Gaiden: Resident Evil SIV

Chapter Fourteen: Worse and Worse

If not for the railing in the stairwell, which the now red-skinned and smoldering Cora had walked into during her initial attack, Leon might very well have gotten his throat torn out by her clawed fingers, instead of just feeling a rush of air as they moved past his skin. Gasping and trying to jump back, the Agent tripped over his own two feet, falling hard onto his back as the red-skinned zombie ran around the railing, moving at speeds that he had never believed an infected person capable of… and then shrieking while diving at him.

This time he managed to avoid the attack on his own, rolling out of the way as Cora's clawed fingers sparking against the metal floor where his chest had been, and then trying to scoot farther away while kicking her repeatedly in the face. Except for making her fall back down when his foot hit her arm when she tried to get up, Leon's hits were doing next to nothing, aside from giving him the time he needed to get to his feet and take out his pistol.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Light and noise echoing throughout the corridor as he pulled the trigger again and again, hitting the red-skinned zombie in the chest, leg, and head, but aside from the leg shot making her fall down again for a second, the thing just kept coming. Two more shots and the pistol clicked empty, that being the end of his second and only spare clip, since this had only supposed to have been a simple reconnaissance mission. So he tossed the pistol at her, hitting her reddened forehead with a soft whump, but then had to run when this only seemed to anger her.

She was quick now, too, running faster than the Agent, to the point where he had to dive and roll across a stack of the small crates that he had seen earlier, and Cora's body now seemed to be smoldering ever more when her clawed fingers sliced right through one of the rotting crates, kicking up a small cloud of sawdust… which was intensified when Leon picked up one of the smaller ones, and slammed it down onto her head. The wood splintered apart, making the red-skinned zombie fall to her knees, but then she immediately jumped back up, tackling him to the ground.

He reflexively brought his arms up, jamming his elbow up into her throat to keep her now jagged teeth from biting him, and staying tucked into her body so that her arms couldn't get him like he had learned during training, but man the smoldering heat coming off Cora's entire body was so hot that it was making him sweat profusely… and now it was getting so intense that the barely visible heat waves coming off of her were now giving off the appearance of black smoke… as if she were literally burning up.

Then he saw it; the knife and TMP that she had reclaimed before degrading into… whatever this was that Tobias had turned her into, but the machine pistol was hanging too far away for him to reach without exposing himself to her continuing attempts to kill him… so he pulled the knife from its sheath. Slice! With a wet stabbing sound, the blade was forced up under her jaw, forcing Cora's infected mouth closed and actually holding it that way, but even though the knife was long enough to be stabbing into her brain… it wasn't killing her.

However, the distraction of the knife caused the red-skinned zombie to be put off balance enough for the Agent to grab the TMP, unhook it from the strap around her shoulder, and turn the weapon around. Ratta-tatta-ratta-tatta! Blood sprayed in all directions, burning Leon when it touched his skin as if being sprayed with boiling grease from an oven, and also making Cora fall over sideways. He kept firing as he scooted away from her, emptying the whole clip into her body until there were no more bullets…

"Oh no." The Agent said in disbelief when the red-skinned zombie started to move again. "You have got to be kidding me."

But it was no joke; the infected Cora scrambling to her hands and knees in preparation to pursue him once again… but then she stopped, shrieking in what sounded like pain as her rapidly heating body suddenly burst into flames. Now rolling on the floor, flailing her claws and arching her back like she was possessed by the Devil himself, the red-skinned zombie was soon completely engulfed in flames, but now the noise and movements were slowing.

Leon was sure that the fire alarm and sprinklers running along the ceiling would come on at any second, but the fire must have gone out before then, because there was no noise or water… only a large pile of blackened ash where Captain Cora of the USS had been only seconds ago. Have to get out of here, the Agent thought, trying to pull himself to his feet. The beast trapped behind the metal door was putting more and more small dents in the metal, and there was no telling when Tobias was going to come back down to check on things, so he needed to go… now.

