Chapter Ten.
Seras made no attempt to contact Integra until she was back in Pueblo. Once there, she and Ashley quietly made their way into the town's watchtower, where they climbed to the top.
"Are you okay?" Seras asked, taking her radio from her pocket.
Ashley was breathing heavily, likely unused to running at such speeds for long distances. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"Good. HQ, come in HQ. This is Seras, come in."
"Integra, report."
"I've recovered Ashley Graham. I'm in Pueblo now. Requesting evac," Seras said, tuning the radio a little to cut down on the static.
"We'll send a chopper. Has she been harmed?"
"No, she's fine. Kennedy, the American agent, we had to split up. He was being chased by a monster of some sort."
"He's not our problem," Integra said. "There's a house beyond the farm to the northeast. A helicopter will pick you up there. Did you happen to learn the meaning of this little stunt?"
"Yes," Seras said. "They planned to infect Ashley with the Las Plagas and then send her back to the White House, where she would spread it."
"Las Plagas, Seras. You don't add the the."
"What?"
Integra sighed. "Las is the plural version of the in Spanish. Las Plagas means The Plagues. When you say the Las Plagas, you're saying the The Plagues."
"Oh…"
"Never mind. From my talk with Kennedy, it seems your vampiric blood hasn't gotten rid of the parasite. The girl might also have already been infested."
Seras saw the look on Ashley's face, a mixture of confusion and fear. "Um, Sir…" Seras began to say.
"Just get to the extraction point and try not to feed from her. You've been wounded, your bloodlust might take over if you engage in another battle."
"She can hear you," Seras said through her teeth.
"What? Oh…just get to the extraction point. Integra out."
Seras turned the radio down and pocketed it. Scratching her head, and casting a sideling glance at a terrified Ashley, she thought of what to do next while an awkward silence settled over them.
"Y-you're a vampire?" Ashley said, sliding backwards. "H-how…w-what…?"
"Yes, I'm a vampire," Seras said. "But, uh, I'm a good vampire. I'm not going to eat you or anything."
Ashley's look didn't improve. "I heard what that woman said. You might go crazy and eat me."
Seras wanted to cry and scream at the same time. This was Sherry Birkin all over again. A frightened blond girl who she needed to protect from monsters, and was afraid Seras would drink her blood at the first opportunity.
Seras felt a warm hand touch hers and looked to see Ashley's concerned, yet still nervous, face. "I…I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. You rescued me, so I guess you can't be that bad."
Had she looked that sad and pathetic? She hoped not, but either way, came to the conclusion that she wasn't here to be Ashley's friend. In all likelihood, she would never see her again outside of the news once they parted ways. "We should be going," Seras said, stepping onto the ladder.
When she got to the ground, she stepped out of the tower ahead of Ashley and scanned the dark town. "Stop," she said, seeing the shapes of villagers standing in the shadows and ducking behind buildings. "Go back up the ladder and don't down until I call you. Take this too," Seras said, slinging the rifle over Ashley's shoulder. "Don't use it though."
Confused and afraid again, Ashley did as she was told and headed back up the ladder. Seras, machete in hand, gun ready to draw, walked out of the tower. "Lets just get this over with," she said, mostly to herself, but loud enough for the villagers to hear her.
As they came closer, she could see them better. There were nine of them, two with pitchforks, the other with hatchets and sickles. She wondered how well they could see in the dark.
She charged the two men with pitchforks first, not wanting to be stabbed through and weighed down by the handle if one managed a hit. They went down quickly once she cut the ends of their pitchforks off. A hatchet nearly hit her as she cut the hands off a sickle-wielding woman, but it struck the wall of the tower instead.
Before she knew it, all of the villagers were melting on the ground, leaving nothing but their soiled clothes. Her senses were on high alert, and aside from some sleepy, annoyed chickens, nothing was stirring in the village. "Clear," she said loudly.
It took Ashley a minute to get down the ladder. When she did, she handed the rifle off to Seras.
Seras shouldered it and wondered what had become of Leon. Integra had been cold when she said he wasn't her problem, but she was right. He likely had his own plans for escaping, and would have been radioed by someone letting him know Ashley had been secured.
Leading Ashley up the same hill she had traveled earlier that day, Seras kept her eyes peeled for more villagers. She didn't see the steel trap before she stepped on it, making it snap shut just bellow her knee. She shrieked, both in pain and anger from the traps teeth biting into her leg.
"Oh my God, are you alright?" Ashley said, coming close to Seras and looking down at her leg.
