Fic: Cold In The Desert
Title: Cold In the Desert [3/?]
Author: Redlance
Fandom: Resident Evil
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3180
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. Except the story idea.
Summary: Claire Redfield leads her convoy across the sun-scorched land, feeling cold despite the heat. Alice enters their camp under a blanket of fire and finds a kindred spirit. Maybe warmth will find them together.
Alice watches their surrounding pass with a vague sense of familiarity. One sand dune looks very much like any other, but something in her tells her that she’s been this way before. Maybe this was the direction she’d followed the crows in. She blinks against the wind whipping past her face and blowing her hair back. She can still feel the heat of the fire, the way it made her blood sing, the way it burned. How powerful it had made her feel; how weak she’d felt afterwards. She remembers clutching Carlos, how warm that had felt, seconds before succumbing to the dark of unconscious that usually started out peaceful and always ended with blood. She doesn’t call them ‘dreams’, and ‘nightmare’ suggests something that isn’t real. These are memories, on a constant loop inside her mind with no way to turn them off.
They jerk a little as the front wheels of the ATV hit the slope of the large sand dune and Claire presses the accelerator more firmly as they slow, forcing them up and onward. They tilt, and the redhead uses the handlebars as leverage while Alice, in turn, uses Claire. The messy-haired blonde looks around the red tresses blowing into her face and watches the crest of the hill rapidly approach. She feels a sense of foreboding and excitement as they reach the top and the vehicle starts to straighten out. The quad skids to the side and Claire curls her fingers around the break and applies pressure, slowing them to an eventual halt.
“Great.” She mumbles, turning the keys in the ignition and shutting off the engine. “More sand. How... interesting.” Claire sighs, lifting a hand to run her fingers through her windswept hair. She feels Alice shift behind her, sees pale skin and intense blue eyes in her periphery and feels the weight of the other woman press against her back.
“No, look.” And it’s only when Alice lifts her hand to point at something off in the distance that Claire realises there is one still lingering at her hip. Distractedly, she trails her gaze along the arm outstretched close to her face until she reaches the tip of the index finger, and then she squints. All she sees is sand and darkness.
“I don’t see any....” She lets the sentence trail off, narrowing her eyes again and then snapping them wide open. “Is that a house?” Excitement bubbling within her, Claire turns her head to look at the older woman leaning into her. Alice’s eyes are shining, mirroring the excitement Claire feels, and her lips are parted in a contagious smirk. Unbidden, the redhead feels herself returning it. There’s something infectious about the other woman.
“It’s a ranch.” And there is more exhilaration in those three words than Claire has heard leave the newcomer in the short time she’s known her. Feeling anticipation swell within her, she sets green eyes back towards the blurred shadow in the distance and punches the accelerator. She feels Alice’s hands grip her tightly and grins into the breeze. The wheels kick up loose sand that blows by them as they ride, eagerness making Claire gnaw absently at her slightly chapped bottom lip. She idly tries to remember when they had last felt soft, but she can’t. She misses lip balm.
********************
It seems to take them no time at all to reach the dilapidated building, though maybe Alice had just been too lost in her thoughts to notice the seconds passing. She is uneasy riding the quad version of ‘shotgun’, more used to being the one driving. The one making the decisions. Being around Claire and her convoy - because it is Claire’s convoy, there’s no arguing that - is giving Alice an odd kind of reprieve. One she isn’t sure is entirely welcome or unwanted. Ever since she stumbled across them, after the impromptu fire show, Alice has felt an unsettling sense of confusion, like she isn’t sure what she’s supposed to be doing. It frustrates her a little, because she hates not knowing, but it almost soothes some part of her. A part that has loathed responsibilities and their consequences ever since this whole mess began. And while Alice prides herself on never shirking them, sometimes it’s nice to put them aside. Just for a second. Let someone else carry a little of the weight. But it’s never too long before the guilt returns.
