"Do you know what death sounds like? What it is to feel your final breath leave your lungs before falling into the vast brinks of nothingness that await while God judges the worth of your soul?" His blade left the unthinking, hunger-driven body, allowing it to fall to the ground and embrace Death's touch once and for all. "When you suffocate, not from the lack of air but from the lack of your ability to draw it in… you hear bells. They ring in the distance like a wind chime, promising to return you to a small cottage in the country where only fields and love wait for you." His sword retracted into its mechanical sheath and he turned his head towards the sky, as if seeking a celestial being at which to direct his speech. "It's only later that your realize those were Hell's bells, welcoming you through its gates and back to life."
Damien had done little more than stand idle as Billy made quick work of the fragile bodies that had roamed the street. All too quickly, it became obvious that he didn't even need to bother spending ammunition on most of the undead they encountered. Awe became Billy's liquid movements and blood became his uniform, as if delicately thought out and woven by the most sick and twisted of designers.
"Soon, you too shall hear those bells. Even though the boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague, you will not be blessed with returning to Hell… Such blessing is fit only for gods." He paused for a moment, wiping the blood from his fingertips down the length of his uniform, stopping just above his waist. "Know that while you sleep, I shall feast upon the void left by your departure. This is your use and your fate. Accept it or don't, you shall sleep."
With those words said, matching the dread madness of the world's most hollow and forsaken banshees, Billy continued down the street, never once bothering to glance over his shoulder and examine the paralyzed shell of Damien. Far too confused and stricken by the fuzzy implications behind his squad leader's words, it proved near impossible for him to make out much of any meaning outside of the fact that Billy had foretold his death. Even as Billy walked off, Damien's eyes found the time to absorb the sight of gore and blood that littered the ground, almost as if a vortex straight to Hell had opened in the sky, letting it rain liquid nightmare upon the earth. Perhaps, Damien found himself thinking, that was what Billy actually embodied: A fragment of Hell that had found a way to materialize on earth. He was no god. He was a demon.
A sudden clang snapped Damien's concerns in half, allowing the gloss of fear and shock to depart from his eyes. Reacting to the noise, his attention shot to his right just in time to see the animate corpse of a young woman crawling from the now-opened door of a nearby car. Its body fell like a ragdoll, but after overcoming the initial impact of flopping to the ground, the corpse continued to crawl towards Damien, ever eager to push beyond the limitations of death to fill its unnatural craving for flesh. The absence held by its pale eyes as well as the sickening, simplistic hunger within its soft moans led Damien to think, for but a moment, that Billy belonged within the city, to rule as king of the damned.
A single shotgun blast removed the zombie's skull from its body, granting it permission to lie dormant until the crows decide to swoop down and feast upon it. Just before running after his acting leader, Damien wondered if the woman whose body he had just decapitated ever heard those bells, and if so, if they were loud and commanding or soft and sweet.
Finally catching up to Billy, who stood still at an entrance to Raccoon City Park, Damien found himself beginning to ask, "Where are we going?" but caught himself shortly after the first word left his lips. He had no idea why or how Billy was navigating through the city, but at this point, he knew better than to question him and his motives, lest he toy too much with the madness of a natural born killer. Like it or not, Damien had to reconcile with the fact that he had become a lackey and any attempt to escape his bondage would most likely result in an unpleasant meeting with Billy's blade or once on his own, falling to the servants of Hell who claimed Raccoon City as their new home. Until he could manage to issue a pick-up point to Patricia somewhere that he felt certain he could safely reach unnoticed, there could be no escape from Billy's command.
Before Billy started moving again, Damien could have sworn he heard him utter, "I can see the trail of blood you leave in your wake, Prospero. Try as you might, you cannot hide from the Red Death."
Walking along the path through the park offered a brief retrieve from the overbearing air of the city. While the greenery of the park still flaunted its fair share of gory décor, it did offer a faint semblance of peace. However, Damien couldn't imagine the park being all that humble, always staying on guard despite the relatively wide disbursement of undead. At any given moment, he half expected some deformed beast to jump from its perch on a tree and attack, but all he found were the ever-watchful scorn of crows and the roaming undead, lost within the vast maze of the park. Any hordes that stood directly along the path proved little trouble for Billy, who wasted no time in hacking them to bits and moving on.
Surprisingly, Billy ceased a few paces from a cobblestone bridge. Like some sort of trained dog, Damien stopped behind him, listening as he spoke. "They expect us to go over the bridge. See? They've laid traps upon the ground." Billy offered a brief chuckle before adding, "I almost admire their diligence in clutching on to instincts so tightly, but I pity them for thinking me as nothing but a fly." Looking over his shoulder, catching Damien's eyes with his cold, dead gaze, Billy grinned and forced shivers to run up Damien's arms and legs. "Come. Let us finish the job that my dear, sweet Prospero failed to accomplish."
