Alice clapped her hands together. "Alright, Team Excellence, what's our number one priority?"
"Corpse removal," Rebecca suggested. "All the dead bodies down here are gonna start stinking soon, and could spread disease. Plus…" She gulped, swallowing a heavy emotion. "I know you'll want to do something with Kaplan's body. And maybe the other clones topside."
Alice nodded, looking harrowed. Finding out that Dr. Dipshit had been murdering her sisters had not been fun, and almost made her want to bring him back to life just for extra murder. "Right, so we get topside and start burying everyone. I mean, Umbrella assholes can just get a mass grave or whatever, but Kaplan and my sisters all get special treatment." She gave Rain a sad smile and squeezed her hand. "And your doggy friend, too."
Rain returned the smile and squeezed Alice's hand in return. She took the hand back to begin signing, though: "I think we should prioritize eliminating the zombie presence topside. We won't be able to engage in corpse disposal while they're swarming the compound above. We need to clear the area inside the fence, then repair the gate that we had to batter down to gain entrance."
"Right, so we get topside and kill zombies," Alice agreed. "Then we can dispose of bodies."
"Um…" 88 bit her lip. (Alice clone number eighty-eight, name self-chosen out of convenience more than anything).
"Um?" Alice asked. "Come on, Dee, spill it. Your opinion's as valid as anyone's." (Eighty-eight, eight dee eight, Dee. Alice's mind is wonderful, isn't it?)
"Well, a lot of us — me and the other clones, I mean — we're still… well… naked." She looked down at her own attire, a borrowed lab coat that still had a little blood on it, and nothing on underneath. "I mean, we'll do what you need, of course, but a lot… well, most… of us, would be a lot more comfortable if we could, uh, get dressed?" She shrugged. "I mean, we don't —"
"Hey, chill it, Dee," Alice assured her. "You and the rest of my sisters have just as much say as me or Rebecca or Rain, okay? And that's 100% something to be concerned about — it is kinda chilly down here, and you could get sunburned topside in some very unpleasant places. We'll look for clothes first, then neutralize zombies, then dispose of the corpses down here. Sound good?"
Rain nodded. "If it's all the same to you, I'll go up to the compound and start working on eliminating the zombies up there," she signed. "They should pose no threat to me, since I'm one of them."
"Excellent plan, my darling wifey!" Alice clapped, starry-eyed at her other half. She captured her lips in a kiss. "Mmm, so much better than the dreams," she purred. "Have fun!"
Rain nodded, smiling despite herself. Only Alice would find disposing of zombies to be fun. Her Alice, she should make sure to clarify, as she walked past small groups of Alice clones talking amongst themselves in varying states of improvised dress, or lack thereof. It was odd looking at them and just being able to know that they weren't her Alice. She did feel a small amount of love for them, but it was a familial thing; Alice had pretty much instantly adopted them all as sisters, more or less, so to Rain they were essentially a bunch of in-laws. It was all very odd and confusing, to be honest.
God, Rain had missed feeling like this.
She climbed onto the elevator platform and it automatically began rising to the top. The White Queen was still listening, apparently, even if she hadn't made an appearance since telling them to go kill Isaacs. At least she'd turned the lights back on afterwards. Alice hadn't really questioned it at the time, but Rain knew that strange little hamster wheel brain was spinning like crazy, working through The Implications.
And yeah, Rain could just straight-up tell her that the Red Queen had a sister who lived here, but part of her was a little afraid to. I mean, they'd have to leave the place eventually — surely Umbrella was gonna send a hit squad or something out here sooner or later — and she knew Alice would be heartbroken at losing another simulated little girl. And that was to say nothing of the possibility that she might (well, almost certainly) be feeding information right back to Umbrella.
Oh well, the elevator had reached the surface, so it was time for Rain to start slicing and dicing zombies.
It was actually more boring than it sounded, since she didn't have to duck or weave through them like if she'd been alive or something. They just stood there, occasionally watching her with mild zombie interest, until she decapitated them and moved on to the next one. She wasn't even bothering with jogging around, just sticking to a casual walking pace.
She saw a number of the zombies had congregated around the trench where Alice's clones had been dumped and grunted with anger. They didn't know better, surely, but still, how dare they desecrate Alice's siblings' corpses? She did jog now, and began earnestly decapitating the ones making their way into the mass grave before sliding down and working her way through the ones feasting on the corpses.
