The Long Dark

XII:

Dynamite

Abandoned Alaskan Fishing Village - 5:15 a.m.

Jill was dropped to the ground as her magazine clicked empty, and the thing trying to kill her tumbled brokenly, shattering and snapping branches as it fell to the ground with a splat and sigh of defeat.

She rolled to her feet as the wolves descended. Backing up, she called, "Split their focus!"

Shenmei nodded and took off into the dark.

Alone, Jill backed up further into the tree line. She considered her options and shot the first of her attackers. It went down, and its friends halted to feast on their fallen comrade.

Taking a brief respite from battle, Jill turned and fled through the dark.

Half of the pack had already given chase to Shenmei. Jill raced through the shadows and snow, her boots crunching and twigs snapping beneath the assault. When she reached a small clearing, she backed up to the other side and waited.

The second three wolves burst onto the open ground; she launched the flashbang grenade in her hand. It hit the ground, went off, and the world went bright with light. The wolves screamed and burst like water balloons on the back and shoulders. The unmolested few kept coming.

They raced across the snow, and she picked them off one at a time. When her gun clicked empty, she paused to reload and the trees rustled above her. She barely got the magazine slammed home before something landed on her and took her to the ground.

With a shout, she battled beneath the bulk of her attacker.

It knocked her arms to the side and sent her gun spinning over the snow. She grabbed for her knife and crammed it hilt deep into the exposed throat of the blubberous thing trying to eat her face. It was part man, part mutated fish or something. It had scales and fins and fingers as long as her forearm. When she ripped the knife free in a burst of blood, it pinned her to the ground by her face. Something tickled at her lips from the palm of that hand and begged for entrance.

Jill drove the knife into its arm, into its back, into its neck - anything she could reach as she fought against the attempt to implant her.

And the wolves reached them.

One leaped on the attacker and took it off her in a battle for survival. The other dove for Jill, and she shoved the knife into its side as it attempted to eat her throat out. It roared, it got a mouthful of her arm shoved into its gaping jaws, and it attempted to tear apart her jacket to get her skin below.

Jill shoved her boots into its belly, thrust with her hips, and sent it up and to the side. As she rolled, she ripped the knife free of its side and kicked simultaneously. It let go to skid backward, Jill scrambled for her gun in the clearing, and it came for her again.

She slid on her belly, grabbed the gun, and rolled to her back, and it leaped atop her to a hail of bullets into its guts. Blood splattered her face and arms as she fired. It danced atop her in a macabre parody of death before it collapsed with a heavy, hot bulk atop her.

Her erstwhile attacker joined the fray as she was shoving it clear and grabbed for her face. Jill fired through the dead wolf into the monster, watched it squeal and absorb the heavy rounds without stopping, and it gripped a handful of her hair and jerked.

She was airborne, flying through the dark like a swatted fly. She rolled as she landed, somehow holding onto her gun, and clamored to her knees to open fire. The blood burst black in the dark, peppering the snow as it tried to reach her. It gave a final squeal as it teetered, tottered, and tumbled to its face in the snow

Her breath burst out of her lungs in a whitewash, looking shiny in the encroaching dawn.

A symphony of gunfire accompanied her survival, telling her somewhere Shenmei was still fighting.

She pushed to her feet and ran towards the echo of sound.

Shenmei was outmatched. She was surrounded. She fired, flipped, she backed up and reloaded. But she was losing the fight.

Jill fired into the fray and drew some of the attention. Birds took flight, squalling their anger at having their home disturbed. She launched her last flashbang at the battle and took out what she could of the mutated.

She fired on a half dozen wolves who came for her. Some went down, some kept coming, and she had to stop to reload. One leaped for her face while she slammed home a magazine and was blown out of the sky inches from devouring her.

Rebecca stood enshrined in the moonlight with a determined look on her face. She gave Jill a shaky thumbs up.

Deputy Nolan had waded into the battle with Shenmei. She picked off wolves with her handgun, brave and determined. She seemed steady, considering the horror she was facing.

Deputy Morgan was embroiled in a dangerous fistfight with one of the humanoid mutants. He'd lost his gun, and his face was dark with blood. Jill fired into his attacker and watched it collapse after an impressive uppercut to its gushing face.

He nodded at her in the dark.

Kevin was firing into the pack when one leaped and took him to his back in the snow. Shenmei shouted in denial. Rebecca tossed a flashbang into the darkness, and it went off in a pop of white.

