Chapter 21: Into the Deep

Claire was giving him curious and worried side glances as they reached the cable car. Rick didn’t blame her for it one bit. He would, too, had he been in her shoes. After all, a few minutes earlier he had been at the height of exhaustion and couldn’t even walk on his own. Now? Now he was, and was still feeling better and better. He wasn’t in pain anymore. Still sore, but the soreness was going away. Mostly what he felt was hunger and drowsiness.

Swiping Sherry’s bracelet with her hand, the cable car’s door opened for Claire. Rick let her go through first and walked closely behind. On his right he saw Sherry unconscious and breathing with difficulty. The sight of her left eye and the surrounding skin looking infected made him frown.

Claire climbed a few steps down to reach the front of the car and turn it on. When she turned around, she saw Rick sitting down against the opposite wall, facing Sherry. He had removed her brother’s jacket and the white shirt he had been wearing, leaving him in a black beater. Hesitating for a moment, she went to sit down beside him while the cable car began to move down towards Umbrella’s underground laboratory.

When Rick felt her shoulder leaning against his, his body jolted a bit. The sudden contact and impact, even if small, had been enough to wake him from the sleepiness that weighed more and more heavily on him.

“Talk to me,” he whispered. “I need to think to stay awake. If I fall asleep… I don't think I’d wake up for a while.”

Not paying attention to why, nor being conscious of it, the volume of Claire’s voice matched his. “Alright.” Taking a moment for herself to choose what to talk about, she decided to avoid the elephant in the room. “Your parents?”

Rick chuckled when he registered the subject she wanted to know more about. “Ooooh, you’re really good at that emotional stuff. Already I’m feeling wide awake. Out of rage and loathing.”

She gave him a tired smile. Her hand searched for him on its own. When it found his, her fingers laced with his. Neither noticed as she spoke. “I know they weren’t good people. I saw the scars when I patched you up…”

“Twice,” Rick spoke in a low voice. The idea of making a joke about it being her turn to be bare-chested crossed his mind but was quickly discarded. He chose not to avoid the conversation. There was no point, and he was not ashamed of his childhood. “My dad was a raging alcoholic who liked beating my mother and me.”

Claire had gathered as much regarding the beating part. There had been plenty of clues. Implicit and explicit.

“Sometimes… He wasn’t even drunk or even angry. He did it because… I think he liked it. He liked feeling strong. Beating a defenseless child and mother is a sure way to feel like that. Twisted but sure nonetheless. I don’t know what his job was. I know he was dealing drugs to pretty much everyone and pimping my mother when he needed more money.”

That took Claire aback. “He was selling your mother to…” the words refused to come out.

“Yeah. She was a drug addict and had no qualification for a job. One thing she was, however, was beautiful. Really beautiful, like… She could have starred in a movie or a charm magazine. I won’t… take that from her because… it’s the only thing she had.” He seemed lost in a memory, and Claire let him. “Since she was beautiful and since Dad gave her the drugs for her addiction, her contribution to the household was sleeping with clients. Sometimes thugs, sometimes rich men. I remember a few cops.”

Now Claire was properly horrified. That cops were involved revealed a lot about why Rick ended up in the streets. Why CPS or the police never intervened. His father must have had powerful connections to make everything go away despite his occupation. It wasn’t a wonder why Rick didn’t trust figures of authority or organizations like Umbrella and the government.

‘To be fair, after everything I’ve witnessed tonight, I’m not surprised.’

“One day… when I was eleven… He was… I don’t know what had happened, but he was furious. Completely unhinged. He beat her like he never did before, and I really thought he was going to kill her. So…”

Claire looked at his face. His eyes narrowed as if he was trying to remember something.

“I don’t… It's all foggy. I remember grabbing… something heavy and smashing his head. After that…” He shook his head. “I only remember the relief on my mother’s face while she looked at him beating me. I woke up a week later in the hospital. The official report this time was that I had been mugged.”

‘Oh god! This time?’

“Usually the report says I just fell down some stairs. I’m clumsy like that,” he shrugged as if it didn’t matter.

Claire’s hand squeezed his on instinct. ‘This is not okay!’

“When I was discharged, I was promised another beating once I was a hundred percent healed. It took a month. Just the time for my broken bones to heal and the doctor to remove my cast and my ribs to fuse back together. Bastard waited for my birthday. Said it would be the only kind of birthday present someone like me deserved.”