And it’s so strange to Alice, but she feels an odd kind of kinship whenever she’s around Claire. It’s odd because they’ve barely known each other a day, don’t really know each other at all, and it’s odd because Alice isn’t used to it. Isolation, alienation, being someone and doing things people can’t understand even when they bother to take the time to try - these are things Alice is used to. In Claire she sees someone who has also done things others couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Who has lost lives and taken them. Who fights for a better tomorrow even though she isn’t sure any of them will even reach it. The mask of bravery she wears is more defined than Alice’s, better at preventing cracks, but for a woman who has spent the majority of the last five years alone she hasn’t lost her touch and she can see the strings holding the mask in place. She can see how little it would really take to pry it off, should someone know the right way to grip it.
Briefly, as the they near the farmhouse, Alice wonders if Carlos knows.
The paint of the house is peeling, a hundred sandstorms weathering the wood, and the structure looks like it could crumble should it face a wind strong enough. The quad skids a little as Claire squeezes the break, the back tyres swinging around to the front and levelling the vehicle with the side of the house. The redhead kills the engine and silence envelopes them. Two sets of eyes scan their dim surroundings, two pairs of ears strain for the slightest sound, and when nothing out of the ordinary is immediately forthcoming Alice’s hands drop away from Claire’s hips and she slides her body away, dismounting the ATV. Claire tugs the keys out of the ignition and drops them into a pouch on her belt, before swinging her leg over the side of the quad and moving to follow Alice. The blonde glances over her shoulder to find the convoy leader a few paces away, prying her glock free from its holster. For a second, their gazes meet.
“Wanna take a look around?” Alice asks with a knowing smile, fingers twitching at her sides, itching with the anticipation of freeing her own guns. But she makes a conscious effort to wait until they are needed. Claire cocks an eyebrow at her and grins.
“Just you try and stop me.” Alice lets out a dry chuckle, waving an arm out to indicate that the other woman should lead the way.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Claire smirks to show her teeth and then readily takes the lead, and Alice can’t help but note how comfortable she seems in doing so. How the skin of a leader fits so snugly over the other woman’s frame. By the time she falls into step, Claire is a few paces ahead of her, kicking up tiny clouds of dust as her boots move across the sand. Alice hears the creaking of wood and flexes the fingers of her right hand, assuring herself it’s nothing more than the aged house shifting. Because she knows the difference.
The house is tall and oddly shaped, almost as though the builder had taken tips from a Victorian-era architect who had a penchant for gothic-style buildings. The windows of the upper floor are as long and narrow as that section of the house, giving the edifice the appearance of being very thin. The drab paint, which Alice thinks was once maybe a deep red colour, now looks like nothing more than pale, peeling skin being shed from a eerie exoskeleton. Claire shudders and Alice, unconsciously, feels it ripple through her.
“Home, sweet home.” Green eyes glance at her through the darkness and Alice lifts a hand to point toward the wooden gate of the paddock Claire had been approaching before the shadow of the house looming over her had caused her to pause. Red hair sways as Claire turns her head back to find a sign with the words Alice had spoken aloud printed on them in black, faintly outlined letters. Her lips quirk.
“Maybe for the Addams family.” Another low chuckle left Alice and over it she hears the sound of metal against wood, and then the protesting screech of hinges as Claire pushes the gate inwards. The paddock is small, enough to house a couple of horses, and the metal feeding trough had been turned over and rusted through long before they got there. The texture of the ground beneath them shifts once they’re within the enclosure, and without looking down Alice guesses that this particular plot of land had once been grassy. Her eyes flit downwards, her feet not pausing in their half-strides, and she sees sporadic patches of browning lawn littering the floor of the paddock. Briefly, as she looks back towards the darkened house they are cautiously approaching, she wonders what the area would have looked liked in its heyday. Before.
When they reach the other side of the corral, Claire tries lifting the latch but it refuses to move. She doesn’t look back at Alice, but the blonde can sense her want to. She can feel Claire’s eyes shifting to their corners. And then the other woman is up on the first beam of the fence, clambering over it, even though they both know Alice could probably have found a way to either open or obliterate it. And the fact that Claire didn’t ask doesn’t bother Alice, it’s that the redhead forcibly stopped herself from asking that causes the older woman to frown. But then Claire’s feet hit the sandy ground on the other side of the fence and she’s waiting for Alice to join her. The blonde grips the top beam with both hands and bends her body out and away, pushing all her weight back. Then with only the barest whisper of an exhalation, she throws herself forward, lifts her legs to the side and lets the momentum carry her right over the fence. She lands beside Claire without a sound, and jade eyes that glitter in the dim light are smiling at her as they roll.
