I half ran, half limped towards the exit at the end of the tunnel, my lungs wheezing, my body burning, trying to gulp in some of that luscious oxygen to help my failing body move faster. The cold, hard feminine voice that rang throughout the tunnel did nothing to calm my terror.
"The self destruct sequence has been activated," she said, more so out of boredom than anything. Whoever's voice that was, she sure as hell didn't think such a situation would ever occur during the time of recording. But lately it seemed Umbrella had a habit of blowing up their labs. "Repeat, the self destruct sequence has been activated. This sequence may not be aborted. All employees proceed to the emergency car at the bottom platform."
Billy was a few yards ahead of me by now, not even taking the time to glance back. Not that I blamed him. If I were a criminal, I'd probably be more concerned for my own safety than that of some cripple. The wound I received from that giant worm a few nights ago was beginning to burn. I had to get myself to a hospital before the infection spread too far. But right now, I had to escape the radius of the impending explosion before I could get myself checked into a hospital - and that was what kept me going on.
After what seemed like an eternity of darkness, its clutches rendering my body more useless by the second, I stumbled out of the subway tunnel and continued on my pathetic limp, trying to get as far away as possible.
"Faster," Billy ordered, turning back to face me. "There's no telling how huge the explosion will be, or how long more we have left before that happens."
"Are you telling me we could be dead anytime within the next few minutes?!" I wheezed, clutching painfully at my chest. It was a stupid question - but I like to think of it as being rhetorical. So I continued to run. There was a patch of vegetation towards our left, consisting of lush green trees lined around the edges with thick bushes. Would they offer protection from the blast? Would they serve as obstacles to dodge when it finally occurred? There was no way of telling and I sure as hell wasn't a physics expert, so I decided to take my chances. Apparently, Billy silently agreed as he headed for the trees as well.
"We'll be safer in there!" he said, pointing in the direction of the forest. I guess he agreed with me. I smiled as I stepped into the bushes, despite the prickly branches scratching against by wounded and bruised body. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, I was out of Raccoon City. I was safe. I didn't care of the possibility of creatures leaking out of the city and into the surrounding forest. It was just good to be out of that damn hellhole.
Not only that, but the sun was close to the eastern horizon, warming up the cold earth from a freezing night. It's warming rays produced goose bumps on my body, shining like heavenly beams between the thin trunks of the trees. By now, Billy and I had slowed to a walking pace, too tired to continue running. After a few minutes, he collapsed to the ground, finding a cozy spot beside a tree trunk. I did the same, instead coming into contact with a rock - not as comfortable.
"I can't go on," he admitted, finally defeated from the physical and mental stress endured for the past few days. "It was a mistake going into that place."
"Well I'm thankful you did," I said, feeling a little uncomfortable showing him my gratitude. But I really was thankful. I don't know how I would've gotten out of Raccoon alive if it weren't for him. Then again, I was thankful to the others too, like Leon, Ada and Carlos. Despite my brief encounters with these civilians, they each contributed to my escape in some way. And then there was Jill, whom I liked to call Ms. Chase-Your-Dreams! Out of everyone involved in the Raccoon disaster, Jill was the one I knew best. She worked with me in the police precinct, always mothering me around … I couldn't help but feel concerned for them as I sat now, beside a huge rock with the sun's rays bathing my body. They were still trapped in the city. "Do you think the others will make it out?" I asked.
"Who knows?" Billy shrugged. "It's out of our hands at this point."
"Maybe we should go back," I suggested.
"And get blown up? I didn't go through two nights of hell to escape, just so I can go back and be killed in some explosion. But if you want to, be my guest."
I stood up, unable to handle Billy's cold outlook anymore. "If we'd only helped them in the first place, they wouldn't be stuck in there right now!"
"Yeah, and we wouldn't be out here," he countered.
"And you're fine with just leaving them in there?!" The volume rose a little in my voice. Perhaps I was being a little more emotional than I intended to? No. There were people that were important to me and they were about to die. I had every right to be emotional.
"Look," Billy continued, trying to calm me down, "I know it doesn't seem fair, maybe even cold. But we had to do what we did to ensure our own safety. We didn't deliberately put our friends in any sort of danger. If they fail to escape, then that is their own downfall, no matter how regrettable."
"I can't believe I'm even …" I wasn't able to finish the sentence. It seemed that despite having escaped Raccoon City, fate still had a tendency to have me knocked unconscious. And that was what happened again for the third time in three days. The warm light of the sun, the chirping of the birds in the forest, the smell of the fresh clean air was swallowed up by a black void in less than a second - along with my consciousness.
* * *
I don't know how long it had been at that point, when I started to get feeling in my fingers. A sharp pain made its way down my spin, the pain of having something collide with my back. I tried wiggling my toes and they did. So I wasn't paralyzed, but I still couldn't see anything. Then I tried opening my eyes. It was difficult at first, peeling my lids that had been caked shut by crusted blood. And that's when the headache started. It started as a dull ache from within the depths of my brain and spread outwards to the edge of my skull.
Then I remembered Billy. I rolled over onto my back and tried getting up, fighting against the force of gravity against my broken body. The wound in my leg began screaming again, torn open by the airborne debris colliding with me, thrown into the air from the force of the explosion. Every part of my body that could possibly hurt did. I noted a particular sharp, radiating pain coming from my left forearm, my right shoulder and both my ankles. Ignoring the pain, my eyes scanned the surrounding area for Billy, but he was nowhere to be found.
"Leave us alone," a familiar voice said, from somewhere in the distance. Someone was angry, having shouting these cold words at another person. "You're looking for your brother, right?" I squinted, perking my ears up just a little higher to hear exactly who was doing the talking. The familiar threatening attitude, the loss of patience for the victim receiving these thoughtless words … it could only be Leon! He had made it out of there along with someone else! Could it have been Ada?
I started running in the direction of the voice. As I approached the edge of the forest, I realized that I hadn't even made it that far from the edge of the tunnel. I had only run deeper into the forest where the explosion from the underground lab spread. No wonder it was able to knock me out cold. But standing a hundred feet from the mouth were three figures and one of them had indeed been Leon. It was hard to tell at first. The three of them looked identical with a caked-on layer of dust and debris. I could only tell that one of them was a child. Upon seeing them, I was made aware of the seriousness of their argument.
The woman that was with them didn't look happy. She backed off slowly, putting space between herself and Leon and the child. She rubbed her hand across her face, what I could guess as wiping her tears away. But Leon remained insensitive, keeping his posture tall and firm, holding the child close to his body with an arm. "Just go!"
His latest outburst even made me jump as it echoed throughout the barren land just beyond the forest edge. For the pretty brunette girl he was shouting at, it was the last straw. She turned around and walked away trying to keep her head high. Something inside of me wanted to run up to her and tell her everything was going to be all right. The worst was over. She made it out of Raccoon alive. But yet …
"I …" she stumbled over her own words, clearly hurt by what Leon had just said, "I'll be back. I promise!!" She exploded into a run, heading straight towards my direction, getting farther and farther away from her comrades. As she approached me, I began preparing a few words to say to her, perhaps to encourage her to stay with Leon and the child. We were the survivors of the Raccoon City disaster and I didn't believe a little argument should get in the way of what could have been a real bonding experience.