Pandemic: Resident Evil VI

Chapter Forty Two: From the Sky

"Woo-hoo!" Jake couldn't help yelling as he drove faster. "You better hang on tight, Sherry!"

The blonde tried to yell something back, but the wind was too loud for him to hear while the motorcycle they had liberated from that mansion's parking garage moved even faster. No one had tried to stop them while the containment alarm was going off, and the young man could hardly believe it when security allowed the very subjects they were searching for to leave the building. All of the workers were frightened and panicked, scrambling to their vehicles in order to escape in case the subjects couldn't be contained… making it easy to hit a guy and take his keys in all the confusion.

After that, the two of them joined a line of vehicles that were moving toward the exit ramp, and although there was a chance for them to still get caught at the toll booth, this was prevented when one of the drivers up ahead decided to just crash through the barrier. There wasn't much the guards could do as car after car rolled past them, and Jake veered away from the rest of the group as soon as they were free, driving onto another road that sloped downward… hopefully toward the city down in the valley.

Oh yeah, the young man was on top of the world now; he had escaped from those lunatics, got a brand new motorcycle that didn't even have two hundred kilometers on the odometer yet, and the incredibly hot girl he had been dreaming about for the last six months was holding onto him. Yeah, it was kind of a bummer to find out that his dad was some kind of world-destroying megalomaniac, and… it explained why Jake's mom never talked about him, but now they were free. No more experiments, no more Tobias Liquid… just a flight to the US, and fifty million dollars.

There probably wasn't any point to driving this fast, especially down such a steep and curving hill at night, but after six months of being locked up in a cage like a lab-rat, the young man was feeling the need for speed. The closer they got to the city, the heavier traffic got, forcing Jake to slow down a little when the motorcycle entered a long traffic tunnel, but there was no sign that anyone was following them, so there was no harm in blending into traffic for a while.

Tiny flashes of light came from the windows of a large tour bus as the people inside took pictures of them, and Jake couldn't blame them, since this bike was sick and Sherry was hot. Yeah, the people in that bus were probably jealous of him, not that they would have been if they knew the truth. The bus was gone now, falling far behind since even though the tunnel was crowded, traffic was still moving. Everything around the motorcycle was illuminated with intense orange lights that were mounted along the concrete walls, in addition to the lights on each vehicle, and this actually made it take a second for the young man's eyes to adjust to the darkness once they got back outside.

He couldn't hear anything that Sherry was trying to say, but thankfully the blonde managed to reach around with her arm and point in the general direction that she wanted him to go, so again Jake veered away from the crowd. Before the tunnel the road had been surrounded by mountains and dense forests that were so dark it felt like they were in the middle of nowhere, but now the young man found himself driving down a crowded city street, surrounded by tall buildings, and smelling mostly of car exhaust.

Unlike where the attack had taken place in Edonia, this was a modern city with a population that had to be more than a million people. Cars and trucks were driving along the streets, couples were holding hands as they strolled along the sidewalks, restaurants and bars were open, with people constantly entering and exiting… hard to believe that people were being experimented on just a few miles outside of town… but that must have been what the people of Raccoon City thought, too.

Traffic was thinning out a bit now after Sherry pointed for him to take a less crowded, but longer road that went straight for as far as the eye could see, and as much as Jake wanted to go full-throttle again, the last thing they needed was to draw the attention of the local police. So he obeyed the speed limit sign, which thankfully was written in both English and Chinese, only to have the blonde behind him begin frantically hitting him on the shoulder. Even at the speed limit, the wind was too loud to hear what she was saying, so the young man started to slow down… and that's when he saw the huge object in his side-view mirror.

"Sherry, what is it?" He asked, adjusting his mirror to see it better. "What is… HOLY MOTHER OF SHIT!"

Jake felt her have to hold onto him tightly to avoid being thrown off backwards when he cranked on the motorcycle's throttle as hard as he could, and he was pretty sure that the police would understand a little speeding, given that the two of them were being chased by a God damn airplane! It had actually taken him a second to realize what it was, needing a second look to realize that the big object was a full size jumbo-jet that was flying way too low to the ground for normal operation.

