Lone Wolves: 01

Some Corpses Get Up

Chapter by Mehrune

Crows with eyes like the dark, greed filled pits circled over the rooftops of the corpse littered island. One in particular had caught their interest. It was abandoned in a pool of blood, bullet casings littering the area. Smoke billowed up from the island making visibility dim at best. The stench of blood, rotting flesh, and gun powder clung to the air, a reminder of the gruesome battle that had taken place a mere hour ago. The fight to the death had been without equal. In the end the victor, the sleek Asian woman in red had walked away smiling, but not without scars of her own, a permanent reminder of the event. The defeated now lay lifeless on a the roof of a metal building, his body riddled with more bullet holes than were feasibly countable.

It was the reek of the dead that had drawn the crows here in flocks. One after the other they perched on the surrounding metal beams that had made up the pair's arena. Feathers glistening in the dim light they waited. Watching and observing, making sure that no one would return for the discarded, once human male. As if some unseen signal had been given, in unspoken unison the crows took to the sky and descended upon the man that would become their meal.

Upon landing their sharp beaks began ripping into the pale, already torn flesh beneath their sharp, blood caked talons. The corvids didn't care about what the combination of the virus and the deadly parasite had twisted their prey into. The risk of infection and similarly debilitating mutation meant nothing to them. For a good five minutes the hungry birds feasted, cleaving strips of skin from the stiff body. The man beneath them formally bearing the name of Jack Krauser, a title that served no purpose in death, was completely covered by the ravenous birds.

The nature of these creatures was to pick apart the mortal until there was nothing left. Many of the corpses littering the island had already met a similar fate. Yet, unlike the others that had been reduced to bloody skeletons, this meal would be different. This time the meal would be incomplete.

The crows suddenly spooked when their pray, a man that in all rights had been dead—a still heart, no electric activity between the neural synapses in his brain, no breath in his lungs, blood stagnate in his ripped veins—began to twitch and move. They took to the skies with shrieks of anger and surprise, blood droplets falling from their beaks, wings, and talons as they rose higher and higher leaving the man once more, but this time, not for dead. By some horror, or perhaps miracle—depending on how you viewed such things—the twisted mess of biological warfare residing in his tainted veins had restored some semblance of life to the corpse on which the ravens and crows had been dining.

Confused, and not yet sated, the birds only moved far enough to remain safe, staying close enough to return to feasting should the man fall back into death's clutches once again, greedy hunger burning in their black eyes.

Jack's entire body felt like it was on fire. Every inch of his twisted being ached. The empty blackness that had completely engulfed his mind for God only knew how long was slowly giving way to fog that allowed Jack to begin to think once again, but only of the pain. His back felt as though a blunt nail imbedded club had been pounding it into unrecognizable, pulverized flesh. He could feel the fresh blood that was once again being pumped out of him in small rivers by his now beating, tired, aching heart flowing from the open gashes that he knew extended down into his muscles, some deeper still. His back was only the beginning of the horrors that had become his body.

His face that was still pressed against the metal was also covered with blood, trickling down the marred flesh that made his previous scars look like mere superficial scratches. He was choking on his own blood, a process that made the already agonizing filling and refilling of his previously still lungs even more excruciating. He wasn't even sure where the blood was coming from: The mess that had once been his face which felt as though someone had stuffed it onto a meat grinder, or something internal. Probably both if he had the strength to think about anything besides how much he hurt.

Slowly, mostly off of instinct he blinked his eyes open, the process taking a few moments since they had been previously glued shut by dried blood and now he had to blink away the fresh crimson curtain trickling into them. Once he had them open, even the light hurt, searing into retinas that had thought they were done dealing with such things as vision. It was a miracle that he could still use both his eyes. A miracle that at the time meant nothing to Krauser.

It was awful. Hellish even. Perhaps he was in hell, he certainly couldn't see himself flying upstairs with many of the happy souls he'd already sent there. But nothing, nothing at all, not the ribbons of muscle and sinew his back had been reduced to, nor the burning agony of his mutilated face, not even the tightly packed clusters of bullet holes bored into his chest could compare to the blinding agony that comprised from his left arm.

