Resident Evil: Resurrection

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It was like playing a videogame… except this was reality, and that was her old French tutor Cosette had just decapitated with a shotgun blast to the throat, not a poorly-animated run of the mill bad guy. She was surprising herself, however, with her abilities. She wasn’t a good shot, and she wasn’t fast or agile by any means, but she also wasn’t screaming or crying or running away. Some part of her was detached about all of this and there was no connection between emotion and reaction to what she was doing.



That had been the woman who trimmed her nails and cut her hair. That was the man that came once a year to take her measurements for new clothing.



Most of the bodies she was walking over in a twitching, wet carpet of slaughtered undead were familiar to her. Through years of living in a contained environment with a restricted amount of humans in it, even if she didn’t know their names Cosette had seen them all at least a few times each. She looked up and down the corridor slowly, and lowered her weapon before looking up at Carlos, who was marching forward steadily. “It stopped,” she said with bewilderment in her voice. Cosette pushed her visor up and repeated herself when she realized he probably hadn’t heard her.



“They’re feeding elsewhere,” came the grim reply, muffled from behind his visor.



Well, at least that was confirmation that he could talk, she thought dryly as she followed him. When he tried to take a left turn at an intersection of hallways, Cosette ran forward, grabbing his arm. “Not that way,” she urged. “That leads deeper into the Hive. We need to get out.” She was tired; they’d been doing this for what felt like days, though in reality it was probably more like hours or perhaps even all night into the morning. Another difference between this and a videogame was that she couldn’t strike a pause or save button and come back to it later. “I can get us to the last sub-surface level but it’s going to take some quick thinking and a lot of work to get the bitch to open her doors up at the surface.” Cosette pointed to the right. “It’s that way to the elevator, come on.”



She took the lead this time, stepping in front of Carlos and hurrying along the blood-slicked tiles as fast as she could with her little remaining energy. Just as they reached the elevator doors, and she was letting out a sigh of relief, there was a distant boom that rocked the very foundations of the hive and made a chill sluice through Cosette’s veins. “Not good,” she whispered to herself. “So totally not good.” She looked up at the little lit-up panel that indicated where the elevator was, as more red emergency lights began to flash in the hallway behind her and all around her. “At least the elevator’s working… that’s in our favor,” she said nervously, watching the numbers drop rapidly as the elevator came right down towards their level.



With a soft ‘ding’, the elevator doors slid open.



Standing in the elevator was an angry looking woman, slender but muscled. She wore a ratty brown cloak and tightly bound clothing patched together here and there with scraps of bloody cloth and canvas, and she was armed to the teeth. Her eyes were a fierce aquamarine as they swept over everything before her and settled on Cosette and Carlos; the stare made Cosette’s innards bunch up. The teen opened her mouth to say something, but the words died in her throat as this strange woman lifted a semi-automatic and pointed it between Cosette’s eyes.



“Don’t!” was all the girl could think to bleat out in a terrified scream, shielding her face with her empty hand and wincing. In her second before death, all she could think about was to wonder why Carlos wasn’t protecting her from this woman as he’d protected her from all the other attacking monsters and people.



The shot never came. When Cosette lowered her hand once more, the woman was already several paces away, walking steadily and quickly in the direction Carlos and Cosette had come from. Both of them were left standing there, staring at her as a sudden swarm of walking dead came flooding out of a door that slid open for no apparent reason - probably on Violet’s command, Cosette figured.



It was the sound of the elevator doors closing again that made Cosette snap back into reality, and she threw her arm out, grabbing hold of the door. When it didn’t stop, she pushed her shotgun into the doorway, and a chill ran down her back as the door continued trying to close, the sound of straining metal screaming in her ears. “Violet Queen! She’s onto us!” Cosette cried out, turning to look over her shoulder at Carlos. The man wasn’t even paying attention; he was still standing facing the woman who had just decapitated three half-eaten women in lab coats. “CARLOS!” Cosette screamed when the barrel of her gun started to bend and she felt their freedom slipping away.



Finally he turned, and one of his bear-paw hands slammed against the closing door. Carlos braced his shoulder against the jamb of the elevator doors and pushed, forcing the panel back open. Cosette dove into the elevator, her heart hammering hard in her chest, clutching her shotgun up against her breasts and feeling her legs tremor, ready to collapse. Her last nerves were being frayed, and her eyes went wide as she saw Carlos release his hold on the elevator, but not to come in with her – to move back into the Hive instead. Against her personal morals of never sounding like a helpless girl, Cosette bolted forward, slamming her hand on the elevator door with a scream. “Don’t leave me!” She saw the moment of hesitation in him, and didn’t know what it was about that woman that made him pause like that, but Cosette finally did collapse onto the elevator floor when Carlos pushed the door open once more and got in with her. She was left shaking like a leaf as the elevator began to take them upwards, towards the surface, and a terrible silence was left hanging between them. Cosette would have time to be angry with him later, for now she was far too relieved to so anything at all.



