Antarctica -Closed RP-

[IshtarPrince]

Dark, feral. A darting silhouette shifting through the shadowed passageways of what was once one of the most guarded and secure facilities in the world. Now however, ravaged by the deadly infection, it stood only a husk of it's former self; a mere collection of bolted doors, broken glass and diseased tissue. The corpses had already begun to reanimate and though they moved with relative slowness, the girl had seen them overwhelm with sheer numbers. They moved in packs, did these unholy progeny of science. Luckily for the girl, she was quick. Her feet were sure and her flexibility was one of her greatest assets. She was nimble enough to evade the clumsy movements of the infectious corpses even when they came at her in clumps. Now she sat perched on one of the ceiling rafters, feet dangling over at least a fifty foot drop to the floor where several of the zombies were mechanically devouring the mauled body of what used to be one of the last surviving researcher. His flesh was cold now, and the zombies were growing tired of it. They constantly scrabbled at the walls in efforts to get to the flowing blood they smelled above them. Useless. Kumi had no intention of moving. Not until they did anyhow. They didn't linger long. Their constant need for sustenance moved them reluctantly from the spot and they migrated towards the North East wing of the lab, leaving Kumi to climb with almost catlike sureness down from the rafters on into the desecrated remains of Lab No.5. She was careful to avoid the gleaming glass shards that decorated the floor and picked her way carefully to the remains of the dead researcher. Kumi's dark features betrayed nothing and her minty green eyes showed no sympathy for the lifeless man. The canker of science, that's what they were, fat spiders greedily spinning their webs wider and wider until they choked even themselves. Kumi put her bare foot on the main's shoulder and turned him over. He was still wearing a thick sealskin coat and heavy steel toed boots. Kumi gave them a hard look. Despite being shut up in this godforsaken facility for a majority of her life she wasn't stupid by any means. The elements were deadly and she'd never get out of this facility alive the way she was now. She glanced ruefully down at the stained hospital gown that had served in variance as her only clothing for the past twelve years of her life. So it was decided. Gingerly, so as not to touch the body if she didn't have too, she squatted down and untied the boots and removed the unfortunate man's coat and put them on herself. They nearly swallowed her whole, her body was so slight compared to his. The boots were annoyingly heavy and the hood came down over her eyes but they were built to defy the icy fingers of the Antarctic weather so she wore them. She wasn't alone though, there had been other creatures that had been let lose in the lab with her when the researcher had made a last valiant effort to save at least some of Umbrella's projects, herself being one of them. Kumi froze. Far away, there came the choked howl of one of the many infected animals that were also trapped inside the lab, and Kumi had no desire to stick around to see which one it was. Five minutes later, Lab No. 5 was devoid of life and Kumi was wrestling with one of the exit doors. The door was a large one, code operated and made of metal so busting it down by force was utterly out of the question. She cast furtively around in a supply closet for some sort of blunt object to attack the code box with and her long fingers closed around the icy metal of a crowbar. Backing triumphantly out of the closet her skin tingled and she could smell the sour reek of rotting flesh. Without even bothering to look over her shoulder she swung around with her newly acquired weapon and was rewarded with a satisfying wet thunk as the crowbar connected with the rubbery flesh of one of the zombies. Yanking the crowbar out of it's decaying body with a twist, she swung again, doing a swift head count. Only three, nothing she couldn't deal with. She swung again, taking off a chunk of the closest one's head as she did so, Kumi backed into the other room, still swinging like a melee. Crash! The crowbar came down on the code box. Once! Twice! A broken, festering hand grabbed at Kumi's neck and she pivoted around again, fighting off the creature as the iron-wrought door gave a mighty groan and opened with a blast of frozen air that stopped the breath dead in her lungs. The opened, exposed joints of the zombies began to freeze over almost instantly. The trio of them stumbled stupidly into the Arctic, their movements slow and jerky like puppets on severed strings. Even Kumi, wrapped as she was in the sealskin coat felt her body contract and immediately begin to numb. In all her life she'd never known such a bitter cold. Nevertheless, she pushed herself to start walking through the iced over snowbanks. Through the falling whiteness, she could spot the red marking flags. Automatically she followed them, leaving Umbrella's facility behind her. Time seemed to stop as she walked, following flag after flag. It seemed like they would just go on forever and though she didn't feel fear, a slight buildup of anxiety was beginning to well in the pit of her stomach. The snow in her eyes had almost blinded her but she managed to make out a shape in the distance. Another facility? Or was it the same one. No difference, she wouldn't last long in this weather an she knew it. Like some sort of abominable snow monster, she staggered towards it. Not Umbrella. No, this facility was alive. She heard some kind of alarm go off as she passed over the perimeter.

[Light Ice]

Here, within the great stretch of dark, had lain the world's first and only Joint-Operations Research Observatory. JORO had been constructed as the finest facility in the world. It stretched across acres of the iced over land-mass that was Eastern Antarctica within the coldest, most inhospitable stretch of buried mountain and continental glacier that the world had to offer. The facility was a concrete above-ground bunker segmented into wings and alpha-numeric coded passages. The laboratories flanked the central drilling chamber where geologists, like Curtis Hawkins, attempted to gather core samples of the earth beneath the ice.

The researchers arrived in the April of each year and departed just the same. Term of service was one year. Of his first, and mind his only year, Curtis had spent only four of those months. A rancher's son from Montana, Curtis was the facility's lone cowboy. He was a tall man, lean and country strong. He'd dark brown hair and pale eyes, a rough masculine cut to his features that could at their best be called ruggedly handsome. At their worst, when the light was not just right, they'd simply be rough. He was not a beautiful man. He wasn't brilliant either. He was simply serving as he must before he finished with his University and went back to his ranch better for it. Wealth, as it was, was hard to earn without a degree. His parents had never understood it. He was the first in his family to graduate.

They called him cowboy inside JORO because of the hat and boots he wore. Little pieces of home; Curtis had brought them instead of pictures. It was comfort they brought, not longing. Images of his girl or the wide open stretch of Montana's hills and mountains would have tortured him. And while he doubted he'd have cracked up, Curtis didn't look past his own pension for misery. And monotony, to Curtis, wasn't just misery but hell.

Hell itself.

Curtis was wearing his favorite blue jeans and his favorite flannel shirt when the perimeter alarm went off. He was wearing them because it was Friday and Saturday was the start of his ten days off duty. He was also wearing them because he only had seven sets of clothes and he had arrived wearing them, on a Friday. There was a curse he'd make later about the alarm going off, a stark and ugly word that flew from his mouth even as the walkie talkie beside him crackled to life.

"Fuck me." He said.

"Curtis, check it. Dah?" It was one of the Russians. Mikhail. An older man who was watching the Western Security Grid tonight. They had done many shifts together, sometimes playing chess through the walkie-talkie until the sun rose and they slunk off to bed. Or more frequently, as of late, slunk off to Mikhail's room to get piss drunk on the home-distilled booze he'd made in Laboratory Blue. Mikhail called it vodka. Curtis called it Steer Piss.

The results were the same.

"Dah, Mikhail. You god damned Rooskie son of a bitch." He groaned, straightening to take his coat.

"Dress warm, comrade." Came the sly voice at the other end.

"Warm my ass. There is no such thing as warm. Fucking penguins."

An Emperor, he thought. They stumbled over the perimeter fence from time to time and were royal pains in his ass. Curtis pulled on his pull-over leggings, pushed his thermal boot covers over his cowboy boots, and slung his parka on. He took sun goggles for good measure, and gloves. Out there, where it was sometimes over a hundred degrees below zero, you had about two minutes before flesh froze through. Sometimes less depending on your body's make-up. Not a real danger on a quick run like this, but he'd spend the rest of his trip with a tremor. That was certain. It took a hell of a long time to warm up.

The last sound he heard on the walkie was Mikhail's laughter. And then he was gone, passing through the small security cage and into the corridor. He secured the interior door, and then opened the vault-like exterior door. All at once it hit him, a blast of cold so sharp that it took his breath. He remained in the doorway, waiting for it to return before he ventured further. The wind was sharp, but not too sharp. It kicked up the snow so he couldn't see past the first flag infront of him.

He'd gotten three flags in when he saw the dark shape staggering on the horizon, swaying back and forth as it took stuttered steps. Another flag and he saw it was a person, poorly under dressed, shambling along the snow crest. It swayed left against a stiff wind, then right as it compensated, before finally falling to its knees. The massive seal-skin coat that covered it dusted thickly with snow.

