"Check it out," Claire said, grinning.

A row of yellow snow-trucks were parked in the vehicle hangar, next to a stack of rock-salt, and a pallet-jack. One of the bags had ripped at some point, a scree of white crystals scattered on the pavement. There were smaller vehicles, too: a forklift, cherry-picker, maintenance carts with emergency lights bolted to them.

"My mom worked in a warehouse," Steve said, conversationally. "Reminds me of that. When I was little, sometimes she had to take me to work. I remember bein' really bored in the break-room."

"You okay?" Claire asked. "You've been acting weird since you went back to the hangar for Rodrigo's gun."

"Yeah," Steve said, pushing his hands into the pockets of his parka. "Couldn't reach it. Too many zombies."

Claire knew something had gone down, but Steve kept denying that anything had. Still, she wouldn't push it; he'd been through enough, and Claire didn't want to make him feel any worse. After Chris had returned from his mission in the Arklays, he'd acted pretty weird too, and so Claire had given him space, had stopped calling him for a while. Eventually, her brother had called her back and said everything was okay. And Steve would too, when he was ready.

"Wonder if the keys are in one of them?" Steve said, making his way down the expansion-grate stairs. He strode across the concrete to one of the snow-trucks, jumping onto its thick rubber tread and peering through the dark driver-side window. He shook his head. "Don't see nothin' in the ignition." He turned around and hopped down. "Mom's warehouse had snow-trucks, too, 'cause winter could get pretty bad where we'd lived. Minnesota, you know? They kept the keys in the office, usually. I remember my mom havin' to sign 'em out."

"Then I guess we should check the office," Claire said, looking around for some kind of door that indicated an office. She saw a gray fire-door not far from them, beneath a flickering fluorescent strip. OFFICE was spelled out on the door in adhesive letters. "Well," she said, "that wasn't hard to find."

She opened the door and stepped inside. The office was cramped, with gray walls and a concrete floor. There was a small break-area to her right: two worn couches, two vending machines, one of which had an OUT OF ORDER signed taped to it, and a mini-fridge that stank heavily of old food. On her left was an aluminum desk, a whiteboard behind it with shift-rotations written in erasable posters and leaflets, most of which advertised Umbrella's health-benefits and certification programs, covered the walls like some kind of corporate fungus.

A laminate sign-out sheet tacked to a clipboard sat on the corner of the desk, listing several signatures and handwritten timestamps. There was a sticky note, too, on the clipboard:

Donald, I need those fucking keys back . It's all we got! Our asshole boss cut us down to one keyring after that shit Mason pulled, when he'd tried driving off in one of the trucks. Speaking of which, have you seen him? Hasn't reported to his last three shifts. Also, fuck Alfred. He denied my vacation.

-Frank

"Claire," Steve said, and beckoned her over. "There's blood on the door-knob here."

She hadn't noticed the door at the back of the room until he'd pointed it out; she'd been busy looking around the desk. "It's pretty fresh," she said, and opened the door.

Another office, probably for the Manager. An aluminum desk, replete with computer and neglected paperwork, stood against the back wall, a map of Antarctica tacked up behind it that showed the facility's location. They were a couple of miles south of the Weddell Sea, in Western Antarctica. In the chair behind the desk sat a dead man in blue coveralls, who stirred when she drifted too close. Claire shot him in the head, blood splashing the Antarctica map, and the body slumped with a death-rattle and did not move again. Donald Wentz stared vacantly at them from the laminate ID badge around the zombie's neck.

"Probably tried Mason's plan," Steve said, digging irreverently through the pockets on Donald's bloody, tattered coveralls. "Didn't work out. Here we go." He fished out the keyring, each key identical to the others. "Let's get the fuck outta here."

Displayed on the computer screen was a half-finished e-mail begging for help from Umbrella Headquarters. The keys on the keyboard were smeared with blood. "Poor guy," Claire said, and shook her head. "Umbrella needs to pay for this shit. I can't wait to get that data to Jill, and—oh shit." Claire stopped, buried her face in her hands. She'd been so focused on getting off Rockfort that she'd forgotten about the e-mail to Leon, the one with the coordinates for Rockfort. "The e-mail," she said, and looked at Steve. "I forgot. My brother, he has no idea we're here."

