Resident Evil: Exodus - The Tale of Elza Walker

Chapter 22 - Reminisce

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Linda silently cursed as she raced back to the Security Office. She had taken far longer to clean up, bathe, and change than she had expected. After all, it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to take a bath when your main water source was a bathroom sink, and Linda had no experience in such things. She had done as best as she could, dried out her hair, slipped into her new clothes, thrown the old ones away in the nearest wastebin, and then hurried back to rejoin Rita and the wounded Elza. Fortunately nothing had attacked her, and nothing tried as she passed through the hallway door for the nearby bathrooms into the corridor next to the Security Office. The heavy double door at the end of that corridor connected to another corridor that eventually led to the Power Room for Pi Section; however, they dared not try it. The one chance Linda had taken using that Umbrella ID card in the freight elevator to activate the Lab's security system, and her emphatic warning about its use, had made all of them leery about her using it again. Linda's warning had been a serious one. Because of that one swipe, it was now only a matter of time before somebody in the computer section of Umbrella corporate noticed that the card had been used in an area where everyone was supposed to be dead. They would of course report whether its use was authorized or not. Once they did, the U.S.S. was going to swarm down on the Underground Lab like a pack of jackals closing for a certain kill. Linda sincerely hoped that using Birkin's ID card instead of her own would confuse whoever eventually detected its use, and buy them some much-needed time to recover and escape before the Security Service was dispatched to the area. She would have liked to have used Birkin's ID to activate one of the emergency escape trains far below, but that was too risky. Using it in that fashion would almost certainly be picked up. All Umbrella Security would have had to do after that was simply wait, and execute them as they came out of the appropriate train tunnel on the other side of the Arklay Mountains. They would not be expecting Kevin's plan to go back up to the surface by an alternate path and escape that way, and that was a good thing. As he and the others constantly said, "One can always hope."

Linda knocked on the door and called out to let Rita know it was her, and not some zombie or U.S.S. paramilitary pulling a fast one. The door opened and Rita appeared, gun drawn and ready all the same. One did not survive the Outbreak for as long as had she and the other survivors by throwing caution to the winds. She nodded and let Linda in, then closed and locked the door behind her. Linda saw that Elza was sleeping, and started to move the other chair in the room beside the one Rita had near Elza's side. Rita shook her head and motioned that they should move the chairs to the far side of the room. Linda helped Rita do that as quietly as they could, and then they both sat down.

"Elza just dozed off," Rita said quietly. "She's tuckered out again." She looked at Linda, then dug through some of their newly scrounged-up supplies and handed Linda a small comb. "How's the new outfit?"

"A bit more breezy than I'd like, but at least these scrubs are clean," Linda said, taking the comb from Rita and starting to work her hair with it. It was a good thing her hair was almost as short as Rita's. "It's too bad they don't make scrubs with long sleeves. By the way, thanks for that set of men's boxers. I feel a lot better bottomside now. Wherever did Kevin and John find them?"

"In that same supply cabinet where they found all of those scrubs," Rita said. "I told 'em to keep an eye out for something like that during their first search, while you were busy with Elza and I was telling 'em what medicines we needed and all. I figured you had gotten tired enough of running around without any underwear. I had to guess at the size, but I'm guessin' I guessed right."