Curtis didn't think, he moved. His long strides crossed the hard-pack until he reached it, only then could he tell she was a girl. She was grey, a color he'd never heard in frostbite descriptions, but it was pale and wrong for life. She hardly weighed anything, he lifted her, his arms beneath her. Terrified she was dead, Curtis ran.

A minute later he was through the door, locking it after him. His voice raising as he slapped the internal com system and pushed into the room's interior. She was so slight, a sleek-figured girl. She couldn't have been twenty, not a day's over. And she'd been beautiful before the cold took her.

"Mikhail!" He shouted, alarmed at how deeply scared he sounded.

"What is it?" Mikhail was not laughing now.

"A girl. It was a fucking girl. Get down here and bring blankets. Christ, she's alive. I can feel her breathing."

Shedding his other coat, Curtis laid it over her. His powerful hands turned from holding her to laying her out along the floor where it was dry, right infront of one of the JORO's heat returns for the Eastern Hall. Then he was briskly rubbing her slender arms beneath the pile of coats, trying to warm her. Her skin was like ice to the touch, and the color. It had softened, become almost pretty, but was grey all the same.

And then the alarm went off again.

Curtis looked up, his brow arcing sharply, only to find it was on the Western entrance. The walkie talkie sputtered to life.

"Curtis!"

"Penguin?" He hoped. God he hoped. Had a helicopter tried to get here? Had it crashed in the cold?

"A man, I see him on the video. I have to get him. Stay with her."

"Get him. Christ, what's going on?" He asked, but Mikhail didn't answer. He was already gone.

Curtis remained with the girl, scooping her into his arms, trying to gently shake her awake. His strong hands wrapped up her lithe waist, pulled her against the rugged stretch of him as he wrapped the coats about her like blankets. Each subtle shake of his hands had her head lolling gently side to side. It was only then he really saw how pretty she was, and how dark her hair. And it was only then that she startled, eyes shooting wide. Curtis startled worse. She scared him half to death.

[IshtarPrince]

Hazed vision and the soft slur of meaningless words. The dulled noises and moving splashes of color were equivalent of a drugged dream and seemed of little to no importance; indeed Kumi couldn't even bring her thoughts to string a coherent idea together. Everything was fine. The choking cold and pound of the bitter wind against her no longer even caused her pain. It was as if she was merely an indifferent bystander watching with mild interest as her body crumpled to the frozen, white ground in a flurry of icy flakes. She felt a slight pressure against her body and the sound of a harsh male voice in the fading distance and then all of a sudden came the most unpleasant jolt of pain. Kumi's body gave a little spasm as it made the transition from the deadly Antarctic elements to the warmth of the new facilities heater. Awareness flooded back to her as a thousand white hot needles seemed to pierce her body and the girl stiffened and opened her eyes, her teeth grinding from the crippling jolt of agony.

A man?

Alive.

Not one of the putrid dead things that roamed the infected facilty.

Thanks to the heavy quantity of drugs pumped into her body over the many years she'd been a daughter of Umbrella Kumi was blessed with a rather quick time span for recovery and despite the pain of her thawing body, already she was regaining her strength. Without even stopping to size up her situation Kumi's hand flashed out with the speed and accuracy of a striking serpent and her thin fingers closed around the handle of a discarded hammer, no doubt left by some careless worker in charge of maintaining the heater and abandoned in the excitement of the nights transpiring events. The sharp iron prongs of the back of the hammer pressed non to gently against the side of Curtis' head as Kumi twisted lithely from his grip with a wiry strength surprising for someone of her build. She shook off the coat that constricted her movements and her frosted mint colored eyes narrowed into suspicious slits.

"Qui sont vous?" She asked, her voice was cracked from the time in the cold but there was no doubt that she wasn't playing around. As she she dropped the heavy sealskin jacket to the floor with her free hand her body gave another small shudder as it adjusted it's temperature.


A sprinkle of goosebumps coupled with a sheen of sweat coated her body like a glaze but Kumi preferred the chilly freedom of her body clad in her off-white hospital gown to the nauseating heat of the bulky, suffocating coat now that they were out of the weather. Now that her blood was recirculating she was feeling far more tense and alive with the raw energy adrenaline. Images of the zombified corpses were still marching across her minds eye and though her outer exterior was steel toughness, her heart was beating as fast as the frantic fluttering wings of a trapped bird and her eyes were bright with the mad fear of a cornered beast.


"Qui sont vous. Quel est cet endroit?" She asked again, speaking in French. The confused look on his face caught her off guard and she realized that he couldn't understand what she was saying. Not French. English then perhaps?

The hammer dug into his temple and her free hand came up to his neck, icy fingers gripping lightly at his throat. Kumi leaned forwards, her mouth mere centimeters from his forehead.

"Who are you?" there was the whisper of snarl in her subtle tone. "What is this place? Is this another Umbrella faction?"

[Light Ice]

She was fast. Damned fast. The only thing that he could think of was the way a rattlesnake lashed out, as though it'd kept itself on a spring. That was much the way she moved, all at once, committing herself entirely to the action in an instant. He felt small fingers at the thick cord of his throat and the hard dig of the hammer's iron claws into the soft flesh at his temple. There was no danger in that, not in any real sense. But if she swung it and buried a couple inches of those claws into his head it'd be lights out, goodnight, and when Mikhail or anyone else found him in the hall he bet his legs and arms would still be twitching something fierce.

Stretching a hand he reached up, sliding his palm between the hammer's neck and his head, gently pushing it aside. She didn't fight him, not for long. It yielded and fell away, hesitantly to her side. It wasn't hard to imagine her braining him with it. Not hard at all. It was enough to put a chill up his spine.

"Umbrella?"

Umbrella Corporation?

Umbrella hadn't been mentioned in years, certainly not in the Antarctic. They'd found the facility of course, in summer, half-buried a few hundred yards away. Most of it was under the ice but all of it was supposed to be abandoned. And yet here she was, right infront of him, looking half wild in what amounted to a hospital gown.

The walkie-talkie burst static. He heard Mikhail's voice shortly after.

"Cowboy! You there?"

His eyes never left the girl. But he answered. "Yeah, I am."

"Careful. Mine up and bit me and took off into the building. Seemed delirious. Can't imagine how he was alive. No parka or nothing." Mikhail said.

"You don't say." Curtis replied, his eyes tracking over the girl. If only Mikhail had warned him a minute or so earlier. "Listen, Mikhail, I've got to see to mine. Go rustle yours down."

"Alright, Comrade." The radio spat more static before it clicked off.

His eyes tracked from the girl's hammer to her face, the tight line of her lips. It'd have been a snarl, a real snarl, had it not been for the fact she was so young and so damned pretty. None of it made any good sense, not as far as Curtis could tell. She seemed to tense under his stare and lifted the hammer some. It was enough.

"I'm Curtis. This is a geological observation station. The only Umbrella station is east of us, back where you'd been walking from. But it's abandoned." He felt his body finally growing awake, finally getting wise to the situation. For the first time he felt that if she took a swing at him he'd be ready for her.

[IshtarPrince]

This man was not like the researchers. Or at least he wasn't like any that she'd ever come across. He was was built strongly, a trait uncommon to the frail, basement-dwelling city slickers with their college educations and their balding heads. Nor was he like her father; crouched, weak. He was a mere shadow to her recollections now but she still remembered how his back was constantly bent from bowing and scraping, the way he would take off his round glasses and clean them whenever he was upset or nervous.

No, this man was different from anything she could remember seeing. The closest he came in comparison were the dock workers she'd glimpsed from her confinement on the trip over from Germany years ago on the steamer ship.
As he pushed aside the hand that threatened him with the hammer her body grew rigid, ready to swing at him if he attacked; all the same she felt a glimmer of respect for him. For his fearlessness.

The crackle of the walkie-talkie startled her out of her reverie and drew her attention from the man. Her eyes narrowed as she listened in on their brief exchange of words with dark curiosity.
The man said he'd been bitten and that the straggling man had been acting rabid, floundering around in the snow like a sick animal.

Bitten?

No way he could logically be alive.

Only the those infected from the lab behaved like that as far as Kumi knew. She'd watched it start. Watched it spread slowly, the thin tendrils of insanity grasping at the bodies of the greedy, slaloming researchers of Umbrella and it's corrupt work.

As the communicative equipment gave a final sputter of static and clicked off Kumi hoisted the hammer defensively, her hand gripping it so fiercely her knuckles began to whiten.