This time her hand clenched not in support but in fury. Had Rick’s father been in front of her right now, she would have given him a taste of his own medicine.

“I ended up planning my escape for that whole month. Clothes, food… Everything I thought I would need to survive. The eve of my birthday I stayed awake until they went to sleep. Then I acted. I went to his secret stash, stole some cash, and ran away.”

“Did you ever see them again?”

Rick nodded. “On the second day of the outbreak.” He scratched his chin with his free hand. “I was on my way to Jugs’ flat. Came across them in a narrow alley. He was missing an arm and someone had eaten his entrails. She was dressed… like the whore she was. Naked but for some flimsy lingerie with a big part of her neck missing. I knifed them both in the end.”

He hadn’t said it, but Claire knew he hadn’t felt any remorse or guilt for it. If she had to be honest, she wouldn’t have either. The disinterested look on his face, as if he was talking about the weather, told her as much.

‘At least he doesn’t feel joy about it. Although, is it really better?’

“That’s about it.”

Claire wanted to know more, however. She had spent the whole night with those questions running in a corner of her mind; she wasn’t about to give up on the opportunity to get answers for them. “What about your time on the streets? How did you meet… Jugs?”

Rick smiled thinking about his first encounter with his friend. “I met Jugs in early January ‘94. It was… a very cold winter that year. I found a spot to be warm during the night. Near the generator of a parking lot. Unfortunately, during the day, there were a lot of people coming and going, so I couldn’t stay there.”

“Where did you go then?” She would refuse to admit it, but she was enthralled by his story.

“I was wandering down the central plaza one day. There was some kind of event, I don’t know what, but there were a lot of people. Perfect for pickpocketing assholes with too much money on their hands. It was really massive, and I thought that the whole city was there. And then, something clicked in my mind. If everyone was outside…”

Claire understood where he was going with this. “Then they weren’t home.”

“Yeah. Of course, I didn’t break into the first house I saw. I studied which sector was the easiest to break into while providing the best… accommodation. Finally, the cold during the day was too much, and I followed my gut. I climbed up the emergency ladder of a building. I had to reach the fourth floor to find a window that was closed but not locked. I looked inside and listened for a bit to check if there was someone. There wasn’t.”

“There was Jugs,” Claire correctly deduced, an amused smile on her face.

“Yeah. I got inside, thinking I could warm myself. Maybe steal a bit of food. When I was rummaging through the fridge, I heard someone sniffing. I immediately turned around and was face to face with Jugs’ gun, with her holding it. She looked sick, and when she sneezed, I tried to use the opportunity to run past her.”

Claire was already chuckling. “Let me guess, it didn’t end well?”

“No,” Rick chuckled with her. “Jugs may have had a cold, but she was still former Delta Force. She handed me my ass without much effort. But to be fair, she had it even easier because I was malnourished. In the end… she realized I was just a cold, starved, homeless kid who was trying to warm himself and fill his stomach. She dragged me to her bathroom, ordered me to take a shower because I smelled worse than a cage at a zoo, and gave me some warm clothes way too big for me. They belonged to one of her exes who forgot them at her place.”

“That was awfully nice of her,” Claire remarked, secretly approving.

Rick’s face softened. “Yeah. She did more than that. When I came out… She just said she was going to lay down, that I was free to use her couch, but if I stole anything she’d arrest me and bring me to the precinct.”

Claire was surprised by the nonchalance. “Really?”

“Really,” Rick nodded. “I think Jugs was too tired for the bullshit I represented and took a shot in the dark regarding my character. I stayed there the whole afternoon. When night came, I left before she woke.”

“That can’t end like this. You met her again.”

“A week later. I was shoplifting at a supermarket. A cup of noodles. She caught me red-handed, and this time she brought me back to the Police Station. It was a mess that day. Everyone was moving around in a hurry. Jugs sat me down and asked Officer Ryswell to keep an eye on me. The guy was too busy eating a donut and doing crossword puzzles. When he finished his food, he stood up to get another. I snatched the cuffs’ key from his belt, freed myself, and walked out of the office.”

“You just…. Walked out?” Claire couldn’t believe it. “Just like that? No one stopped you?”

