Resident Evil: Resurrection

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The rhythmic pounding was hard to deal with, but it was nothing in comparison to the pounding inside her head. A short cough wrestled its way out of her before several more came, and she sat up rigidly, doubling over and vomiting thick, sandy bile before coughing harder. Sand was everywhere; it was in her ears and eyes, in her nose, in her mouth and lungs, in her stomach. Alice looked around desperately with what little she could see, the sand burning her eyes, but she could find no water and nothing to relieve her as she choked and gagged. Another wave of mealy vomit spattered onto the floor of the truck as she shuddered and gasped, straining to breathe. Several more rounds of alternate searching for water and gagging upon the sand inside her body were punctuated by the occasional scream until finally her fingers stumbled upon something under her seat. She pulled it out immediately and unscrewed the cap, pouring water first into her eyes to wash them out and next into her mouth. The water was hot - everything was hot, her skin was tight from sweat that had dried on it - but it was still a relief, and when she could breathe again, albeit shallowly, she rinsed out her nose and washed off her face.

Alice looked around slowly. The wind was howling with the familiar tunes of a freshly finished sandstorm, and hot sand was piled high on the truck and in it, having blown in through her broken window on the passenger side next to her. That rhythmic pounding was the sound of the wind opening and closing the driver's side door, and as Alice stared at the empty driver's seat, her eyes widened. "Carlos!" she whispered, though it had been meant to come out as a yell. Her voice was gone, her throat ravaged from the heat and sand. "Carlos!" Alice rasped anyhow, looking around with fear in the pit of her stomach as she clawed her hands along the door until she could open it and stumbled out into the desert sands. She looked around, everywhere, trying to find something... anything. Footprints, signs of life, even a fire in the distance would do, but there was nothing. She climbed up onto the hood of the truck, then the roof, standing at the highest point nearby and turning full circle, looking around. No buildings, no boulders, nothing for him to be hiding behind and nowhere for him to go.

She had to think, she had to remember. What had happened? She recalled the second dose of her blood and Carlos' reaction, she even remembered the strange sensation of being inside his mind and helping to put it back in order, then sealing up the memories of his death. Then... nothing, blackness. She remembered hearing him calling for her but she couldn't do a thing, and she remembered hearing the truck straining to start, as she silently wished she could tell him to pop the clutch. The dead tree thirty feet away told her that the truck hadn't moved an inch from where they'd made camp, either. Whatever had happened... Carlos was gone. Alice released a scream despite the headache grating on her frayed nerves, and she fell to her knees in the sand, her hands at her face as she squeezed her eyes shut. She screamed again, and then began to sob as she rocked back and forth on her knees, trying desperately not to imagine the gruesome ways in which Carlos had met his end - again - at the hands of those infected by the T-Virus, all because of her. Amidst all the anger, sadness, horror and fear she'd felt in these long years it had been forever since she'd actually broken down and cried like this, and once it started she couldn't stop herself. Her sobs didn't carry far at all on the wind as it was so loud and she was alone in her agony as she fell to the ground, her face in the crook of one arm and her other arm extended out into the sand, her fingers curling in it. "Carlos!" she screamed, while clawing at the sand. It wasn't that she had lost him as a person, per se... it was that she had lost the last person to have ever known her, and now she really was all alone in the world, her tiny little light of hope at his recovery snuffed out bitterly. The last of the beings that saw her as a person and a human being was gone and now she was left alone, a monster amidst others of the same title. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" she shrieked, her whole body shuddering with the painful scream. If only she hadn't pushed so hard, if only she hadn't gone for that second round, if only...

Alice sucked in a sharp gasp as her fingers touched something in the sand. Her heart began to pound hard in her chest as she sat up, letting the scorching wind dry her tears, and she dug and clawed at the sand with both hands now, until the toe of a familiar black combat boot was revealed. She didn't dare call his name or get her hopes up, but Alice began to dig with all her might, throwing sand to either side of her as she dug, revealing a second boot and the beginnings of tattered pants. She dug for a solid hour, not noticing or caring about the gathering clouds in the sky and how the wind was starting to cool, before enough of this body in the sand was uncovered that she could pull it out without tearing it in two, and when she did, it felt like her heart stopped within her chest, a painful fist clenching it tight and squeezing. "Carlos," she whispered, seeing his familiar face as sand poured off him. Something struck her cheek. Alice blinked and looked up, and it happened again. She wiped it off and looked down at Carlos, before up at the sky once more. "Acid rain," she whispered to herself as she felt a tingle on her cheek where the droplet had struck. She couldn't leave Carlos like this out in the middle of nowhere... she had to bury him, she had to finalize his death once and for all. She had to... she had to shoot him between the eyes. Her throat closed at that thought and Alice turned her face away as though she'd been slapped. There was no time to play around; she had to get back to business.

