Disclaimers: For all disclaimers see Chapters 1 and 2.
Notes:
Graphic violence and adult language will be used in this Chapter. If you read on, you were warned. For those of you wondering: yes, the question of how can Chris Redfield have gone through all of this and yet not know anything about Umbrella, its activities or Zombies/worse in RE1 will be answered in this Chapter. Read on and find out more... CHAPTER TEN Lost Souls/June 8th 1996, central Iraq/
38:15
38:14
38:13
Serena Baccarin was simply frozen, for one of very few times in her life.
38:12
38:11
38:10
A variety of swearwords fought to pass her lips first. She ignored them all.
38:09
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38:07
They had less than forty minutes before the world they knew cremated them alive in a C4-fueled fireball hot enough to liquefy steel and vaporise human flesh. There simply wouldn't be any trace of them left if the Failsafe detonated the complex Self-Destruct while they were in the building.
/Fuck/.
She wasn't even sure that they could get out of this place that fast if they ran all of the way. What to do, what to do, what to do...
38:07
38:06
38:05
Who was she kidding? There was only one thing to do, as had always been the case: find Robert Creig and execute with extreme prejudice. That was why she was here, after all. The sample of the Virus the team had been assigned to retrieve was their mission, she was just riding shotgun. She'd wasted ten whole seconds, there was work to be done.
Without even blinking, she pulled out a Stopwatch, set it to the exact second and hit start. Then she scanned the computer screen for information apart from the Failsafe Timer readout. She spotted the trick in a moment.
"Stamper, get into the mainframe properly and find out where the samples are, right this second. Discover if anyone else is let alive here while your at it, where they are if so. Most important, find us a fast way out if here in the sense that fast means were at least a hundred metres from this place when the explosives go off. Move" snapped Serena, slapping Stamper's shoulder to be utterly sure of getting his attention.
Stamper's agile fingers flew across the keys /very/ quickly. In seconds the screen cleared and an Activity Log came up on the screen-only to immediately request a Username and Password. With no time to waste Stamper Hacked it, beating the surprisingly sophisticated lockout with little trouble since he routinely designed better. The screen cleared again and the Log came up properly. Serena very nearly put her boot through the computer screen at what was revealed.
The same day, six hours earlier. Robert Creig, Head Researcher and Administrator, had shut off all external communications and Locked Down the whole complex. He had then released the T-Virus through the Air Conditioning, killing everyone outside of the central lab area. He'd locked the main lab completely away from the main base interior first, after sealing his primary team inside with him. That done, he had burnt all electronic data, wiped and wrecked the main operating system beyond all hope of recovery, leaving only basic systems functioning, then destroyed all Virus samples-bar the original test samples. He'd even thought to shut down the Air Conditioning after this to prevent any accidental infection of himself...
Then things had gone all kinds of wrong. The dead workers had gotten up and started stumbling around hunting for meat. Experiment subjects had gotten loose from cages confining them with the Security compromise of Virus release automatically shutting some areas off and opening others. The Undead dogs, listed as Cerberus Prototypes, being just a part of this. Typical Scientist gift for melodrama, Serena couldn't help but think. No doubt they knew that Cerberus was the double-headed hound which guarded the Gates of Hell... Then there was the Behemoth.
It had walked out the wall, literally, of this lab, where it had been held in mass restraint and sedation. The sedatives had been made up of a cocktail of heavy duty Muscle Relaxants, Sleeping Drugs, Narcotics designed to disorientate and confuse and Mind Altering substances, to describe them politely. They'd been so scared of the thing they'd plowed every single kind of consciousness suppressor and relaxant they could to stop it from EVER even possibly waking up while they continued to study it-defying all logic and all sense from what Serena could see. But then, sane people didn't work on things like this...
It was so big and physically powerful that it had parted inch-thick chain restraints bolted to floor, walls and ceiling inside the huge tube just by moving, smashed its way through the three-inch-thick steel and torn a solid steel wall like Rice Paper. The Security Camera footage was indistinct because it was so huge, almost ten feet tall and four, maybe five wide at least, but she could make out massive, thick arms and huge bear-like claws at the end of them. Suddenly she had an idea of just what had happened to the terribly mutilated corpses she, Stamper and Chris had found earlier. Why this thing would try to conceal such things she couldn't easily explain...
"Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle...we are so screwed" muttered Stamper, rubbing his sore eyes with an expression which suggested he'd just laid eyes on death itself. His eyesight seemed to be failing, he was having increasing trouble focusing on anything at all no matter how hard or long he stared at it. Worse than that, his injured arm was increasingly slick with blood despite his attempt at a rudimentary bandage with the sleeve of his uniform and he could feel the wound itself, the area around it too, going increasingly numb as time went on. His whole arm now felt soft and almost floppy, with the awful sensation spreading into his chest at an increasing rate.
Was this what dying felt like/Was/ he even dying, given what he'd seen so far of the effects of this awful Virus? Wasn't he going to end up like those...things...soon? No, no /way, he'd find a cure first /somehow/. Either that, or he'd take care of his not becoming a thing like that regardless, permanently. Contrary to popular belief he'd never lacked for courage, or nerves, he just came at them differently to most. He had no difficulty at all with the concept of putting a bullet in his own brain to prevent his own death being used against him...
"Stamper, unless you have the location of Creig to hand /shut up/. More to the point, get to work on finding that obscene excuse for a piece of humanity. Chris, your with me. Aaron...if you suddenly start to feel worse, tell me. You won't get a second chance in here" said Serena, sparing the battered engineer a brief glance of sympathy. Feeling too weak to do much else, Aaron nodded as Serena and Chris stepped off to one side. Stamper tried to follow his Orders, but things were getting worse. It took all of his concentration just to make his eyes focus now, the strain of making his brain and body keep functioning was slowly killing him as dark edges shimmered at the edges of his sight...
Serena made sure that Stamper and Aaron couldn't hear her or see her face before she turned to face Chris. She'd have to be brutally direct, there wasn't time to be kind and she had no inclination to be under the circumstances. She looked Chris in the eyes-now was /not/ the time to consider just how alluring those light-brown pools of welcome were-and just said it.
"Chris, Stamper has minutes at best left, not hours. If he changes when were not ready he'll kill Aaron if he's anywhere near him, quite possibly us too, through infection if nothing else. So understand this: if he makes even the slightest odd movement or sound, shoot him in the head and make your peace later. I may not have much to live for, but I am not going to die here. So understand this too: if he gets you, I'll kill you too without thinking about it and I /won't/ care. This isn't about success, its about survival, understand?" she said, staring deep into Chris's eyes, willing him to hear what she was saying and understand what she meant without even attempting to make any pleas for mercy. If he tried to reason with her, she didn't know /what/ she'd do. If he didn't understand as much as she'd told him so far, there was no hope...
Chris didn't even bat an eyelid. "I'll be doing him a favour and we both know it, just like you will me if it comes to it. One thing /you/ should understand, though" said Chris, his bright eyes never leaving hers for even a moment. "Aaron is getting out of here alive and back to the US if I have to drag him through the whole desert myself and fight a Battalion with a Combat Knife, okay?" he replied, clearly utterly serious.
After a brief moment, she smiled. She shouldn't have, it wasn't fair, but her respect, and her growing liking of the young man, made her do it. She held out a hand without even considering it. Chris took her forearm in his hand as he returned the favour, the two of them sharing a strangely intimate meeting of the minds. She had real trouble suppressing the wish that that strong hand would be joined by the other in her hair, on her shoulders, on her bare breasts...
Chris's smile was slightly wild-eyed, but she was confident that he was as fine as could be expected in the circumstances. "Hey", he muttered, "If what's been happening here hadn't taught me to do what it takes then I think /you'd/ think I was missing something important, let alone me. Fight the good fight but do whatever it takes to win, right?" he muttered.
She-was-NOT going to kiss him...
"Hey, I found him!" called out Stamper suddenly, surprise evident in his voice. Chris and Serena walked over to his side quickly, to see what appeared to be poor-quality streaming footage straight from CCTV cameras being shown on the computer screen. One feed was enlarged, to the point that a figure none of them had seen before was centre-screen-a middle-aged man, wearing a lab coat over scrubs and a pair of steel-frame glasses. An attractive young woman was being half-dragged, half carried behind him while he held a large metal suitcase in his free hand. Creig and...somebody, Serena identifying him immediately from old surveillance photos. In front of Creig, waving his M-16 around like he knew how to use it...
Chris loudly and obviously clicked off the safety on his Desert Eagle even as he drew it slowly from the holster. "I sense a murder coming on..." he declared, with an expression that suggested he had absolutely no problem with that at all...
"First come, first served, Chris. Stamper, just where are they?" said Serena, trying to recognise anything in the picture. Abruptly, Webb raised his M-16 and started shooting at something off-camera-a second later, distant echoes of gunfire sounded, the whip-crack recoil roll of a heavy gun firing single-shot again and again...