Even as Billy's hand embraced his sword, extending the blade in but an instant, Damien could only shake his head and quietly ask to himself, "Prospero? Prospero… Who the hell is Prospero?"
When Damien's attention returned to his squad leader, who had walked knee deep into the stream running underneath the bridge, a large mass took Billy to the ground, sending a cascade of water up like a fountain. No sooner did Damien begin to move in order to offer so sort of assistance than Billy kicked the abnormally large spider off himself, standing to his feet as if he hadn't just been attacked by a spider the size of a large dog. The water turned green from the arachnid's blood and even though Damien probably should have been somewhat concerned about Billy's state of health, he couldn't tear his eyes away from the still-twitching body of the creature. Slowly but surely, each of the creatures limbs began to fail until only one of its front most legs gently tore through the air in some pitiful attempt to keep hold of its miserable existence.
"Amazing, huh?" Billy's words wound around Damien's mind and seized his attention. The giant spider stopped moving. "They become so strong with the virus while mankind dwindles away to nothing. Tell me," he took a step towards the small tunnel underneath the cobblestone bridge, "What does that say about people, to have their existence turned to that of fragile, mindless drones while common spiders bask in the benefits of increase strength and durability?"
Even though a few lonesome zombies had made their way to the vicinity, slowly creeping up on Damien, he couldn't so much as think to remove Billy from his sight out of an intense feeling that, if he did, the man would sneak up behind him and dig into his mind with tendrils of pure, wretched insanity. It proved impossible to tell among the all the nearby monsters if Billy were not the worst of them all.
"Maybe it says that they are little more than flies."
Billy disappeared under the bridge, followed by the sound of metal scraping against stone. Once again, Damien felt compelled to offer what little aid he could, except a lifeless moan caused him to turn around and face the undead horror that stood mere inches from him. The creature reached out in an attempt to give Damien one final, bloody hug but the side of the corpse's face met with the butt of his shotgun. Taking a few steps backwards, towards the stream, he dispatched two of the other nearby zombies. There may have only been about five animate corpses attempting to hone in on him, but in his mind, still embraced Billy's haunting words, he began to feel utterly paranoid, imagining the beasts rising from the very ground around his feet until all he felt up to his knees was the cold touch of the stream.
After one of many gunshots, the sound of splashing through the water let Damien know that something had crept up behind him. With about as much dexterity as his frantic mind would allow him to muster, he spun around, aiming his shotgun at head level, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
"Miscount?" Billy asked, facing down the barrel of Damien's shotgun, his uniform decorated with streaks of dark green blood.
Nothing but stillness and silence moved from behind Damien. The zombies had been delivered to their eternal rest by his personal, mechanical scythe. "Y-yea…" It seemed amazing that he even managed to get the one word out considering Billy stood not two feet in front of him.
"Do I disturb you?" Billy stepped to the side and took a step towards Damien, who hadn't so much as budged since pulling the trigger. Silence dictated his fear and, somehow, he knew that Billy could feel it. His face still expressionless, he whispered, "I hear your heart beating beneath your chest and the drumming… is maddening. Should I come clean of my sins, or let you die in ignorance?" His blade shot back into its hilt and he took a swift step back and began to walk across the stream, calling back to Damien only to say, "Die ignorant. It's in your nature."
It took a few moments for Damien to push beside the fear that seized control of his body. Perhaps, in the end, it was mostly the fear that the undead would soon swarm him again that caused him to continue following Billy, leaving him feeling exposed and naked without the master-killer's blade watching his back. Even when he caught up to the squad leader, he remained silent and several feet behind him. Everything in the city seemed to have turned against him and despite his years of training and working with Umbrella, he knew that he couldn't handle something on this scale. Billy was right and if he didn't leave soon, he knew that he would meet his end within the city.
Before Damien could contemplate leaving to contact Patricia and set up an extraction point, the two Umbrella agents came across a small clearing in the park. A fountain stood in the center of the clearing, inactive and just as dead as everything else. What seemed to catch Billy's attention, however, was a backpack resting atop one of the benches set around the edge of the fountain. Damien followed him towards the bench, stopping only when a deep growl entered the previously quiet air, followed by a bark. As if to confirm his theory that everything within Raccoon City wanted to see him dead, a small pack consisting of three mangled, bloodied dogs entered the clearing from nearby brush.
