Chapter VII
He was knocked over by the sole impact and found himself wriggling on the ground like a worm trying to escape a bird's grasp. Two iron hands were slung around his throat and in the absolute darkness Wesker saw white spots sparkle before his eyes. His own hands clawed at the attacker's and he used his nails to dig them into the other's skin.
There was a yelp and more pressure to his windpipe in response.
"Shetani!"
Wesker didn't understand what that meant, but could interpret the throbbing in his ears as clear sign that he had to do something soon, or he would asphyxiate. He opened his mouth in a desperate attempt to inhale air. The hands around his throat were set on squashing it completely.
Instinctively, his own hands found their way to his opponent's face. Balling his fingers into a fist, Wesker slammed it into what he thought was a jaw. There was a moment's release and a gasp (he was too busy to realize that it came from his own mouth) and with oxygen flooding his mind again, survival instinct kicked in.
He brought his knee up with as much force as he could muster, connecting with the person's thigh. A groan broke the silence and Wesker felt a wicked sense of satisfaction. The grip around his throat loosened a moment later and he thought he'd won.
The feeling didn't last long.
"Shetani, shetani, SHETANI!"
shii-
He cried out in pain and surprise. The assailant had pressed his thumbs into Wesker's eyes and was trying feverishly to push them out the other side. The agony was literally blinding. He tried to draw his head back, away from the pressure, but solid rock prevented that. Wesker screamed, pushing at the man's face. His palms skimmed over rough stubble, found mouth with teeth and gum and lashed out with his other fist in an attempt to hurt the attacker enough to let go.
goddamn goddamn, the pain!
Moaning, Wesker felt tears and saw bright white, certain that in the next moments his eyeballs would give in to the abuse and burst. He gripped at the stony ground in some grotesque way of preparation, when his fingers twined around a larger rock.
There wasn't a moment's hesitation. The rock hammered against his attacker's head, fragile skull cracking under the force. The pressure on his eyes was gone almost instantly, but Wesker kept hewing. At first there was only blood, but when his own pain had withdrawn a little and gave way to rational thought again, the blood had turned into spongy tissue.
Wesker let the rock fall and brushed his hand on his labcoat with nauseating disgust.
Kill! Kill! You killed him! You've got his brains on your hands to prove for it!
Wesker crawled away from the corpse until his back hit the wall. By that point the adrenaline had vanished and left him with a blinding pain in his head. As if his eyes wanted to throb their way out of his skull.
He brought his left hand up to palpate his eye sockets (his right hand was still dirty with brain and cerebral fluids) and he winced at the bolts of agony the touch spawned. Blinking against the white spots Wesker was marginally relieved to find that they got lost in the different shades of black with every passing minute. Soon the image of absolute darkness returned to him and the sharp pain dulled down to a numb throbbing.
It was time for the light in the middle of the tunnel.
He produced the lighter from his pocket and fired it up. The first thing he saw was the glassy coat of blood and pulpy mass on his hand. Then he crawled back to the corpse. The fire went out during the process, so when he reached the lifeless body and illuminated it, his deed was even more sinister. A good part of the man's skull had caved in under Wesker's repetitive assaults. There was bone, covered in blood, skin and hair. Here and there was brain, but most of it had adopted a reddish color and was hard to distinguish from the rest.
The man's face was a visage of terror, eyes wide open, pupils diluted in pretense that they could see better that way. Over a bulky frame he wore a ripped checked shirt and ripped dusty jeans. But not all damage to the material had been done by over usage alone.
And for the life of him Wesker couldn't remember to have clawed the man so cruelly across the belly.
And even if you had, your nails don't leave such traces.
Such long, open cuts. If he really wanted, Wesker might be able to ablate the first layer of skin, but whoever had done this had dug deep into flesh. The man was undoubtedly a worker, one of the initial survivors. Although the state he was in made Wesker uncomfortable, the thought of not being alone down here momentarily excited him.
Because someone had done this to the worker. With a knife, perhaps a sharp stone. There could have been disagreements that led to the deed. Wesker clipped the lighter shut, placed it back into his pocket and stepped over the fallen.
He refused to think about a reason for the infliction of the injury, explained it away with a similar act of self defense to his own. If there was another survivor down here – perhaps even Birkin? – then Wesker was intent on finding out.
He placed one hand on the wall for guidance and started to move, glad that the throbbing in his eyes continuously faded. That was good. Sight might not be the most useful sense at the moment, but Wesker was happy that no lasting damage had been made to his eyes anyway.
The corridor slung on for quite a while. Then, out of nowhere, he bumped into solid stone. The lighter sprung to life. He'd reached a fork in the road. Both ways looked equally unwelcoming. He pointed the torch to the ground, but there was no possible way to make out where the crazy man had come from.
Eventually Wesker decided for the left. The lighter was put away, his palm touched the cold stone wall. He went on.
It wasn't long until he stumbled over something and to his absolute horror, that something was very soft in comparison to the hard rock he had become used to. Wesker stumbled another few steps, before shedding light on the matter.
He recoiled from the sight similar to when he had first gripped into the emptiness that should have been one man's legs.
Slumped against the cave wall sat a corpse and it made the realization sink in that he was not the first one to wander this place. Wesker felt bile rise in the back of his throat and averted the flame from the thing's empty eye sockets.
