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Chapter 8

The lights were all gone. The doors were all shut tight, only the light of life itself remained, and Lisa could smell its slow extinguishment as the dead tore out the throats of the living to add to the ranks of the eaters. The smell of death rose through vents she passed by, and sometimes the faint final cry or the sound of hungry undead dogs was passed through the vents to precede the smell of death. With the coming of the night indoors, the research facility was becoming a tomb.

A noise. Noise. Sound. Lisa cocked her ear towards it, "Let me in! Let me in!" A woman's voice shrieked and pounded on the door, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaked over the smooth floor, her little fist pounded hard on an entrance that she could not pass through. "Please! Please don't keep me out of here! I hate the dark! I hate it! I hate it I hate it I hate it!"

Lisa followed the sound of the voice, few were still alive, dogs were close by. 'Mother won't know my face… I need a better face…' She thought, and came on more rapidly, 'She has a face.' Lisa thought, and came around the corner, she could see in the pitch black the way a woman in a white lab coat was pounding on the door.

"No! This is our place! Go hide somewhere else! There's not enough room for you!" A deeper voice shouted from within.

Lisa could hear the sound of dog claws tapping on the floor in the distance, hunting for another kill. They reeked of blood. Evidently the woman could hear them too. "They're coming! Please let me in!" The woman in the lab coat wailed hopelessly and pounded so hard that Lisa heard the faint crack of fingers breaking.

However the researcher did not sense Lisa. Her fear was for the dogs she heard coming, her fear was for the dead walking the halls, and whatever experiments the woman knew of that were now free, which included Lisa herself.

But… she did not see Lisa coming at all. Not in the dark.

She did, finally sense a presence, and turned slowly around, catching the towering shape of Lisa in front of her, she let out a scream and raised her arms up to protect her face.

'White coats are bad. White coats must die.' Lisa thought and thrust her hand through the woman's chest, ripping through her heart, and coming out her back.

Lisa felt the flesh rip apart, meat tore, bones were forced aside, the heat and warmth inside the body coated Lisa's arm up to the elbow and stained her with the woman's blood and viscera. The scream became a gurgle and the light of her eyes in the dark faded away. 'Face.' Lisa thought, and when the body crumpled to the floor, Lisa reached down, turning the face up, she carved away the skin. Her sharp fingernails rolled away the soft flesh, leaving a slick, wet sound as the only noise in their immediate space except for a faint whimpering of fear beyond the door.

When Lisa had the face peeled away, she brought it up to her own and pressed it to her skin. It slipped a little. Lisa frowned and gritted her teeth with frustration.

'Tie it…' She thought after a moment, and reaching down, she tore strips from the white lab coat and wrapped it around her head, binding the skin of the face beneath it so that it would stay in place until the sticky red blood and other liquids dried against her skin and held it in place later.

'Better.' Lisa thought just as a pair of dogs rounded a corner. She looked at the beasts, then at the door, and casually batted the back of her hand at it. The lock jamb snapped and the door shot within to the sound of shouted alarm, deep cries of fear from within the room were followed by scrambling bodies and flailing limbs to push the door shut.

Lisa moved on, the dogs had picked up their pace and were rapidly rushing toward the corpse and the door behind which fresh meat lay live and waiting for them. The scraping nails and instinctive barking went on, when she was far behind, she could hear the voices of the living men within as their strength began to fail them. She was, however, well beyond hearing when their final moments came.

Chris and Rebecca moved in sync with one another down the hall, each taking slow and steady steps to avoid noise as they reviewed the plans in their heads. 'Armory and the parts, the problem with the parts is that we don't know where that thing took them… but at least with the armory we might have enough firepower to deal with anything out here…'

With their NVGs on again they couldn't read faces, but they didn't need to, when they reached the nearest elevator point, Chris stopped and looked at the open shaft.

'Chris… I don't like this.' Rebecca mentally grumbled, when his fingers silently pointed to the cable, she took position beside the open shaft at the right side. He took the left, the faint sound of creaking and a constant tapping echoed from below. She looked up, he looked down into the depths.

"Oh no…" Chris whispered. When Rebecca confirmed that there was no elevator car up above, she looked down to see what held his eyes. The brake locks of the elevator car were broken and stuck on the wall. The cable was swaying.

"Do you think there were people in it…" Rebecca whispered the question, but the way he tensed, she knew his thoughts without his saying it.

He reached out and grabbed the steel cable and began to draw it up, never once was there the resistance of any weight, and soon they were staring at the broken, cut end of a steel cable.

"We can go down safely, this is the best way to get to the armory if the doors aren't going to be reliable anymore." Chris said with mute pity in his voice.

"Shit." Rebecca swore while Chris dropped the cable back down the shaft.

