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Rain shoves her last remaining magazine into her Heckler & Koch.
They're everywhere. They won't die. They won't die, they keep getting back up, and they're everywhere.
"Shit."
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep—
"Shit!" Kaplan is sweating bullets. His nervous hands are shaking and he can't seem to input the code correctly.
"Hurry up, man," Spence murmurs. "Get those doors open."
Beep. Beep—
"Shit, shit!"
Rain's semi-auto stops firing and starts clicking. She curses under her breath, quickly shifting it by its sling toward her back. "C'mon, Kap! I'm runnin' outta ammo over here!" The pistol leaves the holster at her hip. She's only got seven shots left now, and there's still over a dozen rotting things shambling toward them.
"Move!" J.D. shoves Kaplan aside. "What's the code?"
Rain fires off a round, hitting the closest monster square in the heart. She pulls the trigger again, striking the next in the same spot.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. The keypad plays a tone. The doors begin to open. "There. Was that so hard?"
A series of fresh, rasping moans and groans begin to seep into the "Dining Hall".
She looks over her shoulder. Her eyes widen in alarm. "J.D.!"
The corridor they're meant to retreat through is filled with more of the monsters, all tightly packed together like sardines. Their cold, bloody hands are clumsily grasping at him, trying to pull him in, trying get him closer to their mouths, trying to—
"No!" Rain all but launches herself into the horde, her arm outstretched. "J.D., grab my hand, man! Grab it!"
J.D.'s gloved fingers close around her hand. There's desperation and fear in his dark eyes as he hangs onto her with all his might, which she's sure is reflected in her own as she uses every last ounce of strength in her body in an attempt to save him.
She can't lose him. Not again.
Kaplan and Spence are shouting things, but she isn't listening. She can only hear her best friend begging her for help.
Rain is trying, goddammit!
Teeth sink into the meat of her forearm, hardly impeded by the thick fabric of her uniform jacket. She yelps.
Her grip loosens.
J.D.'s hand slips out of hers.
Not again!
Not again!
Not again!
Spence's arms wrap around her middle as he attempts to drag her away.
"No, let go of me!" Rain flails about wildly. "Let the fuck go of me! Let go and help him, you bastard!" She slams the heel of her boot into his shins over and over, not caring how much it hurts. He can go screw himself. "Kaplan, do something! Please!"
J.D. cries Rain's name. He's sinking into the sea of monsters. They're ripping him apart. They're gonna kill him.
A harsh elbow to the jaw, accompanied by a violent shove, causes Spence to finally release Rain.
"Hey, wait! It's—" Kaplan receives a much milder push when he tries to block her.
Rain takes J.D.'s hand a second time. It's the only part of him that's still visible. His fingers remain loose, but he's still screaming. He's still alive. "I've got you! I swear, I've got you! I'm not gonna let you die!"
"You have!" he wails. The reply is like a sucker punch. "You already have!"
"Don't you talk like that. If you can run your mouth, then you're not dead yet!" She manages to wrap her other hand around his wrist. "Now, stop being all limp like you are!"
As sudden and powerful as the snap of a bear trap, J.D. finally returns her grip.
Then, he yanks. Rain is pulled into the horde along with him.
The fluorescent light above is quickly blotted out by the monsters closing in, sealing the two of them in total darkness like the lid of a coffin.
It's silent aside from the sound of Rain's uneven breathing, but she can barely even hear it over the thundering of her heart in her eardrums. She knows J.D. is under her, though. She can feel him there.
"...Hey." She blindly takes him by the tactical vest and shakes him a little. "Hey. Wake up, man. Talk to me."
There's no response.
"C'mon, J.D. You're okay. And if you're not, you're gonna be." Rain's voice wavers. She shakes him harder. "Wake up. Give me something."
"You're so... damn..." his fingers slowly close around the straps of her shoulder pads, "headstrong..."
