AN: SOoooooo. Chapter 2. that took me a while. I apologize for taking sooooo long guys, but here's something! Thanks for reviews and criticism alike, hope you enjoy!
Rebecca's footsteps seem to echo impossibly loudly as she steps into the tiled hallway on the second floor of the Umbrella Training Facility. Billy's boots reassuringly click-clack in behind her as she dutifully sweeps her field of vision, eyes trained for any movement.
A few feet in front of her and to her right was yet another door that contained God knows what and past the door, the hallway opened up to an elaborate stone staircase and from, what Rebecca could make out, an open ended observatory. Polished archways supported by stone columns and another door barred by a pair of crossed swords stood at the end of the landing past the staircase.
Rebecca could almost feel Billy's eyes rolling as he moved in closer beside her. "It's surprising these people ever got any work done considering half of the damn doors are locked." He paused in front of the door, handgun at waist level, readily able to draw and fire. He inclined his head towards the door. "Well, care to see what's behind door number one?"
And though he is smiling and his tone light, Rebecca knows the former Marine is serious. Too many times that night the smell of rot had staggered towards them, cloaked in ragged tatters of clothing, ashen-grey fingers, flayed to the bone, grasping for a purpose that withered brains could no longer comprehend. The rookie medic of STARS had heard lurching footsteps, soft, uneven, pulpy and wet with decay, stumble as shredded vocal chords moaned, hungry and lost.
Rebecca dispels the unwanted images and sounds of the victims of the T-Virus- that's what they really are, she thinks- with a shake of her head and takes a deep breath in an attempt to steady her nerves. Dwelling for too long on the impossibility of what had occurred that night would only make things harder.
"Ready if you are." She lies, and hopes Billy does not notice the shaking of her hands.
The door creaks open, terribly loudly after what seems like an eternity, a cocktail of fear and adrenaline thrumming in her chest and gnawing at her stomach. The room that greets her sight is plush with décor; several framed paintings lay untouched near boxes awash with dust. Ornate carved marble statues of a hooded man and a woman holding a crown above her head decorate the room, and a similar bust sat in front of the unlit fireplace. It was a touch of decadence and refinement out of place in a facility so full of horror.
Something metallic and round in front of a drab green couch catches Rebecca's eye at the same time she hears a skittering, rustling sound tap-tap-tap its way across the carpeted floor. A queer hissing sound fills her ears and Rebecca brings her Beretta to firing stance.
"A cockroach…" she has time to half mutter bemusedly as one of the creatures lunges at her. Larger than it has any right to be, the sheer size and weight bowls her to the floor. Gleaming red eyes stare sightlessly as multiple, spindly appendages pin her down and scrabbling pincers seek to close around her throat. A sour smell, like rotting fruit overripe in the sun, permeates Rebecca's nostrils and she tries not to gag.
"Get. Off!" And suddenly the burden on her chest is relieved as Billy Coen is at her side, ramming the insectoid creature with his shoulder. The handcuffs dangle from his left hand as he steadies the shotgun against his shoulder and fires and the monster's life ends in twitching limbs and ichorous, greenish yellow blood that smells of swamp water.
Rebecca breathes in, her body trembling more than she'd like to admit as Billy gives her a hand.
"You alright?"
Rebecca hears rather than sees the keening sound of another of the creatures as it leaps at the unprotected back of her partner. Her hands jerk as she fires, the Parabellum round finding its mark between bulbous red eyes and the abomination dies with a hiss.
She takes the hand the twenty six year old marine had earlier offered and levers herself up. Her eyes meet his and she blushes.
"I am now. How many times is that you've saved my life? I think I might've lost count." Her sincere gratitude is tinged with sheepishness as she casts her eyes to the ground.
Billy leans down and tips her chin up with his hand and looks into her eyes as he speaks, "Hey now, none of that. This isn't some kind of competition, Rebecca. It doesn't matter who saves whose life; we made a promise that we're getting out of here together, and you'd best damned believe I'm going to keep it."
He lets her chin go and Rebecca is able to keep it from dropping again if only out of shame. Billy crosses his arms and continues. "If you were half as useless as you seem to think you are, dollface, we'd both be dead on that train and you know it. I didn't get this far on my own; don't discount what you've done."
Rebecca's face is cherry red at this point and she finds herself unable to express her gratitude. The newly minted member of S.T.A.R.S. had had so few opportunities to prove her own capability and usefulness to her Bravo Team squad mates. Hearing that she was able of pulling her own weight from a man she'd known for half a night meant more than she could express.
Billy perceptibly picks up on Rebecca's flustered reaction and motions towards the still twitching corpse of the creatures they had killed. "The hell you think those things are?"