Morgan waded into the furry bodies, ripped the one atop Kevin off with his arms around its middle, and threw it away. Brave was Morgan and liable to get himself killed for it.

Kevin came to his feet, kicked a wolf that raced for them, and produced a handgun for Morgan from his hip. Morgan fired into the dark like he knew what he was doing.

Jill shouted, "Get back to the cabin!"

It was closer than the boat. It was their only chance. The enemy was growing. The woods were full of threats.

If they could hold out in the cabin, the rising dawn might limit their aggressors.

They ran for it, trying like hell to stay together. They surged together in a semblance of a combative circle, running, firing, fighting. At the back of the cabin, Jill shoved up the window and boosted Rebecca inside. She did the same for Nolan and Shenmei.

Too big for the window, Morgan, and Kevin raced around the outer edge of the cabin as Jill slung herself inside and slammed down the glass. A wolf crashed against the pane, making the resistant barrier tremble under the assault.

Once inside, Kevin slammed the door and caused pursuing wolves to yelp in denial and pain.

They set about blocking the windows with anything they could to shore up their defenses. Rebecca made the rounds to find out who was wounded.

The bad news? Everyone was wounded. The good news? No one was wounded too badly.

Jill flipped open her phone to call for help, and Nolan told her, "Pointless. There's no signal on the island. Opie was terrified of cell phones. He made sure he was beyond the reach of things like that. I radioed back to the station...but the only other deputy is out for patrol, and the receptionist Zelda? She's not...exactly...reliable."

When everyone continued looking at her, Nolan confessed, "Zelda is an airhead. She's the second-generation eldest daughter of a former Mayor. She has the job because she gossips really well and keeps us informed on who and where, and when."

Jill queried, "Can she get in touch with Leon? He might be our only way out of this."

Nolan gave a sharp nod and radioed the station again. The crackle of silence was met with looks of dismay and resolution. The cabin rocked as the screams of hungry souls peppered the silence.

Kevin murmured, "They're gonna tear the house down in a minute here...and not in a "we just saw Metallica kind of way"."

Jill instructed, "Find anything we can use to set them on fire, to cause a distraction, to blow them the fuck up - anything."

Everybody started looking, but it was Rebecca who advised, "We can make life simple and throw this on the wood pile we ran past at the back of the cabin."

It was a stick of dynamite.

Jill blinked. Rebecca shrugged, "Survivalist nutcase, right? I'd say this isn't the only dynamite he's hidden...just the only one beneath his bed."

Shenmei stated quietly, "We explode this cabin, we lose any evidence hidden in it."

There was the clatter of breaking glass toward the blocked-off kitchen as Kevin returned, "We don't, we die with all the secrets this guy was keeping."

Jill snatched the dynamite stick and advised, "So, we don't blow up the cabin. We just give them something else to hold their attention."

She started toward the small staircase to the pathetic loft. "I'm gonna hit the roof and make a fucking scene. Then I'm gonna light this son of a bitch and toss it into the wood pile. When I yell - fire in the hole - I want you all to run for the boat."

Kevin gave her a cool look, "You won't make it to the boat before it blows up."

She shrugged. He held her eyes, "You won't make it before they give chase either."

Jill arched a brow, "So, you get in the boat, and you run. Go get Leon, come back, and find out what was here."

Rebecca snapped, "Don't be a hero, Jill. You hear me? We can rig a distraction that doesn't involve anyone dying a martyr."

The window in the back of the cabin shattered with a scream of glass. Jill shook her head, "No time for that. I'll find a way back. I've sure as hell survived worse."

She started up the stairs, "Wait for the signal and run. Try to avoid shooting anything to draw more attention."

Kevin tossed her his last flashbang and warned, "Don't be a fucking Redfield, Jill. Run. Don't try to fist-fight your way out."

Without another look, Jill slipped out the small window in the loft area. She carefully climbed to the roof and snuck around to the back of the cabin. When she was poised to toss the dynamite toward the wood pile, she opened fire on the creatures trying to get into the windows. She shouted. She whistled. She blew apart one, then another; she tossed Kevin's one grenade into the mess of them and lit the dynamite with a shout, "FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

The wick crackled as she tossed it, she turned and fled to the far side of the roof, and she launched herself onto a low-lying tree branch. The still-reeling wolves were distracted by the smoke and light as she climbed down, landed, and ran toward the shore. She made it four steps before the dynamite did its job.

