When the grendade exploded, everything happened too fast for Rebecca to think about. There were only sensations, terror reigning over all. Brilliant light and explosive movement as the door blew outward, hardness against her back that gave way in an instant, lungs screaming, a billion bubbles like bullets, and incredible, impossible pressure that seemed to go on and on in shades of cold and black. Faster than fast, movement and muffled, strange sound. Dark shapes moved over her feeling mind, blotting out everything in growing flickers of dizziness and her chest was imploding, her lungs eating them- selves. She kicked and kicked and kicked and as her legs started to weaken, the dark flickers swallowing her up - air, sweet, wonderful air slapped across her dying face. She drank convulsively, gasping in great, heav- ing gulps of the stuff, still not thinking at all. Her bodythought instead, greedily swallowing life, the sprayand sting of salt, the warmer, rocking waves, a high, reedy buzz... CRASH! A massive wave of pressure pushed her forward, driving water up her nose as buckets of it suddenlyrained down on top of her. Rebecca gasped air, spinning, her mind connected to her body again.
David! What's... "Rebecca!" A choked cry, from somewhere in the buzzing dark. The buzz was clearer now, it was... CRASH! Another surging wave, another torrent pouring over her, seeking to drown her as Griffith had been unable to do, and as the rain fell away, she saw light - thick beams of it piercing the dark, wild surface of the cove. A boat. An engine's powerful, deepening thrum as it sped toward her over the thrashing sea. "Rebecca!" David's desperate call, from her left. "I'm here..."
CRASH! She could see the explosion this time, see the giant column of water silhouetted against the searching beams of light before the debris-encrusted wave knocked her back, blinding her with a vicious slap of foam. She managed to take a quick gulp of air before the column came down, crashing over her, spattering loudly against the choppy surface.
Depth charges, they're firing depth charges...
Umbrella?
The boat was less than thirty meters away when the engine suddenly cut out, the lights playing across the water in front of her. There was a splashing move- ment nearby and the lights moved, one of the blindingly bright beams finding David's exhausted, dripping face a short distance away. A man's voice, coming from the boat now moving slowly toward them. "This is Captain Blake of the Philadelphia S.T.A.R.S.! Identify yourself!" S.T.A.R.S.?
Blake went on, his shout louder as the boat came closer. "The water's not safe! We're coming to get you out!"
David called back, his voice clogged and crack-ing. "Trapp, David Trapp, Exeters, and Rebecca Chambers..." When Blake shouted again, he said the most won- derful, most beautiful words that Rebecca had ever heard.
"Burton sent us to find you! Hang on!" Barry. Oh, thank God, Barry!
As drained as she was, as spiritually wasted, torn by loss and fear from the long, terrible night, Rebecca had just enough strength to smile. That's when she heard the choking groan behind her.
There was darkness, tinged with red and an echo of pain. In that darkness, there was no self and no peace; he was alone and engaged in battle, a furious struggle to find the end to that absence of light. He knew that finding the end quickly was important, but a maze of strange and somehow frightening images blocked his way, insisting that he didn't need to hurry. A ghost, a soldier, a rage. The ringing laugh of a woman he had known who was no more and the terrible dead eyes that had taken away the light in an explosion of fire and sound. Eyes that he knew but was afraid to remember... The maze beckoned him, called to him to explore deeper and give up his search for the end of darkness - that the path would only lead to greater pain - and he'd almost decided to stop fighting, to let the shadows take over when the light found him in an explosive blast of deafening thunder. Then he was being shot through ice and liquid black, pounded to consciousness by pain - and it was the pain that he focused on in that screaming, terrible ride, the pain that drove him to fight the darkness. His awareness spun away as the air curdled in his lungs and the raging cold numbed the pain, but then he could breathe, and the jagged piece of bobbing wood beneath his clawed fingers told him that there was, in fact, light. He wasn't dead, although he almost wished he were, he could still hardly breathe, and the pain in his back was exquisite and then he heard the sound of David's voice amidst the sloshing cold and felt that life might be worth living, after all. He tried to call out, but all that emerged was an exhausted moan. There was a stab of sharp and blinding light and then darkness again, but there was a flicker of awareness this time that allowed him to understand what was happening. Pain and move- ment, a feeling of weightless suspension and then hardness against his cheek. Chill and more move- ment, the sound of cloth ripping and paper tearing. Excited voices calling orders, and again, the shriek of torn flesh. When he came around again, he saw a shadow in a S.T.A.R.S. vest bending over him with an IV bag in one hand and a needle in the other.