It must have been lying here for years.
What was left of the skin was quickly decaying and now that he paid attention to it, the air was full of moldy stench. Beard looked like it grew from bone and the lips had retraced to reveal a partial denture. Beside the man was an equally old backpack.
Wesker bent down to grab it. The wind his movement caused blew out the little flame, but by that time he had already gripped one of the rucksack's leather strings. A few steps away from the corpse he sat down and emptied the bag, for the moment disregarding its previous owner, or why he had ended up that way.
It was quickly obvious that the individual had been an explorer, or archeologist. Wesker found a handful of tools that indicated this. He also found a flask of water and and a portion of food, but decided to stay away from that. Who knew how long they had lain here. The last thing he needed was stomach ache because of bad food. He also found a small knife with wooden handle and pocketed it quickly. The last item in the bag was a small, leather clad book, not bigger than Wesker's hand. A journal.
He opened it and held the flame closer. It was full of notes and drawings and although the writing was hard to decipher, one thing about it caused a mix of emotions to flare up. He wasn't sure whether his little discovery was a good or a bad one. The journal was written in English.
After a few moments of repose for the lighter (the metal was starting to burn his fingers) Wesker found the last inscribed page of the book. He raised his eyebrow at the only sentence that filled the upper part of the page and felt like someone was playing a very bad joke on him.
'No humanity is left for this place.'
was scribbled in neat handwriting. He turned a page back. The writer talked about different rock types here, nothing that really interested Wesker and nothing that had anything to do with the next entry. He browsed the book some more until the lighter in his hand began to smolder. He dropped it with a hiss and closed the journal too. As far as he could make out there had been no dates or whatsoever that could help him guess its age or be of any benefit to him. Yet it still he found a place to fit the journal into the pocket of his labcoat.
He did not return to the corpse to loot it. The way led on some more, then there was a dead end. Wesker felt disappointed, his motivation for an alternate escape route from the tunnel labyrinth sinking. He saw himself wandering around aimlessly until thirst got the better of him and dragged him to his knees and he'd end up like the archeologist, slumped against the wall. Or he would find the other survivor and flee the dark corridors with a knife wound in his guts until there would be more blood outside of him than in his veins.
Wesker turned around, gripped the newly acquired knife in his pocket and promised himself that the second alternative was never going to turn real, no matter what actions it required.
He passed the corpse and stumbled over its decaying legs again. He went on until he reached the fork. This time he took the other way, certain that this had to be the way the worker had come from. And perhaps this was the way back out.
But his hopes didn't get a chance of reaching adequate heights. The walls around him tightened more and more and he felt cornered, his heart thudding louder and louder. Soon, he had to lower himself on hands and knees.
Was this really the way the other had come from?
It has to be. There is no other possibility. He didn't materialize out of thin air.
But the walls oppressed him and Wesker's frustration rose as both shoulders scratched against stone. The air around him was heating up, not giving him the oxygen he needed. From a chilly cold the tunnel around him had suddenly turned into an oven. Perhaps there was no other possibility, but the fear of being stuck suddenly overwhelmed him. He wasn't going to crawl on.
His mind made up he tried to turn around. Of course, that didn't work. He tried to put his despair off with an uncertain shake of his head.
No, of course it doesn't work. You barely fit through the way as you are, how could you possibly turn around?
So he started to crawl back slowly, the little stones below his palms and knees mercilessly digging into his skin.
All of a sudden he stopped, frozen to the place. From behind him – clearly from behind – came an abyssal screech. It let the blood in his veins freeze. He didn't know what had made it, but he didn't even finish the thought as he was crawling again, forward this time, at a remarkable pace.
Soon his shoulders hit stone again, but in his panic Wesker hardly cared, pressing on. He couldn't hear anything apart from his own wriggling and breathing and heart beating, and he was too terrified to stop and listed for thump thumps of steps or clitter clatters of something else. Not in a stone corridor where he couldn't even turn around to see what was behind him.
He couldn't reach for the lighter in his pocket, so he wormed on blindly. By this point, he was pulling himself forward on his elbows, the tunnel not high enough to allow him to crawl anymore. The screech repeated itself, this time further away. It was no reason for Wesker to slow down though. He briefly scolded himself for not checking on the archeologist in more detail. He did have water and food with him, Wesker reminded himself, so why had he so foolishly assumed that the reason of death was starvation?
Why did you assume that those injuries were done by a knife and not a claw?
And why was there no humanity left down here? Wesker hit his head, cursed, and crawled on. The way was getting tighter again and Wesker absurdly thought about the potion Alice had found in Wonderland, the one that was able to change her size. But rationality told him that he could have no such potion and that it certainly wasn't the Cheshire Cat screaming in the darkness.
When he placed one hand in front of the other the next time, it gripped thin air instead of solid stone. The narrowness around him gave place to voluminous space. Wesker didn't know what hit him until he found himself sliding down. It wasn't like falling into a vertical hole, more like rolling down a very raw steep.
He desperately tried to reduce speed and find something to hold on to, but before he could do anything helpful he toppled over, went head over heels and in the back of his mind thought that this simply couldn't be the right way!
Then his head connected with the stone ground and the world turned one level darker.
