Author's note: This is sadly the last chapter of Crimson Ribbons, and the last you'll hear of stories connected to How long is the night? Unless I decided that I want to create something to give everyone a better understanding of it all, but I don't see that happening. Before I hurry along to the reviewer responses I would like to thank everyone who took some interest in this story and everyone who took time out of their lives to review, it was greatly appreciated. I am planning on writing another Resident Evil fic, but I'd like to wrap up some of my other stories first, like Sidewinder which is in a desperate need of an update. Thanks once again, I now bring you the last installment of Crimson Ribbons!

Reviewer Responses

To my top three reviewers:

The one and only-Ace: I'm glad you enjoyed the story. Thanks for reviewing every chapter (from what I can tell) and reading through everything. Good luck on any stories you may write, I'll make sure to read them.

Luna-Starr: Your stories are amazing and very humorous to read. It would be impossible to thank you as many times as I want for writing some awesome reviews, the feedback was great. Best luck on wrapping up your Advent Idiots story and anything else you may write.

Foggy Brains: It'll probably take you forever to read this, like always. I'm joking. Anyways... you better update your stories or else every chance I get I'll slug ya in the shoulder. Your Advent Children story seems like its got lots of potential and your Gundam Seed story (the Shani one), which I may add, needs more chapters and no end in sight. Update! Or else...

Crimson Ribbons

Final Chapter

Our last plight

Their footfalls were quick and silent as they hurried through the halls to the operations room. Water splashed to the sides as Leon's boots were surrounded by it. Michael and Barret were close behind, never straying too far away. It was dark, but with the help of some handy flashlights, their small, steady trail through the seemingly never ending mess of hallways was visible, slightly.

Sounds of the undead and who knew what other monsters echoed from behind, in the front, from the sides. It was confusing as hell to know where they were coming from, but the three men paid no attention. With Leon leading them towards a place where the unpredictable could happen, they trekked closer and closer to their destination.

A splash of water from behind caused them to stop in their tracks. Without the constant tapping noise of their boots meeting the floor for only a few split seconds, a dreaded silence fell upon them. Barret spun the flashlight in the direction of the noise and met nothing. However, he soon found out that there was indeed something there, just that it was too fast for him to spot it.

Leon shouted at them, the word 'run' echoing in the dark, narrow hallway. He had never seen anything like it before, giving the creature the upper hand here. He was at a loss as to what they should be doing. Luckily, his decision was the right one for the monstrosity traveled at a quicker pace than any Ganado could.

Michael was the closest to the creature, and saw no point running from the thing any longer, which was now close to decapitating him with extra long claws that sprouted out of its rotted fingers. Barret stopped as well, letting the strong, but dim light fall over it as to let Michael know where he was aiming. When Leon couldn't hear the others following him, he spun around to rest his eyes upon their deadly stalker.

He had never seen such a thing as that. Its skin was red and instead of moaning mindlessly like the other undead creatures did, this one sounded like a fierce animal as Barret's light shone painfully into the whites of its dead eyes. Leon also took note of the long claws, yellow in color, and knew this was no ordinary zombie.

Rushing forwards, growling like a crazed animal, the super zombie headed straight towards Michael, claws pointed at his heart. It covered the ten foot distance between them in a mere two seconds and savagely took a swing at Michael, who fired a shotgun shell directly into its head, receiving no rewarding sound of its head falling to the ground. Instead, the thing only proceeded to attack its intended victim. That was when Leon finally stepped in.

Barret steadied his flashlight, giving Leon more of an advantage over the creature with the light in its eyes. He used his skills he had obtained through hard work and aimed his gun expertly, firing three rounds, one after the other, into its rotting skull. He had no hopes that this thing would die so easily, and motioned for Barret and Michael to quickly walk behind him and head to the door that they would've entered, had the super zombie not interrupted their progress.

Objections threatened to be made, but Barret and Michael both knew that Leon was more experienced than them and right now, his skills and determination to survive overpowered their's greatly. But Barret stood in front of the door, still giving Leon some light. He had no chance at surviving against that thing, but he would damn well help the younger man. Michael on the other hand, raised his sawed off shotgun so that it was trained on the creature and refused to back down and leave Leon to fend for himself.

