Disclaimer: I don't own legal rights to any of the copyrighted Resident Evil stuff in this story.
"Do you think she's dead?"
"No," Rosita responded, without hesitation.
"How much longer do we have to wait here?" Pierce asked.
Rosita refused to make eye contact, staring at the foot of the door from beneath the heavy conference room table instead.
She groaned.
"Until she comes back."
It wasn't the first time Pierce had asked that question, and it wasn't the first time she'd given that answer, but she hoped it was the last.
Suddenly, there was a loud pound on the door.
"Do you think that's her?"
For once Rosita looked over, if only to gauge the fear in Pierce's face.
"If it is, she has a very aggressive knock."
The pounding continued, louder and louder, until the door flew off its hinges.
A pair of scaly legs with razor-sharp claws appeared.
"Definitely not her," Rosita assured Pierce.
It snarled as it came closer, and then sharp claws reached for them. Rosita and Pierce crawled back on their elbows, just out of the monster's reach.
Then it began smashing its fists on the top of the table.
Rosita curled up into the fetal position. Pierce's eyes turned up towards the table over his head.
"At least they didn't skimp on the wood," he said. "I think that might be real mahogany."
Then the room was punctuated by gunshots. The hunter fell to the ground, and Rosita gazed into its empty eyes and sharp fangs.
"It came straight for them," a familiar voice said. "As if it knew."
Jill bent over and peered under the conference table.
"Are either of you hurt?"
Rosita shook her head.
"A little bit from the scratchy carpet," Pierce said.
They slowly crawled out from under the table.
"Some hiding spot you picked out for us," Pierce said dryly.
"It was only meant to be a short term hiding spot," Jill shot back. "To hide you from a much bigger monster than that one. It served its purpose. Now we have to go."
Rosita tried to brush the dust and lint off her uniform.
"Go where?"
"You tell me," Jill said. "You know this place better than we do. Where would you normally go in an emergency situation?"
"As far from this hotel as possible."
"That's not really an option right now."
Rosita put a hand to her chin, looking pensive, while Pierce snuck his head back out into the hallway, looking up and down it anxiously.
"We were always told in case of fire or inclement weather to all evacuate to the parking garage," Rosita suggested.
Pierce scoffed.
"That's out of the question, sweetheart," he said, stepping back into the room. "It's not what we call tactically sound."
He winked sideways at Jill and tried to put his arm around her shoulder.
"Don't touch me," Jill said, her voice deeper than usual, and Pierce immediately took his hand away.
"Maybe locked away by the swimming pool?"
Jill shook her head.
"We don't want to go there, either. Trust me."
Rosita continued thinking.
"There's a ballroom," she said. "They'd have meetings in there for the staff sometimes. Holiday parties and things like that."
Jill nodded.
"Sounds like it's at least worth a shot."
Carlos slowly pushed open the bathroom door. Slowly so as not to alert the small huddle of zombies he could sense were coming closer, and also because he wanted to make sure there was nothing worse waiting on the other side before he barged in.
Once the door was closed behind him, he slowly examined his surroundings, starting with the open area by the sinks, and then opening each stall one by one and making sure each was empty.
Then he stopped holding his breath. At exactly the wrong moment. The stench was overwhelming. It was hard to say how much of it came from death and destruction, and how much was just from a poorly maintained bathroom seeing heavy convention traffic. Each toilet was clogged. One was overflowing. Flies buzzed around a too-full trash can.
He pulled the door open a crack, peeking through to watch the zombies that had been rounding the corner pass him, following them with his eyes as much as he could to make sure they'd moved far enough away to not be interested in him.
He planned his next move. There was a door propped open across the hall, a paper taped to the wall next to it identifying it as "Panel Room C." If the room contained fewer zombies than the hallway itself, he could close the door, neutralize the threats within, if any, and lay low as long as he needed to figure out his next step.
The quick breath of, comparatively, fresh air in the corridor wasn't enough to remove the lingering stench from the restroom. He held his breath again, sprinted across the hall, and shut himself into Panel Room C.
The dim florescent bulbs flickered overhead. The room was completely empty. Something going his way, for a change.
He hadn't needed to waste a bullet yet since entering the convention center, but he doubted that luck would hold.
The hordes were only going to grow thicker as he made his way deeper, and soon trying to avoid direct conflict was going to be less practical than taking them head-on.
He checked his location on the map again. Panel Room C wasn't that far from a much larger auditorium. If he passed through it and exited on the other side, he'd have a shortcut. But if the auditorium was more densely packed than the longer way around, he'd be trapped, surrounded in a more enclosed space, possibly risking more than he would by just continuing to tiptoe down the hallways he'd be bypassing.
Like always, he was going to go with his gut.
