Author's note:

Apparently I opened a can of worms. The need to finish stuff is after me again. Let's get this bad dog out there.

Slainte!

….

IX: Hey girl - Black Ice ain't the only thing I'm falling for

ANTARCTICA, 1998

:::::::::::::::::NINE:::::::::::::::::::

Claire would later think about how one ends up in the middle of nowhere with a pervert.

Of all the things in her life that sucked lately, this was the least of them. Apparently, somewhere between losing the love of your life and waking up in the middle of a prison, there was coming to in the cockpit of a wrecked airplane with a tongue in your mouth.

She would have traded gang rape in the prison by angry inmates for this shit show ANYDAY.

Claire spat, cursing loudly, even as Steve shouted, "I BROUGHT YOU BACK! WHOOOT!"

It was colder than a well digger's ass, she was shivering on the freezing steel of the still smoking plane, and Steve Burnside had just finished giving her CPR accompanied by a cleansing of her tonsils. She smacked him hard in the chest, shoving him away. "GROSS! You always deep throat your victims?"

Steve puffed up his chest, face flushing, "You only a victim of my loooove, girl. Besides, I SAVED YOUR LIFE...seemed ok to get a kiss. Isn't that what heroes get?"

Idiot.

She gave him a narrow look

He grinned, "It's nothing but cold here doll. Can I hiber-mate with you?"

Claire rose, pushing at his skinny shoulders. "Dumb ass. Where's Leon?"

Steve shifted and shifted again. The silence dragged out. Claire felt her throat seize. "Steve...where is Leon?"

Sharper, a little more shrill. She didn't like sounding shrill, really, but she was starting to get concerned. Finally, Steve answered her, "...he kinda stayed behind remember? On Rockfort Island."

No.

No no no. No no no no no no no. She shook her head in denial. "No. NO!" She slapped him twice and had him recoiling, "YOU LEFT HIM BEHIND!"

Lord, that was a loud shout. A loud shout in a really cold building of some kind. She might think about that too, and the snow falling on her face from the shattered roof of the plane, but she was too upset. He was saying he'd left Leon behind to die.

He'd left Leon behind on an island set to blow up.

Her heart hurt so bad that she rubbed at her sternum and collapsed against the wall. Steve scrambled toward her, looking pensive. "I'm sowwy! I am! He told me to!"

He would. The fool. The adorable. wonderful bastard. Maybe...maybe he'd stopped the countdown? Hadn't they played this game once? Thinking he was dead?

Clearly they were still close by right? Steve had been headed to a neighboring island when she'd passed out.

Concerned, Claire asked, "How are we here?"

And Steve sighed, "The plane...I lost control of it. It just...steered here. And we weren't alone...we weren't alone on it. That thing followed us, Claire. It knocked you into the roof...I didn't know what to do. So I just...hit the doors to the loading bay and it...kinda got sucked into space."

Wow.

Impressed, Claire blinked at him. "Really?"

He shrugged. "It was all I could think of at the time."

"Worked right? Good thinking." She moved to check the guages on the cockpit dash. "Where are we?"

"I don't know. Honestly. It's freezing ass cold. I can't see dick beyond the plane roof when I poke my head up. But it feels like my eyeballs might freeze outta my skull. Do you wanna see my snowballs?"

Apparently, he couldn't do anything but hit on her with bad one liners without Leon around. Claire gave him a muted look. "First - get on that console and try to raise anyone, anywhere, to find us. Secondly - I'm going to go down to the ground and see if I can find something to try to get us out of here."

Steve gave her a wiggles of his brows. "Better hurry, girl. I'm not weatherman, but you can't expect more than a few inches tonight if ya know what I mean."

Claire smacked him upside the back of the head,"Stop. Now. I mean it."

"What? Kimmidee isn't here. We might be the only two peeps left on earth. We gotta make babies, Claire. And fucking is how we stay alive in this place right? Gets the heart rate up, makes the blood pound. The snow is blowing out there, Claire. BLOWING. Wanna do the same?"

And she smacked him in the face.

It rang, loud and echoing. He blinked, twice, and his lip popped out like he might cry. Claire pointed in his face. "Shut up. Grow up. Get it together and stop being a stupid asshole. You hear me? If I don't find Leon again, I'm going to blame you. I'm going to rip off your tiny dick and shove it up your ass. So the only person you will be fucking, will be yourself. Do you understand me?"