“You’re kind of a show off.” And it’s all Alice can do to withhold the noise of indignation trying to force its way from her. But Claire doesn’t give her time to respond anyway; she’s creeping up the concrete steps that lead to the front door of the oddly shaped house before Alice can blink.
When she sees the redhead crouching before the arching door, looking at her with an eyebrow raised in question, an urge rises in Alice that she isn’t used to fighting off. It’s an urge that makes her want to pull Claire back, behind her, so she can check things out first. Make sure the interior of the building in safe. But it’s a point that has been made very clear: Claire Redfield does not need protecting. Still, as Alice has had to learn the hard way, gut instincts are a hard thing to shake.
Alice positions herself behind Claire, nodding in silent communication when the redhead, hand on the doorknob, looks at her for affirmation. There’s a quiet squeak and the creak of wood and soon enough, they’re inside an almost pitch black hallway. The only thing giving them any kind of light is the moon outside, but neither are willing bring out flashlights or light flares just yet. No need to alert anything inside to their presence before they’re ready. She fights the impulse to move first, can feel her muscles tensing as they prepare to take her swift and stealthily through the house, but she distracts herself by finally freeing her gun. Its weight is familiar and comforting, and she’s long since come to terms with that. Though it was never handling a weapon that bothered her. That was something she’d always enjoyed, relished. It was how easy drawing and firing it had become. Before, when there were laws and prohibitions in place, using a gun had always been a last resort; something to be done when there was no other way out. Now it had become Alice’s autopilot response. And that had unsettled and frightened her for along time. It had taken a while to come to terms with everything, not that she had had a lot of downtime in those early days. It was only when she’d set out on her own, to evade Umbrella, that she was given a moment to reflect. On what had happened, the people she had so quickly come to know and then lose, the idea that the world was forever changed and the one she now lived in required her to be the person she’d become. A person who could do things others couldn’t. Who would shoot first, to protect, and ask questions later. And she fights with that person everyday, because she remembers how the world was before, how she was, and she misses it. That lost part of herself. But she knows there’s no point in pining for something that’s gone and isn’t ever coming back. Knows that while Umbrella might be behind the battle that was still raging, she’d inadvertently started the war. And if she’d just done things differently, made different choices.... But Alice tries not to think about that too often. Because after everything she’s seen, the things she’s done, if there is one thing that will drive her to the brink of insanity and finally hurl her over it, it will be those thoughts.
Claire’s lithe figure finally shifts beside her and the redhead takes the first few tentative steps into the gloom. Alice follows, the few seconds of down time allowing her eyes to adjust and she can see that the room they’re in is a kitchen. Or, used to be. The sink had been pulled free from the wall and tossed to lie upside down against the linoleum of the floor, scattering bits of chalky rubble everywhere. Claire steps carefully around the wreckage and Alice’s watches, her feet falling into the same spaces moments later, and they move around the table that has been overturned in the middle of the room. At least, Alice thinks it’s a table. It’s hard to tell under the inches of dirt and dust. The room is small, probably no more than six by eight feet, but it’s compact and looks like it would have held everything someone living in the middle of the Nevada desert might need in a kitchen. Old and most definitely broken appliances litter some of the counter space, a few of the cupboard doors hang limply from one hinge, and everything is coated in a thick layer of dusty sand, blown in from the broken windows no doubt.
“Looks homey.” Alice drawls quietly, running her index finger over top of an old coffee maker and then rubbing the digit clean with her thumb. Claire glances back over her shoulder and smiles when she sees Alice looking back at her with raised eyebrows.
“Looks like whoever lived here could have used a house keeper.” Claire quips, using the barrel of her gun to knock over a half eaten cereal box container. A few kernels spill out, looking as though they would disintegrate upon being touched, but the mouse Alice had expected to scurry out doesn’t appear. She is about to comment on the lack of rodents, when a sudden clattering noise makes their heads snap in the direction of the only doorway leading out of the room. Their guns come up in unison, Claire handling her glock with both hands, and Alice using her left to draw her second gun from it’s holster to join its twin, all three barrels fixed on the open doorway.
