Chapter 15
As it turned out, the recovery center cafeteria did have bottles of wine. They also had cold beer and even hard liquor. Apparently, some of the other survivors spent their time in recovery getting pleasantly drunk. Instead of eating in the cafeteria, Leon and Claire filled their plates with spaghetti and went up to Leon’s room. Leon snagged two bottles of white wine, stuck them in a bucket of ice, and brought them along.
Claire sat cross-legged at the foot of Leon’s bed, her plate in her lap. Leon was seated in a chair with his legs stretched out on the edge of the bed, his plate sitting on the desk beside him. They didn’t find any candles, but Leon improvised by turning the desk lamp on and leaving the overhead lights off.
Right before dinner, Claire went to her room to check her messages, and found out that her parents finally made contact with her brother Chris. After the sad goodbye to Sherry, the good news brightened her mood considerably.
“He’s in Arizona,” she gushed. “I guess he’s doing alright, but he didn’t tell my parents much about what he was doing.”
“I think I can take a good guess about what he’s doing,” Leon said. “Have you told your parents about what happened to him in Raccoon City?”
“No, not yet,” Claire said, shaking her head. “I’ll let Chris decide when he wants to tell them about it.”
Leon learned from Claire earlier about what happened to the Raccoon City S.T.A.R.S. team, which she learned from reading a newspaper back in the police station. Leon already knew some of the details, of course, since he was hired for the S.T.A.R.S. team as a replacement for one of the officers who died in the line of duty. And although they didn’t know exactly what happened on that doomed mission to the Arklay Mountains, it didn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to figure it out.
“You think your brother is going to try to get some kind of revenge on Umbrella?” Leon asked carefully, trying not to make it sound as bad as it was.
“Not revenge,” Claire said. “He’s not the kind of person to want revenge. But he’ll go after Umbrella, I’m almost sure of it.”
“If not revenge, then what?”
“Justice?” Claire said with a shrug. “That’s the kind of person Chris is. I know he likes to pretend that he’s this carefree kind of guy, but deep down he really has this deep sense of right and wrong. It’s why he joined the Air Force, why he became a cop. Umbrella did some terrible things, we both know that, and I bet Chris knows it too. And if he knows, then you can bet he’ll do everything he can to make it right.”
“You mentioned that he was in the Air Force,” Leon said. “Why did he leave the service?”
“Well, it’s a bit complicated,” Claire said. “He was training to be an officer, but unfortunately, he wound up getting discharged.”
“Really?” Leon asked, surprised. “What happened?”
“It’s a stupid story, it never should have happened.”
“We’ve got time,” Leon said. “I’m honestly curious. Unless it’s something really bad, which I don’t think is the case.”
“No,” Claire said, “It’s actually the opposite.”
“Well, what happened?”
Claire sighed and set her plate down on the bed beside her. “I went to visit Chris one time while he was on base. He was only going to be stationed there for a couple months, I think, so I went to visit him and I met some of his teammates. We went out to dinner, we had a few drinks, you know. We had a really good time, and went back to his dormitory on the base. Well, I had a room at a hotel nearby, so later that night I left to go back to the hotel.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, I was out in the parking lot, getting on my motorcycle. And these two guys came up to me and make some smart-ass comment about my bike. I hate it when guys do that. I didn’t even know these two guys, but I could tell they were drunk. So I just tried to ignore them, you know? But they tried to act all cool and tried hitting on me, so I told them to get lost.”
Leon waited a moment, and then prodded her. “And then?”
“Well, one of them got all nasty with me and called me a stupid dyke.”
Leon’s jaw dropped. “Wow, that wasn’t very nice.”
“You’re telling me. So I got in his face and told him to go to Hell. And that’s when the other one grabbed my arm, like he was going to hit me or something. I mean, I can take care of myself, and I can certainly take care of two drunk losers like that. But I guess Chris came out to the parking lot to see what was going on. And when he saw that guy grab me, he ran in without thinking and just nailed the guy right in the jaw, knocked him cold.”
Leon leaned back, covering his eyes with his hand. “Oh, Jesus. Those two guys were Air Force officers too, weren’t they?”
“Yep,” Claire said. “And it gets worse. When the other guy tried to fight Chris, he wound up getting the crap kicked out of him. I was pulling Chris off of him when the MPs arrived. They arrested all three of them, of course.”
“Did he get court-martialed?”
“Not exactly. That guy that Chris beat up, his father was some high-ranking guy in the Air Force, like a Major or something. So his son got off without a punishment, of course. They tried to claim that Chris started the fight, and were going to try to throw the book at him. So I accused the guy of trying to rape me.”
“Holy shit,” Leon said, stunned.
“I had to do something,” Claire explained. “I wasn’t going to let them just destroy Chris’ career like that. They didn’t have any proof that I wasn’t telling the truth, so they quickly covered the whole thing up. They let Chris choose an honorable discharge in return for me not pressing any charges. The whole thing was such a mess,” Claire said with a sigh, shaking her head in disappointment. “If I had left his dorm a few minutes later then I wouldn’t have even run into those guys, and none of it would have happened.”
“That’s quite a story,” Leon said. “I can see what you mean about your brother, though. He didn’t even think twice, he just ran in and punched the guy out for grabbing you?”
Claire gave him a quirky, half-embarrassed smile. “Well, let’s just say that Chris can be a bit overprotective at times.”
“I guess one of these days I’ll have to meet him.”
