Resident Evil:

The Whole Story.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Rebecca came to with a low groan and the first thing she did was check the back of her head, when her hand came back spotless she couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief. It would be a great start to her first mission if she managed to fracture her skull. She quickly began to glance around the helicopter and got up out of her seat to check on her teammates.

They were all still conscious so there was at least that, before she could unclip her medical pack she heard Enrico curse loudly and she turned to face the front of the helicopter. Enrico was leaning into the cockpit and glaring at Kevin.

"What the hell happened!?" The man roared, the sound was amplified in the small space of the helicopter and it made Rebecca's head pound, for a moment she wondered if she had gained a concussion but she quickly discarded that idea, there was no nausea or blurriness in her vision and she was able to think clearly so she thought she was alright.

"I don't know! We just suddenly lost engine power." Kevin replied as he and Edward tried to get power back to the cockpit, after a few moments he cursed lowly and slammed his hands hard against the controls, Edward said nothing but it was clear by the look on his face that he wasn't happy with what he was seeing either.

"The engine is completely dead, I am not getting anything from it. This doesn't make any sense at all." Kevin said as he pulled off his helmet and ran his fingers through his hair. "It was serviced, it was fine."

"Who serviced it last?" Enrico asked in between coughs, it just suddenly occurred to Rebecca that something in the helicopter was on fire and she quickly decided to slide open the door.

"It was me, me and Chambers." Suddenly she felt everyone's eyes on her and it occurred to her that opening the door to the helicopter as they were speaking about who might have caused it to crash was probably a bad image.

"I did everything perfectly! Kevin watched me as I did it! It was fine!" Sounding as hysterical and desperate as she did probably didn't help her case but she couldn't help it, she took a deep breath to calm herself and counted to five slowly in her head. "It was perfectly fine when I finished checking."

"Chambers, relax. We know you didn't do anything wrong." Enrico soothed and Rebecca wanted to slap him in the face for how condescending he sounded, but not more than she wanted to slap herself in the face for panicking even before they managed to get out of the helicopter. "Getting the door open's a good idea, Richard, Ken give her a hand and when everyone's out I want you to have Chambers check you over for any injuries. Kevin, any chance that you can reach HQ?"

"No, the radio's out. I don't get this." The frustration in the pilot's voice was palpable as he fiddled with the controls. "Losing engine power shouldn't affect the radio but there's just no signal."

With a grunt Kenneth and Richard managed to slide the door open and they stepped out into the dark clearing before helping her out of the helicopter, the air had a bite to it but other than that it was actually quite a pleasant night and compared to the acrid smell of the smoke in the helicopter the fresh air of the forest was as close to heaven as Rebecca would get at the moment.

The grass crunched under her boots as she stepped on and rain drops shone like silver in the light of the moon, dark clouds seemed to be gathering and it would more than likely rain again soon enough and Rebecca was dreading it as it would most likely be a heavy downpour. They needed to find cover and the helicopter wouldn't do, maybe they could stay in the old Spencer Estate.

Assuming they could find it, the forest was only light by the light of the moon and it would be lost to them when the clouds covered it up. They had flashlights of course but they would only do so much good, they wouldn't be able to find their way back to the city even if they had too.

Rebecca let out a small sigh, there was no point in worrying about it now. They all had a job to do and they were going to get it done, Rebecca ordered the men to sit down on the ground so she could check them over for any injuries, Kenneth and Richard were both fine aside from a few bruises but Forest had had a long scratch running down one of his arms all though all he complained about was that his ink was getting ruined.

She quickly sterilized the wound and wrapped a roll of gauze before covering it with bandages, Rebecca was just grateful that it didn't need any stiches as while she was fairly confident in her skills doing it in the dark by torchlight was not something she had ever practiced before and it was very easy to make a wound a great deal worse when you were trying to stich it.

Now all she had to do was check on Edward, Kevin and Enrico and she could give the entire team a clean bill of health. They were still in the helicopter however trying to see if they could do anything to get the radio back online. After a while it became clear that the three men were fighting a losing battle and they made their way out of the crashed vehicle, the pilot and co-pilot made their way to the tail of the helicopter as the captain walked over to the rest of them so he could address them.

"Alright team, listen up. We can't get the radio back online so Kevin and Edward are going to see what went wrong with engine and fix it if they can. But I am not going to lie to any of you, we shouldn't get our hopes up." Enrico waited for a moment to his announcement to settle in and see how they all reacted to it before he continued to speak. "But that's not our problem, we have a job to do and we're going to see it through."

"If the radio's down and we can't get the bird back in the sky, how are we supposed to get back to town?" Forest was the one who asked that and Rebecca had to admit that suddenly his wound made her more nervous, it wasn't serious and she had treated it but if they were stuck out here for a long time and they were forced to engage with the murderers than it could get worse and he would need proper medical attention that Rebecca wouldn't be able to provide for him.

"If we can't reach the RPD by radio or by being able to fly back then we will fall back on to standard operating procedure." Rebecca may have been the new girl but the slight change of atmosphere was noticeable enough for even her to pick up on. What had been a little residing tenseness due to the helicopter crashing had changed into a mixture of irritation and fear and it was more than understandable.

