Love Lies in a Puddle of Blood

Author: Panika feat. Pyres

Music: Dire Straits – On Every Streets

Notes: Sorry for being a little slow... I'm doing my best updating as often as I can, but... Yeah, right, like you were interested. -laughs- Anyway, here's chapter 2, enjoy!

Reviewers: Thank you! When you were kind enough to take time to review, I take time to answer you!

JoJo10: It's not easy trying to write a horror-story, but I'll do my best! Thanks for the praises, here's the update!

Dark Moon Crystales: Well, with you it's a little different. I didn't know my writing-style can be both creepy and fluffy at the same time, but I guess it can! Reader is always right! Soon you'll see for yourself did she kill him or not.

whoa, what's this: Thanks for saying that, I'm trying very hard to make this good!

TheDonutMistress: You don't need to wait anymore, here it is!

Spider-bear: They don't always die when you shoot them in the head… Or maybe I just wanted to be dramatic –laughs-

DarthBond: Thanks, I've written a lot to become what I am now and I look at my works and think; 'I have to keep practicing!' Aww, but now here's chapter two, freshly baked and ready to be read!

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She kept her eyes closed for a long time after she had fired all the shots, still pulling the trigger and the gun clicking in her trembling hands. Not only were her hands trembling, but her whole body seemed to be falling apart. None of her muscles wanted to work; she couldn't get her body under her control, some greater force, something primitive in her was making her shake and want to run.

Run.

Run and run until she would be far away from this place and that…

Keep running

that warpage of a man, that thing.

Finally she opened her eyes, only a little, breathing unevenly. The room was gloomy and dark; the thunder raged outside, the rain whipped the window with its merciless raindrops. The monster lay on top of Chris, its bloody and bitten body was completely limp.

Jill held her tears back that almost forced their way out of her eyes, they wanted to flow down her cheeks and fall on the floor, deep down in her heart she wanted to be a normal girl who had just lost her love, not a tough S.T.A.R.S. member. She bent over the body of the warpage that had just attacked them and examined it, pinching the dead, loose kin of the creature and it ripped off as if the whole man could've crumbled away like a cookie right there in front of her eyes.

After a moment of disgust she pushed it off Chris and took his head in her arms, holding him close against her chest. She cleaned Chris's face from the blood from the attacker, finally letting one tear escape her eye. She sniffled quietly, whispering comforting words in a confused mass to the emptiness of the room. Then she sighed and got up, lifting Chris's limp body on one of the chairs in the corner. She knew that there would be more of those monsters and they would be hungry and they would eat him, but she couldn't carry him around forever.

She returned to the door and was about to go back to the main hall through the dining hall, but then returned.

"Chris… You were a great S.T.A.R.S. member. I really enjoyed working with you." She saluted him, holding her tears back and went to the door that leaded to the dining hall again. She had already opened it when she decided to return once more.

This time a little embarrassed, although she knew that he was dead and couldn't hear or see her or know in any way that she was there she felt embarrassed as she returned and sat next to her former friend and love. "Chris… As a friend… I really enjoyed your company." Then she got up, looking at him tenderly.

Jill took a deep breath and pressed her lips on his mouth gently as a farewell-kiss. Suddenly she opened her eyes and drew back, realizing she wasn't kissing Chris, she was kissing a corpse. It sure was Chris's corpse, but his breath wasn't in it anymore. It had disappeared, vanished, gone. And considering the place where they were in, she thought of him as lucky.

"You lucky bastard." She said out loud as she loaded her gun again. "Anyway, I'm going to report back to Wesker. Loons like that can be anywhere..." She continued, but stopped upon realizing that she was talking to a corpse. She was talking alone in this mansion like there was someone with her.

Crazy. You're going crazy. Spilling your marbles. Becoming mentally disoriented.

Jill shook her head. She wasn't going crazy in any way. This was happening, she was just a little jumpy and speaking always helped being scared. But usually people had someone to talk to when they were scared.

She turned around as fast as she could and ran out of the room, out of the dining hall to the main hall, suddenly she didn't want to see Chris's dead face anymore or think about the rotting corpse of Kenneth on the floor, wonder what had happened to the warpage of a man to make him like that, she didn't want to think about going crazy.

When she got to the main hall, it was empty, booming with an eerie feeling that something malevolent could jump out of the shadows and eat her alive like it had eaten all of its victims back in Raccoon City. Something made the house feel like evil lived in its walls and it wasn't just that dead man in the hallway where Chris had died, it was something that went deeper, it had been there ever since the first brick had been put on its place to build the walls. And what made her even more scared was that Wesker was gone although he had promised to stay there and wait for them to get back.

"Wesker!?" She called. "Wesker, answer me!!"

Nothing.

Except the house breathing.