As she looked up at the numbers rising and could practically feel her horrible freedom coming closer and closer, two final pangs of guilt stabbed at Cosette. Her parents were still down there, somewhere in the hive. Her father, she wasn’t overly concerned about, she knew that Violet would take care of him to her dying day… but her mother was sure to be dead. Even so, abandoning them like this left her feeling worse than she ever had in her life. She felt like a coward for leaving them behind, and yet she knew that if she’d tried to save them, she too would have been dead by now. The urge to vomit rose in her as she pulled her visor back down and cocked her gun, preparing for the worst as the elevator came to a stop at the surface entrance.



When the doors opened, it suddenly became clear what the Hive-rocking boom had been as Cosette was assaulted with the blinding experience of her first exposure to sunlight. One third of the secure building standing on the surface of the planet had been demolished, flames still flickering here and there on burnt corpses and electric panels. What had been a hallway heavy with lethal security now ended halfway through and was flickering and sparking with lost electrical connections and damaged control panels. It looked as though an army had marched through here destroying everything in its path, both living and not. Had that woman done this? No, it was impossible! She couldn’t do something like this alone. Unless…



A chilling thought struck her, and it was like a puzzle piece sinking into place. Even Carlos’ reaction back at the elevator made sense now. Still, there was no turning back and no guarantee that Alice would accomplish her mission down there. Standing here and waiting would do nobody any good, and that besides, Cosette could hear a slow, scraping shuffle coming closer, and it was quickly being joined by others. “Gotta go, gotta go,” the girl said tightly while pushing her thoughts aside and hurrying down the hall towards the blinding sunlight and what she had only ever heard stories of: outside. Relief washed over her as Carlos’ shotgun rang out loud and clear from behind her, sending hot lead through the skull of an approaching, mottled thing that had once been a man.



She would be scared, angry, hurt, lonely, upset, guilty, enraged and worried later. Right now Cosette was in a thoughtless self-preservation mode and she felt little as she gunned down and ran away from attacking creatures, but there weren’t too many left alive. It was only when they reached the outside and she saw the fence surrounding the entrance building that Cosette’s heart sank down into her stomach. For as far as she could see beyond the fence there was a wall of undead, screaming, clawing, thrashing and writhing, trying to get into the Hive, trying to get at her and Carlos. “Oh God,” she whispered faintly, her gun lowering and her hopes withering away. How did Alice get through them? Her eyes skimmed across the fencing before stopping on a small two-person helicopter sitting on a large pad of cement. Temptation to use it flared up in her, but she couldn’t bring herself to suggest it; if Alice did survive, she would need some way to get out, wouldn’t she?



Cosette continued to look around desperately, before finally spotting the answer to her prayers. “There, come on!” she said urgently, breaking into a run towards a large supply truck built like a tank, covered in armor. “You know how to drive, right?” she pressed while pulling her helmet off. Cosette had to squint hard; the sunlight hurt her eyes. “She’ll be fine, but we won’t! You’re hurt and I can’t do this alone!” Why was she saying that? “Get in the truck and let’s ram our way out of here!”



Fresh air. It was a heady thing. It stank, yes, but even so, it somehow felt better against her skin and on her tongue and in her lungs than the air down in the Hive. Cosette was shaking from head to toe as she climbed into the passenger side of the truck, and it got worse when she saw Carlos still standing at the Hive entrance. Rolling the window of the truck down, she pushed herself halfway out of it, fisting her gloved hands against the door. “Carlos!” she cried out pleadingly. “If she wanted to come with us she would have gotten back into the elevator with us!” His head turned then, and even though his visor was down and she couldn’t see her face, Cosette knew he was staring at her. She shuddered. “I know it’s cruel but it’s true! She went in there after something else and it definitely wasn’t us, so - ” She didn’t have to finish the sentence, it died in her throat as Carlos began moving towards the truck.



Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. Cosette slumped back into the passenger seat as Carlos approached the truck, and when she door opened on his side she swallowed the lump in her throat. The information in Violet Queen’s files mentioned Carlos and Alice only as co-conspirators, but you simply didn’t go through everything Alice had to recover and restore Carlos to some form of humanity for somebody who was only a team member and nothing more. Deep down she knew there had to be more to their relationship than just fellow rebels and she knew that there was more to be interpreted at his hesitations than simple comrade considerations at face value. When the truck started up with a deep rumble, however, Cosette let out the breath she’d been holding and felt something hot stinging her eyes. Her inner mantra of please don’t kill me quickly switched over to I’m not going to cry as she collapsed back against the seat and pulled her knees up to her chest. When the truck started up, Cosette grabbed her seatbelt and yanked it in place, securing it firmly as Carlos pressed the gas pedal to the floor and they went surging forward, towards the fence and wall of undead. She squeezed her eyes shut as they hit the fence and the tumbling sound of dozens of bodies hitting the bumper thundered.









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