Chapter Text
Each step he took felt like double the effort, trying not to slip on the slowly icing snow that covered the road. It had stopped snowing at least. An upside, in Bryan's opinion. One in just many terrible things that had happened tonight.
"We can do this, can't we, baby?" he mumbled, resting a hand on his bump. "Just… need to get into the city and put this shit show behind us. Maybe someone can explain what the fuck happened too."
Bryan follows the road round the bend, the tree line giving way to the tunnel he'd been expecting but halted. There was in fact a tunnel. A standard one by any means of the definition. It cut right through the mountain, and should have been a clear passage through into Raccoon City. It was not clear. Cars of all sorts sat abandoned and askew.
The snow had settled around and on them, long hiding any trace of movement. He looked over his shoulder, tracing his own foot steps through the snow.
It should have been obvious—there weren't any tyre marks. There had never been any but his own on the roads even back when he still had his car.
Bryan looked back at the pile up, heart in his throat. His tongue snaked out, wetting cold chapped lips. "Oooh man," he mumbled.
He shifted the shotgun into his left hand and fumbled for his keys. They rattled obscenely loud in the stillness to the point his stomach churned sickly.
"Fuck," he said, turning his keychain flashlight on. It barely touched anything, even as a few reflective things bounded the light. "What the fuck man," he whined.
Pacing, Bryan took long, deep breaths. He halted, rested a hand on his stomach as baby fluttered. "I can do this."
A low, groaning came from the woods that was decidedly not just the wind and he squeaked, turned on his heels and began walking again. Bryan would not stand around trying to sike himself up and leave himself vulnerable to that godforsaken mutated zombie ball.
He held the flashlight as still as his trembling hand could manage, which wasn't nearly as steady as he'd like while the left held the shotgun ready for any hint of zombies. He moved through the abandoned cars toward the lip of the tunnel, where the darkness swallowed everything.
Hello darkness, my old friend.
Bryan groaned quietly in disgust at that thought. Now was not the time to scare himself even more.
Peering into the abandoned cars as he walked, Bryan spotted all sorts of things—plants, luggage, personal effects. The cars were all pointed away from the other end of the tunnel. They were trying to leave Raccoon City.
Bryan halted again at that thought, flashlight turned this way and that. His shaky breaths were eerie in the ear-ringing silence.
"Okay," he whispered.
He pushed on, entering the tunnel. Walked with a pace he refused to falter from.
Something metallic clattered in the dark.
Bryan bit down on his scream so hard his teeth clicked. The shotgun swung toward the sound before he’d decided to move. He heaved for air, finger hovering well clear of the trigger, as he watched a dented bucket roll lazily across the tarmac from the shadows.
"Hello?" His voice cracked. "Is someone there?"
For a long moment, nothing. Then a small head peered around the bumper of a car, and his breath was stolen out of him.
A kid. Twelve at most. Her wide blue eyes were locked on the barrel of his gun, wet and terrified, and the sight of it hit Bryan like a punch to the gut. He dropped the shotgun immediately, apologies tumbling out of him. "Sorry, sorry, oh god, I’m so sorry, I thought you were—I’m sorry."
The girl edged out from her hiding spot, still wary, but she shook her head. "It’s okay," she said, small but steady. "We’re both scared."
That nearly broke him. She wore some sort of school uniform, a pleated skirt and blazer, the kind of private-school get-up whose annual cost would be more than Bryan could dream of earning in a year. It was not remotely suitable for the cold.
"Hi," he said, adjusting the shotgun to rest skyward against his shoulder, trying to make himself look more friendly. "Hi. I’m Bryan. What’s your name?"
"Sherry."
She stepped closer, and Bryan knelt; laid the shotgun on the ground between them. Now that she was near, her scent reached him: fear first, sharp and sour, but underneath it something flowery and green, like the air after a storm. Petrichor. Beneath that sat the faint, sweet milkiness every child carried, and it made his chest clenched tight.
Sherry’s nose twitched as she took in his Omega scent, cinnamon and vanilla gone burnt at the edges with his fear. Her shoulders loosened anyway. Even a wreck, he was still soothing to some.
She was shivering, Bryan noticed next. There was a tremor in her thin arms, the way she hugged herself. He set the medical courier bag down with care so it wouldn’t jolt, then shrugged out of his coat. Sherry protested at once, eyes darting to his stomach. "You’re pregnant, you’ll freeze."
Bryan purred at her, low and warm in his throat, and the protest died. "I’ve got a thick sweater and long sleeves under here," he said. "Plus a scarf and a hat. I’m basically a burrito. Take it."
She did. The coat swallowed her whole, sleeves hanging past her fingertips, hem nearly at her shins. He reached out and smoothed down pale blonde flyaways.
"You look like a very frazzled bat," Bryan said gravely, and she giggled, then startled, like she’d forgotten she could laugh.
He let that sit for a second before asking, gently, "What are you doing out here, Sherry? Are you alone?"
Her smile faded. "I was with Ms Silva," she said quietly. "But she got bit. And she turned, like all the others."
"I’m sorry." He meant it. "What about your parents?"
Sherry shrugged and toed at the ground. "I don’t see them much. Ms Silva was my caretaker. Mum and Dad are high-level Umbrella employees."
Bryan nodded slowly. Absent parents who were probably dead, and a dead caretaker. A kid left alone in a tunnel full of abandoned cars and possible monsters. He swallowed the lump in his throat and hesitated, almost afraid to ask. "What’s… what’s Raccoon City like?"
"Shit," Sherry said flatly.
A laugh punched out of Bryan before he could stop it, the sounded carried through the tunnel. Despite his grimace at the loud sound, Bryan cracked a real smile, the first in hours, and across from him Sherry clapped a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking as she hid her own giggle in the oversized sleeve.