"Right, but it's the safest way…" He said grim faced and glancing down the hallway.

"How do you know you'll even be able to open the door from there?" Rebecca asked, sharing his anxious glance in both hallway directions. Faint moans passed through shafts and through the halls, speaking of unfortunate numbers acting as barriers to progress.

Chris tapped the open doors. "These are old, probably installed decades ago, newer elevator doors are almost impossible to force apart, but the old ones? They won't have an interlock system, it means we can pry them open from our side. Unless you think Umbrella is going to bother updating those…?"

Even in the darkness, he knew her expression was accepting. 'Right, because they care so much about the safety of their employees.' She thought with brutal pragmatism.

Chris then grabbed the cable that hung down, and jumped. He swayed back and forth, kicking his legs off the wall and sliding down the dark shaft. The cable was hard, it dug into his hands even with the gloves on, but little by little he made his way, down to the lower levels where the armory could be found. The smell of oil and grease was overpowering within the shaft, and if possible, it was even darker than before, making it difficult for his NVGs to magnify any light at all.

His breath came ragged and heavy, it felt hot against his hands, he felt the sweat from the effort of his tight grip, and slipped down to the closed shaft.

He reached the door he wanted, a small ledge wide enough for him to stand with his feet in line with the door was all he had, but he planted first one foot, then the other and released the cable. "Alright, come down, this will take just a minute!" He called out above, and heard the faint 'hut' sound of Rebecca taking the leap and grabbing the steel cable.

Chris forced his fingers within the tiny space and began to push, his ear pressed against the smooth sliding door, he heard nothing from behind it, and so he pushed with confidence.

The metal groaned slightly, but the heavy elevator doors gave grudgingly against him. He slipped another hand within and grunted, his jaw clenched and the rest of his face tensed with it, his muscles strained as badly as they did in his roughest workouts…

But he made a gap, a gap large enough to fit through. He turned to the side, slid in, and got stuck at the chest. Chris braced his hand on the other side of the door, and pushed against it, sucking in a deep breath as much as he could, he forced himself through hard enough that he almost fell forward.

And by then, Rebecca was dangling behind him. "Simple, huh. Men." She chuckled, and Chris blushed a bit.

"Hey the door is open, that's the important part, now come on, we've got to be close to the armory now."

He slipped through the gap, then extended a hand and caught her forearm as she swung in close.

A quick tug and she slipped through easily. "I didn't say which of us it would be easy for." Chris replied sarcastically, and they resumed positions covering one another from either side of the walls.

Bodies littered the hall, one of them was in an Umbrella military uniform, a flashlight pointed in the direction they were going. Switching off their NVGs, they looked at the horrific scene. Workers, employees, but it became obvious quickly… 'They died twice. Bravo team made it this far at least. Well, most of them.' Chris thought, uncomfortably adjusting himself and fingering the trigger of his rifle.

The body of the umbrella military agent had clearly been picked clean by his comrades, a bullet in his brain that blew out the back of his skull from below spoke of his suicide. 'Don't blame him, I wouldn't want to go that way either.' Rebecca thought as she stared down at the corpses.

Some were missing eyes, others entire faces, bullet holes riddled the walls where the team had opened up in force. "They always were big on mass firepower, I guess it really tore through these." Rebecca muttered while they stepped through the puddles of blood and viscera that had once been inside the living bodies of those who worked within the facility.

"Yeah, but did they save enough rounds to reach the armory? Wesker wouldn't have suggested we go secure it if they'd done well. They may need backup, they may be trapped, they may be…" Chris stopped when Rebecca shook her head.

"Don't say it. Let's just go." She said in a hushed voice and they stepped over corpse after corpse, pausing to check rooms, and finding nothing but emptiness and death, at last they reached their destination.

The shouting was what they first heard from beyond the door. "Where is it?!"

"I don't know man! I don't know! Why won't it fucking die?! Why doesn't anything in this hellhole just die when we pump em full of rounds?!"

"I don't know! Just keep an eye out, it's still up there somewhe-"

"Help! Oh god no, no help me help me help!" The scream for help was bound up in agony and pain and fear, gunfire blazed out of sight, the scream was cut off, though by the cause of the scream or a lucky… or unlucky set of rounds that cut off the life of the despairing unfortunate, neither Chris nor Rebecca were sure.

Their blood started pumping and adrenaline kicked in, Chris felt his pulse racing like mad, the sound wasn't from the armory, but rather from a nearby side office. "Open up!" Chris shouted as he rushed for the door and tugged on the handle, and found it locked.

"Alpha! Alpha! Alpha! We're here to help!" Chris shouted as loud as he could, Rebecca took up position at his back… and they heard the sound of rushing feet and frantick jumbling of keys, while above them within the ceiling, they heard the sound of a hiss.

