Pandemic: Resident Evil VI
Chapter Twenty One: Ustanak
Watching this thing walk out of the slowly dissipating smoke was like something out of a Hollywood Movie as the hulking behemoth stepped over the bloody remains of the J'avo it had just killed. Now, Jake had seen BOW's before, mostly the various Hunter classes, and even a few infected people that resembled zombies, but this… this beast with its ripped, deformed flesh that looked discolored from the cold… it was just something else. Each step of the monster's heavy boots sent a slight vibrating tremor through the factory, and the source of the whirring machinery was finally revealed to be the thing's right arm, which had been replaced with some kind of industrial drilling attachment.
The multiple drill facets twitched a little while the monster walked forward, and some visible breath came out through the vents in the face mask it was wearing as it let out a slow, deep growl. What the hell was the mask for, the young man wondered as he took a step back? The beast's face was just as twisted and deformed as the rest of its skin, looking like it might have been human at one time, but… that would have had to have been a very long time ago to produce something like this.
Suddenly the thing crouched down and took off sprinting, changing its whole posture and executing the moves a lot faster than something that size should have been able to, and it… holy shit, it grabbed Sherry with its human hand before the young man even realized what was happening. The blonde gasped as the monster dragged her out from behind the stairs where she was trying to hide, lifting her up into the air as if she weighed nothing, and then seeming to… I don't know, look her over very closely as if the thing had poor eyesight.
Whatever the beast was looking for, Sherry clearly wasn't it, because the monster tossed her away with an irritated grunt, turning back toward Jake and resuming the slow walk forward even before the blonde bounced off the staircase with a hard thud that knocked the wind out of her. Seeing her roll down the stairs like that finally snapped the young man out of his paralysis, making him remember that he was holding an AK-47… which he slowly aimed at the monster's head while continuing to back away from it.
Kakka-kakka-kakka! With much larger caliber ammo than the American made shit the BSAA was using, the beast's body twitched with each impact, causing a small amount of discolored blood to leak out of each tiny hole that was made. This surface damage didn't seem to bother the monster, though, even when one of the bullets put a crack in its face mask, and it just kept walking forward until… oh shit, it was charging again! The speed of this thing was unreal, the way it went from a slow stride to a full sprint almost instantly, and before he knew it, the monster had ripped the rifle out of his hands and tossed it away.
"Uh… hi." Jake said nervously as it looked him up and down. "I don't suppose…
His words were interrupted when the beast quickly reached down and grabbed him by the ankle, causing the young man to cry out in pain when his head hit the concrete floor while he was being lifted up into the air upside down. Again the monster examined him, as if it were trying to make sure of what it was seeing, but then the beast grunted in what almost sounded like irritation after a few gunshots were heard from behind. Bang! Bang! Bang! It was Sherry, somehow already on her feet after taking a pretty hard hit, and now the monster dropped the young man as it turned back around to face her.
"Jake you have to get away! Hide!" The blonde yelled, fumbling nervously to reload the pistol. "I think it's after you, specifically!"
Stepping away from him in order to begin pursuing Sherry, the drilling machinery on the monster's arm came to life as each of the large bits began to spin, and then it ran after her. There had not been enough time for her to reload, and a couple sparks flew as the drill struck the pistol, sending it flying across the factory as the young woman dove out of the way. However, the monster was on her before she could even get up, turning around and making Sherry cry out in fear when it stabbed the makeshift weapon down at her.
Crunch-crack-whirr! A large section of the concrete floor was pulverized into small chips of debris when the drill made contact, and the beast kept up the attack, continuing to stab and stab and stab the floor while the terrified girl tried desperately to roll and crawl out of the way. For a moment it looked like she was safe after crawling through a small hole in the wall that led into one of the bathrooms… only to scream when the monster grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her back out.
Fortunately for the young woman, Jake had not just been standing there uselessly the whole time, instead looking around for something he could use for a weapon after discovering that his rifle was broken. Clearly, this thing was no ordinary BOW… it had to be a Tyrant, like the legendary ones that Umbrella made when he was just a kid… and now if he didn't do something quick, this thing was going to kill her. Firearms were pretty much useless, that much was obvious from how quickly the infected mercenaries had been killed, and… unfortunately the only other weapon available was a metal pipe… great.