It felt as though a chainsaw had ripped through the skin from the inside, splitting his extremity straight down the middle. Or perhaps it was better described as an alien, a parasite that had burrowed its way beneath his skin, integrated with his musculature and wrapped sinisterly around his bone before deciding to excruciatingly expand, ripping through his body until it was exposed to the world as the grotesque creature that it was. Then it had the audacity to pulsate and wriggle, each unintentional movement sending electric jolts of excruciation through his body. Even now he could feel the invading tendrils working their slow unhaltable way under his skin, pushing and prodding the invasion past his shoulder, over his chest, up his neck, and across his back. It wasn't fast. Nigh unnoticeable actually, except for the burning ache they left in their wake. An ache stronger and deeper than anything Jack had felt before and one that brought with it an overwhelming sense of fear that came with being completely consumed, eaten alive by the power he was currently unaware he had willingly injected into his body.

Jack was no stranger to pain he had served in the military special forces for years and his work as a mercenary placed him on a first name basis with every sort of discomfort imaginable. But the sensations that were ripping through his arm were worse than anything he had ever felt before. It was worse than the spine that had been thrust through his left arm by the enormous mutant B.O.W. he had faced in South America. Worse than the helicopter crash that had carved up his face. Worse than all of the times before. Nothing in his entire career could have prepared him for this.

He couldn't bring himself to look at it, he couldn't bring himself to move a single muscle. All he could do was lay there in agony, unaware if he was screaming, crying, a combination of the two, or nothing at all. For Jack an eternity passed by in mere minutes. Vaguely the realization that he was going to die, that he should have been dead crept into his clouded mind. Followed by the thought that if he did nothing he would die.

His mind returning from whatever crippling agony ridden oblivion it had fallen into begged him to do something, to survive. But how could he? What good was he against the tide of death slowly pulling him down back into the blackness he'd just emerged from? He couldn't even move. It was as if some invisible hand was forcefully holding him into place, pushing him into the wet steel beneath him. That hand was fear. He was terrified to move; terrified of the searing agony that would overwhelm him. Jack was vaguely aware of his body heaving against the cool surface under him, his lungs feeling like they couldn't take in enough oxygen no matter how hard he tried and screaming in protest at the effort. Panic forced its way through the fog urging Jack to do something.

In the end the urge to survive won out. It always did. That's why he was still breathing after all. No matter what happened to him, Jack somehow always survived. It's who he was.

Jack slowly forced his gray, blood shot eyes that had somehow drifted shut again to open and then to do something they hadn't last time: To see, to somehow make the painful light and various shapes around him make sense through the pain racking through his entire frame. The world was swimming, he couldn't focus his vision, but he knew that he was definitely flush against the ground that felt as though it was soaked in some mixture of viscous liquids.

Jack tried to make both of his arms move so he could get up, but he couldn't manage anything with the left arm that was no longer really his but an entity all its own. The pain that shot through him was excruciating every time he tried. Giving up on using that thing he used every ounce of strength left in his desolated body to push himself up using only his right arm. Through shear determination Krauser managed to lift himself a few inches off the ground, just enough to allow air to properly fill his deprived lungs.

Krauser's vision swam further complicating things as he tried frantically to make sense of something. Through the blood veil that stained his face and his eyes he was finally able to see that the liquid on the ground was blood. Judging by how he felt Jack came to the conclusion that it was his blood. Well that figures... He was unsure how he could still be alive, while his blood covered the ground. It was as if the metal itself was rusting a deep crimsonstream. No one should have been able to survive that, yet here he was still breathing.

Taking in several gasps of air he did his best to calm his shaking breathing. Flashes of prior events spasmed through his mind. An image of a woman in a red dress, a knife fight, the president's daughter, and his arm...God his arm. None of it made any sense, there was no order to the images. They just pounded their way into his head. The entire situation made Jack want to scream, to yell bloody murder to the entire world.

It was a scream that Jack could not contain. The sound itself was inhuman, like a wounded animal's cry, defiant before death's door. Krauser himself couldn't even recognize the cry as his own. It didn't help that it was the first sound his ringing ears had picked up on, the first thing he truly heard besides the intense sporadic pounding of his own wounded heart.

The sound itself sent the crows that had perched in wait on one of the many rooftops nearby to take to the skies once more. Emitting enraged squawks as they circled, spiraling upwards and vacating the area and their unfinished meal.

Jack's head slumped forward, his forehead hitting the ground once more. An act that did nothing for the horrendous pounding in his head. Gasping he began to pull himself from the pool of blood with his right arm, towards the edge of one of the sloping rooftops. Sharp gasps of pain mingled with the occasional curse filled the silent and still night. Every inch felt as though he had moved a mile. Every breath he took required the same force as if he was pushing a bus off of his chest.