"That was not a man," she said with doubtless certainty. She hefted her stolen tool and straitened up, removing her hand from his throat and looked over her shoulder, scanning the surroundings. She turned back to him, backing up a few steps, even as he explained that this facility was different from Umbrella.

None of the mattered though.

This place would be infected as well. It would be just like before.
Kumi glanced down at the man and made a quick decision. She'd never been good at communicating, mostly because it had never really been a requirement. There was no way she would be able to convince this man that his workplace was in danger of a zombie infection, she thought. No way.

So she ran.

Bolted for the exit, still gripping the hammer.

[Light Ice]

"That was not a man."

She was mad. Had to be. Curtis looked hard into her softly-featured face and searched for it, searched for the glaze in her eyes. He searched and found nothing but a cold intelligence and a stark, sudden fear. It flickered through her in a decisive instant before she sprang, every lithe muscle detonating in a surge of primal motive. Escape, the most natural of fight or flight, embraced in the flickering lights of the corridor by a girl who couldn't have escaped her teens by a year at the very most. Escape, embraced in calculated necessity, into a cold that would kill her in moments.

Flash freezing was a horror that Curtis had been forced to witness once, forced for his own benefit he had been told, though he felt it was less for him and more for jokesters like Mikhail. One of the men that had left had waited at the door, let them file in before he told them to always wear gear. And then he'd tossed the cat into the cold, into air colder than liquid nitrogen. It was solid when it hit the snow, bounced once on the hard pack and then cracked. The horror wasn't in the animal's death, as awful as it was, but in the brutal swiftness of it. There was no swaggering sleep of hypothermia, no staggered strides or yowls of protest. There was oblivion. Cold, merciless oblivion.

She'd die in that brutal instant somewhere between her tenth or eleventh step, when the ice froze sharp from her bare fingers and ran along every vein until they reached her brain and heart and locked them up as effectively as concrete.

She would be that cat.

There had been as little warning to him now as there was then, when that awful man had flung that poor kitten into the Antarctic winds. She hadn't said a word to her intention, simply detonated in a sudden hard flurry of movement. Curtis had only one chance and he took it, reached with his long arm and caught her by the hair. There'd be a time to apologize for that later, to regret the pain it'd surely bring the girl. For now there was only the sudden screech as her head jerked back ferociously and the pain lit along her scalp. The force nearly pulled his powerful arm from the socket. She raised both hands came to her head, one still holding the hammer in her slender fingers, before she was lashing out at him.

The empty hand clawed at his shoulder and arm, and he'd wear the semi-circle welts where her nails bit down for days. The other swung the hammer. It arced towards him at a flat, backward angle. Curtis leaned back, nearly let her go, and felt it whistle past his face. A half-second late and she'd have knocked his jaw a half-foot towards the left-side of his face. She tried to arc it back, claws first this time. Stretching back far, he felt her lean body recline to make up the ground.

She'd have killed him had his other hand not come up, a rough forearm taking her elbow and slamming down into it. The blow would have buried more than a few inches of the hammer's claw into his skull and the force of it would have destroyed what his mother felt was a very handsome face. But he'd trapped the arm enough that the hammer's claw skipped hard against his shoulder, drawing blood and bruising him, and missed killing him.

She struggled hard, and he fought her, tightening his arms about her, trapping her lissome frame against his body. Aware of how tiny she was, how surprisingly strong, and how suddenly ferocious she'd been. He grimaced as the hammer drove again and again into his shoulder, unable to gain enough force to damage him badly (he hoped), but enough to send a trembling ache through him.

"Please stop." He breathed against her ear, closing his knees when one of her booted feet arced back in an effort to find his groin. She glanced off his shin instead. The pain flared white-hot through his nerves. It was a small miracle he didn't let go.

The hammer thudded against his shoulder again, and this time the pain was sharp, pointed. She'd struck the small punctures where the claw had hit him before.

"You'll die out there! There's nothing for a hundred miles!" He breathed. Her struggling softened some.

"We have to get out!" She shrieked suddenly. The hammer seemed to stop its swinging.

He was glad for that. Glad it wasn't slamming into his shoulder anymore. But mostly, more than anything, Curtis Hawkins was scared to death. The girl had appeared out of nowhere, emerged from the damned snow, and by all rights should be dead. Not only dead, but frozen solid. This girl, this tiny and pretty young woman, should be trembling on the floor in a state of hypothermic shock. Curtis had no idea what was going on, only that none of it made any good sense and that if he wasn't careful this woman was going to knock his head clean off.

[IshtarPrince]

As expected, he reacted as though she'd lost her mind.

Trapped as she was against his steady body with her leg caught between his knees and her arms pinned in his iron grip, she'd never felt quite so utterly vulnerable before in her life, and her entire existence had been about constriction and restraint. This time however, the nightmarish fate of the infection, the threat of the horrific virus taking hold was a maddening fear that clouded the senses and cloaked reason in gray cobwebs. Mad panic was throbbing through her veins like fire, smoking out everything else but the desire to flee from the perversion of the natural balance.

Her breathing came out in quick, sharp gasps as she squirmed, attempting to free herself. Better to let the blood stop and the flesh harden into stone then allow the body to be reduced to a mindless mass of savage, unsated hunger. Her scalp ached thanks to his unexpected arrest of her escape. She tugged fruitlessly at him but there was no getting around that he was far more powerful then she was. She opened her hand and let the hammer fall to the floor with a load clanger.

Slow down the breathing.

In. Out. In. Out.

One, two, three.


"You don't understand," she whispered against his neck. "You don't understand; that man was not a man. Check out your friend, have him examined, he is already infected. Soon he will get sick and then he will get violent." Any pretense of rough ferocity was discarded at this point and Kumi was just a frightened young girl. She could feel herself trembling against him, the only clues to her terror. Kumi had never learned to express herself in words. There was never room for emotional expression in the lab.

One last weak tug and she stopped fighting him and pulled her head back to look at him imploringly, her eyes begged him to believe her. She wasn't crazy. She was a survivor. She wanted to live.

"Please..." Even she despised the pathetic desperate tone that carried over in the plead. Kumi had gotten by most of her life without asking for things. What things were there to ask for? She knew nothing else. She wanted nothing until now. "Please check him, this isn't a trick, I came from the Umbrella facilty under the ice. They were there. Some of them must have come out in search of food. They're hungry. Forever hungry."

[Light Ice]

He heard her, every word. All at once her eyes were stark and bold on his, glistened with the remnants of panic and the fresh sheen of desperation. What she was saying was madness, Curtis knew it. It echoed that way in the very fiber of his being. But the -way- she was saying it was convincing, damned so. He felt a hard chill run through him, nose to toes, the kind that curled up your fingers and strung at your heart hard enough that the tremors of it resounded long after it'd passed. Curtis was terrified. This was all very, very wrong.

But she had relented to him, let go of the hammer. And while she may be out of her mind, may be crazy as hell, he'd not suffer her an indignity that could be so easily avoided. She needed warmth, proper clothes. She needed a moment to gather herself. And mostly, more than anything, she needed to see that Mikhail was fine.

"I don't believe you." He said. Curtis wouldn't lie. "But that doesn't mean we won't check it out together. You've scared me half to death. Let's get you some clothes and then we'll go together, alright?"

He didn't wait for her, he simply helped her to her feet. Around her waist his rugged arm circled, held there as he gently lifted her until she took her own wait. And while Curtis didn't release her entirely, he loosened that embrace until only his hand lingered high on her back. She followed, reluctant at first, until at last they were moving together.

The facility's halls turned from the subtle, rounded entrance chamber to a more open, squared corridor. They were cut in steel-reinforced concrete, the walls lined with pipes that served to circulate heat throughout the massive complex. It wasn't water, steam, or air that pushed through the three-inch black polymer pipes but a semi-viscous liquid chemical compound designed to run hot. The best that the United governments involved had to offer.

Everything was lit in soft yellowed lights, not white. A small mercy.

They walked until they passed the corridor into Curtis' barracks room. There were two cots, one for Mikhail and the other for him. He moved to Mikhail's locker. The Russian man was smaller than Curtis, and he found a heavy sweatshirt and a long-sleeved cotton undershirt and handed it to her. He gestured to the small bathroom stall.

"Throw those on. On the way to the West Entrance we'll stop by Margaret's room and get you a pair of jeans or something. Some socks. What's your name?"

[IshtarPrince]

Her breath caught as she read the look on his face, the almost pitying mistrust. He thought she was mad. The way he looked at her was almost worse then the understanding that the virus was about to outbreak in this facility as well. She hadn't realized how much she'd been counting on him to believe her and she felt shattered as he spoke.

