Resident Evil: Voracious - Chapter One
Author's Note: This is much better written than the prologue. Much better. The prologue needs another revision. Also, things intentionally proceed at a somewhat glacial pace (although I have the satisfaction of knowing how damned frantic and cruel things will become later), and I take liberties with Barry's somewhat nebulous-and-thus-pliable-backstory. Huzzah for creative liscence and story editing! Also, thanks to Shakahnna for the kind review. Here's hoping I give the Burtons the brief place in the sun they so rightly reserve. Yes, "Poly" is spelled intentionally like that -- I went with the spelling from the book.
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"There's a bear." Poly Anne announced, pointing with one hand out the window at the side of the road.
Kathy looked. "That's a badger, honey."
Moira sat forward. "I thought that was a badger." she said, pointing.
Dutifully, Kathy looked again. "That's a porcupine."
Barry snickered. "City kids." he said, not without affection.
Kathy met his gaze briefly, and at any other time, the eye contact would have sparked a smile on both their lips. Whatever Barry saw in her eyes now, however, made the tentative smile he'd begun to offer wither, and he quickly returned his attention to the road. She had every right to be angry; she knew she did. Nowhere in their vows had been included "international conspiracy" or "bilogical warfare" or "all family and friends are now forfeit".
Still, she felt just a little guilty at the twinge of savage pleasure she felt at the dull hurt in her husband's eyes.
In an effort to take her mind off the situation, Kathy shifted her attention to the buildings that were beginning to emerge from the landscape around them. She had to admit, the place didn't look like the overly expensive tourist trap she'd envisioned, nor the seemingly inevitable ramshakle, run-down counterpart. Instead, the brick architecture gave off a comforting feeling of solidarity, and the enveloping trees a sense of peace. It was as though no matter what changes the rest of the world found pressed upon them, this place would emerge the same, and wiser for the experience.
"Where are we staying?" Moira was twisting about in the back seat, looking at everything with a curiosity that seemed to have dispelled the sulky pall she had been under for the majority of the trip. "And are we gonna have to go to school?"
"No school." her father replied, turning them down onto what was clearly the main road into town. "No homework. No detention. I'm afraid you'll still have to wash behind your ears and brush your teeth though."
In the rearview mirror, Kathy met her young daughter's exasperated gaze and laughed suddenly, the sound surprising her as much as it did Barry. Moira, however, only looked oddly relieved.
Kathy and Barry had met young, and at the time she'd been interested in little more than her studies at the pokey community college she'd been taking classes at, forget about one fresh-faced young military recruit built like a barn in town on leave. Although Barry himself continued to deny it, his old friends took great delight in telling her the pains he had gone through to orchestrate every time he had 'accidentally' bumped into her off-campus, found a reason to stop by the cluttered stationary store she worked at after classes, or tried to nonchalantly inquire after her to her friends. While her girlfriends had thought she was playing hard to get, the truth of the matter was Kathy really had been all but oblivious to Barry's attentions until, tormented by teasing from his friends and the looming approach of a return to the base, he had asked her out directly.
Months later, when he'd come back for the final time, and she found herself laying curled against his side in the grass one evening in the yard behind the library, he'd cupped the back of her head in one strong hand and murmured, "I knew the moment I laid eyes on you."
Not usually one for romance, Kathy had found herself replying with complete sincerity, "I knew the minute you opened mine."
It was a story that never failed to bring half-envious, half-appreciative laughter from her friends, and Kathy had always been a little embarassed to find the undeniably goofy grin taking up stubborn residence on her face when it was told. She was not a woman given easily to laughter or more than slight smiles, and the day she realised she thought less of monetary concerns and the state of the world than she did the man in her life had literally caused her several moments of stunned pause.
Thinking of it all now, Kathy grimaced inwardly. Bad enough the man's surprisingly emphatic eyes were pleading with her whenever she looked his way, now she had her own mind pleading his case, too.
And she did understand.
Understood, but didn't accept.
The move from her hometown to Raccoon City when Barry had first accepted his position with the S.T.A.R.S. had been bad enough. Moira had just been a baby, and Kathy had been more than a little wary about the world beyond the cornfields and rivers she knew, nevermind leaving behind the friends and family she had always known. For the first six months or so in their new home, sleep had been slow in coming for her and often restless, leaving her feeling oddly displaced, until she finally began to accept the place as her own.
But at least that had been voluntary.
"Nearly there." Barry announced, large fingers beating a nervous tattoo on the steering wheel, a habit he'd never had before the Spencer Estate incident.
If you want to blame someone, an insinuating voice inside Kathy's head said venomously, how about the man he told you forced them all into it?
I never liked him. Kathy thought, and realised with only the mildest flicker of surprise that not only was the statement true, but for the first time in her life she was experiencing a hate so acidic she was a little frightened at the intensity of it.
Albert Wesker, the new captain, had made an appearance at the Burton household some weeks after his appointment to the position. All the S.T.A.R.S. had, and Kathy never minded; in their own way, Chris Redfield, Enrico Marini, Forest Spyer and the others were as much part of her family as Moira or Poly Anne. Wesker shouldn't have been any different; she'd met Raccoon's police chief Brian Irons before, and the knowledge that Barry was now under the management of someone as capable and cooly professional as Wesker should have been a relief.