Silence. It’s quiet enough that Alice is sure she can hear Claire’s muscles tensing. Sure she can feel the other woman’s breaths shifting the molecules of air between them.
“Looks like whoever lived here might still be around.” She whispers, drawing Claire’s green-eyed gaze for a few seconds. Then, by unspoken agreement, they both lapse into silence. Shifting her left hand so it better supports the butt of her gun, Claire starts forward, taking care to avoid stepping on anything that could alert whatever was in the next room to the fact that they were no longer alone. Alice follows, training her hearing so she is able to block out any unimportant noise and then her head is filled with the sounds emanating from the other room, the slightly elevated tempo of Claire’s breathing, and her own heartbeat.
A muted scuffling, like a heavy garbage bag being hauled across a carpeted floor, reaches Alice’s ears and she glances at the redhead to see if she hears it too. Claire’s posture is taut and her attention trained solely on the doorway ahead of them, and everything about the way she moves; the way her head is tilted slightly to one side, tells Alice’s she’s more than on top of the situation. Alice can practically hear the cogs of Claire’s brain turning, formulating a plan.
In the handful of seconds she’s taken to pause and watch the other woman, its become more apparent than ever that Claire is the physical embodiment of a leader. Her movements are schooled, calculated, her eyes take in every inch of the space surrounding them and her gun is in her hands before there’s time for any approaching danger to breathe. Alice can’t help but admire the redhead. She has so much courage and strength surging through her veins, and a not a whiff of T-Virus anywhere on her. Alice is almost jealous, but the thought is pulled from her just as she registers it by the near overpowering stench of infected flesh. It hits her with the force of a freight train and her fingers respond for the rest of her body, tightening around her guns.
“You smell that?” Claire whispers a few moments later, turning her head to look at Alice’s over her shoulder. Scraggly blonde hair sways with the nodding motion of Alice’s head and Claire makes a conscious effort to breathe through her mouth. “Stinks like death.”
“Infected.” Alice mumbles, voice low and scratchy. They look at each other for a second longer until Claire breaks the connection by inclining her head and turning her attention back to the dark doorway. Silently, Alice complies by moving to stand shoulder to shoulder with the redhead and in an odd moment of symbiotic thinking they both take their first step into the other room.
Author: Redlance
Fandom: Resident Evil
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3180
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. Except the story idea.
Summary: Claire Redfield leads her convoy across the sun-scorched land, feeling cold despite the heat. Alice enters their camp under a blanket of fire and finds a kindred spirit. Maybe warmth will find them together.
Alice watches their surrounding pass with a vague sense of familiarity. One sand dune looks very much like any other, but something in her tells her that she’s been this way before. Maybe this was the direction she’d followed the crows in. She blinks against the wind whipping past her face and blowing her hair back. She can still feel the heat of the fire, the way it made her blood sing, the way it burned. How powerful it had made her feel; how weak she’d felt afterwards. She remembers clutching Carlos, how warm that had felt, seconds before succumbing to the dark of unconscious that usually started out peaceful and always ended with blood. She doesn’t call them ‘dreams’, and ‘nightmare’ suggests something that isn’t real. These are memories, on a constant loop inside her mind with no way to turn them off.
They jerk a little as the front wheels of the ATV hit the slope of the large sand dune and Claire presses the accelerator more firmly as they slow, forcing them up and onward. They tilt, and the redhead uses the handlebars as leverage while Alice, in turn, uses Claire. The messy-haired blonde looks around the red tresses blowing into her face and watches the crest of the hill rapidly approach. She feels a sense of foreboding and excitement as they reach the top and the vehicle starts to straighten out. The quad skids to the side and Claire curls her fingers around the break and applies pressure, slowing them to an eventual halt.
“Great.” She mumbles, turning the keys in the ignition and shutting off the engine. “More sand. How... interesting.” Claire sighs, lifting a hand to run her fingers through her windswept hair. She feels Alice shift behind her, sees pale skin and intense blue eyes in her periphery and feels the weight of the other woman press against her back.
“No, look.” And it’s only when Alice lifts her hand to point at something off in the distance that Claire realises there is one still lingering at her hip. Distractedly, she trails her gaze along the arm outstretched close to her face until she reaches the tip of the index finger, and then she squints. All she sees is sand and darkness.