The creatures wasted no time in charging at the agents, but in the end, they met the same fate as everything else that stood in Billy's way. This time, however, Damien had the opportunity to aid in the combat, even if it was only to save himself after one of the three dogs veered off from Billy to attack him. Still, the entire ordeal ended in only a few moments and before Damien could even so much as wrap his mind around exactly what had transpired, Billy approached the backpack once more, not even remotely phased by the incident.
Crouching down in front of the bench, as if he were about to pray, Billy ran his hands up the sides of the bag and then fell still. Damien could only watch in awkward silence. If he hadn't started to think Billy nigh unkillable, he might have considered the idea that Billy simply shut down. However, the killing machine did begin moving once more, giving Damien just enough time to kick himself for not deciding to leave the bastard on his own and seek a way out of the city. Letting his blade extend from the hilt once more, Billy destroyed the backpack and all of its contents, throwing the shredded remains into the dark waters of the fountain before turning to walk down the very path that they had used to walk through the park.
"Now we're turning around?" As soon as the last word left his lips, Damien wished that he had simply remained silent.
Billy stopped in place for a moment, obviously listening to Damien's question. However, without so much as a single utterance in reply, he continued moving. Without a doubt, he knew that Damien would follow. Standing alone in the city did not rest well with him and as much as Billy made his skin crawl, he had no other option.
Retracing their steps, it didn't seem to take long before the two Umbrella agents returned to the Raccoon City's streets. There wasn't a doubt in Damien's mind that Billy knew precisely where they were heading. Even though he had no idea as to how the man continued to come up with directions to their 'prey,' he didn't really have much of a choice but to follow. It crossed his mind every now and then that Billy may have fallen into complete madness and partook in leading him through the city on a wild goose chase. When Billy revealed that a nearby hospital was their next destination, a faint glimmer of hope lit within Damien. He figured that he could use the roof of the hospital as a pickup point, provided that he found a way to get enough distance between himself and Billy to call Patricia without his knowing.
"Recognize it?" Billy asked, having stopped inside a very small clearing in the center of the street, the broken vehicles circling it like some sort of apocalyptic arena.
Approaching Billy's side, a mess of deformed, bloodied flesh lying on the ground caught Damien's attention. "N-no… Sorry."
"It's one of the tyrants released into the city. Mass produced to carry out Umbrella's desires…" He crouched down next to the body, running his fingertips along what appeared to be the creature's arm. "Pitiful and disgusting. I hope the undead have their way with it for failing."
As Billy began moving again, mumbling something to himself about Prospero, Damien took a moment to retrieve a rifle from the ground nearby, as well as a couple extra clips of ammunition that the previous owner of the gun had apparently dropped. Strapping the rifle around his back, feeling slightly more secure and sure of himself, Damien ran to catch up to Billy. It wouldn't be too long before he would wish that he hadn't.
After a few minutes of walking, slaying the occasional undead in their path, Billy raised an open hand, issuing Damien to stop moving. Silently, he pointed off in the distance where a small figure moved through the street, avoiding the few undead that had yet to meet Billy's blade. It proved impossible to make out any sort of detail about the figure. Before Damien could ask about it, wondering why it concerned Billy so much, the squad leader lowered his arm and continued walking. Defeated and confused, Damien once again followed suit. The two agents ended up following this figure for a few blocks, passing the hospital on their way, until finally the figure dodged a small horde of undead by running into an alley. It was a survivor.
"You… can't be serious…" Damien had to stop walking as soon as he managed to catch a good look at the entity up close, trapped between a truck blocking off the other end of the alley and the two agents.
He couldn't have been much older than fourteen. His skin looked scuffed and dirtied, no doubt scarred by life on the streets since Raccoon City became a living hell. While holding a sense of cold distance within his eyes, he stared at Billy and Damien with the faintest amount of hope. He began to speak, probably asking for some sort of help, but his words were lost to Damien.
"We weren't sent on an elimination mission!" Damien began to yell, standing still in fearful defiance as Billy took a few quiet steps towards the young survivor. For a brief second, he wondered if this kid was the Prospero that Billy continued to go on about. All this time, had they only been looking for some living person to slaughter like an animal simply for surviving through Umbrella's horror? "He's probably been through a lot! It's not fair for us to-"
"Fair?" Billy mused, unlatching the hilt of his blade from his belt. He glanced over his shoulder at Damien, still expressionless and cold. "Hell was never meant to be fair... Raining warm, pure blood… It does wonders to replace the longing of a lover's embrace."
"That's why you're going to kill him!?" Damien yelled, his words sending the kid into a fit of desperation as he began to run down the alley. "Just to satisfy some sick blood lust!?" Why wasn't he moving to defend the young survivor's life? Why hadn't he drawn his gun? Did he truly fear Billy that much?
Returning his attention to the fleeing kid, Billy pressed the button to send his blade tearing through the air. "Blame God."