Instead, when Barry had invited the man to dinner, Kathy had found herself disliking the man on sight.
It was difficult to say why, exactly. Now, of course, she had a reason, but back then, she'd never had cause to suspect a thing. Albert Wesker, with his good looks, somehow stylish military haircut, and smooth manners had been every bit the gracious guest, complimenting the lasagne she'd served, and even patiently answering Moira's endless parade of questions throughout dinner. If his smiles had been few and slow in coming, Kathy should have thought nothing of it; the man was in a new town as she herself had been, with people he barely knew.
It gave her a chill now to think that the man who had shaken the hands of herself and her daughters with such gravity and manners had been the same one who had threatened their lives and nearly ended that of her husband's.
But even hating Wesker, easy as it was, brought her little satisfaction. By Barry's own admission, the traitor was dead, his remains surely little more than charred ruin and ash amidst the now picked-clean site of the Spencer Estate. There would be no easy answers as to why it had happened, no closure, no face to yell at . . .
. . . except her husband's.
That twinge of guilt again.
The car glided to a stop, and Kathy looked around curiously. All along the wide, paved road were old-fashioned buildings built by hand and sweat long ago by the area's first settlers, and likely still home to their descendents, albeit a few coffee shops added into the mix. On a nearby porch, a mournful looking basset hound raised it's head off it's paws and regarded her gravely through the window before settling back down. A hand-painted sign propped in the window above the animal read 'Barb's Lunchbox'.
"Thought we'd get some grub before heading up." Barry explained, and the girls cheered loudly from the backseat. "And some directions." he added conspirationally to Kathy in a low whisper with a bashful grin, eyebrows raising comically.
She stared at him for a beat before she leaned forward and hugged him suddenly, fiercely. The strap of her seatbelt dug painfully into her breasts, but she ignored it, feeling instead the reassuring strength of his broad shoulders, the familiar bristle of his beard against her cheek. She felt his surprise, but he hugged her back readily with something like relief.
She might have forgotten things for the duration of the trip, allowed herself to fall blissfully ignorant, if her hands hadn't felt the familiar shape of his shoulder holster, and the magnum inside a dead weight.
Kathy pulled back suddenly, and knew he knew what she'd felt. Their eyes met, but this time she didn't allow herself to look away. The embrace had done some good, thawed the ice at least a little, and opened the door a crack. She kissed him once, impulsively. Things would be allright.
They had to be.
"Gross." Moira commented from behind them.
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"I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation."
Tall, spindly, and rumpled, Eddie Riddick knew he was something of a joke to the other researchers. It didn't matter how brilliant he was, or how many reports he turned in; he would always be remembered for his mismatched socks, his paranoia, and the lunch stains on the faded lapels of his lab coat. He refused to allow himself to be cowed this time, however; he stood tall (if, admittedly, a little shakily) in front of the enormous glass topped steel desk, in the direct center of the stylized red and white umbrella painted on the marble floor, and glared across it. "None of you do." he insisted.
"I think you're overreacting, is all, Eddie. We all do." Smiling, John Mayhew gazed impassively across his desk at the older man. "I mean, it's just a handful of people. Most of them are country bumpkins, Ed. Hell, I should know . . . I was one of them, once, wasn't I?" He grinned.
Riddick refused to be taken in by the executive's smiling, good old boy appearance. Mayhew hadn't gotten where he was by being a rube, and those who mistook him for one often became just one more step in the ladder he was climbing, waiting to be trod upon. "You don't understand . . . these people, they could ruin us all."
Mayhew grinned again. Aw, shucks, fellas, it said. He looked out of place in his cold office, a thick necked, sandy haired man with sleepy blue eyes and a smattering of faded freckles on his broad face. He looked, in fact, like a farmhand who had awoken to discover he had been reincarnated as a businessman and still couldn't get out of the old habits in his smart, impeccably tailored blue suit. "What're they gonna do, Ed? The facility's hidden, isn't it? And," he went on, laying a finger aside his nose, "they don't have the access codes, now, do they?"
"That's what you don't understand." Riddick said quietly.
Mayhew became very still.
He didn't lose his smile, but something changed in his eyes, a subtle quality Riddick wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been watching for it. Like a pond frosting over with ice at the beginning of winter. "I don't think I follow you, old boy," he said slowly, hands flexing once on the glass surface, "and, you know, contrary to what might be popular belief, we aren't much of a joking type of people here."
Riddick took a deep breath. He knew it was his nerves, but the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped several degrees. "Something's happened."
After a long moment, Mayhew gestured for him to begin speaking.
Outside, the autumn chill pressed insistently onward.
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Back at his small apartment, finally dismissed for the day, Riddick hurriedly shrugged out of his labcoat even as he kicked the door shut behind him. The small place was excruciatingly tidy, in sharp contrast to his sloppy appearance, which made sense; the only real things the researcher owned were the clothes on his back.
Which made it easier for him to find what he was looking for.
He snatched the small cellular phone he had been given the week before off the table and punched a number into it with trembling fingers. His eyes never stopped roaming over the walls, windows, and doors as he did, rolling in their sockets like those of a frightened horse. The minute he heard a click on the other end, he said, breathlessly, "It's me.
"The bastards went for it."