Blue-green eyes turn towards the nearest creature. A long, fragmented body covered in a segmented carapace with multiple spindly appendages covered in fine, bladelike hairs for sensing prey. The bulbous eyes and pincers remind Rebecca of a praying mantis, yet this creature lacked the elegance of the predatory insect and seemed more of a sloppy amalgamation of grasshopper, cockroach, and fly. Rebecca is half tempted to squash the insect's head under her heel as rank blood starts to spread underneath it, staining the carpet floor.
"Dead."
With his boot Billy toes the still body of the one Rebecca had shot through the eye, the edges of his mouth curling downward into a frown. "Works for me. Big ass scorpions, hybrid insect monsters bigger than a dog-"
"Let's not forget the actual zombie dogs." Rebecca interjects.
"Shit, it's like we're in some 60's horror movie."
Rebecca delicately steps over the bleeding corpse of the insect as she scans the rest of the room. "Yeah, well, wake me up when it's time for the credits."
Her partner grins and opens his mouth to say something but is stopped short. His eyes trail over to the dust coated couch Rebecca had noticed before receiving a face full of mutant insect and he walks over.
"Hey, didja get a look at this?" He beckons Rebecca to his side, movement accompanied by soft jingling of handcuffs.
She comes to him, kneeling at his side. Discarded almost haphazardly on the worn carpet in front of them, like a forgotten plaything, is a grenade launcher, with a revolver style chamber and an easily grippable stock steadied against the shoulder for more precise control. Rebecca vaguely recalls one of visually similar make carted around by her fellow Bravo Team member Forest Speyer- if the firing mechanics or caliber rounds utilized were different Rebecca was unable to ascertain.
"We could've used this about, I don't know, half the damn night ago," Billy grumbles, reaching for the grenade launcher and hefting it in his muscular arms. He takes a shooters stance, hips shoulder length apart and arms steady, testing the feel and weight of the launcher with practiced ease. "S'different than the rifle mounted M203's or MK19 Automatics we used in the Corps, but I bet it works pretty damn well all the same."
"Ever used one of these?" Billy turns to Rebecca, offering the launcher to her. She takes it and mimics the firing stance Billy used earlier and feels a bit ridiculous.
"Can't be all that hard," she says, fingerless gloves palming the round revolver chamber- weirdly, the cold, smooth steel provides an abstract sense of comfort and protection. "Point at something and squeeze the trigger until dead."
Rebecca can feel the smirk on Billy's face and she smiles herself as she unloads the grenade launcher. The grenade shells are cased with a silver lining
"What kind of payload is this?" She asks and has to restrain herself from rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly.
Billy takes the three 37mm rounds from Rebecca's palm and the brief contact of his uncovered hand against her gloved hand gives her goose bumps. He eyes it thoughtfully, hand on chin. "Looks to me like your standard explosive round. High explosives like this will be more than enough to blow our way out of here, though there're a lot of other kinds; nitrogen rounds, grenades filled with an acidic compound, there are incendiary grenades. Huh, wonder if whoever left this behind left more grenades scattered around. Poor bastard. Ah well, won't see me complaining."
"You said… incendiary grenades?" A spark lights momentarily in Rebecca's eyes to match the heat from any flame, a cunning, almost devious one and for a moment Billy is a little scared by his partner's almost diabolical expression.
"Well, yeah. Used for starting fires, destroying sensitive enemy equipment, I'm sure there are other uses if you wanted to get creative. The chemical compound-"
"Red iron and aluminum powdered together and ignited with a large amount of heat." She relays rapidly to him, the information familiar and quick on her tongue, and Billy is stunned briefly into silence. He gazes at her for a few odd moments, a smile slowly spreading across his face.
She crosses her arms, a thoughtful expression on her face as she puts her hand under her chin. "Well, chromium, manganese, and copper oxide could be utilized as oxidizers for a more specialized purpose, but given that our goal is generally killing things I think red iron should serve."
Her earnest enthusiasm is infectious and Billy realizes for all her knowledge and expertise she is still just an eighteen year old woman.
"Well, yeah, if you want to get technical. Gets hot enough to melt through steel in almost no time so I doubt that anything that gets in our way could stand up to it."
Rebecca turns on her heel to face her companion after rechambering the explosive rounds, reloading the grenade launcher with a comforting click. "Do you know how useful those grenades would be against those leech monsters we encountered? Way better than molotovs and easier to aim. Umbrella must have had containment procedures of some kind against these monsters and incendiary rounds were likely a part of that contingency. Surely they left some around!"
She is almost giddy and childlike in her excitement and Billy cannot but help be swept up in the moment of brightness in their so far miserably dark night. Any advantage they could get was one gladly accepted.
"Heh, I guess with your new toy," he says as he points to the grenade launcher and indicates the shotgun he has nestled in the crook of his right arm, "and this baby right here, anything that gets in our way will be dead faster than you can say 'Umbrella'."
He pauses briefly and corrects himself.
"Well, deader."