the grasping hands of a man close to him and followed it with a solid straight punch to the face. The man went down, head over ass, on the pavement.
Another grabbed his face and came in like he intended to bite him. Chris head butted him, feeling the brunt of the hit like a blow to the face. He kicked the man in the balls and watched him collapse, screaming.
Sheva was still screaming for him. Another man had grabbed her flailing legs and they were carrying her between them toward the bus.
The man with the megaphone was still shouting into it, moving toward Sheva and the other men. Chris bum rushed him, he caught the man in a tackle and took them skidding to the ground. Jerking the megaphone from his grip, he beat the man's face in with it and turning, hit the next attacker clean between the eyes with it.
Rising, Chris rushed the men holding Sheva. He kicked the one in back in the back of his knee and watched the man drop Sheva and crumble to his knees in pain. Not waiting, Chris gripped his arm around the man's throat, caught his chin in his hand and broke his fucking neck in a single swift move.
The man in the lead continued to drag Sheva by her hair. But Sheva pushed off the ground with her legs, twisted up under the man's arm, and punched him clean in the face.
Free, she drove her knife straight into his chest in a spurt of blood.
Chris grabbed her arm and propelled her forward. They ran, listening to the hungry wails of the men chasing them.
They ran up a flight of stairs and across a landing, leaping onto a suspended wood dais and then racing over to a concrete pad to make their stand. Trapped, they backed up to the edge.
Chris glanced around frantically. A wire fence was to their left and a gap leading over to the top of the rotted out bus.
Men began rushing the fence and trying to climb up from the ground to where they stood.
"They just keep coming!" Sheva shouted, kicking the fence and sending a climbing man down in a heap atop a few others.
Chris jumped the distance to the top of the bus. "Come on!"
Sheva echoed him, following him in a mad dash toward the front of the bus. The men weren't nearly as fast. They had a handful of seconds to make their next move.
Chris leapt back to the ground and caught Sheva as she followed. They raced back toward the hut, hopping a fence to climb up a ladder ranging along the side of the dais where Reynard's body lay sad and defiled.
Chris glanced around frantically at the top. Men were climbing up after them, leaping along the scaffolding toward them, hustling and bustling along the ground and trying to climb up walls.
Chris and Sheva ran on, ducking when a hatchet whizzed by in the air around their heads.
"Jesus."
Chris stepped back into an alcove and nearly tripped on something. His eyes went to the ground. There, amongst what was clearly Reynard's discarded items, a machine gun sat gleaming in the sunlight.
"Oh yeah." Chris snatched it up. "Sheva, get behind me." He checked it, found it had almost a full magazine. Another lay tossed negligently a few feet away. Snatching it up as well, Chris turned and faced the mob steadily running toward them.
Sheva had uncovered spare handgun ammo amongst the discarded items and reloaded her Beretta. She put a well placed shut into an electrical transformer far above the converging mob.
It hissed, sparked, and fell, smashing to the ground in a sparkling mess of electrical beauty. Bodies bounced, danced, and screamed as they were fried where they stood. Chris opened fire, peppering their advancing flesh with slugs.
Blood sprayed in a fine pink mist. They fell, more came, climbing over their dead comrades. Chris kept right on spraying them.
And then they saw the man with the axe.
"Chris, Sheva…how you holding up? I'll be there shortly!" Kirk's voice on the head set. He was close. But not close enough.
The axe man swung his axe, took out ten of the careening mob, hit the wood struts holding up their safe haven, and severed it clean in half. The haven tipped to the side. They had time to brace and down they came, both of them rolling as the wood collapsed and they hit the ground.
Chris kept right on rolling back to his feet, Sheva doing something similar. They turned and started running. Backed against a set of double steel doors, they had to make their stand.
Sheva glanced a set of piled oil drums and fired on them. Shots pinged against metal, one, two, thr-
The explosion set the ground on fire in front of them effectively making a barricade between them and their attackers. Furious, the mob tried to rush the fire. The smell of burning flesh was disgusting. The air was acrid with the stench of rotting meat.
The mob was kept at bay by the fire but not the axe man. He walked right through it, stopping only to lift that enormous axe up.
Left without any other option, Chris did the only thing he could: he attacked.
He rushed into the axe man's range of attack, caught those beefy wrists in his hands and stopped the blade from coming down. Every muscle in his body went into stalling that movement. Chris felt his legs and arms start shaking with the effort.
Sheva moved in close just as his body started to give up. She put the barrel of her gun under the bastards chin and started firing.
