Disclaimer – Completely fan-written. I have no rights to any of the trademarked elements of this story.
Xaori – Glad you're enjoying the dialogue. I'm going for action-comedy with some horror flavoring. Jill and Carlos were both so wonderfully snarky and quippy in the RE3 remake especially that it seems justified. Here come the monsters!
TheGamerMarine76 – Glad you're reading despite not having played the RE games. (I'd say you're missing out, but I'm sure your reasons are solid.) Ashley gets a bad rap, and I feel like it's partly because of the precedent set by the female characters in the previous games. Badass cop, sister of other cop who gave her a crash course in badassery, highly talented femme fatale . . . Not really fair to compare her to the heroes of the previous games. She's still miles ahead of most escort characters, follows instructions well, and does a decent job of staying alive. If I were in her place, I'd probably be curled up in a corner just waiting to die.
CreedTheCheshire – Groovy idea. I want Will to have an arc, but at the same time, surrounded by canon veteran zombie slayers, I really want to keep him as the "normal" character in the midst of the carnage.
A/N – I realize it's been a longer-than-usual hiatus. (At least from this fanfic. I have others I walked away from literally years ago and haven't found the inspiration to go back to quite yet.) But I felt like I was on a roll with this one. I've got the seed of an idea for a completely different RE fic in the back of my head, but I'm not ready to start writing that one out yet because I'm not ready to try actively working on multiple fics at once and be tempted to abandon one for the other. Anyway, finished RE5 recently and am currently playing Revelations, and, I've gotta say, I'm enjoying Revelations a lot more than I did 5. Though I'm kinda mad they took some of the Dante references I wanted to use.
The ramp Carlos had just tumbled down slammed shut above him. There was barely enough room for him to stand up, his shaggy hair brushing the ceiling even as he tucked his chin down into his neck. He reached up above him, trying to feel the edges of the ramp, trying to find a way to pull it back down and climb back up to the floor of the parking garage.
It had fused seamlessly back into place. If there was a way to open it again, it wasn't a simple hinge or switch.
He pulled a flashlight from his hip. Toughened as he was, he was barely able to keep himself from crying out and jumping back when the beam of light fell directly on the face of a Licker, inches away from his own.
There was a pane of thick glass between them.
He worked the beam along the glass. There were several similar cells with glass viewing panels, packed with varying numbers of creatures. Beyond the Lickers were Hunter Betas, and beyond the Hunters, a host of different creatures, some Carlos was all too familiar with, some which were similar but not quite identical to those he'd seen before.
They were throwing themselves against the glass, and it seemed to be enough to hold them, but Carlos definitely did not want to linger here. He turned a corner, shining his beam up and down each inch of wall. He could see seams, panels ready to open, but he couldn't get any of them to budge even slightly. They were probably designed to be opened electronically and remotely.
Then his blood went cold. He heard the mechanical whirring. From the cell block he had just left.
He picked up his pace, rounding another corner. His beam hit a small grate by the floor at the end of the crawlspace. He ran for it as fast as he could.
He could hear the assorted roars and growls of the bioweapons echoing through the small space now. The whirring had stopped. All the cages had been opened, all at once.
He dropped to the ground, kicking at the grate as hard as he could. The pounding and clawing of the monsters filled his ears.
"C'mon, dammit!" he muttered, slamming the sole of his boot harder against the grate, feeling it begin to give.
He felt the vibrations of a dozen monsters charging at him at once. He looked over his shoulder and saw a pack of Hunters marching around the corner, a Licker crawling across the ceiling above them, another right at its heels. He kicked again, harder, as another monster crawled out behind the Lickers.
The grate gave way, plummeting to the ground below. Carlos flattened himself as much as he could and began to squeeze through the small gap.
It was a struggle, given his muscular build, but Carlos managed to squeeze his torso into the adjoining room, paying attention to nothing but the floor below him. The sharp claws of the nearest Hunter couldn't be that far away at this point. Carlos pulled at the walls around the vent with all of his strength, and managed to drop to the ground below, right as two claws reached through above him, swiping at the air. As difficult as squeezing through had been for Carlos, it was downright impossible for any of the monsters in the crawlspace.
He tuned out the otherworldly sounds of the monsters turning on each other as he dusted himself off.
"This place has a real pest problem," he muttered.
Then he looked up. He was in a large reception hall, splattered in blood. Sparkly banners hung in tatters from the ceiling. A buffet table had been knocked over, spilling various hors d'oeuvres, petit fours, and other fancy-sounding morsels to the ground along with a sputtering fountain of chocolate fondue, the pool of sweet mixing with puddles of blood, the fancy morsels strewn across half-eaten corpses.
And crawling over the long, narrow tables and their sparkly tablecloths were zombies in rented tuxedos and fancy gowns.