"I don't believe you."

Her shoulders sagged and she seemed to wilt, the fight lapsing back from her like the withdrawing tide. No resisting. No arguments. She meekly allowed him to guide her down the hallway to the small, slightly sour-scented room and she stood by while he dug out a thick black sweatshirt and handed it to her. It was soft and warm and smelled like cigarette smoke and something else she couldn't put a finger on.

"My name?" Such a simple question but it was one she couldn't remember being asked before. With a slight hesitation she tipped her head and regarded him with shrewd curiosity. "It's Kumi. Leben. Kumi Leben. Case Study Number 223. And your name is Curtis. Curtis Cowboy."

She didn't wait for a reply from him nor did she notice the bemused look on his face, but coily accepted both articles of clothing and withdrew into the tiny bathroom without looking back. Once inside she spent a good long minute leaning up against the door, going over the events of the past 48 hours in her head. No matter what Curtis believed, she knew it was only a matter of time before his friend started to get sick and then the virus would spread like wildfire.Her fingernails scraped against the door as her hands tensed and she went to the mirror, examining her reflection. Kumi had never been vain, and there had been few times in her life when she'd felt shame for the peculiar pigment of her skin, but now was one of those times. If she looked like him, would he have listened her? It didn't matter. As soon as she got a chance she would slip away and snag some gear and make for the nearest checkpoint. She knew from the map that had been hanging in the lab that they were dotted all along the coast, though they were uninhabited.

"Ssst,' she hissed in disgust and undid the buttons of her hospital gown and let it pool around her feet. On her left arm was a minuscule tattoo depicting her file number.

223.

She pulled on the undershirt, it was tight, unlike the hospital gown and clung to the curves of her body and went down to a bit above her knees. The sweatshirt was deliciously warm and swallowed her up, making her look like an ash-covered snowman with twig legs sprouting from the bottom. Sliding opened the bathroom door, Kumi looked Curtis right in the eye with a newborn fierceness.

"Take me to your friend; you'll see I'm not crazy. He should be feeling a bit nausious about now."

[Light Ice]

The door closed. Curtis was disturbed at the image that flickered first through his mind. The vision of a sleek-figured girl dragging the soft cotton of that undershirt over her body, her breasts stretching the fabric out across the middle. His body reacted, warming, a knot wrenching itself in his belly. Had it been so long that it was that easy? He reckoned it had been. He reckoned that being scared out of his wits wouldn't be enough to keep him from noticing the girl. It was dangerous and stupid to let it carry on in his head, so Curtis turned his back to the door. The sounds inside muffled by his own thoughts as he stepped towards his bed.

Could she be right?

He could remember the conversations he'd had in class, arguing gently with friends who had become believers of the undead conspiracy theories. It'd always seemed so outrageous to him. It wasn't that he believed Umbrella innocent, he did not. But to bring the dead to life, to raise zombies, was something impossible to consider. But here was this girl with slate-colored skin, sleek-bodied, who had the look of a dame not a survivor. She shouldn't have survived the cold. She shouldn't have made it here. And now that she was she was babbling, just straight ranting about what could only be the same damned thing.

Curtis didn't believe her, but she'd scared him. She'd scared him enough that he bent over his bunk and found the wooden box beneath it. She'd scared him so bad that he took the holster from inside and slung it over his arms, putting it under his left arm where his jacket would conceal it. The holster's thick straps held thick, heavy brass cartridges. He found his Revolver in the box, looked into the chambers in the cylinder to make sure it was loaded, and pushed it into the holster. The weight didn't make him feel any safer. It just made him feel like a fool. The fact he took two of the ten boxes of cartridges and pushed them into the interior jacket pockets made him feel worse.

He reconciled his own paranoia with the image of a snow-crazed man running through the facility. Mikhail had said the man had attacked him. And Kumi, which Curtis had nearly forgotten to note as a strange name, had nearly debrained him with his own hammer. Aside from the insanity that they seemed to believe, they may be dangerous enough.

Content with his own explanation, Curtis settled.

When she appeared, he turned to face her. She was beautiful. She looked more so without the unnatural smock of the hospital gown. Her skin wasn't quite as pale, it'd darkened, and that favored the tone of it. Her legs were long and lean, small feet and well-turned ankles. She'd dark hair and soft eyes. She was beautiful.

But it still didn't explain how the hell she had gotten here.

Curtis was briefly aware he hadn't shaved this week.

"I'm Curtis Hawkins. They just call me cowboy." He started, but she was moving towards the door. He was aware her hips were swaying, and then scolded himself again.

She didn't answer him.

"And I know you want me to believe you."

He reached out before he finished, gently hooking her elbow with his strong hand.

"But don't say that about Mikhail." He said.

She softened some, just a hint, before she gently shook his arm off. He lead her, but she didn't linger behind him much. By any account she kept directly beside him, effortless in her movements. She was damned fast, and it wasn't just in the wild state of earlier. He could easily see this girl running circles around him if she'd the means to. His eyes tracked through the halls. Everyone was asleep. He'd wake them after they found Mikhail.

Weaving through the corridors, she suddenly froze. Curtis didn't know why at first, he turned to protest, until he saw it. On the floor, he'd stepped right over it, was a small pool of what looked like blood. He bent some, his corded thighs flexing to support his weight in a feral crouch, and touched his index finger to the pool. It was warm. There was too much here to be from a cut. It streaked further westward, and up one wall. He'd only seen that pattern when he winged a Pronghorn pretty good while hunting. There were no footprints, and the there was no doubt when he lifted his finger that it was blood on the end.

He wiped it away on his jeans and stood up, his eyes ticking to Kumi. There wasn't just triumph in her features, but terror.

"Come on." He said. And abruptly backtracked. He wasn't aware that he was gritting his teeth until they were at a small door.

They went inside, it was empty. One small bunk. The benefit of Margaret being a four-term veteran of JORO. Her clothes were strewn about the room, save for a locker where the clean ones had been folded and stuck. He gestured towards Kumi, and then the bathroom.

"She'll understand. Pick what you want."

She stood, staring at him for a long while, before she moved to comply. Curtis felt the knot in his gut return, different now. He hardly noticed when the hem of the sweatshirt pulled up as she stepped towards the dresser, revealing the soft curve of her backside's cheeks. His eyes had strayed towards the door into the hall, and his mind had turned inward. The terror was thick in him now, ice around his heart. His focus on the moment sharpening in a way it'd only had once before, back when Evan Kellar had got his hand caught in a bailer. Curtis had pulled him from the thing without blinking an eye, wrapped the stump of his wrist to confine the jets of arterial spray, and called 911 without a moment's hesitation. Later, when Evan asked him of it, Curtis had said he'd simply felt cold all over. The way jumping in a cold pool shocked you to alertness.

He felt that way now.

[IshtarPrince]

The pit of Kumi's stomach was knotted with anxiety and she felt sick with cold fear. Beneath the heavy sweat-jacket her body was slick with an icy sweat and the undershirt stuck to her like a second skin. She didn't want to alarm Curtis with the information that the virus was already in full effect; though by the look of him, she guessed he was already pretty spooked. Soon enough he'd catch on, the zombies were hunters, as clumsy as they were it was suicide to underestimate them. They could tap into astonishing quickness if given the chance and this particular breed of the virus worked with frightening swiftness. Kumi estimated that under a couple of hours the whole place could become infected.

The bathroom smelled of chalk and french perfume, and Kumi didn't even bother going in there. Modesty wasn't exactly a high priority of hers, indeed she barely knew the meaning of the word. She'd been pawed and handled by Umbrella's researchers her whole life. She pulled on the jeans and zipped them up, unused to wearing such tight things around her legs. Stretching out, she rotated one leg at a time, moving her joints a little, testing them out and decided that they wouldn't impede her movement too drastically.

"Mikhail is no longer himself," she told him matter of factly, without looking up. She checked herself in the tiny locker room mirror and pulled down the sleeve of the jacket to be sure her tattoo was hidden from sight.

Brutal honesty. No room for sympathy. She had never been attached to anyone so she couldn't empathize with him even if she'd tried.

Satisfied, she stalked over to him, ears straining for any sounds. Her hand descended on his wrist and her fingers curled with earnest pleading. "Curtis," her voice caught and she looked up at him. "Come with me please. This please is a death trap. You believe me now don't you?"
Despite the bloody puddle they'd come across on the floor, the cowboy still looked incredulous. Who could blame him, the concept was fantastically horrific.

