The Farville Detour

The Farville Detour

By Brian Flynn



5: Fire



Jill grabbed Alice with one hand, fired at the Shambler with the other. The Thing was coming for them and Jill yanked Alice to her feet and started to run.

Alice struggled into her pants as she ran down the hallway, away from the Thing. It slithered down the hallway, around corners, relentless.

“We need a metal room with no glass walls!” Jill said.

Alice understood, got in the lead. A moment later, she found a suitable door, quickly entered the override code. The two women got in the room and shut the door behind them a moment before the Shambler was on top of them, screaming an inhuman cry as it came.

Safe inside the room, Jill leaned against the wall, her breathing heavy, labored, sweat pouring down her body. Alice looked at her. They were laughing a split second later. Alice calmly pulled a pistol from her holster and pointed it at Jill’s face. The laughter stopped instantly.

“Alice?” Jill asked.

“What do you think you were doing?” Alice asked.

“When?” Jill asked. “Where?”

“Back in the hallway!” Alice screamed. “I had it under control. What the fuck did you think you were doing?!”

“She was right on top of you!” Jill said. “She was between your very naked and very spread legs. Who knows what she might have bitten off!”

“I said I had it under control,” Alice said.

“How?! How did you have it under control?! Were you going to fuck her to death?!” Jill couldn’t help but feel jealous, furious. “Was that the plan?!”

“Something like that,” Alice said. “But I thought…”

“What?” Jill asked. “Were you trying to save her? She has a fucking bullet hole in her head, Alice. She’s dead. There’s nothing left.”

“Yes there is. Some part of her is still alive.”

“How could you possibly know that?! Was she…”

Alice looked away from Jill, lowered her gun. Jill looked at her, no longer as angry but concerned.

“Did you know her?” she asked. “Oh, God, was she someone you knew?”

Alice nodded, a tear rolling down her cheek.

“She was…” Alice said. “I never knew anyone as strong as her. Until I met you.”

Jill hugged Alice, held her close.

“Do you remember when I wouldn’t let you shoot Peyton?” Jill asked.

“Yes,” Alice said.

“I said that I would take care of him myself if and when he turned into…one of them.”

“Yes.”

“This is the same situation. That thing is not your friend. Your friend is gone.”

“This is different,” Alice insisted, breaking away from the hug.

“No, it isn’t,” Jill said.

“She’s been changed,” Alice said. “She’s not like one of those corpses.”

“I know,” Jill said. “She’s been infected by something called the G-Virus.”

“G-Virus?” Alice asked.

“Some kind of new pathogen is what the computer called it.”

“Computer?”

“This eerie little girl,” Jill said.

“Oh, not her,” Alice said, put a hand to her forehead. “Don’t listen to anything she says. She’s sadistic.”

“She’s crazy,” Jill said. “Something’s gone wrong with her systems.”

“Something’s always been wrong with her systems.”

“She said that we should try to destroy as much of the thing’s human body as we could. She said that may kill it. That’s why I shot at it when it reverted to its human form.”

Alice nodded.

“But we have no guarantee that that will work,” she said.

“No, we don’t,” Jill said.

“Still,” Alice said, “total destruction of the body is our only chance. You’ve probably ruined any chance that I had to reach the woman inside.”

Jill looked away, not wanting to meet that haunting, accusing stare. When Alice laughed madly, Jill looked back up at her, gathered enough courage to ask what she had to ask.

“The computer said that Umbrella was trying to find you,” she said. “Said that they were trying to control you. Is that true?”

Alice didn’t answer for almost a full minute. She started pacing around the room in frustration.

“When you first rescued me from one of their facilities,” she finally said, “I could feel them in the back of my head. It felt like a pressing sensation at the base of my skull. That’s when I started suggesting out of the way towns and staying indoors or undercover as much as possible. It just felt like the right thing to do. Since then, I haven’t felt it as much.”

Jill nodded, said nothing. The metal wall behind her bulged inward from a mighty strike that came from outside. The Shambler was trying to force its way in.

Alice and Jill reacted instantly, backing away from the wall that was being forced and pointing their pistols at the bulge. Behind them, all the computer monitors suddenly came to life, the face of the Black Queen filling each one.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?” the Black Queen asked.

“We’re a little busy right now, computer,” Jill said. “Trying to slay your Jabberwock.”

“You are approaching my main systems room,” the Black Queen said. “Please desist.”

The Shambler slammed into the metal wall again, the bulge becoming larger.

“What are you talking about?!” Alice asked the computer.

“Jubjub,” the Black Queen said. “Beware.”

“The computer’s lost it completely,” Jill said.

“Yeah,” Alice agreed.

The Black Queen began to scream as loud as she could, its distorted image shaking and flickering on the computer screens. After a full minute of this, the screens went blank, the Black Queen gone. The door to the main computer systems room swung open behind them.

“I think we just lost the computer,” Alice said.

“Now what?” Jill asked.

“I don’t know,” Alice said.

At that moment, all of the security systems started breaking down with the loss of the computer. Alice and Jill could hear doors unlocking and opening throughout the Hive.

“Shit,” Alice said. “Run!”