Two small, unnaturally bright blue rings appear in the darkness. Irises. Infected eyes.
"...It's too late... You were too late."
With another Sharp tug, Rain is forced down.
J.D. clamps down on her neck like a vice, breaking open the skin. The cry that leaves her lips is caught somewhere between surprised and pained. She instinctively tries to create distance, but he won't release her.
Rain plants her hands on his face, now slick with blood, and pushes. "Fuck!" His teeth come away with a chunk. Red begins to stream from her throat.
J.D. rolls and puts himself on top. There's splashing as he does so. The surface beneath them has inexplicably become flooded with something warm.
She can't breathe.
Can't see anything except his godawful dead gaze.
"Why'd you let go?! I trusted you!"
Can't break free.
"Stop trying to get away! We're supposed to be there for each other!"
She seriously can't breathe. The fluid on the floor is rising.
"You're gonna lemme die and then ditch me here to rot alone?"
It's going into her mouth. It's going into her mouth and it's metallic and it's going into her nose and impeding her ability to breathe—
"You don't have anywhere to go, Rain! You're dead, too!"
The blue vanishes.
The iron grasp on her gear vanishes.
Everything vanishes.
"Open the doors!"
Rain collides with a metal surface. She doesn't dent it, but she hits it so hard that it feels like she should have.
Smoke lingers in the train car. A few stray rods continue to roll around.
Everything's swimming. Reality has already set in. Not for the first time during this nightmare, she spews. All that comes up is blood. A lot of it.
Alice is startled not by the impact, which she doesn't seem to have noticed at all, but by the sudden hurling. She instantly drops to her knees, shifting Rain from her back and onto her side. "You alright?"
Rain can't tell if her vision is growing even worse because of the infection, or because she's continuing to hack so hard that she still can't take in enough air.
Helpless to do much of anything to make it stop, Alice can only rub her back and attempt to provide words of comfort.
This is it.
The burn beneath the surface of her skin has been steadily burrowing deeper.
It's settling itself in.
Getting ready to take over.
Eating its way to her brain.
No matter how optimistic Alice tries to be, Rain already knows she passed the point of no return when she stupidly gave J.D. the chance to take a bite out of her.
At this point, she can barely hold herself up so she's not facedown in the mixture of blood and puke she's currently decorating the train with.
Mercifully, her body finally stops heaving.
"Are you alright?" Alice repeats. "Here, let's sit you back up." As she guides Rain back against the wall, Rain can't help but groan.
She squints, trying to force her eyes to focus enough to make out the features of the woman in front of her. She can't. There's only the red of her dress, the white of her skin, and the dyed blonde of her hair.
"Rain. Can you hear me?" Alice gently brushes the loose face-framing layers out of Rain's eyes and tucks them behind her ear. When the question elicits more silence, she turns to where Matt is crouched to her left. "Grab that kit again for me. She's already bled through these bandages, too."
Matt quickly rises, leaving Rain's handgun on the floor.
"I wonder if we can—"
"...Lys..." she finally rasps. She clumsily locates her weapon and pushes it toward Alice. "...Time..."
Alice frowns, her brows knitting together. "A couple of minutes ago, it was, 'Gimme my gun back. I'm not dead yet'. What happened? I know you're not doing great yet, but I just gave you the cure. You have to give it a chance to work."
"...Won't do shit... Know it won't..."
Matt returns with the small first-aid bag. She removes the soaked dressings from Rain's neck wound and grabs fresh ones.
"Don't talk that way. You haven't stopped breathing. There's still a chance."
"...The computer said—"
"She said a lot of things. And she lies. She wanted to trick us. She wanted us dead the moment we all entered. You know that." Alice's voice grows firmer and more insistent with each word. Almost pleading.
Rain slides her weapon toward Matt. "...Addison..."
He shakes his head. "You've made it this far. Don't give up right before you reach the exit."
"The fight in you is half of what got you this far. Hang in there a little longer. Please."
