Resident Evil: Resurrection

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If it had been any other day or any other situation, Cosette would have been hanging out of the truck window, taking deep gulps of the air up here on the surface and wanting to touch everything she could see… every bush, every tree, every moss-covered rock. It was today, though, and she’d been up for well over twenty four hours, and she was in a massive supply truck with a man that could turn into a flesh eating monster any time now. Her parents were dead or as good as dead, she had no shelter, food or water, she hadn’t bathed in two days and she was also rather sure she was running out of ammunition as well. At very least the feeling of warm sun on her face should have been nice, but it only served to make her sweat in her armor and sting her eyes. Cosette was slumped into her seat with her weapon across her chest and her arms around it, her feet up on the dashboard and her stare straight ahead at the road before them. Carlos couldn’t possibly know where he was going, and he probably shouldn’t have been driving anyhow with only one eye and no depth perception, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything to him right now… she got the feeling that for every ache and sorrow she felt, he was feeling it a thousand times worse. The sunset was pretty, though.

There had been three stops on this trip so far: the first happened out in the middle of a field an hour away from the Hive, where Carlos had checked the contents in the back of the truck. The next ones had been at two different cities, stopping only at petrol stations where he checked the pumps for fuel but found none. Cosette assumed that since he was searching only for fuel that there must have been at least food in the back of the truck but she didn’t take it as fact; she had to face the awful truth that Carlos probably didn’t need to eat at all and he might not care whether she did either. On the other hand, maybe… maybe he was saving her for a delicious meal later on?

She shuddered as the signpost for another town coming up rushed past her view. Cosette let her gaze roll over to Carlos once more. He seemed as he always seemed in the short day that she’d known him; he was calm, silent and stoic. He’d said all of one sentence to her but she was grateful for at least that, since it confirmed he could still speak. Hm… it was more comfortable to sit turned slightly to face him, Cosette thought to herself, as she curled up in the seat and suppressed a yawn that was bubbling up in her throat. Her head lowered bit by bit with each bounce and rock of the truck until she was fast asleep with her collar flipped up to block out some of the sunlight and a weary expression on her face. Cosette had fallen asleep without realizing it, and fell deep into a dream world where she was still wide awake and sitting in the truck next to Carlos.

BANG!

“YAAAAH!” Cosette shrieked and leapt right out of her seat, hitting her head with a metallic thump on the ceiling in the truck cab. She fell back down into her seat with a hissed curse while holding her head with both hands, but the terrifying banging noise sounded again, and she paled as she saw what it was. The truck had come to a stop and it was night out; Carlos was nowhere to be found, but there was a knapsack on the seat where he’d been, and there were undead monsters slamming their hands on the sides of the truck, trying to get in. They hadn’t yet figured out that the window on Carlos’ side was down, but they would soon – Cosette had to think fast. She grabbed the knapsack and slung it over her shoulder, then slung a rifle over her other shoulder, acting on pure impulse as she rushed over to his side of the truck where the monsters hadn’t gotten to yet and jumping out of the truck.

They gave up their quest for the truck when they saw her running, and the walking dead took off at a run after her, arms out as they snarled and bellowed at the tops of their lungs, practically tasting their prey on their rotten tongues.

Gotta run, gotta hide, gotta get out of here! Cosette was panicking. She knew she was panicking but she couldn’t stop herself. She had to get away from those creatures and somewhere safe, but not too far away because she didn’t want to leave the truck. Why had she left the truck in the first place? It was so hard to think, everything was blurry… it was hard to run, too. She struck her face against a low-hanging branch of a tree she was running past and cried out in pain and surprise; she could have sworn she’d moved far enough away from it to dodge it.

Why were the trees getting thicker, hadn’t she been running down a road? Her heart was hammering in her chest. Her head ached but it was something more than just the branch strike, it was a powerful all-consuming ache that made her want to curl up and give everything up as well. She realized as she ran, tried to jump over a fallen log, and tripped over it that she could only see out of one eye and had no depth perception.

When she lifted her head again to get back up, it wasn’t grass she’d fallen into, it was snow. It was bitingly cold, and it stung her fingers and face – especially her face – as the wind cut like razors across her skin. Cosette squinted, tears from straining her one good eye running down her cheek, and grabbed the bundle she’d been carrying. Her gun was gone, and she didn’t seem to notice that the backpack she’d been toting along with her was now gone as well. Why did her head ache so badly? She lifted a hand as she ran, and touched it to her head where it hurt most, over her eye and forehead. When her hand came back into the view of her good eye, her stomach turned; were those fragments of skull sticking to her fingers with blood, and was that gray stuff… brain matter?