A rustle of movement echoed in the empty halls and Kumi moved with astonishing speed, reacting almost without thinking. There was a deafening crash from above as a portion of the ceiling collapsed, sending plaster raining down. A blurred, discolored body landed on the floor with a sickening crunch and lunged to it's feet, head craned forward, foam flecked lips reduced to bloody scabs. It had been a woman once, but the graying skin and blistered face made her nearly unrecognizable.

Thwack!

A folded metal chair hit the woman on the side of her neck, twisting her head at a nintey degree angle. Surprisingly, she didn't fall, only staggered to keep her balance and clawed at the splintered bone and tissue poking through the skin, jaws still working as though she were chewing slobber dribbling down her broken throat. Kumi dropped the chair and threw herself against the cowboy.

"Curtis!" She screamed in his face, nails digging sharply into his arms as she tried to convey the urgency at this bizarre twist of events.

[Light Ice]

The ceiling gave, and there was dust and debris. Curtis had staggered back, forced to as the drywall and concrete filled the air infront of his face and choked his vision to blindness. He was still pawing the grit from his eyes when her sleek body collided into him, giving him a brief sensation of warmth against the chill that had risen through his body. He'd heard the sounds, the awful sounds, and the shrieks.

"Curtis?!" She shrieked again, her hand drumming against his muscled belly.

He drew the revolver from beneath his jacket, the large-framed revolver leveled lazily towards on what was infront of him. The tattered flesh along its skull was blistered, and peeled back from a blow. It couldn't have been alive. His mind couldn't process what his eyes were seeing, a walking corpse. It was impossible. She'd not been lying. They were here.

For a moment he hesitated, narrowing his red-rimmed eyes on the collar of her jacket. He was trying to see if he knew her. The wounds, the great blistered and peeling flesh upon her face, otherwise obscuring her to him. She lurched closer, moving on a broken foot. It dragged behind her at an awkward angle, smearing the puddle of blood that a moment before Curtis had been bent over.

"CURTIS?!" Kumi again. It snapped him from his paralysis.

He fired. The revolver's roar had always been considerable outside. Inside, however, it was deafening. But in his lack of focus he'd missed, and instead of blowing the woman's head clean off he took a grapefruit sized chunk out of the concrete wall behind her. She took another broken step forward.

Curtis fired again, aware that Kumi was now curled against him with her small hands clasped over her ears, her eyes pinched shut. He allowed her the shelter, and he didn't miss again. The Ruger roared a second time, beating thunder into the hall and spitting its massive bullet. Flames licked the barrel of the massive revolver and the round put out one of the woman's pale, dead eyes. The back of her head detonated outwards down the hall in a spray of blood, bone, and brain matter. Her scalp flapped sloppily and she buckled, keeling backwards to fall heavily in the hall.

As if on command a scream ripped off to their left. Curtis wheeled, found nothing, and promptly hauled Kumi to her feet. His rugged arm hooked beneath her own, hand wrapping just beneath her firm breasts. Twenty minutes ago and he'd have been aware just how fine her figure was, how sleek and feminine she felt in his arm. Now, there was only the urgency of the moment. He all but pulled her past the corpse, not checking it now, towards the Western Exit Corridor and Mikhail. Curtis feared the worst. He feared Kumi had been right about Mikhail.

But he had to see for himself. He just had to.

She began to pull from him some, as if to silently disagree once she realized what he was doing.

"I have to see." He said. He didn't release her. She didn't fight him, either. "I just have to see."

---------------------------

But they didn't see the worst of it. How the creature that had ran into the facility had killed Ryan Christophe in his bunk while he slept, tearing the Frenchman's throat out with half-fractured teeth. He was still dining on the blonde, handsome man when Ryan reanimated. His mind was gone, plain gone, but the hunger was there. A very real and unrelenting hunger. He and the battered man that had just been munching on his waist had leapt upon the screaming form of Philipe, his bunkmate, as he emerged from the bathroom.

It was his shriek that Kumi and Curtis heard.

While elsewhere in the facilty men and women gathered together, rubbing sleep from their eyes and trying to make sense of the sounds coming from nearby dormitories. The panic would start soon. Damned soon.

[IshtarPrince]

Clinging to Curtis's arm as he lifted her, Kumi didn't let go of him even as he turned to find his comrade, to see the full extent of the horror for himself, though she silently thought him very rash. Still she followed him, forsaking the law of every man for himself. He was strong and he was capable; he kept his head in startling situations and that gun of his was effective against these horrors. Her arms snaked around his neck and she shifted in his grip, her body pressing up against his toned chest and her mind fluttered in insane amusement. He certainly wasn't like any man she'd come across before and she rather liked the way he felt. So intriguing.

The scream frightened her. It was the howl of a man staring down the face of the devil himself.

No escape. No redemption.

She kicked a little, silently demanding to be put down and he complied wordlessly, barely even looking at her. Kumi got the feeling he was even more horrified by this nightmare then she was. Woe to the man who has everything to lose.

The Western Exit Corridor was a wreck. Their first clue of the sickening events that had transpired there was the bitter frozen air that hit them like a solid wall. Kumi skidded to a stop behind Curtis, her breath catching viciously as they were enveloped in the icy embrace of the Antarctic wind. Reluctantly, Kumi followed after the horrified cowboy, though far more cautiously. The exit door was opened. Not all the way, but a good foot and a half; the wall around the door was already sheeted in a thick frosted coat. There was a frozen smear of crimson on the floor, a virtual map of events.

Here was where the wounded Russian had fallen, overcome with a wave of vapid dizziness and the lumpy brown puddle was where he had retched up the contents of his stomach onto the floor. He must have staggered over to the wall, confused and unable to think clearly and collapsed against the supply closet door. After that, who knew. There was no sign of the body and Kumi had a sinking feeling that someone had tried to help him and was bitten for his troubles and so the infection spread. She looked longingly at the exit, her memory recalling perfectly the details of the map, the route to the checkpoints and to safety. Even the zombies wouldn't last long out in the snow. Sooner or later, blundering about as they did they would freeze to death, their joints hardening and there motor skills failing them completely. Hugging herself and shivering in the cold, she watched Curtis pace the room, following in his friend's final moments as they lay, marked out here so brutally on the walls and floor of the room.

It was tragically cruel, the way fate chose to deal it's cards. Even as sheltered as she was, the girl could sense his loss and she felt bad for him. A childlike desire to cheer him up blossomed inside, but she didn't know what she could possibly say in this situation, so she kept her silence, arms crossed in front of her, eyes watching sadly.

Elsewhere, the small band of undead were multiplying with terrifying speed. This particular form of the T- virus worked quickly, breaking down the immune system and reanimating the dead cells in a matter of minutes. The residents of JORO were caught pathetically unaware; they didn't have a chance. The more the survivors grouped together the faster the zombies advanced, ganging up on them mercilessly drawn with the bodily heat and driven into a frenzy at the scent of living flesh. Those who tried reaching out to their dead comrades were instantly set upon by their infected friends and mutilated. It took only one corpse splashing through the water main to taint the water, carrying the disease into the very life force of the facility. Even those who had wisely barricaded themselves in secure rooms began to show signs of the sickness and they turned on their mates, who were now trapped in their own graveyards. Irrational panic was widespread and there was more then one suicide.

[Light Ice]

Out of some thoughtless sense of habit he had closed the exterior door, leaned and pushed with his country-strong body until it'd sealed. For his efforts he'd caught a chill, a stark one. It went unnoticed against the coarse tremble of fear that had taken his spine and shed through him. He saw, of course, what she saw. The blood, the smeared bootprints and overturned chair. Someone had fought here. Some had died here. Mikhail was dead.

The realization, once voiced, struck him with ferocious force. Right to the core the tragedy had sunk in, one terrible moment. Already he felt the absence of his friend with acute, pained clarity.

But the reality of the moment was right infront of him. The western exit corridor was a long, chasmic dead-end where they were more or less sitting ducks. She was standing rigid, so he reached for her. There was no doubt right now she'd more a clear sense of action than he did, but it wasn't for her benefit. The feel of her sleek weight against the rugged stretch of his forearm helped draw him from the haze of the moment. It brought him quickly to the moment at hand. It helped him regain himself.

They walked in silence. It was better that way. A woman was screaming down a hall to the right, they could hear it growing more distant as they walked past. It was as good as ringing a dinner bell, and the creatures leapt up to fling themselves down the halls toward the sound. What had once been slow, lumbering dangers in the Umbrella Facility had turned rabbit quick, feral and fast. The natural mutation was slight enough that the infectious nature of the disease was slowing somewhat, each successive infection coming more slowly.