A clawed hand swept over his head, missing by half a centimeter. The air created by it blew his hair directly into his face, giving him some insight at to just how powerful this thing really was. He stood up from his crouching position and pressed his body flat against the wall, missing another close encounter. His weapons seemed useless in this fight and the monster indestructible. The chances were slim, but Leon saw the red skinned zombie falter in his steps and shot forward, gun drawn.

The two men, excluded from the battle, watched as Leon rapidly pelted the thing with bullet after bullet after bullet. They were amazed and disgusted at the same time at how fast it could move. This wasn't a surprise to them, now that they had a better look of what Umbrella really was. But the thing toppled down, onto the cold, wet cement floor, when Leon used up a whole ammo clip on its legs alone, befalling it. They watched as Leon ran towards them at a much faster pace then even the blond man alone thought possible, waving his free hand at them to hurry and make it out the door.

He knew it wasn't dead. Ordinary handgun bullets were the equivalent of small sized pebbles when it came to the super zombie. As Michael, being the closest to the door and to safety, wrapped his hand firmly around the door knob, they all heard the thing growl like a beast and they all heard as it slowly raised itself up. Wasting no time whatsoever, Michael flung the door opened and quickly ran in, followed by Michael and Barret. Just as soon as the door had been shut, it began to shudder as the creature violently through itself against the hard metal surface.

"What now?" Michael asked as they struggled to keep the thing at bay.

Leon scanned the room, using the short couple of seconds he had before the thing would charge again, and spotted a couch. But a couch wouldn't be in a hallway. He took a second glance and realized that they had made it back to the lobby. Luck was on their side no longer as Leon spotted a group of undead, blood soaked scientists heading their way.

"Keep it back a while longer, I'll be right back."

Neither of the two men looked back, concentrating completely on keeping the super zombie away. They did hear Leon's footsteps fall quickly and then the powerful sound of him firing away with his shotgun. There must have been some bother behind them, but they could find no chance to see what it was, lest they want to be sliced into perfect bite sized bits.

Leon finished off the last of the zombies and quickly made his way over to what used to be a pearl white couch, but now a blood stained piece of torn furniture. Surprisingly, it weighed like nothing and Leon easily managed to lift it. This was good on his part, but the super zombie would have no troubles in knocking the door down with such a light chunk of furniture holding it back. Pushing his worries behind him, the blond called out to Michael and Barret, warning them that the couch was going to land on the door.

Barret left the other two with trying to secure the door and went to grab another couch. He returned shortly with a few metal chairs instead and set one under the rusted doorknob, and watched as it successfully kept the door from shuddering violently. One less thing to worry about, they all cleared away from the door and followed a track of double bloody footprints.

They were too straight to belong to a zombie, or anything human like for that matter, so Leon figured that one set had to belong to Vivica, especially if they were smaller than his shoe size. Barret pointed towards a door once the tracks came to an end, then checked the map to double check that they were headed in the right direction. Once confirmed, they swung the door opened and stepped through.

Cold laughter rang in their ears. Leon aimed his gun in the shadows, the direction of which it came from, and held his ground as a figure emerged, grasping none too kindly to a struggling girl. Leon immediately recognized her and rushed forward, only to have the glistening barrel of Wesker's Desert Eagle aimed at his forehead.

Vivica looked different. Her skin color wasn't its ordinary pale color, but shaded sickly gray instead. Her eyes had lost the eerie glow that came from their bright turquoise color, and were replaced with a livid crimson that seemed to seep into them. Her clothes were torn and multiple scars, along with cuts, littered her arms. When she attempted to push Wesker away, her hair was brushed back, revealing a grotesque scar on the side of her head.

The records weren't lying. She had survived.

"Not so fast, Kennedy," Wesker spoke as he struggled, even with his great power, to maintain his hold on Vivica. "Do you really think I'd go down so easily?"

Barret couldn't believe what he was seeing. The girl had been dead, from what he was told, shortly before he had reunited with their little group. But he remembered who Wesker was, and despised him. This man had caused a lot of pain and just like he felt nearly a year ago, Barret became overrun with anger.

Wesker was peppered with bullets, carefully aimed at him and not the struggling teenager. He quickly fired two rounds back at Barret, and Michael as well, who had joined in once he remembered the bleach blond haired man just like he partner had. They fell to the ground, crippled by a single shot to each of their legs, excluding them from yet another battle.

