Best of Intentions: River Below (ch. 13)

Things weren't going that great, Chris Redfield could admit to himself. It wasn't really a surprise. Things not going great is probably the best way to understate what happened when the world was staring down the barrel of a gun in the hands of idiots with an itchy finger.

That being said, they could always be worse. “I think I'm a glass half full kind of guy,” Chris remarked to Brad, who gave him an absolutely bewildered look as the double door that they both leaned against began to heave as the undead broke their hands on it. Chris’ belt was woven between the doorknobs, limiting how much the dead could push.

“Great. I'm glad you found your optimism, Chris. How about you put it to good use and find a way for us to get the fuck out of here?!” Brad snapped, his face flushed and sweating heavily. He really let himself go since STARs was dismantled. It was a shame, and it wasn't the first time Chris thought it. All of them had their ways to cope in the aftermath of the Mansion, but unfortunately for them all, Brad's involved a lot of heavy drinking.

But, even out of shape and drunk, Brad was still more reliable than most people that Chris had served with.

The door behind them bucked hard, the moans and groans of the dead echoing out as his leather belt strained to keep the doors closed. A warning that time was short, so he did exactly that -- they were on the first story of a bodega, thankfully one grid shutters over the windows. Less thankfully, it meant that he couldn't get a decent look outside. But, based on the sounds that echoed out through the bodega, Chris could summarize that the back door was just as crowded as the front.

Which left one option, really.

“We go up to the roof. The stairs will block their numbers, and if we secure the door, they won't get through.” Chris reasoned, spying the staircase that would take them to the upper floors.

“So, we get to be stranded on the roof?” Brad asked, exasperated and desperate.

“No, we jump to the next building over. I think it's a hardware store,” Chris said, the door bucking again and he saw a fatal tear in his leather belt. Claire had really cheapened out on his birthday gift, huh? Authentic leather his ass. “We drop in, grab a ladder, then use it to skip over the alleys. Sound good?”

“No, but it sounds better than getting eaten,” Brad said as they shared a look. “On three?”

“On three,” Chris agreed, taking a bracing breah. “One. Two. Three!” He exclaimed, both of them jumping off of the door and breaking into a dead sprint to the staircase that would take them to the top floor. Without then taking the stress off of the belt, it held for all of a few seconds before there was a loud popping sound as the faux-leather gave out. The doors swung open, welcoming a veritable sea of corpses into the building but they were quick to run up the stairs.

They had already cleared the building, thankfully, so they didn't have to worry about any surprises on the way up. They did have a nasty surprise waiting for them on the roof, though -- the metal door slamming shut behind them. While Brad barricaded the door, Chris went to the ledge to see a rather unwelcome sight.

The streets were completely filled with the undead. Hundreds of them. Thousands, even. They were packed tightly against one another as they mindlessly charged forward, following the others that mindlessly followed some zombie that was battering at the door, who only started battering on it because a zombie accidently bumped into it. It looked something ripped out of his worst nightmares.

“You know… technically speaking… this just means that everything is going according to plan,” Chris remarked, the faintest of tremors in his voice.

“Who in their right fucking mind planned to put themselves in the middle of this mess?” Brad demanded, the door starting to shake as the dead arrived. But, the door remained firm.

“Same guy who was tossing out posters and business cards,” Chris replied, reaching into his tact-vest to take out the plan in question. There was a smile on his lips when he heard Brad cursing up a storm. Rude's reputation preceded him. The guy was as crazy as he was ballsy. More than that, he knew exactly what he was doing.

It was almost alarming at how through Rude's plans were. Calling them Plan A, B, and C implied he only had twenty six plans. He had dozens and dozens more for, in his own words, ‘Everything goes to shit and the plan goes out the window.’ So far, it looked like they were on… Plan D, subset 25, variation… 3. All of it contained in a little notebook filled with neat handwriting and some notes to self written in the fringes.