“I don’t see any....” She lets the sentence trail off, narrowing her eyes again and then snapping them wide open. “Is that a house?” Excitement bubbling within her, Claire turns her head to look at the older woman leaning into her. Alice’s eyes are shining, mirroring the excitement Claire feels, and her lips are parted in a contagious smirk. Unbidden, the redhead feels herself returning it. There’s something infectious about the other woman.
“It’s a ranch.” And there is more exhilaration in those three words than Claire has heard leave the newcomer in the short time she’s known her. Feeling anticipation swell within her, she sets green eyes back towards the blurred shadow in the distance and punches the accelerator. She feels Alice’s hands grip her tightly and grins into the breeze. The wheels kick up loose sand that blows by them as they ride, eagerness making Claire gnaw absently at her slightly chapped bottom lip. She idly tries to remember when they had last felt soft, but she can’t. She misses lip balm.
********************
It seems to take them no time at all to reach the dilapidated building, though maybe Alice had just been too lost in her thoughts to notice the seconds passing. She is uneasy riding the quad version of ‘shotgun’, more used to being the one driving. The one making the decisions. Being around Claire and her convoy - because it is Claire’s convoy, there’s no arguing that - is giving Alice an odd kind of reprieve. One she isn’t sure is entirely welcome or unwanted. Ever since she stumbled across them, after the impromptu fire show, Alice has felt an unsettling sense of confusion, like she isn’t sure what she’s supposed to be doing. It frustrates her a little, because she hates not knowing, but it almost soothes some part of her. A part that has loathed responsibilities and their consequences ever since this whole mess began. And while Alice prides herself on never shirking them, sometimes it’s nice to put them aside. Just for a second. Let someone else carry a little of the weight. But it’s never too long before the guilt returns.
And it’s so strange to Alice, but she feels an odd kind of kinship whenever she’s around Claire. It’s odd because they’ve barely known each other a day, don’t really know each other at all, and it’s odd because Alice isn’t used to it. Isolation, alienation, being someone and doing things people can’t understand even when they bother to take the time to try - these are things Alice is used to. In Claire she sees someone who has also done things others couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Who has lost lives and taken them. Who fights for a better tomorrow even though she isn’t sure any of them will even reach it. The mask of bravery she wears is more defined than Alice’s, better at preventing cracks, but for a woman who has spent the majority of the last five years alone she hasn’t lost her touch and she can see the strings holding the mask in place. She can see how little it would really take to pry it off, should someone know the right way to grip it.
Briefly, as the they near the farmhouse, Alice wonders if Carlos knows.
The paint of the house is peeling, a hundred sandstorms weathering the wood, and the structure looks like it could crumble should it face a wind strong enough. The quad skids a little as Claire squeezes the break, the back tyres swinging around to the front and levelling the vehicle with the side of the house. The redhead kills the engine and silence envelopes them. Two sets of eyes scan their dim surroundings, two pairs of ears strain for the slightest sound, and when nothing out of the ordinary is immediately forthcoming Alice’s hands drop away from Claire’s hips and she slides her body away, dismounting the ATV. Claire tugs the keys out of the ignition and drops them into a pouch on her belt, before swinging her leg over the side of the quad and moving to follow Alice. The blonde glances over her shoulder to find the convoy leader a few paces away, prying her glock free from its holster. For a second, their gazes meet.
“Wanna take a look around?” Alice asks with a knowing smile, fingers twitching at her sides, itching with the anticipation of freeing her own guns. But she makes a conscious effort to wait until they are needed. Claire cocks an eyebrow at her and grins.
“Just you try and stop me.” Alice lets out a dry chuckle, waving an arm out to indicate that the other woman should lead the way.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Claire smirks to show her teeth and then readily takes the lead, and Alice can’t help but note how comfortable she seems in doing so. How the skin of a leader fits so snugly over the other woman’s frame. By the time she falls into step, Claire is a few paces ahead of her, kicking up tiny clouds of dust as her boots move across the sand. Alice hears the creaking of wood and flexes the fingers of her right hand, assuring herself it’s nothing more than the aged house shifting. Because she knows the difference.