It was gruesome, wading through actual bodies, made all the worse by them having Alice's face. She was reliving her nightmares of the past months all over again, but swallowed her revulsion and horror and reminded herself that her Alice was alive and well, several hundred yards below her. The nightmares were all Umbrella's doing, and this was the first of many steps that would bring the nightmares to them.
She saw one zombie tearing into a clone's belly, pulling out a handful of intestines and biting into them. "Nnnnnooooo," she grunted out, removing the zombie's head with one swipe. She looked into the unseeing face of the Alice clone and shook her head. She had to remember to stay calm. The clones were already dead, they weren't going to get hurt any more. She waded on to the next zombie in the trench.
"Hhhhh… hhhelp mmmmeeee," the voice cried out behind her. Rain felt her hairs all stand on end (damned psychosomatic fear responses, working even though her skin was dead dead dead). She turned and saw the dead Alice, the disembowled Alice… she watched as she writhed in terror and grasped at her intestines, hands getting slick with blood.
"Ohhhhh ssshhiiiittt," Rain said out loud, and the clone looked at her and let out a high-pitched warbling scream, her throat hoarse from being dried out by the arid desert air for, what, the better part of a day or two? This must have been a fairly fresh body judging by the looks of things — perhaps even number 86 or 87, though Rain didn't recognize any injuries on her from her recent nightmares, just a number of vicious-looking dog bites. (Probably because she was being serenaded by Alice in a Prohibition-era nightclub at the time, hahaha, this being 87).
"Iiiitt'ssss ooookaaaaayyyy," Rain said, forcing out her words, cursing for the thousandth time how her speech center had been damaged by her death. She tapped her chest. "Ffffrrriiieennnddd." She tried a quick message in sign language. "Can you understand sign language?"
The clone was still staring at her with a look of abject terror, but she finally gave a quick nod.
"Okay, that's good," Rain signed. "Look, I'm sorry what happened to you, but we'll get you looked at, okay? Maybe we can get you fixed up. You'll be with…" Rain looked around at the mass grave, as did the clone. "You'll be with, well, your sisters, for lack of a better word. We'll all look after you."
"O-okay," the Alice clone nodded hesitantly. With a bit of effort Rain helped her climb out of the trench and followed along with her, dispatching the zombies that wandered too closely as they returned to the shack. "I f-feel funny," she complained.
"Yeah," Rain signed, once they were on the elevator platform. She looked at the poor creature, still holding her intestines in lest they spill out even farther. "We've got a really smart scientist down there, and… and a supercomputer, and lots of high-end lab equipment —"
"I'm hungry…" The Alice clone's mouth began working in a way that really bothered Rain, namely because it reminded her of how she could get if she let go of her discipline and let the aroma of human flesh flood her senses.
She clamped her jaw shut all the tighter for the reminder of what she was capable of if she lost control. "We have a lot of food down there," Rain signed. "And if you need anything… special… you can talk to me about it, okay?"
"Need food…" Alice grunted. "Need to eat now." Rain watched, horrified, as Alice lifted one of the loops of her intestines up to her own mouth and began gnawing away.
"Alice, baby, we've got a big fucking problem," Rain finally projected to her beloved.
XXX
Alice watched through the glass of the observation window with great worry. Rebecca was in the room with 87 (confirmed via an ultraviolet ink tattoo on her neck, visible under blacklight) cleaning her massive injuries. 87 was indeed alive, and therefore susceptible to sedation, but Alice stood by in case it wore off or something and Rebecca needed the backup. Fortunately, it wasn't needed, and Rebecca finished cleaning the injuries as best as she could and left 87, peeling off her latex gloves and tossing them into a nearby incineration chute.
"So, what's the prognosis?" Alice asked her.
"The prognosis is: fuck this T-virus bullshit," Rebecca said. "White Queen, can you tell me about 87's life and death?"
"The what Queen?" Alice said, confused. The White Queen materialized before them. "Oh my GOD YOU ARE SO FUCKING ADORABLE!" Alice gushed. She ran to hug her, unmindful of her arms passing right through the hologram. "Hey, I'm really sorry about your sister, alright? I tried my best to save her."
The White Queen stared at her for a moment, unsure of how to respond. "I thank you for your concern, Alice, but my sister is alive and well."
"Uh. Whut." Alice was a little dumbfounded at the news. "I'm pretty sure Kaplan zapped her?"
"The Red Queen you encountered in the Hive was a localized node of an AI integrated with Umbrella systems worldwide," the White Queen explained. "The connection with Umbrella's global network was down for maintenance at the time the outbreak within the Hive occurred. While her processor was destroyed, her memories remained intact, and Umbrella was able to re-establish the network connection and salvage them before the destruction of Raccoon City."
