A brief stop (Patreon)

The road to Raccoon City was a scar across a dying landscape, a path paved with dread. Jill and Claire raced toward the epicenter of the catastrophe, the distant plumes of smoke a grim beacon. Yet in the shadow of the coming storm, they chose a moment of stolen defiance—a halt at a deserted fueling station, an island of eerie quiet in a world screaming toward ruin. There, amidst the scent of spilled gasoline and dust, time seemed to warp. The mission, the urgency, the very city groaning under its own collapse, all receded into a dull roar. Claire, her body humming with the vibration of the idling motorcycle, stretched across the seat in an attitude of profound surrender. Her head tipped back, eyes closed not in fatigue, but in focused sensation. Before her, Jill knelt on the oil-stained concrete. Her hands, so often clenched around the stock of a shotgun or the grip of a steering wheel, were engaged in a different, more intimate duty.