Resident Evil: Kingdom Come
The Ashes of Paradise – Chapter 6
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."
– Eleanor Roosevelt
July 22nd, 1:45 PM.
"Get down!" Leon spun around, his gaze locked on Claire as he shouted, watching her dive instinctively to the ground, trusting that he knew what he was doing. He would have smiled if his mind hadn't been caught up in shooting, bullets catching the hunter that had leapt towards his partner in the chest, the hip and the eye. It spun grotesquely through the air, limbs flailing, before slamming into a nearby overturned bus with a crunch and dropping to the ground.
He turned slowly, scanning the street around them, but it seemed no other monsters were forthcoming. "You alright?"
"A little bruised," Claire hauled herself to her feet, scooping up her shotgun as she went. "God, I'm lucky you saw that coming." She frowned, reaching up to tug irritably at her hair, her ponytail now a useless mass of uncontrolled hair. "They're normally so loud."
"I barely noticed it either," the former cop shook his head, steps carrying him over to Claire, eyes looking her over quickly for injury. "Just a shadow against the building, no noise at all. I thought they were supposed to scream."
"I'm fine," Claire waved Leon away, turning to peer out into the city. "And they do. It's…frightening. More like a scream of pain than anything else. But I don't remember them ever attacking without screaming."
"Well…what's one more piece of bad news, huh?" Leon couldn't help but smile tired. "You want to just pack it in? We could find somewhere to hole up, call Liz and the others. Half the city still has power."
"I don't know. You heard that broadcast earlier, there are survivors near the docks somewhere. If we can get there, we can help them. Or they can help us." The brunette let out a little sigh and crossed the ruined street, hauling herself up onto the top of a parked car, and from there onto the top of the overturned bus. "We came into the city after all, we can't just…cut and run."
Leon followed after her, and the two of them stood on top of the bus surveying the street. "If we go that way, and then hook down Broad, it should take us towards the navy docks. I think." Leon had lost the map during their first run in with a group of zombies when they'd entered the city. "I think we should try to hotwire a car though."
Claire laughed softly. "Oh yeah, we'll just hot-wire a car like in the movies. Push the two wires together and vroom." She waved her hand vaguely in the air before pausing. "…Does that really work?"
Leon's eyes sparkled, eyebrows rising jokingly. "Couldn't hurt to try.
Fifteen minutes later found the two of them sitting in the front seat of an ancient looking Cadillac, Claire stretched across the middle of the car with her head under the steering wheel, head resting on Leon's shin as she peered at a large clump of wires.
"Hollywood needs to be more specific. Everyone always knows which two wires to cross. There's like, eight of them." She sighed, tugging her knife off her shoulder and poking at the clump irritably.
"Try the green one," Leon offered helpfully, humming to himself as he stared out at the street. A pair of carriers had shuffled into view a few minutes before, but seemed content to stay fairly far away. "Or the red one."
"Why?" Claire turned her head to peer up at the former cop through the steering column.
"It's always one or the other. Or sometimes both," he grinned down at her. "And we better hurry. Our two friends at the end of the street just got some company."
"I'm not even sure there is a green one," Claire sighed, sticking her knife between her teeth as she used both hands to begin separating the wires.
As Leon watched the zombies draw closer and closer, he checked over the clips in each of their guns, swapping out half-empty ones for full. They would have to stop somewhere and just reload everything at some point, but for now that would have to do.
"Arwight, wred and gween…" There was a click, a grinding noise, and a moment later the engine burst to life, prompting a squeal from Claire as she crawled back out onto her own seat, tucking her knife back into her shoulder-sheath.
"That really shouldn't have worked," she shook her head, a grin on her face as she buckled her belt.
"Shh. Don't jinx it." Leon put the car in gear and headed off, plowing through several of the carriers on their way.
July 21st 9:45 AM
Rebecca was perched on the hood of the camper, her knees tugged up against her chest, arms folded on top of them, chin on her arms as she stared at the nearby town of Insbruck. She'd been watching the town for almost an hour now, watching the carriers shuffling aimlessly back and forth between the buildings.
"What are you looking at?"
