Gone by Dawn
Part One:
-Downfall-
Chapter 4: Hail Mary
Raccoon City
The swirling warmth lulled, it lured, and it let her know she wasn't alone. Inside the cocoon of unconscious peace, there was no fire, no death, no darkness or destruction. Jill floated, feeling the pull of a kind of perfect release.
She prayed she never awoke.
The rain pounded and drowned out the pursuit of boots on pavement. Together, the rookie and the mercenary cut across the courtyard of the Apple Inn toward Raccoon General Hospital. Leon was still trying to figure out why the mercenary had agreed to going after the promise of a vaccine.
When he'd offered the option over Jill's burning body, Leon had stood in surprise as he invited, "I'll go with you. It's gotta be there. The files from the courthouse...they can't be wrong. Why would they be? Somebody was working on a vaccine for this damn disease...if there's any hope...it's in that hospital."
Leon, feeling the thrill of the possibility of saving Jill, inquired, "Why help us? You don't even know us...you're, literally, working for the enemy."
Carlos Oliveira shifted uncomfortably. A handsome man with a shock of unruly hair over a copper toned complexion, he seemed the most reasonable of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service. He seemed remorseful for what had become of the city they'd been sent to "save". He remarked, "I'm just a grunt...I didn't know, neither did the rest of us, who started this shit. They sent us to clean up the mess. You think I'm high enough up to have any say in the cause of it? I'm here. It's done. I can't save the dead, but I can try like hell to save the living. This girl is S.T.A.R.S. right? She stayed behind when the rest of them fled. She stayed to help...that kind of bravery deserves nothing but the same."
Impressed, Leon nodded. He agreed, wholeheartedly, and finally allowed, "...ok. If there's any chance at all of saving her...I'll need all the help I can get."
So, they were running through the night toward the hospital. The schematics that Carlos had pulled on his Palm Pilot had shown the lab to be located on the B-1 basement level. It made sense, given that most of the volatile vaccines would need to be kept at cool temperatures. They needed to get in, get the vaccine, and get back to Jill as fast as possible. She was being guarded by Mikhail and another of Carlos' team. They seemed eager to help as well, looking ashamed at the concept of working for a company that had created such chaos.
They had to pick their way through the swarming parking lot of the hospital carefully and quietly. They'd have made it, cleanly, but Jill's erstwhile monster made his appearance as they were slinking between cars to avoid detection. He roared, he swung his rams and knocked aside the undead in droves. They moaned and milled about, stupidly and sadly, being kicked or thrown aside as he the monster came for the two men trying to save the woman he'd been stalking all night.
Carlos cut through a small opening of two cars and shouted, "Go! Go, god damnit! Get in there and do this...I got this."
He hurried out into the swarming undead, bellowing, "HERE! You stupid sack of shit! I got yer fuckin stars right here!"
The Nemesis turned it's attention toward him as he started to fire. The dead swirled around him as Carlos ran into the open and started drawing attention to himself. Leon, with no other choice, hurried through the shadows toward the hospital. He eased into the vestibule toward the main lobby as the fighting filled the air where he'd been.
Carlos had no chance. He had no hope. He was going to die playing distraction. It was sad somehow, but Leon understood the impulse. He'd have done the same if Jill wasn't counting on him.
Leon hurried into the dark hospital, guided by flickering red emergency lights. The lobby was a mess, scattered chairs and tossed papers covering the ground from a ransacking of people fleeing there for safety. Bodies littered the floor, some torn to pieces, some still human with bloody throats and bellies. Leon gagged at the smell, hurrying through the flickering shadows for the stairs.
He bypassed the elevator, aware that there was no way it was going to be working with the power on emergency supply.
The door opened and he lost his footing as three zombies crowded the opening, shoving and slobbering for blood. He went to his butt, scuttling backward toward safety, his gun came up and a hand on the floor grabbed for his ankle. He kicked at it, a zombie lunged for his ankle, and Leon shot it the head from close range. A splatter of gore accompanied a pair of hands grabbing for his vest from behind. He shouted, swung an elbow to clobber the attacker in the face, and the other one lunged into his side. He struggled, shouting, and fired from the hip to blow apart a belly of one of them, but the second got its teeth into his forearm and clamped on.
Just like that, he was bitten.
Horror guided him to flights of sheer fury. He kicked and sent the one munching on his arm backward as he blasted apart its face and turned to pick off the third one. He might have been ok but the lobby was rapidly filling the undead called from the parking lot to the sounds of battle. Leon dodged hands and mouths and felt fetid breath as he ran for the stairs, his shoulder struck the door and he barreled through until a hand grabbed a tuft of his tousled locks and tried to rip him back into the fray he'd left behind.
He shouted, terrified, and a gun went off from the base of the stairs. The zombie was blasted backward, Leon grabbed the door to jerk it shut and seal the dead on the other side, and he crumpled against the wall in the dark with his gun raised on the shooter. A pretty woman in red stood at the base of the stairwell illuminated in muted blue light. She tilted her head and mused, "...cop?" Her gaze turned beside her, "You aware there were any cops left in his city?"