All things considered, Chris already figured that Rude was pretty smart. He had that brainy academic feel to him, just more down to earth. But, contained in the little black book was undeniable proof that Rude was the kind of brilliant that Chris couldn't comprehend. The kind of smart that was beyond the run of the mill astrophysicist or biochemical engineers and into the realm of the Leonardo Da Vincies.

“Quit your complaining. I was right about the hardware store,” Chris said, spying it across the alley. As well as the skylight on the roof that was mentioned. Provided that the door really did hold, he could easily make that jump, drop down, grab the ladder before they continued carrying out the rest of the plan. “We're about halfway through the job. You going to quit on me now?”

“I can't believe I let you talk me into this, Chris,” Brad sighed, approaching the ledge and giving the sea of undead a dispearing look. “I get we can't duck our heads into a shelter, but why do we have to be surrounded by these ankle biters?”

Because that big guy was on the hunt for them, and if they couldn't aid in the evaluations, then the least that they could do was make it easier on the people doing the evaluations. Rude had marked a number of locations throughout the city that were the ideal places to gather the undead, pulling them from the populated blocks and burrows, then once everyone was in the clear, efforts to contain could be put in place. Chris was left improvising as a lot of the plans needed Rude's nanomachines or someone named Alice.

But, improvising under pressure is what he did best.

The current goal called for some basic prep work, making use of narrow alleys and high fences. Should everything work out as they wanted, by the time the evaluations in the area were done, they could put up emergency barricades and shoot the dead like fish in a barrel. From there, the whole process would repeat over and over and over again until the only undead left in the city were the ones trapped in apartments or closests where people tried to hide before turning.

It wasn't going to be a simple and clean process. Even if everything worked like a charm, the plan going off without a hitch -- it'd be years before Raccoon City was cleared for human habitation. If it ever was.

Still better than getting nuked, though.

“You know why,” Chris said, patting Brad on the back as they both stepped away from the ledge. “Think you can make the jump?”

“Chris, I put on some weight. I'm not an invalid,” Brad groused, giving him some stink eye before he broke into a sprint and jumped across the alley. To his credit, he made the jump with some room to spear. Not as much as Chris had when he made the jump, but enough that Chris shouldn't have worried. Together, they approached the skylight to find that the hardware store was overrun with corpses. “Ask the magic eight ball what to do now.”

“This thing is a lot more accurate than a magic eight ball,” Chris said, flipping to another page. “I can't believe that he wrote like thirty of these things.” One for each respective box that was filled with gear useful for each stage of the grand plan that Rude cooked up to deal with the zombie apocalypse. The sheer attention to detail beggared belief. Enough so when Chris saw the plan, complete with notes of what should be readily available near the skylight, he didn't need to think twice about trusting the plan with his life.

Taking out the metal coat hanger, he bent it into shape and slipped it underneath the skylight seam and started fishing for the lever that'd let them inside. Took him a solid minute, but he managed to get it open. There was a shelf that he could drop down onto, which he could then crawl on top of to grab the ladder on the far wall.

Just as he was prepared to drop down, the sound of gunfire rang out. Hardly unusual at this point, but what was unusual was that the gunfire sounded close. Very close. Muffled ever so slightly by being indoors, but still audible. Experience let Chris clock it within the block. Worse, so did the undead as some shifted to the more interesting sound, then others went with them because they saw movement.

Brad was quick to grab the radio, “Raymond -- I'm hearing gunshots balls deep in a red zone. Is that your guys?”

There was a brief pause, “Doesn't seem to be us. I told everyone to give you two a wide berth, but I can't promise that everyone got the memo. Communication has been a mess and Irons hasn't been much help.” Raymond answered, his tone curt. Chris glanced up at Brad, whose lips thinned.

