A/N: Oh wow, I actually have reviews. I had to cut this in half, it was much longer than I expected so Clairice is actually in the next chapter. Sorry D: Please don't hate me, I didn't even expect to get reviews so I stayed off and continued packing my bags.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
(Alice and Carlos)
17th of October, 2014
With the amount of supplies we had loaded on the boat we've been able to survive the long and daunting trip. Just. There were days when we decided to cut down on meals or water in case we had future rough seas or any other scenarios that would lengthen our trip. The sun was unrelenting as it dried the salty water on our burnt skin, and the desire to bathe in our scarce fresh water was tempting, but we were able to keep it out of reach during those times. We shed our excess clothing near the beginning of the trip, keeping only a loose shirt and pants (short shorts in my case, which I'm ashamed to say) this was only during the day since the nights were absolutely freezing over the ocean, and we had to huddle together to keep our core temperatures stable during those hours, it wasn't very comfortable but we had to deal with it.
It must have been almost a month by the time we set foot on American soil. We were lucky to find our way into a bay, which we later found out to be called Noyo Bay, homed in Fort Bragg, California. Searching the empty streets of that town we've looked through a few different stores to replace the used supplies, and in hopes of finding some sort of weapon. One of the stores we've managed to find had almost everything we could possibly need. Almost. The first place looked like it used to be a camping store since there were still old mountain bikes hanging high on the racks. Some canned goods and bottled water were left around inside, a couple 2-way radios were tucked away in the back room, which Carlos immediately called dibs on, but there were no weapons. The place looked like it held a lot of stuff back when the world was still relatively normal, but now the two storey building was almost empty, raided and trashed.
In another store we were able to find a map of the area. Quickly scanning through the index I noticed that there was an airport approximately 4km north of our position. When I showed it to Carlos we both agreed that it would be better to take an aeroplane than any other vehicle, although neither of us knew how to control an aircraft... But it's never too late to learn, right?
With the small haul of supplies we stuffed into our backpacks we made our way north, following the direction of our Dad's compass. Carlos was still mucking around with the radios as we made our trek, trying to get the damn things working.
"Maybe they need new batteries?" He kept tossing them over in his hands, looking at every nook and cranny.
I groaned at his attempts.
"Give it here." I held out my hand. There's no way I was going to listen to him complaining the whole way there.
Pouting he shoved the two radios towards me without looking. As soon as they were in my hands I flicked them on and put both on the same channel. I handed one back to him.
Pressing the button to activate the radio I spoke into it, "There you go, dumbass." I heard my own voice echo out the other end.
An awkward silence followed as he looked over the radio again.
"...Oh," he laughed sheepishly, "Wrong switch."
Sure, he could master any fucking vehicle, but switching on a walkie-talkie fazes him?
Shaking my head at him I had to laugh at his stupidity. Switching off the radio, in hopes to extend the battery usage, I slipped it into the pocket of my pack as we kept following the street to the airport.
By the time we got there, looking over at it from the other side of the barbed fence, we could see the destruction caused on the place. It looked like it was bombed in hopes to kill all those who flew over here, but only the main terminal building was affected by the blast, from what we could see the runway looked completely intact and the hangars housing the planes looked in good nick too. As for the planes themselves, we'll never know until we see them up front.
"Well," I sighed, "How the hell do we even get inside a hangar? They're not going to be unlocked for anyone to waltz in and take what they please."
Carlos just shrugged at me. "They might be. Let's just check it out."
Not looking back at me he began to jog down the gentle slope to the fencing around the runway. I watched as he made a running jump and grabbed the chain linked fencing, starting to climb. He stopped at the top. He failed to notice the coils of barbed wire above him, or he had seen them and thought he could climb over with skin still intact. Once I made my way down I stopped below him and threw off my backpack, inside was my jacket that I used back in Russia.
"Here, Spiderman. You might need this." I scrunched the clothing in a ball and threw it up to him.
With one hand still on the fence he untangled the jacket and swiftly chucked on top of the wire. He awkwardly tried to drop his backpack once he was done.
"Get mine out, will you?" The thicker the blanket, the better I guess.
Sorting through his messy pack I eventually forced out his thick jacket, but as it came out something fell with it; it was a pair of binoculars. I didn't know he had this. Thinking that this could be quiet useful I put it back and gave the jacket to Carlos, to put on top of mine. As soon as he was over the protective blanket I threw over our packs and followed his example, climbing over I made sure to take the jackets with me, landing next to him, we were both unscathed on the other side of the fence.
