Disclaimer - I own no legal rights to any of the copyrighted or trademarked elements of this Resident Evil fanfiction.
Alex Veltro - Thanks for your review! I hope you're enjoying getting caught up on this story.
"What happened to our sound tactical advantage?" Pierce whined.
Jill loaded a new clip into her weapon as her eyes darted from the Lickers crawling across the ceiling above her to the zombies and Hunters surrounding them on all sides and Minos who had just ducked in through the doorway.
"Look, I never said we wanted to be surrounded," she insisted. "I just said that if we had to be surrounded, this would be the best place for it to happen."
Minos had spawned several more glowing orange eyeballs since the last time she'd seen him. She picked the one that looked like the biggest target and started firing at it while backing away.
Carlos put his back up against hers.
"Feels just like old times, huh, Supercop?"
"Yeah," Jill agreed. "In all the worst ways."
A Licker leaped down from the ceiling at her and she blasted it in the face.
"Let's see," Jill said, scanning her environment again. "There's six of us and about – what, a million? – of them."
"I wouldn't count all six of us," Carlos said, indicating Pierce and Rosita taking cover under a table on the other side of the restaurant.
"Can't say I blame them," Jill responded. "They're just civilians, after all."
Another Licker dropped from the sky, and Carlos knocked it to the side with a powerful punch, then opened fire on some approaching zombies.
Minos leaned forward, and Carlos and Jill rolled out of the way as it charged. The colossus collided with a horde of zombies, knocking them down like bowling pins. From the way their spines crunched when they hit the floor, it was likely several of them would stay down for good this time.
Ashley was blasting monsters off the ceiling with her shotgun. One of the Hunters charged her. She just managed to duck under its razor sharp talons as it swung at her, then blasted it away with the gun.
Minos swung its fist and obliterated the table Pierce and Rosita were hiding under. As they scrambled to find new cover, Jill and Carlos took aim at the eyeball blinking at them from the back of Minos' shoulder until he turned his attention to them again.
Will was firing at the horde of zombies. And he kept missing.
"Screw this!"
Screaming at the top of his lungs, he ran directly into the horde and began shooting them in the head at point blank range. One was lunging at him from behind, mouth open to take a bite, when Ashley blew its head away.
"Are you crazy?" she yelled at him, continuing to pick off the zombies surrounding him from a distance.
"Maybe," Will said. "It's been a crazy night."
There was a loud screeching sound, and then a flock of the zombies swarmed in from one of the busted windows. Will grabbed what was left of a broken chair from nearby and used it to swat them out of the air.
Jellyfish zombies like the ones Jill had encountered at the restaurant with the mutant koi fish emerged from a nearby aquarium. Their translucent membranes stretched down to protect their human torsos and legs, but Ashley's magnum tore right through them.
A throng of zombies was surrounding Jill and Carlos, right as they were reloading their guns. Then Minos hunched over and charged again. Again, Jill and Carlos maneuvered out of the way as the monster tackled and missed, crushing several more zombies instead.
Zombie seagulls were sinking their talons into Pierce's arms and shoulders as he howled in pain, grabbing a bottle from the bar and trying to knock them off of him.
Now Minos charged at Will. He managed to leap out of the way and roll across the floor, just in the nick of time.
The monster's momentum once again continued carrying it forward. It was heading straight for Rosita. But she was too paralyzed with fear to move.
All of a sudden, Pierce ran for her, pushing her out of the way and wrapping his arms around the monster's enormous neck.
He looked the girl in the eyes and mouthed a silent goodbye as he and the monster both fell through the enormous broken window behind him.
Occasionally, Jill would scan the room, wondering where the largest monster had managed to vanish to. But she didn't have long to look before a Hunter or a Licker would steal her attention. It wasn't until she, Carlos, Ashley, and Will had made sure there were no longer any monsters or zombies still moving that she noticed Rosita just staring down. The ground below wasn't even visible through the darkness.
Jill approached her slowly.
"Where's Pierce?"
Rosita was trembling. She knew keeping her mouth shut was the only thing keeping her from sobbing, so she just pointed.
Jill swore and stomped her foot, then swore again, much louder.
"It's not your fault," Carlos said. "You can't save them all."
He knew it wasn't the first time Jill had heard it. He knew she'd heard it so many times that she was sick of it. But it still needed to be said.
And he knew it would still haunt her, anyway. Just like all the other deaths that, no matter how unreal the nightmare unfolding around her, she had vowed to prevent but, ultimately, couldn't.
Rosita swallowed the lump in her throat.
"That asshole," she managed to spit out. "He just had to go and save my life."
She rubbed her eyes with her clenched fists, trying to wipe away the tears before any more could form.
Jill gritted her teeth.
"We're going downstairs," she said. "Somebody's going to take my boot up their ass for this."
Ashley was staring down into the darkness as well.
"His name was Lance," she said.
"Huh?" Carlos said.
"My pilot," Ashley said. "The monster that just went over the edge. I just remembered. Because he'd always tell me to call him Turbu-Lance. I thought it was pretty messed up. Probably should have been a red flag."
Jill shook her head and made her way to the display case containing the plaster bust she was looking for.
"Rosita," she called, studying the lock. "Por favor. Hairpins."
Rosita obligingly took two pins out of her hair and handed them to Jill.
"Not like I need them much now," she said, again feeling the ends of the shaggy haircut the laser grid had given her.
It only took Jill a few seconds to pick the lock on the case and add the bust to her inventory.
"I bet there's an elevator that French guy used to disappear," Carlos said, holding up the card Carver had given him. "I've got a key for that."
"There's something else I'd like to check out once we get down to ground floor," Jill said.
She showed the others the scrap of the painting she'd found in the room with the laser trap.
Ashley dug the similar scrap she and Will had found out of her pocket.
"They're parts of a Hieronymus Bosch painting," Ashley said. "I saw it at a museum once. I think I've got a picture on my phone."
She scrolled through her gallery and showed the others the selfie she had taken posing in an art gallery, flashing the peace sign in front of a painting of Hell while wearing a white scarf, halter top, and pants with a blood red belt.
"Nice outfit," Jill acknowledged.
"Thanks," Ashley replied.
"I saw a print of that painting," Jill said. "In a conference room downstairs. I knew I recognized it."
"Then let's find that elevator and check it out," Carlos said.
Jasmine had a self-satisfied grin on her face as she took off the control suit.
"I got one," she said.
"But you also threw yourself off the roof," Daniel said, pouring a glass of wine. "And that's the end of the Minos experiment. His guts are splattered so far apart not even his regenerative properties can put him back together again."
"But at least I finally managed to kill one of our pests in the process," Jasmine said.
Daniel scoffed.
"Not even one of the good ones."
"But it was the annoying one nobody liked," Jasmine said, holding her hand up for a high five. "Totally worth it."
Daniel shook his head and ignored her waiting hand, setting the glass of wine below her hand on his desk instead.
"This isn't congratulatory," he insisted as he poured another glass. "You still did a terrible job."
Jasmine swirled the liquid in her glass.
"What shall we drink to, then?"
"How about the end of the world as we know it?" Daniel suggested as he clinked his glass to hers and then took a sip.
"You really are a nihilist," Jasmine responded.
"Or just a really big Michael Stipe fan," Daniel said.
Jasmine sighed and took another sip as she scanned the security monitors but saw no sign of the survivors.
"We threw everything we had at them, and yet five still managed to move on without a scratch."
Daniel started throwing switches and images of the hotel were replaced on the monitors by images of the lab.
"No sense in crying over it now," he said. "Nothing left to do but start preparing for their arrival."