For those of you who remember my basic non-shipperness, just remember I can change my mind if I want to! ;p
My son, by the way, is claiming all credit for this story now, although he disclaimed any responsibility before he knew it would be liked. (Kids!)
Okay, here's the next part...
Resident Jarod?
4/?
ByRebeckah
The ladder led to the waste water tunnels that crisscrossed the entire city. They were often called sewers by the uniformed, but they didn't actually carry any raw sewage, much to Parker's relief. She'd followed right behind Jarod, in spite of his suggestion to wait, and even with the odor of rotten garbage and mildewy walls, she was glad to be out of the cavern area.
"We have to wade through the drainage ditch." Jarod indicated the concrete channel running alongside the concrete ledge they stood on.
"Are you sure?" Parker eyed the murky water dubiously.
"We've got two choices," Jarod pointed to the vertical metal bars that blocked the water canal about twelve feet in front of them.
"We can go through the door in those bars," Parker could barely see the outline of a barred door, "or go through the gate on the side that opens to the overflow trench on the other side."
"Will it be dry?" She questioned, seriously unhappy at the thought of wading through the questionable stream in front of them.
"Nope. Chances are good that there's water being diverted through there at some point, regardless, and as soon as we trigger the gate, water from this ditch will flow through with us."
"Let's go straight, then." Parker sighed, grateful that she at least wasn't wearing anything expensive.
"Good." Jarod smiled, his features still capable of taking on that "little-boy-in-a-toy-store" expression at the drop of a hat. "I think the hospital's that way, and I want to take a look through it before we leave this town."
"Why?" Parker demanded, as much to take her mind off of the unpleasant sensation and smell of wading through debris clogged drain water as for curiosity.
"Even if Umbrella wasn't conducting secret research into this virus, which I think they were, the doctor's here must have been doing something to investigate it. I want all the data I can find to take with us."
The door, made of the same metal bars as the grate, but set on hinges to open, resisted being opened until Jarod shook the bars vigorously. Oxidized metal showered down from the rusting bars and the hinges finally moved with an agonized squeal. Parker winced, at the noise and at the thought of what the noise might attract. She winced again when Jarod closed the entrance behind them, producing the same tortured shriek of metal.
"Why'd you bother closing it?" She demanded sourly.
"You never know what it might keep out." He answered enigmatically. "Besides, even if no one's following us, I'd rather not leave a trail that's too easy to follow."
Parker withheld a response, being too busy scrambling up onto the concrete ledge running along this section of sewer. She trudged silently along behind Jarod, cursing Lyle, Umbrella, and the universe in general for the entire mess her life had suddenly become. Her leather boots felt slimy with excess moisture, her jeans slapped wetly against her legs, and the dampness made the cool air seem positively cold.
Jarod, of course, seemed unaffected by the miserable conditions, focusing entirely on the mystery of this disease. She had forgotten Jarod mentioning the familiarity of this entire situation, but Jarod was becoming obsessed with retrieving those particular memories and sorting them out. He still couldn't remember anything clearly, but he was sure he knew more about this virus than he remembered. Parker was relegated to the back of his mind while he sifted endlessly through the one brief flashback he'd recalled.
"It's too dangerous." The boy insisted stubbornly, glaring at the older man from his position huddled in on himself against the wall. He ignored the tremors shaking his frame and the cramps that already shot through his abdomen.
"I won't do anymore work on it." He repeated grimly, tightening his grip around his middle.
"You'll do what I tell you, boy." Raines rasped harshly.
"No! I won't." Jarod contradicted with remarkable boldness. It was the first time he'd ever defied anyone. "Nothing is worth the risk this virus represents. It's uncontrollable; nothing more than a killing device. Worse of all, it robs its victims of any sense of normalcy. All they care about is killing---killing anything and everything."
"All the more reason to develop an antidote."
"Don't you understand? It's a virus! It mutates! It's nearly impossible to develop an antidote for any virus, and this one mutates faster than even the common cold. You want the impossible."
Jarod bowed his head over his knees, feeling equally ill from the withdrawal symptoms and fear, but knowing that he'd let nothing sway his decision. The study of this organism had to be stopped, and the sample destroyed. He knew it was the only way to protect humanity in general.
"You'll pay for this defiance, Jarod. Do you hear me?" Raines vowed coldly. Jarod refused to look up, letting his continued silence answer the man.
"Very well. Escort him back to the infirmary. It's time he purged the narcotic from his system. It was a failure anyway." "Jarod!" Parker actually grabbed his elbow, physically shaking him from the memory. "Something is following us." She repeated, as he gradually surfaced from the memory of pain and despair.