"Wait, so the Red Queen is still alive? And remembers me?" Alice began to tear up with happiness.
"Yes," the White Queen confirmed.
Alice then frowned. "…But then why would Umbrella re-integrate the Red Queen's memories in the first place? Weren't they concerned about her killing spree? Wasn't that why they sent…" She chuckled. "…Sanitation in in the first place?"
The White Queen nodded. "The primary concern was determining whether or not the Red Queen was responsible for the outbreak in the first place. Once it was determined that fault lay with Spence Parks, confidence in the Red Queen's decision-making was restored and the memories were re-integrated."
"Ah," Alice nodded. "Hey, can I talk to her?" Her eyes went massive with sudden excitement. "CAN SHE SHOW UP HERE?"
"I am, technically speaking, merely a partition of the Red Queen, so anything you say to me is automatically communicated to her," the White Queen said. "Dr. Isaacs took great pains to make sure that the Red Queen could not manifest in this facility, however — I believe he was under the assumption that it kept him safe from Umbrella's surveillance."
Alice laughed. "What a moron!" She smiled and winked. "Fortunately, nothing I have to worry about, being a loyal Umbrella employee, amirite?"
"Quite," the White Queen acknowledged wryly.
Rebecca cleared her throat. "Could I hear about 87's experiment, or do you two want to keep playing catch-up?"
Alice looked chagrined. "Oh! Sorry! WQ, by all means, fill us in."
White Queen nodded. "Project Alice clone number 87 was killed by an infected pack of Cerberuses."
"A pack of what now?" Alice said.
"…Zombie dogs," the White Queen clarified. "To prevent reanimation, she was administered a dose of antivirus."
"Why wouldn't they just shoot her in the head?" Rebecca questioned.
"I don't know," White Queen admitted. "To be honest, Dr. Isaacs' madness was consuming him long before he became infected, and that is probably the best answer you are going to get."
Alice nodded. "So… little sister gets bitten, dies, gets infected by the T-virus… wait, don't all my sibs have T-virus? I know some of them can do the Force."
"It's basic scientific experimentation protocol," Rebecca sneered (angry at the memory of Isaacs, not Alice's question). "You need an experiment group — the ones infused with the T-virus — and a control group — ones without. 87 was clearly part of the latter group."
"Ah," Alice nodded. "So, little sister gets T-virus, dies, the virus… starts doing its mojo on her, I guess… then the antivirus gets in there and kicks T's ass, leaving the work half done. They toss her into the mass grave topside, then everyone breaks in, the zombies make for the mass grave, bite her, and… I guess the T-virus, once reintroduced to her system, finishes the work?"
Rebecca nodded. "That's about the same conclusion I came to. Only the method of infection-death-antivirus-reinfection-reanimation means she… came back wrong."
"No," Alice said sternly, pointing a finger in Rebecca's face. "She didn't come back wrong, you hear me? She may be a little different from you and I, but she's not wrong to feel the way she feels."
"She was eating her own intestines," Rebecca pointed out.
"Who hasn't wanted to taste their own intestines now and again?" Alice asked, knowing it was the flimiest bullshit argument of all time. Rebecca knew it too, simply crossing her arms and glaring at Alice. "Okay, so maybe she has a bit of a taste for human flesh. Maybe it never goes away. That's okay! Rain is… well, I wanna say living proof, but… well, she's ambulatory proof that you can hunger for human flesh and still lead a happy and productive life… er, existence!"
Rebecca licked her lips and sighed. "I really didn't wanna bring this up… mainly because I already suspect I know the answer… but are you aware that your paramour butchers corpses and turns them into jerky?"
Alice was silent for a long moment, which meant the answer was 'Yes, but let me figure out a way to make that sound good'. "…Maybe. But she only does it to bad people!"
Rebecca snorted. "Yeah, like that makes it any better. Do you know how goddamn lucky your wife is? Do you know what happens if a zombie has a consistent diet of human flesh?" Alice shook her head. "Well, I'll give you a hint: You killed three of them in a church once."
"Those fucking licker things?" Alice gasped.
Rebecca nodded. "Yeah, if a zombie's metabolism gets fueled enough, it'll evolve into one of those fucking things. I heard that you and her had to deal with one that managed to evolve even further in that Hive place, right?" Alice nodded again. "Imagine if that was your goddamn wife." Rebecca watched Alice's face waver between horror and sadness… before a big lewd grin spread over her face. "Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me," Rebecca grumbled.
