Las Plagas: Resident Evil IV

Chapter Six: Salvador

Catching one last glimpse of what remained of the bridge before being carried off into the forest by the four men in old fashioned clothes, felt to Leon like getting one last glimpse of the real world before being sucked head-first into a nightmare where things didn't make any sense at all. He had seen movies and heard urban legends about groups of crazy people who lived in the middle of nowhere, who attacked outsiders on sight, but those kind of people didn't usually ever leave their home region, so… so why on Earth would they have gone all the way to the United States in order to kidnap someone?

Was the Intel wrong after all? Instead of belonging to international kidnappers, did that other van simply belong to the last group of unlucky bastards to cross paths with… with whoever the hell these people were? It wasn't like the Agent could ask his captors, since he didn't speak their language even if they were in the mood to chat, although they were definitely in the mood to drop him on the ground and deliver a few swift kicks to his sides when he tried to struggle his way free.

"Deja de luchar, cerdo!" One of them yelled during the beating. "Solo moriras cansado."

It was awful hard to defend himself with his arms tied like that, leaving Leon with no choice but to take the blows, and then be picked up again so that the journey could resume. Moving farther along the trail as is twisted and turned its way through the forest, they carried him downhill past a couple old partially rotted shacks that looked like they were about a week away from collapsing, and then just as the forest reached its thickest, the whole thing just opened up into a wide clearing after the next curve.

Getting a good view of his new surroundings was difficult because of how he was being carried, but suddenly the Agent felt like he had been transported a couple hundred years into the past when he craned his head upward to see the village that lie before him. The buildings were made of wood, with thatch roofs, with the exception of the large stone watchtower tower that looked oddly out of place as it stood two stories higher than all the other buildings around it. There were cows and chickens around as well, with most of the bovines chewing on hay inside a small barn while the chickens just kind of wandered around aimlessly.

Seriously, this place looked like something out of the 1800's, with all of the men in sight wearing similar plain shabby clothes to the others, with the women all wearing outfits consisting of simple dresses and head scarfs like a medieval dairy maid. The Agent didn't see any children around, though, which seemed odd in this kind of… what was this, a kind of minimalist commune? Everyone around was paying attention, watching intently as Leon was carried toward what looked like the center of town… but then a knot formed in his stomach as he saw what was waiting there for him.

There were wooden structures that were kind of like crosses, made from wooden planks as thick as the ones for the bridge, and lined up across the center of the village like they were positioned for some kind of grotesque display. There were four others there as well, each with their wrist-ropes hung over one side of the crosses so that their feet were off the ground, as if each man was a kind of counterweight for the one on the other side… and all of them wearing a light blue policia jacket, which explained what had happened to his backup.

Wait a second, there were only four of them hanging there, including the wounded one from the house… along with the one dead down in the river, made five… so where were the other three? Dozens of villagers had surrounded the hanging Officers, some waving pitch forks and shovels in a threating manner, while others angrily shouted things that… Leon was probably better off not being able to understand… although he started struggling again once he realized that he was being carried toward the structure on the far end.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" He yelled while kicking and squirming. "Those men are Police Officers, er… policia!"

This time they didn't drop him, although the one up front gave him a hard punch across the face, which was successful in stopping the Agent from struggling, at least long enough for them to lift him high up enough in order to get his wrist ropes hooked over the plank. The villagers cheered once Leon was secured, and now he was just hanging up there with his feet unable to touch the ground… clearly the people in this place didn't care much for the cops, but… what the hell was going on here? What was all this?

"Los extranos estan preparados!" One of the men yelled after checking the Agent's ropes. "Ahora dejalos conocer a Salvador!"

The people cheered again while Leon tested the ropes by pulling on them and kind of swaying back and forth, and the four captive Officers were trying this as well in the hopes of getting away, while also sounding pretty frightened as they yelled to each other in Spanish. The Agent tried asking them what was going on, and what had happened to the others, but the Officers were too panicked to answer him, or maybe they just couldn't hear him over the villagers who were still cheering and yelling.

