The snow melted, and there was grass. The thing about Alaska. In the winter it's cold, yes, but in the summer it's long, long warm day with brilliant splotches of wildflowers. Fireweed brightens the not-yet-lush landscape and bit by bit, the foot hills bleed green, the snow reeling back for another short season.

Alice and Carlos went walking. Her boots sunk into the dead grasses left behind and he stood back to watch her. It had been years since they'd seen life like this. It was still cold; the wind whipped down in off the mountains and cut through the heavy jackets they still wore. Alice told him he still smelled like sun and sand, but when he would bury his face in her hair, he would smell the smoke from their wood fire, the sharp breeze that came in off the ocean. Alice didn't smell like sand or anything else.

The mountains framed her head. Sometime during the winter months she'd cut her hair, but it was growing back again, without the uneven patches left there by the scientists at the Hive under Raccoon city. Her tan had faded, a fact she'd pointed out happily, and she smiled more, if only because when they woke up in the mornings, sometimes they heard birds.

It's possible here she'd told him the first day they'd seen a caribou thump awkwardly through the snow, crossing in front of their house, it's possible to be human again.

Carlos stayed back and let her stand out in front, alone. He could remember when all they could see was sand and it was as though he could feel it working into the pours of his skin, invading him and suffocating. Now the wind whipped it away and he could smell the last of the snow on the mountain tops, the air cool, not burning, against his eyes when he closed them. It was possible, he thought.

creative_muses
May Prompt #6
320 Words

He'd been too busy to pay attention to his sidekick. Claire had gone to bed a few hours ago and it was the first chance either Alice or Carlos had to get off their feet. Her energy seemed truly endless. He loved it. She'd met Nicholai and Jill. He would take her to see LJ and Ranger soon. Yes, Carlos loved showing her off. It was the first time in weeks he'd gone a full day of feeling content, happy, without the stresses of Nemesis, Wesker, worrying about Alice going home, grieving for everything they'd lost.

But the past part of it was he'd never seen Alice smile so much. She was so easy with the girl, relaxed and laughing. Her face would light up in ways Carlos had never seen before and he didn't think he could ever get over how beautiful they both were. He'd settled quite nicely into proud, sappy fatherhood and he loved it.

He was half dozing on the couch, Alice tucked into his side, the remnants of dinner still on the table, when his sidekick buzzed again, reminding him that he had a message he hadn't read yet. He shifted carefully and dug into his pocket so he could flip the thing open.

Carlos' heart dropped down into his stomach and he sat up, staring at the screen.

Prompt #6 - Ruins

Sometimes they would come upon ruins. Carlos no longer really knew where they were. The jungle. Somewhere in the jungle. Somewhere in the shit. Most of the time they were just abandoned indigenous villages, broken pottery strewn about the dirt floors and the thatch rotting through. But sometimes there would be the stone skeleton of a church. They could hear the ghosts of the missionaries, deep in the jungle on a fools errand, sent there by God to convert a people who were much more interested in their supplies than their faith. Some of the men would circle the ruins, M16s in hand, and murmur their sympathies.

Carlos would just smirk. Maybe he'd grown up in the Bronx, but he'd been born in Uruguay. He would never be able to dig deep enough to find sympathy for a bunch of missionaries.

The jungle ate away at the stone, tugging and tearing it down in its insatiable hunger. It was always just the sparse stone that was left, the wood roofs and doors long since reclaimed. Once, Carlos' Lieutenant found an iron cross buried in the soggy muck of the jungle floor. Carlos stood back as the others examined it. He was remembering a dream he'd had that had only just returned to him. Iron ruins. The sun had blinded him and he'd been scared, but he didn't know why. He was watching someone. A woman stood in an archway, stock-still, as though waiting. Iron rose up around him, rose up out of the Earth, mammoth, terrifying remains of something that had been glorious, once upon a time. Carlos wasn't prone to nightmares, but watching this woman, squinting against that violent, painful sun, he wanted to weep. What was coming? This devastation, this emptiness, it felt inevitable. But it was a dream. He woke up and his cheeks were wet. He called it sweat and hauled himself out of his bunk for another day of humping through the jungle.

A week later Umbrella found him in a small town five miles from the Brazilian border. Every night after that, after being recruited, Carlos would close his eyes at night and dream of sand.

creative_muses
April #6
362 Words

What one act in your past are you most proud of?

It wasn't a hard decision to make. He would get into the truck, wrench it into gear, accelerate through the writhing mass of infected and then he would die. Carlos had lived a life during which most days had been days where he might die. Would it hurt? He wondered. He'd come close before and it had hurt. But this was different. This was for Claire and Alice. It was for K-Mart. They had to get to Alaska. They had to keep fighting, even though he couldn't go with them. The wound on his arm festered and ached, getting larger no matter how tightly he wrapped it. He could feel it spreading, slithering through his blood, up to his brain. The copper of blood was tangy in his mouth, settling on his tongue like a reminder of his mortality. He welcomed it.