"...You're too stubborn... You don't get it..." Rain sucks in a deep breath, trying to calm the frustration and dread continuing to build within her. What she knows is exactly how this ends, but she's struggling to convey the absolute certainty she feels. "You're too late."
This has happened a thousand times over now and things never change. It always ends with death.
She begins to keel forward.
Alice catches her, carefully pushing her upright again. Her head continues to limply hang. "Rain?" Alice cups her face and lifts her head up.
Rain's eyes snap open.
And not of her own volition, her teeth clamp down on Alice's hand.
There's a startled cry. Alice manages to tug herself free, only to promptly be forced onto her back as Rain pounces, overcome with the sudden urge to feed.
Not again.
Not again.
Not again.
Rain has no option but to watch as Alice stares up at her in horror, trying desperately to keep her mouth away. She's on strings now.
Matt seizes her by the back of her damp shirt and pulls her off, creating as much distance as he can by hurling her toward the opposite end of the train car.
She rolls, forcing herself back on her feet with speed uncharacteristic of the other walking corpses they've faced, launching herself straight at him.
He doesn't react in time. Rain shoves him into the wall, tearing right into him.
Not again.
There's so much much blood. So much exposed meat.
Blood.
Meat.
Viscera.
Alice hastily grabs the pistol and raises it. She doesn't want to shoot, but she has to. She has to help Matt.
Click.
Rain lets Matt crumple to the floor, unmoving.
Not again.
She turns to Alice, screaming at her internally to do something, to stop her, to not let her kill her, too.
Click, click, click. Empty magazine. Nothing in the breech, either.
Rain lunges.
Not again!
She jolts awake in the seat of her truck, smacking her head on her partially lowered sun visor.
"Damnit..." she grumbles, rubbing her forehead. She's so sick of this. It gets worse every night.
...
It doesn't seem right. Or fair. It's a simple fact that, during that night in the Hive, she was closer to death's door than anyone else.
So, how did she end up being the only survivor?
How could her commander, nearly all her teammates—her friends all get taken out in one fell swoop? What the hell happened in that chamber?
How could she let her best friend down when he needed her most?
Rain drags her hand down her face and wipes the lingering wetness in her eyes. "Damnit!" She slams the sun visor back into place.
Kaplan fought all on his own to make it back to the others (something that had Rain feeling genuinely proud of the guy). He made it to the train, almost made it to freedom, but was ripped away by that mutated licker at the last minute.
Matt made it all the way from the front doors but was unable to receive the cure in time thanks to intervention from Umbrella. They turned him into a monster, and not long after he regained control of his body, he was crushed by a helicopter.
Alice got past the perimeter set up around Raccoon City before it was nuked into a crater but was caught in the shockwave, ending up impaled by shrapnel before falling out of their escape vehicle as it spun out of control.
The silence following it all became deafening long ago.
Rain can't stand it.
She misses them.
...
There's nothing she can do about it, though. She can't change the past. Can't fix any mistakes. What's done is done.
She's on her own now. Permanently.
Taking a deep breath, Rain leans back in her seat and tries to calm herself down.
The sun visor sags again.
Her exhale turns into a growl. She rips the visor straight out of the roof and steps out of her truck, throwing it at a bunch of trash cans on the opposite side of the street.
Loud metallic clangs echo through the darkness.
That was a stupid thing to do. She's well aware. Sound draws the monsters near. Does she care? No.
If she was going to turn, it would've happened about ten bites ago. And hell, if she gets to blast some holes in a few undead assholes, that'll certainly help her blow off steam.
Click.
Rain is bathed in the harsh beam of a gunlight.
She whips around to look at the dilapidated building she parked beside, her hand darting to the Smith & Wesson in her thigh holster. She can't make out who she's aiming at, or who's aiming at her while being blasted in the face with a high-powered flashlight.
"...Rain?"
But that voice... She recognizes it.