But the infected corpses were reanimating with greater metabolic capacities.

They were getting faster.

He lead Kumi by the hip, turning her down the corridors. The central laboratory facility and mess passed them by, men were being torn about around them. They could hear the screams, the movements, the wet tearing sounds in the closed labs they walked past. But they were fortunate in this regard, horrors on the other side of the walls. It was only then that he began to secure the corridor fire doors behind him. The heavy, vault-like doors were every hundred feet apart. Almost all the facility's corridors, halls, or laboratories could be entirely sealed.

The last that he locked in their wake was the door that segmented the barracks branch that had been Margaret's from the rest of the facilty. The lone door was the only access point, and he'd locked it. A door on the left revealed an empty dormitory with three bunks. The door on the right was Margaret's own. They were safe for a time, though how much remained to be seen. He removed his hand from her slender spine, brushing its curve briefly with his thumb before Curtis rested his hand against her softly-rounded hip.

"You're right. We have to get out. But we can't just leave. We have to get gear, food, rations. It'll take a few days. We'll have to go lab to lab until we get a mess key." He said as they walked into Margaret's room. And then. "I'm sorry I didn't understand at first."

It was all he seemed to have to say at that. His fingers worked fresh rounds into the empty cylinders of the Ruger and he pushed it into his holster. Margaret's bed was a fine enough seat, and he claimed it's edge. For now his thoughts of Kumi had faded to images of Mikhail alive and the quiet musings of how they'd be able to scrounge the supplies they needed to get out of here.

[IshtarPrince]

A barricade.

Kumi had her doubts but what was done was done. She kicked off her shoes and placed them neatly at the side of the doors, arranging them for easy access later. For now though, she had no use for the heavy, clompy things. With careful, measured steps she picked her way about the perimeter of the room, eyes sweeping the place for anything useful. There, she crouched down by one of the half opened lockers and brushed aside the remains of some hurriedly scrawled notes and crumpled laundry and pulled out three smallish canteens. They were full. Unscrewing one cap, she sniffed the substance and her tongue darted out for a lick.

Water.

What luck.

Gathering up her fortunate finds she emptied out a duffel bag of cosmetics and replaced them with the untainted water. That was all the room appeared to have to offer so she placed the duffel bag beside her shoes and stole a peek at Curtis. He was still seated on Margaret's bed, rearranging his gun with a face Kumi was unable to read. It was a dark face.


The muffled shrieks of the dying members of the JORO organization were slowly fading out, becoming fainter and fainter until there were only one or two here and there and then finally came the absolute, terrible silence. Soon, Kumi expected, the corpses would become ravenous and come searching for them. They had awesomely keen senses of smell and sooner or later they'd locate them and try to force their way through the secured doors.


Kumi sat down cross-legged on the floor directly before the entrance to Margaret's room, not saying anything to Curtis but she was watching him. Her head tilted and she furrowed a brow. It wasn't fair what was happening. What a curious thing, such an odd twist of destiny that sent him blundering out, braving the elements to bring her back into the facility. It could just have easily been Mikhail who had done the deed and Curtis who had encountered the zombified corpse.

Just as easily been anyone else.

Yes, certainly Kumi Leben felt sorry for this man.

That made him number two. Her fingers curled against the floor.

Number two. The second person she could ever remember feeling anything towards besides an indifferent sort of indignation.

The first of coarse, being "Mother." Though Kumi had never seen her true face; indeed, any sort of face would have been preferable but "Mother" had always ever been only a voice.

Kumi wondered if she was still alive.

[Light Ice]

Monotony. Had you asked Curtis Hawkins what hell consisted of he'd have gladly told you monotony. It was the feeling of obligation and the weight of a routine you couldn't escape. Monotony was the curse of doing something over and over without having to think about it. He had thought, been quite sure actually, that his year at JORO would forever represent the very definition of the word. The undead, however, changed all that. In a way they were monotony to the tenth degree. He was quite sure that things would be unpredictable until they either escaped, back to life, or were devoured. But he was fairly certain the latter was some incurable form of monotony. He could imagine Mikhail witnesses without control as he attacked his friends. The droning hell that was repetition seemed so much more real with these things.

Kumi was silent. Kumi was barefoot. Kumi was moving. Curtis realized he should be too.

The Ruger slid back into its home without protest. It was a good gun. His father had bought it years ago and passed it on, creating a keepsake that Curtis had taken up when he'd taken the Ranch. It'd come with him to college, something that even his roommate had never known, and he'd brought it here. It was a modern retake on a classic of the American Cowboy. It had a long black barrel and a heavy frame to it with a thick, cherry-wood grip. The very bottom suffered a small, weighted iron butt-plate that balanced it just right. It had the Hawkins name in looping Victorian cursive scripture along with a slender-bodied hawkin profile, diving towards some unseen foe. It'd been the symbol a distant great-great-great something had decided on for their Ranch.

"Two snow suits, a tent, bags with hot plate, solar battery, a tow-behind. Some food, water." His mind rattled off the supplies, things he knew the JORO facility had.

They were going to try and cross the hardpack. He wasn't certain the last time it'd been attempted. There was no comfort in the knowledge it was theoretically possible. Once outside they'd be free of the creatures, but they'd be at the mercy of the world's coldest winter. There was just shy of a hundred miles to the coast facility.

"Listen." He said, and now she finally met his eyes again. "We'll wait six hours, then we'll leave this room. When we go outside through the vault door we close it behind us. We stay close to each other, and we work one dormitory branch at a time. The first one we work is Paris branch, what we called the French branch. The JORO office is in that branch and there should be an inventory of supply inside and keys. We get that and we find a place there to hole up for a bit, or we come back here to hole up, and use it to make our own. Then we get the things we need, carefully, and we go. We go out the eastern door. The west is..."

He trailed off. The west was Mikhail's half of the JORO continent. The west was pointed towards their destination. The west was also blood smeared and the heart of where these horrors began. She was nodding very slightly, studying him with her eyes.

"We're going to be alright." He said. Aware for the first time since they met there was a chance he had lied to her.

[IshtarPrince]

He was rattled, but he was trying. Trying to make sense of this madness with logic and performance. So Kumi listened politely as he listed the things they would have to do in order to survive and she remembered. He knew this facility far better then she and he'd had experience with this weather. The elements were something new to her and before she'd stepped out from the Umbrella building she hadn't even realized that Antarctica was cold. A life of locked, plated glass and iron doors had screened her from the most simple of life experiences.

Six hours.

Her eyes re-scanned the room for anything she could use as a weapon and she got to her feet, marching over to the tiny medicine box built into the wall.

Bug spray.

Gauze.

Disinfectant.

Matches.

Kumi picked up the first and last of these, hefting them both in her hands. Just because she'd lived a sheltered life did by no means indicate that she was uneducated. Umbrella's intentions for her future had never been divulged to her, but they had taken great pains to sharpen her mind as well as her body, tutoring her with the latest technology. Kumi lit up a match and gave the bug spray an experimental squirt.

There was a small roar and a burst of yellow heat as the bottle belched a ball of white fire. Kumi dropped the match and put it out swiftly with the ball of her heel, grinning like a madman. A flamethrower. That should keep the beasts at bay, at least for a couple of minutes. Enough time for her and Curtis to get what they needed and get moving to the next room. If they needed more time there was always Curtis's gun.

She tucked the bug spray and the matches into the pockets of the sweatshirt and trotted back over through the door into Margaret's room. She stood over Curtis for a second, chewing her bottom lip in agitation, still unsure of what to say to him. He seemed so lost even though he was clearly trying his best to pull himself together and get through this.

Hesitantly, she reached out a placed her hand on him, at the juncture where the neck and shoulder came together and gave him a little squeeze. Sitting beside him she leaned against his arm, looping bother of hers around it in a childish gesture.

"You got me," she told him, a hint of ferocity in the undertones of her voice. "We'll make it. We have a plan and this is just a nightmare." A sigh, a catch in her breath. "You always wake up in nightmares."

[Light Ice]

She was encouraging him. The sleek-bodied woman who'd only twenty minutes ago come damned near bashing his skull in with his own hammer was now curled into his side, embracing his arm against her, and attempting to encourage him. For a moment the humor of it didn't strike him. All Curtis felt was the warmth they shared, the soft easiness of heat and the faint press of her breasts against his upper arm. For a moment all he knew was the feel of a beautiful woman. Then he realized just what'd happened and his attention turned more intently towards her.