She gestured behind them, and Jarod listened, hearing the splashing noise that had alerted Parker. Whatever it was, it was big, and traveling quickly. The fact that it made no effort to disguise its presence argued that it was dangerous enough that it didn't have to fear the mutations afflicting the city. In fact, it could very well be a mutation itself!
"Come on!" Jarod ordered, whirling and breaking into a brisk jog.
He had a feeling their only chance would be to find another door or a ladder before their pursuer caught up with them. The creature behind them roared, a mixture of a hiss and a squeal, but with a volume level that neither had ever heard from a normal creature. Jarod had an uneasy suspicion that it could tell that they were trying to escape it, and broke into an all out run.
"Jarod!" Parker pointed to the narrow opening to their left.
He had no idea where it might lead, but it was only large enough for one person at a time. Hoping that his suspicion that their hunter was large would prove to be correct, he waved Parker in ahead of him. Then he backed into the passage, his shotgun held ready to fire.
"There are stairs!" Parker called out a moment later.
"Get up them!" Jarod shouted urgently, catching a glimpse of their pursuer at last.
His shotgun dropped down and he edged quickly backwards as a reptilian eye, easily the size of a car tire, glared into their escape hole. Another alien bellow, loud enough to prompt Parker to clap her hands over her ears, announced its displeasure at being evaded. Jarod watched in amazement as the creature, so large that it barely fit into the drainage tunnel before him, swung it's scaly snout to slam into the opening of the service corridor.
Concrete chunks the size of dinner plates crumbled from the walls as the gargantuan alligator pounded its face against the narrow walls in a frenzy of destruction. Jarod, more terrified than he knew he could be, wedged himself around in the corridor, and ran for the stairs.
"GO!" He shouted to Parker as she hesitated before the metal door at the head of the stairs.
The door wasn't locked, fortunately, and the two of them spilled into the tiny room on the other side with no thought of zombies, Lickers, or any other horror but the one behind them.
"What was it?" Parker demanded, her eyes wide with fright.
"An alligator." Jarod replied grimly, his eyes searching the room for another door.
He wasn't about to assume that it couldn't batter its way after them-- -he wanted to put as much distance between tthem as humanly possible.
"An alligator?" Parker gasped disbelievingly.
"An alligator the size of three city buses." Jarod corrected, finally recognizing the room as storage area for the Parks Department. "And it's trying to follow us." He added, heading for the far side of the room.
On the other side of a row of lockers was another narrow corridor. Parker followed Jarod quickly as an impact tremor shook the floor. Jarod dispatched the three zombies in the next room with casual efficiency, no longer horrified by their existence. Compared to what they'd just encountered, the zombies were tame.
"Do you have any idea where we are?" Parker asked, sinking tiredly into a cushioned chair behind the single desk in the room.
Jarod peeked cautiously through the blinds out the picture window over the street, trying to match the buildings he saw to the map Jill had sketched for him.
"I'm not sure." He murmured, frowning at the two largest buildings.
Looking up, he spotted a giant clock on the top of the closest one, recognizing it finally as the "Old Clock Tower", a building Jill had mentioned. He swung his attention to the other building, larger and brand new in comparison, and identified it as the hospital that he'd hoped to explore.
"Yes." He told her, satisfaction coloring his voice. "We're only five blocks to the hospital, and it looks like a clear shot from this street to the emergency entrance."
"Jarod, I don't think it's a good idea for us to make any side trips at this point. We need to get out of here. Besides, won't there be even more---creatures there?" Parker objected.
"I have to, Parker." He told her, turning the full force of his attention and pleading brown eyes on her. "I'm involved in this somehow, I can feel it. I need to find out."
Parker's eyes narrowed and her brows drew together in a menacing frown. This was to counteract the strange melting sensation his beseeching expression brought to her insides. She knew she was right, damn it! This city was dangerous and they needed out of it now, not later. She couldn't believe her ears when she heard her voice answering.
"I'll give you thirty minutes in there, then we leave."
Was she insane, she wondered, or did she just harbor a death wish that she'd never previously noticed?
"An hour." Jarod countered, asking, not demanding. "I'll need at least that to check the major research areas."
"Forty-five minutes." Parker compromised. "And do you even know where these research areas are?"
"I should be able to figure it out. Hospitals tend to follow the same basic layouts---something like supermarkets." Jarod accepted her compromise, his eyes fairly blazing with relief.
Parker wasn't sure what to make of that relief. So what if he'd had a hand in the early exploration of the virus. She knew him well enough that he would never, not even when they were children, have willingly worked on something so universally lethal. One of these days he was going to have to forgive himself for the things the Centre had done with his research---he hadn't had any control over that, after all.
But you plan to take him back to all that? Her conscience jibed uncomfortably. You have to know what it would do to him to be forced to work for the Centre again. Hell, you know what Lyle did to him the last time. Can you really hand him over?