A small framed female joined the woman in red. She had short dark hair and big blue eyes. She shook her head and returned, "...no. I thought the entire RPD perished in the stand off."
Leon sighted at them both and demanded, "Identify yourselves...now."
The woman in red laughed with ire, "Come on, handsome. I just saved your ungrateful life. Stop grandstanding and get down here...you're about the repay the favor."
As much as he was trained to resist it, the urge to kill her was paramount in a way he couldn't describe. He wasn't sure what instinct it was that flashed "bad news" around her beautiful face in warning lights as bright as the blue that bathed her, but he barely resisted the urge to pull the trigger. He lowered the gun and the small one beside the other invited, "There ya go...come on...you're wounded..let me help."
With little choice, he did. Her name was Rebecca Chambers - she was happy to tell him her story while she tended his wounds. She'd lost teammates in the wounds when the world had fallen apart a few months prior. She'd spent the time in between trying to find a vaccine for the virus that was currently killing everyone it touched. She informed him, "I knew one was being developed here...I knew there was some hope of getting it when the world went to shit. I-I have a friend who needs it. I have to go after it."
Quietly, he told her, "I do too. I need it. You know how to administer it if we get it?"
Rebecca nodded, looking dedicated, "It needs to be in the jugular for immediate release. I need-the thing-the man who was chasing you...he was my friend once."
Surprised, Leon arched his brows, "...he's the reason the friend I'm with needs the vaccine. He...his tentacles..." He trailed off, hating the crushed look on her face.
But the girl circled her resolve and answered, "...he's not himself. He- I can help him. I can. He helped me once...I can help him."
She sounded so desperate for that to be true that he didn't argue.
The monster, she told him, had once been Billy Coen - a former marine who'd survived betrayal of his own men to be falsely imprisoned and turned around to help her survive the destruction of the mansion and the worst night of her life. She'd lost him in the woods and assumed he'd gone on to safety, but he'd never roundezvoused with her at their drop site. She knew, when he didn't show, that something terrible had happened to him.
With a quiet laugh, the woman in red wondered, "...so you assume he's become a big nasty monster? How can you even be sure?"
The woman in red was named Ada Wong. She had a boyfriend who worked in the hospital lab, she said, and she was trying like hell to make sure he was alive. She claimed to be F.B.I. and was dressed like she'd been out dancing instead of investigating anything. She assuaged curiosity by telling them she'd been doing just that, at a fundraiser for the Bureau, when things had fallen apart.
In the silence, Rebecca finally told them, "Billy had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his arm...the monster? It has the same one...it's-above that gun...I saw it...when it came after me the first time...I saw it. I had to be sure, so I let it grab me."
Horrified, Leon shook his head, "It could have killed you!"
She shook her head, eyes sparkling with tears, "It didn't! He didn't! Don't you understand? He dropped me. He left. He didn't hurt me! Billy is still in there!"
It did seem shocking that he wouldn't have killed her when he had her at his mercy. The monster did exhibit occasional flashes of human intellect. Was it possible to save it? What about mutation? Even if "Billy" was still in there...would he want to be saved?
Not wanting to break her heart, Leon agreed to help them. He needed all the help he could get anyway. When Ada offered to kill him because of the bite on his arm, they stood there staring down the barrels of their guns at each other until Rebecca soothed, "...he should have started to get feverish by now."
Surprised, they both glanced at her. She nodded and remarked, "The rate of infection is fast in this thing. He should have started to turn...he's fine."
The silence dragged out until Ada laughed, voice laced with something eerily liked excitement, "...he's fucking immune."
Rebecca nodded, patting Leon's wrist until he lowered his gun. "Yes. I believe so."
Immune?
Leon shook his head, "How is that even possible?"
Rebecca told him, "Something like one percent of any population is naturally immune to any pathogen...Officer Kennedy...you're in that one percent."
He shook his head again, "It's just Leon. What does that mean? I can get bitten a thousand times and...nothing?"
Rebecca nodded. Ada was staring at him like he'd just done something interesting. He was thinking about how it might help Jill that he was immune. Did it? Could it? What good was it if it didn't help anyone else?
They trekked together through the hospital levels to the lab. It was easy to move quickly and quietly. Ada was a crack shot, giving credence to having firearms training which she would have gotten in the FBI, and didn't let them get snuck up on either. She was aware, in a way that was admirable, of their surroundings to the point of showing real aptitude for survival.
They were in the lab, with Rebecca hitting keys and working quickly, when something flickered on her belt in the low lights. Leon stopped and stared and remarked, "...S.T.A.R.S.?!"
She was. She had to be. That explained why the thing had stalked her and attempted to kill her. She was the same as Jill, the same as the dead Brad Vickers. She was one of the elite former RPD.
This girl?
This...child?
It seemed impossible.
So, Leon tested her, "...do you know Jill Valentine?"
Rebecca froze. She turned from the machine that was beeping and swirling, the mechanical arm rotating and grabbing compounds and chemicals to create the vaccine. She stared at him until she finally spoke, "...do you know Jill Valentine?"
