For all disclaimers: See Chapters 1 and 2.
Notes: this symbol denotes radio communication. A Y by itself is a page break.
CHAPTER SEVEN Lost Souls/June 8th 1996, central Iraq/
Serena didn't know, although she would find out later, that the airlock doors closing behind her sealed her off from the outside world as securely as a Bank Vault. The entire room was shielded to prevent any possible contamination of the experiments being conducted, including the blocking of signals coming from any electrical sources such as radio's and Mobile phones which could effect the massed computer banks function. Therefore she never directly received Tom's call-not that, as she would slowly admit long after the event, it would have made any difference in the end.
At the moment she saw what was in the room, though, these things were the last thing on her mind. For the kind of reason that never left the mind.
Strapped down inside the small white room, heads forced back by neck guards and braces running across the forehead, torso propelled up and out of the steel surgical chair by the angle of restraint added to the way the arms and legs were forced to sit, the remains of what had once been six people gave her an insight into the torments of Hell. Old, young and child, one of each, men and women, beyond that...beyond that, she wasn't sure what she was looking at precisely. Nor was she sure she wanted to know.
Skin was gone, chest cavities were exposed, bare bone gleamed amidst red flesh and dried blood, in one case a lower jaw was missing entirely. Eyes had been plucked out, fingers were broken, a trail of drool ran over the chin out of the mouth of the adult woman, the young man had screamed so much that he'd ripped his throat, blood still evident in his mouth that had dried into black flakes-she had to look away. These people, all of them, had been alive, sane and alive and alert, when this had been done. They had to have died in circumstances that defied description, suffering pain that simply could not be imagined, knowing that no-one was coming for them, that they were going to die, here in Hell, suffering the torments of every Damned Soul first, before they died...
She couldn't be in here, she couldn't be seeing this, she couldn't...! Slowly, it pierced her shell of sick disgust and loathing, as she closed her eyes and fought off old tears of pain that threatened to force their way out again and again and again, that there was someone else in the room. As she recovered her equilibrium and natural state of calm abruptly, her impossible level of self-control overriding in a moment any attempt at letting any part of her Soul show through where anyone might even possibly see or sense her doing so, as had to be the way, her senses filled in the gaps. She knew who it was before she even looked up at him to see the tears that she knew were running down his face as he slowly closed the glazed, long-dead eyes of the girl child before carefully, ever so carefully, stroking her hair back from her face. He was sobbing, too, that was evident to anyone within fifty yards of him in her opinion.
Stamper. The man she'd come to find and retrieve. Abruptly he'd solved all her problems, she just had to get out of here with him now and that was it.
"Serena...who would do something like this? Who could do something like this?" he asked, slowly, unable to take his eyes off of the dead girl child. From the look on his face and in his eyes he was, unsurprisingly, taking this even less well than she was. That was to be expected, though. A man as cut off from the real world as Stamper, who had more interest in how Drugs and Chemicals functioned, who thought about scientific study as a lifestyle choice rather than as only part of what he did, would react about as well to real blood and gore as she would to getting a Crash Call at the last second to not blow Saddam Hussein's head off even as her finger tightened on the trigger.
The problem was that ageing monster wasn't standing ten feet away from her with a gun in his hand, that he hadn't been chased by monsters in an underground facility beneath a foreign country where the natives would likely skin them all alive if they were caught. That worried her, particularly given the fact that she had strong suspicions Stamper wasn't entirely stable upstairs, where it really counted in situations like this, for all his impressive brainpower. That made her walk very slowly, very carefully towards him, all of her weapons holstered, trying to appear unthreatening...
Everything happened so fast that she would later have to spend hours thinking through what had happened just to get everything straight in her mind. When she'd done that, considering what she'd already known at the time, she'd spend several more hours chastising herself for failing to think through all of the options and realise that what happened could have.