She glanced up as Carlos settled onto the hood next to her, a pleasant smile on his tAnnad features and a worn look in his eyes. He'd been supervising the search of all the houses on their route into town, a task that had taken almost two days now, and the signs of stress were showing.
"I'm counting." She smiled back and set her chin back on her arms. "It's not that accurate, but I think I've counted one hundred and nine different zombies in town. Not counting the ones we've been seeing as we go." They had been leaving carriers that were trapped in their houses alone. Carlos had pointed out that it seemed wrong to break in just to kill them when they couldn't hurt anyone.
"You can tell them all apart?" He sounded surprised, turning his own gaze to the town. "I don't know how you do that."
"Photographic memory. I just remember the clothing each one is wearing." She shrugged and tilted her head to the side. "One hundred and ten…that doesn't make any sense," the young medic sighed.
"Why not?" The south American turned to study her face, watching her expression.
"The town has, what, six buildings? None of them are more than two stories high. There is no reason for more than maybe twenty people to be working there. Even if you throw in another forty for visitors, you still can't account for the other fifty. It's too many people."
"So?" Carlos stared at the town as well, eyes narrowed as he tried to figure out what Rebecca was seeing. "What does it matter how many people are in town? Maybe there was a bus tour or something."
"Maybe," Rebecca didn't seem convinced. She sat up straight suddenly and twisted around, peering into the camper where Anna and Tandy were seated in the front seat talking. She rapped on the windshield, offering them a smile when they looked up.
"Hey, did either of your parents work for Umbrella?"
Anna nodded. "Yeah, why?"
"Did they ever walk to work?"
"Uhm…sometimes…though not that much," Anna shrugged. "Dad would sometimes, if Mom drove in early. Why?"
"Don't worry about it." Rebecca offered the two children another smile before she turned back to stare out at Insbruk again. Carlos did the same, both of them counting zombies to themselves.
"…You think the Umbrella facility we're looking for is in the town, don't you?" He finally asked, a little smirk on his face. "You could've just said that."
"Well, sure, but where's the fun in that?" The young woman grinned and pushed off the front of the camper. "Our best bet is under the bank, or possibly under the real estate firm. They are the two newest buildings in the city."
Carlos gave a little sigh as he stepped down as well. "Which means you want to clear out the town so we can look." He shook his head, tugging his walkie talking off his belt. "I'll call in the troops, but this is gonna take a while."
"It'll be worth it. I hope."
July 22nd, 2:35 PM
"Found one!"
Claire tumbled forward from the back seat of the car into the front, a city map clenched tightly in her hand and a triumphant grin on her face. She took a couple seconds to settle back into her seat before unfolding the map in her lap.
"So which way?" Leon stopped the car in the middle of the street, which made him feel rather strange despite the fact that he knew nothing was going to come driving down it.
"Uhm," Claire traced her finger along the streets of the map, a puzzled expression on her face. "If we go along this street and then turn here we could go under the highway and end up somewhere near the docks. Or…or we could go straight through the center of the city, there's a couple big streets but we don't know how wrecked they are." She sunk into her chair and shrugged. "Your call."
The former cop turned his gaze out to the street in front of them, a frown settling onto his features. The good mood he'd felt when they'd hot-wired the car and heard about other survivors had been sucked away by the devestation of the city. Philadelphia was bigger and had more people in it than St. Louis…but it didn't look like any more people had survived here. Which meant a lot more were dead.
"We're near the center of the city now, so we could just cut across. We can always climb over stuff and hot-wire other cars." He finally decided, putting the car back into gear and starting forward.
"Oh yeah, because we're such criminal masterminds now," his companion gave a little smirk, reaching up to mess with her hair. "I'm pretty sure this one was a fluke, hon."
"Maybe…" Outside of the car, the number of carriers seemed to be increasing with each block they passed. Before they had scene four or five scattered amongst the broken cars and burning buildings, but now he was hard pressed to find a spot that wasn't occupied by a shuffling, half-broken figure. It was starting to worry him.
He brought the car to a stop a block from the center of town, watching a group of zombies stumble by on the other side of a pair of parked cars. "Maybe this was a bad idea. There are a lot more here."
