Showdown, Chapter 7 by patricia51

(New Friends, Part 3)

(Christina's Story)

I grew up on the wrong side of town. But I didn't know it and I didn't care. I liked the part of LA I called home. East LA. Many Hispanics have moved out of the area but it still remained a place vibrant with our culture and proud of our heritage. As I was.

Not that growing up was exactly easy but that was mostly my fault. I got into more than my share of fights. In fact I probably got into several people's shares of fights, mostly because I didn't take crap from anyone. I ran the streets. I was free and I was wild and eventually at the ripe age of nearly seventeen I was pregnant by a boy who magically disappeared the moment he got the news.

I was fortunate. I had support. My mother, my grandmother, my extended family, no one turned their backs on me. But they made it clear that my days as a wild child were over. I went back to school, at night when my mother could keep Eliza and I learned to work off my aggressions with boxing and martial arts. I graduated from high school and joined the police force. After all, the force had health insurance, retirement and better pay than I would get at pretty much anything else I was qualified for by my high school diploma.

Plus I found I LIKED being a cop. I was good at it. I wanted to advance but I had a problem.

Regardless of ethnic background most guys didn't like being taken down by a woman. So in true macho fashion they went crying to Internal Affairs whining that I had used "excessive force" in subduing them. Mind you this was after they bragged "ain't no woman cop taking ME to jail". They were bullshit complaints but once you got a file started with those headhunters it just kept growing. It limited my opportunities to move up. So I tried for sideways instead.

I had always been fascinated by SWAT ever since the first time I saw them take down a pair of "you ain't taking me alive copper" bank robbers without firing a shot. I liked the idea of a small, close-knit team that had access to the kind of training that allowed them to do their job AND stay alive. I met all the qualifications so I applied

Of course I had a problem there too. Nothing I could do about that short of massive surgery and let's face it, I like being a woman. But the Captain of Metro, considered an ass by all who knew and despised him, was definitely NOT going to allow a woman on SWAT. Three applications, three rejections. Oh those rejections didn't say it was because I was female but the rumors that reached me said that Captain Fuller was known to believe that women not only didn't belong on SWAT the only thing they would good for on the force was as meter maids.

So when I was sitting in the hospital ER getting bandaged up once again after an encounter with a pendajo with a razor blade and a Sergeant with another officer came in. I was relieved at first when he said he had the wrong room. I figured they were Internal Affairs and was happy to be rid of them but of course I had to open my mouth and ask who they were looking for and admit I was Chris Sanchez. And a darned good thing too.

Sergeant Second Grade Hondo Lane wasn't IAD. He was SWAT, was forming a new team and he wanted me on it. He hadn't realized I was female but it was irrelevant to him. So I was finally in.

The training was hard, physically and mentally challenging and I loved it. I was a bit prickly with a couple of the guys at first, distrusting offers of a hand while, saying, running up a tall slippery hill in full gear. I wanted to show I was as capable as any of them. I think I started to win them over when I beat the hell out of the heavy bag one day and nearly kicked it off its mounting. I also began to realize that the occasional offers were just from one team mate to another and had nothing do to with my sex.

The first month was a wild ride. We survived the field test, one with things rigged against us by Captain Fuller. We passed our first call perfectly, without having to fire a shot in taking down a dangerous but disturbed man off his meds. And then things went out of this world with us being assigned to deliver an international want to Federal custody. That involved a chase through the subways and sewers of LA, a shootout on a bridge and incidentally me getting shot. But none of that was the most important thing that happened.

When I first saw Police Officer Third Grade Jim Street I figured he was Hondo's driver and therefore a guy on his way up. It was only later I found out this handsome ex-Navy SEAL had been on SWAT and kicked off after his partner disobeyed orders and shot a civilian. Of course that civilian would have been killed by holdup men had he now but it wasn't "by the book" to say the least. Jim's biggest offence though, at least for Captain Fuller, was that he refused to give his partner up under questioning about the incident.

Of course I should have figured out he was that kind of guy from a confrontation we had with his ex-partner one night. The whole team had gone out to celebrate after we passed our team test. But all the guys except Jim ran off after we left the first place, which was run by one of the guy's dad by the way. It was the first time I had found a late night babysitter in months so I did NOT want to go home early. Jim laughed at my chewing out of the guys and we headed off to a watering hole where he used to hang out. And there we met his ex-partner Gamble.

There was some verbal jousting between him and Jim and it spilled over to him and me. Jim just sat there lazily grinning as I gave the guy better than he expected. Jim told me later he was sure I didn't need any help; physically, verbally or emotionally to handle Gamble or anyone else. Did I mention that he told me that several months later from the other side of the pillow?

That was after I impulsively invited him to my daughter Eliza's birthday party the next day. He came and we all had fun, until he and I were called away on a job. But he came back. Often. Sometimes I teased him it was more to see Eliza than me. It was great. Not only did he and I fall in love but my daughter and he did as well. No, I shouldn't say "my daughter". By the time of our wedding Eliza was "our daughter" and Jim was her papa.

So life was better than I ever could have dreamed of it being. I had a wonderful family and an ass-kicking job I loved and was good at. And then Umbrella took it away.

(Christina's Flashback)

"Head shots, head shots!" commanded Sergeant Hondo Lane. "Watch your ammunition. No spraying on full auto; it's not effective and it wastes ammo that we don't have."