The girl child's head suddenly snapped forwards and she buried her teeth in Stamper's left hand, just as all of the bodies started to twist and turn, shift and move, moaning low and deep, dead, glassy eyes blinking open as ruined muscles tried to shift, broken bones cracking as dead flesh tore around them. Stamper's terrible scream would have woken the dead if the Virus they were all infected with hadn't already done it, the second before he raised his gun and blasted the corpse chewing on his hand at point-blank range in the head, shattering its skull into fragments and pulping the brain even as he ripped his hand free in a spray of blood. Bone fragments slashed through his face and neck, drawing blood everywhere even as they barely failed to blind him.
His face abruptly looked like a mask from a horror movie as blood poured from every cut, coating his face, throat, collar and upper chest. His screams turned into howls of animal fury and terror and he snapped off shots at all of the moving Corpses, Serena jumping away from the shooting in an attempt to avoid being shot even as Stamper blew chunks off the corpses with every bullet until he ran out of ammunition, still pulling the trigger with continual clicks. Four were no longer moving, two were still twitching feebly Serena automatically noticed-just before Stamper apparently heard her, spun around and pulled the trigger on an empty gun with the gun aimed at her heart.
Without blinking an eye, she moved, fast. She jumped forwards and straight-armed Stamper so hard that she felt rather than saw his jaw break as his head snapped backwards sharply before tackling him with a flying tackle that would have earned her a place with any American football team, throwing all of her weight and muscle into it.
She hit him in the chest with her full weight so hard he was lucky not to wind up with a broken back even as he went over backwards, arms flailing wildly, gun flying loose and away, until he hit his head with an awful thud against the floor. That should have finished him but it didn't and, apparently forgetting just who he was fighting, he writhed and fought her like a wild animal with a madman's strength, clawing and biting, left completely demented by the horrors of this place.
Unwilling to waste time or risk even bruises Serena thought fast, shaped her fist and shot a very precise strike to Stamper's throat. "Nerve Strike, place it perfectly you win, don't and they die" her instructors had always taught her at the ETC. To her mind, in this situation, especially given her skill in delivering such strikes, the action was warranted. It worked instantly, Stamper went as limp as a wet dishrag and Serena allowed herself the slightest sigh of relief before standing and finishing off the last two creatures with perfectly placed headshots from her pistols. Looked like she'd be carrying the stupid man out of here...
Y
In room 101, where Tom, Aaron and Webb were trapped in a storeroom under siege by the living dead, the situation was going from bad to worse. The Zombies were constantly pounding on the glass-evidently it was shatterproof after all, something Webb would be eternally grateful for-but they were also pounding the door, which was not locked and was occasionally shifting with the weight pressing against it added to the force. A metal cabinet, files and folders, books, a folding chair and Aaron's weight and muscle were all that was holding the door shut, but the room was about big enough to hold six people standing upright so Aaron was able to brace his feet against the rear wall easily, giving him all of the leverage he needed. The door wasn't opening while the big man was conscious, but they couldn't get out.
Tom would have sold his Soul for a shaped charge of C4 and a flamethrower at that particular moment, but they didn't have either and a miracle seemed unlikely, so they were, in his professional opinion, dead men. Chris Redfield had come back to him on his call to Serena and reported that she'd chased Stamper, who'd apparently completely lost it on coming face-to-face with the undead, into a sealed area where he suspected radio transmissions couldn't penetrate. He'd offered to go in and get her-then gone off the air with a yell of fright followed by rapid gunfire, finished by a blood-curdling scream. He was likely dead, Tom thought, and if he was, with Serena and Stamper AWOL, he, Aaron and Webb were going to die here. They had no escape, no way out and of their two best choices at the minute for getting out of this mess one was to commit suicide and hope the Zombies couldn't break in to desecrate their remains. The other was to short the electronic locking system in the room and manually force the door somehow, a possibility with Aaron involved if he could just not panic...
"Aaron, listen to me a minute. The doors electronic, right? That means that this room has a power source originating somewhere that's channelled through it to run the lights, door and any other necessities. If we can find it and short it couldn't we force the door by hand?" he asked, checking his gun again, the only sign of nerves he ever showed, as he glanced at the Engineer.