But then he heard it… the sound of a small motor trying to start up, followed by the rhythmic puttering as it started, and you know, it almost sounded like a… no, the very idea of something like that in a place like this was just ridiculous. At least, that was that the Agent told himself as the sound of the small idling motor seemed to get closer and closer, until the crowd of villagers parted so that Leon and the hanging Officers could see yet another figure that was walking toward them… this one even worse than the others.

He wore the same kind of old fashioned clothes as the others, but where the other men wore simple hats or nothing at all on their heads, this guy's whole face was covered by what looked like a burlap bag that had eye holes cut out of it so that it could be worn like a mask. However, even as scary looking as the bag was, it wasn't the worst part of this newcomer… the worst part was when the Agent realized that the small motor noises he had been hearing were coming from the large chainsaw that the bag man was carrying in his arms.

"Salvador matalos! Salvador matalos!" The villagers chanted, stepping back so that they made a kind of human wall around the whole area. "Salvador matalos Salvador matalos!"

Part of Leon's mind wanted to simply deny this whole situation, since it was so ridiculous that it was like… it was like something out of a bad horror movie. The clichés were all there; the city people wandering into some old redneck hidey-hole, and then all getting captured before being killed one by one in horrible ways… hell, this place even had a masked freak with a chainsaw. Unfortunately, as much as he wanted to believe that this was some kind of a joke or a nightmare that he would wake up from soon, there was no more room for denial after the chainsaw revved up... and its blade began tearing its way into the ribs of the first Officer in line.

"Holy fucking shit!" Leon screamed as blood started spraying out of the man's side. "Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit."

This was no joke; blood was now spraying all over the bag man that the villagers were referring to as Salvador as he kept pushing the blade farther into his chosen victim, the Officer who had been wounded back at the house. The poor man kicked and flailed around as his screams were quickly turned into a desperate kind of gurgling noise with just as much blood flowing form his mouth, but Salvador just kept digging with the blade… digging, and digging, and digging… until the Officer went silent as the entire lower half of his body fell onto the ground.

All around the bloody spectacle, the villagers jumped up and down, cheering as the bag man moved around the post in order to reach the next Officer in line, but this time it was Salvador's turn to be surprised. The second Officer was not wounded, so as soon as the bag man got close enough, he swung out with his leg, making Salvador grunt and stumble back a step after being kicked square in the face, but this just seemed to make the bag man angry.

The Officer tried to kick him again, but this time the bag man grabbed onto his ankle with one hand while bringing up the revving saw with the other, resulting with a blood curdling scream as the Officer's leg was severed very slowly. The Agent wanted to help him, but there was nothing he could do so long as he was just hanging there, but there had to be a way to get himself free… there just had to be. Unfortunately, nothing came to mind by the time the second Officer was no longer moving, but then Leon looked down just as Salvador was approaching the third, and saw something that just might do it.

It was his knife. These psychotic villagers from the 1800's were quick to get rid of the Agent's pistol, but they hadn't given the knife down in his boot a second thought. The sharpened blade was surely enough to cut through the ropes, so with using all of the gymnastics skills that he had, Leon brought his legs up, pretty much folding himself in half so that his boots were pressing against the wooden beam right next to his hands… but the blade was still so hard to reach that the third Officer was already bleeding out from having the saw blade put right through his stomach by the time that the knife was in his hand.

"Come on, come on." The Agent said to himself, frantically cutting at his ropes while the bag man approached the fourth and final Officer. "I just sharpened you, damn it, cut!"

Although it was pretty horrific to see, the fact that Salvador was taking his time by slowly cutting the fourth Officer vertically in half from the groin all the way up through the top of the skull, was giving him the time he needed to slowly cut away the thick rope. Slicing at it faster and faster while the blood soaked bag man started walking toward him, the color drained out of Leon's face when he heard the chainsaw rev up… just as the rope around his wrists came apart.

The Agent fell to the ground, landing on his back just as the chainsaw blade swung right past where he had been, releasing a small shower of wood splinters as it tore into the beam instead, giving Leon time to swing his knife so that the blade made a deep cut across Salvador's leg. With his attacker momentarily staggered by this, the Agent lifted both legs, and kicked the bag man in the stomach, making him stumble backwards, so that Leon would have the time to get to his feet, but although free, he was still in a really bad situation as Salvador recovered.

Okay… so what the hell was he going to do now?