Leon knew that Wesker being distracted only came once in blue moon and charge towards the older man, ramming the butt of his shotgun painfully, and rather deep, into his face. His infamous sunglasses shattered from the impact and small droplets of blood began to seep out of the wound he had just suffered. It was a small victory, but Leon still payed dearly for it.

The older man released Vivica when she had dug her sharp teeth into his flesh, and even though he had gone blind in the eye Leon had struck, he managed to take a swing at the daring blond and knocked him painfully into the wall on the other side of the room that they were in. He went to reacquaint Leon with his fists, but Vivica jumped onto his back, ripping large amounts of his jelled back hair out and clawing at his face. He flew her backwards and she sauntered off, into the deep shadows.

Leon coughed violently, his lungs aching from being prodded by his ribcage. He had difficulties getting up, only pushing his body further when Wesker loomed over him. His life would have ended right there and then, had Leon not rolled to the side, narrowly dodging Wesker's balled up fist. The ground cracked where his head had once been and a rather large indentation could be seen once the dust cleared. Leon had no time to think of how badly it would've hurt to have his head crushed by a powerful force when Wesker made another attack, only missing due to the loss of sight in his left eye.

Before anything else ensued, a female voice, loud and blaring, echoed through the speaker box in the far right corner of the room. Wesker grew angry, but Michael and Barret let devilish smirks appear on their faces, despite the pain that had spread entirely through their bodies.

"Self destruct system activated. Ten minutes until self destruction. All head personnel please report to the lobby and exit through the main doors. Repeat: self destruction activated."

The lights overhead, powered by the emergency backup energy, flickered above them. Leon only managed to make out the dark form of Wesker as he neared, quickly moving to the side. When the lights remained stabilized, he saw the older man take out his prized gun and aim the barrel of it directly into his face. His finger raised slowly to the trigger, as if he was only playing with his prey, and smirked coldly.

Something happened when the lights completely turned off. The next thing Leon knew, Wesker was bent over in pain. He sat up, finally off the ground, and looked to see what had occurred. He found a pair of scissors, shinning innocently in the lights that had turned back on, sticking mostly inside the older man's back. Only the very top of them, where the fingers could slip in, were visible. They must have hit something vital for Wesker began to heave like he was suddenly out of breath.

Vivica smirked at her handy work, having returned from the control room only seconds before Leon would become nothing but mush under Wesker's boots. She walked over to the already injured man and used the heel of her shoe to dig the scissors further into Wesker's body. He shuddered slightly, causing Vivica to take as cautious step backwards. She was still within striking range, and soon found herself leaning heavily against the wall behind her, crumpled in a heap of pain when Wesker brought the backside of his hand up, and used it to propel her backwards, causing a great amount of damage.

Coughing up blood, she could do nothing as the sticky liquid dripped down her neck, adding onto the large number of crimson stains that had also found a spot on her shirt. Vivica watched through clouded eyes, breathing heavily from having the breath knocked out of her, as Leon made his way over to the man she barely remembered and one she hadn't seen before.

"Run," she croaked out before coughing up more blood.

Leon looked like he was about to object, but he was blocked out of her sight when Wesker stood in front of her, knuckles cracking loudly. He went to finish her off but something stopped him from continuing out his actions. The room fell silent as the noise that both the tyrants had heard made its way towards them.

Vivica smirked, blood sticking to the curled edges of her mouth. Through matted hair, she watched as everyone was consumed by a ball of bright light.

Everything went black.

From her greatly missed room within the White House, Ashley sat with a bowl of popcorn propped on her knee, expertly balanced. She picked up the black remote of her new television and flipped through its multiple channels. There was absolutely nothing on, save for several news reports. Figuring that it was better than nothing, she turned the volume up.

"An explosion was reported only hours ago. Officials rushed to the scene and discovered the bloody remains of several people and some that had somehow managed to stay alive. It was noted that their behavior was unnatural, resembling the same traits as the illness that had broke out a year ago. The explosion has apparently been caused from somewhere within an abandoned factory. Every square inch of the place, both intact and nothing but rubble, were searched for survivors. So far no one has been found. Stay tuned for further updates on this horrendous incident."

Assuming had nothing to do with anyone she knew, Ashley turned the television off and left the room, abandoning her bowl of popcorn. It had been forever since she talked to Leon and decided that she might as well call him and find out why he hadn't hung around or anything.

She dialed his number and waited patiently for him to pick up. The phone rang and rang and rang.

Leon never picked up.