Cosette vomited as she ran, wiping her hand off on her pants and straining to keep running and to not think about the fact that if she could see her own brain matter she was supposed to be dead. Her legs ached from working so hard to get her through the deep snow, but each time she checked over her shoulder, the undead creatures chasing her were further and further away… until she couldn’t see them any more. She kept running. Why am I running? What am I after? she quizzed herself. Then, she spotted it, in the distance ahead of her. That’s why!

That was right! She’d forgotten! How could she forget? She was chasing after that man, who had stolen her property. She needed that property, to… to… to get back together with the woman she wanted to be with! Yes, that was right. Rage filled her suddenly. That pig-fucking bastard swine had stolen her medicine from her and Alice wouldn’t stay with her if she didn’t have the medicine. Cosette snarled loudly as she suddenly found new energy to run harder and faster than ever before, and her snarl alerted the man she was chasing that she was closing in.

He wailed, and screamed as he ran, but he couldn’t run fast enough; Cosette was catching up. She threw her arms out in front of her, her fingers curled like talons as she got closer and closer, swiping at the air and trying to snag his clothing or an arm or leg. Finally, the right chance came and she caught hold of his ankle, yanking it back and sending him crashing into the snow. The silver case went tumbling into a snow drift as Cosette leapt on top of the young Asian man and clapped her hands around his head. He screamed – he screamed loudly, and shrilly, begging for his life – but she was disconnected from his pleas, only able to think about Alice and her need to be with Alice. She felt things for Alice… warm, cherished things that she couldn’t feel about anything or anyone else in the world. Alice was the one beacon of light in this shitty existence and Cosette didn’t care how many times she was killed, maimed or wounded, she would keep going just for her.

Her hands clutched tighter on the man’s skull and for a brief moment Cosette remembered that this man’s name was Tyler Hung, but that wasn’t going to matter in less than thirty seconds. His screams grew watery and bubbled with the blood filling his throat as she continued to pull, until he stopped screaming altogether and the wet, crunching sound of his head being ripped right off his body seemed to echo in the trees around them. The hot, stinking spray of his blood everywhere was somehow satisfying to Cosette as she crushed his skull between her hands and threw the decapitated head into the snow. She stood slowly, her legs shaking and shoulders sagged as her gaze fixed upon the snow bank the case had flown into during their struggle. “Alice…” Cosette rasped weakly. Each step forward hurt. The adrenaline and rage that had fueled her chase was gone now, and she could feel the gaping wound in her head like there was a pickaxe still embedded there. Her feet dragged along in the snow as she approached the bank, and when she crouched forward to retrieve the case, she collapsed. Everything hurt, right down to her toenails. Cosette was making a terrible rasping, choking noise that might have been sobs and might have been groans as she pushed her hands into the snow and pulled them back out with the silver case.

“Alice.” She clutched the metal case to her chest as tightly as she could and got back up, looking around slowly, having completely lost her sense of direction. The sun was moving that way, so… Cosette wanted to go left, that’s what her STARS training told her. She shuffled forward through the snow, but as she walked, she had a lot of time to think. Trying to remember anything beyond her need for being with Alice and keeping this case made her very skull ache, but she had to do it, it was the only thing keeping her going. The wind blew harshly again and forced her to close her good eye, and in that moment, she finally remembered some of it: standing at the side of the truck, realizing and finally verbalizing what neither of them had wanted to say. She’d told Alice that this wouldn’t work, and they couldn’t keep this up… she didn’t want to be a constant leech in Alice’s life and what they were doing together was just a pipe dream. For Alice to accomplish what she had to, and what the world needed, she couldn’t have Cosette there with her, Cosette was a lead weight around Alice’s ankles and would keep her from making the best decisions. They couldn’t be together. She’d asked Alice to put her out of her misery.

That was right… she’d forgotten. She remembered now, watching Alice line up her gun and close one eye. She remembered feeling better, almost relieved to finally die… and she remembered watching Alice pull the trigger. Everything between then and coming back to reality while running through the snow-laden woods was a blank, but some psychotic logic told her she’d been dead during that time. Dead, again. Her stomach turned as she looked down at the case in her hand. There was no point to keeping this… there was no point to anything any more. Cosette felt her very soul as if it was crumbling up, drying up and dying. She could never be with Alice, and Alice could never be with her. Alice hadn’t even hesitated when she lined up the shot and fired; she’d probably been relieved to get rid of Cosette.

She was still walking, still moving forward, even though there was no real reason to. The loneliness and building apathy were warring with each other inside of her, until finally the apathy took over, striking out every desire and feeling she’d ever had for anything like a large black marker, leaving her emptier and emptier inside. Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to throw away the case as she kept moving, even though she didn’t care about anything any longer. This must be what those creatures must feel like, she thought blandly, before lifting her gaze slightly at an unusual sound. That was the sound of helicopter blades… out here? Cosette stared blandly as men in black armor seemed to be raining down from the sky suddenly, their weapons trained on her, and indeed that was a helicopter that landed nearby, kicking up blinding snow. She blinked the frozen snow out of her blood-caked eye, and when she could see again, she was watching a man who didn’t fit in with all the others getting off the helicopter. He was staring at her as he approached.