Carlos readied his gun. His situation might have been better than a moment ago in the crawlspace with the Lickers and Hunters, but not by much.
"Not even the first wedding reception I've crashed," he said. "But definitely the worst."
He anxiously scanned the room for the nearest door. There were two . . . and they were both on opposite ends of the opposite wall.
He began sprinting, firing as a zombie lunged at him, aiming between the glass shards of a broken champagne flute protruding from his face. He shifted his aim to the next closest target, a woman whose soft pink dress was smeared with all the food from the plate of her last meal. He nearly tripped over a toppled chair, stepping over it and taking a big step backwards to edge around a fallen table. A zombie with an untied bowtie, lying on its stomach, grabbed Carlos' leg, and Carlos stomped his head in with the heavy sole of his boot.
The zombies were now very attentive, and Carlos was aiming less precisely, trying to hold the horde back with a wide spray. When his clip emptied, he reached for the table of gifts, grabbing the heaviest-looking package and swinging it like a club.
The bride let out a terrifying shriek, standing up from the remains of the many-tiered cake, knife still firmly in her grip. She and the groom shambled towards Carlos together, having apparently forged a more perfect union, "'till death do us part" be damned.
Carlos charged forward towards the door, swinging the wrapped package at the bride as hard as he could. Whatever had been inside was now shattered completely. He could hear the tiny remnants of broken glass shifting around the box. He shrugged and tossed it at the bride's face, knocking her over, and then punched the groom as hard as he could, sending him staggering back.
Then he felt a burning pain surging through his leg. The bride had inserted the tip of the knife into his shin. He jumped back, took a deep breath, and pulled the knife from his leg. The bride looked up at him, make-up smeared, skin pale, eyes completely bloodshot, and Carlos felt pity for her as he plunged the knife through her temple.
"I hope at least the ceremony went better."
The groom shambled to his feet, and Carlos swung his fist at his bared teeth again, knocking him back before running out the door and slamming it shut behind him. Then he reloaded his gun and fired at the wedding guests beginning to shamble out the other door of the reception hall, limping over and closing that door as well. There was a table by the door, covered in portraits of the undead couple in happier, more alive times. Carlos tried not to look at the pictures as he moved the table to bar the door, hoping to keep the wedding party sequestered a while longer.
Then he collapsed against the nearest wall, trying to catch his breath, clutching his leg where the zombie bride had stabbed him with her cake-cutting knife.
His hand was crimson as he pulled it away.
"That's not good," he said, forcing himself back to his feet. "I should probably do something about that. Jill, wherever you are, I hope you're having a better time than me."
Jill narrowly dodged the car speeding straight towards her.
She picked herself up, only to see the floor beneath Carlos drop into a ramp, swallowing him, and the wall behind Ashley and Will revolve, removing them from her sight.
She sighed.
"So much for safety in numbers. That's just great."
She took a look through the window of the car that had nearly run her down. No sign of any driver. It was a drone.
She began descending to the previous level of the parking garage, eyes darting everywhere with each step, scanning for the next possible threat.
"Carlos?" she called out, still trying to keep her voice low. "Carlos?"
She walked towards the spot she thought he would logically have been discarded when he fell through the trap door, but saw nothing but empty space between rows of parked vehicles. He'd vanished into thin air.
"Valentine," she chided herself, "why didn't you just hang up when you realized it was your ex calling?"
Then she caught something out of the corner of her eye.
There was a body huddled in the driver's seat of a nearby car. And it was still moving. She could see from the neck and shoulders that they were shuddering.
She knocked on the window. No response from the shuddering figure in the driver's seat, except it hunched over further and shuddered harder.
Jill rolled her eyes and then knocked again.
Finally, the man peered over his shoulder. Jill stared at him, refusing to break eye contact, as he seemed to quietly debate how he should respond. Finally, he turned the key to start the battery so he could roll down the window.
His head was covered in slicked-back white hair where it wasn't bald and shiny, and he was dressed in round-rimmed eyeglasses, a pin-striped dress shirt with starchy cuffs and collars, a tightly knotted necktie, and polka-dotted suspenders.
"Hi," Jill said. "Are you okay?"
"No," he said. "No, I'm not. I was at a meeting when the branch president started eating my colleagues."
"Were you hurt at all?" Jill asked. "Bitten?"
"No, thank God," the man said. "I got the hell out of there, and locked myself in here. Been trying to book the next flight away from this nightmare, but I can't seem to get a hold of anybody."
"You'd better come with me. I'll get you some place safe."
The man moved further away from the window, pressing against the door.
"I don't even know who you are," he said. "And I've been perfectly safe right here."
"Did you see the giant monster that just blew through here?"
"Giant? What?"
"You just barely managed to avoid being crushed when it fell."
She looked over to the space in the center of the garage the monster had plummeted through.