"Kumi," He began, lifting a hand to brush a few strands of hair off her face when she looked up at him. "What happened?"

She'd told a clipped, panicked version of the story before. It wasn't that he'd forgotten it. But Curtis wanted the proper tale, wanted her to take a breath and tell him. And he didn't want her to release his arm while she did. Outside there was an eerie silence. The hall he'd sealed off dead-ended and only had two rooms branched from it. They'd hidden away in one, Margaret Horus' room, but it was only for a moment. Beyond their door lay the empty hall, and beyond the vault door to the corridor lay the chaos of the facility. In his mind he could imagine a few others walled up like they were, trying to come up with a solution. In his mind he could see the corpses of his friends rising, sprinting through the facility.

He'd been surprised how fast things had happened.

While Kumi began to speak he pulled his arm from hers, felt her small fingers grasp at the muscled stretch of his forearm in protest until he drew it from her. It slid about her waist, low, belting her rounded hips as she sat beside him and gently pulling her against his rugged frame. He felt her head rest on his chest and lifted his free hand to stroke his fingers through her hair, pushing each digit along her scalp. They traded these comforts in the clutter of the woman's room while outside the facility descended further into madness. It'd be give and take like this, Curits realized. She'd pull her weight and he'd pull his. And even as she allowed him to touch her, to assure her gently without speaking, it was her words before that echoed through his mind.

They'd find a way out of this.

[IshtarPrince]

The story?

Kumi gazed up at him questioningly as his strong arm curled around her and pressed her soft frame against his harder, muscled one. She could feel his breathing, and as she rested her head against his chest she could hear his heart pumping and the churn of blood as it surged just beneath the thin barrier of skin. Her heart sped up a little as his fingers, rough to the touch but now moving with surprising gentleness, threaded through her hair in an absent caress. She was a little nervous; closeness was not something she was used to. Never, in fact, had she been held like this.


It was nice.

She didn't mind. In fact, her hand rested on his knee and she settled against him, taking in the scent of talc and woodsmoke that clung to his skin. A flicker of kiddish triumph rippled through her. He wasn't so morose anymore, or so it seemed. She took a deep breath and thought, rearranging the facts in her head.

"I was in the lab, you see?" she began . As she talked she raised her hands, illustrating with them as she talked, taking the time every so often to sneak a peek at him to make sure he was following her.

"I've been there for a long time. Oh...years and years I think, it sometimes feels like forever but I was at another before that. The researchers were developing this thing called the 'T-Virus' but I never knew what it did. I remember the night it was complete. They celebrated." She took a deep breath and pinched her eyes shut. "It didn't last long. Two days ago one of the lab dogs they'd injected with the virus got loose in the pen with some of the healthy dogs. By the time anyone knew what happened it was too late. Several people had been bitten and the virus spread there, just like it is here. The entire lab went into crisis lock down. My cell opened and I was able to get myself out of that wing. They're not good at climbing, those corpses I mean. I avoided them and fought the few that I ran into off until I reached one of the exists and then I broke the lock and got out. I borrowed the coat from one of the dead researchers too far gone to have his cells reanimated. The ones there were so hungry that they sometimes devoured a body before it even had a chance to zombify."

She shrugged and ticked off the events on her fingers.

"I came here next, I followed the flags and I met you. I thought you were one of them at first. Then I thought, 'why should I bother talking to this person? I can never make him believe me.' I was never good with that kind of thing. Talking. I'm sorry I attacked you back there. I was going to go to the checkpoints they have set up on the coast. Those things can't last long in the snow. They're joints freeze like anything else. I guess it didn't work out like I planned."

She looked up at him again. "I am sorry for attacking you."

[Light Ice]

In his mind he could see it, her narration soft, personal. He didn't feel her tense. He didn't feel her clench up as she narrated to him the dark tragedy of the place. All he felt was her hands moving, animating the story before him. All Curtis felt was a growing desire to get this girl out of here, to get her to some place safely. The lab. One before. She was too young to be a researcher or a scientist. The color of her skin suddenly made terrible sense. His heart broke for her. Before he could help himself he'd bent his head, pressed his lips to her brow. It was the only immediate answer he could manage to her apology.

"It's alright." He said.

And it was.

She turned into him some, and he tightened his embrace. Aware more acutely now of just how lissome she was, how terribly small. She was fast, damned fast, but he couldn't imagine her fighting them off. Beneath his arms was soft skin, a willowy body that held sleek curved hips and the small, firm rise of a woman's breasts. It was a graceful shape built for escape. And here they were, caged in a facility where there was only two rooms overhead. The rest was one sprawling floor of chambered wings and laboratories.

"Let's get that list." He said. Eager to get moving.

She seemed reluctant to leave his side, but when she did he rose with her. Curtis let his hand linger at the small of her back, the small hollow before her spine turned up towards slender shoulders and down toward the round of her backside. The chastity of the touch was in its brevity, before all at once they were connected only by intentions once more.

[IshtarPrince]

It was over too soon. Kumi touched the spot on her forehead where his lips ad brushed her with an air of vague puzzlement. What a strange person he was. He didn't act like anyone she'd ever met before. Nonetheless, she followed him in his quest to leave, every bit as eager to get out of this dreadful place as he was.

Her feet slid easily into the over sized boots she'd placed by the door and she swept up the duffel bag.

"I found some water. It's not contaminated and I'd advise not drinking anything else unless you're sure it hasn't been tainted. I saw it happen in the other facility, something bled in the water main and the virus spread that much faster." She strapped it to her back and withdrew the bug spray from her pockets, using a sleeve to wipe the bottle clean. She brushed off her hand on her jeans and held it up.

"We can use this if they get too close. I found some matches too, you see? It's a flamethrower. They hate fire. It burns them right up."

Trotting over to Curtis she stood before him, raring and eager to go. Every nerve on edge once again but this time she knew she wouldn't be in this thing alone. Already this companionship thing was growing on her. An intoxicating feeling, to not be alone. Many people take things like family or friends for granted.

Everybody has them. No big deal.

It was easy to become attached, and Kumi was like a stray animal in that way. Latching on to a person was a fault of hers that had rarely been exorcised. She'd latched onto the voice of "Mother." When she'd been a child Kumi had thought the voice really was her mother. Now that she was older however, she understood that it was merely another researcher on the other side of the intercom, talking to her once a day at the exact same time.

Or maybe not a person at all. Perhaps the voice had been a computer simulation.

[Light Ice]

The hallway was empty in both directions all the way to the dead-ends formed by its end and the door at its head. Curtis lead her for only a moment, quick to find her at his side. She flashed a smile to him, a toothy grin that shed a few years from her face and made her look startling full of life and youth. Under the circumstances it was strange just how powerful his attraction to her was proving, but he wasn't fighting it. It felt good to have a beautiful young woman with him, even now. It felt good to have someone to navigate this mess with. The last woman he'd held, even for a moment, had left him just before he'd graduated college. That'd been over a year ago.

His hands took the vault-handle on the door and turned it a full rotation, feeling it fight him faintly at first was distinctly satisfying. The sensation of security began to fade as he turned it again, feeling the seal break and the door come undone. Curtis eased it open with his left hand, grimacing some at the metallic creak from the industrial sized hinge. His right took the Ruger from its holster, keeping it pointed toward the floor.

The connecting corridor, labelled A-Wing, doubled as a commons area. It had once been a quiet place for cards or table-tennis. The smaller card tables had been flipped over, the chairs scattered and tipped. Papers and magazines lay strewn across the floor, some soaked with the pools of blood that dotted here or there. There was a half-empty plastic Pepsi bottle on its side against the far wall. He'd closed the door leading on further into the facility as they'd passed through before, but he'd not closed off the dormitory wings. He moved to do that now. There were three to his left, two to his right. He closed the ones to his left first, knowing they were the larger ones. The doors gave groans when they closed, but locked surely.

Curtis moved to the first on the right and pulled it, and was immediately aware that there was at least one of the creatures further along. It burst from one of the dormitories, its face half-peeled away. He couldn't recognize who it'd been from the distance and he didn't wait to find out. His hands quickly pulled the door shut and tightened the vault-handle. A few seconds later a muffled thud echoed from the other side as the creature threw itself against it.

The last door stretched on towards the A-Wing Laboratories. Kumi was looking down it, her smile was gone. Her eyes were narrowed. She looked unsure.

"Do we have to?" She asked. Her hand lifted, gesturing quietly. He knew what she meant.