"Depends on the set-up, Tom, if this place has advanced comp-tech it /might/ automatically lock down every exit and entrance to any room where positive power and surveillance is lost, for no matter how much time. Also it might not, but even if it doesn't that door would stop a small car dead. The three of us couldn't open it if we killed ourselves using Crowbars and we don't have explosives. Just to add to the fun, the only electrical conduits I could reach and screw around with enough to do the job are in the main walls, which were cut off from entirely in here. At the distance we'd be working at that would mean fighting those things hand-to-hand for long enough to let me do the job. Apart from all of that, good idea" replied Aaron, still refusing to refer to the walking corpses outside as what they were, Zombies. It didn't bother Tom at all, everyone had their way of coping.
"I can do twelve rounds with the best, Aaron, I'll bet you Webb can too, so don't hazard a guess. We can take care of ourselves: how long will you /need/?" asked Tom, staring straight into Aaron's eyes. Aaron didn't flinch at Tom's ice-cold gaze- one thing to be glad of, Tom couldn't help but think. The big Engineer clearly had no trouble dealing with /humans/.
"A minute if I risk electrocution, but only that long because I've no idea what I'll be dealing with. The door?" Aaron replied, raising an eyebrow as his mind almost audibly raced behind his eyes running through a variety of strategies and ideas and plucking out the best, letting the rest slip away without a seconds thought. Tom just grinned back at him.
"I /always/ have a plan involving getting out alive, Aaron. Just give me thirty seconds to work-" Tom replied, a second before Webb cut in.
"On developing those all-new end-of-the-world survival skills?" Webb asked, suddenly, staring straight at something in the main room as Tom and Aaron turned to stare at him before seeing the expression on his face. They followed his gaze-then they saw it...
Tom and Aaron spoke as one in a second. "OH SH-!"
Y
"Reapers currently unavailable, Iceman. She can be reached if in an emergency situation, though. Is this required? Over" replied Chris, replying to Toms radio message before he failed to stifle a yelp of mixed fear and disgust as the latest Zombie came into view. He gritted his teeth. "Stand by, got a small problem here" he added.
The Zombie which came around the corner first had once been a middle-aged scientist in a white lab coat and light-green scrubs with little hair left. Now he was dead, missing the entire left side of his face, his skull being exposed inside rotting flesh and ragged skin, the eye socket being dark and empty. He also had a knife sticking out of his ribs over his heart, a broken ankle-and a fire axe, bloodstained, that he was evidently using as a crutch. It would have made a nasty mess out of anyone it had hit, Chris couldn't help but think...
Without blinking an eye at this new horror, even as its ruined mouth opened and it hissed at him with the wet gargle of sound only a throat and vocal cords as ruined as its could produce, he smoothly sighted on its empty eye and puts its brains out the back of its head like a professional, with a single shot. It wasn't that the things didn't frighten him any longer, he reflected even as the brass shell casing dinged against the metal floor, it was just that there was only so much horror the human mind could handle before it started to shut down just to preserve your sanity. He'd hit that point with the hell hounds attack, now he just dealt with them as they came, numb to everything inside. The only wish he had left, the objective in his life now, was to get out of this whole nightmare alive-by whatever means necessary. Not that he'd abandon the others under any circumstances...
He smoothly turned and aimed as the moaning from behind drew closer, shuffling feet dragging over steel floor. He got his first good look at them-and the full, sick horror hit him all over again, making his stomach churn for a long moment before he forced it down. Five more, four lab techs and one in a suit, one tech a woman the rest men, one tech was missing its left arm while all of them had suffered awful fatal injuries at some point-the one in the suit still had a long-handled razor stuck in his slit throat, the front of his suit and shirt still being soaked in thick red blood.
/NO/ problem.
The one with the razor in its throat went first, a huge chunk of grey matter exiting the back of its head accompanied by fragments of skull after he put a bullet through its eye with a perfect shot. It was still collapsing when he decapitated the second, his shot taking its throat out to such an extent that he could clearly see the damaged spinal column amidst thin strands of red flesh. The things head slowly fell right off of it with a sick wet crack as it went over backwards, slamming into the floor with an awful thud.
