Pandemic: Resident Evil VI
Chapter Twenty Four: G-002
For a while Jake was comfortable and relaxed, feeling like he was resting in the most comfortable bed in the world after a long day, wrapped up in a thick, heavy blanket that made him never want to get up again. Only problem was that there was a slight draft coming from somewhere, so the young man tried to adjust his blanket, but the draft only got worse while the mattress started to feel harder underneath his body. Damn it, now the pillow was all lumpy, but the more he moved around, the harder and less comfortable the bed became until everything was so hard and cold that he opened his eyes…
Fierce wind and blowing snow assaulted his senses while a dull, throbbing soreness was there to fight against Jake when he tried to move, causing the young man to cry out in pain as he tried to straighten out from the unnatural position he had been lying in. But where was he? What happened? How had he gotten there? Turning his neck toward the only visible light source, the young man saw that the sun was rapidly setting behind the mountains, and… and then something was pulling him from behind.
Not, not pulling… he was being dragged as the wind caught what was left of the tattered parachute Jake was still wearing, so he reached up and struggled to grab the release ring on his shoulders. With as sore as he was, this simple action was quite a struggle, but the young man managed to reach it just as an updraft was lifting his canopy into the air, and him along with it. As soon as the rings were pulled, the risers released from his harness, allowing the canopy to float away, and knocking the wind out of him when he fell back to the rocky ground.
Now that the young man had been jostled awake, he was starting to remember what happened… the helicopter… the monster attacking… jumping out in the parachute with… with Sherry! Shit, where was Sherry?! Jake remembered holding onto her as the helicopters crashed into each other, and then… and then… and then that broken rotor had been flying right toward them, and then… then nothing until he woke up a second ago. Had they crashed together? Had she fallen?
"Sherry?!" Jake called, trying to be heard above the wind. "Sherry, where are you?!"
Struggling to get to his feet, and then even more so to keep from getting knocked over by the wind after he got up on the third attempt, the young man kept calling out to her, but even if she was responding, it would have been impossible to hear over the blowing wind. With each passing minute the sun got a little lower in the sky, making it less likely that Jake would find her if she was injured, and… damn it the snow was making it hard to see where he was going, and then the young man cried out in surprise when there was suddenly no more ground under his foot.
Falling forward, and then sliding down a snow-covered slope, he came to a stop on a patch of even rockier terrain that hurt his elbows and arms when he tried to get up again. The parachute harness was making it ever harder to move around, so the young man fumbled around to get out of it, falling backwards just as he was getting free… and then hearing a soft moan as something moved underneath him. Startled from the sound and movement, Jake rolled away, turning around and then gasping at the small figure that he saw partially buried by the snow.
"Sherry!" He exclaimed, ignoring his pain as he began to scoop the snow off of her. "Sherry, hold on, I got you, we gotta find… oh… oh shit."
When the young man had first spotted her, he was worried that if he had come any later the snow would have buried her completely, and the blonde would've frozen to death, but once she was uncovered, Jake found that there was an even bigger problem. Sherry cried out as soon as he sat her up to hold her, and that was because there was a very large piece of metal impaled through her mid-section. It must've been from the rotor that flew toward them during the fall, and this piece must have hit her and broken off when it went past.
"Out… Jake." The blonde struggled to say in a weak, pained voice. "Out… pull… it… out."
"No, Sherry, I can't." He replied, trying to hold her so that she was somewhat more comfortable. "If I pull this thing out of you, you'll bleed out."
The poor thing was gasping for breath, probably because the metal had pierced at least one of her lungs, and now… as much pain as the rotor piece was causing her, it was literally all that was holding her body together. Sherry was crying now, with her tears freezing before they even made it all the way down her cheek, and she kept trying to reach for the metal piece herself, but didn't have the strength. God damn it, maybe if there was a hospital nearby she would have a chance, but whether or not he pulled the thing out of her, she was going to die anyway. He didn't want her to, but… there was nothing that could be done about it except to end her suffering.
"I'm sorry, Sherry." He said, hugging her and stroking her hair with his hand. "I'm so sorry."