It ignited with a whoosh and rush of sound and explosion. The boom was so loud it nearly drove her to her knees with the impact. Fire followed, crackling, snapping, and catching on any dry dead branch it touched. The wood pile that didn't scatter into the wind became fireballs and flying death. It shattered; it flew like bullets made of flame and struck; it smoldered and threw tongues of smoke toward the shyly hiding moon in a bank of bitter clouds.

A piece struck her in the back as she ran and staggered into a tree. Pushing off, Jill kept running even as she smelled the acrid stench of her coat burning. She tossed the coat and kept moving.

The boat was skimming away from the shore when Jill threw herself into the water after it. The immediate cold tried to turn her muscles to ice. It tried to freeze her instantly as she swam, her body already letting her know it was a mistake to take on winter water without the right gear. She flagged, she went under, and a hand grabbed the back of her vest and jerked.

She was tossed into the boat by Kevin, grateful for his enormous muscles, and Rebecca wrapped her immediately in a wool blanket. She rubbed briskly at Jill's arms as Nolan stuck a hat on her head made of fur. Morgan zipped the boat through the now beautifully glowing water as the world burned behind them.

The dawn broke, pink and pretty, casting shimmers of Easter Egg pastels over a previously blood-red sky. The water reflected the fire behind and the fire in the sky, offering a surface of gold and blood. It might have been beautiful if it wasn't a desperate escape.

Jill slumped against the edge of the boat as Kevin demanded, "Did anyone find a goddamn thing in that cabin to help?"

Nolan reached into her jacket and offered a small notebook. Rebecca plucked it from her fingers as Uki said, "I think...it's his journal?"

Rebecca muttered, flipping pages, "It's in shorthand...and maybe gibberish?"

Nolan shook her head, "Not gibberish...it's Yup'ik..."

When she was met with curiosity, she clarified, "...it's Eskimo...to the layman."

Impressed, Kevin remarked, "You can read it?"

"...sure." She shrugged a little, "It's the language of the majority of the people in these parts."

Morgan, helming the boat, added, "The shorthand isn't anything I've seen. So, it must be his own version."

Kevin shrugged at that, "If it needs deciphering, we'll find the way. Hell, if Kennedy can't read it, I'll eat my boot."

The boat came to the shore as Rebecca slapped Jill's face and called, "Here! Look here! Jill!"

Tired, Jill fluttered her lashes and muttered something about chicken soup. Kevin scooped her up and called, "I'm gonna get her someplace warm, quickly. Shenmei - go with Nolan and Morgan to the station and start deciphering that book."

Rebecca jogged beside him as they hurried toward the inn. They made their way to Rebecca's room and the former Bravo medic turned up the radiator in the bathroom. The old pipes groaned as Kevin snapped, "Look at me, Valentine! Up here!"

She sagged in his arms like a limp doll as the door was thrown open, and Rebecca was trying to divest Jill of her pants. Her soaked boots lay forlornly on the floor. As Leon came through the door like a whirlwind of rage, Kevin commanded, "Yell at us later, she needs warmed up. Now."

There was a rustle of movement as Jill teetered in and out of consciousness. She was transferred into another set of arms and nearly asleep when the heat her in the face. She shouted, rousing, slapping as the warmth hit her in the face and shoulders.

He caught her hands and pinned them to his chest as Leon demanded, "Stop. Stop it. It's me."

And the shivering started.

She felt him settle into the bed and pull her like a child into his lap. The denim of his jeans rubbed against her bare thighs. Her soaked panties settled against the cold press of his belt. When she couldn't move her hands to lift her shirt, he took it from her and tossed it away. In her bra, she cuddled against his bare chest in the bundle of blankets Rebecca kept tossing on the bed. He propped against the headboard to hold her, cocooned in goose down and aided by the electric blanket that Rebecca tucked around their bodies.

She tried to bind her hands to her chest and huddle, and he grunted gruffly, "No. On me, put them on me. Here."

He settled them against his chest as she stuttered, her lips moving sluggishly, "T-t-too cold...hurt...you."

"I'm fine. You can't hurt me." Her wrapped his arms around her and tugged her so tightly into his body that she couldn't do anything but let him. Her sopping hair settled at his shoulder as her nose buried in his neck. He laid his cheek on hers, wrapped his legs around hers like an octopus, and held on.

After a moment, he unhooked her bra at the back, and Jill passively let him slide it down her arms. She did the same with her panties and settled naked against him. He let Rebecca tuck another fur hat on her head and pin her hair up and off her shoulders.

And there he was, he thought, holding Jill naked in bed - with no interest in fucking her.

It might have been comic if he wasn't worried about her.