"Not very far at all, actually" replied Stamper, as he turned, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. He pointed back the way they'd come and shrugged. "Sprint that way and you'll beat them to where they must be going" he added, before trying and failing to stand. His legs were trembling and weak, he could feel an increasing cloudiness spreading through his mind even as a sick, horrifying numbness spread throughout his body. "Shit..." he muttered, even as he realised that, finally, it was all over...
Serena didn't miss what he said, nor anything else about him. Without so much as a question or even a word she pulled a pistol and shot Stamper in the back of the head, the contents of his skull exploding over the computer console in front of him in a thick, terrible wash of meat, bone and blood. He was dead long before the remains of his head thumped as a dead weight against the metal and plastic...
Chris Redfield almost threw up, but didn't. He was getting numb to the horror, seeing the living dead upright and walking towards you intent on both eating you alive and ripping you limb from limb only scared for so long, no matter what anyone said-/but, that didn't take away the wrench in his guts and an awful, mind-numbing sense of disbelief when someone you knew was so brutally, casually murdered. The only thing which kept his gun in his holster was the fact that he knew better. Serena just might be a stone-cold killer, but she didn't kill unless she had to. If she'd wanted Stamper dead herself, she could have killed him in any of a thousand ways which none of them would have even guessed were suspicious in a Hell like this...
He swallowed several times before he was able to speak, staring at Serena as she slowly holstered her pistol. She was staring at the contents of Stamper's head, where they'd been spread all over the computer console by her point-blank shot... "Serena...did you have to?" he managed, slowly, weakly, still barely able to take in what she'd so casually done...
She turned and looked straight at him. Then he knew, it hadn't been casual at all. She'd /liked/ the little chemicals super-freak. "I'm a surgeon, Chris, not a Butcher. What do you think?" she replied, so quietly that he barely heard her. She looked more than a little angry at something, he sincerely hoped it wasn't at him for surviving this long somehow...
"I think that you did him a favour if he was going to become one of those things. I hope you'll do /me/ the same if it comes to that. Most of all, though, I am /very/ glad I'll never have your job" Chris said, somehow managing to give her the thumbs-up. She actually smiled at that... Another burst of gunfire sounded, not far off at all. The smile turned into a vicious grin.
"First one there gets his head?" she asked, nodding her head in the direction the gunfire was coming from. Chris just grinned back at her, in this he could read her mind for once.
"Sure, but what about Aaron? We can't just leave him here?" he replied. Aaron cut them both off before either could say anything, however.
"Go get...that ugly mother...guys. DON'T worry about me...I've survived this long, I'll survive...anything down here" Aaron said slowly, having trouble speaking around his broken jaw. Chris and Serena both looked at him, then at each other, then back at him. Their eyes met one last time, then they ran... Even as Aaron watched them go through bloodshot eyes, he wondered whether or not he'd have the strength to take care of things in the end...
Y
Webb shot another Zombie right between the eyes, stepped back and drilled another, then another-but he kept stepping back. Standard Combat Protocol said that if you were forced to retreat in the face of an enemy when challenged by superior numbers and/or firepower, you fell back on a secure or at least defensible position and called in relief. If this was impossible you dug in and defended your position until either you defeated the enemy, were relieved, escaped-or were rendered incapable through injury or death. In this situation, that made him dead.
Webb had fought in Wars, urban and rural conflicts all over the world. He'd participated in everything from full-scale Military action to brutal Street Fighting where you only had your bare hands to rely on. He'd fought in battles that had lasted months where vicious Guerrilla War was the norm, where you could walk through a door and have your throat cut with Piano wire, be shot in the back by a 90-year-old half-blind cripple and the norm was to triple-check your own base for Booby Traps every day and night when you woke up and again when you went to sleep, just in case. He'd been in places where you came to miss the shelling after months of ducking and diving as people tried to kill you using everything from Poison to bombs, where you went everywhere with at least two weapons on prominent display and stood in the sun permanently during the day because the shadows could be literally lethal.
He'd been in the US Army in one form or another for seventeen years putting his ass on the line for stiff-neck Politicians who had no idea what had to be done and he'd had enough. His time and service had taught him two things: first, no one remembered anyone but the survivors, so you always looked out for number one. If Umbrella happened to offer a much-improved package for him to work as a Double Agent for them while still in the Army-well, that was just fine. Too bad for the losers who couldn't see the truth. The second thing was much more important when facing off against a group of almost 30 Zombies which didn't want to die: always listen to the instinct which tells you when its time to bolt, something which was currently screaming at him... If he didn't think of something fast he was fucked, pure and simple. Creig could take his Virus and strike a deal with the next Zombie as of right now, what it would have been worth as a Bio-weapon on the open market was /nothing/ if they didn't get out alive...