The house is tall and oddly shaped, almost as though the builder had taken tips from a Victorian-era architect who had a penchant for gothic-style buildings. The windows of the upper floor are as long and narrow as that section of the house, giving the edifice the appearance of being very thin. The drab paint, which Alice thinks was once maybe a deep red colour, now looks like nothing more than pale, peeling skin being shed from a eerie exoskeleton. Claire shudders and Alice, unconsciously, feels it ripple through her.
“Home, sweet home.” Green eyes glance at her through the darkness and Alice lifts a hand to point toward the wooden gate of the paddock Claire had been approaching before the shadow of the house looming over her had caused her to pause. Red hair sways as Claire turns her head back to find a sign with the words Alice had spoken aloud printed on them in black, faintly outlined letters. Her lips quirk.
“Maybe for the Addams family.” Another low chuckle left Alice and over it she hears the sound of metal against wood, and then the protesting screech of hinges as Claire pushes the gate inwards. The paddock is small, enough to house a couple of horses, and the metal feeding trough had been turned over and rusted through long before they got there. The texture of the ground beneath them shifts once they’re within the enclosure, and without looking down Alice guesses that this particular plot of land had once been grassy. Her eyes flit downwards, her feet not pausing in their half-strides, and she sees sporadic patches of browning lawn littering the floor of the paddock. Briefly, as she looks back towards the darkened house they are cautiously approaching, she wonders what the area would have looked liked in its heyday. Before.
When they reach the other side of the corral, Claire tries lifting the latch but it refuses to move. She doesn’t look back at Alice, but the blonde can sense her want to. She can feel Claire’s eyes shifting to their corners. And then the other woman is up on the first beam of the fence, clambering over it, even though they both know Alice could probably have found a way to either open or obliterate it. And the fact that Claire didn’t ask doesn’t bother Alice, it’s that the redhead forcibly stopped herself from asking that causes the older woman to frown. But then Claire’s feet hit the sandy ground on the other side of the fence and she’s waiting for Alice to join her. The blonde grips the top beam with both hands and bends her body out and away, pushing all her weight back. Then with only the barest whisper of an exhalation, she throws herself forward, lifts her legs to the side and lets the momentum carry her right over the fence. She lands beside Claire without a sound, and jade eyes that glitter in the dim light are smiling at her as they roll.
“You’re kind of a show off.” And it’s all Alice can do to withhold the noise of indignation trying to force its way from her. But Claire doesn’t give her time to respond anyway; she’s creeping up the concrete steps that lead to the front door of the oddly shaped house before Alice can blink.
When she sees the redhead crouching before the arching door, looking at her with an eyebrow raised in question, an urge rises in Alice that she isn’t used to fighting off. It’s an urge that makes her want to pull Claire back, behind her, so she can check things out first. Make sure the interior of the building in safe. But it’s a point that has been made very clear: Claire Redfield does not need protecting. Still, as Alice has had to learn the hard way, gut instincts are a hard thing to shake.
Alice positions herself behind Claire, nodding in silent communication when the redhead, hand on the doorknob, looks at her for affirmation. There’s a quiet squeak and the creak of wood and soon enough, they’re inside an almost pitch black hallway. The only thing giving them any kind of light is the moon outside, but neither are willing bring out flashlights or light flares just yet. No need to alert anything inside to their presence before they’re ready. She fights the impulse to move first, can feel her muscles tensing as they prepare to take her swift and stealthily through the house, but she distracts herself by finally freeing her gun. Its weight is familiar and comforting, and she’s long since come to terms with that. Though it was never handling a weapon that bothered her. That was something she’d always enjoyed, relished. It was how easy drawing and firing it had become. Before, when there were laws and prohibitions in place, using a gun had always been a last resort; something to be done when there was no other way out. Now it had become Alice’s autopilot response. And that had unsettled and frightened her for along time. It had taken a while to come to terms with everything, not that she had had a lot of downtime in those early days. It was only when she’d set out on her own, to evade Umbrella, that she was given a moment to reflect. On what had happened, the people she had so quickly come to know and then lose, the idea that the world was forever changed and the one she now lived in required her to be the person she’d become. A person who could do things others couldn’t. Who would shoot first, to protect, and ask questions later. And she fights with that person everyday, because she remembers how the world was before, how she was, and she misses it. That lost part of herself. But she knows there’s no point in pining for something that’s gone and isn’t ever coming back. Knows that while Umbrella might be behind the battle that was still raging, she’d inadvertently started the war. And if she’d just done things differently, made different choices.... But Alice tries not to think about that too often. Because after everything she’s seen, the things she’s done, if there is one thing that will drive her to the brink of insanity and finally hurl her over it, it will be those thoughts.