His face was quickly obliterated in a wash of blood and brains. Wailing, he dropped the axe. Chris hit the ground with the sudden weight of it. The axe man swung out with his last breath, caught Sheva in chest and knocked her airborne. She smashed into the steel doors and slid down them, still.
Chris let the axe fall to the side and crawled toward her in the flickering firelight. The axe man teetered, tottered, and fell flat with enough force to shake the ground.
The fire was dying, the mob was starting to cross the last smoldering bits of it. Chris grabbed Sheva, lifted her into his arms and turned right, running for the stairs not far away.
They were dead. Dead. Dead. Sheva was so still.
Afraid she was already dead, he raced up the stairs. His head set fluttered with static and then, "Chris, Sheva…find some cover. I'm gonna take out the door."
Chris skidded to his knees behind a wooden set of planks, tucked Sheva against his chest and turned into the concrete wall beside them.
There was a loud whistling of sound, an RPG dispatched amongst the whirring of helicopter blades.
The explosion rocked the earth, fire and blood harpooning up into the sky like the wrath of god. Bodies were blown to bits, parts showing down onto the earth in a misty pink rain.
Silence followed the explosion, split only by the whir of helicopter blades and Chris's heavy breathing.
"You okay down there?" Kirk, on the headset, queried. "Sorry it took me so long."
Chris pulled Sheva gently away from his chest, cupped the side of her face and turned it toward him. She was awake, staring at him from inches away with wide, startled eyes.
She said, "We're alright. Thanks Kirk. We owe you one."
Kirk answered, "No problemo kiddos. Continue to the rendezvous point with Alpha team."
"Will do."
The whir of helicopter blades retreated, leaving only the silence and quiet sizzle of fire dying in the background. Black smoke curled up from the destroyed steels doors below them.
Chris wasn't quite ready to let go. Apparently, neither was Sheva.
"I thought…" His voice was shaky with emotion, with receding adrenaline and worry. "For I minute, I thought…"
Sheva smiled, her dark eyes golden in the dying sunlight. "Yeah. Me too."
He cupped her face in his gloved hands."Sheva…"
She wanted to kiss him. Hell. She wanted to take him right there on the stupid blood spattered planks of wood. She wanted to climb atop him and take him into her and love him. And because she knew he'd left her for another woman, she pulled away from him.
Standing, she brushed off her pants. "Thank you, Chris. You saved my life."
He remained seated for a long moment, watching her. One knee was drawn up and his wrist rested on it while he watched her distance herself from him.
"That makes us even then."
She nodded and started reloading her gun. "Let's move on."
"Sheva," She met his eyes, "There was no one else."
Sheva stiffened at his words.
"There was no one else. It wasn't like that."
If there was no one else…then why had he just cut her off like that? Why not speak to her for an entire year? She couldn't think of a single excuse that would make that long of an absence alright. Except that he'd never felt for her what she had for him. That their night together hadn't meant anything at all.
Maybe it was on her. Maybe it was her fault for assuming they'd been more to each other then they had.
Sheva shook her head. "It's alright Chris. I'm not stupid. I understand."
"Understand what?"
"That I read too much into it. That we had a good time and that's all it was."
He shook his head and rose. "Sheva…it wasn't you. It was me. I cut everybody off for a long time. I…I was going through stuff. I didn't know how to deal. So I didn't deal. I ran away. What can I say? All these muscles and I'm still a pussy."
Sheva shook her head at him. "Let's just move on. Okay? It's fine. Let's leave the past where it is."
"But I have to explain. I have to tell you what happened."
They were walking now through another set of doors at the top of a rise, headed toward the storage facility where they would meet up with Alpha team.
Sheva stopped, turned, met his eyes. "Chris…it doesn't matter. Don't you understand that? You left. You were gone. You made it clear you were finished with me. And…I've moved on okay? I've…got someone else now."
His heart hurt. His chest hurt. His brain hurt. His body hurt. He just fucking hurt. She'd found a way to kill him and still leave him walking.
Sheva watched his face close down and shut off. She watched him pull into himself and freeze her out. It killed her to do it. To hurt him. But she had to make him understand that she wasn't strong enough to be with him, to love him, and have him leave again. She just wasn't.
And this was the easiest way to make sure he didn't even try.
Chris brushed passed her. "Fine. Let's continue on."
"Chris…"
But he'd pushed open a door and gone through it, leaving her standing in the dying sunlight with nothing but a broken heart. And no way to tell him the truth that burned in the back of throat like poison.
'