"Fair," he said. He tapped the courier bag. "Well. I’ve got something important to deliver to the hospital, for whatever reason, and I’ve got to see it through. And if there’s anyone holed up there, maybe we can help them. Or they can help us."
Sherry’s eyes went wide and fearful all over again. "You’re going into the city?"
Bryan hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. And… the way I came, there was a mutated thing. A monster." He bit his lip. "I took two out, and then they sort of combined into one really god-awful thing. I’m not leaving you out here alone, Sherry. Not with that behind us."
"Mutated?" she echoed, and she blanched, her scent spiking with fear. But then she straightened, chin lifting, tiny and absurd in his coat. "The ones in the city are slow. But if you’re quiet and quick enough, you can skirt around them."
Bryan’s eyes burned. Her scent was still thick with fear, the petrichor warped and muddy, but she was trying so hard to be brave for him—the alpha in her, he reckoned. For him, a grown man with a shotgun, who was supposed to be the one doing the protecting.
Damn it, baby, we’re not about to cry right now, he thought, and pressed a hand to his stomach as the little one shifted.
He pushed himself upright and collected the shotgun and the bag. Then he held out the keychain with the little flashlight. "Could you point this for me? My hand’s been shaking so much I’m just going to give us both a seizure."
Sherry took it with both hands, nodding solemnly, and swept the thin beam out ahead of them over the cars and into the dark. Her hand wasn’t steady either, but at least it was steadier than his.
Bryan settled the shotgun back into place, aimed and ready for any unwanted surprise.
They moved further into the tunnel together, Sherry’s little circle of light wobbling across the walls and cars. Bryan kept half a step ahead of her without really deciding to, shoulder angled so anything that came out of the dark would have to go through him first.
The cold was different in here. Still and heavy, none of the wind that had been needling him during his journey to the tunnel. It was almost worse. Every scuff of his boots came back at him off the concrete, and he was pretty sure his heartbeat was doing the same.
"Left a bit," he murmured. "Sorry. Can you… yeah. Perfect."
"Sorry," Sherry whispered back, and the light shuddered across a windscreen. Bryan flinched, then felt like an idiot for it. It was just glass. Just a rear-view mirror with a little cardboard pine tree dangling from it.
Normal people had those. Normal people drove to work with their stupid little pine trees.
Okay, don’t think about normal. He swallowed and kept walking.
The cars thinned out around the middle of the tunnel, enough that he could see the road between them, scattered with dropped things. A single child’s shoe. A tipped-over cooler with the lid hanging open. A Nokia phone face down in a dark stain Bryan decided not to look at too closely.
"Oooh man," he breathed, before he could stop himself.
"Bryan?"
"Yeah, sweetheart?" It slipped out before he’d thought about it. Sherry didn’t seem to mind. She kept the flashlight steady, though her free hand had found a fistful of the coat’s hem and was twisting it.
"Are you having a boy or a girl?"
Bryan blinked. Of all the things. A laugh got halfway up his throat and came out as a breathy huff. "Don’t know yet. Wanted it to be a surprise." He adjusted his grip on the shotgun and winced as the baby shifted. "Though I’m starting to think surprises are overrated. Like, really fucking overrated. Sorry. Language."
"I said ‘shit’ earlier," Sherry whispered, deadpan, and Bryan choked on a snort.
"Yeah. Fair."
She giggled something small and quiet, and some of the sour edge escaped out of her scent. The petrichor came back a little, clean and green. Bryan let himself lean into it for a second and let a low purr rumble in his chest, barely a sound at all. But it was enough to make her shoulders drop.
"That’s nice," she said. "Ms Silva used to do that when I had nightmares."
Bryan’s chest ached. "Yeah?"
"Mm."
He didn’t say anything else, not trusting his voice. He just kept purring, steady and low, and kept his eyes forward on the dark.
The groan, when it came, was close.
It came from somewhere to the right, wet and rattling, and Bryan’s whole body locked up. Sherry’s light jerked, then swept right on its own, catching a red car with its driver door hanging wide. Something slumped half out of it, one pale hand dragging against the road.
The light found a face. Grey. Slack. A jaw that didn’t close right.
"Oh shit," Bryan breathed.
Sherry made a tiny, terrified sound in her throat. Bryan’s hand shot out behind him and caught her shoulder, pulling her flush against his side, shotgun swinging to bear. The thing in the car lifted its head, milky eyes locked on them. Its mouth worked. It tried but failed to drag itself another inch.
Slow, he thought. She said they’re slow. It’s slow. It’s just slow. It’s not the ball of limbs, it’s just a regular zombie, I can do regular.
Still, Bryan’s pulse hammered in his ears, loud enough to drown the pathetic rattle of it.
"Okay," he said, barely any air behind it. "We go round on the other side of the car. Keep your hand on me, alright? Don’t let go."
Sherry nodded against his arm and fisted her hand in his sweater. She was trembling, but she moved when he did, and she kept the light low and steady.
They slipped sideways between a van and a battered hatchback, close enough that Bryan caught the iron stink of the something in the van and nearly gagged, stomach protesting on principle. He kept the barrel on the red car until the last second, until it was nothing but a shape behind them. The groaning faded.
Ahead, so far away it looked like a star, a smudge of pale light waited at the end of the tunnel.
Bryan let out the breath he’d been holding. His hand was still on Sherry’s shoulder and he gave it a gentle squeeze.
"See that?" he whispered. "That’s the way out. We just gotta keep going."
“Okay,” Sherry whispered back.
The baby wiggled, like it agreed. Yeah, yeah, Bryan thought. I’m going. He tightened his grip on the shotgun and walked on.