Seras used her strength to free herself from the trap and favored her good leg as she drew in long, hissing breaths. "Yeah, fine," she said. "Should've seen that coming."
"Can you still walk?" Ashley asked.
"I'll be right as rain in half a minute," Seras said, letting her leg heal. The trap hadn't been strong enough to break her leg, few traps were, but the teeth had given her a nasty cut, and had she been human, she would certainly get a nasty infection.
When it felt better, Seras tore a piece of wood from a nearby fence and used it to trigger traps on her way up the hill until they reached the farm. She saw a woman holding a torch standing on the scaffold adjacent to the barn and stopped.
She couldn't tell just how many were standing guard by the large wooden door that would lead to the extraction point, but she didn't want to pick a fight with Ashley unprotected and in the open.
"Follow me," Seras said, leading Ashley over to an empty chicken coop. "Lie down and keep quiet," she said, pointing to a clean spot on the coop's floor.
Wincing, Ashley got down on her stomach while Seras began to cover her in hay. "Hey," Ashley said, scrunching up her shoulders so the hay wouldn't go down her shirt and make her itch.
"It sure is," Seras said, smiling.
The villagers still hadn't seen her, their night vision most likely ruined by the torches they had set up near the large wooden gate. There were twelve of them in front of the gate, standing still, facing the farm. Twelve seemed to be the number of the average villager attack force, but perhaps she was over-thinking things too much.
Moving away from the chicken coop, towards the smaller barn, Seras shot the woman holding the torch on the scaffold. She fell forward, her torch hitting the ground before she did.
While the other villagers, roused from their bizarre stupor, came rushing forward towards their unseen attacker, Seras fired once more, taking out another villager. Lowering her gun and ejecting the spent shell, she ran around to the other side of the barn, trusting Ashley was hidden well enough.
From a new angle, she fired three more times, felling three villagers. Backtracking and loading more shells into the gun as she went, she ducked behind a pig trough and fired five more times, hitting her mark each time.
The two remaining villagers had ducked into the large barn, perhaps realizing that their charge into the darkness was futile. Not wanting to waste more bullets, she leaned the rifle against the barn wall and took her machete into where the two villagers had retreated.
A short man with a bushy beard greeted her with a Spanish phrase meaning "cunt" and came at her brandishing a hatchet. She cut his weapon hand off and then his head. The tall, thin man behind him tried to flank her, but she stepped into his knee, breaking it, causing him to fall. A downward stab with the machete onto his neck severed his head. Shoving the blade down his neck, she killed the parasite before it could crawl out, and stepped on the other one as it emerged.
"No need to be rude," she said, leaving the large barn and picking up the rifle.
Reloading the rifle while Ashley rose up out of the hay, she noticed something hanging from the small barn's peak. Squinting, she saw that it was some sort of blue medallion bearing the cult's insignia. There was another one hanging from a tree next to the large barn.
She took the one hanging from the tree and examined it. "What's that?" Ashley asked, looking over Seras's shoulder.
"I'm not sure," she said. "They're hanging all over the place though."
She used one of the villager's hatchets to dislodge the medallion from its spot high up on the smaller barn. Now that she had noticed that there were medallions, she could see them all over the place. Hanging from the windmill next to the barn, in the back of large barn, in its rafters, all in all, there were ten of blue cult medallions.
"Um, can I ask why we collected all these?" Ashley said, watching Seras pocket the medallions..
Seras stood, turning her head towards the large door blocking the path out of the farm. She remembered taking Chief Mendez's false eye after killing him and pondered Ashley's question. "Woman's intuition I suppose," she said. "Anything that awful cult would take time to hang up is probably worth taking down, too."
"If you say so," Ashley said, following Seras to the giant door. Seras guessed that it swung open, but her attempts to push it failed.
"Must be barred on the other side," Seras said. "Wait here."
Seras went beneath the scaffold and picked up two of the sharpest hatchets she could find. Giving Ashley the rifle and her machete, she jumped and stuck a hatchet into the wooden door.
Her strength was enough to burry the hatchets deep into the wood, thus supporting her weight. Before long, she was up and over the gate. Lifting the giant log barring the door, she threw it aside and kicked it open, allowing Ashley to pass through.
"It's almost over," Seras said, waiting for Ashley to catch up.
"Thank God," Ashley said. "Worst. Vacation. Ever."
Taking her weapons back from Ashley, Seras smiled. All in all, things could have been worse. She hadn't eaten anyone, Ashley was alive, and only a small population of innocent civilians had fallen victim to the machinations of a lunatic. Jogging up the hill, Seras gave the nearly complete mission her stamp of approval.
To be continued...