Claire’s lithe figure finally shifts beside her and the redhead takes the first few tentative steps into the gloom. Alice follows, the few seconds of down time allowing her eyes to adjust and she can see that the room they’re in is a kitchen. Or, used to be. The sink had been pulled free from the wall and tossed to lie upside down against the linoleum of the floor, scattering bits of chalky rubble everywhere. Claire steps carefully around the wreckage and Alice’s watches, her feet falling into the same spaces moments later, and they move around the table that has been overturned in the middle of the room. At least, Alice thinks it’s a table. It’s hard to tell under the inches of dirt and dust. The room is small, probably no more than six by eight feet, but it’s compact and looks like it would have held everything someone living in the middle of the Nevada desert might need in a kitchen. Old and most definitely broken appliances litter some of the counter space, a few of the cupboard doors hang limply from one hinge, and everything is coated in a thick layer of dusty sand, blown in from the broken windows no doubt.
“Looks homey.” Alice drawls quietly, running her index finger over top of an old coffee maker and then rubbing the digit clean with her thumb. Claire glances back over her shoulder and smiles when she sees Alice looking back at her with raised eyebrows.
“Looks like whoever lived here could have used a house keeper.” Claire quips, using the barrel of her gun to knock over a half eaten cereal box container. A few kernels spill out, looking as though they would disintegrate upon being touched, but the mouse Alice had expected to scurry out doesn’t appear. She is about to comment on the lack of rodents, when a sudden clattering noise makes their heads snap in the direction of the only doorway leading out of the room. Their guns come up in unison, Claire handling her glock with both hands, and Alice using her left to draw her second gun from it’s holster to join its twin, all three barrels fixed on the open doorway.
Silence. It’s quiet enough that Alice is sure she can hear Claire’s muscles tensing. Sure she can feel the other woman’s breaths shifting the molecules of air between them.
“Looks like whoever lived here might still be around.” She whispers, drawing Claire’s green-eyed gaze for a few seconds. Then, by unspoken agreement, they both lapse into silence. Shifting her left hand so it better supports the butt of her gun, Claire starts forward, taking care to avoid stepping on anything that could alert whatever was in the next room to the fact that they were no longer alone. Alice follows, training her hearing so she is able to block out any unimportant noise and then her head is filled with the sounds emanating from the other room, the slightly elevated tempo of Claire’s breathing, and her own heartbeat.
A muted scuffling, like a heavy garbage bag being hauled across a carpeted floor, reaches Alice’s ears and she glances at the redhead to see if she hears it too. Claire’s posture is taut and her attention trained solely on the doorway ahead of them, and everything about the way she moves; the way her head is tilted slightly to one side, tells Alice’s she’s more than on top of the situation. Alice can practically hear the cogs of Claire’s brain turning, formulating a plan.
In the handful of seconds she’s taken to pause and watch the other woman, its become more apparent than ever that Claire is the physical embodiment of a leader. Her movements are schooled, calculated, her eyes take in every inch of the space surrounding them and her gun is in her hands before there’s time for any approaching danger to breathe. Alice can’t help but admire the redhead. She has so much courage and strength surging through her veins, and a not a whiff of T-Virus anywhere on her. Alice is almost jealous, but the thought is pulled from her just as she registers it by the near overpowering stench of infected flesh. It hits her with the force of a freight train and her fingers respond for the rest of her body, tightening around her guns.
“You smell that?” Claire whispers a few moments later, turning her head to look at Alice’s over her shoulder. Scraggly blonde hair sways with the nodding motion of Alice’s head and Claire makes a conscious effort to breathe through her mouth. “Stinks like death.”
“Infected.” Alice mumbles, voice low and scratchy. They look at each other for a second longer until Claire breaks the connection by inclining her head and turning her attention back to the dark doorway. Silently, Alice complies by moving to stand shoulder to shoulder with the redhead and in an odd moment of symbiotic thinking they both take their first step into the other room.