Nearing the edge of the building he gripped it, forcing himself to look over rim assessing how far of a drop off there was. Krauser knew that he was in no shape to climb, but also knew that if he stayed here death was imminent. Once his vision cleared slightly he assessed the drop to be about twenty feet, maybe, but he knew that it would hurt like hell if he slipped and fell, a luxury he could not afford in his current condition. Krauser braced himself against the ground and began pushing himself up off of it crying out from the effort and the pain it caused. The tears that ran up his right arm increasing from the endeavor, ripping into new unscathed flesh, causing more blood to fall.

Barely managing to make it to his knees Jack glanced at his left arm that up to this point he had tried to ignore. The sight that met his eyes matched the horrible images that had imbedded themselves into his mind. The mangled, scared thing that had once been his left arm hung limply at his side. A thing that Jack could only describe as something out of a horror movie. The arm itself was red and black looking, like a mix between scar tissue, muscle, and something else entirely—the flesh of the creature fused with his body. Severe burns covered his upper arm further adding to the sickening color pallet. Yellow pustules that he didn't even want to think about erupted sporadically over the dilapidated monstrosity. Towards the bottom it branched into what appeared to be a large blade capable of slicing through any enemy with ease. The entire sight was foreign, perhaps alien in nature. What his left arm once was didn't matter, all that was left of it was a combination of the virus and parasite that had consumed it. Transforming it into a weapon, a weapon capable of taking down anything and anyone if used correctly.

Krauser doubled over and held his head as more memories poured forth. There was something about a dominant strain, and then he was injected and...Krauser slumped forward farther his mutated arm pulsating faster, the movement causing fresh bouts of agony to shoot through him.

Trying desperately to clear his head Krauser began to push himself up. Discovering whatever had happened to his arm and to him in general would have to wait until he got the hell out of here. There was only one thing urging Krauser onward, preventing him from lying down and letting despair take him: That damned unyielding, indomitable will to survive that even with his mind in shambles, he knew he'd always stubbornly carried with him. And something else...the fear of dying here alone. For some reason he knew he wasn't supposed to be alone any more.

Once shakily on his feet Krauser looked for a way down through his unsteady vision that wouldn't involve jumping, or more likely, falling off the metal building and onto the combination of more steal and concrete bellow. Stumbling around the rim Jack hopped he would run across some luck see a ladder, hell right now he would take a giant, out of place slide to carry him to safety, or an open bar for that matter. God he could use a drink... Right now he was leaning towards the open bar as a very appealing idea. Regardless of how impractical that was.

Whether his search would have proved fruitful or not didn't even matter. The air that had moments ago lay still picked up. The breeze rocked the metal frame that made up the near by bridge, howled against the steal building, and crashed against the man who had only moments ago found his footing. Krauser desperately tried to steady himself but in his current condition, failed miserably, his back crashed into the rooftop and from there he proceeded to slide farther and farther towards the edge. In a matter of seconds Jack's body, barely holding itself together at this point between past and current abuses, crashed into the concrete ledge beneath him. The twenty foot drop shook Krauser to his very core ripping another blood curdling cry from his scared and burned lips.

Jack couldn't move. He didn't even try to move for close to ten minutes. The entirety of that time was spent with tears pouring down his face washing some of the caked on blood away, eyes screwed tightly shut. That was it. He was done. He didn't care any more. He was just going to lay down and die or let that thing on the end of his shoulder consume him. He was done fighting. He was done-

"You really are a pathetic waste of my time, Jack."

The slightly accented words lit across his mind like wild fire as well as the image of the man speaking them. Tall, completely clad in black darker than the night surrounding him, with a devilish condescending smirk and eyes to match.

"Are you really just going to die now? No...no I think not. Not yet anyway. Now stop lying on the ground like a dog. Get up Jack! Now!"

It was so real. He could see it all, hear it like those cruel lips had said it right above him. He'd even smelt his sharp strangely appealing cologne. But it wasn't real. The man wasn't there. Jack was alone in a desolated smoke filled town, and somehow, he wasn't even sure how, he was standing. He had no idea how he had made it back to his feet, or how he was going to stay that way—he felt like his legs would buckle at any minute—but he knew he had to.

Jack clutched at the wall of the building he had just fallen from for support. Looking around him he noticed a door on the other side of a walkway. A door that for all he knew could lead to more problems than he could handle right now. In fact currently he couldn't handle any more complications. Taking in a deep breath and shakily letting it out, he approached the edge of the ledge. Slowly he moved into sitting position before lowering his legs off of it. The knew drop he faced was only five feet, much better than twenty, but still, it was a distance he wasn't sure he could handle right now.