“I’d be happy to introduce you. You and him have a lot in common, actually. You’d probably hate each other.”
Leon laughed at that. He reached for his plate of spaghetti, but realized that it had already gone cold, so he just left it on the desk. He asked Claire for her plate, and she picked it up to hand it to him, but it slipped out of her hand and fell to the floor, spilling spaghetti and tomato sauce all over the carpet.
Claire yelped in surprise and looked at Leon. “Do you think we should clean that up?”
“Leave it,” Leon said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We’re leaving here tomorrow anyway, let Umbrella clean it up.”
Claire busted out laughing, rolling back on her legs and bumping back against the wall. Leon laughed as well and reached down for the bottles of wine on the floor.
“And on that note,” he said, “how about a drink?”
“I would love a drink,” Claire said, still giggling with laughter.
“Does white wine go with pasta?”
“I have no idea, I don’t drink wine. I like craft beers,” Claire said with a laugh, as Leon poured two glasses.
“I like fruity mixed drinks, myself,” Leon said.
Claire reached out to take the glass he handed her. “Well, aren’t you a fancy man?”
“The fanciest,” Leon said with a grin. “Cheers.”
They clinked their glasses together and took a sip of their wine. Claire made a funny face after tasting hers, but she shrugged and drank some more anyway. Leon wasn’t big on it either – he guessed it was a cheaper brand – but he wasn’t going to be picky. He drank down the whole glass and then poured
himself another.
Claire swirled the glass in her hand. “What are we going to do, Leon? How can we possibly go back to a normal life after this?”
“I don’t think we will. But having a normal life is overrated anyway.”
“I don’t know, a normal life seems pretty nice compared to what we’ve been through.”
Leon nodded and set his empty glass on the desk beside him. “Just be thankful that we didn’t lose anyone we cared about. We might be the only survivors who didn’t live in Raccoon City or have family there. All the other people who made it out lost family members, like Sherry lost her parents. We were the lucky ones.”
“That’s true,” Claire said. “At least we can go back home after this is all over. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“All we have to do is go back to our lives. The newspapers and the media will bother us for awhile, maybe some of the people we know will treat us differently. But a normal life is still out there, we just have to go for it.”
“Are you going to?” Claire asked.
“I don’t think so,” Leon said after a pause. “I’m going to re-enlist. I think that the military might have a use for someone like me. My friend Jack asked me to join the UBCF, but that’s not going to happen. Instead, I think I might try to set up special unit like that within the Army.”
Claire sighed and looked down into her glass before drinking the rest of it. She held out the glass and Leon refilled it for her. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know if I want to go back to my boring old job after all this, especially not if Chris is out there doing who-knows-what. Maybe I’ll try to track him down and see if he needs my help.”
“You could certainly do that,” Leon said. “With the money we’re getting, you could help fund his investigation.”
Neither Leon nor Claire had really bothered discussing the monetary settlement that Umbrella was offering them. They were just happy to be alive and safe, a huge amount of money held little interest for them at the moment.
But Claire brightened at the idea. “That’s a good idea, I like that. We could use the money Umbrella is giving me to try to bring them down. That would be like poetic justice.”
“Personally, I think Umbrella is going down all by itself,” Leon said. “But if you or your brother can find real, solid evidence that conclusively proves that they were responsible for the outbreak, or that the people at the top knew about it and didn’t stop it, then that would be amazing.”
“I think I’ll do that,” Claire said, half to herself, holding the glass of wine in her lap. “I need to find Chris anyway. I want to know what he’s been through. I want to make sure he’s really okay.”
Leon filled his glass once more. He felt pleasantly warm, but he would have to drink the whole bottle to get as drunk as he wanted to get. Besides, Claire didn’t seem to want to drink very much, and Leon didn’t want to get sloppy drunk by himself, so he set the bottle back in the bucket of ice and sipped his glass slowly.
“You know what this means, though,” Claire said. “We won’t be seeing much of each other after this. I don’t know where Chris’s search is going to take him, he might leave the country. And if he does, I’ll probably go with him.”
“I don’t know where I’ll wind up either,” Leon said. “If I end up joining some kind of special task force like I want to, they might send me anywhere. And who knows when I’ll be able to come back to the states.”
For a few minutes, they sat in silence, considering their own individual futures. Then Claire patted the bed beside her. “Come, sit next to me.”
Leon set down his empty glass and got out of the chair. He sat down on the bed and slid next to Claire, who sighed gently and set her head on his shoulder.
“I wish we could have met under different circumstances,” she said softly.
“Me too. I guess things aren’t going to work out like we thought.”
“I feel like this is all just … like an interruption. Like, as soon as we get past this, everything is going to get worse again. This is just a brief respite.”
Leon couldn’t help but think about Jack’s dire warnings the day before about more impending virus outbreaks. He felt like his decision to go back to the military was in reality an invitation to go jump into danger once more. A widespread outbreak had happened once, and it was bound to happen again. The only questions were “How long until it happens?” and “How many will die this time?” This was just a calm interlude before the next crisis developed.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “But what else can we do? You and I could go and have a normal life. Maybe we could even have a normal life together.”
“I would like that,” Claire said. “But it’s not going to happen, is it?”
Leon shook his head. “I don’t think we’re going to be that lucky.”
Claire sighed again and nestled up closer to Leon, and he reflexively put his arm around her.
“All we have is this short time together,” Claire whispered. “I hope we can make the best of it.”