Rick laughed good-heartedly. “Yeah. There was so much activity, nobody paid attention to me. By the time I reached the entrance, Jugs saw me. She shouted for me to stay right where I was.”

Claire grinned. “And you didn’t listen.”

“Of course not! Who do you take me for?” He laughed again. “I ran with everything I had. So did she. For two blocks. In the end, I turned into a back alley I knew well and hid. Jugs searched, of course, but I was too well hidden. She swore she would never stop chasing me until I was caught.”

“And?”

“And it took her a month. She asked around about me, learned everything she could, and in the end, she cornered me in one of my hideouts. She asked me questions. Why I was in the streets; where my parents were. It was either answering or jail, so I talked. In the end, she chose to let me go on the condition that I met with her every few days. Like I was on parole. I agreed. Not like I had anything to lose, and she always gave me a five or a ten for food.”

“And you became friends over time,” Claire was sure of it.

“Yeah. She was the one to encourage me to go to the library to continue my education. She taught me stuff no police officer should teach or even know.”

“Like what?”

“Lockpicking, self-defense, to name a few examples. When I turned sixteen, she taught me to drive and how to shoot and handle knives. Sometimes she brought me to the firing range in town. That’s how I met your brother and one of their friends: Barry Burton.”

Rick finished speaking there, and Claire understood there wasn’t much more to say about his relationship with his friend. So she asked another question. One about a more delicate subject and way more personal.

“What’s going on with you?” She went with bluntness instead of being subtle. “One moment you were on the verge of collapsing, needed my support to even stand on your feet, then the next…” With her free hand, she pointed at his bullet wound. “Your shoulder looked like it had been shot weeks ago when it happened hours earlier. That’s not…”

“Normal,” Rick finished. “To be honest, I’m not sure what’s happening with me. I know it's fairly recent, ever since…”

He wasn't forthcoming with the information so Claire asked, “Since?”

He sighed in surrender and with his free hand raised the left leg of his pants. Claire gasped at the sight of a bite mark on his calf. She knew what that meant, but it wasn’t what shocked her the most; what shocked her was that the wound was completely healed. It was only a bite mark, a scar.

“Parting gift from my mother. I thought I finished her, but I was wrong. I knew what it meant at the time. So I ran back to my hideout, barricaded it from the inside. I remember my calf burning something fierce. I disinfected the wound with alcohol and a knife I heated. The bleeding stopped naturally but it didn’t stop the fever. I don’t remember much. I was mostly out of it, but when I woke up, two days had passed and I was still me.”

“You were talking about you back then! The one person…” Claire was awed. “You’re immune.”

“I think so. I noticed… a few differences ever since. My senses are better. My muscles are stronger, and I move faster.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “That zombie you nearly decapitated with a kick! The garage gate you were able to pull up when I couldn’t even move it an inch.”

“Yeah. And the healing too. I’ve noticed… that I heal extremely fast when I have food in my system. Well… that was before that monster put that thing inside my body. I felt like I was burning to ash from the inside. I felt it moving, trying to get out, as if… being inside of me was killing it. You noticed it too. The moment that thing was out of me, I began to get better immediately in an unnatural way.”

“Yeah. That’s…” Claire didn’t know what to say.

“I wonder what I am now.” His eyes were vacant, and she didn’t miss the dread in them.

Claire felt her heart clench. It felt wrong to hear him say that, and she couldn’t let that stand. With her hand, she grabbed his head and turned it to her. They ended up face to face, so close they could feel the warmth of each other’s breath. Eyes locked on the other’s.

“You’re my friend. My partner. That’s all that matters.”

The atmosphere was heavy. Their eyes moved right and left as if searching for something in the other’s. Hers diverted to his lips. Claire leaned forward, and just as her lips brushed his, the car came to a stop with a shake.

Before she could apply more pressure, real pressure on his mouth for a proper kiss, something more than a phantom sensation, Rick was already moving. He immediately stood up without even thinking. He hadn’t even noticed he was holding hands with Claire and pulled her up along. She was the one who let go. A conscious decision this time.

He picked up Sherry and went out without looking back or saying anything about what had almost happened.

Claire, on the other hand, was stuck in place. Her mind was all over the place, and her heart was beating the fastest it had the whole night.

‘What the hell, girl?’