After stuffing the jackets back in the packs we crept along the outside edge of the airport, on the opposite side of the wrecked terminal building, towards the first hangar in sight. We haven't had a run in with any infected recently, I noticed.
Maybe they've moved out of the area to look for more fresh people?
As we reached the first hangar we continued along the steel wall, crouching and keeping our bodies almost pressed against the metal to get to the front entrance undetected, in case there actually were infected or even crazed survivors ready to shoot and loot. As soon as we stopped at the front entrance we could straight away see how difficult it would be to try and open this cage of metal.
We both looked at each other and back at the massive locked sliding door in mild shock.
"There's no way we can get through that." Carlos shook his head in defeat, still looking in awe at the door.
We stood there for a while, just staring at the sliding door. Ideas were circulating through my mind.
"Pass me the binoculars." I extended my hand towards him.
"How'd you-?" He cut himself short; he just dropped his pack and stuck his hand in to grab the binoculars, "Here."
Mumbling a quick 'thanks' to him in return I immediately started using the binoculars to search the surrounding area.
"What are you looking for?" He asked as he narrowed his eyes in attempt to see what I was trying to search for.
I replied as I kept looking, "It's better to search the hangars from distance than to walk around all day checking them individually. Just saving time, that's- wait."
I could almost feel Carlos snap his head towards me, "What?"
"I think I saw something. There's a hangar open at the end of the runway, something is moving around inside."
"Infected or survivor?"
I lowered the binoculars and handed them back to Carlos, "I don't know, I could only see a shadow." Tightening my pack I carefully made my way down. "Either way there's an open hangar, maybe with a plane inside."
If it was only one infected in there we would be able to overtake it easily, but if it were a survivor we wouldn't know if they were friendly or not, or if they were alone. Looking up at the sun to see what time it was I could tell it was past midday, it wasn't much relevance right now but we hadn't eaten since last night and I was starving. A part of me worried that my stomach rumbling would attract unwanted attention. Quickly and quietly we jogged along the fence, keeping a close eye on the distant hangar. We were taking a huge risk being out in the open during daylight hours, if this person was a shoot and loot maniac we would be lying dead on the pavement in seconds, so for once in the past year the whole way down I was hoping it was an infected being.
The moment we met the sliding door we followed it down to the cracked opening, being extra careful where we stepped along the way. I was in front of Carlos, and at times he had to hold me back from moving too fast, I wanted to get this over with, to get out of here and meet with the convoy already. From this position I could hear movement inside the building; it echoed easily being it is a massive empty room and all. It sounded like someone rummaging through a box of tools... I looked back at Carlos, silently asking if he was hearing the same thing, from his expression I guessed he was.
Carlos moved closer to me, to whisper in my ear, "We should try calling out. If it's a survivor they might call back. If there's no answer, we run. Got it?"
I nodded. I had no ideas on how to approach this situation anyway.
After a few moments of only listening to the continued rummaging I decided to yell out.
"Hey!" I readied myself to bolt in the other direction.
Immediately there was a clinging of a tool hitting the floor.
"Shit!" A male voice called out, "Who the fuck are you?"
Relaxing slightly Carlos yelled back from behind the door, "Are you a friendly?" We were both still tensed as we waited for an answer.
"What? Frien- Yeah, man. I ain't gonna shoot ya or nothin'. Damn."
The man could still be lying and really aiming his weapon towards the door, to shoot and kill. But I decided to take another risk. Hesitantly I slowly poked my head around the corner. From the looks of the man he was an African-American, probably only in his early twenties. My gaze went straight to his holstered weapon where his hand rested, a gold plated desert eagle.
"Hey, you know how to fly this thing, man? Can't find the damn keys or nothing in this joint."
Still on alert I exposed my whole body and walked inside. I moved my gaze right to the only aircraft in the hangar.
"A helicopter?" I asked stupidly. I didn't expect a helicopter to be in here, "I don't even know how to drive a car."
The man folded his arms, shook his head and stared at the UH-60 Blackhawk. The machine was the most amazing thing I have ever seen, but then again I haven't seen much of the outside world.
"Well, shit. Name's Lloyd Jefferson Wayne. You can call me LJ." He held out his hand and I shook it.
"Alice Abernathy."
