To begin this chapter, I have to explain the use of /slashes/. Like many other people on FF.net I have found whatever format I'm using doesn't like italics too much, but I'm still trying to use them. That's why they /might/ appear in slashes and italics, or just slashes. I'm pretty sure there's another web format that shows italics (it was working before) but I'm very good with computers so I'm going to let it lie until I can found out how to change it. Anyway, I'm back at school now so my updates will be even /more/ sporadic than normal.
TheBurnin'Samuari~ Yay! Another review! And very little delay for it, too. I was just seeing what I had on my e-mail and BAM! Review alert the very next day. So yeah, I was psyched, like the name suggests. Aah, Ian got his broken fingers from 'ensuing chaos', I think (that is what I said, right?) Anyway, how /that/ happened is completely up to the imagination. LOOPHOLE! There's always one if you search hard enough!!! ^_~
OogieBoogie man~ I'm glad you like it this far! Thanks for the review!
Zarbok~ I'm honoured by every review, so I'll be honoured by yours if I wish! ^_^ I've also had a dislocated elbow, but that was in amateur gymnastics as a kid (my one weakness, curses!). Just riddle me this; did the other guy survive? Anyway, Four Winds sounds cool, but I don't know too much about anything you tried to explain to me. *sigh* small town Oceania girl here, with enough knowledge to fill a teacup!
Shady777/heaven/Ashford~ Curiosity killed the cat (and satisfaction brought it back! But that's not the /point/) I'm glad you liked what I did as a kid-fight. I happen to know a Rosanna and she'da kicked my ass if I made her namesake look weak
Chapter 20: Ambulance
Rebecca squeezed into the crawl space. "It's a good thing Rosanna left chalk arrows or we'd never have found this route," she called back, shining her torch on the walls.
"We may have," said Barry doubtfully. He clambered in behind her. "Enough room for you too, I think Chris!"
Rebecca slowly made her way through the small enclosed space and wondered how on earth the teens managed to get Sena through here, what with the girl being claustrophobic and all. Must've been a bloody miracle.
Don't swear, Becky, 'tis not Christian!
"Quiet, Mom," she muttered under her breath. Why her mother's voice liked to distract her at crucial moments she'd never be able to find out. Her knuckles grazed lightly on the concrete as she changed her grip on the torch. Patterns of light changed like a demented kaleidoscope on the wall, less than two centimetres behind her. Speaking of tight...
"Not being squeezed to death there, Barry?"
"Stop being smart, kid," he wheezed, slapping his hand against the sole of her shoe, "I can fit in her perfectly. It's like wearing a fricking straight jacket."
"How do you know what wearing a straight jacket's like, Barry?" Chris pondered.
Rebecca allowed herself a silent giggle before becoming serious again. A couple more steps and stops to check her grip on the flashlight and she would be out of the confined space. On one of her last 'grip-checks' she saw a fresh, dark stain. She swiped it with a forefinger and was unsurprised to find it wet. With some difficulty she shone her torch down the length of the crawl-space. Patches of the stuff, joined by streaks in between, outlined the path to the exit.
She sniffed gingerly at her finger but refrained from licking it. Considering the circumstances it was not sanitary and in any case it was a mistaken belief that tasting something automatically told you what it was. Take methanol and ethanol for example. Same taste, but you wouldn't want to be drinking the former, mistaking it for the latter. And if you found a streak of white powder, it could be sherbet, or it could be arsenic. Want to lick it and find out?
"Guys," she called softly, "I think I've found a blood trail. I'm going forward to check it out because quite frankly I don't have anywhere else to go. Should I turn the torch off?"
"No," Chris replied instantly. "If someone's there, they already know we're coming. And if it's a vampire-thingy then they'll be able to see us, light or no."
Rebecca gave a nod that Chris couldn't possibly have hoped to see and continued forward. She fancied she could hear the sharp intake of breath, the impatient hissed exhale with the slight whistle caused by long teeth. She had only been close to vampires very briefly but now, when faced with the whole experience again, could remember everything in depressingly clear detail.
She pulled herself along with all the stealth she had available, uncomfortably aware that it wasn't much. Finally at the exit of the tunnel, Rebecca sat just behind the edge like a scared bunny-rabbit, too timid to peak out. Barry grunted impatiently and she decided it was time to move.
Cautiously she crept out, landing in a congealing pile of blood. There was a lot of it too, spread in puddles along the dusty floor. She sweeped the area with her torch, illuminating more signs of fighting and... There. Was that a vampire?
