Chapter 35
It was getting dark outside now. Not completely dark, but twilight had fallen, and scattered streetlights flashed on to illuminate the city. As frightening and dangerous as the city had been before, now it was even worse.
Carlos sat by one of the windows at the streetcar station, his assault rifle propped up against his leg. He watched disinterestedly through the windows out into the street, keeping an eye out for any stray zombies. There were still plenty of them congregated on the other side of the fence that ran parallel to the station, but they were too stupid to come around the fence, so the soldiers left them alone to conserve ammo. But if any zombies came up to the doors, however, they were shot. Mikhail and the other commander didn’t want zombies blocking the doors in case any survivors showed up, or in case they needed to leave the station in a hurry. A few dead zombies were hauled away from the doors and piled up near the corner of the building.
There were eleven soldiers there now. Four from Carlos’s original squad, and seven others, including the commander who called himself Hunk, who was not UBCF at all. He was technically from another military organization within Umbrella, but he was now in command under the authority of Commander Ginovaef. Carlos didn’t know how many other UBCF troops were still alive in the whole city, but he didn’t think it was very many. Currently, Hunk was up on the roof, watching guard like a tireless sentinel.
Carlos sighed and glanced across the small parking lot, through some sparse trees that were planted along the sidewalk. He noticed two lights shining through the trees, and it took him a moment to realize they were car headlights.
“Sir!” he shouted. “There’s a car outside!”
As soon as he spoke, Hunk’s voice boomed down from the roof. “We have a vehicle coming! Send someone out there!”
Mikhail trudged past Carlos, slapping him on the shoulder. “Come on then. Let’s go and see who it is.”
They went out the front doors and jogged out into the parking lot. Carlos held his rifle at his shoulder, but Mikhail didn’t seem as worried, and held a pistol loosely in his hand. They walked out into the street just as the car, a white sedan, came slowly in their direction. It stopped and Mikhail put his hands on his hips.
“You can come out,” he said. “There are no infected ones here.”
The driver’s side door opened and a young blonde woman in a blue t-shirt and jeans exited the car, looking at the two soldiers with a mixed expression of hope and suspicion on her face. She looked exhausted, Carlos thought.
“Is it just the two of you?” the woman asked wearily, leaning against the car.
“There are more soldiers inside. But you are the only civilian. Let’s get out of the street. More of them may show up.”
Carlos shouldered his rifle and walked toward her. The woman nearly fell over when he put his hand on her shoulder, she was so tired. He took her arm and helped her walk over to the station. Mikhail looked around, seemed satisfied, and followed them.
Carlos helped the woman walk over to some of the benches and let her sit down. One of the other soldiers already had a bottle of water and some candy bars ready for her, taken from one of the vending machines. She happily took the food and immediately began to gulp down the water.
“Who are you?” she asked when the bottle was half empty. “You’re not National Guard. I don’t recognize your uniform.”
“We’re UBCF,” Carlos said. “Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Force,” he added.
“Umbrella? You work for Umbrella?” the woman said, staring at him.
Carlos shrugged. “Yeah, I know.”
Mikhail came over and crossed his arms over his thick chest. “And what is your name? We haven’t seen a living person for several hours. You must be very lucky or very brave to have survived this long.”
“My name is Jill Valentine. I’m a cop.”
“I am Mikhail Victor, the Captain of this squad. It is a pleasure to serve you.”
“You people work for Umbrella?”
“Yes, does that bother you?”
Jill seemed to measure her words carefully. “You must know that your employer is responsible for what’s happening here. Umbrella is to blame for all of this.”
Mikhail pursed his lips and nodded a bit. “Well, perhaps ‘responsible’ is too strong a word, yes? But I think I know what you mean.”
Jill seemed to accept that as an answer, and began unwrapping the candy bars. She wolfed them down as if she was starving, and then finished off the bottle of water. She looked to Carlos, wiping her mouth. “Can I get some more?”
“Sure thing,” Carlos said with a smile. “There’s lots over there. My name is Carlos, by the way. It is good to see another person out here. I was beginning to think maybe we were the only ones left.”
“I’ve been driving around for more than an hour,” Jill said. “I saw a helicopter awhile ago and tried to follow it, but I lost track of it. So I just drove around, trying to find a way out of the city, but so many of the roads are blocked. I was almost out of gas.”
