Disclaimer - I own no legal rights to any established Resident Evil characters or trademarks.
Xaori - Thanks for your liking the story so far! Y'know, I wasn't always a Carlos fan, so I was pleasantly surprised when the remake actually managed to make me emotionally invested in him and his partnership with Jill. I thought he seemed like thematically he'd fit nicely alongside Ashley in the category of one-and-done characters that deserve to have been revisited by now. Similarly, Daniel is such a wonderful character that I still find it hard to believe he was made up just for Resistance. Obviously, Jill doesn't really fit that theme, but I'm too big of a Jill Valentine fan to not include her anyway.
OBSERVER01 nli - Thank you for your reviews. I hope you continue to read and enjoy.
Ashley Graham had spent the day touring a hospital. The pale, sickly patients infected with the virus laid in a catatonic state as she tried to talk to them. She insisted on baring into a wing of the hospital where they were keeping the patients whose symptoms had progressed. They were strapped to their beds, restraints around their wrists and ankles, trying to lunge at her, gnashing their teeth as though they were trying to bite her. But it was the children's ward that hit her the worst, where the press was all to happy to seize on the opportunity to get a picture of her with a little girl holding a stuffed El Gigante in a deathgrip, her eyes totally glazed over.
She was in tears as Will watched her keep yelling virtually the same thing over and over in to her little pink phone.
"Everyone needs to hear about this! They're trying to cover it up, downplay it. There's something very wrong with these people, and everybody keeps trying to make it sound like it's no worse than the common cold."
Now she was pacing up and down the aisle of her private jet, fists clenched in rage and frustration.
"I've got all of these connections. At least one of them has to be able to do something, right?"
"Are you sure now's a good time for this?" Will asked again, the nib of his pen resting on the page of his notebook.
"Yes. Sorry," Ashley said, taking her seat across from him. "Not much I can do about it up here. I need to get my mind on something else."
"So, we were talking about your volunteer work. The time you helped build a hospital in Kijuju."
"And everyone kept saying I was just there to pose for some pictures. That I wasn't going to actually do any real work, because I wouldn't want to, I don't know, break a nail or something."
"Or get your hands dirty. Or stain your outfit."
"All of those. Because I was born rich. Because I had all those powerful political connections through my dad. Because I was a woman. Probably all of the above."
"They were already biased against you."
"That's what I'm trying to say. They were very . . . umm . . ." She reached into the sky, grasping at the air as if she could literally pull the word she was looking for out of it. "Mean?"
"Unwelcoming? Ungrateful?"
"Something like that," Ashley said. "They made that first day hell for me. Well, more hell than you'd already expect volunteering to help with construction in that region would be expected to be. So, I had to work twice as hard and stuff."
"You had to put in twice the effort, just to prove to everyone that you were there to put in any effort at all."
"I guess that's a good way of putting it. And the whole time I was working, they wouldn't stop . . . I'm still trying to come up with a better word than 'mean.' It's on the tip of my tongue."
"Abusive? Abrasive?" Will suggested. "What you're trying to say is despite you're doing everything you could to help, they harassed you out of some personal vendetta against . . ."
"I know what I'm trying to say!" Ashley snapped. "I'm not stupid, you know. Just because you have bigger words than I do doesn't mean you're smarter than I am!"
She turned her head dramatically to the side, tossing her blonde hair and crossing her arms over her chest. Will took a second before responding.
"Ashley. I'm sorry," Will said. "I-I didn't mean . . ."
Then she slowly turned back to him.
Then cracked a smile. Then started laughing uncontrollably.
Will sighed.
"How do I always fall for that?"
"I'm sorry," Ashley said, still giggling. "I just really really needed a laugh right now, and you're just so much fun to mess with."
It was all Will could do to try to pretend to still be mad at her instead of laughing with her. Ashley laughed so hard she snorted. And then Will cracked and started chuckling too.
"I can't believe you really thought I was mad at you for the exact reason I hired you in the first place." She let out one last chuckle and then regained her composure. "I'm glad you're here with me. Honestly."
Then suddenly the plane shook, nearly jostling both of them out of their seats.
Will looked out the window.
"I think . . . " he began. "I think we're losing altitude. Fast."
Ashley rose to her feet. The plane rocked again, throwing her into the seat next to Will. But she managed to regain her balance and stand up again, marching her way to the front of the plane.
"What's happening?" she demanded, as soon as she'd made it into the cockpit. "What's going on?"
The pilot stood up quickly, turning around and grabbing her hard enough to leave bruises.
"Get out!"
He shoved her, hard, pushing her out of the cockpit and to the ground, sprawled out in the aisle, then slamming the door on her.
From there, everything happened so quickly.
The plane was leveling out, landing, but not on a runway. In the parking lot of a hotel, taxiing straight into the front entrance.