Carlos was hauled into the back of the truck - she couldn't bear the thought of his corpse sitting next to her up in the cab while she drove - and she pulled out one of the cans of gasoline, filling the gas tank and thankful it hadn't been filled with sand. With one last look around this desert hell where she'd lost her last bit of humanity, Alice's face set in a deadened expression and she got in the truck, starting it up after a few tries and turning on the air conditioning. She was about to put it into gear when she glanced at the open window and the rain starting to come through it as the storm built and raindrops pattered on the truck, making a hollow metallic drumming sound. The window couldn't be left like that, not for the rain and not for the harsh winds and sand storms. She set her mouth in a hard line and pulled her scarf up over her head, then got out of the truck again, walking around to the passenger side and estimating the size of the window. After a few moments of contemplation she went to the back of the truck and opened the hitch yet again, climbing onto the truck bed and rummaging until she found a panel of plywood she used to partition the truck, keeping the gas away from the food. With one swift slam of her fist to the wood it shattered in the middle, and she wrenched off a piece of it, then jumped down from the back of the truck and walked over to the passenger door again. She opened it up and pressed the wood against it from the inside, then looked it over before taking it down and breaking off a few edges until it was small enough to fit properly. When her measurements were complete, she reached under the seat - Carlos' seat - and drew out the bundle of torn cloths she'd been saving as bandaging for him. There was no use for that now, she thought bitterly. Alice began to wind them around the door and window, binding the wood to the door frame in a poor makeshift repair as the rain started to come down hard, pelting her bare hands and causing them to redden as the acidity of the rain ate at her skin. She set her jaw stubbornly and completed the repair before getting into the truck, now reasonably cooled, and slamming the door shut. Sitting there, with her hand on the wheel, she stared at the rain pouring down on the sand and wished she knew where the road was; this was the beginning of the rainy season, and if these sands reached a saturation point high enough, they would start to shift and swirl and no amount of skilled driving would keep the truck from being swept around helplessly, unable to drive through such muck.

There was no time to sit and dwell. She put the truck in gear and floored the gas, but hit the brakes almost as quickly after the vehicle ran over something that made it rock and thumped under the undercarriage. She paused, and had to calm herself, with a little reminder that it was commonplace to run over corpses and that was not Carlos. With a little more determination and a little less pointless aggression, Alice eased off the brakes and pressed the gas pedal again, and winced only slightly as the vehicle rocked and bounced and she heard the thump of driving over bodies. What was going on here? One or two was commonplace but this many... it was unheard of, and she most certainly hadn't killed them. At least... she didn't remember killing them.

She paled suddenly as she stopped the truck and put it in park, staring up ahead as the rains pelted the sands and hundreds of corpses started to appear, the sand washing off them in the rain. "Oh," she whispered, "Oh God." Her stomach turned. She'd done this with one of her psychic overloads - she'd eliminated the swarming mass of undead attacking them, and she'd killed Carlos in the process. As far as she could see out into the desert, bodies were strewn everywhere, their eyes, noses and mouths bloodied and some with their heads entirely erupted from the psychic pressure that had been put onto them. Her hands gripped the steering wheel just a little harder as she felt a little crack in the mask of her deadened face, but she shook it off with a quick toss of her head. No, she couldn't succumb to this; there were bigger things at stake. One life was nothing compared to the hundreds and possibly thousands left in the world, struggling to remain uncontaminated, straining to live. Those were the ones she had to focus on - Alice had to forget the dead, the past, and the deeds done. She had to... she had to forget Carlos, and most of all, she had to forget herself.

The truck was shifted into first gear and she took off, and each crunch and thump underneath the vehicle was another sliver taken out of her soul, removing more and more of her heart and feeling as she drove towards the sunset.

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