“Well, you’re safe here. I’ll go get you some more to eat.”
Just then, Hunk came in through one of the side doors. He set his assault rifle on one of the nearby benches and walked over to them. “Well, it looks like we actually have a survivor. Congratulations on staying alive this long.”
Jill took a bite of a candy bar and chewed gratefully. “I can’t be the only person who has survived. There must be others.”
“Not too many, I’m afraid,” Hunk said. “I heard that less than a fifty civilians made it out of the city on their own. We were able to rescue perhaps a hundred more, but the last of those was probably three hours ago.”
“Only a hundred and fifty people?”
“Give or take a few. Two hundred, tops.” Hunk said it so casually, it sounded as if he was giving Jill the local sports scores. He didn’t seem the least concerned that only two hundred people out of a population of more than 100,000 had survived.
Jill stared up at him as she ate. She wolfed down six candy bars before she began to feel sick. She washed them down with another bottle of water.
Mikhail walked over to Hunk. “How much longer are we waiting here? Nicholai said he would be back by now.”
“I know,” Hunk said. “We can wait a little longer. We’re in no danger here.”
“Not right now,” Mikhail agreed. “But I would rather be safe than sorry, yes?”
“Let’s wait another hour,” Hunk said, looking out the open side of the building at the streetcars waiting to take them away. “If Nicholai isn’t back by then, we can leave.” He drew his pistol and walked over to the platform.
Jill looked past him and saw a zombie on the other side of the streetcars, coming in their direction. Hunk stood at the edge of the platform and shot the zombie in the head, and it keeled over and slumped across the tracks. Hunk looked around and stuck the pistol back in its holster.
“What are you doing about the epidemic?” Jill asked. “When you say that we’re going to leave, do you mean leave the city?”
“Yes,” Hunk said.
“What if there are other survivors still in hiding?”
Hunk walked back over to her. “That’s not my problem,” he said. “My problem is the fact that my men barely have any ammunition left, and they are tired and hungry, just like you are. We’ve rescued as many people as we can. It’s time for us to get the hell out of here.”
“Are more soldiers coming to take over? Are there any reinforcements?”
Hunk just shook his head. “We’ve lost seventy-five percent of our men so far. I don’t think Umbrella is prepared to lose any more.”
“So you’re just going to abandon the city?”
“What else is there for us to do?” Hunk asked, crossing his arms. “Should we start going door to door, looking for survivors? We already tried that. The only thing we accomp
lished was finding thousands of zombies and getting our troops killed. There are simply too many of them. Do you seriously think we’re going to search every single room in every single building?”
“Well, you can’t just leave the city like it is,” Jill said. “The infection will just keep spreading.”
Hunk looked down at her. “Well, I hope that Umbrella has a plan to deal with that. All I know is that it isn’t my concern right now,” he said, effectively ending the conversation. He walked over to the door and picked his assault rifle back up. “I’m going back on the roof. Hopefully Nicholai gets here soon.”
Carlos came back over to Jill, having stood to the side while she argued with Hunk. He sat down and handed her some small bags of potato chips.
“Thanks,” Jill said softly. “I was already sick of candy bars.”
“Yeah, we don’t have much else.”
“Do you have any spare weapons? I’d like to have a gun to defend myself if something goes wrong.”
“Sure thing,” Carlos said, pulling a Desert Eagle from his hip holster and handing it over to her. “You said you were a cop, right? I guess you know how to use it.” He smiled awkwardly and opened some chips for himself.
“How old are you, Carlos?” Jill asked.
“Twenty-two.”
Jill laughed shortly. “Jesus, you’re younger than I am.” She rested the pistol in her lap and leaned back on the bench. The food was finally settling in her stomach and she felt immeasurably better than she had half an hour before. She almost felt good enough to walk around, but she decided not to risk it.
She perked her head up when she heard the telltale thrumming of a helicopter above them. Carlos got up and ran to the window, some of the other soldiers seemed relieved to finally hear the familiar sound. Jill looked outside and watched the helicopter lower to the ground out in the parking lot.
“Okay,” Mikhail said from beside her. “Nicholai is back. Now maybe he can tell us what we are supposed to do next.”