Oh well, no one ever impressed a girl by being smart, so Jake picked up the pipe and ran at the monster, swinging it as hard as he could, and knocking the breath mask right off its face… with no other visible effect. Just like the rest of its visible body, the mouth on this thing was crooked and deformed with only a couple teeth sticking out… teeth that the young man planned to knock right out of its jaw as he pulled back for another swing. With all of his strength, Jake brought the pipe down, only for it to stop when the beast caught the weapon in its human hand.
Whack! Of all the things the young man thought were about to happen, it came as a complete surprise when the monster pulled him in and headbutted him, making the young man's vision go white for a second as its massive skull collided with his forehead. There was ringing in his ears as Jake's vision came back into focus just in time for the whole world to tilt on its side, and it took him a moment to realize that the world was on its side because he had fallen onto the floor… leaving Sherry to face it alone.
He tried to get up, he really did, but each time the young man got any farther than up to his hands and knees, the dizziness would come back, and his vision would blur again while he got reacquainted with the concrete below. His condition was improving, but slowly, and all Jake could do was watch the blonde getting pursued by the monster. At first glance, she looked all frail and delicate because of her small build, but Sherry was doing a lot better than expected as she avoided the drill so that it continually struck the walls and floor instead.
She tried to run up the stairs, only to have to jump away from them when the beast's drill destroyed the next five steps the blonde would have reached, and then she had to drop down onto the floor to stop from getting ripped in half from its next swing, causing another spray of rubble when it struck a support pillar instead. Whatever was powering that monster's drill, it must have been real compact and powerful since he couldn't see any obvious equipment, aside from the tool itself… but how could something like that be powered just by attaching it to the beast's arm? Unless this thing was partly mechanical too?
Sherry was getting visibly tired at this point, struggling to avoid the monster's attacks by staying inside the narrower corridors of the factory so that it's massive body made it harder for the thing to move around, but then once it struck the floor one last time, the blonde suddenly took off running back toward Jake. He had just about gotten to his feet on his own when Sherry grabbed his arm to pull him away from the monster, leaving the young man confused since there was no way they could outrun its sprinting speed… until the floor suddenly fell out from underneath it.
Blinking a few times to clear the rest of his vision, Jake understood why she wanted to run away after seeing that cracks that were spreading across the concrete floor toward them, and if those cracks got all the way to the support pillars… yeah, it was time to run. He was still a little dizzy from that blow to the head, and so stumbling a bit as they ran for the same entrance they used to come in, leaving the monster to pull itself up from the hole it had nearly fallen into. As if not tired at all from trying to catch them, the beast climbed back up onto the ledge and stood up… just in time for the cracks in the floor to reach one of the support pillars.
Maybe it would have been fine under normal circumstances, but the damage from the monster's drill caused the pillar to collapse as soon as the floor around it was compromised, and suddenly there was concrete and metal raining down from the ceiling… or was it the ceiling? Jake didn't know if Sherry purposely lured the beast into dicking itself over by wrecking everything, or if she was just lucky, but either way the monster vanished after a piece of the roof landed on its head, making the monster stumble back just enough so that it fell into the hole it had just narrowly escaped.
Great, that thing was gonna be buried alive, the young man thought as they ran toward the door, but then again so were they if they didn't get out soon. A cloud of smoke was being kicked up as the pillars and ceiling continued to collapse, leaving both of them completely blinded for a second just before shoving the door open and stumbling back out into the fresh air… only to discover that they were no longer alone. Coughing and partially blinded from the clearing smoke, Jake gasped when he saw that there were over a dozen armed men right in front of them, with rifles aimed.
"Don't move!" A voice yelled in English as they struggled to see what was happening. "Drop your weapons, and get on the ground! Get on the ground right now, damn it!"
The armed men had them surrounded and were closing in so fast that one of them grabbed Sherry by the hair before Jake could start to react, but when he tried to help her, the effort was stopped when the stock of an M4 rifle was rammed into his stomach. Bending forward as the wind was knocked out of him, the armed man and another grabbed his arms while kicking the young man's feet out from under him, forcing Jake down face down onto the snowy dirt at the same time as the blonde.
"Get off her!" He yelled, struggling while more men wrenched Sherry's arms painfully behind her back. "Let the girl go, you piece of…
"Shut it or I'll kick your balls up into your mouth!" Another of the armed man ordered as the two were put in handcuffs. "Nice uniform, terrorist… I'm Lieutenant Piers Nivans of the BSAA, and as of this moment, you two scumbags are under arrest."