The third was the woman, a huge bite wound looking to have been made by human teeth despite the missing chunk of flesh in her left forearm. He shot her in the heart with the powerful handgun just to see the effect, the shell blasting right through her at thirty foot-she staggered, then came on slowly, a hole three inches across in her chest. Too bad. He centred his aim right between her eyes and pulled the trigger-the "chikt" sound of his main weapon misfiring was, all of a sudden, the worst sound he'd ever heard.
He felt all the blood drain from his face as he instantly moved to fix it, recognising the problem as a shell stuck in the breach in a second. He worked the autoloader, frantically shook the gun but nothing happened. He glanced up and realised that the Zombies would be right on top of him in ten seconds flat. He /did not/ have time for this. He dropped his Desert Eagle, pulled his 9MM Backup and clicked off the safety.
He centred on the same Zombie and shot her in the head, right between the eyes. Unfortunately his Backup didn't have the punch of his Primary and the thing staggered but, weaving, kept coming. He had to fire three more times, all headshots, swearing at increasing volume, to finally drop it. He was automatically starting to back away as the Zombies got so close that they were beginning to reach out for him with bloody, decaying hands and arms, but didn't immediately realise that he wasn't backing away fast enough.
He shot the last but one creature in the eye, but it only staggered before coming on more slowly. It took four shots to drop it, since his hands were starting to shake with fear and nerves he couldn't suppress. He snapped around to face the last one-just as its decaying fingers touched his neck and grasped, the thing abruptly lunging for his throat. He barely had time to let out a bloodcurdling shriek before he threw himself backwards, just barely avoiding the attack only to trip and land on the floor with the Zombie on top, the air exploding from his lungs as his gun scattered out of his hands, the impact breaking it loose. The Zombie clawed at him any way it could in a moment, trying to rip off pieces of flesh from his arms and face, take out his eyes while he tried to kick it off or simply damage it so badly it would just stop trying to bite him.
He got his forearm under its chin and lifted its snapping head and jaws away from him, but couldn't hold its arms off too. He heaved his arm up and loose for a moment, forcing its arms aside-then poked it in both eyes with his fingertips. It squealed, then went crazy, blind but far from dead, leaving Chris trying not to hurl with two eyeballs on his fingertips. This only made it more dangerous, though, as it flailed around like a wild thing, feral anger and rage threatening to maim or mutilate him at any second as he fought to hold off its bony limbs without complete success. He couldn't even throw the thing off, it was lying on him literally, he couldn't get any leverage. He head-butted it, smashing its nose, but it didn't even react.
Out of options, he finally succeeded in grabbing both of its flailing arms and tried to force it aside and over off of him using the leverage it gave him. It didn't work, the thing was far stronger than it looked and Chris found himself out-muscled and out of position withy no hope of escape. He'd been in one to many barroom brawls to not know what happened next, leverage wasn't enough, not against this kind of fury and power. The thing was going to bite his face off in seconds to add to all of the scrapes and small cuts he already had-its brains flew out of its mouth, spraying him with unspeakable substances in the moment before it collapsed, as limp as a wet dishrag, right on top of him.
He blinked, rolled the dead-again corpse off of him, rolled over to his hands and knees the other way-and threw up, violently, twice. Then, wiping feebly at his mouth, he sat up and glanced around-to see the striking figure of Serena Baccarin standing just outside the door to the room she'd been in, an unconscious Stamper slung over her shoulders in a fireman's lift. She was still holding the gun she'd killed the Zombie with using a single shot, still aiming it just in case even as dark humour flickered in her eyes. "Looked as though you needed a hand, Chris..." she remarked, a slight smile on her face at his battered appearance. If he'd had the strength left after what he'd just been through, he'd have thrown an extremely dirty look at her for that comment...
/End of Chapter Seven. Yes, I know that its short, but I have a lot to cover in the next chapter, this is just setting things up... So what does everyone think? All Reviews welcomed/