Homeward Bound, Chapter 11 by patricia51

(A Tale of Two Tales)

Alice led the way to where the Umbrella operative was propped up against the wall, her back supported by what the others realized were the bodies of a couple of the umbrella guards.

"Nothing like reminding her what could have happened to her and in fact what still could," whispered Alice to the others.

Claire was already at Morganna's side, frowning at the extent of her injuries. "Your boss really did a number on you," she commented.

"Ex-boss and I know," responded the woman ruefully. "My guess is that I cracked my kneecap when he tripped me and broke my right arm and possibly a rib or two when he trampled me."

"Serves you right," commented Jill, who was still angry about Angie's wound and perfectly willing to take it out on any and all Umbrella members.

"It does indeed," admitted the operative feebly.

"Well I'm going to need some more bandages and something to make a splint out of," Claire commented as she carefully explored the downed woman's side.

"I can show you where the medical supplies are kept," a soft voice spoke from behind the group. K-Mart and Angie recognized her as Sue, the second of the so-called survivors they had rescued. K-Mart was about to make a suspicious remark when she remembered seeing the woman with what she had assumed to be her family locked in the cell with her parents.

Alice noticed the look of doubt on her daughter's face and explained. "Not to worry honey, Sue's family was being held hostage for her playing along with Umbrella. And under the circumstances I might have acted the same way."

Turning towards the woman Alice lifted an eyebrow in a questioning gesture.

"Medical supplies are always welcome but I'm curious why you would volunteer them so quickly for someone who kept you under duress like she did."

Sue smiled the first smile anyone could recall having seen on her face. "Because she didn't keep me under duress. Yes she kept an eye on me during the set-up and our trip up here with you all because it was her job and she is, or perhaps was, a loyal Umbrella employee. It was Major Halstead who captured us, kept us prisoner and threatened to harm my family if I didn't do exactly as he wanted."

She pointed to where Claire was laboring over the Umbrella operative. "It was Morganna who convinced Halstead that there might be some use for us when his troops captured our boat and our friends. She kept us alive and got us food and medical attention. Without her my husband might have died."

"Hmmmmm," Alice replied thoughtfully. "We need to hear more about that, about both of you but for right now let's find those medical supplies."

Alice, along with Carlos and K-Mart followed Sue across the cavern to the other set of stairs. They passed one of the wooden doors and then halted at the second one. Sue wrestled with the old-fashioned iron door knob in exasperation.

"This isn't locked," she said, "Morganna brought me here several times. One of the uses she pointed out to Halstead was that I was trained as an RN. It's just that this door literally IS a hundred years old and sometimes it sticks."

Stuck the door might have been but it yielded to the combined efforts of Carlos and Alice. Sue fumbled inside and flipped a switch, resulting on an overhead light springing to life.

"Wow," Carlos said as he surveyed the shelves of bandages and non-perishable drugs.

"Wow," said Alice as she studied the lighting fixture. "I just realized something. We've seen lighting elsewhere but I've never heard the hum of a generator. Is it located elsewhere or is there some other power system?"

"Both actually," replied Sue as she quickly rifled through the supplies on the shelves. "I'll tell you all about it soon."

The group closed the door and headed back down. Sue splinted Morganna's arm, carefully wrapped her ribs and treated the various cuts and bruises the Umbrella woman had received. Several pain-killers were doled out, both to her and to Angie to relieve the headache of the near fatal shot.

"May I suggest," asked Morganna after Sue had checked on her husband, "that we move this discussion to the command center? It's up that same stairway you took to the medical locker but it's the first door. It's a lot more comfortable there."

"And how do we know that it's not a trap of some kind? There could be a dozen Umbrella troopers there."

"There could," admitted Morganna, "but there's not. I've been looking over the bodies as you checked them. Everyone is accounted for. Halstead brought the duty officer and the communications operator here. Completely against regulations but I think he wanted to make sure that nothing was transmitted to corporate and Chairman Wesker until he had made you tell him where Angie and K-Mart were."

A general consensus was reached by the group simply by exchanging looks and nods. Chris, Alice and Carlos cautiously led the way. This time the old wood door opened easily to reveal a very comfortably furnished area as well as niche containing up-to-date communications equipment and computers.

"And over there," Morganna pointed out, "is the conference room and Major Halstead's quarters."

The conference room was sparse but roomy. Halstead's personal quarters were, as usual for Umbrella higher-ups, luxuriously furnished.

Everyone settled in at the conference room. A pair of couches was used to make Sue's husband Donald and Morganna reasonably comfortable. The couple's two children sat with their father. K-Mart raised an eyebrow slightly and hid a smile as she noticed that the other three children sat with Claire and Sam.

"Okay Sue," Alice Said. "You've got the floor." The slight woman nodded and started.

(Sue's tale)

"Much of what you have been told before is true. My family and the original Linda and hers were indeed survivors who took to our boats to avoid the infection and the zombies. For several years we stayed out at sea most of the time, only occasionally touching land to look for spare parts, repair materials and other things we couldn't get out on the ocean. We also did begin to gather in groups and establish permanent floating gathering places at sea, most of them built around abandoned ships. As time went on we gathered plants and dirt from the land and started gardens and crops on our refuges.