The door to the room that had become their sanctuary opened and the Shambler looked around the corner and inside, its tentacles wiggling in its stead. Alice and Jill turned around and ran into the computer systems room, the Shambler right behind them.

Tearing through the computer systems room as fast as they could, Alice and Jill exited the room and emerged near the laser hallway where they had first entered. The Shambler not far behind, they ran through the hallway and up the stairs, back into the farmhouse.

As they were just about to reach the kitchen, the Shambler caught up with them. It grabbed Jill, two tentacles wrapping around her ankles and tripping her. Jill fell to the ground, dropped her gun.

Alice whirled around, pointed her pistol at the Thing. After a moment of hesitation, she decided not to fire.

“Rain!” she screamed.

The Shambler looked up at her, still holding on tightly to Jill.

“Rain,” Alice said, “come to me. Come on.”

The Shambler tilted its once-human head to one side, inquisitively. A moment later, it let go of Jill. She grabbed her gun but before she could use it, Alice stopped her.

“Get out while you can,” Alice said. “Go!”

Jill didn’t want to leave Alice behind. She hesitated for a moment, kissed Alice on the cheek briefly and ran out the door into the open air.

The Shambler retracted its tentacles and the woman that it once was emerged. The corpse of Rain shuffled into the kitchen as Alice slowly backed away.

Rain’s arms were out-stretched, reaching for Alice.

“Yes, honey,” Alice said, tears streaming down her face, “come to me.”

Behind Rain, the stove in the kitchen flicked on, gas beginning to fill the room. Alice had to concentrate hard, blood running from her nose, to turn the stove on.

“Come here, baby,” Alice said.

Rain was directly in front of the stove now. Closing her eyes, Alice willed all of her mental powers and created a spark near the stove. The gas ignited, bathing Rain in fire.

Alice was knocked back by the force of the flames and she fell to the ground. She looked up at Rain as the girl was engulfed in flames. She screamed an inhuman cry, flailed around, tentacles emerging and retracting randomly from her body.

Alice – knowing that the house was about to go up – got to her feet and ran to the door. She took one final, sad look at the burning form of Rain before heading outside.

Jill was waiting for her and Alice grabbed the girl, dropping them both to the ground as the farmhouse exploded. Burning debris flew past them but they were unharmed.

Inside, Rain was blown to bits, finally finding peace in death. The instant she died, a wave of mental energy pulsed through the farmhouse and past Alice and Jill.

Jill shook her head, looked around. She was on the ground, Alice draped over her, a burning farmhouse nearby. What was happening?

“Alice?” Jill asked.

“Yeah,” Alice said.

The two women looked at each other intently.

“What happened?” Jill asked.

“I…” Alice said. “I don’t know.”

“I remember the car accident,” Jill said. “And I remember running to this farmhouse, but…I don’t remember anything else.”

“Yeah,” Alice said, confused.

The two women continued to stare at each other. After a moment, Alice kissed Jill. It was a brief peck of a kiss but a kiss nonetheless.

“What was that for?!” Jill asked after the kiss broke, a slight laugh in her voice.

“I don’t know,” Alice said. “It just felt like the right thing to do for some reason.”

“Hey!” a voice called out from across the field. “Jill! Alice!”

It was L.J. Alice and Jill got to their feet, looking at each other confused. Something had happened between them; something powerful, something primal. They didn’t know what it was but it felt right, somehow.

L.J., followed closely by Carlos and Angie, headed across the field towards them.

“What happened?” L.J. asked.

The two women looked at each other.

“You know,” Alice said finally. “Dead people walking around, trying to eat us. The usual stuff.”

“Yeah,” Jill said.

“You all right?” Carlos asked. He was asking both of them but his eyes lingered on Alice.

“Yes,” Alice said. “We’re fine.”

“More than fine,” Jill said.

“We found another car,” Carlos said. “Let’s go.”

“Right,” Alice said.

The five of them headed across the field towards the road, Alice and Jill stealing glances at each other.

“I wonder if we could spend some time alone,” Jill thought. She didn’t know what she and Alice would do alone together but she knew, somehow, that it would be worth it. After a moment, she frowned.

Her panties were missing. Her skirt covered her up sufficiently but her panties were definitely gone, obviously having been discarded sometime during the “missing adventure.”

“What could that possibly mean?” she thought.



Somewhere in the dark, an intense pair of eyes watched the Farville Hive fall apart on a computer screen, its cover – the farmhouse – destroyed in an explosion.

“Time to move?” the owner of the pair of eyes asked.

“Yes,” Project One said.

“Right.”

The two of them suited up, got their weapons ready. They intended to intercept Project Alice and take her for themselves.

“None of that brought up any…emotions?” Project One asked. “You are a clone of her.”

“I know,” Project Rain said. “But it didn’t affect me.”

Project One nodded.

“All right,” he said. “The special project was a failure. For all her mental abilities, she couldn’t compete with our strength and agility. The clones, like us, are the future.”

“Yes,” Project Rain said.

As they headed out to meet Project Spence for the mission, Project Rain couldn’t stop thinking about what she had seen on the computer monitors. Her memories of her original self were fragmentary at best but she remembered one thing for sure: she really had felt something for Alice.

Pushing these thoughts aside, Project Rain fell into line and steeled herself for the mission ahead.



THE END (for now)