“Alright. We'll check it out and pull whoevers asses out the fire and toss ‘em back into the frying pan. If they're one of yours, we'll let you know.” Brad decided, giving Chris a small nod that encouraged him to drop down and grab the ladder. Whoever was shooting in these circumstances had to be in pretty desperate straits, and with a wave of undead coming, their odds just took a nosedive. Pushing off the merchandise on the top shelf, he crawled along it to grab a thirty foot ladder before he began to shuffle back.

Once he was at the skylight, Brad helped him back up. “I think I know where we are going. Jack's Bar,” Brad informed.

That… “Yeah, that could track,” Chris admitted. Jack's Bar was a cop bar. The chosen destination for many celebrations of putting a bad guy behind bars to celebrating someone's retirement from the force. Other times it's where a cop could drown their sorrows after a bad day in company that understood. So, it'd make sense that some cops got trapped there when all of this shit started kicking off.

“If anyone should survive this mess, it had better be Cindy. The woman is a saint,” Brad said, grabbing the ladder, tossing it over the ledge where the top half hit the other side of the alley.

“She has to be to put up with your flirting,” Chris teased, giving Brad something else to think about other than the alley that was filled with zombies directly below him. “Or put up with a bunch of drunk cops spilling their guts out.” Cindy was a waitress at the bar -- pretty, friendly, and a genuinely kind hearted person as far as Chris knew her. So, to a bunch of sops, she was an angel from Heaven.

“You don't get it since you're married to your job,” Brad replied, flipping him the bird as he made his way across. The words were harsh, but his tone was thankful. “She used to ask about you, you know. Back before she figured out you were a meathead.”

Chris quickly made his way across the ladder, stealing a glance down below to see the undead were hissing and groaning as they looked up at him. Waiting for him to fall. “Me and romance don't mix,” Chris admitted, crossing the alley and grabbing the ladder. “A good relationship requires compromise. Meeting in the middle. And I… you give me a choice between the suburbs and this right here?”

He set the ladder up, ready to cross another alley, “I'm going to pick this every single time.”

It wasn't the adrenaline. It wasn't even the sense of control that he felt when he was one wrong move from death. It was… when the stakes couldn't be higher, that's when Chris felt like he was right at home. Exactly where he should be.

“Like I said, married to the job,” Brad replied, unsurprised.

“Yeah, yeah,” Chris said as they made their way across. The idle chatter fell away when they heard more gunshots, urging them both to pick up the pace. Before long, J's bar loomed in the distance and even if they already hadn't known the way, they could have just followed the tide of zombies that were battering at the front. The bottom floor, the actual bar, was already flooded with the glass windows giving out.

Whoever was inside seemed to be on the second floor based on another gunshot. Unfurling the ladder as far as it could, they braced it against the ledge and pushed it up so that it reached the roof of the building. The gunshots became more frequent, telling Chris that whatever barricade that they had was breaking down. Once they were up the ladder, Brad wrenched the door open and nearly ran head first into someone that was diving for the door.

Tall, dark brown hair cut in a medium length with a scruffy looking beard. “Brad?!”

“Kevin?” Brad blurted right back, greeting Kevin Ryman. A long serving officer that Chris knew had tried a few times to join STARs back before the team was dissolved, but he failed to make the cut because of ‘personality conflicts.’ By that, Chris meant Albert Wesker was an asshole even before he betrayed them.

“Nice ta’ see ya’, but we got trouble coming our way,” Kevin greeted them both as Chris stepped forward, his assault rifle up. True to form, downstairs was a mess with three others making their way to the staircase. Chris descended, firing off shots that cleared a path from the dead.

“Brad, get them down the ladder. I'll buy time,” Chris ordered, his gaze flickering to the survivors. Brad would be relieved to see that Cindy had survived, if a bit scared out of her mind. However, Chris's attention zeroed to two men -- both older, and given the carry that dark skinned guy was using to transport the other guy, he was ex military. Probably the Vietnam or Korean war at the oldest.

The fact that he had to carry the other guy at all told Chris that he might be infected, but he trusted Brad and Kevin to take care of that. He just had to focus on the problem before him, and that was the undead that were crawling up the staircase en masse.