Rebecca approached it carefully, uploading her weapon and unlocking the safety as she did so. It didn't move. She heard the sounds of Barry struggling to get out the hole as she bent down to examine the creature. It wore a party-dress, now mauve with blood, which suggested that originally it had been cream, or at least off-white, in colour. The ragged remains of a silk sash were knotted around the creature's stomach.
It was very definitely dead. Not that this necessarily was a comforting thought, nor did it mean the thing would stay immobile. "I think we're safe for the time being."
"You think? You'd never make in command, Officer Chambers," Chris said as he fell out of the crawl-space with a graceless thud.
"Oh, that's okay sir, I have you to show me how I'd screw it up."
"Guys," Barry warned. "Wrong time, wrong place. And don't even think about saying 'double negative'. We have what appears to be a dead- meaning extinct- vampire there and a lot of blood. Which means more than likely the kids are in trouble."
Chris and Rebecca remained wisely silent and put any energy they had to talk with to running full speed after chalk-arrows. Barry snatched Rebecca's torch from her hand and was now in the lead.
The teens may have had a head start, and they may have been in good shape, but STARS had intense training to make them fitter, faster and more lasting than any high school sport player. Slowly it might be, but the three were catching up steadily. The blood was still warm.
Rebecca was very worried about the amount of blood there. She hoped, very fervently, that it was from all four kids, not one, which would mean no one was in danger of dying due to blood loss. If it was mainly from one person... well, that person would more likely than not be meeting up with Celia soon. Blunt, crass and accurate.
Chris was worried about everyone in general. He was worried about his sister, Jill, his present companions, and the four whose trail he was on. He was worried to some agree about Wesker. Not for Wesker, mind you, about Wesker, about what he could do that would endanger the people he was responsible for; his people.
(One of the many reasons Wesker hated- to be accurate, detested- Chris was his unique ability to befriend anyone and then keep that friendship by projecting the air of safety, the belief that now, in Chris, the new friend would have some one to watch their back. There was no reason for this feeling. Maybe it was carefully grown in to be the essence of Chris. But Chris happy and Chris content meant everyone happy and safe.)
Barry ran methodically, no thought spared for random musings. At the moment his world was full of very little; a white line of chalk to follow, a pounding in his ears as he ran, painful breathing and a searing pain in his shoulder. Whatever he'd done to it in the crawl-space had sent the fiery waves of pain back up. Dark shadows bustled on the edges of his vision, and it wasn't entirely from bad lighting either. The headache was back too, drilling somewhere between his right eye and temple.
So it was a weary and distracted group that followed the four teenagers. Possibly not the type of rescue team you'd want if you were in trouble. Then again, that's not to say the kids hadn't proven their ability to take care of themselves.
***
Claire gasped. "Jeez Jill. Ordinarily I wouldn't even consider calling you fat but damn! I never knew 70 k' could be so heavy!"
The nearly unconscious woman made no reply, except for a slight quirking of the lips.
Up the steep incline and... Aha! The grating! "Check it out, Jill! We're there!"
The two burst through the gate that they'd come through several hours before. An excited murmur rose from the watching crowd. Women and men wrapped in blankets looked on curiously, breath rising in a fine mist, as Claire struggled with the door.
"Help me out here, damn you!" she screamed, furious at them for not having any common sense at all. "She's badly hurt and needs a doctor!"
For a moment the silent crowd stood motionless until a man stepped forward. He had a homely air about him, the man who had a wife and children waiting at home. Hooking a finger over the rusted hinge and a thumb underneath, he jimmied the door up till there was enough leeway to move the rusting iron.
Claire stumbled through, almost over balancing as Jill's trouser seat snagged on something. The 'family man' swiped two blankets from the crowd- you called tell by the protesting 'hey!'s- and wrapped Jill in one. He took her from Claire's side and offered her the remaining blanket. She took it gratefully.
With him carrying Jill, he led the way to the ambulance. A scrawny boy was wearing a sweatshirt five-times too big and a smile that seemed to big for his face, His body was still dirty, as was his hair, but his face was clean and he had a generally healthier appearance.
"Aaron?" Claire marvelled at the change in the boy.
He gave a bemused smile that, as he recognised who it was, seemed to grow and swallow his face. "It's you! Did you... did you find Celia?"