"You're pretty well armed," the business man said. "Why can't you just keep me safe here?"
"It's not what we'd call tactically sound," Jill explained. "Too many blind spots, exit and entry points, including above and below us. Not where I'd want to risk being flanked."
He continued weighing his options, his gaze moving from Jill's face to the floor of his car and back again.
"What if I just hide better?"
"I was with the Army, then the R.P.D., then S.T.A.R.S., and then the BSAA. I do this for a living. And, not to sound overconfident, but I'm pretty good at it. Trust me. You're better off if you come with me."
As he stared at her, Jill was reminded of Dario Rosso back on that fateful night in Raccoon City. She'd had to learn a long time ago that she couldn't save them all. But she could never stop trying.
Finally, he opened the passenger side door and climbed out.
"I'm Jill," she said, as she led him back up to the level she'd come down from.
"Pierce," he replied. "So, what's your plan?"
"Strictly speaking, I'm still making it up."
She heard a medley of threatening growls and snarls. She reloaded her weapon as she approached the throng of Hunters and Lickers that had doubtless emerged from whatever space Carlos had disappeared to.
"You'd better get behind me," she whispered to Pierce.
The wall rotated into its place with a slam and a rumble. Ashley turned to it, yelling and pounding it with her fists to punctuate every word she shouted.
"Why. Does. This. Always. Happen. To. Me?"
She dropped her arms to her side and turned back to Will.
"Looks like it's just me and you again," she said.
"Against the world?"
"Against one hotel crawling with monsters. Let's not get carried away."
"We should find a place to hide," Will said. "Not just from the monsters. From that storm Carlos was talking about."
"You said you worked in a place like this before," Ashley said, beginning to walk down the hallway. "Where would you hide in inclement weather?"
"Some place with sturdy walls and no windows," Will said, rubbing his chin and thinking. "Linen closets. Laundry room, maybe. Walk-in fridges. Restrooms . . ."
"Perfect," Ashley interrupted. "So when things get bad, you can pick the nearest one of those for us to duck into."
The hallway was plain taupe walls and carpeting, identical to the hallways they'd already seen but without any doors or decorations lining it, just a single door at the other end. Will ran after Ashley as she opened the door at the end and stepped back into a standard corridor lined with guest rooms. The other side of the door had no handle, and it blended in with the rest of the wall around it when it swung shut behind them.
"What are we doing?"
"Looking for Jill and Carlos," Ashley said. "They seemed to have a plan to get out of here. And enough weaponry to fight a small war. That's a lot better than what we've got." She stopped and turned around. "Or you could pick a place to hide and we can just come back for you."
"No way," Will said immediately. "I wanna stay with you . . . I mean, like Carlos said, safety in numbers."
Ashley smiled at him again.
"Safety in numbers," she agreed. "C'mon."
"That thing that attacked us . . . you think he's really dead? And was that really your pilot? What was his name again?"
"I don't remember," Ashley said. "Actually, I'm forcing myself to forget. It's easier that way."
"Do you think he might have crashed here on purpose?"
"I'm pretty positive he did. I'm just not sure why."
Then they heard a growl, and a scaly, hunched-over giant toad with long, curved claws emerged from around a corner.
"Oh, great," Ashley said. "A lizard monster."
She ran to the closest door, shoving her key card into the reader, but it flashed red.
"Damn! I think this key only worked on that one floor."
As the monster moved closer to them, Will spotted a door that was slightly ajar and pointed to it. He and Ashley ran towards it, and Will stepped back in shock when he realized the object holding the door open was a human arm.
Ashley quickly threw the door open, kicking the arm out of the way, and Will entered after her. They both grabbed the door handle and pulled it shut behind them.
Then they saw the rest of the body that was missing the arm, and the zombie standing over it, blood and entrails dripping from his jaw.
Ashley didn't hesitate to lift her gun to the zombie's head and pull the trigger until it went down.
She walked around the room, gun still drawn, slowly opening the doors to the closet and the bathroom to check for any danger, then briefly poking her head through the connecting door of the adjoining room.
She looked down at the desk. On a simple sheet of printer paper was a convenient map of the hotel. She picked it up, disappointed there was no convenient indication of where they were. Identical printouts had probably been distributed to every occupied room on every floor of the hotel.
Then she noticed typing on the other side.
"A note from the general manager," she read. She skimmed the paper, reading random excerpts aloud.
"The Hotel Malebolge wishes to welcome . . . beautiful beaches and tropical climate . . . several top-of-the-line amenities . . . currently hosting . . . O'Hara wedding . . . international pharmaceutical conference . . . and the Defenders Backing . . ."
She folded up the paper and stuck it in her pocket, turning to Will excitedly.
"We need to get up to the ninth floor."
Before Will could ask why, they were startled by a loud pounding on the door.
And then the Hunter burst right through it into the room.