Author's Note: To the T, to the H back to the R, E, and E

Summary: As Chris and Claire scrape up what they have to pay the Price, Jill and Carlos huddle in False Salvation.

Rating: T. This one's a widdle bit gwaphic.

Paranoia

Chapter Three: False Salvation

By: Mazzie May

Jill sat in the corner of the living room, staring out into the living room, but not really seeing anything. All the lights were off, the curtains closed. This was how she spent the nights she knew she wouldn't be sleeping through; in her white over stuffed arm chair that Carlos wasn't allowed to touch.

Her Springfield Armory XD-9 sitting quietly on top of her right thy which was crossed over her left.

Jill never really thought about anything when she sat here, just waited. Didn't really expect anything, just waited. It was sad, that someone was so beyond their fear that all they did anymore is wait for it to try and bite them in the ass the moment they took a moment to relish the thought of "safety".

A door opened and a block of yellow light broke out from the hall. The door closed, the light disappeared. Muffled thumping down the hall, second door opened, a small click and more light, only softer this time. A second later the door closed and all was dark again.

Jill hadn't moved at all, simply blinking once, slowly after it was dark again to readjust her night vision.

Carlos was just sprinting for the bathroom. It happened sometimes at night; something would worry him – either a nightmare or flashback – and off to the bathroom, or any place with a mirror, he would run. He needed to reassure himself.

Carlos had always been a jokingly vain individual. It was no secret. What was a secret, however, was his looks helped keep him sane. See, his greatest fear was turning into a zombie, and had been for the list six years. In his nightmares his flesh would gray, and rot, and fall away, revealing pulsating muscles gone green and slimy, and below was yellow and blackened bone.

To reassure him self, he'd lock himself away in the bathroom, checking his face, probing and pocking and picking every part of his body. He'd strip down to his birthday suit and stand amongst all the mirrors, trying to find sign of the virus.

And if he did happen to find a blotch, of any kind, he'd quickly cover it with some sort of foundation and then powder so the blemish was completely gone, his skin flawless again. The mounds of make-up in the bathroom and on his dresser might be embarrassing for most men, but to Carlos moisturizing and mixing colours to make the perfect shade were damn therapeutic. Jill didn't think he could make it through the day without the routine checks of dark flesh.

Jill watched him do it once. She'd been in the shower when he asked her if he could come in. She'd told him to wait. He began to plead, she gave in. He was near tears when he cracked open the door and slid in. She'd opened the shower curtain and watched him do what he did, neither of them ashamed; he needed the make-up to feel better, just like she needed to shower with the water boiling in order to feel semi-clean after a shower.

Jill shivered, thinking about being dirty. 'Dirty' was a bad thing with Jill, and just thinking about it now was doing things to her mind: she could feel Joseph's blood warm on her face, dry and crusty after she'd tried to wipe it off; the vomit slick on her lips after throwing up in the bathroom; Richard's skin pasty against her fingertips; Enrico's innards thick and sticky, slapping against her torso, his blood seeping through; the sticky shwoopk as she skid through Brad's blood, kneeled into Brad's blood, pawed his bloody vest, collecting gray chunks of his brain and skull chips on her finger tips, desperately trying to find his ID card before the killer – NEMESIS – turned around since she wasn't carrying hers; the grim caking her shoulders after the gas station explosion; the stench of the dead worm she fried in the graveyard seeping into her pours; raw sewage making it into her boots, forming burning rashes on her calves; her hair clumping in sticky masses as Nicholai's blood poured over her, a waterfall of death.

She reached into her pocket quickly, feeling the soft, warm comfort of metal. Hastily pulled out her lock pick and rubbed it between her fingers. Carlos had his make-up, she had her lock pick. Or, Luke, as she fondly called him in private. The phrase 'Lucas' Locks' were written on the inside, so Luke, of course. Luke was her most treasured possession and friend. Jill wasn't stable by any means, but Luke helped her cope. She'd spoken allowed to him many times in the dark, empty hallways of the Spencer Estate. The entire reason she went to the RPD back during the Raccoon Disaster was to get Luke. She searched her desk frantically, hysterically trying to find him that day; she couldn't get through that ordeal without Luke, and she certainly couldn't leave him behind.

And he repaid her loyalty now, the warm metal pressed against her cold, sweating, flushed face, reminding her that there were things she could count on in this world, that there was some structure left, that sanity did exist.

Jill and Carlos couldn't save themselves. They hide behind their inanimate saviors. The reassurance they seek comes from the need to be told they're okay from something that cannot tell them they aren't okay.

False salvation is where they hide from it.

Paranoia.

Author's Note: First off, I'd like to thank my little sister, whom on the site goes by Shizmoo, for being my beta this time around. I think I'll enlist her help in the future because I suck at proof reading, as you all know. So, thank you Shizmoo. It is also worth noting that she thought the word "Calves" was pronounced "Cal-vis" and we had a good laugh. Hope you're all still around for this chapter and the next one, which happens to be the end! This will be my first completed multi-chapter story. Unless I'm hit by a car before I can finish. I hope that doesn't happen.

R&R if you please.