He blinked and retorted, "In highschool, my nickname was Burnsides the Butt Warmer. Just sayin."

He was incorrigible. A real piece of work. In other news, at least it kept her mind off her possibly dead boyfriend somewhere in the world. She glanced at the wintry sky above them and whispered, "Leon...wherever you are...I will find you."

It felt very Last of the Mohicans, but she still liked the dedication behind it. She just hoped he knew to stay safe.

Of course, as she climbed down, and listened to Steve work on his one liners - she was betting he was better off than her anyway. God knew, there was nothing worse than an amorous teenager trying to get in your pants in the middle of a nightmare.

The arm smacked between them, echoing. Currently, no one was safe.

If he'd had to choose between a foul mouthed lecherous shit like Sideburns or rubberband man...he'd likely pick the rubberband man. Leon avoided losing his face to the next snap of its arm as he ducked behind the console.

It struck; sparks and fire crackled noisily into the open air. It chased him down the row as he crouched and ran, trying to get his feet and stay alive. Leon shouted, "REDFIELD! SHOOT THE FUCKING THING, WOULD YA!?"

The rubberband man jerked as Redfield put a bullet in the side of its head but it didn't go down. So...apparently he was a crack fucking shot under all that stupid bravado. Admirable, useless given the state of their current affairs, but admirable. A stupid handgun was NOT going to stop this bastard from breaking all Leon's ribs.

It drew back its arm to end him in a single move, and Leon threw his arm over his face to cower.

Real manly like though. It was really really manly. He cowered like a MAN. A man's man. A TOUGH GUY! He cowered like a hero! Right? Sure.

He also didn't die. Redfield tackled the goddamn rubberband man like he was taking down the quarterback. Leon was betting his balls that the guy had played football in highschool. He hit that monster broadside with a grunt of power.

It sent them over the console in a flop of bodies and noise.

Leon rolled out of the way and turned back to kick the damn thing in its side as it landed atop Redfield in the rush. It roared, Leon kicked it again in the face, and Redfield rolled up to smash his fist into its melting jaws. It was a totally, completely, balls to the wall, MAN FIGHT. They kicked the shit outta the thing with fists and boots.

Nobody made a small sound of fear during the fight when it tried to eat their nose. Nope. No one did that. Not Chris, when it nearly took his ear, or Leon, when it smacked him in the side with its arm. Nope. All men, all the time - all fighting like heroes in the streets and the dark like Batman.

Redfield body chucked it into the broken tank and side swiped its massive arm as it tried to fight back. Leon ducked under the arm, pummeled it twice in the face with his right fist, and kicked its naked groin. They went in together to tip it backward, shouting like warriors, and used the broken edge of the glass tank to impale it through the chest.

Blood sprayed, they ducked to avoid the splatter, and backed off while it struggled and died.

The ragged breathing filled the air when it was over.

Without a word, Chris stuck his hand out. Leon took it, shaking it, and the former sniper remarked, "I'm glad you were with Claire."

A high compliment. Leon returned, dead pan, "I'm glad Claire doesn't look like you."

Chris sighed, shaking his head, "Sadly, you're still the big loser here. You let a teenager perv take her away. The good news is that she'll feed him his dick on the end of a pencil if he even tries."

Leon nodded, picking up his gun from the floor. "You got that right."

Chris rose beside him, "...so we need to find her."

Leon gestured toward the side door, "Ladies first."

They eased out of the lab together and found the first of a series of problems that would stop them from finding Claire. The small set of stairs beside them curled up to the main floor of the facility - a weird tunnel made of mud and beams. It was mostly quiet at first, offering a few seconds of solitude.

And then all hell broke loose.

The world shifted and rumbled. The ceiling peppered them with dust and debris. The beams groaned under the assault. And the wall of the tunnel completely collapsed in a shower of rock and concrete.

They had to duck and cover to avoid the explosion.

The giant sandworm from Beetlejuice had returned to finish the job it had started with Claire and Sideburns.

Leon yelled, "...penis!"

Chris jumped like he'd been stung by a bee and shouted, over the rumbling, "Whafuck?"

