Chapter 16
As Jill looked out toward the street, she almost felt as if everything she experienced in Raccoon City had taken place in another world. In this place, life went on as usual. Cars drove down the street, people went down the sidewalk with headphones on, music played from a car stereo, birds chirped nearby, everything was exactly the same as it had been before. It was almost like the events of Raccoon City never happened.
Of course, Atlanta, Georgia was hundreds of miles away from Raccoon City, and life goes on no matter how terrible things are in other parts of the world. Jill sat on a bench out in front of the Umbrella research lab entrance on the outskirts of Atlanta and just watched life return to normal. People still went to work, children still went to school, the people here heard about the disaster on television, shook their heads and said how terrible it was, and then went right back to their lives. The destruction of Raccoon City was as far away from them as an earthquake in Peru or a famine in Ethiopia.
Jill envied them, in a way. To the people here, Raccoon City was just the name of a disaster now, like Hiroshima, or Chernobyl. But to Jill, it was the place she lived, it was her home. And now it was gone.
She didn’t know where she was going to go now. She supposed that she could go back to New York state, where her parents lived. But she couldn’t face her parents now, she had only spoken to them on the phone once since the disaster, just to tell them she was alive and okay. They would have a million questions that she didn’t want to answer. And if she stayed with them, then she knew that they would pity her and sympathize, and so everything they said and did would be with respect to what she had gone through. They would treat her differently. They would treat her like a victim who needed to be comforted and taken care of.
Jill didn’t want that. She wasn’t a victim. She fought harder than she had ever fought in her life, and she survived. There was no way in Hell anyone was going to treat her like a victim.
She sipped her cup of coffee and continued watching the traffic drift slowly by. Occasionally, a pedestrian or a driver would glance her way. They were probably wondering who that strange woman was, sitting outside an Umbrella office in her bare feet and with her hair uncombed.
She heard the front door open and close behind her. Someone joined her on the bench, and she smiled into her cup. “Good morning,” she said.
Carlos Oliveira nodded and slouched on the bench, setting his hands in his lap. He was dressed in sneakers, khakis, and a blue dress shirt. While Jill felt perfectly comfortable wearing the plain white clothes Umbrella gave her when they first arrived, Carlos opted for something more normal.
“Yeah, good morning,” he said. “What are you doing out here alone?”
“Just sitting here doing nothing.”
“That must be fun.”
Jill shrugged. “There isn’t much else to do. Besides talking to Carlisle or talking to Lisa, I’ve been pretty bored.”
“Me too,” Carlos said. He leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees, and looked out toward the street. “I was just talking to Mr. Carlisle. He wants me to stay with the UBCF.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Jill said. “I think he even wants me to join up, but he won’t come out and ask. He knows that I’ll bash his face in if he so much as suggests it.”
“Yeah, he treats you real carefully, you know?”
“I don’t know why he would. It’s not like Umbrella is worried about me. They know I can’t do anything to them now. I’m just another survivor, I don’t even know why they’ve let me stay here as long as they have.”
“Cause that girl they got here likes you, I think.”
“You mean Lisa? I guess that’s possible.”
“I never saw her before we came here,” Carlos said. “Was she really crazy like they said? She was one of their experiments?”
“Yes, she was. When I saw her before, she didn’t even know how to talk. She was just a wild animal.”
“Man, that’s crazy.”
“Just one of many crazy things I’ve seen in the past week or so.”
“Yeah,” Carlos said. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. Jill noticed that since their arrival in Atlanta, Carlos was kind of uncomfortable talking to her, like he wasn’t sure what to say. Having a normal conversation seemed silly somehow, after what they had been through together. Jill suspected there was more to it than that.
Carlos was barely twenty-three years old, just a few years younger than Jill herself, but somehow, she felt like the age gap between them was much larger than that. Maybe her experiences in the Arklay mansion aged her somehow, or maybe she just felt older. But sometimes she felt that Carlos was still just a kid, which was actually kind of demeaning, since Carlos fought his way through Raccoon City and saw many of the same terrors that she had, and he even saved her life a few times.
But now, here together, he seemed like a shy teenager, and Jill felt twenty years older than she really was. She wondered if Carlos felt that way.
“What are you gonna do with your money?” he asked finally.
“What money?”
“Didn’t Mr. Carlisle tell you? They’re gonna pay us off. A settlement, he called it.”
“Really? How much?”
Carlos quoted a figure in the high six digits, and Jill grunted amusedly, drinking the rest of her coffee and tossing the empty cup in a nearby trash receptacle. “That’s interesting. Makes sense though, they’re probably paying everyone a settlement like that to prevent them from filing lawsuits later.”
“That’s a lot of money,” Carlos said.
“So they’re giving you the settlement, but they still want you to stay with the UBCF? That doesn’t make any sense. You could take the money and go start a new career doing whatever you wanted. I mean, it’s not enough to retire on, but you could live comfortably for quite a while on that.”
“Maybe,” Carlos said. “But having that much money is dangerous. People talk, people find out about it, and it just makes me a target. I already have a bad reputation, you know? For trying to stop the cartels from bribing the guys in my unit back when I was in the army. The cartels know who I am.”
“You think they might come after you?”
“Probably, if they find out. And I can’t give the money to my family or the same thing might happen. You’re better off not being rich. And if you are rich, you better be rich enough to afford bodyguards and a huge security system and all that stuff.”