Worse, still, there was nowhere for him to drive to get away from it except straight forward, and it was a good thing this was such a long, straight road, because that plane was coming in hot. Speeding past apartment buildings, and passing underneath a railroad bridge, the young man looked back to see if the plane was gaining on them, and just for a second he thought he saw someone familiar standing on top of a passing train… was it that Ada woman? No way to know, since the train was gone a second later… but the plane was still coming.

Lower and lower to the ground the aircraft came, getting closer and closer like an owl chasing after a dragonfly, and… and now the road was ending at a tall chain-link fence. Behind them the sounds of twisting and scraping metal could be heard when the aircraft hit the ground, but if they got stopped by the fence, they were dead… so Jake looked around desperately for something that would be able to save them in the next five seconds. There were no ramps, no exits, no escapes of any kind… except for a tiny opening in the fence that might have been just enough for a man to walk through.

Clang! With no other choice but to head for the opening at full speed, the edge of one of the handlebars was grazed by the fencepost, causing them to fish-tail as they entered a brightly lit yard full of industrial cargo containers. Sherry was holding on so tightly that it was hard to breathe, and now Jake was fighting to keep the motorcycle from putting down while the plane tore right through the fence behind them. The ground was concrete with good traction, and the aircraft was slowing down as it hit several containers, but they were still fish-tailing and a little bit of loose gravel was all it took for the bike to give up.

Jake and Sherry both screamed as the motorcycle fell over sideways, separating from them as it made sparks in one direction while they rolled to a stop in another, hitting hard against another container while the plane… while the plane finally slowed to a stop. Everything behind the aircraft was totally destroyed; containers, the fence, the concrete ground, but the two of them were okay… and why the hell did a fucking airplane just crash into the street like that? The very front of the aircraft was dented up, but mostly intact, but the entire back was on fire, sending up billowing clouds of black smoke, and… and did the side door just open?

"Sherry, are you okay?" The young man asked, looking back and forth between her and the plane. "Are you hurt? Come on, try and get up."

The blonde took his hand, yelping a little when he pulled her up, but she was able to stand, so her legs weren't broken. Both of them had some pretty nasty cuts and scrapes, though, given that their clothes hadn't exactly been appropriate for motorcycle riding, and… and the yellow emergency slide on the plane just inflated. Survivors? Boy, Jake would have loved to get his hands on the pilot of that plane, but he didn't see the usual white shirts and ties that pilots wore… there were just a couple of normal looking people… some guy helping a slightly limping woman get down onto the slide… and then coming down himself as soon as she was down.

He wanted to just avoid them, but from where the young man and Sherry had ended up in the cargo yard, the only ways out were right past the survivors, and taking a dive into the ocean a short distance away. Jake didn't fancy a swim this time of night, and Sherry was limping a little, so she might not have been able to swim right now anyway, so there was no choice but to walk right up to the survivors. For a moment he considered just hiding until they left, but it wasn't like crash survivors were going to just wander off, and again it was only a matter of time before the local authorities arrived.

"Hey!" The young man called out as they approached. "Hey, are you two all right? What happened?"

Both of the survivors were covered with soot from the smoke, and the woman was coughing, probably inhaled a lot of it while trying to get out of the plane. The man helped her sit down against one of the nearby containers, coughing a bit himself while getting to his feet and looked in their direction. He rubbed his eyes, coughing more as he leaned on the container, and it sounded like he was trying to say something about the crash, when Sherry gasped.

"L… Leon?" She asked, almost in disbelief. "Oh my God, Leon!"

Running forward, and throwing her arms around the filthy survivor as if he were a long lost relative, the man seemed to be just as surprised by this as Jake was, at least until he got a good look at her. Saying her name in just as much disbelief before returning the hug, it was obvious that they knew each other, but he couldn't have been involved in her mission, since the first thing he asked after the hug was what the hell she was doing there. Immediately telling him that she was escorting the young man to an extraction point, Jake wondered what was even the point of her no-contact orders, but then the blonde gasped again when Leon told her why he was there.

"I'm tracking down the man responsible for the C-Virus outbreak back in the US." He explained. "National Security Advisor Derek C. Simmons is a traitor and a bioterrorist, and I'm gonna take him down… hard."

"Simmons?" Sherry asked, taking a step back as if startled again. "No, Leon, you're wrong, I… I report directly to Simmons… he's meeting us for extraction."