"We did indeed occasionally have troubles with raiders. Some of them were just desperate people who had abandoned all thoughts of civilization in their attempts to survive. Those we were often able to make peace with and indeed welcome into our communities. Some were too far gone for that and we had to deal with them. And some, like the original inhabitants here, preferred stealing already. The collapse of the world just made it easier for them.

"Most of the raiders were in groups too small to be more than a nuisance. The group that came from here was much more than that. They were no ad-hoc group of survivors thrown together and without organization. They had boats, they had supplies and they had an organization. In the confusion of the early days of the wide-spread infection they had beaten off several zombie attacks and while they lost some members they finally solved their problem by withdrawing into the caverns below the mansion and sealing the two secret entrances.

"We did manage to fight them off several times and thinned their numbers. We did pull on spectacular ambush, having tipped off a suspected informant planted in another group that we had located a large fuel supply at a marina built on one of the coastal islands. We were waiting for them when they showed up.

"We knew that we had not eliminated them all but weeks and weeks passed with no further contact with them or word about them. So we took a chance. We had long known about their hideout here so Donald and I, and Linda and her husband Randy from another community volunteered to take a look.

"If it sounds strange that we took our families with us rather than leaving them, well, as you have obviously learned," here she nodded at Angie, K-Mart and their parents, "There is no sure and safe haven. We were only planning on making a quick recon of the area. In the past we had learned the safest way to do that is to approach when the wind is blowing out to sea. If pursued we go out into the deep waters. Because of their limited gas supply the pirates never wanted to get too far from land.

"We came as close as we dared on a first pass and saw no signs of life. Their boats were as you see them, pulled up on the shore. We anchored and came ashore onto the sand out there in our dinghies. Over at the storage room that became the jail cell we found several fairly recent zombies beating on the door. We killed them and found the door had been barricaded from the inside. Eventually we managed to open it and found two dead men in there. One had scribbled some notes before dying.

"It seems that our ambush had really done more damage than we knew. During a raid on the coast by the few survivors one of the men had been bitten. He turned and attacked the others one night, killing all but the two who took refuge in that room, which had originally been set up as a storeroom for high value loot." Sue got a grim look on her face. "Once in they couldn't get out." Nods by everyone showed that they understood what had happened.

The ocean going survivor looked embarrassed. "We should have left immediately but we lingered. There was so much good stuff here. And that undead shark is our fault; we threw the bodies in the ocean, never thinking what that might cause. So we stayed a few days, picking out what we needed the most. Then Umbrella showed up."

"Maybe we should have just surrendered but we're not used to that. You don't survive in this world by being meek. But the heavily armed Umbrella troopers overcame us. Linda and Randy were killed and Donald was wounded. I thought they were going to kill all of us but," she looked at Morganna, "a certain someone convinced him not to do it. A few days ago Morganna came to me and explained that she needed my assistance to capture several people badly wanted by the corporation. She emphasized that the objective was to take them alive."

"I didn't have much choice. I knew she was the one keeping Halstead from simply throwing us all to the undead shark that had appeared by then. So I agreed and I guess the rest you know."

The survivors' faces turned expectantly to Morganna, who nodded and began to talk.

(Morganna's Story)

"My name is Morganna. Morganna Combs if that is important. I've worked for Umbrella since I got out of college ten years ago with a degree in of all things accounting. My college was paid for by Umbrella with the understanding I would come to work for them. I started out as an auditor in a subsidiary location here on the coast and then was transferred to the main facility in Los Angeles. By then it had became apparent that I had a flair for detecting BS. A supervisor thought that since I could spot it I might be able to sling it as well. So I was pulled and sent to a specialized training facility Umbrella maintained to train its intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives. I did really well.

"When the collapse came I had been working as an industrial espionage agent for several years. I was good. I infiltrated rival corporations and stole technical data and research. The money was good and I didn't have too much trouble justifying my actions. In fact I reveled in how good I was at the game. I never got caught and in most cases was never even suspected.

"When the infection started Umbrella was sure it could be contained and that it would be business as usual. I wasn't so sure. I had worked several bio-research operations and knew more than I should have perhaps about those things. So I hot-footed myself to the Canadian complex, buried like most Umbrella secret facilities, and survived when the order came to seal it.

"That facility was decimated by the raid they launched against you in Montana. Things kept going for a while but finally we were ordered to shut down. Major Halstead and his team had arrived in Los Angeles from the Central American complex only hours after you had reduced it to ruins. They were ordered off the coast and then to pick up me and the last members of our operation. It was during that wait that you all were preparing to start your travel up the coast that we learned about the survivor groups on the water.

"Umbrella has always considered that theirs is theirs and what you have that they want is theirs too. Intercepted messages gave away your plans. Umbrella has snooper programs on many satellites, including the one you used to communicate with Alaska. The decision was made to ambush you here.

"I may be a thief at best but I am no murderer. I couldn't stop what happened when Halstead took this place but I could try to keep Sue and her family and the other children alive. I convinced Halstead how useful they would all be as a lure and how I could use Sue to help me infiltrate your group. That of course required that they be kept healthy as well.

"I've been thought of as being fairly clever but I was at my wits end. Any sign of weakness or hesitation and Halstead would no more have worried about tossing me to the shark that he would have any of you. Sue went along with me not only because of the threat to her family but because I hoped I could get her and them released once you had been captured. Not much of a heroic solution but I'm a spy, not a hero.

"In the end you all proved smarter and more determined than Halstead. So here we are."

"Here we are indeed," said Alice.

(To be continued)