The snow finally went away altogether on May 3rd. "FUCKING FINALLY!" Alice screamed. She packed any remaining shit into the plane, taxied onto the runway, and took off, screaming for joy. "YAKETY YAK, LICK MY FUCKING SACK!" she screamed joyously.

Most of the flight was boring as hell. "Ocean, ocean, more ocean… this is just like the snow, except blue instead of white." She yawned, then pinched herself. "Don't fall asleep, dummy!" she chided herself. She was mildly excited every time she overflew one of the Aleutians, but flying low, she saw no signs of life on any of the islands. Poop.

She overflew Anchorage and the place resembled Tokyo (and San Francisco, which she and Rain had flown over on the way to Tokyo) — a lifeless ruin with walking corpses haunting the streets. The only difference was that none of the buildings were smoldering — probably too cold for fires to keep going. Whatever, didn't matter.

The coordinates for Arcadia grew close and she kept her eyes peeled. She soon saw a big field of various parked aircraft and got excited. Either the Air Show was in town, or this was Arcadia! She landed and taxied to a stop, then jumped out… only to find no welcoming committee. "Rude," Alice remarked. "Hello! Anybody home?" she called out.

No answer.

"Great, big spooky abandoned air field," Alice grumbled. "I think this was an episode of Scooby Doo."

She glanced around at the various air vehicles before her, and one helicopter in particular caught her eye. She walked up to it. "WGON, huh?" she said, scrutinizing the old-timey logo. "The 1970s called, dipshits, they want their aesthetic back!"

She wandered through the derelicts until she came to the shore, where a helicopter with the Umbrella logo was parked. The serial number on the side — N450CC — matched with the number Rain had told her that Claire Redfield and the others had flown off within. She grimaced, finding the helicopter empty, and next to it — tipped over, cracked open, and dried out — the 'still' that had held the group's supply of anti-virus. Alice grimaced at the sight of it all. "Jinkies."

Half-concealed inside the helicopter was the little journal Rain had mentioned finding, that had led Claire's group to seek refuge at Arcadia. Alice opened it, flipped through the pages, and tossed it back into the helicopter, disgusted. "Baby, I love you, but that is a crazy person's notebook," Alice said aloud. "Should have just burned it where you found it."

Alice sat down on a log and thought about what to do next. She supposed she ought to fuel up and mosey on back down to Nevada, see what Beccers and the clones were up to. Maybe she could persuade Rebecca to work on reactivating her superpowers? It was a long shot, but the worst she could do would be to say no.

She got up, preparing to go loot the various derelicts for any goodies and fuel they may still have aboard. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, though, and called out: "Was that a person? Or a bear? Oh my God, I hope it was a bear! I know it's dangerous as shit and you're not supposed to do it ever, but I will so give you a hug if you're a bear!"

Alice ran back into the derelicts, as that's where the mysterious figure had fled to. "Here, bear bear bear," Alice murmured. "Alice wants to hu-ug you-ou!"

She poked her head into the side of an airplane and nearly shat herself when a bunch of (regular) birds flew out. "You fucking assholes!" Alice called after them. "You think I forgot you little shits scaring me outside my house? Fuck all birds!" She gave them both fingers.

That's when she got punched and tackled by the crazed wildwoman brandishing a knife.

"Oh, VERY rude!" Alice snarled, struggling with the wildwoman. "Jeez louise, do you fucking reek! I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but…" Alice gagged.

She threw the woman off of her, dodged a few knife swipes, then kicked her right in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Alice walked over and rolled her onto her back, and noticed a fancy bit of jewelry sticking out from under the top of her shirt. As she studied the woman's face, something about it seemed familiar.

"Oh, I know you!" Alice said, excited. "You're Claire Redfield! The wife sent me a mental picture of what you look like!" She pursed her lips. "Hey, your necklace thingy looks funny… may I?" She knew it was improper to peek under a woman's shirt without permission, but something was nagging at the back of her mind that this time it was warranted.

Pulling down the cloth, she saw it wasn't a necklace so much as a big fucking robot bug. It had a pulsing red jewel thingy at its center, and its legs fucking twitched when Alice pulled the shirt down oh fucking ew.