Claire hesitated, unsure what to say. "Yeah, in a way..." she hated herself for not being able to say it straight out and hiding behind the cover that it would hurt the boy.
"She was already dead, wasn't she?"
She was startled at the boy's intuition. "Yeah, but not much suffering for her," that much is at least true.
"Ma'am?"
Claire swivelled round almost crashed headfirst into an ambulance officer. Green eyes, solemn and mirthless, regarded her sombrely.
"You are Miss Radcliff, right?"
"Redfield."
"Ah, yes. The lady inside was asking for you but we couldn't quite make out the name. Are you alright?"
"She's okay? She's talking?" Claire said eagerly, ignoring the question about her welfare.
"We have to be brief. Are /you/ okay, ma'am?"
"Uh... yeah," she said, mentally checking herself for any injuries.
"That's good to hear. Me and the boys are taking the lady down to the ER promptly. Will you becoming?"
"Yes, of course."
*
The inside of the ambulance was nothing exciting. All was clean and hygienic, except the sheet on the hospital stretcher that Jill was lying on. The rough blanket covered her lower legs from the knee down. A hand-operated oxygen pump was over her mouth and a man was working it gently.
From a distance she could hear Claire, /is she alright? When will we get to the hospital? How long will she need to stay there? / Her young companion sounded worried, but Jill couldn't tell what about. Not her anyway, she was perfectly fine, apart from the slight underwater quality of her vision.
*
Claire couldn't tell in Jill had an anaesthetic in her system or was simply drowsy from blood loss. Her efforts to gain information had been futile, though she had continued to pester the officials until they threatened to throw her from the vehicle.
AS far as she could tell, Jill's condition was 'stable'. She needed care at the hospital for several things with scientific names that she couldn't understand and, when she had stopped pressuring them for information, the officials began asking /her/ for information.
"Has she been conscious, for how long, how long ago? How much blood was lost? How were the injuries sustained?"
Those were just the easy questions, and Claire didn't know how to answer them. Then there were ones that she couldn't even begin to comprehend. She sighed, thinking it should've been Chris or Rebecca or Barry here in her place, being helpful and thus helping Jill.
But it wasn't any of them; it was her. So she searched her brain for anything she could say that wouldn't be too controversial. For example, what made this neck wound? Instead of saying teeth, Claire replied, something sharp. Very insightful.
***
Wesker regarded the vampiress in front of him. She put on an award winning smile and if you squinted, you cold /almost/ believe it was genuine.
"Why?"
An impatient hiss chipped away some of the credibility of her smile. "Because if you don't, I can see to it that you don't leave these sewers. At least, not in one piece."
"It's not very diplomatic to threaten people, Ms. Reeves," Wesker said deadpan, secretly enjoying the perk of frustrating a vampire.
"/Arben/ Reeves," she muttered, rising to the bait.
"Whatever. Y'know, I think it would be more fun if I just killed your deputies and let your secret become public knowledge."
The young girl that Ben might suspect to be Victoria gave a screech of impatience and leaped at the impudent man. "I have lived here for over one hundred years," she hissed in his ear, "I will not be ousted by a simpleton like you!"
Wesker decided to let the simpleton remark slide and endure being pinned down by this mere slip of a girl. Actually, and this was another thing he'd /never/ admit, he couldn't move. This mere slip of a girl was pretty strong.
She went back to where she had been sitting. "Now, I would've had you killed before when you met my 'deputies' for a second time. But I decided I liked you, after how you 'defeated' my first team. And I grew curious, so I watched you for a bit, and then came back here, confident you would follow."
"That pine smell... that was you?"
"Not entirely. This room, too." She gestured with a mirthless smile to the empty cleaner bottles. "I lead a clean life among the filth. Anyway, I saw you, and then I knew..."
"What?" Wesker asked, uneager to indulge in mind games.
"Your virus. A less powerful version of mine, but more powerful than the diluted one I created for my followers. Didn't want a war for leadership did we? So I want your virus, and I want you to get these... policemen... out of my lair."
"And what will I get in return for this?"
"Safe passage through the sewers."
"That's a very small reward."
Victoria shrugged. "That depends on how much you like living Mr...?"
"Wesker. Dr. Wesker."
"Dr. Wesker. You may be able to beat some of my troops, maybe all of them, but you won't be able to beat me. I am, as the line goes, unbeatable."
Wesker allowed himself enough emotion to raise an eyebrow. /Big claim/