"Carlos." He waved over my head to LJ. "Maybe we should pull this thing out first. Then have a look inside for a manual."
LJ laughed at Carlos, "Be my guest, you can pull that shit out if you want, but I ain't got a clue on how this thing works."
Carlos walked past us, "We'll figure it out."
It took a fair while before we managed to get the helicopter outside and started reading through the manual. LJ and I ate lunch and got to know each other as Carlos studied the manual. Turns out, LJ was in Raccoon City when the virus escaped, he tagged along with a few others to rescue a little girl in exchange for a lift out of the city which was soon to be sanitized, bombed. Once they were in the air to their freedom they were attacked by Umbrella, the ones responsible for the virus, and crashed into a hillside. He woke up alone, to wander by himself and ended up here looking for a way out.
I didn't tell him much of our past, I only told him about the convoy in Nevada and he was more than willing to come with us. The more the merrier I suppose.
It must have been a couple of hours before Carlos believed he got the hang of the controls. There was already a bit of fuel still inside the chopper, which we hoped was enough to get across the border. Without any further delays we climbed up and strapped in for the ride of our lives.
We didn't get too far into Nevada with the little fuel we had. During the flight I looked through a large book with a detailed map of USA, tucked away in the compartment shared with the manual. We needed to find the exact location of the convoy, and with the scrunched up co-ordinates in my pocket combined with this map I figured they were taking the route from Utah towards the famous Las Vegas. At the mention of Vegas LJ decided to share some bad moments that he had in that gambling city, we welcomed the anecdotes since it was a change of pace of our usual silent trips with just me and Carlos, or Dad.
Upon landing the beautiful aircraft close to the weed riddled road we immediately began setting up camp, next to the machine, and ate our last meal of the day. Using nearby decaying shrubs and bushes as firewood we lit a small campfire, heating up the cans. It was possible all because of LJ, he was a smoker and had a few spare lighters tucked away in his back pocket. Together we sat close around the flames to get as much warmth as possible.
"We're probably only 25 to 30 kilometres from Las Vegas," Carlos spoke as I began poking the fire with a short stick, causing small red and orange sparks to fly. "This is the road that the convoy should be taking. We can hunker up and wait for them or we can meet them half way."
"Don't these big convoys have radio broadcasts and shit?" LJ was already lounging between the chopper and the flames, eating a can of baked beans.
"We might not be close enough to pick up the broadcasts. For all we know they probably haven't even left Utah yet. Or they're already into Vegas. We have no idea how fast these guys are travelling, it's impossible to tell exactly where they are."
As they continued talking I took the opportunity to slip out one of the radios from my pack. All this talk of broadcasts got me the urge to check for myself if they were nearby. Flicking it on I started surfing through the channels, but I was only met with static on each one.
"Nothing?" Carlos asked me. He was doing the same thing as me.
I shook my head, and spoke through the radio, "Not a damn thing." Chuckling as I heard my voice come out the other end.
He ran a hand through his hair as we watched the flames dance in front of us. At least we made it safely into Nevada, and with a new survivor.
"Let's just turn in for the night, sort it out in the morning."
(The Convoy)
The small convoy had turned in early for the night after a long day of constant travelling. They settled in a relatively flat stretch of sand off the side of the road, or what's the remains of a road that is, and continued the normal end of the day ritual. The morning had been especially brutal for them as the desert scorched high in temperatures, making the survivors sticky, uncomfortable and more moody as usual since there was little they could do to cool themselves down. Couldn't they just flipped a switch and turn on the vehicle's air conditioning? Of course not! They couldn't afford that kind of luxury in this barren wasteland, you want fresh air you stick your head out the window. And there was no way they could use the scarce fresh water on their sun burnt skin at will. Everything was rationed with reason, so the only way to get a bottle is to sell your own limbs...small price some would pay during these desperate times.
The perimeter was all set well before the sun dipped below the horizon. Mickey, the sixteen year old electronics operator of the convoy would be up most of the night keeping an eye on each monitor in the old news van, once his shift is up it would be Chase's turn, the man in charge of the one and only fuel source... The most important person in this convoy, the leader, was also the one responsible for placing the portable surveillance cameras around: the young, red haired Claire Redfield. She may be far younger than half of these survivors, but without her things would most likely have turned to shit.
"Claire?" The cowboy, Chase, called out in the darkened night.
