Disclaimer: I don't own legal rights to any of the copyrighted Resident Evil stuff in this story.
A/N – Everyone else super stoked for RE: Village? I've been poring over that reveal trailer, coming up with some theories of my own. Anyone else think that guy with the big hat, tiny sunglasses, and messy hair might be Carlos? Something about that shit-eating grin. Then again, I've also heard some theorizing it might be Fabron, owing to the distinctive taste in eyewear. Either way, I'd be all-too-happy to find out my story here is way off base if it meant seeing either or both characters in action again. Relieved, even. Then again, I've also heard theories that guy may be the RE8 equivalent of the RE4 merchant, or Van Helsing, or some character we've never heard of before. We'll see . . .
"Ariana is smart as a whip. Smarter than I'll ever be. Must get that from Maria. Carlos Jr., on the other hand, just can't stay out of trouble. Definitely takes after his old man."
Jill smiled.
"Family life suit you, Carlos," she said. "Would have never guessed it the first time we met."
"Things haven't been that bad for you, either, have they?"
Jill slowly let out a heavy sigh.
"I was brainwashed and forced to fight for everything I've ever stood against," she said. "Then had to spend years being deprogrammed."
"Oh."
An awkward minute of silence followed.
"Well, that was almost a pleasant conversation," Carlos said.
"It was, wasn't it?" Jill said. "Oh. And I was a blonde. Definitely did not have more fun. Though I suppose my case was so unusual it doesn't necessarily disprove the rule."
From somewhere below, they heard loud thudding and a bone-chilling roar.
"What the hell was that?"
"What exactly are we looking for?" Will asked, digging through suitcases while Ashley dug through drawers, dumping the contents on the floor as she went.
"Anything that can help even the odds against all the monsters standing between us and a way out."
"Like, what? A bazooka?"
Ashley answered Will's sarcasm with a deadpan stare.
"If you find one, I call dibs, okay?"
Will shrugged his shoulders and pulled something out of the duffel bag he was searching.
"How about a pocket knife?"
"I've already got a knife," Ashley said, stroking the hilt of the blade in its sheath. "You hold on to that one."
Will obligingly pocketed the knife, while Ashley started to reach her hand down into a trash can.
"Stop! Don't!" Will screamed.
Ashley froze as Will grabbed the trash can by the bottom and slowly shook its contents on to the floor. Ashley's nose crinkled in response to the smell as he did so.
"You wouldn't want to stick your hand in there," Will said. "You don't know what you could find. Used hypo needles. Not to mention all kinds of things that could be covered in all kinds of bodily fluids. You might as well just stick your arm in one of those zombie's mouth."
Ashley looked over the pile of rotten banana peels, fast food wrappers, and soiled baby diapers. Nothing that would have made digging through with her bare hands worth it. She looked up at Will.
"I spent a summer working in housekeeping for a hotel like this," he said. "Had some really bad experiences with trash cans."
"I didn't know that about you," Ashley said. "Then again, I guess we talk about me more than we talk about you, huh?"
"It's just part of being your writing partner," Will said. "Me picking up trash in hotel rooms isn't as interesting as you suplexing the undead or escaping crazy cultists, anyway."
"Yeah, but still," Ashley said, "I feel like I should have known that about you by now."
She turned her attention to some papers on top of the counter.
"Instructions on how to access the parking garage," she said. "And a parking garage key. That might be a way out."
Will cracked the door to the room, checking the ceiling and both ends of the hallway.
"I think the thing with the tongue is gone."
"Stick behind me," Ashley said, joining him at the door and drawing her gun. "Just in case."
She stepped back out into the hallway, Will tiptoeing behind her.
There was a loud thudding.
As Ashley and Will made their way to the end of the hallway, a door on the other side of the hall fell from its hinges.
Stepping over the broken door was a monstrous mass of sinewy veins and exposed muscles, spikes made of bone protruding from shoulders and back. A giant glowing eye like the eyes all over the giant cephalopod's tentacles blinked from the right arm. Instead of fingers, slimy tendrils sagged down to the floor. And atop it all, staring blankly from the bloody mass, was a familiar human face.
"Is that my asshole pilot?" Ashley asked.
She backed up, attempting to fire at the eye. The bullets missed and struck its chest instead, not seeming to bother it at all.