“Daddy?” Cosette blurted.

She sat up with a sharp gasp, her whole body thrashing as she clutched at the rifle in her arms. Cosette looked around in a panic, her eyes settling on Carlos beside her who appeared to have woken at the same time as her and seemed nearly as alarmed as she was. When reality finally clicked into place, she looked around again, then over at Carlos, while wiping the cold sweat off her forehead. She felt sick. Cosette doubled over and vomited onto the floor of the truck in front of her boots, though it wasn’t much since she only had bile inside her. When she was done, she sat back up and looked over at Carlos, who was staring back at her with his one good eye. Something hot was trickling down her upper lip but she wasn’t interested in paying attention to nosebleeds right now. “That was you,” she said outright, her stomach still churning and the worst headache of her life splitting at her skull. “That was you!” It wasn’t an accusation, per se, but she couldn’t quite understand what she was feeling. Fear, mostly. She needed a distraction. Cosette looked around and saw that it was indeed still night, as she wiped the blood off her mouth and chin with the sleeve of her jacket. The truck was parked in a wooded area facing the road they’d been driving down, lights off and doors locked with the windows up.

When she wasn’t quite so panicked, Cosette slumped back into her chair and pushed her rifle aside, wrapping her arms around herself before turning her head to look at Carlos, who was still staring at her. “I saw everything,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how, but I was in your head and I saw everything… your death, the chase, Hung’s death, and then my father finding you in America. I’m… I’m sorry.” She had no idea what she was apologizing for, but she was sincere. Cosette curled her toes in her boots and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to do some guessing in her head. “So,” she said softly. Being Carlos had given her a swift kick in the ass and a strong dose of reality. It had also, however, made her braver and more comfortable around him, knowing how he felt inside. “We have to face some facts here. In a few days you’re going to go all zombie on me because you don’t have the case or Alice’s blood.” Carlos didn’t acknowledge in the least, not even a nod, but she knew he was listening. “It’s really just a matter of time. My death, that is. I could leave here now and run away from the truck but it would probably be less than a day before I was caught and eaten by the monsters out there. Or, I could make you get off the truck, and take it with me, and drive to London or something or until I was out of petrol… but that’s also just a matter of days at best before I got caught and eaten, I don’t know how to survive on my own up here. Or…” She sniffled again and wiped the latest stream of blood off her face, wishing her headache would ease off if she wasn’t going to get a break from the nosebleed, “I could stay here with you, where I feel the most comfortable, until it’s time. Then I don’t mind being your food. I mean. If I have to be somebody’s food, I’d rather be yours, you know?” It was a messed up thing to be talking about but she was trying to speak bluntly. “Is there…” She shifted in her seat, her stomach knotting repeatedly inside her. “Is there anything you want to… see, or try, or do… before our time is up?”

He wasn’t answering, which was no real surprise to Cosette. “Fine,” she said with a nod. “Well, there are things I’ve always wanted to do, though I don’t think I can do any of them. I’ve always wanted to touch snow, to stand in the rain, to jump in a lake.” She closed her eyes, feeling sorry for herself for a while, before opening them again, staring straight ahead. She’d thought of one that she could do before she died. “I want to have sex,” Cosette said finally. Her gaze shifted over to him, and for once, she seemed to have gotten some kind of reaction. Carlos had a slight frown creasing between his brows as he sat up a little straighter.

“I’m infected with the T-Virus,” he pointed out.

“I don’t care,” Cosette countered just as quickly. “It doesn’t really matter anyhow, does it?”

“It’ll shorten how long you have left to live as a thinking, functioning human being.”

“So we wait one more day, fine, I can wait,” Cosette agreed. “Then we have sex. Okay?” She stared at him tensely, feeling like she was going to come apart at the seams.

He nodded slowly, and she let out the breath she’d been holding. Cosette sank right down into her seat then and threw her legs up onto the dashboard, feeling like a melted puddle of relief. Finally, she had time to blush, and blush she did, turning red from head to toe as she realized she’d just successfully solicited a man for sex and it was going to happen tomorrow. The nosebleed stopped.

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Sorry about the long pause between chapters, guys! Work got insane and life did too at the same time - when it rains, it pours, right? These three chapters have been itching to commit to word form from inside my head, and they're finally out there. Lots more to come, and guess what? That UST warning is going to go away eventually I promise! As always, please read and review, I love hearing your feedback, comments, suggestions and questions, it's great inspiration to know somebody out there is interested!

Kisses,

-Flawed Sapphire
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