Grabbing onto the metal piece with one hand, he leaned down and kissed Sherry on the lips, before sitting back up and then pulling. The blonde shrieked when the broken rotor moved, but surprisingly it came out of her real fast, as if it had just been sitting there. Discarding the metal as soon as it was out, Jake hugged the sobbing girl so that she at least wouldn't have to lie there on the ground while she bled out, but… but where was all the blood? The young man had seen situations like this before, and each time there was so much red liquid that it was like someone spilled a large bottle, but… but there was nothing coming out of her wound at all, and… and… and now it didn't look so bad.
Using his free hand to wipe his eyes, maybe it was the stress of the situation, or the fading sunlight, or hell, maybe he was just going crazy, but… as nuts as it sounded, Sherry's massive wound looked like it was getting smaller. Yeah… no matter how many times he blinked and rubbed his eyes, the puncture that would have been fatal for anyone else was closing up on its own, and in less than a minute it was like there had never been a wound there at all. Nothing but smooth skin visible through the hole in her jacket, not even a scar… wait a second, there was something… a black mark just above the wound.
The blonde was leaning heavily against him, with breaths deep and rapid now as if trying to calm herself down, so Jake lifted the ripped material of her jacket just enough to see that it wasn't a black mark at all… it was a tattoo. Well, more like a stencil in large black lettering that read G-002 just below the shoulder blade on her back. He had heard about creatures with such designations, there were stories about them out in the field, usually told by the older surviving mercenaries that were around for Raccoon City or Terragrigia, places like that. Umbrella used to brand their Tyrants that way, and all of them had some kind of abilities that made them far beyond normal… but they were still monsters… and killers.
"Cold." Sherry said in a tired voice. "Jake… I'm cold."
Damn it, even if she was one of those Tyrant things in disguise, or however that worked, the young man couldn't help feeling sorry for her after everything they had been through, and… and, yeah, he was getting pretty cold himself. Without some kind of shelter, the two of them were going to freeze to death, regardless of her magical healing powers, so Jake picked her up into his arms and stood up… or at least tried to. Eventually he managed to get back on his feet, trying to carry the blonde as he stumbled blindly across the rocky, snow covered terrain.
The sun was down now, and visibility was zero, meaning that if there was a cliff or another steep slope or something in front of him, they wouldn't know until it happened. So far he hadn't fallen, though, so the young man just kept moving until the full moon shown brightly through the clouds… no, wait, that wasn't the moon… it was a flashlight being held by someone standing on a slope above him… and that person's flashlight was mounted on the barrel of a rifle. Jake tried to turn away, even though running was impossible, only to be met with another flashlight beam from behind… and then more off to the side.
Soon there was enough light for the whole area to be illuminated, but the bad news was that this meant they were surrounded by more of those infected J'avo things… men he recognized from his old unit, who were now aiming their rifles right at him. Bang! Jumping for fear that he had just been shot, the young man realized that it had been a pistol shot that he had heard, and it was one of the infected mercenaries that fell over dead as he dropped his rifle. Bang! Bang! Bang! Three more shots from somewhere in the darkness, each one dropping another J'avo, and… man, whoever was doing that must've been a good shot to hit them in the head during a snow storm.
Once six of the infected mercenaries had fallen, the pistol fire stopped, replaced by the echoing shots of rifles as the six remaining J'avo tried to hit their unseen enemy, but then a flash of blue light illuminated his location. From right behind one of the infected, a figure struck him with some kind of electrical weapon that made sparks fly, before taking the man's rifle and shooting him, and then turning it on the others. Kakka-kakka-kakka-kakka! The four remaining J'avo were cut down in seconds, and since the other rifles were already almost buried in the snow, the light faded until there was nothing but darkness… no, wait there was one thing still visible… there was a pair of glowing yellow eyes slowly moving toward them.
Jake and Sherry had both lost their weapons in the crash, and he didn't know where the now buried rifles had fallen, so there was no choice but to run away. However, when the young man turned around to escape, he tripped over a rock and fell forward, dropping the blonde and hitting his head on something hard as he fell. Now once again just as dizzy as he had been from the crash, Jake tried to get up, but only managed to roll over onto his back just in time to see a shadowy figure with glowing yellow eyes standing over him.