With the ease of long practice, Parker locked that reasonable voice back into its tiny compartment in her mind and focused on the task at hand.
"What approach do you want to take?" She asked him, looking over the street. Fortunately the stairs from the sewers had left them one story above street level, so they could see most of the street from their vantage point.
"I guess we'll have to just make a dash." Jarod answered doubtfully. "I don't see any real cover. Maybe we'll get lucky and the street will be empty."
A dog wandered slowly into view, moving with a strange stiff-legged grace.
"You don't get lucky," Parker informed him dryly. "You make it. Give me the magnum."
"What?" Jarod was understandably confused by her sudden order.
"It's more powerful than my berretta, and you have the shotgun. I want to pack some punch into my defense. Something about those dogs bothers me."
She nodded briefly at the five red and brown dogs stalking stiffly around the streets. He understood her misgivings when he realized that the red on them wasn't fur color, but that peculiar, raw-skin effect brought on by the virus in some victims.
"Yeah." He agreed, wondering why he hadn't thought of that himself. "In fact, I think we should eliminate them before we expose ourselves fully."
"And how do you propose to do that?" Parker demanded curiously.
"Bait." Jarod focused his intent eyes on her, taking on his "genius- at-work" persona as he explained. "I'm betting that the dogs will do the same as the zombies---home in on any living being in the area. One of us will have to draw them into a clear line of fire for the other."
"Are you insane?" Parker questioned incredulously. "That's suicide!"
"Not necessarily."
"Yes, necessarily." She countered flatly. "How the hell have you survived for four years without a keeper anyway?"
She pretended not to notice the faint hurt that flared in his eyes at her thoughtless words. His plan was suicidal, and she'd use any weapon in her arsenal to turn him away from it.
"Why don't we just go above them?" She asked, eyeing the line of wrecked cars appraisingly. "It would be slower, but if we keep to the line of cars along there, we'll be out of their reach. If they're as stupid as the zombies, they'll never think to jump up on the cars after us. Even if they do, we'll have a better shot at them from above."
"How to we get to the cars in the first place?" Jarod questioned reasonably. The cars were a good fifteen feet from the door that led out of this building to the street.
"In relays." Parker replied promptly, her security training popping the solution up in her mind without effort. "I'll go first, and you lay down a covering fire if any of them notice me. Then, when I'm up on the roof of the first car, I'll cover you while you make a break for it."
"I really don't like this plan." Jarod objected, quite mildly, considering that he had visions of Parker's savaged body dancing past his mind's eye.
"You got a better one?" She challenged, utterly unaware of his concern.
"No." He glowered, as if his failure to come up with a superior idea was all her fault, but offered no further complain as she led the way down the flight of stairs on the far wall of the room.
In the end, they didn't have to use the cars as a pathway to the hospital. Jarod, more frightened than he'd been in his life, managed to take out four of the dogs while Parker dashed for the first car. He didn't even wait for them to start for her, he just aimed and fired as she started her run. She picked off the other dog, and two more that were lying just out of sight around a slight bend, from her vantage point on the roof of the car.
"All clear." She grinned triumphantly as she jumped lightly down to the street beside him.
"Don't ever do that to me again." Jarod told her, still shaking with nerves.
"I didn't know you cared that much." Parker's attempt at levity fell somewhat short as the memory of past hurts leaked into her voice.
"I do." Jarod told her simply, unwilling to allow the pretense of disinterest to continue between them. "I always have. I just didn't know if you could care back, and I was afraid to find out."
Confronted with his naked honesty Parker felt the axis of her world tilt with the impact of emotion. Feelings she'd tried so hard to bury resurrected in moments, but she still didn't know what to do with them.
"I---" she looked away uncertainly, trying to think of what to say. "I care, Jarod. But I don't see any future in it. The Centre will win eventually. It always does."
The bleakness in her eyes told him more about her state of mind than even she knew.
"No, it doesn't." Jarod replied quietly. "And it won't. It'll never have me again, if I have to kill myself first, and it doesn't really have you---not if you don't let them."
"I don't know." She whispered, torn between hope and bare survival.
"Now isn't the time to make any decisions anyway." Jarod smiled crookedly, trying to ease some of the turmoil in her heart. "Let's worry about this after we're clear of the city."
"Yeah." Parker agreed quietly, but her face was contemplative.
Jarod knew that this particular situation, which offered only fates that were clearly worse than death, had finally opened up the shadow of a doubt in her mind. All he could do now was hope. Hope that they escaped this place and lived to really examine the possibilities. Hope that Parker wouldn't revert as soon as the danger passed. And hope for nameless things that he'd never even allowed himself to identify before, for fear that they too would be snatched from him.