“So what are you going to do?” Jill asked.
“I think I’ll use the money to help my family come to the United States. I told Mr. Carlisle about it, and he says that Umbrella might be able to help, but I think they would be doing it in return for me staying with the UBCF.”
“Do you want to stay with them?”
Carlos shrugged. “Maybe. I know what they did, it’s just that ...”
“Don’t worry about what I think,” Jill said softly. “If you want to keep working with Umbrella, then go ahead and do it. I won’t think any different of you.”
“You won’t?” Carlos asked uncertainly.
“Of course not,” Jill said. “Remember when you told me about why you stuck with Umbrella in the first place? That even a bad company like them needs at least a few good people working there?”
Carlos nodded. “Yeah, I remember that.”
“They still need good people,” Jill said. “And as much as I hate to think about it, they need people with the kind of experience we have. I’m certainly not going to join up, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, if that’s what you want to do.”
Carlos was quiet for a moment, and then said, “I keep thinking about Mikhail. My commander, you know. Mikhail was a good man, a good commander. He died on that train car, he gave his life for us. Well, they want to promote me to squad commander now, and I keep thinking if I could live up to that example, you know? I don’t know if
I could be as strong as he was.”
“I think you are,” Jill said. She leaned against him and set her hand supportively on his shoulder. “I think you’re a lot stronger and a lot braver than you realize.”
“I think you’re a lot braver than I am,” Carlos said in a low voice. “Like when you made that monster chase you. You did that two times, I could never have done that.”
Jill didn’t respond right away. But all she could think of was when she and Barry were attacked by the skinless dogs back in the mansion. It seemed like a lifetime ago. When those dogs came through the windows, Jill was not very brave then. She turned and ran for her life, leaving Barry behind to fend for himself. She escaped in a blind panic and finally hid in a bathroom, where she crawled into a ball on the floor and cried her eyes out. She was not brave then, she was a coward. It was the lowest point of her entire life.
Bravery was a quality that people either had or did not have. Jill didn’t believe that it was something that could be learned. Her actions back in the mansion proved that she was not brave, but since then she redeemed herself somewhat. She did her best to save the lives of the people around her, but despite her best efforts, it was all for nothing. Her friend and teammate Brad was dead, Eddie Thorne and the rest of the survivors at the warehouse were dead, the rest of Carlos’ unit of UBCF soldiers was dead, they were all dead. Only Jill and Carlos managed to escape. Even if Jill was truly brave, it didn’t make any difference.
Carlos asked, “After we leave here, are you gonna be a police officer again?”
“No,” Jill said instantly. Her police badge was back in her small room. Apparently, Lisa was still carrying it when they found her and brought her here. Carlisle returned the badge but Jill could barely look at it.
After a pause, she added, “No, I’m done being a cop.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m not sure. If they’re giving us a settlement, then I guess I’ll live off of that for awhile. Maybe buy a house somewhere very far away, like Alaska or something. I haven’t given it much thought.”
“Are you gonna talk to the news people or anything like that? I guess some of the other survivors already started doing interviews.”
Jill considered it briefly, and then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I know the truth, but I can’t tell them the truth. They don’t want to hear my story.”
She sighed and continued to watch the traffic. She didn’t know how she was going to be able to keep her silence. Carlisle did an excellent job of convincing her that it was not a good idea to try to reveal the truth, but that didn’t mean Jill was happy about it. But she didn’t know if she could keep a secret this big. She would have to tell someone, sometime. Otherwise, the knowledge would eventually eat her up inside.
“How’s the busted ribs, by the way?” she asked.
“Sore,” Carlos said, gingerly touching his side. “I’ll be alright though. What about your leg?”
“I’ll probably have to get surgery on it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I tore a ligament or a tendon or something. It doesn’t hurt right now, but it won’t ever heal on its own. If I don’t have surgery, it will keep getting worse until I won’t be able to move my knee at all.”
“I guess it could have been worse,” Carlos said lamely.
“Yeah. I’m sure Umbrella will pay for the surgery. I’ll talk to Carlisle about it.”
They sat together for a few minutes, not saying anything. Despite the time they spent together, Jill felt as if they were worlds apart. In the end, they just didn’t have anything in common to talk about once the excitement was over. They would always have a connection, and they would always share their memories of the traumatic events in Raccoon City, but unfortunately, that was all they would share.
“Once we leave here, you know we’ll probably never see each other again,” Jill said softly. “Umbrella will probably send you to another country. I’ll move somewhere far away. This will be the last time we’re together.”
“I know,” Carlos said. “I suppose I could try to visit you sometime, but ...” he trailed off.
“Yeah,” Jill said. “But why bother?”
“We can keep in touch.”
“We can. I would like that.”
“Maybe when we’re old, maybe we can meet up and see each other, just for old time’s sake.”
Jill smiled gently and put her hand on Carlos’ shoulder. “They’ll probably have a ten-year anniversary of the disaster, and a twenty-year anniversary, and so on. Maybe we can make plans for the fifty-year anniversary. Maybe by then it won’t hurt so much.”
She stood up unsteadily on her weak knee and took Carlos by the hand, pulling him to his feet. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go get something to eat. I’ll buy you lunch.”
They headed back into the lab building, walking hand in hand. Jill decided that maybe it was time to stop thinking about the past, and begin to think about the future.