It wouldn't hurt. He just wished he had a cigarette.

Carlos Olivera
152 Words
creative_muses

A taste of your own medicine.

The night Alice told him how the Virus had gotten out, Carlos went on a very long patrol. Spence Parks. He didn't know what the man had looked like, but he had a very clear picture of a hand dropping the blue vial, could watch in his mind's eye as the glass shattered against the sterile white tile of the floor.

A quiet tinkle that signaled the end of the world. The end of the world. The end brought about by one man.

It was easy to hate Umbrella. They were so huge and faceless that Carlos' rage could spread far and wide. It was large enough to encompass all the confused fury he felt.

But one man? The end of the world. How could he focus that all down onto one man?

The night was clear, both of clouds and infected. He walked along the lakeside, or what used to be the lakeside. Lake Michigan was barely a puddle now and Carlos wore a scarf over his nose and mouth to shield him from the stink of the mud left behind. It wouldn't be long, though. It hadn't rained in months and soon the mud would be dry earth, hard packed and littered with the trash that was all that remained of humanity. Busted bikes and car parts, cans, ragged rotted clothes, plastic bags and beer bottles.

The end of the world they took such good care of.

Carlos shifted the cold metal of the M16 in his hands as he walked, one boot in front of the other, and thought about Spence Parks. What did he deserve? He'd been torn limb from limb by a licker, then shot in the head. Was that adequate punishment? He wasn't the only man deserving of guilt, Carlos thought as he tugged his boot free from the mud his foot had slipped into as he walked, but no. It wasn't adequate.

How do you rectify bringing about the end of the world?

creative_muses
Resident Evil
330 words

Meet me at the edge of the forest. Come armed and hurry.

Continued from here

He was working hard on keeping himself reigned in because man would that be embarrassing. This girl was too beautiful and amazing for him to make a fool of himself like that.

So he kissed her back, slowly, carefully, easing up into the stroke of her hand and concentrating hard on returning the pleasure, working her gently with two finger tips, hoping it would feel good.

"Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed." ~Natalie Clifford Barney

Carlos never once saw Alice cry. She didn't cry in Detroit, not after they lost Jill and Angela. He couldn't even remember her shedding a tear when she'd faced Nemesis, which meant all the more when he'd finally learned who Nemesis had once been.

When she disappeared after Detroit, he thought of her every night before falling asleep, blue eyes floating just out of reach like some sort of bizarre Chinese water torture. The sounds of the desert, the wind hissing over the sand, was like an eerie lullaby. The place was a wasteland, but some how the planet retained its beauty. Carlos could appreciate the elegant violence of the desert when there weren't any infected around.

But then the alarms would sound and he would be shooting some poor, undead sap in the head to keep him from chomping on the arm of a screaming ten year old.

When Alice made her reappearance, he could see the difference in her. Her face was drawn and even her smiles felt like frowns, but it didn't matter. The beauty was still there. The expanse of the sand stretched out behind her and Carlos could believe in something good.

creative_muses
195 words
Nov #3

When the box was opened again, fifty years later, Carlos was long gone. In fact, everyone he knew was gone. Life expectancy wasn't long these days. It was like they were working their way back up the evolutionary chain. But it didn't matter, because where Carlos was no longer, the box remained. It was metal and ugly, dented and thick with grime.

It was opened on the third month of Alice's disappearance. She'd left her things behind, except for the knives, and when the others finally ventured into her room, they found the box sitting on her bed. It was unlocked, partially open and curiosity was too strong to resist.

( There were only two things in the box. )


Carlos Olivera
Resident Evil
579 Words

"It's called a Sundog."

Carlos looked down at her and had to smile. Alice was clearly unused to the cold. You could barely see her for all the clothing. The parka hid most of her face and she had to turn her head to look at him. It was the sort of thing he thought about, the fact that she had no peripheral vision. A year ago Alice never would have allowed her vision to be compromised like that. She felt safe here. His smile broadened.

"What?"

"Nothing." He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and turned to look back at the sun. It made him squint. It also made his heart rise in his chest, like when she'd first kissed him. "It's called a Sundog? Why?"

"I don't know."

"It's beautiful."

"Yeah." And it was, but it tugged at his heart because they could stand out here in the wilderness with dark coming on and not fear for themselves. Go to Alaska she'd said, and she'd been right. It was fucking frigid, yeah, but that was a small price to pay. "It is beautiful." It was more than that. It was freedom.

Carlos Olivera
Resident Evil
189 words