Knowing there was no other way down Krauser allowed himself to slide off of the ledge, legs impacting hard with the ground. The force of his landing caused him to swear and fall forward, landing hard on his knees. Krauser's whole body was shaking at this point, but the voice still echoed in his ears "Get up Jack..."

Shakily he pulled himself to his feet only succeeding with the help of the railing that lined the walkway. Jack gripped his left alien appendage to his chest as he slowly crossed the walkway, leaning on the railing the entire time. A trail of blood was left behind him; too much blood. He was shedding more blood than was humanly possible. There was no getting around it, he should be dead. From the blood loss, gashes, third degree burns, or the copious bullet holes that riddled his body, he shouldn't be breathing let alone standing. Yet by some miracle or curse, Krauser was stumbling down the walkway towards the heavy metal door.

Krauser practically fell against the sturdy frame. Now that he was close enough to make out the details of the door he noticed that it was bent out of shape as if something large had rammed into it, and it was now jammed shut. Krauser turned the handle but the door wouldn't budge. He tried again and again to make the blasted thing move. Desperation and panic settled in telling him he wouldn't be able to open the door, that he had fought this hard for nothing, that he would die here alone. Jack pounded against the door silently begging God or some other power to give him the strength to open it.

Jack ended up ramming his mutated shoulder repeatedly against the door. Each hit accompanied by a cry of pain and very little progress. On the last hit Krauser threw all of his weight behind it, and through some stroke of luck, the door gave way and crashed open. It swung back and forth, barely hanging from its hinges.

Pipes stuck up out of the ground wrapping their way across the room blocking Jack's line of sight. Railing designed to keep the workers from falling into the lower bowels of the building surrounded the walkway on which Jack was standing. The most remarkable point of the room were the corpses scattered over the ground along side a myriad of empty bullet casings from various types of guns littering the newly revealed room. All in all it was not the sight of hope that Krauser had wished for. The entire room smelt like death, hell he probably smelt like death too. The one thing that did catch his eye was that many of the corpses were still clutching weapons. None of the weapons were too impressive, but they were still something. Stun guns and knives seemed to be the weapon of choice for the massacred. Hopefully they would serve him better.

Jack made his way into the room and over to one of the fallen men. Bending over Krauser picked up two of the discarded weapons: A stun gun and a knife. The knife was badly made, the blade unbalanced, slightly rusted, and the grip felt wrong in his hand, but it was sharp. The stun gun on the other hand Jack knew nothing about, but he took it anyways, sticking it through a loop in his belt. The knife he kept in his hand. Despite the fact he hadn't been able to locate any of the guns that had made the empty shell mess covering the ground, he did feel somewhat better now that he had some means of defense other than the arm that he couldn't even move right now.

Krauser walked deeper into the building, picking his way through the dead that hadn't been blessed with a second chance like him. He was hoping against hope for a way out of here, but mainly he was just trying to find the will to keep moving.

Unlike outside where the stench of the dead had been masked by the breeze, in the stale room there was no escaping it. The air suffocated him with every breath he took with the smell of rot, decay, disease, and death. The fallen felt familiar somehow...at least their uniforms did. Perhaps he knew more about this place and what had happened here than he was aware, but as his mind was still not functioning properly, he couldn't say for sure. He wasn't exactly sure he wanted to know either. So far the flashes he'd gotten were severely disturbing.

Even in death, the rotting solders still fought. Their stiff limbs and discarded nigh septic fluids causing him to stumble and otherwise threatening his already unsteady footing. It was as if they were trying to pull him down to join their feted ranks. He wasn't sure if it was his imagination or not but he was certain that they were purposefully trying to keep him here. That they wanted to kill him too. It served as motivation to keep him going. He refused to end up like them, he would not rot alone down here.

Through the dim light Krauser made out what looked to be a table covered with documents and other items. From his current position he couldn't make out their nature but, hoping there might be a map or some sort of communication device, Jack made his way over. If there was maybe he could actually make it out of here.

Looking down at the table he was met with a mix of disappointment and relief. Scattered over the wooden surface was a disorganized mess of official looking documents that Jack had no use for. Most of them were blood stained, and some had fallen carelessly to the floor. No maps or radios, but, nestled among the documents were several packages of gauze bandages. Some of the packages were opened and the bits of blood stained, already cut strips told Jack that someone else had also needed a quick patch up job, though probably nothing compared to what he needed. A morgue would be better equipped to deal with his wounds than an ER, let alone a make shift medic station. He wasn't even sure there would be enough to make a dent but maybe they would be enough to stop the worst of the bleeding that was leaving a red trail behind him.