He peeked out of the room, making sure the coast was clear, then ran out and sprinted around the corner.
The double doors to the auditorium were closed.
He reached for the door handle. Gave it a tug. Locked.
And he was drawing attention. He could hear the low groans. He looked over his shoulder and saw zombies shambling towards him from every direction.
Then he noticed the card reader by the door. With one hand, he reached for his sidearm. With the other, he pulled the lanyard from his pocket and dangled Dr. Carver's ID card in front of the reader.
He heard the buzz of the electronic lock, and then threw open the door and ran into the auditorium, right as one of the zombies charged for him.
No sooner had the door closed than something grabbed him.
He'd got scared. Got reckless. A zombie was grabbing him by the shoulders. As he jerked back, he dropped the lanyard with the ID card.
He pulled his knife from it sheath, stabbing the zombie repeatedly through the temple. When it was on the ground, dead forever, he bent to try to pick the lanyard back up, and found a vent.
He cursed under his breath, flattened himself against the floor, and stuck his arm through the grate as far as it would go.
It was deep. He was grasping at air. And he knew he couldn't just keep reaching. There was no telling what could be waiting in those vents to bite his arm off.
The auditorium wasn't as crowded as he might have feared, and the occupants were widely spread out. He kept the knife handy, swiping at any that came directly into his path, as he walked down the main aisle towards the plinth.
There wasn't much left of the speaker behind the podium, but Carlos pulled the blood-stained ID card from around her neck and pushed through the nearest exit.
He could see zombies huddled by the opposite wall, making a meal out of an unfortunate janitor. He moved silently past them, past the gift shop, following an arrow on the wall pointing to Hall H.
It took him straight to an iron fence, securely locked.
As he cursed at the fence, a face appeared on the other side. A face like granite, beneath tightly curled, dignified gray.
"Corporal Oliveira."
"You can stop calling me that," Carlos said. "I'm not with the company anymore."
"We're not safe here," Carver said, looking anxiously over his shoulder than over Carlos'. "Hand me the ID card I so generously left for you."
"Not just yet."
"This really isn't the best place to negotiate."
"Oh, I agree," Carlos said. "But you've got to give me something, first. Some reason I should listen to you. For all I know, you could be leading me straight into a hill of man-sized mutant fire ants . . . or something."
Carver just raised an eyebrow.
"I've seen some weird shit, man," Carlos said.
"What do you want me to say?"
"How about you start by explaining how you knew I was here?"
Dr. Carver angled a tablet towards Carlos, and he could see himself in grainy CCTV footage.
"There are surveillance cameras covering every inch of this hotel, and I've hacked into them."
Carlos instinctively reached for it.
"I have friends with me," he said. "I need to see where they are. Need to know they're okay."
"Not just yet," Carver said, pulling the tablet out of Carlos' reach. "I need to keep some things close to the vest, until I know I can trust you. How do I know you won't try to shoot me in the back? You are a former guerilla fighter, after all."
"Fair enough, I guess. So what's your story?"
"No one wants a repeat of Raccoon City," Carver said. "Or any of the other . . . embarrassing outbreaks. During development of the Alpha-Virus, I've been concurrently working on a vaccination, and a treatment for those already infected."
"Alpha-Virus?" Carlos said. "Now? What is the logic behind the naming system, anyway?"
"I'd be happy to share my complete research notes with you," Carver said. "Including the minutiae of what makes the Alpha-Virus so much hipper and sexier than the t-Virus. But first you've got to get me out of here."
"Are you trying to tell me you've got a cure?"
Carver groaned and massaged his temples.
"Try to pay attention so we don't drag this conversation out until we die. What do you think I've been trying to tell you?"
"The virus has already started spreading. There are infected in the hospital on the mainland. Children in the pediatric ward who . . ."
"There is a very small list of people I actually care about. All I want is to hold my husband and our child in my arms again. And if providing you with a cure is what it takes to make that happen . . ."
"Why me?"
"You have a certain reputation with the company, Oliveira. I think you're the only one who can protect me."
"From the Virus? The infected?"
"From my employers. I would do anything to be happily reunited with my family, and I believe you would do anything to get your hand on that cure. Can we make a mutually beneficial arrangement?"
"What do you need from me?"
"For starters, my convention ID."
Carlos shifted on his feet anxiously.
"Well, here's the thing," he said. "I kinda . . . lost that."
Carver buried his face in his hands.
"I guess your competence was greatly exaggerated."
Carlos extended a hand through the bars of the fence, clenching the blood-stained ID.
"That won't do," Carver said, barely even looking at it. "Dr. Parekh doesn't have anywhere near as high of a security clearance as I do."
"So what am I supposed to do?"
Carver shook his head and began walking away.