"Maybe we can send another e-mail?" Steve hazarded. "It's still logged in." He gestured at the computer, at Donald Wentz's corpse. "If you're so damn sure your brother's gonna go to Rockfort, maybe he'll be smart enough to check a computer?"

"It can't hurt," Claire said. She thought about erasing Wentz's e-mail, but it felt like desecration, like writing over the words on a tombstone with graffiti. So she saved the draft, then opened a fresh e-mail. Thankfully, there were was some correspondence between Frank Duval and Alfred's former secretary, the one she'd taken the ID from, about a vacation request that had been denied. She copied the address, glanced at the coordinates of the facility on the map, and then typed out a quick e-mail:

Chris,

This is Claire. If you're seeing this, we're in Antarctica. I'll explain later. I've enclosed the coordinates: 84°29'16.9" S 64°47'36.9" W. Please help.

-Claire

She sent it and hoped for the best.

"We goin'?" Steve asked.

"Where are we gonna go, Steve? We're in Antarctica."

"We can't bank on your brother seein' that e-mail, Claire," Steve argued, pocketing the keys. "We gotta try gettin' out ourselves. If we do, we'll contact him again." He paused, looked at the map behind the desk. Steve walked over, pointed at another point on the map, about seven miles north of their position. "There's an Australian research base," he said. "We could make it in one of the snow-trucks, easy."

"What if my—"

"The chances of your brother showin' up in Antarctica is slim to none, Claire," Steve said, scowling. "We gotta make for that base, or we're gonna die."

She sighed. Claire knew Steve was right; it was a long-shot that her brother would ever see that e-mail. Another opportunity might not come to leave this place, so she nodded, followed him into the vehicle hangar and to one of the snow-trucks. Its plow was still crusted with salt. "I'll drive," she said, and took the keys from him. "My best friend's boyfriend does snow-plowing in the winters, and he took me and her along a couple of times. I can run it. Prefer motorcycles, though." She climbed up, opened the driver-side door, then sat behind the wheel. The cabin smelled of cigarettes and motor oil, and of old, stale coffee, and, inexplicably, of rot—ingrained forever in the cheap polyester upholstery.

"You ride bikes?" Steve said, climbing into the passenger's seat.

"Gotta Harley," she said, and nodded, turning the keys in the ignition and letting the truck warm up. "Once spring hits, I'm goin' riding again. Maybe do some interstating."

"Sounds awesome," Steve said, and paused. "I… never got my driver's license. Never got the chance."

"You're only seventeen, right? You got time," Claire said, and climbed out of the snow-truck to cross the concrete and hit the button that opened the hangar shutters. Then she came back, put the truck into drive, and eased out.

The world was whitewashed beyond the hangars, and for a moment, Claire wondered if it was a good idea to go out during a whiteout like this. Something told her that no, it wasn't a good idea; but she didn't want to stay here any longer than she needed to. Thankfully, the truck had a radio and a map, with the route marked off in red pen. Steve had been right; Donald Wentz had attempted to escape.

Something moved in the backseat. Ten clammy fingers gripped her shoulders like pincers, and the zombie's rank, warm breath rolled over her neck, rotted teeth dipping toward her carotid. Steve shot it, and the dead man toppled backward with a groan, blood splashing the torn fabric of the roof.

Claire, heart thumping in her chest, stopped the truck, and they got out and pulled the body from the backseat. One of the Rockfort prisoners that had arrived on one of the other planes; though Steve didn't recognize them. They dumped the body, then got back inside the warm truck and drove away, the thick rubber treads kicking up snow, crawling through the drifts.

"Close," Claire said. "Thanks, Steve."

"Don't mention it. You woulda done the same for me." He was reading the map and fiddling with the radio. "Tryin' to figure out what frequency the Australian base is on, so they know to look for us in case we get lost in this fuckin' whiteout—" Steve suddenly stopped talking, catching something in the passenger-side window. "What the fuck is that?"

Before Claire could look, whatever Steve had seen had caught up with them. It shook the truck, then lifted if off the ground like a toy, treads still spinning and the walls giving way with a squeal of metal as if crushed by some enormous fist, Steve and her bouncing around the cabin like beads in a child's rattle. The truck rolled once, then twice, and her head slammed against the windshield and cracked it, and that was all Claire remembered.