Krauser sat down on the table's surface, thankful it supported his weight. Taking the bandages in his right had he looked down first at his chest. What met his gaze scared him. His torso that had once been riddled with bullet holes, gashes, and burns was somehow...healing. The many holes had shrunk in size, still bleeding but not nearly as bad as before. The gashes there had also began to close, and the smaller ones had sealed completely. There were no words that came to Krauser, no idea of why or how this had happened. Tearing his eyes from his chest he focused his gaze on his pulsating left arm. It too was healing, the mutated flesh still looked horrendous but the cuts themselves had healed. As far as he could tell, his arm had actually healed faster than the rest of him. The question that remained was why? No matter where he looked his wounds were slowly healing, the places close to his left inhuman arm closing up the fastest.

Jack finally shook himself out of his shock, letting his hands drop the bandage roll he'd been about to apply—It looked like he wouldn't be needing it after all. This was important there was no way he could deny that but now was hardly the time and the place to piece together that mystery. He needed to get the hell out of here, before whatever killed these corpses and whatever had done this to him in the first place came back to finish the job.

Krauser hopped gingerly down from the table he was still sitting on. His actions caused one of the loose documents to fall to the floor, the movement catching his eye. It wasn't the words on the page that captured his attention, it was the symbol that it bore. A red and white octagonal shape. It was so...so familiar...Umbrella.

Suddenly Krauser doubled over holding his head as memories began to pour forth.

...must retrieve a Master Plaga for the mission to be a success, bring me any other type and I'll...straight back to Spain...

...need to gain his trust...use whatever means necessary...

...yes, Ada is coming with you...a certain finesse you seem incapable of...

….oh, you think that's funny, do you? ...actually rather tiresome...

….not to be trusted. She'll serve her own interests before ours...

...The Organization is becoming suspicious...time is shorter than I want...

...Don't fail me, Jack...and do come back in one piece...

It was the same blond man, cloaked in shadows. His silky, commanding voice giving Jack brief insights into the reason he was trapped in this hell hole, beat half to death. Ada... He remembered red. A red dress and even redder blood; his blood. She was the one who did this to him, somehow he was sure. Maybe if he got out of this...no when he got out of this he'd be sure and return the favor. He very much doubted she had some miracle monster living in her arm that would eject every bullet from her flesh, start her heart again, and then slowly put her mutilated body back together.

First things first. He had to get off this island, which was apparently somewhere in the vicinity of Spain, and then somehow find his way back to the man in the dark sunglasses; find his way back to...Wesker. The name hit him like a gunshot and then resonated through his being like a heartbeat. His body's reaction to just remembering the man's name was enough to convince him that this was the right coarse of action and his first priority.

"You must return with a Master Plaga, otherwise, the mission will be a complete failure..."

"Master Plaga?" What the hell was that?

Suddenly Jack's arm pulsated painfully and he was taken over by his foggy memories again. He was really beginning to hate this ride...

Jack saw himself standing in some sort of throne room before a man who looked more ancient than the building he was in, dressed in deep purple robes and wielding a staff that looked like it had come out of an fantasy RPG. He remembered the needle filled with the eery purple liquid and the tiny white speck it had contained.

An egg. An egg from the deadly parasites that had turned this peaceful town into something out of a horror film.

"...To show our appreciation for all your hard work we are happy to bring you into our brotherhood Krauser...as an equal...the Master Plaga we place into your body will..."

Jack's eyes flew open and he doubled over, physically sick as he recalled the feeling as the mutated creature burst through what had once been his arm, shedding the useless flesh like a bloody coat.

Once Krauser had finished retching up what was left in his stomach—mostly blood—he chanced a glance over at his pulsating extremity. Well, he thought, swallowing hard, at least I won't fail the mission...

This will be a semi-short story revolving around Jack Krauser and Albert Wesker during the fallout from Resident Evil 4. Chapters will alternate between Krauser's and Wesker's perspectives.

The story is being co-written with my sister Asiera* and loosely follows future plot points from her ongoing Resident Evil FanFiction Project W. I'm writing the chapters told from Krauser's perspective and she the ones written in Wesker's. Our writing styles are fairly similar so the transitions should be pretty smooth.

Wesker/Krauser is the primary (only) pairing.

Story rated M for violence, swearing, and sexual content (explicit lemons will be posted on my sister's AO3 account, "clean" versions here).

Thank you for reading, we hope you enjoyed the first chapter. Reviews are appreciated and always responded to.

*Story also posted on Asiera's AO3 account (link on my profile)