He stood alone in the camp. All the others were fast asleep, or on shift to keep on look out.
It was hard for the man to see far, even with the combined light from the full moon and the lone gentle campfire, which kept him warm as he waited for his shift to start.
No response came from the darkness. Chase tightened his leather duster and adjusted his Stetson cowboy hat before exhaling a breath in annoyance. As he walked forward his worn out leather boots scrapped the desert sands, creating a small cloud of dust behind him. He had been looking for Claire for a while now, it was time to turn in for the night and no one has spotted her after she set up the perimeter.
Every survivor in the group knows that he acted like a father towards Claire. They've never met before the outbreak, but as soon as he joined in with the convoy and laid eyes on the stubborn redhead he could truly see the weight of troubles on the kid's shoulders and was compelled to look after her, like she was his own child.
Stopping at the edge of the camp, he looked beyond the sea of dunes, towards the empty horizon. "Where've you gone now?"
It wasn't an uncommon occurrence for Claire to wander off. Not away from the camp itself, otherwise the alarm would go off, but hidden along the border simply stargazing or tucked away in one of the vehicles, keeping the occupants up all night from constant talking about new ideas to improve the convoy. But she was nowhere near worse as K-mart though, their newest recruit. Both K-mart and Claire are the same age, only fourteen years old, yet they could be quiet a handful at night. They would stay up and talk far too loud or abuse Mickey's electronics to listen to music... Don't get me wrong, they're not irresponsible, they do their fair share of work and keep in line, but sometimes they can be like a pair of squirrels on speed with the kind of things they come up with.
Chase ticked off the areas that he hadn't spotted the young leader. She wasn't with K-mart, since she was fast asleep in the yellow hummer, she wasn't inside the ambulance talking with Betty, or even with the kids hunkered inside the school bus, and he searched the entire grounds inside the perimeter and hasn't found a clue of her being there. Only one more place came into mind as to where she could possibly be.
"Mickey."
Marching away from the invisible barrier he headed over to the old, battered news van with a menacing scowl on his face. He got ready to give a long lecture to the good looking Australian boy about being alone with his semi-adopted daughter.
Ripping open the double doors and glaring hard inside he found none other than Claire Redfield, engrossed with the radio system, sitting beside a sleepy looking Mikey. At the sudden sound and movement caused by Chase the teens jumped in their chairs and whipped their heads towards the door, looking surprised and almost scared at the intruder.
"Christ sake, mate. You scared the shit out of me." Mickey let out a breath that he unconsciously held onto to settle himself down. But he was still looking on edge after his unwanted boost of adrenaline.
Chase ignored his comment and kept his attention to the young redhead, "It's getting late, little lady. We've got a long day tomorrow. Remember?"
Claire slipped off one side of her headphones and turned her head to face the cowboy, "I know, I know. We're almost in Vegas. Just a little while longer, okay? I think I got something."
Turning her attention back to the radio hand held radio in front of her she adjusted the frequency slightly. She kept listening intently into the headset, waiting for something to show up again, hoping it wasn't a recording and there truly were more survivors out there.
"What you got there?" Chase asked as he stepped up into the vehicle, and crouched next to Claire.
She didn't reply for a few moments, in case she would miss the voices.
"I was looking through the different channels a while ago, to see if there are any broadcasts nearby. I think I heard voices, but I went straight over it and I can't find it again. They have to be within a 10km radius of us for this piece of crap to pick it up."
Chase just watched as Claire sat still, with her head cocked as she continued listening intently. He shook his head in amusement and chuckled lightly. Gently taking off the headphones to get her attention he began to speak again.
"I'll take over for the night," He looked over to the Australian, "You look half dead anyway, Mikey. Get to bed you two."
Not needing to be told twice Mikey leapt out of his own chair and out the back doors, to his sleeping quarters. Claire was more hesitant than him, she wanted to stay in the van but she knew it was a big day tomorrow, as Chase said, and she had to be in the best condition possible if she hoped to keep her position as leader. Reluctantly she tossed the headphones and radio back on the bench and followed Mikey outside, to join K-mart in the yellow hummer.
"Night, Claire," he said once she was out of the vehicle.
Claire closed the doors shut behind her, "Good night, Chase."
R&R please. I know I said Clairice was suppose to be in this chapter, but I didn't realize how long it was :\ So I cut it off here. I should be posting that chapter later on.
You must hate me right now D: -flees-