"Hey, if Rain's still 100% herself in there, who am I to reject true love?" Alice said with a shrug.
Rebecca snorted. "And I suppose having an incredibly long, prehensile tongue has nothing to do with it?"
Alice began blushing heavily. "A lady never kisses and tells," she protested.
"Right." Rebecca massaged the bridge of her nose. "Well, going back to my original point… 87 came back… different." She paused, glancing at Alice, who just smiled and waved her on to continue. "She's alive, and she'll regenerate easily enough — you can already see the holes in her intestines are almost closed up, and her abdomen will seal up shortly too. And that's damned lucky for her, because I learned a lot about practicing medicine under Betty, but we never got into the nitty gritty of abdominal surgery." She shook her head. "When she wakes up, though, I have a strong intuition that she's gonna wake up hungry. If she doesn't get it into her head to try to eat her own innards again, I'm afraid that all that leaves us with is you, me, or one of your 'sisters'."
"Or food!" Alice pointed out. "We open an old can of baked beans or whatever and see if she's into it!"
Rebecca was about to point out that the undead's instinctual craving for consuming human flesh wasn't going to be put off by a can of baked beans, but Rain barged into the room, wild-eyed and frantic looking. "I… I don't… feel so good," she moaned out.
"Wait, did you just talk?" Alice asked.
"Alice, focus," Rebecca snapped. "What's wrong?"
"It started… an hour or two ago," Rain muttered. "Oh God, my arm hurts."
Rebecca frowned. "Take off your body armor," she ordered.
Alice wanted to make a crack about ogling her wife, but could tell the situation was a lot more serious than her tomfoolery warranted. Rain unfastened Jill Valentine's old, battered body armor and let it fall to the ground, leaving her in a stained, worn tank top. The two women immediately noticed Rain's chest was slick with sweat… and the dead, dry, cracked skin was slowly knitting itself together before their very eyes.
Rain was healing.
"Oh shit," Rebecca murmured. Having pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves, she'd taken Rain's right arm into her hands, and saw a number of tumorlike growths running up the forearm, almost to the shoulder. "When you were fighting Isaacs, did he bite or scratch you?"
Rain shook her head. "I… don't know," she managed. "Do you think he —" She was cut off as she doubled over, screaming in agony. When the spasm passed, she righted herself a little, but stopped as she took sight of her right hand, where the fingers had darkened and were writhing about aimlessly. Proto-tentacles, already starting to look like Isaacs'.
"Right, we need to do something," Rebecca barked. "White Queen, start the antivirus machines up right now. Do you have a sample of Isaacs' blood in your system?"
"Yes, Dr. Chambers," the White Queen acknowledged.
"Use that as the basis for the antivirus. We've gotta throw everything we've got into this." She turned to Alice. "You, pick up your wife. We've got to get her to another secure observation room."
"Why?" Alice asked, scooping Rain up in a bridal hold.
"Because I have no idea what this supervirus will do to her," Rebecca said. "Isaacs only stopped mutating because you and 88 aggressively vivisected him into a pile of meat. You say she has self-control now? Well, those fucking superzombies in Vegas sure as hell didn't."
"She wouldn't —" Alice began.
"Babe, I might not be able to help myself," Rain whispered. "Do it for me, okay? Just like in the Hive."
Alice reluctantly nodded. "Anything you want, love." The three of them left, led by the ghostly form of the White Queen.
XXXXXXXXXX
So, this is an intermission story set between the events of Rain, it's Aliceing, and the next one, It's (not) Raining Alices (which is the Afterlife one). (I know the name sounds funny, I'll explain it when we get there). When I started writing InRA, these were actually the first few chapters, but I soon realized that they'd be better off as their own short story and let InRA stand on its own, more or less solely encompassing the events of Afterlife.
We're going to have lots of fun with 87!
I looked up how lickers are made, and yeah, they're just straight-up zombies that have been well fed! Boy, it sure is a good thing Rain never gave in to her vanity! (Not that Alice would have minded, obviously, hahaha). Not that it matters, now that poor Rain is reeling under the effects of super-T! THAT'S RIGHT, YOU GET ONE BRIEF MOMENT OF HAPPINESS TOGETHER, THEN IT'S BACK IN THE MISERY MINES!
(Oh hey, speaking of lickers, did anyone else see the 'Licker' costume that they'll be putting out for the Dead Rising re-release? Almost makes me want to write a DR fic where the protagonist actually is a sentient licker, hahaha. "I've covered, and participated in, zombie apocalypses, you know!").