Staircases were great for caroling their numbers, but it was hell on the nerves. The dead didn't have fear or thoughts of self preservation. They just mindlessly pressed forward, driven on some base instinct to feed and spread the virus. So, it didn't matter how many of them he dropped with near perfect aim, firing in short bursts. For every zombie that he killed, three more were shoving their way forward to take its place.

Keeping calm was the trick. Controlling a retreat was another. The dead were stupid and mindless, but the reason why they could overrun checkpoints is because people lost their nerve. They saw a seemingly never ending tide of undead unrelentlessly pressing down on their position. Instead of buckling down and making a controlled retreat, people just got scared and those self preservation instincts got everyone around them killed.

Chris made his way up the steps that led to the roof, the undead spilling out of the confines of the staircase, spreading out a bit before following him up. The bodies were simply pushed up or trampled underfoot and entirely too quickly, Chris found himself back on the roof. “How are we doing?”

“Need thirty more seconds, Chris!” Brad exclaimed behind him. The wounded guy probably gave them some trouble.

With nothing left to do, Chris planted himself at the center of the roof and started firing into the doorway, killing everything that poked its head out. He was doing a pretty good job of it until he had to reload, and that three second delay proved to be disastrous. They just poured through the doorway, and the bottleneck started to spill over. He retreated slowly, step by step, until-

“We're clear!” Brad shouted up, and Chris wasted no time pivoting and running out of the lunging grasp of a corpse. With two long strides, he hooked a hand over the top rung of the ladder to bring it down with him. It was anything but a controlled landing, but he was able to roll out the worst of the fall. By the time he was back on his feet, now on the same rooftop as the others, the dead were throwing themselves off the ledge and falling into the alley.

Only then did Chris let out a breath, releasing all the tension in his body. “Who left the door open?” He sighed, taking stock of their situation. Four of them were able bodied, Cindy was a civilian, and they had one wounded. They had the ladder, so they had range of movement down the block. Through the fire escapes, they could make their way down to street level in a pinch if they had to.

“That old thing has been busted for ages. If we closed it behind ya’, it wasn't liable to open back up for ya’,” Kevin said, his stress revealing itself as a southern drawl that he usually kept tucked away.

Chris nodded, accepting the reason. Better getting chased than locked in. Brad spoke up after that, “What were you all still doing here? This whole area got marked as a dumping zone for the undead.”

Cindy answered, reaching into her purse before taking out a familiar brochure. Rude really went all out on make it the most overt and eye catching thing he could think of -- a decaying zombie lunging towards the reader, giant bold letters marked in blood spelling out ‘Read this if you don't want to die in horrific agony when the dead start to rise.’ It was impossible to miss. “Someone delivered these a few days ago-”

Kevin snorted, “More like he was throwing them in people's faces.”

That got a weak smile out of Cindy, “Kind of. We kept a few, and because of it, last night, when the dead started attacking the bar…” Her lips thinned, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “We did what the brochure said to do -- we stayed quiet. It worked for a while, and it would have kept working but… there was an argument. A fight broke out on what to do from some of the other patrons- they didn't want to keep waiting, and they were worried about their families.”

The wounded man, who was propped up on the ledge sighed bitterly, “Those fools didn't have the decency to die alone. Came running back to us and led the dead right back.”

Those brochures really had paid off, Chris decided. Even if it was just a handful of people, it was undeniable proof that Rude had done more than just be a public menace. “Right. It's a shame we couldn't get here earlier, but we’re here now. My names Chris Redfield, Pointman for STAR's Alpha Team. Back before the whole team got disbanded.”

“Mark Wilks,” Mark introduced himself. Now that Chris got a better look at him, he saw he was wearing a security jacket. He matched the guy on the ground, a hand on his side.

“Robert, but everyone calls me Bob,” Bob sighed. “You mentioned red zones. So, there's gotta be green zones too, right?”