Creig was still standing carefully behind him, making sure that he, the soldier with the guns, was between him, the Scientist and the walking dead. Survival instinct-Webb abruptly stepped backwards quickly, grabbed the almost comatose Alice as Creig literally half-dragged half-carried her, ripping her out of Creig's hands in an instant, then threw her at the Zombies. His steroid enhanced strength let him throw her ten feet easily, bowling over Zombies with the cracking, splitting wet sounds of breaking bones. She managed to mewl feebly in pain-then somehow managed an ear-splitting scream of pure terror and agony combined, just before a Zombie tore half her throat out, a second one ripping off half her face. Half a dozen Zombies literally fell all over the young woman in an instant, tearing loose flesh and muscle with teeth and fingers, snapping bones.
Almost anyone would have vomited at the very lest at the cannibal orgy occurring in front of them, almost anyone would have been left too horrified to move, most likely simply incapable. Webb didn't even notice the carnage beyond the fact that it made it more likely now that he would survive, Creig was simply incapable of mustering the humanity to care. Satisfied they'd slowed the Zombies down, Webb turned to run, sure he could out-distance the stumbling horde and cut around them-he caught Creig glaring at him, an odd look on his face. "I had plans for her, you know-" Creig began, then his brains fell out of the back of his head as a small, neat hole appeared precisely between his eyes. Creig, very slowly, looked up at the wound with a dumb expression, even as blood began to run down his face. He collapsed bonelessly a minute later in front of the furious Webb, who span around to locate the attacker-and froze.
Serena Baccarin held her left hand pistol on his head from the other side of the Zombie mob. The middle finger of her right hand was extended in a very obvious gesture, one that portrayed both intent and number. Webb just snarled, snapped up his M-16 and opened fire...
Y
Serena barely had time to throw herself to the floor before a succession of bullets tore through the air where her head had been, some punching through Zombies on the way. Chris didn't have her reflexes and his frantic dive wasn't fast enough, one shot slashing through his right upper arm, blood spraying through the air even as he slammed to the floor. He landed hard, howling in pain, rolled over and grabbed his injured arm with his left hand, trying to stop the flow of blood-
Hisses and screeches filled the air, sounds echoing all around that had no business being produced by anything moving that had once been human. Serena, still assimilating Webb's inhuman reflexes after he beat her to the trigger-tests had stated repeatedly that her physical skill and reflexes combined placed her in the top one percent of combat experts on the planet, a VERY elite few of which Webb was not one-glanced up...to see Hell rising.
The Zombies were charging them, literally. Chris's blood had woken them all up and they were going to eat him alive...
Not in /HER/ lifetime.
She drew her second pistol, rolled to her feet and started shooting. There was only ten feet distance between her, Chris and the Zombies, which meant this was going to hurt. Not bothering to say one word, she shut out everything she didn't need to know and focused on the job in hand. Zombies started to fall as though she was playing a video game even as they advanced at a shambling trot, heads popping left and right as bits and pieces of skull and brain sprayed in all directions, blood exploding against walls, ceiling and floor.
/Breathe out. Breathe in./
About thirty Zombies against her with twenty-nine bullets in her weapons. They were charging her with the intent of engaging her in CQC and dragging her down through sheer weight of numbers before she could simply kill them all. She had no time at all, which meant inaccuracy was lethal, so she didn't miss.
/Breathe out. Breathe in/.
She took in the sight of Webb grabbing the dead Creigs steel case-half done there-and running for it. She noted his likely route and kept shooting. Chris had been rendered incapable by pain and shock on top of injury but would be able again in maybe five minutes. He'd be lucky if he had more than one.
/Breathe out. Breathe in./
Her weapons grew hot in her hands as she fired dead-centre shots on the heads of every single monster without even thinking of hesitation. Skulls were surprisingly solid and resilient, actually, she knew from experience. Hit them at the wrong angle in the wrong place and small bullets like the ones she was firing would bounce right off or simply not do enough damage. Anyone capable knew better than to make mistakes like that, she was better than that. She knew all the right /and/ all the wrong places, how, where and when.
/Scream if you want to go faster. Focus!/
The only difference between this and the ETC version of a shooting range was the fact that the targets would only die if you shot them in the head. She enjoyed the challenge.
/Breathe in. Breathe out/.