The standard operating procedure for S.T.A.R.S in a situation where all contact had been lost by one of the teams out in the field was to wait for twenty-four hours, the S.T.A.R.S officers could be in a situation where they had to maintain radio silence or they could be under enemy fire and be unable to use their radios at the time but by the time twenty-four hours had passed with no word then it had to be assumed that something had gone wrong and at that point the second team would be sent in to assist.

The long and the short of it was that if they couldn't fix the helicopter then they were going to be stuck out here for twenty-four hours, Rebecca had never been very fond of roughing it but she would've been able to mange if this had just been a normal forest and all they had to worry about was a bear or a wolf but there were cannibals in the woods, a lot of them.

It was hardly the most ideal first mission, what she wouldn't give for a nice simple robbery.

"God fucking damn it!" Edward's outburst shocked her, not just because of the sheer anger in his voice and how suddenly it had come but because it was the most emotion that she had ever heard Edward express. The large man stormed over to them with Kevin following behind him, the pilot's expression crossed between furious, confused and hurt.

"Someone fucking sabotaged us!" Edward roared as he threw a hunk of metal down at their feet, it was a square piece of metal with a few wires sticking out it and there was a small black box sticking out of the middle of the metal. Rebecca wasn't an explosive expert but she knew more than enough to know that she was looking at what remained of a bomb.

"Is that what I think it is?" Kenneth asked in a breath of disbelief as he knelt down to get a better look at the contraption, Richard knelt down next to him with a grim look on his face.

"The detonator is radio controlled, not time based." Richard explained as he examined the device, using his combat knife to pry open the cover of the black box so he could take a better look inside. "The helicopter must've flown within range of a signal and that caused it to detonate."

"What sort of cannibals have access to that sort of hardware?" Kenneth asked and it was a good question, they were in the middle of the woods and there was nothing around for miles and miles. And yet, they had access to radio controlled explosives? It didn't make any sense.

"You're missing the important part, the bomb was planted on the helicopter and we didn't land, we left straight from the police station which means someone at the station planted the bomb." Edward's words came over Rebecca like a bucket full of cold water being dumped on to her head, someone in the police department had done this? Why would anyone do that?

"Who? I checked over everything the night before we were due to leave and that wasn't there, hell, I did a check a fucking hour before we were due to leave and that wasn't there. I'm sure of it!" Kevin shouted, off all his conflicting emotions anger seemed to be the one that won.

"And then Enrico sent you up to the roof to get the engine running, by yourself." Edward spat and Kevin's eyes narrowed into a glare and for a moment Rebecca though that Kevin was going to hit him but before he could Enrico stepped in between them.

"Everyone, just calm the fuck down. Okay? I don't know why anyone would plant that bomb and I don't know who did it, Kevin you left the helicopter alone long enough that anyone could've gotten up there and messed with it before we were due to leave. Now, we are stuck out here and there is nothing we can do about that. What we can do is our fucking jobs, that sounds better to me than standing around and arguing. Alright?" Enrico spoke, though it was clear that his words to calm down were not suggestions.

Still, Edward and Kevin both managed to calm down all through they still shot one another intense glares, Rebecca wasn't certain how they would be able to work together ever again. What was worse than being accused of being a traitor, it wasn't something that could easily be forgiven.

"Now, Kevin I want you to stay with the helicopter and do whatever you can to try and fix the engine." Enrico commanded.

"I'll do what I can boss but with just me...don't hold your breath, that's all I can say."

"Understood, but still just do what you can. As for the rest of us I want us to spread out in a circle, we should be roughly close to the estate but I have no idea in what direction we are in. So, Richard and I will head north, Edward and Kenneth can go east and Rebecca and Forest can go east, when you see the estate make sure that you radio the rest of us. Do not go in on your own. Everyone clear?"

"Clear!" The group responded and them they sorted themselves into their pairs, Forest wouldn't have been her first choice to be paired off with as she would've preferred to be with Richard or Kenneth but she would make do with Forest. Rebecca turned the flashlight which was mounted under the barrel of her gun and shone the beam into the thick woods.

Forest and Rebecca began to make their way through the trees, going slow so they wouldn't trip over any branches. Off in the distance Rebecca could hear the sound of wolves howling and dogs barking.

With a sudden cry Rebecca fell to the floor as her feet caught on a particularly thick branch, her gun slipped from her fingers and went sliding into the grass and Rebecca cursed as landed face first on the ground. The pain was nothing compared to the humiliation she felt when she heard Forest turning around and coming back to help her up, he was never going to let her live this down.

Her first mission and she wound up falling flat on her face, she wanted to shoot herself. It was a shame she lost her gun.

Forest let out a chocked of gasp and Rebecca looked up to see him standing there, his eyes wide and his skin pale. Rebecca pushed herself up and turned her head around to look behind her.

She honestly tried to stop it but she couldn't hold back the shriek that escaped from her mouth as her eyes locked gaze with the empty eye sockets of the rotting face.

End of Chapter Twenty-Six

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