It let out a deafening roar, then lunged at them. Ashley saw a door propped open by a utility cart.
She grabbed Will by the arm, yanking him into the room, pushing the cart out of the way so the door slammed shut behind them. Then she bolted and chained the door before blocking it with the cart.
"That might buy us a few secs."
"How many bullets do you have left?" Will asked. "I mean, could you . . . ?"
"I'm kinda flattered you think I'm that awesome," Ashley said. "But I really don't want to be anywhere near him if we can help it."
There was more thudding and roaring as it pounded against the door. Ashley desperately scanned the room for an alternate way out, barely noticing the dead body slumped over the desk. She grabbed a screwdriver off the top of the utility cart.
"It's going to be a tight squeeze," she said. "But I think maybe we can fit through the vents."
Will threw all his weight into pushing the cart in to the door as the monster continued to charge into it. Ashley dropped to her knees and began unscrewing the grate blocking the air duct. Then she tossed it to the side and squeezed through the opening. Will watched as her rear end wriggled and then vanish into the wall.
"Come on!"
He ran to the vent and climbed in after her.
Behind him, the monster was smashing through the door and the cart. In front of him, Ashley was banging against another grate, trying to gain entry to the next room.
The grate gave away and she crawled out and stood up, just as Will felt a tendril wrap around his ankle.
He yelped and Ashley spun around, catching his hand in hers. As she fell to the ground, she anchored her feet into the wall to either side of the duct, then used her free hand to draw the gun and fire at the tendril, just past Will's foot. It let go of Will's ankle, and then Ashley pulled him through the duct into the room with her.
They scrambled for the door, burst out into the hallway, and then burst through the next door into the stairwell as they heard the monster stomping out into the hallway behind them.
They were both gasping for breath as they ran up the stairs, and then Ashley inserted the parking garage key into a card reader. They could hear the thundering footsteps of the mutated pilot climbing up behind them.
The door unlocked and they sprinted through a tunnel, past corpses that shambled to their feet as Ashley inserted the key into the next card reader and then burst through the door into the parking garage.
She was immediately grabbed by a zombie on the other side. She jerked her head away from its mouth and struggled out of its grip, unsheathing her knife and swinging it to try to keep the zombie at bay, even as others were crawling towards her.
Then gunfire echoed through the garage. The zombies writhed on the ground as they were sprayed by bullets. Ashley spotted a car that had t-boned another vehicle in a nearby parking spot, and she ran to take cover in the corner between the two vehicles. Will sprinted and ducked down beside her.
A striking brunette, hair held back in a long ponytail, was marching down the ramp from a higher story, firing her assault rifle as she advanced. A zombie sprung from the open doorway of a nearby car, and she smoothly sidestepped it, firing into its face until it fell to the ground, then reloading the gun.
Then, as another zombie lunged for her, she somersaulted away, then rolled over on to her back and fired.
"I've never been into women before," Ashley said, peeking over her cover. "But I think I'm turned on right now. Is that weird?"
She turned her head to the sound of the monster bursting through the tunnel into the parking garage, zombies following it. And the dark-haired women immediately turned her weapon to it, taking out the zombies before firing bursts into its shoulder-eye as it howled in pain.
Then another figure appeared, a muscular, disheveled man, following the woman down the ramp. They split up, each following a different wall around the garage, concentrating their fire at the monster.
"Over here, ugly!" the man yelled.
As if responding to his taunt, the monster charged in his direction, just barely missing the wrecked cars Ashley and Will were hiding behind. The man kept firing, waiting until the last second to jump out of its way, on to the hood of a parked car. He ran across the line of vehicles, then jumped into a gap between them, stomping the head of a zombie crawling out from beneath a nearby car in to pulp, then charging into another zombie, sending it over the safety railing to the hard asphalt below.
"Doubly turned on," Ashley said.
The monster seemed to have stopped its pursuit of the man, to turn its attention to the woman. She was reloading again. The man continued to fire at the monster's back.
"Hey! I said, over here!"
But as it continued to move away from him towards her, she fished a grenade off her belt.
"Take cover!"
The man ran and jumped over the place the crashed cars connected, joining Will and Ashley in their huddle.
"Oh. Hi, there."