As she settled quietly against him, he demanded, "Start talking."

And they did.

They talked about what had happened. An ambush, and one without concern for the outcome. Who? Nikolai?

Shenmei didn't have the answer to that and Jill, but the former wasn't around, and the latter wasn't in a place to report. When Jill stopped shivering, he extricated himself from the blankets and tucked them solidly around her. She curled on her side, looking young and exhausted. He checked the impulse to touch her cheek tenderly as he picked his sweater up off the floor and joined the other two in the hallway.

Quietly, they made their way to the station.

Nolan, Morgan, and Shenmei were going through the journal.

Kat was M.I.A. which wasn't surprising. She'd bolted the second the commotion had started in the lobby upon their arrival. She was off greasing palms or playing spy somewhere. She'd turn up when the timing was right.

He told them about Nikolai. The cabin made it clear that he wasn't the only one paying attention. Opie had been. Though where he was and what had happened to him remained a mystery.

They dug through the journal, drinking coffee and tossing out ideas about the ramblings as if they could link one errant thought to another. Opie wasn't exactly a man with a lot of sense in his observations. He had owl patterns and pages of the study of their pellets. He had the mating methods of the wolves and their offspring. He had the ramblings of a man who spent too much time alone.

Hermits weren't the most reliable source of information. When the hour tolled for lunch, Leon stated, "Take a break. Eat something. We'll pick this back up in an hour."

Kevin shifted and queried, "What about the B.S.A.A. team? When are they scheduled to arrive?"

Leon blew out a breath, "By six. Let's make sure we've got something to give them."

He was hoping he'd locate Nikolai by then as well. If he was lucky, he could have this wrapped up by sunrise.

But first, he was going to find everything he could about Jill Valentine during her time in Raccoon City and make damn sure she wasn't playing two sides against each other. His gut said she was loyal. His heart was speaking a language he hadn't been able to understand in years.

His head - his head wanted proof. And he was always a man who chased the truth...even if what he found silenced that whispering heart.

He rubbed his tired eyes and clacked on his keyboard, digging around. Near his ear, the oily voice oozed, "...evil."

Leon froze. He blinked and shook his head. Jesus. Now the goddamn common sense at the base of his brain had started to see bad guys everywhere.

After a moment, he knew that wasn't true. He wasn't a guy who had a devil on his shoulder that murmured to him. This was like the cave. It was the pressure in his head that meant something was still with him.

He knew what it was. It was fused to his ribs. And being this close to what might be the source was making those little pieces wiggle around inside him like severed limbs looking to reattach to the host.

More annoyed than concerned, Leon kept digging. Nothing he turned up told him that Jill was anything but what she appeared on the surface - a woman who'd spent years trying to stop evil. The same as him - a warrior, a woman with a righteous sword of a savior. She didn't even have a murky set of footprints that he could find. She operated wholly on the level. She didn't have any red flags that he could find.

The whisper in his head encouraged, "...we're all evil...they're all evil...it's inside them...you know it. You've always known. It's why you fight so hard. It's why you deny. You know...what's beneath the lies...you know..."

Leon picked up the whiskey on the table beside him and tossed back a shot. It worked, as it usually did, and quieted the rise of things he didn't want to face. What was him? What was the thing inside him?

Was it just experience?

Or was it something more malevolent?

It hadn't bothered him as badly before Spain. He'd dealt with some of it, he knew you didn't survive what he had without a few echoes of emptiness to fill in the holes inside you. He knew that. When he opened that door to his ugliest training, he knew what he found there - that white, staticky, soundless place he went to kill. That emptied shell in the ocean where he survived.

But Saddler had filled those holes with something so much worse. It wasn't even evil. It was more neutral than that. It was some kind of primordial honesty, an almost emotionless view of the world as it was - not as he wanted it to be.

The plagas didn't give a fuck about motivation or desire or morals. It existed to spread and grow and add to its ranks. It wanted to breed and succeed and become more. It was legion. And that legion wanted nothing more than to grow.

He'd barely survived it the first time. Would he lose to it now? Was it activated inside of him or something?

It didn't matter. He'd destroy it. He'd burn every last alien growth to the ground. If what was in him gave him a tingling Spidey Sense about it, all the better. He'd use it to crush the host. Like a hammer of their own making.

He stared at his face in the mirror across from the desk. He was no one's puppet. He was a man who understood his limitations, his strengths, and his weaknesses. And he'd use every one to stop what was in those caves.

Or die trying.

And that determination was almost as good as the whiskey at keeping those voices at bay.