Chapter 26

He let go of the side of the elevator shaft and dropped into the depths of darkness that the vertical tunnel provided, right now he didn't care whether or not he was killed again by Kat or anybody else, he just wanted to fulfill the newfound desire to kill her. He wanted to gut her and bury his mouth in her warm flesh. He almost reached the bottom when he let out an inhuman roar of bloodlust and anger, noticing that the figure of Kat was starting to move. He landed right on top of the elevator car and crashed through its roof as she ran out.

He saw her stop, stare at him, and then empty two more rounds into his body which he now didn't even feel enter his body. He threw himself at her, still wanting her but for different reasons.

She ran and he pursued.

Strangely enough, racial memories of the hunt from a life as a lower life form of early pre-primate existence began to rush at him- memories that not only surged through his brain but also through his veins as well- gave him an advantage. He felt that he would take her down. It was only a matter of time.

She was fast, this human, but he found that every living being he had chased before entering the strange building were always fast when propelled by terror and survival instinct, fast for a while but not forever. And in their fear, the hunted were never close to being as cunning as the hunter. Experience assured him of that.

He wished that he had rested and let his wounds heal, for they started to actually delay his pursuit. But his own mutated adrenaline level was so high that he had partially blocked out the pain in his wounded and probably grotesquely damaged legs, ankles, and feet; temporarily the pain did not register for a while.

The prey fled further down the strange white metal tunnel, though nothing in that direction offered the smallest hope of sanctuary. Between them and the intertwining tunnels that sometimes came into view, the land had become home to many other strange beings beside himself, things that bit and slashed and even ate their own kind to stay alive.

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Having run only a few hundred yards through the hallways of the underground Umbrella lab, Kat was already gasping for breath. Her legs felt as though they were made of stone.

She was not out of shape; it was just that the constant fear of the thing that was chasing her that used to be such a non-aggressive person, the awful heat that was radiating from the air vents, and the wonder if any other of Umbrella's dirty little secrets were around the corner. All these things combined had taken a toll on her energy and added a gradual stress to her condition.

She glanced back.

Mike was about ten yards behind her.

She looked straight ahead and pushed herself harder, really pumping her legs, putting everything she had into it, crashing through her wall of fear, only to have temporary relief.

Up ahead was a low wall extending about fifteen yards to the left and equal length and beyond it was an open cavern with a natural river running through it. She didn't want to detour around it because she was afraid that she would lose ground to Mike. The wall was only knee high, and far as she could see it was neither too predictable to trip on nor too hard simply leap over, so she jumped over the wall, where she discovered that behind the wall was a semi-steep slope leading to the water. She landed in a thorny plant and it poked at her legs and snagged her pants and delayed her with such persistence that it seemed to be in leagues with him. Her racing heart began to pound harder, too hard, slamming against her breastbone. She got through the hedge and continued to run, increasing her pace again, gushing sweat, blinking the salty beads of liquid from her eyes before it blurred her vision, tasting it at the corner of her mouth.

She kept pumping her legs, dashing across the cavern floor because there was nothing else she could do. She glanced back again. Mike was closer, about seven yards away from her now.

After about five additional minutes of running, she glanced back a third time and let out an involuntary cry of despair. He was closer, five yards. That was when she tripped and fell.

The rock ended and gravel replaced it. Because she was not looking down and had not seen that the ground was going to change, she twisted her left ankle. She tried to stay up, tried to keep going, but the twist had destroyed her rhythm. The same ankle twisted again the very next time she put that foot down. "No!" she shouted and pitched to the left, rolled across a few weeds and stones. She wound up at the brink of a ditch about fifty feet across, thirty deep, with walls that sloped but only slightly. Even as she stopped rolling at the ditch, she took in the situation, saw what she must do, did it: She threw herself over the brink, rolling again, down the steep wall this time, desperately hoping that she'd miss the sharp rocks and other hazards.

It was a bruising descent, and she hit the bottom with enough force to knock half of the wind out of her. Nevertheless, she scrambled to her feet, looked up, and saw Mike—or the thing that Mike had become—staring down at her from the top of the ditch wall. He was just thirty or thirty or thirty-five feet above her, but thirty vertical feet seemed more like distance than thirty horizontally measured feet; it was as if she were standing on a city street with him peering down at her from a third story window. His hesitation had gained her some time; yet it also left her to realize that he, in his hesitation, made him look as though he was a small child looking down at a group of kids the same age as he, trying to decide whether or not he should jump down to gain their trust of him or an initiation of some sort.

Turning right, she ran along a flat bed of the ditch, favoring her twisted ankle. She did not know where the ditch would lead her. But she stayed on the move, something that would save her, something…

Something.

Anything.

What she needed was a miracle. She expected Mike to plunge down the wall of the gulch when she began to run, but he did not. Instead, he stayed up there at the edge of the channel, running alongside the brink, looking down at her, matching her progress step for step. She supposed he was looking for an advantage of his own.