No, the house isn't breathing. Houses can't breathe. They're brick on a brick, lifeless stone. Just like those dogs. And that man. They were dead too. Her subconscious said maliciously, enjoying feeding her already panicking imagination.

"Get yourself together." She whispered to herself, her voice quivering badly. But she couldn't help it, the image of the man who had tried to eat Chris was freshly on her mind and her imagination was giving her bizarre explanations why he was like that.

Jill knew she wasn't in a condition to be thinking about anything right now; she had lost her love and seen something only a few would believe if she told about it. Now she would need to sit down and get herself together before doing anything. She sat down on the stairs and drew a deep breath.

This isn't happening, this is happening, this isn't happening, repeated in her head like a tape, again and again. But she had seen it; she had seen those dogs, that man… They were dead! For God's sake, dead! They were supposed to be buried underground and stay there like normal dead people do. But these were walking carcasses, they moved although they were dead.

It didn't make any sense! When someone died, their metabolism stopped and they began stiffen; rigor mortis. But it was true that the man who had attacked Chris had seemed overly clumsy, as if he… preferably it was some kind of a large doll made of thick wood. But dead can't walk on the earth!

What really happened here? What the hell happened here to that man, that warpage of a corpse!?

She didn't know and although her curiosity wanted to know, she wasn't sure would her sanity be able to handle with the information of what had happened here. Maybe some tests had been done in this mansion… although there wasn't any evidence of a lab, no strange bottles or liquids, smells of strong acids, nothing. But it was huge, she had seen only a few rooms, she could find anything here.

And she was pretty sure that in this mansion anything wasn't a problem.

"What's happening here…?" She buried her face in her hands and took many deep breaths as she had been taught to take in an emergency situation like this. "What the hell is happening here!?" She shouted to the roof, her voice sounded defiant yet completely broken, mad that that thing had killed Chris and Kenneth and who knows how many people like him were here in this mansion, waiting for her to come close enough to eat her as well.

After a moment of uncontrollable emotions, erupting as tears from her eyes, she got up and sighed, completely in one piece again. Everything was fine and she would find out what had happened here, it was her job. She would be bad and not worth her badge if she wouldn't find out what had happened.

For Chris's sake she would find out what had happened.

But where would she go? The mansion was gigantic. She could easily get lost and wouldn't be able to get back in case of emergency. She decided to go back where Chris's body was and try all the doors in the hallway. Maybe from the rooms where they led she would find some answers and also, watch a little over Chris if more of those unholy creatures were coming after him… and his flesh.

She got back to the hallway and before she had even closed the door behind her she heard a moan, a soulless call for something… something it yearned. She turned to look at another dead man that had probably come for Chris's flesh. Its eyes were empty and light blue as if it was blind, but it sure seemed like it could see her, it headed straight towards her, lunging forward clumsily.

Or maybe it couldn't see after all.

Maybe it could smell her.

Ridiculous.

She fired at it; hating it for what it's… it's…

friend?

What that another corpse had done to Chris. Had made her do to Chris. The corpse staggered as the bullet hit its head, but didn't fall over. She fired again, without any effect. Then she fired four times, directly into its head and it blew up, the blood sprayed on the walls of the hallway, it fell down and a puddle of blood ran from its body and surrounded it.

"That's where you belong." Jill said, spitting on the corpse. She crouched next to the body and tried its lifeless, rotting skin and pulse as well, finding none. Then the thought came to her. Was this a zombie? A living dead? Because it sure looked like one. Just like in those B-class movies she had watched.

But what had created it? Where had it come from? Questions ran in her head like scared bunnies, she was trying to search for answers from her memory, but found none. It was –or at least had been- impossible to bring the dead back to life. And there was no other explanation for this distortion of a man, because his body had been dead at least for a month, his skin and the rest of his body was decomposing already, his hair was thin and greasy, large pieces of dandruff were about to come off.

She got up, feeling the chills running down her spine. Also, it was so gross, the body, that she wanted to find the nearest bathroom and throw up, her breakfast and the little sandwich she had eaten in the helicopter wanted to come out.

Instead, Jill took a deep breath and inhaled. Then she lifted her boot and with a moment's blinded rage she stomped the creature's head, letting the sticky, almost coagulated blood stain her pants.

"Try walking around now." She said scornfully before starting towards Chris's and Kenneth's bodies.

When she got there, she gasped. Chris's body was gone. It had been sitting on one of the chairs, but now it was gone. There weren't even blood stains on the floor to show that he had been taken somewhere.

And that was even worse than seeing his eaten body on the chair because now she didn't know where he was and what kind of obscene things these warpages of a man were doing to his poor body, now defenceless without its spirit. Or what if…

What if he was still alive?

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It's not supposed to be this gloomy, sorry for that, I'll cheer it up in the next chapter. Just bear with me, readers!

Thanks for reading, your reviews would be wonderful!