Alice yanked it free of her chest and smashed the not-so-itsy bitsy spider to itsy bitsy bits. She was 99% sure it was some mind control bullshit anyway. "Alright, that's taken care of," she said, dusting her hands off for show. She looked down at Claire and wrinkled her nose. "Time to take care of something else. You fucking reek."

XXX

Claire woke up that night, clad in some spare clothes Alice had dressed her in. "Oh, top o' the mornin' to ya, me foine lass!" Alice said in an Irish accent.

Claire gave a little caveman grunt and scurried back away from Alice, half-hiding in the shadows at the edge of the light that Alice's lantern was throwing off.

"Okay, cool, I guess I just found a VP for my Amnesia Club," Alice muttered. "Hey, you wanna eat, Cave Claire? Come here, I've got some tasty-ass years old baked beans for you." She sawed the top of the can open with her knife, scooped out some on the blade, and licked them off (careful not to cut off her own tongue, lol). "Just FYI, before you lick something I've licked, I was recently infected with the T-virus and I'm unsure if I'm still a carrier or not. Jill — I guess you met her close to the start of the apocalypse — gave me some shit about that once, so I like to warn people now."

Claire wasn't listening to her, as she'd snatched the can of beans from Alice's outstretched hand and was just using her bare hand to shovel handfuls of beans into her mouth, watching Alice distrustfully the entire time.

"Hey, FYI, beans don't just make you toot, and me giving you a bath was a one-time thing," Alice said. "Cavewoman or not, you best learn to drop trou when you go boom-boom." Claire just grunted through her full mouth.

XXX

Alice had a hell of a time getting Claire onboard the plane the next morning. Now that Claire had figured out Alice was a source of easy food, she'd shadowed the woman while she rummaged about in the aircraft and the beached seacraft for anything useful. Having topped off her supplies, she loaded them into her plane, then tried coaxing Claire onboard with some more food. Claire was very wary of getting into the enclosed space, and eventually Alice just gave up and left her there.

SIKE

She got behind Claire, got her into a chokehold, and when she finally passed out she hauled the younger woman up and into the copilot's seat. She climbed into the cockpit herself and took off, following the coastline southwards, hoping that Claire wasn't an unstable caveperson when she woke up again.

XXX

"…So then he says it can last an hour, a day, a week," Alice said, mid-rant. "You know how long it's been? Five and a half fucking years!" She slapped her hand on the inner wall of the plane. "Five and a half years, and the only pre-Hive memories I have are of meeting Lisa Addison to discuss fucking over Umbrella, and having sex with shitlord Spence Parks." She shrieked a little through gritted teeth. "Fuck you, One! Fuck you and your 'hour day week' bullshit!" Alice took a deep breath. "So yeah, if you never get your memory back, at least you've got someone who can relate."

Claire had been too polite to interrupt Alice's rant as her mind had finished rebooting rudimentary shit like her speech center and a few recent memories. "Your name… is Alice, right?" she said hesitantly.

Alice laughed. "Yep, irony is the best medicine," she remarked. "But yeah, that's me alright. How did you know?"

Claire blushed, a little embarrassed. "Rain told me what you looked like… and she said you can be a little obnoxious."

Alice threw her head back and roared with laughter. "My sweetheart undersold me considerably, it seems!"

"Look, I'm sorry about back there," Claire said, remembering her wild woman attack. "I don't know what happened."

"Brainwashing gizmo of some sort," Alice shrugged. "Don't worry about it, not your fault." She glanced back over her shoulder. "Anything else coming back to you?"

Claire looked lost. "I don't remember anything." She wryly smiled. "I don't even know my name."

"Mata Hari," Alice offered.

Claire furrowed her eyebrows. "That doesn't sound right."

Alice laughed. "That's because it's not. Sorry, I couldn't help myself! No, your name is Claire Redfield. Mata Hari was a spy during World War I."

"Doesn't sound familiar," Claire said, sounding down.

"Hey, like I said, been there, done that," Alice sympathized. "And you can change it if you want. Go ahead and be Mata Hari."

"I don't want to be Mata Hari," Claire pointed out.

"Then be Hata Mari! Or Eatta Calamari! Or whatever you want!" Alice countered.