"I'm really hoping you can figure that out," he said. "We can't keep standing out here in the open like this. I'm going to find a suitable place to hide while you find a suitable ID."
"And what do I do about this?" Carlos asked, shaking the fence.
"Maybe try to find the security guard carrying the key."
Carlos watched as Dr. Carver walked down the hall and disappeared from sight.
"Never cared much for these labcoat types," he muttered.
He drew his pistol as he walked past the gift shop again, looking through the window and seeing nothing but shelves filled with pill bottles, magazines, and sundries.
There was a closed door beyond it. Locked. But Carlos tried Parekh's ID card on the reader and he heard the mechanism activate as the light switched from red to green.
He opened the door and stepped into another bland hallway lit by flickering lights. The hallway appeared clear, but that didn't mean the rooms than flanked it were. He put his ear against the next door, and when he didn't hear anything coming from the other side, he used Parekh's key to open it.
The room was small and empty except for some chairs and a table covered in identical printouts and a projector beaming a slideshow presentation on the wall. Carlos flipped through one of the handouts, trying to parse through the science and marketing jargon, but none of it seemed relevant.
And then he thought he heard his name. The voice breaking the silence of the room nearly made him jump out of his skin.
"Carlos!" the voice hissed again.
Carlos stepped back and looked down. He dropped down to his knees beside the vent and looked down through the bars at Ashley and Will.
"For a moment, I thought I'd lost it and could hear my boots talking to me."
"Are you okay?" Ashley asked.
"Funny," Carlos said. "I was just about to ask the two of you the same question. Are you hurt at all?"
"Yes," Ashley said. "Both emotionally and physically. But we're still alive."
"We were in a boathouse and a flock of mutated seagulls attacked us and we had to jump down here before the building exploded," Will said. "Does that sound crazy?"
"Not any crazier than the night I'm having," Carlos said. "I crashed a zombie wedding and was stabbed in the leg by the bride, then I decided to crash this convention. So . . . no judgment here."
"Can you get us out?" Ashley said, trying to stretch her arms out towards him. "We've got a screwdriver if that would help."
Carlos studied the grate, tugged at the bars.
"Heavy iron, and it looks like the bars are built right into the floor. I don't think I can open it from here."
"It's like a maze down here. And, Carlos, there are monsters everywhere. It's like some kind of holding cell for them."
Carlos nodded.
"I was in one of those crawlspaces and that's what I saw, too," he said. "Wonder how long they've been keeping them hidden in the hotel, waiting for an excuse to let them out. But I don't think any of our close calls tonight have been accidents. Someone's messing with us."
"I'm glad we found you," Ashley said. "But I don't think we can just stand here for long. We've got to find a way out. Before someone decides to open these cages."
"Understood," Carlos said. "But do you think you guys could do me one favor while you're down there?"
Jill rounded the corner just as a table fell over, spilling framed photographs all over the hallway floor.
A zombie burst into the hallway, dressed in an expensive, but very bloody, tuxedo. Other similarly well-dressed but disheveled zombies followed. Through the doorway they shambled through, Jill could see a figure in a wedding dress, lying in a pool of blood.
"Might not have been a bad idea," she said, reloading her pistol and firing into the crowd, "if the hall hadn't been booked."
Something else caught her eye. A trail of blood on the carpet, leading away from the reception hall. Could have been from anybody. But it looked fresh.
She walked backwards, following the trail while still keeping one eye on the zombified wedding party. Then she unlocked the door and stepped into the room, Pierce and Rosita at her heels.
The blood trail ended at the bathroom, next to a washrag that reeked of booze.
"Carlos was here," she muttered. "I just know it."
"Who's Carlos?" Pierce asked.
"No need to be jealous, big shot," Jill said, continuing to examine the room, hoping Carlos had left some kind of clue behind. "You have my full attention right now."
She turned to Rosita.
"Any other ideas?"
"Why do we have to keep going with the Mexican girl's ideas?" Pierce asked.
Rosita put her hands on her hips.
"I'm Guatemalan," she said. "You asshole."
Something thudded against the door. Jill didn't hesitate to turn the handle and kick the heavy door open, sending the zombie groom behind it staggering back before putting two bullets in his head.
"Head for the stairs," she told the others. "I'll hold them back."
She listened to their footsteps disappear around the corner. Then, when all the zombies had been staggered and knocked to the ground, she took off after them.
She ran past the entrance to Wong's Asian Fusion, it's colorful entryway still ornate and inviting, even as the odor of rotting food and decay emanating from it was not. Back in the stairwell, she caught up with Pierce and Rosita as they climbed up towards the next floor.
"Any ideas?"
"The guest laundry room," Rosita suggested. "Tiny room, closed off, no windows and only one entrance and exit."
"I love it," Jill said. "Let's go."