He laughed.
Ada smirked.
He told them, "She's in the clock tower being guarded. She's who needs this."
Rebecca nodded, she spun around to continue working. "It's almost done. There's just enough for two."
Ada flinched but shook her head, "So much for the idea of inoculating ourselves huh?"
Rebecca glanced at her, "...I'm sorry. I have to try...for Billy."
Ada said nothing.
When the samples were in her possession, they hurried toward the emergency exit. It opened to the the back alley away from the flooded parking lot. They cut through the night, hurrying into the rain and the flickering fire of a burning city.
Rebecca called above the din, "Billy will try to find us for sure if Jill and I are together. Let's hurry!"
Leon kept thinking about what was surely the long dead Carlos. He'd died bravely, hopefully, and not suffering the infection they'd all been trying to avoid. He kept thinking of himself, immune, and alive while the rest of the people he'd come to know died of the virus. It was tragic. It was terrifying. He was going to make sure it didn't go down that way.
They hurried toward the clock tower, rushing over the the damp ground - and the click of a hammer dropping made them both pause. Ada had her gun on them. Rebecca lifted her hands and the FBI agent addressed her, "Sorry, sweetie, but this is the end of our friendship. A sad way to end it, but I'm gonna need that sample in your pocket there.."
Rebecca jerked in horror, "...I need this...I need it for Billy."
Ada shook her head, "...Billy is a lost cause, honey. We both know it. Me, however? I'm not going out like that. I'll let you keep the one...treat your friend in there..." Ada gestured with her head, "...consider it a gift. Give me the other...now."
Rebecca tossed it to her, shaking in rage. Ada backed up and shrugged a little, "Just business...one day you'll get that...good luck."
She rushed away into the night. Rebecca slumped a little where she stood, whispering, "...no...no no no. Billy needs that! Oh, god...what-"
She turned on Leon. He was waiting for her to lift the gun on him and demand the sample he carried for Jill. She didn't lift the gun, but she offered, "...there-I need...that. I need it...but listen...listen...we can try another way to help Jill. I-I heard about a cure being developed at the University called Daylight...if we can get there...I can finish the synthesis...I can cure her...she'll still have the antibodies and the rest of it...but I can cure her..."
Leon shook his head, denying that, "She'll turn before we can do that. You know that. She doesn't have that long."
Rebecca, looking desperate, offered, "...what's your blood type?"
Brow furrowed, Leon returned, "...O-Negative...why?"
Rebecca nodded rapidly and pushed into the clocktower. To Leon's horror, the men guarding Jill were long gone. She was lying on the floor on her face, pinked with fever, and moaning. He grabbed her up and laid her on the cool altar, stroking her sweaty hair back.
Rebecca, looking at how pitiful she was, offered another solution, "...we can transfuse her."
Leon bathed some of the sweat from Jill from the bowl of cool water beside the altar. He was hoping holy water would purge her and save her. Stupid - but there it was. His gaze flicked to Rebecca, "...with what?"
Rebecca grabbed his arm and jerked up his sleeve, "...with your blood."
His brows winged up and she waved her hand, "...I'm a doctor...did you know? Youngest in a long time- Yale. I got my doctorate at sixteen. I know what I'm talking about here. If we transfuse, we can spare her from turning. We can't reverse it...but we can spare her from further decline. It'll keep her sustained until we get the cure...please...please...Billy only has one shot here...but Jill? I wouldn't risk her if I didn't think this would work."
Think.
Not know.
Leon hesitated. Jill moaned pitifully.
Finally, he grabbed a chair from beside the altar and sat down. Rebecca hurried to open the medical kit she'd carried with her. She removed tubing and gauze and needles. He wasn't sure this wasn't a huge mistake for everyone.
But what if Billy could be saved?
Shouldn't they take that risk?
He waited, heart pounding, as Rebecca synced his arm to Jill's. She told him, "Relax...ok? Just a pint or two at the most. Your body will make that up in a day or less. Here..." Rebecca offered him electrolyte water from her pack as he sat.
Crazy.
It was all crazy.
It was a hail mary pass.
What if it worked? What if it didn't?
Would he hurt this little girl with him to save Jill with the cure already in her pocket? What was the difference between what she held and the thing called "Daylight?" Wasn't a vaccine meant to work BEFORE exposure?
What good could it do now?
Was it a vaccine?
So many questions. His gaze lingered on Jill's pink cheeks as she moaned and shivered on the altar. It was her only chance here. They had to take it. If he had to, he'd give her that thing in his pocket too.
He was sorry about Billy, he was, but there was no guarantee he could be brought back.
Jill, however, could be.
He'd do whatever it took to protect her. That's what it meant to serve and protect. Maybe the badge meant nothing anymore, but the damn vow still did. He'd made an oath to protect the innocent. He was going to uphold it.
Even if it cost him his life.
He kept his gaze on Jill as his blood rushed red and desperate into her body and prayed it was enough to save hers.