The woman unpinned the grenade and rolled it across the floor, jumping in to the back of a nearby truck and lying flat. The grenade went off, throwing shrapnel across the room and causing the nearest cars to burst into a fiery explosion. The monster stumbled back, crashing through the railing and plummeting to the ground with a loud splat.
"Hey, partner!" the man called, standing up straight and climbing out of cover back into the open before helping Ashley and Will do the same. "I found some survivors."
The woman was looking down over the railing.
"Well, it's not moving right now." She looked up. "Hey! I know you. I've seen you on the news." She walked towards them. "President Graham's daughter. Ashley."
"Yeah," she said. "And this is Will Bard. Who are you guys?"
"I knew a Bard once," the man said. "Doctor. To call him an irredeemable asshole would be generous."
"No doctors in my family that I know of," Will said.
"That's a relief," the man said. He shook both their hands. "I'm Carlos Oliveira."
"And I'm Jill Valentine." She looked at Will. "It's you! From the plane. I was trying to get to you when you crawled out of the wreckage. I'm glad you're okay."
"Will," Ashley said, turning to him with an indignant hmph. "You knew there were sexy people running around with machine guns and you didn't tell me?"
"I didn't see them," Will said. "I was too preoccupied with trying not to die."
"You're in good hands now," Jill said. "I used to be with S.T.A.R.S. The Special Tactics and . . ."
"Rescue Service," Ashley finished. "A very dear friend of mine was with the R.P.D. for, like, a day. I'm familiar with the reputation."
"Oh," Jill said. She couldn't resist adding, "Alpha Team."
Ashley's mouth formed an "Oh", sufficiently impressed.
"Can we get out of here now?" Will asked.
"I wouldn't recommend it," Carlos said.
"What?" Ashley demanded. "Why not?"
"Tropical storm's brewing," Carlos explained. "Winds could go over seventy miles an hour. You're not going to want to be out in the open when that blows through."
"Not to mention, there's no telling how far the infection's spread," Jill added. "The rest of the island could be just as dangerous as the hotel."
"Our plan's to find the basement," Carlos said. "Hunker down there. We've arranged for extraction as soon as the weather's clear."
"But what are you guys doing here in the first place?"
Carlos and Jill looked at each other again, trying to figure out how much they needed to reveal, how important it was for Ashley Graham and her friend to trust them.
"We dealt directly with this kind of thing in Raccoon City," Jill said. "Before it became a crater. We wanted to deal with the situation here before it got to the same level."
"In what capacity?" Ashley asked.
He gave Jill than conspiratorial look again, looking for some nonverbal confirmation of what they should be willing to share.
"An unofficial one," he finally admitted.
"You mean you're hunting zombies as a hobby?" Will said. "That can't be a good way to fight stress."
"Just stick with us," Carlos said. "Safety in numbers, right?"
Then they heard the sound of an engine revving. A car sped around the corner and straight for them.
Everyone scattered. Ashley and Will jumped backwards, pressing their back against the nearest wall. Carlos dove to the floor, landing feet away from them. Jill somersaulted backward, the car careening between her and the others before crashing.
The floor beneath Carlos suddenly dropped into a ramp, sending him sliding out of sight before sealing up behind him.
The portion of the wall behind Ashley and Will rotated, along with a section of the floor, and they disappeared to the other side.
Jill stood up and dusted herself off.
"So much for safety in numbers," she muttered. "That's just great."
Daniel was grinning ear-to-ear as he used the remote control to operate the car barreling into the group, sending them scattering. He carefully set the control down on the desk and began flipping toggles on the control panel, opening trap doors and activating secret passages.
"That would have been boring," he said. "Those four in tight formation."
"Divide and conquer," Jasmine acknowledged, almost approvingly.
She stared at the monitor of the center of the ground level of the parking garage, where Minos was puddle of mutated flesh and blood.
"Its regenerative properties should kick in any moment now," she said.
"Tommy," Daniel said, looking at it. "No, Tony. No. That's not right, either. I suppose I can call it . . ." He gritted his teeth. "Minos. Until I come up with something better. Anyhow, it may have some potential."
Jasmine finished jotting her report down in her notebook before slamming it shut.
"Not bad for a test drive."
"But nothing so impressive that we could show the footage to potential buyers," Daniel responded. "How soon until we can implant it with a parasite? I'd like to enjoy its capabilities first-hand."