Chapter 6
"Hunter"
July 30th 1981
Brian stood by a large, metal, circular tank. On the tank was painted "XH-1". He looked at the clipboard in his hands, scanned the notes and the typed report, then wrote down his own notes and observations.
Albert Wesker walked up next to Brian and crossed his arms.
"So, this is Burkin's Hunter?" Wesker asked.
Brian nodded, "Yeah, I was just going to take some notes before it is disposed of."
"How were you going to do that?" Wesker asked and kicked the tank.
Brian raised his eyebrows when the being inside the tank growled, disturbed by Wesker's kick.
"Well, the soldiers are getting lazy, so I decided to put them in a room with this thing and let it out. If it kills the soldiers, and then we will have combat data on it, if the soldiers kill it, then it will be disposed of. The way I see it, it's a win-win situation"
Wesker smirked and nodded, "I think I want to watch that."
Brian waved a worker over to him.
"Take this," Brian said, motioning to the tank, "To Testing Room 3. And tell Corporal Dallas to also report with a fire team to Testing Room 3. Heavy armament."
Brian, followed by Albert Wesker, headed for the Observation Room to oversee the events in Testing Room 3.
Brian and Wesker watched as Jay entered Testing Room 3 with his squad of four men. He noticed that Jay's traditional Colt M-16 A1 had been fitted with an M-203 40 millimeter grenade launcher. The other men also carried Army Surplus weapons. One man carried what looked like an M-60, judging by its size, and another carried a Mossberg 500 twelve-gauge shotgun. The other two had standard M-16 A1s.
The Hunter's tank was at the other end of the room.
Brian pressed the intercom button next to him and said into the microphone, "Okay, guys, don't kill it before it gets out of the tube."
Jay waved at the glass separating him from his friend and the other soldiers exchanged worried looks. Jay pointed at the two men to his left, the machine gunner and one of the riflemen, and motioned for them to spread out further. He did the same for the remaining two men on his right.
A buzzer sounded and the standard lights shut off in favor of red emergency lights and Brian and Wesker watched as the tank opened and the Hunter emerged. It looked like a horribly mutated man-sized frog. It had long claws on the tips of equally long fingers. The Hunter looked around, spotted the soldiers, and growled before charging at them.
Jay was the first to open fire, and he did so by moving his hand to the grenade launcher, raising the muzzle of the rifle slightly, and squeezing the trigger. The resulting CHOOM from the barrel of the grenade launcher was followed a split-second later by an enormous explosion that blew the Hunter off it's clawed feet and sent it into the far wall. As Jay slid the breech of the grenade launcher open and slid in another 40 millimeter grenade, his squad opened fire on the hunter just as it got to it's feet and ran at them. The roar of automatic weapons and the lesser sound of the shotgun were deafening. The Hunter slowed in its approach, slowed by high velocity bullets and turkey shot. One of the Hunters eyes burst and its skin ripped under the hail of bullets.
The soldier with the shotgun stopped firing and started reloading his weapon when the Hunter used its powerful legs to jump twenty-five feet in the air. Just as the soldier slipped the last shell into the shotgun and jerked the slide forward, the Hunter slammed on the ground in front of him and prepared to inflect a killing blow with it's claws. Jay saw this and ran forward, sticking the barrel of his rifle into the side of the Hunter's head, which made a move to knock Jay away, but Jay was the quicker of the two and used both of his hands to depress the trigger on both the M-16 and the M-203. The small, high-velocity bullets ripped through the Hunter's skin, skull, and brain matter. The 40 millimeter grenade blew out of the large barrel under the assault rifle and, not having time to arm, acted as a 40 millimeter bullet, knocking the Hunter off of it's feet and into the wall. When it didn't move, and blood began to pool around it's corpse, they knew it was dead.
"Test over." Brian said into the intercom and to Wesker, then turned and left as the soldiers headed out of the testing room.