Claire had her gaze glued to the other side of the street, where a group of zombies were feeding on a fallen corpse. She nodded slowly in agreement and turned to look at him. "I think maybe you're right. If they were drawn to the center of town somehow." She resisted the urge to gulp. "There are a couple million people in this city, Leon."
Leon just nodded in response, staring out the window. "And even if only a tenth of them changed…yeah. This is a bad idea."
As if queued by his words, a strange moan went up from the zombies and the few that were near them seemed to surge forward, slamming themselves into the parked cars and benches between them and the two survivors. Which wouldn't have been a problem had the far end of the street not suddenly been flooded with carriers from somewhere out of sight. They roared around the corner in a grotesque mockery of a marathon, arms stretched out.
And every single glazed eye was fixed on them.
Claire tensed in her seat, hands clenching at the leather. "Oh hell."
July 22nd, 11:45 AM
Rebecca felt a sort of strange, guilty pleasure at watching the last two carriers in Insbruk collapse to the ground outside of the bank, their limbs twitching as what remained of their brains realized they were dead. It had taken the entire armed portion of their group, working in shifts, more than a day to finish the job. But it was done. They could explore in peace, find the lab, pick up supplies, and maybe even relax, if only a little.
"We can't relax," Carlos came up next to her, his rifle resting loosely on his arm. "I mean, we don't know if the ones outside of town are gonna come here." Rebecca just rolled her eyes at him, reaching up to brush her hair out of her eyes.
"Spoilsport," she headed over to a bench nearby. "I was looking forward to a shower." Her tired muscles forced an involuntary groan as she settled onto the wooden seat, her pistol resting on her knee, her head staring up at the cloudy sky.
"Well, I figured we can all do that…just in shifts." He turned around to watch the convoy pull into the town, half a dozen RV's and another dozen cars and trucks, all stopping wherever they wished. "It's not like we're lacking in help."
"Yeah, I know. I wish we'd picked up some more people here, though. If we had found someone who worked in the lab, we wouldn't have to pick our way over the town to find it. We could just…walk in."
"Yeah, well, nothing is ever easy for us, you know." Carlos climbed onto the bench and sat down on the back, his boots tapping quietly on the wooden slats of the seat. "But I think I found the lab. There's a keypad in the back of the bank sitting against a rather boring white wall. I bet the wall is one of those secret passages Umbrella loves so much."
Rebecca sat bolt upright and frowned at him. "Why didn't you tell me?" She started to push herself to her feet but found the Hispanic mans hand on her shoulder.
"Because you need to rest before we go down there, and it's not like the lab is going anywhere. If it's like the others there are gonna be things worse that zombies. We really do need to be awake and alert and you're not."
Rebecca seemed ready to argue, but he fixed her with a look and she just sank back into her seat and sighed. "Fine. I'll get a shower and a couple hours of sleep and then we go. No more than three, I don't want to go down there when it's night."
"Go where?" Anna and Tandy had come up from their RV, the first looking quite curious and the second glancing around nervously.
Rebecca peered up at Carlos for a moment, unsure what to tell the children, but he just shrugged, so she turned back. "We think we found where your parents worked, Anna, and we're going to go and see what went on there," she said quietly. "We think that might be where all this started. At least, around here."
"Oh," Anna just sort of nodded, glancing around the town. "I never came to work with them…but…" She frowned. "I don't know. It is hidden, isn't it?" She looked like she was caught somewhere between laughing and crying. "Do you think they are still down there?"
"We don't know, Anna. We're going to go look this afternoon. We'll tell you what we find, okay?"
"Can we come with you?" The young girl smiled hopefully, almost desperately, and for a second Rebecca almost wanted to let her go. If her parents were down there, she'd see them. And if they were dead…well…
"No." Carlos answered before Rebecca could even find the words. "It's just too dangerous, I'm sorry." His accent seemed unusually thick right at that moment, and Anna just nodded in response. A moment later the two children were back inside the RV, leaving the two would-be heroes sitting on their bench.
"Her parents are dead," Rebecca said finally, softly. "I'm sure of it. The virus is a gas at first…unless for some reason they were wearing gasmasks, or just left…they're dead."
Carlos just nodded.
