Resident Evil: Exodus - The Tale of Elza Walker

Chapter 7 - Retrieval

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Elza made a point of stopping by the Armory on the way to the Parking Garage. As she feared, there wasn't much remaining in the way of ammunition. What there was almost refilled Elza's depleted supply. Elza wasn't sure about the half-dozen or so flash-bang grenades Rita had been forced to leave behind in the case inside the locker, due to having to go help Kevin with John. She would have preferred regular grenades, or even "frag-apples" as her dad called them, but she took them anyway. It was the second of the two items Rita had found and not taken with her which Elza appreciated the most. It was a Molle style police tactical armor vest made of Kevlar, complete with supply pouches. It was also a man's armor vest. One of smaller than normal size, but still a man's armor vest. That might have been why Rita the diminutive female had left it behind. It would have been way too big for her. It didn't fit Elza quite right either, despite the fact that she was taller than Rita, and even after worrying with the side and shoulder straps in order to adjust it as best she could. No matter what she did, something designed to snugly fit a male form simply wasn't going to properly fit a female's unless she was flat-chested, and Elza was not. She was no idealized Playboy model given her slender athlete's build; however, she wasn't exactly lacking upstairs either. It was simply a matter of proportion, not dimension.

Elza's upper chest now felt like she was wearing a sport bra that was at least a full size too small. She also knew she was going to have to put up with that feeling for as long as she kept wearing the armor vest. It couldn't be helped, though, because she knew she needed the armor vest for three very good reasons. First, it gave added protection from the horrors of the Outbreak. Her firesuit had done well enough, given that it had never been designed for such a thing, but she had envied Kevin's body armor from the moment she had seen it. Now she had some of her own. Second, the added pouches of the Molle style vest gave her more room to carry supplies and other portable gear. She immediately transferred part of what she had on her from her overstuffed firesuit pockets and backpack to the vest, and she could feel the difference. Third, the vest had come with a strap-on Kevlar gun holster. It was just flexible enough to accommodate both her SiG with the taped-on flashlight and her newly acquired MAC-11/9. All things considered, she thought that the armor vest had been one of her best acquisitions so far. In certain ways, it was even better than the backpack Kevin had procured for her from the SPF Office. She finished making it as comfortable as she could, then she left the Armory and headed on down to the Parking Garage.

Elza keyed the code Rita had provided into the Parking Garage lock's numeric keypad. It beeped in confirmation of the correct pass code being entered, and then there was an audible click of multiple lock bolts being slid back into their housing cylinders. The light directly above the keypad and to the left of the card reader flashed from red to green, indicating that the door was now unlocked. Elza breathed a sigh of relief. With her new autopistol held at the ready in her gun hand, she tried the Parking Garage doors. The one to her left wouldn't move, as it was pegged in place, but the one on her right did. It swung inward, reveaing only a well-lit room beyond with another single door almost identical in style to the double Parking Garage doors directly in front of her. Nothing rushed out to ambush her, nor could she hear anything. It was quiet as a tomb in there but Elza had learned by now not to trust such silences where the Outbreak was concerned. Still holding her autopistol at the ready, Elza stepped into the next room.

The room turned out to be an extension of a large automobile service bay. To her immediate right at the other end was another metal door like the one in front of her. It had a standard large green EXIT sign above it, and Elza correctly presumed that it was the Parking Garage door proper. Between the door in front of her and the Parking Garage door, almost completely filling what would have been that part of the far wall, was an oversized fence-like security shutter. Its many openings allowed her to see into the room beyond the door directly in front of her. It turned out to be the rest of the Service Bay itself.