“Two, so far. Central Station, and the Police HQ,” Chris answered readily, dropping to a knee before the man. “The same guy that was throwing those brochures has a vaccine for that bite. If we get you there in time, you'll make it.”

Bob nodded more to himself than to Chris, “Central Station or the Police HQ, huh?” He muttered before he sighed, “Nah. That's too much of a trip for me.”

Mark stepped forward, “Bob-”

“Son, I almost got you killed because I had to get carried down that ladder.” Bob said, not looking at Mark. Chris got the impression that they were more than just coworkers. They were friends. “Now, how long do you think it's going to take to get me up and down that ladder on a trip halfway across the city?”

Nothing he was saying was wrong. “If I let people die just because they were a little inconvenient, then Raccoon City would have a lot fewer people in it.”

“I'm a fucking liability,” Bob refuted and Chris recognized the tone. He heard it plenty back when he was with the military. “And I don't plan on getting decent folk killed on a maybe that I can survive. So, you're going to take that ladder and the lot of you are going to fuck off to whatever green zone is closest, you hear? You'll leave me right here,” Bob said, taking out a revolver.

Cindy buried her face in her hands, looking away. Mark looked down at his friend helplessly. Helpless because everyone on the rooftop knew that they couldn't change his mind. Bob made his peace with death, and that kind of resolve wasn't so easily shaken, even by hope of survival.

Maybe it wasn't entirely true that Chris wasn't a little jealous of Rude -- it felt like he'd have an answer to this. Something that could convince Bob that he didn't have to die here.

“You sure?” Chris said instead, meeting Bob's heavy gaze.

“I'm sure. I'm an old man as it is. I've lived my life,” Bob said. “Now, go make sure the lot of you go get to live yours.”

Clenching his jaw, Chris offered a small curt nod before standing up. Kevin and Brad exchanged a sad look, but they didn't protest. Brad just guided Cidney away while they got the ladder set up to move on. Meanwhile, Mike spoke quietly with Bob for a long few minutes.

He was carrying a burden when he followed them up the ladder. Chris saw it in his eyes, but he carried it well. Just in silence.

It was three building down before they heard the gunshot.

After it, and once they were clear of the swarming corpses, Chris let Raymond know over the radio that they found survivors. He gave them a direction to go in with instruction that they could link up to another team to send the civilians with them. At that point, Chris and Brad could continue the job they undertook -- preparing the redzone to get secured.

The whole trip took longer than any of them wanted to admit, hours going by as the constantly repositioned the ladder and made their way across. No one wanted to say it out loud, but there was a sense of… appreciation. Knowing that odds are, Bob was right on the mark.

It was some hours later, the sun well into the late afternoon, before they reached a rendezvous point -- a train stop. As part of the general measures to safeguard the Central Station, a wire gate had been set up around the station. They didn't have the manpower yet to guard all of them, so it was a stop gap to make sure a flood of the dead didn't make their way into the train tunnels. Lifting the grate up for the others to crawl under, Chris was the last one down.

And what he descended into wasn't a welcome sight.

“You are the survivors that Raymond warned us were coming?” An older man asked -- grayish white hair, clean shaven, decked out with military hardware. That wasn't really the issue. It was a welcome sight, honestly. What was far less welcomed was that it was coupled with a logo.

Umbrella.

“That's us,” Chris responded, his tone terse while he checked out the station itself. He saw five other members of Umbrella that were setting up a forward base on a train car. There were a handful of civilians in quarantine overseen by an armed guard. “Looks like we'll be in your hands…”

“Nicholai Ginovaef,” Nicholai said, offering a hand and a tight lipped smile. “Squad leader of Theta team. We're UBCS, Umbrella sent us to get the civilians out of the way so we can start fighting back against this disease.”

Chris shook his hand, matching his thin smile with one of his own. “Then it sounds like we're in good company.”

This just got way more complicated than it needed to be.