"Oh… shit. Not that thing…" Chris cursed under his breath as the door flung open.

They knew him immediately, "Enrico what the…" Rebecca began before he grabbed her wrist and pulled her, then Chris, into the room and shut the door.

"Fucking Wesker man! That's 'what the' and that's the sonofabitch who sent us here!" Enrico's hands were a shaking, trembling mess. His entire front was coated in blood, including the normally black mustache over his lip.

"Fucker never told us… never told us what was down this way! Said we could handle it! Man, we believed him and we were wrong! He was wrong! Yeah bodies walkin, you saw em, right?!"

Enrico looked at them with wild brown eyes before glancing at the door as if he weren't sure if he'd actually shut it or not.

"Yeah, we did… we did. Fought our way downstairs to get the power on and…" Chris began, only for Enrico's face to light up, even compared to the flashlights that showed his face to them.

"The power! Wait… then why?" He looked overhead and around them… "Then where's the fucking power?!" Enrico gave Chris an angry shove, "Why didn't you…"

"Encrio stop! We tried…" Rebecca grabbed him by the shirt collar and tugged him away from Chris, who righted himself and tensed for a fight.

"We tried but there was some sabotage, we don't know a lot, there was a survivor from the repair team, it made them take the assembly apart, he can fix it, but we need to find the parts, and we need weapons and ammunition to get anywhere…" Enrico calmed as Rebecca explained, and for a moment he seemed reflective.

"Right well look, what's missing?" Enrico demanded, "Why take it…?"

As they explained, Enrico kept his eyes on the ceiling, "Keep an eye out… there's a snake… it got… everyone. I'm it, I'm all that's left." His voice was hollow, resigned, as if he understood he had only minutes of fighting left in him. "The armory is locked, but you could get in through the vent if it weren't for the snake…. I'll bet your panel is going to be in the lighthouse. There's still power there, that thing that took it, I think we saw it, and we saw it through a window, it found a way out of this place. I didn't know what the damn thing had with it, but now that you tell me… if we go out onto the grounds… but I wouldn't want to do that without firepower."

The hissing began again.

"Star formation!" Chris shouted, and they put their backs to one another and scanned the ceiling.

The hiss drew closer… "We've got to beat that thing!" Enrico shouted just as the head poked through, he hefted his SAW rifle and began to open fire, the weapon bucked like mad as the rounds tore through the body of a snake, Chris saw that it was anything but the same thing…

'There can't be two… so how... oh no…' Chris realized with horror, the huge bulges in the snake's body as it came down were obviously the bodies of some of Bravo team, but what filled Chris's heart with icy fear was that the snake had been 'changed'.

"It's been infected!" Chris shouted and began to open fire. The snake's head bobbed with wild swiftness, and though bullets tore through its flesh, it no longer seemed to be bothered.

Rebecca dove past the head as it darted in, turning her shotgun toward it, she blasted a hole in the side of its shining, blood slicked black body, only for it to accomplish nothing before it snatched Enrico up. Illuminated by the flashes of light from the muzzles of their weapons, and the wild white lights of their flashlights, his face danced in and out of shadow and light, and every time, there was nothing but pain and despair.

His rifle dropped with a clatter to the ground as the snake began to pull him away, indifferent to the rifle and shotgun fire behind it.

"No! No not like this!" Enrico flailed and drew his knife, stabbing the snake in futile desperation as he was dragged off.

"You mother fucker…! I ain't going alone!" Enrico howled as he was drawn inexorably into the massive unhinged maw of the snake during its retreat.

Chris understood his intent only a moment before Jill. "Cover!" he shouted, and they dove for a desk as Enrico took out a grenade from his pouch and slid inside the serpent. "Fucking die you fucking overgrown noodle!" Enrico cursed and pulled the pin and released the spoon.

Inches from its brain, the grenade exploded with a horrific boom, shrapnel flew everywhere, ripping through his flesh, and through the flesh of the massive snake.

Hidden by a heavy desk, Chris and Jill were protected from the worst shrapnel… but from the deafening noise, there was no escape, which is why they heard nothing of the thud as the shredded body of the snake slipped lifeless… and unlifeless, back down to the floor where it lay with a thud, most of its head missing and its entire body torn to shreds, revealing through deep gashes and gouges caused by gunfire and grenades, the bodies of several humans. Their faces were mostly melted away by the snake's digestive tract, bones and muscle were ample, their uniforms were coated with the blood they'd been stained with in life, but those were also slowly being dissolved away until that moment, and had become rags.

The exposed bodies freed from the internal pressure of the snake's tight constriction, began to tear the rest of the way out as if the snake had given birth to them, groaning audibly as they tried to approach Chris and Rebecca while the living pair scrambled to reload.