Hope that's morphine, he tried to say, but again, he only groaned.
A split second later, he saw two pale blurs hovering over him as the S.T.A.R.S. shadow continued to work over him with warm and gentle hands. The blurs were David and Rebecca, eyes circled with dark, hair dripping, faces tired and lost. "You're going to be okay, John," David said softly. "Just rest now. It's all over."
A spreading warmth started to flush through his body, a delicious, sleepy warmth that banished the roar of pain to a distant and faraway land. Just as a friendly darkness came to claim him, he looked into David's eyes and managed to rasp out what he sud- denly wanted to say more than anything. It took great effort, but it had to be said.
"You two look like somethin' a coyote ate and shit off a cliff," he mumbled. "Seriously..." John was followed into the healing blackness by the sweet sound of laughter. The middle-aged S.T.A.R.S. medic had taken John inside the small cabin on the thirty-foot boat, coming out only once to tell them that everything looked all right. Two broken ribs, some deep tissue trauma and a punctured lung, but they'd managed to patch him up well enough to call him stable and he was resting comfortably. A medevac helicopter had already been radioed for and would be arriving soon, and the medic seemed confident that John would manage a full recovery. David had wept a little at the news, and not been a bit ashamed.
They sat in the back of the boat, huddled under a scratchy wool blanket as Blake and his team contin- ued to set charges, powering easily back and forth across the cove. The Pennsylvania team had already brought up four of the giant creatures before they'd seen the explosive burst of air and debris that had come up from the lab, and it was starting to look as though there weren't any more. David had one arm around Rebecca, the girl lean- ing against his chest as the black sky gradually started to shade to a deep, ethereal blue. Neither of them spoke, too tired to do more than watch the team work, dropping charges and searching the results, back and forth and back again. Blake had promised to send divers down for Griffith's tanks as soon as the cove was clear and John had been picked up. There were two wetsuits already laid out on the bow's deck, a young Alpha, whose name David had forgotten, prep- ping them with studied intensity. He reminded David of Steve a little bit... Somehow, the thought of Steve didn't bring the kind of pain that David expected it would. It hurt, it hurt like hell - Karen and Steve, gone, but when he thought of what they had managed to stop, what they had been a part of...... it wasn't all for nothing. We stopped Griffith's insanity, stopped him from effectively killing millions of innocent people. God, they would have been so proud...
The pain was bad, but the guilt wasn't as devastat- ing as he'd feared it would be. His responsibility in their deaths was something he knew he'd have to ponder for a long time to come, but he thought that there was a good chance that he'd be able to find a way to come to terms with it eventually. He wasn't sure how, but the tears he'd been able to shed over John had struck him as a step in the right direction. David's tired thoughts turned to Umbrella, to what role they'd played in Griffith's madness. While they surely hadn't meant for their researcher to go mad, they had created the circumstances that allowed it to happen; their complete disregard for human life could only have been encouragement for someone like Grif- fith. And without Umbrella, the scientist would never have had access to the T-Virus...
Someday soon, they'll be held accountable for what they've done. Not today or tomorrow, but soon...
Perhaps Trent would help them again. Perhaps Barry and Jill and Chris would uncover more in Raccoon. Perhaps... Rebecca curled closer against him, her breath warm and even against his drying clothes, and David let the thoughts go for the time being, content to simply sit and not think at all. He was very, very tired. As the first rays of the sun slipped over the horizon, Blake pronounced the waters clean, though neither David nor Rebecca heard him; both had fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep beneath the twilight of the coming day.