"The inventory is in the Office area down that hall. It's either that or we wander this place room to room." They both knew the latter wasn't an option.

She nodded, dubiously, before stepping into the hall. Curtis followed her, bringing his revolver up to lead them on. There was a shoe laying in the hall. It was a Nike sneaker, red and white. Further on to the left was the first laboratory. None of the labs were secure access. Almost all of them were for geologists, a few for biologists and botanists. But they simply weren't handling anything that required locks, or keys. All the chemicals they used were stored in the office area in a security cage.

They walked past the door, leering into the room. It was trashed. Glassware strewn everywhere, shattered against the floor and atop the counters. But they didn't go inside. Instead, moving steadily, he lead her towards the office. The door hung partially off its hinges, the frame splintered inward.

[IshtarPrince]

With positive delicacy, Kumi moved at the cowboy's side, eyes darting here and there sweeping their surroundings once then over again. Back and forth. The putrid reek of guts and fecal matter was strong here; so strong in fact that it blocked the tell-tale scent of decaying flesh that the zombies usually carried with them.

Each room they passed through held it's own story of savage carnage mapped out upon it's perimeters. The scent of terror that the victims must have felt in their final moments of sanity was almost tangible, like the crackling of dead leaves on the forest floor. Every hair on her body was pricking up and Kumi felt the back of her neck grow cold. The silence was almost worse than the horrified screams, at least then they could know the general direction from which the thread would come. Zombies were like scavenger birds in that way, they traveled in packs. Little bands of them would draw together to hunt and destroy, the strongest of them feasting on the kill first.

The office they entered had succumbed to it's own brand of chaos. There were corpses here, if they could really be labeled as such. They were more like shed body parts too far gone to be reanimated. A torn gnawed off hand here, a chunk of brain matter and bone splinters paired off with unidentifiable regurgitated organs. The smell was so horrible that Kumi raised a hand to her nose, backing up into Curtis. Her eyes watered with the sting of the scent and her hand, when she reached back to grab the hem of Curtis's shirt, was shaking. Her stomach churned nastily and she staggered against the wall, retching, though all that came up was saliva and water. She wiped her mouth, embarrassed at the show of weakness.

No time.

"Curtis!" The cry barely flew from her mouth. One of the zombies barreled into him, knocking him to the floor. Kumi reached for the matches but Curtis had already twisted onto his back and aimed the Ruger, shoving it into the yawning mouth of the monstrosity as it lunged it for a fatal bite. There was a deafening bang and a wet crunch. The zombie shuddered and stumbled backwards; dead, graying hands raising to paw at the stump of it's head. Everything from the mouth up had been blown off.

Kumi was at his side in an instant, her hands tugging at his arm, unzipping the duffel bag and withdrawing one of the canteens.

"You've got it one you," was all she could say, her face was paler then usual and her eyes wide. She poured a small trickle over the cold blood on his hands and face, washing it off with her fingers until his skin was clear of it. She wiped her own finger off on her sleeve and replaced the canteen.

"More of them will come, we have to hurry."

[Light Ice]

The room stunk of death and cordite, chaos and disorder. She was right, of course. They'd precious little time. All the same he didn't hurry, didn't let himself make that mistake. His thumb pushed a fresh round into the empty cylinder, reloading the chamber he'd fired before he pushed the revolver into its holster.

"Watch the door, Kumi." He said. She did.

He could hear her breathing, quick, scared. She was as alert as he'd ever seen her, primal somehow in the way her eyes cut down the hall. Curtis couldn't appreciate the image for long and turned himself to the desk. The roll-a-dex slid open under his fingers, revealing hundreds of folders. He was quick to find the inventory, a heavy packet of printed paper bound and covered in soft plastic. He slid it under his jacket and tucked it into the back of his jeans, ignoring the strange feel of it digging a crease into his ass.

She looked back to him and lifted a finger, her eyes bright and fearful. He reached for her hand, she gave it to him, and he drew her from the door and took her place. Curtis leaned into the hall just faintly, his eye staring down the corridor. There were three that he could see, moving shoulder to shoulder. All three were men. One wore a blue T-shirt that said Navy across the front. He recognized him as Steve Ames. The man in the middle was Ivan Dostov, Mikhail's friend. He had a thick beard and was wearing only a pair of grey Calvin Klein underpants. Curtis noticed as he turned his dead eyes into the empty laboratory they had passed earlier that not only was he missing an arm but he had shit himself when he died.

The last man was the most wild looking. All the flesh on his chin and cheeks had been either ripped or chewed away. His tongue was missing and his teeth were blood stained. Morgan Hall had been a tremendously handsome man when he was alive. He made for a spectacularly terrifying monster. And while he had been, amongst the three, whom Curtis had known best and liked most, he was also the first that Curtis shot. Maybe, even, that was why he was the first Curtis shot.

The Ruger beat its heavy thunder into the air, roaring vengeance. The massive rounds turned Morgan's head into a canoe and Steve's face into a crater. Curtis had always been a tremendous shot, a practiced skill that'd been nurtured by his Rancher's upbringing. All the same his third shot struck Ivan in the throat and not the head, blowing his vertebrae apart and leaving him crippled, but dangerous, upon the ground. The way he fell shielded his head from any finishing shot.

Curtis was already walking towards the exit. Kumi nearly got past him before he caught her arm and lead her around Ivan's snapping jaws.

He was reloading the spent cylinders when he looked back in time to see one of the creatures hurl itself through one of the laboratory doors. It splinted and gave, caving outward as the corpse came through it. Curtis caught a flicker of the hinges in the hall's soft light before the creature struck the wall on the otherside of the corridor and fell on its back. It was up in an instant, scrambling with shredded palms until it claimed its feet and began sprinting down the hall.

He raised the Revolver again and thumbed back the hammer. His next shot missed its target again but did what it needed to do. The impact of the slug in the creature's chest was enough to take it clean off its feet and throw it backward. It gave a hard convulsion on the floor before it began to rise, slower now. Not bothering to finish it Curtis stepped through the door, Kumi leaned her sleek body against the vault door and slammed it shut after he was through. Her small hands wrenched the tumbler until it locked.

"You're fast." He praised her for the obvious, if only because he needed her to know.

His fingers did their trick, reloading without trembling. Curtis was both surprised and pleased with himself, with his ability to overcome the terror that threatened to grip his heart. All things considered he was making a fine account of himself so far. They had what they needed.

She was heading back towards the door towards Margaret's hall, he followed. Closing the vault behind themselves. He chose the room opposite Margaret's then, finding it neatly kept. Empty. It was a man named Alan Everett that had lived here, a quiet man whom had kept to himself. Kumi closed the door behind him, breathing heavily. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts, before he moved to the two-place table against the wall and had a seat. The inventory was thrown lightly onto the table's surface.

"They're fast. I thought... They were slower on the internet." He confessed. Everyone had heard the rumors, watched them discounted as hoaxes. Curtis had never been much for conspiracy theories, but he was ready to write a very strongly worded letter to his State Senator right about now. That or run screaming into Congress with the Ruger. Either seemed suitable.

[IshtarPrince]

A smile flickered over her lips as she leaned her back against the door, sucking in air like her life depended on it. Unconsciously, she'd held her breath through the final bit of the ordeal, the adrenaline rush had left her unsteady and jumpy. Every nerve twitched with each drawn in breath and she took a few minutes to gather herself together. Gradually, she calmed down. Her body felt slick with ice and she sat down opposite Curtis, hugging herself through the heavy sweat shirt.


She looked over their inventory with a wave of relief, satisfied that they had what they had gone out for. She shifted in her seat; bringing up her legs and hugging them to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. A long wait was ahead of them. She worried that they wouldn't make it. Curtis had promised they would. Kumi knew he had lied, but it was a lie she appreciated.

It was like a game they were playing, faking it until they couldn't anymore. Though, Kumi was determined not to join the ranks of the undead. She'd ask Curtis to put a bullet in her head first.

"The virus has various strands," she explained to him. "Some of them react faster then others. Umbrella really was playing with hell fire. An accident like this was bound to happen. Sometimes I wonder if they didn't do it on purpose, isolating us on this frozen bit of land to see what would happen."

A dark look crossed her face and she felt a twinge of disgust as well as smoldering spark of satisfaction. "Though I do happen to know that in my case, they invested a rather large bit of money into me and now it's flushed down the drain." She tipped her head and gave him an inquisitive look.
"I'm rather glad about that, does that make me a bad person?"