Glass shattered and bricks collapsed and then something jagged tore a huge hole into the plane's hull. Ashley crawled through it immediately, collapsing onto the floor of the vestibule and rolling away from the plane.
"Miss Graham! Wait!" a voice called.
But Ashley was moving while barely thinking. This was a hotel, which meant there had to be a fire extinguisher nearby. Something was burning and she had to put out the flames.
A piece of the ceiling collapsed, barely missing her as it crumbled to the floor. Tinier pieces of debris were striking her like hail.
She ran straight ahead, following the sign pointing to the main lobby. She spotted the fire extinguisher almost immediately, beelining to its cabinet and then running back into the vestibule with it.
She heard terrified screams, assuming they were cries of pain from injuries in the crash until she noticed a strange man pinning one of her secret service agents to the ground. The man jerked his head up, a strip of flesh between his teeth, blood all over his face.
A woman was pulling another agent through the breech in the plane's hull, gnashing her teeth as he tried to pull away from her.
Ashley swung the extinguisher like a cudgel, knocking the crimson-faced man off her bodyguard, then smashing the pale woman to the ground. Then she pulled the pin off the extinguisher and swept it over the plane, smothering the fire breaking out.
Something grabbed at her wrist as she dropped the extinguisher, and she reflexively pulled out of the grip.
"Miss Graham," a secret service agent said, taking her by the wrist again. "We've got to get you somewhere safe."
Then he was pulling her back through the lobby. Until a hand latched around his ankle, and he stumbled to the ground, almost straining her wrist before he lost his grip on it.
A pale, bloody man in a bellhop's uniform bit into the agent's leg, even as he managed to struggle back to his feet, and then a woman in a reception uniform, still almost pretty despite the glassy eyes and pallid flesh, grabbed the agent and sunk her teeth into his neck.
Ashley punched the woman across the jaw, as hard as she could. It only seemed to make her jaw clamp tighter around the agent's neck. She frantically looked around for something, anything, she could use as a weapon, settling on a decorative vase on a table nearby, breaking it over the receptionist's head, knocking her to the side, and then bringing the rest down furiously on the crawling bellboy.
Now she was the one holding the agent by the wrist, pulling him through the lobby and turning around the first corridor she could see.
A door was ajar, and she pulled him into it, shutting the door behind them. As soon as she let go, he collapsed to the floor.
She reached for his neck to check his pulse, almost sticking her fingers into the huge bite wound, pouring blood.
She grabbed his wrist instead, although she already knew he had to be dead.
The entire closet stunk of rot and decay. Behind her on the floor was what was barely identifiable as the corpse of a maid, a forearm completely gone, a leg missing below the knee, and skeleton peeking through in several places. Ashley gagged, covering her mouth and trying to keep down her lunch. Then she turned to the agent.
She took off his jacket, then removed his holster, putting it on herself and checking the 9mm handgun to make sure it was fully loaded. Then his tactical knife in its sheath, checking the blade's sharpness on her fingertip before turning her attention to the agent's pouch of additional ammunition.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "But I don't think you're going to need these anymore, and I think I am."
As if in response, he stirred. Ashley took a giant step back as the agent shambled to his feet, pallid skin, eyes glassy, moaning inhumanly. His arms stretched towards her, fingers bent like talons, and his teeth gnashed hungrily.
"Stay back," Ashley said, walking backwards and nearly stumbling over the half-eaten maid, raising the gun on its owner as she did so. "I'm warning you."
He kept advancing, and Ashley's back was already to the wall of the closet now.
She fired twice, hitting his torso both times. The agent flinched, but kept advancing.
Ashley raised the gun higher, and he lunged. The next two shots went through his jaw and his forehead, and this time he went back down to the ground.
He was still twitching and softly groaning.
"I'm sorry," Ashley said again, then stomped her shoe down into the center of his face, crushing it.
That's when she realized her choice of footwear might not be practical under the given circumstances. Even though she realized it was insignificant, all things considered, she felt a tinge of indignation having to abandon her favorite pair of heels, then walk out of the linen closet in her socks.
She heard the thunderous collapse before she left the closet, but was still compelled to run as fast as her feet would carry her down the corridor and back through the lobby towards the vestibule.
The passageway between the main lobby and the vestibule was completely sealed off by debris. Through a crevice, she could see that it was completely caved in.
Her bodyguards. And her interns. And Will.
She was filled with terror and anger and grief. And she fell to her knees and sobbed.
She had to remember what Leon had taught her. She could hear his voice, as if he was in the hotel lobby with her, telling her to take a deep breath, put her emotions aside, and just focus on staying alive.
She had to get out of here.
A/N - Future chapters are probably going to have a little more comic relief. I want to capture the structure of the games, with their backtracking and puzzles and setpieces, but not in a way that it becomes total parody like my other RE fic.
To be continued . . .