"If my name was Claire, then I'll stick with it," Claire said, getting annoyed.

"Well, okay then!" Alice said, getting a little heated. After a moment, she broke into laughter, followed quickly by Claire. "It's really good to have someone else to talk to again," Alice said, relieved.

"What happened to… to Rain?" Claire asked, suddenly realizing too late she may not want to hear the answer. "And… there were a few others, weren't there?"

Alice nodded, joyful mood demolished. "Oh boy, where do we begin…?"

XXX

"Oh cool, the Hollywood sign!" Alice said, pointing out the apocalypse-damaged landmark as they flew over it.

"Hey, do you see any zombies in the streets?" Claire said, staring down at the luxury housing giving way to the skyscrapers below.

Alice scanned the streets as they passed over them. "…Huh. I do not." She glanced back at Claire. "Rain says that when you guys rolled into Vegas, there were a bunch of shitass zombie birds or something who'd eaten all the zombies that were in Vegas. Maybe that's the case here?" She shuddered involuntarily.

Claire shivered as well, the memory of the attack suddenly making itself known in her mind. "I hope not. I doubt Rain's around to take control of a new horde of zombie birds."

"Swear to God, her ability to control animals is the coolest shit ever," Alice said. "Too bad I hate birds!" They flew amongst the tallest buildings in the city, many of which were little more than charred skeletons. "Hey, do you suppose I could fly through some of the holes in these buildings?" she speculated.

Claire did her best to bore a hole through Alice's skull with the power of her mind, and failed. "No, I think that'd be a shitty plan," Claire said.

"Fair 'nuff," Alice said. Her gaze caught something of extreme interest. "Oh, looky looky, we got a cookie," she hummed.

It was a big-ass prison, surrounded by what looked to be the entire undead population of the greater Los Angeles area. That alone was the biggest piece of evidence that there were live people inside, but other more subtle clues were the "HELP US" written on the roof in big letters, and the people jumping and waving next to the big "HELP US" sign directly at Alice's plane.

"Oh hey, suppose I could land on top of there?" Alice suggested.

Claire's eyes bulged out of her head a little. "Alice, not gonna lie, you're making me nervous as shit with all these jokes."

"Not a joke," Alice grinned, doing a dry run just a few feet above the rooftop, probably browning the shorts of the folks up there.

"Jesus!" Claire swore. "You're really gonna try to land there?"

Alice nodded. "Just look at that ceiling. It sure as hell doesn't say 'WE'RE DOING JUST FINE, THANKS!', now, does it?"

Claire didn't have an answer for that. "You're crazy, you know that?"

"We're all mad here," Alice pointed out, a Cheshire-worthy grin spreading across her face.

She nodded approvingly as the folks on the roof stretched a cable taut across her impromptu runway. Good, that'd be useful to help brake her plane, and not crash and die. On her second and final run, she angled the plane down just a tad, on a collision course with the building's top. At the last second she pulled up, shedding just a bit of speed via air-braking. It wasn't much, but every little bit helped.

The plane taxied across the rooftop, colliding with the concrete lip at the far edge of the prison, almost… but not quite tipping over the side. Then she felt something behind the plane give way and they started tipping forward some more oh shit…

And then the plane was once more level with the rooftop, and she craned her neck around and saw that the folks on the roof had run to the plane and were pulling it away from the edge. "That was a close one," Alice remarked. "And to think, I only started flying earlier this week."

"WHAT?" Claire shouted.

XXXXXXXXXX

In the movie, Alice's little vlogs as she's flying over Alaska are dated early May, so it's 100% reasonable that she got snowed in for months and that's why it took half a year for her to get back to North America.

I originally said that Alice and Rain had overflown Los Angeles, but they would have probably spotted the Citadel early on and broken the plot, haha. Anyway, I checked, and a straight shot from Vegas to Tokyo would take them closer to San Francisco, so that was an easy change.

WGON is the news station that Fran and Steven work at in the original Dawn of the Dead. I guess her and Peter managed to find enough helicopter fuel to make it all the way from Monroeville to Alaska!

Birds 3, Alice 0.

Yeah, if Claire's been living the savage life, she's gonna stink like crazy. At least she's only been running around for half a year here, instead of a year and a half!