Chris knew her MP5 was set on single shot but made a quick inspection of the select switch as she changed magazines. A sinking feeling came over her as her fingers confirmed there was only one more thirty round mag left in her equipment vest. She brought the weapon to her shoulder. Using quick but well aimed shots she dropped the first lines of oncoming figures. To her right she picked up the sound of her husband's M4 assault rifle picking off more of the mass of staggering once human creatures. Somewhere to her left she heard the weapons of the rest of her team as well as those of the few remaining patrol officers. Whole groups of the attackers fell. But it wasn't going to make any difference. The horde of the infected stretched almost out of sight. If they had an unlimited supply of ammo it wouldn't be enough.

How in the HELL had this happened? What had happened? How had the world changed, no, collapsed in the space of only a few hours?

Only this morning she and Jim had been lying in bed, snuggling together after she had woke him early with seduction on her mind. Their team was on standby and she hoped that they would be able to find time for a repeat of their just finished love-making sometime in the afternoon. She definitely planned for it again tonight. In the meantime she was content and purring when Eliza's voice came from the hallway seeking breakfast. But before that she slipped through the door and charged the bed. Squealing happily she jumped onto the bed with her mom and her new dad.

The trio was sitting around the breakfast table planning the day's activities when the beepers went off. "What the Hel... heck," Jim corrected after receiving a look from Chris. He went to the phone. "We're off. And a well-deserved off it is after the last two weeks." He rapidly punched in numbers and spoke urgently to someone at the end of the line. Probably Hondo Chris surmised. After all, he was their team leader as well as one of the few people they had trusted with the knowledge of their secret marriage. Well, maybe not secret, it was a matter of public record in another state but was still something they didn't want spread around. Especially to Captain Fuller.

Jim hung up the phone and turned to her with the most serious expression she thought she had ever seen. He took her arm and guided her away from the table so Eliza couldn't hear.

"This is massive," he spoke urgently. "There is some kind of uncontrollable infection that's turning people into, well, something not human. Everyone has been called. Off duty, suspended, reserve and auxiliary police. The National Guard is being mobilized. We're to join the team along with uniforms and hopefully the military and try to establish perimeters and control the flood of people fleeing, trying to get them to safety of some kind or other."

It was the beginning of a day of that started in crap and rapidly descended all the way into Hell. They rushed Eliza to her grandmother's and reported. The situation was already horrifying. Grotesque caricatures of people and even animals staggered the streets. Bullets only knocked them down. Some had been crushed by panicked people in cars only to drag themselves along in search of normal people. People that they fed on.

At first there had been an attempt to restrain the infected. That quickly ended when it became obvious that a bite from one of them was deadly, would turn the victim into one of whatever the hell they were. The police shot and shot to kill only to discover that their training to shoot for the center of mass was ineffective.

The word came down from Police Headquarters. The unofficial shoot to kill policy was now official. Of course "Aim for the head" could hardly be taken any other way. But that was the last transmission that was even close to be anything like good news. Reports came in of station houses being overrun, of National Guard units being lost before they could even arm themselves. There were broken transmissions from other police positions; despairing calls cut off as the infected closed over other cops, desperate pleas for backup that the listeners knew could never be answered. Police Headquarters broke off in the middle of a frantic, hysterical transmission and fell silent, never to return to the airways.

The team had continued to fall back to where they knew not. About the time that Chris realized that all the uniforms had fallen or fled Hondo called for them to make for the SWAT van. Fortunately the one thing they could do was run faster than the infected. However Chris had a sinking feeling that those others could go on and on day and night when normal people would collapse. She sprinted for the van.

Hondo was passing out ammo when she got there. All of the ammo. Looking grimmer than she had ever seen him the team leader spoke quickly.

"Everything is collapsing. It's apparent that the infection is outracing all containment efforts. Things are coming apart and nothing we can do here is going to stop it. Everyone, try to get to your families and get them out of the city. If you can I suggest going north. I'd suggest some kind of meeting place but honestly I don't think that's ever going to happen. Good luck and Godspeed."

Within the first block Jim and Chris found a four wheel drive SUV abandoned and still running. They screeched off heading home. Small groups of infected were shot or run over, larger groups avoided. Then, only blocks from home they ran into an unexpected obstacle.

"What the hell?" Chris asked.

Normally Jim would have teased her unmercifully since she had been doing her best to get him to watch his language aro9und Eliza but instead he shook his head, slowing the vehicle to a stop at the imperious signal of the black uniformed man standing in the roadway.

"Umbrella Security," the man announced loftily as Jim lowered the window. "We have established a perimeter here for safety. You can't go any further."

"Says who?" snorted Jim, displaying his badge. "When did rent-a-cops start thinking they can give orders to real cops?"

The man reddened and waved the half-dozen or so other armed men over. "Since we took control of the situation."

"Some control. Whatever is going on ahead can't be any worse than what is behind us." Jim pointed back towards the now burning downtown LA. "You would do better to haul ass. Regardless, we're going to go get our daughter. So stand aside or we'll have to shoot you and then arrest you."

Words flew. Losing patience with the idiot Jim started the vehicle moving foward. Which Umbrella goon fired first Chris never knew. But the windshield of the SUV shattered and both SWAT officers dove out of their doors, weapons coming up.

When the gunfire was over the Umbrella goons were scattered in various places on the ground and not moving. But Officer Jim Street was slumped beside the SUV with a bullet in his head.

(The Present)

"There wasn't even time to mourn him," Chris said. "My own husband and I had to leave him by the side of the road. At least, thank God, I was spared having to make sure he stayed dead. But there was only time to rush home and fight off the zombies attacking my mother's house. It was too late for her but she had protected Eliza long enough for me to get there. We found our way out of LA and eventually to Alaska. Nine months and three days after the last night Jim and I spent together the son he would never get to know was born. So I want to take down Umbrella too. But I m also going to make damned sure I get home to my, to Jim and mine, children."

"Amen," Carlos agreed.

(To be continued)