Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [27]
Eventually, though, the tide of zomboids was just too strong. Carlos and L.J. were the only survivors of the strike team left.
Claire had been one of the refugees Carlos’s team had rescued, and eventually she grew into a leadership role.
Now Carlos said in as sincere a voice as he was capable of, “I’m out.”
However, Claire wasn’t having any of it. “I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Would I lie to you, Claire?”
Dammit, he wouldn’t, either. Carlos was honest to a fault, which was one of several reasons why Claire didn’t understand how he could work for Umbrella. For his part, Carlos never had been able to provide a good answer to that question—and he’d certainly been asked it enough times.
Sighing, Claire said, “L.J.?”
“Claire Redfield,” L.J. said in his usual boisterous tone from his position behind the wheel of the Enco tanker. “Now how can I help you?”
Nobody knew much about L.J.’s past, mostly because he kept making up different ones. Every time someone new came into the convoy, L.J. would spin some yarn about who he was—a haberdasher, a shoe repairman, a computer programmer with IBM, a minor-league baseball player, a cop, a drug dealer, a federal agent, a deli clerk, and a veterinarian.
He had been with Carlos when he had the strike team, and his job was to help out with all the nonmilitary stuff—including keeping the refugees safe. While Claire owed Carlos her life, she owed L.J. her sanity. His crazed sense of humor had kept her going through the worst of the despair, especially after she realized that she probably would never see her brother again.
What little Claire did know about L.J. was something that only one other person in the convoy knew: that he, like Carlos, was a survivor of Raccoon City.
It was for that reason that Claire hadn’t pried about his past. If it was connected to the city that started the apocalypse, she was just as happy not to open up that old wound.
“Got a smoke?” she asked him now.
“We talkin’ regular tobacco or alternate substances?” L.J. had shown an affinity for pharmaceuticals that led one to think that his claim to have been a drug dealer in the past was pretty close to the mark, and he had managed to scrape together a supply of drugs that weren’t FDA-approved.
Not that there was an FDA to approve it or a law-enforcement structure to enforce it.
“Regular,” Claire said. Getting high sounded appealing, but not while she was driving.
“No can do,” L.J. said quickly.
Frowning, Claire asked, “How about alternate?”
“Sorry to say, we’re out of that, too.”
Somehow, Claire wasn’t surprised.
Betty Grier, the paramedic they’d picked up in Bakersfield, was driving the ambulance, and she chimed in: “You gotta be shitting me! Otto?”
From the school bus, Otto Walenski said, “Sorry, campers. Smoked the last of it back in Salt Lake.”
They hadn’t been in Salt Lake for almost a month, so Claire was rather amazed that Otto’d been able to hold out this long. He’d been a high school history teacher in Omaha, and he’d been using the bus from his own school system to protect his kids and later other kids who’d been abandoned or orphaned by the growing plague of the undead.
“Damn,” Betty muttered.
“Yeah, people,” L.J. said portentously, “it really is the end of the world.”
Otto snorted. “Ladies and gentlemen, our morale officer, L.J. Wayne!”
Betty said, “There better be some damn cigarettes in the next town.”
“So speaketh the medical professional,” Otto said. “An inspiration to us all.”
L.J. said, “Motherfucker, lung cancer ain’t exactly high on the list of shit I’m concerned about, you feel me?”
Claire interrupted the bantering. “Speaking of the next town, shouldn’t we be close to something?”
“Maybe,” Carlos said. “If I remember right, there’s a small town coming up soon. If we see a video billboard for Vegas, we