July 22nd, 2:45 PM
Leon silently cursed as he tried to turn the massive car around in the narrow street. Picking a big car had been sort of a joke, at the time, and now they were going to pay for it. He swung the front around, knocking over a single zombie that had squeezed between the parked cars, and then wincing as he dragged the front bumper across the side of a parked SUV.
"There are more behind us," Claire said in a remarkably off-handed manner, staring out the passenger side window. The horde of zombies that had appeared at one end of the street had apparently not been alone, as a second wave was slowly forming at the other.
Leon spared a second to check the far end of the street and immediately regretted it. While there were not as many as in front of them, it was still a frightening prospect. Even in Raccoon, the former cop had never seen that many carriers in a single place. "We'll have to go through them." Leon said, shifting into reverse and slamming the car backwards, forcing a second parked vehicle onto the curb. The little bit of extra room was all he needed, and he shifted back into drive and sent the car lurching back the way they had come.
The car plowed through the oncoming zombies, the vehicle rattling under the impacts. One of the carriers rolled over the hood, crashing into the windshield and shattering the passenger side, sending spideweb-like cracks through the glass before the corpse rolled over the roof and off the back.
A few seconds later and they were through the crowd, the car limping out into the clear street behind the carriers. Despite the bulk of the vehicle, crashing through that many solid bodies had been bad for it, and it was obviously on its last legs. "If it breaks down here, we're dead." Claire said, pressing both hands against the dashboard as though to will the car forward.
"It won't. It won't break down." Leon pressed down a bit more on the gas, urging the vehicle down the street, glancing in the mirror every few seconds to check the progress of the crowd. The carriers were following them, but not with any significant speed.
One block…the engine started to smoke, tendrils of grey cloud forcing their way out through the edges of the hood. Two blocks, the smoke got darker. "I think the engine is on fire." He said, glancing over at Claire for a moment.
She said nothing, and the car kept moving. Three blocks and the engine kicked, loudly, the entire car vibrating. Four blocks…five…
The engine failed, the car shaking around them. Leon tugged his feet off the peddles and let inertia carry them another block before the car came to a halt.
For five seconds, the two of them said nothing, just sat there staring at the smoking front of the car, listening to their collective breathing, fingers clenched tightly around their weapons.
"We need to go," Claire whispered, her eyes glued to the rearview mirror. The carrier horde was out of sight, but it was only a matter of time before they caught up. And if the two survivors wanted to continue to be survivors, they needed to be somewhere else.
Without another word they grabbed their supplies and slid from the car, checked the area quickly before moving ahead of the car, and forced their way through the cloud of smoke, out into the clear air further up the street.
And stopped dead.
Standing in the intersection, perhaps twenty yards away, three hunters were silently watching them. The long, curved claws that replaced the beast's fingers were curling and uncurling slowly, their bodies swaying like some grotesque line dance. It was all Leon could do not to scream in surprise. It made no sense…the monsters were almost acting coordinated. But it had to be random chance…the hunters were just as likely to kill a zombie as a person…they couldn't possibly have organized with the mindless horde.
But that didn't make them any less deadly. Or make Claire and himself any less dead. He slowly reached into his belt and tugged out his revolver, hoping the added kick of the weapon might make him enough of a distraction that Claire could get away.
"When I say…run back the way we came," he whispered over to the brunette, never taking his eyes off the monsters. "The zombies shouldn't have caught up…if you cut across a couple blocks and head this way again, you may be able to get away."
"What about you?" She turned her green eyes to stare at him, her face a mask of surprise and fear. "I can't…"
"Yes you can! One of us has to get away, we're the only ones that really know what's going on. You need to contact your brother. And I have a better chance of holding these things off than you do. So no argu-"
He trailed off as the three beasts suddenly screamed, the sound so loud that the cars of the windows closest to them buckled and shattered inward. Their muscles tensed, all three hunching over, ready to spring. Leon braced himself for the strike, half-closing his eyes as he resigned himself to what was coming. "Claire…now! Ru-"
He never finished the sentence.
To Be Continued…
(( Well, there ya go folks. This story is NOT dead, and I am working on it every chance I get. I promise that the next chapter will be up soon. At least, much much sooner than this was. I can't believe I let that go so long…Anyway, Read and Review!))