Leon returned, "Prepare for the fucking of a lifetime, Boy Scout. Here comes the world's most giant cock."

It burst through with a thunderous mutiny of sound. It was Tremors with Kevin Bacon or something. It tried to eat them as it roared into the open air. They split up, shouting and running.

Leon barely had time to put his arms over his head as he ran.

It jumped, it dove, and it took Leon down like Moby Dick swallowing Captain Ahab. He couldn't even shout as it took him into the ground in one gulp. Chris shouted in horror.

Chris heard the small cry of the other man first.

It was the guard who wished to be a dancer, Rodrigo, waving his arms. One held a big ass gun in it. Chris rushed toward him, stumbling with the shaking floor and ceiling. He slid on his knees and grabbed the gun.

Rodrigo was badly wounded, bleeding everywhere, but he gasped, "Stop that damn thing. Burn this place to the ground. Find her. Save her."

Chris nodded, putting a hand over the man's gushing stomach. Rodrigo coughed, desperately, "...Antarctica. The-the-the base there. Check the mainframe...in the...in the...main...house...hurry..."

He died on a blubber of blood from his mouth, grunting, and his last words filled the rumbling air, "...I can see the lights on Broadway..."

Chris rose, clutching the weapon. It was an enormous grenade launcher. It fairly glittered like Excalibur pulled from the stone by Arthur. He wielded it like a hero, turning toward the worm that ERUPTED from the Earth as if to devour him.

It came for him, roaring, and Chris blasted it in the face grenade launcher. The impact was immediate. It smelled like roasting flesh and dog shit on fire. It stunk up the cavern until Chris gagged and covered his mouth.

The worm flopped. It plopped. It jerked and "did the worm" which made sense where the dance craze had come from. It wiggled and wriggled and smashed into walls. Its face was totally obliterated like someone had ...well...hit it in the snoot with a M32 grenade launcher.

It twitched, it switched, it trailed uselesslly...and died on a spluttering burp of grotesque mucus and guts.

The silence was painful.

Until the body twitched twice. Chris hurried to reload the weapon, panicking, and dropped the shell from his blood slick palm - twice. IDIOT, his mind taunted, GET IT TOGETHER! KILL THE WORM!

But it was like Solo slitting the belly on the tauntaun. The guts tumbled free in a pungent, offensive wash -and Leon Kennedy rolled free, grunting, gasping, dripping with old mucus and digestive juices.

He shouted, at the ceiling, "I CAN'T FUCKING STAND THIS PLACE! I NEED A NEW JOB! I HATE MY LIFE! I AM LYING IN WORM GUTS! I WAS SWALLOWED BY A MONSTER! I QUIT! YOU HEAR ME!? I FUCKING QUIT THIS JOB!"

Chris, a hand over his mouth, offered the other one to him in the mess of the dead beast. " You smell like ass dude...you have intestines in your hair man."

And Leon kicked him in the knee.

Logically, he should have prepared for it. As it was, he went down beside the other man with a squelching plop of disgusting noise. Two heroes, ass deep in monster guts, staring at the ceiling of the cave where they'd likely die if they didn't get moving, surrounded by the stench of shit and decay.

A really bad movie probably started this way.

As it was, they didn't have time to piss and moan about it, they had to find Claire.

But it didn't stop Chris from musing, "How did you survive in its fucking belly man?"

Naturally, there was no good answer.

But Leon did choose that moment to let nature take it's course and finally let out the painful fart that he'd been hoarding since this all started. It made a pbbbbt sound and added to the stench of the dead beast as they got to their feet.

Chris gave him a very droll look as they stumbled away.

Leon, angry, shouted, "What?! I can't do that around your sister, ok!? I can't. And I haven't taken a shit in days. I smell like ass already, so do you, who cares?! Really? Who cares? I've been wanting to blast ass on one of these bastards since the moment this all started. Payback is a bitch. I only wish I'd done it on a lighter and lit that son of a bitch up while I was at it."

Chris stood there for a moment. They both did, glaring at each other...until finally Chris started laughing. He just...laughed. Leon followed suit, shaking his head.

Sometimes, it seemed, even when you were screwed...you just had to cut loose, cut the cheese, and laugh.