Now that the adrenaline of recent events was wearing off, Leon found that getting up and retreating down the corridor was no longer as easy as it was before, and he was barely able to hold onto the TMP as he leaned against the wall to steady himself. The Agent had been up and down this corridor a dozen times it felt like, but now it felt a million times longer… only to have the stairwell look like an impossibly daunting task when he finally reached the opposite end from where Tobias had gone.

He had to find a way to contact HQ, he thought while using the railing to start pulling himself up the stairs, if nothing else he needed to contact the Director and inform her of the situation… Tobias and Gillette, that R-005 monster… whatever the hell happened with that kid, Lucia… man, Leon thought… when Umbrella set out to screw a place up, they really went full force. Okay, that was one flight of stairs, only about a million left to… hey, what was that?

From up above where he was, there was a loud kind of thumping sound… no, not a single sound, but multiple ones as if a small group of people were rapidly descending… oh, fuck! Suddenly realizing what the rapidly approaching sounds meant, the Agent tried to turn around to run the other way, but now fatigue and muscle failure were setting in, leaving him only able to lean heavily against the railing as five figures came around the stairs above. They weren't Umbrella agents or more infected creatures, like he feared, but normal people… all of them in the uniforms of the Starlight's crew.

"There! Is that him!?" One of them yelled, pointing down. "You, stay where you are!"

"Is that a gun?" Another one asked. "Careful, he's armed!"

Oh no, Leon thought as they ran toward him, he couldn't let himself be taken into custody by the ship's crew, so using the last of his energy, the Agent turned and ran back down the stairwell into the corridor… only to stop in his tracks when more people started running toward him from the other side. Trapped! There was nowhere to go, and the TMP was empty, not that he would have actually started shooting these people.

All of the men were yelling now as they descended upon him from both directions, ripping the weapon from his hands, and then someone must have punched him in the stomach, because suddenly the wind was knocked out of him and he was being forced to bend over the nearby railing. Crying out as his arms were forced behind his back, someone was restraining him by the hair while the click of handcuffs being snapped onto his wrists was both heard and felt.

"Careful boys, he's covered in blood." A gruff voice warned. "Better gag him, too, in case he's a biter."

Suddenly pulled back by the hair, the Agent's outcry was cut off when a really bad tasting rag was shoved into his mouth, and then the crewmembers dragged him back toward the stairs, but turned at the last minute so that he was dragged down one of the other branching corridors that Leon hadn't had a chance to explore… and it was a long one, too, ending up at a small service elevator. Well, that would have been nice to know about, since he wouldn't have had to use the stairs a hundred times… of course he had bigger things to worry about now.

"When we get to the top, make sure there's no one around before we bring him through." The gruff, older looking man from before said as they started up. "Last thing we need is for this psychopath to cause a panic, after everything else he's done."

"Yes, Captain." The one he was talking to replied. "And I've already alerted maintenance to start cleaning up those rooms once everything's documented… boy, if not for that retired cop, this freak might have gotten away with it."

Retired cop, Leon wondered? Oh crap, they must have been talking about Tobias, but… they needed to be warned about him before they ended up infected, too. So the Agent tried to speak through the gag, hoping that they would realize that his words were important from the urgency in his voice and the look in his eyes… unfortunately, the Captain responded by turning around and socking him right in the mouth.

"You keep quiet, freak!" The Captain yelled, punching him in the stomach while some of the others held him up by the arms. "I've been Captain of this ship for fifteen years without a single serious incident, and then on my very last voyage before retirement, I get a God damn serial killer on board!?"

The Captain said some more things, but it was hard for Leon to focus on them while the older man was hitting him with his fists again and again while the others restrained him. Not that the Agent was in any shape to fight back to begin with, thanks to everything that the Liquids had put him through since leaving port, but now he could barely stand, and had to be dragged out once the elevator reached its destination. But where were they taking him, and how was he going to convince them about Gillette's plan to infect the ship if he were gagged and in custody.