The deafening roar of gunfire finally finished. She raised both weapons to head height and hit the ammo release, no need to count as both empty clips hit the ground with a dull clank. A professional knew when the job was done and did it right, including never running out of ammunition. As a thought occurred to her she blew the smoke away from the end of both barrels with a gentle puff and a smile, her nose catching the sharp stink of cordite and gunpowder. Not even a twitch, job well done-she estimated about a minute of concentrated effort. The one nearest to Chris was six feet away and missing the back of its head.
Chris.
She turned sharply on her heel to look straight at Chris, who was alert, aware-and staring straight at her with an expression of awe mingled with, perhaps, fear. Should she have savoured the look on his handsome face before he realised what she was staring at? Probably not, but everyone who really knew her was a little afraid of her, with good reason. She /liked/ fear, it let you know you were still alive, while anger took away your pain. The stare she directed at Chris after this was all predator. If she hadn't had a job to do still, if the corridor hadn't been full of the dead-again physical remains of walking Corpses-Hell, she'd have probably torn Chris's clothes off there and then and Raped him if she had to, not that she would have needed to she was sure. She knew too many people too well. Violence made /EVERYONE/ want to have sex as though tomorrow was the day after too late...
"Jesus...Jesus...Jesus...Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle and in Silk pyjamas... Fuck me, Serena, what did you do in your last life? Win Wars single-handedly with a smile and a knife?" asked Chris, slowly rising to his feet, pushing himself up off of the ground with his good arm. His smile was genuine, but she saw the look in his eyes. Hunger, lust, unadulterated Fuck-me-now. He'd just seen the closest he'd get to the Angel of Death doing what she did best and he wanted her /bad/. She didn't try to hide the smile. That felt /good/. After all this was over, if they got out alive, she was going to have to seriously see about this young man...
/BANG!/
Chris and Serena span to look behind them as an almighty clang sounded, steel wall bending and buckling wildly. The walls of this place were inches-thick steel, it would have taken shaped C4 charges to blow holes in them-and both Chris and Serena knew the sound of a punch when they heard one.
/BA-CRANNG!/
The wall gave entirely and a fist the size of a cooked chicken came right through. It was a pale white in colour with no trace of fingernails or a thumb. The four fingers ended in short jet-black claws that looked designed to rip through anything from stone to flesh with equal appalling ease. The "skin" was rough and thick, it looked like it had been carved from solid stone and set straight on the creature's monstrously huge bones. The thing was built like a tank and it was acting like one. If it was as tough as it looked and sounded, Serena knew, they were dead. Chris had little better than a peashooter and she hadn't brought any more than the basics with her, foregoing her more exotic options in favour of dealing with simple human threats. Five years, when would she learn? She found herself wishing that Tom was still with her, at this moment in time she could really have used his help...
/SCRWEEE-NCH!/
The things other arm came through the gap as well and it simply spread its arms. The wall crumpled up like rice paper and opened like the top of a tin. It provided about as much resistance as cardboard would have in the end. The creature stepped through the gap and stood in front of them for a moment as it turned to face them, its bulk making it hard for the thing to simply manoeuvre in the corridor as its head clipped the ceiling.
Eight foot tall and four wide at least, the things was physically humanoid-this seemed to happen a lot, Serena reflected, human tests subjects all no doubt-but its arms were at least five feet long, its legs shorter than they should be, more like an Apes. Its head was small and strangely elongated, too long in places, set directly into its chest atop its body, precisely between massive, thickset broad shoulders. It had six eyes set right around its head, giving it total visual clarity in a 360-degree arc. Other senses were less easy to analyse, but various black holes in the head suggested that it did have the other basic four. It had that strange skin all over it, too, covering huge muscularity and a simple physical solidarity, a /density, really, that made her feel very, very worried. Serena spotted bloodstains up and down its legs, arms and body, even some on its head, but no-where was there any trace at all of physical injury or damage.
It had to be the Behemoth. They were now officially screwed, if she knew anything about physical resiliency it would take high explosives to penetrate that things hide.
/Shit/.
Under the circumstances, she did the one thing she could do, glancing at Chris for a moment. "RUN!" she shouted, then took off after Webb as fast as she could, taking her own advice in a hurry even as she heard steel crack and groan as the Behemoth started after them. Chris would later reflect that he'd never run so fast in his life...
Y
Webb sprinted down hallways at a dead run, skidded around corners, jumped bodies, vaulted over obstacles like toppled benches and fallen equipment, watched every side and angle for a glimpse of anything remotely threatening. A Zombie was shambling down the corridor he was in, but he didn't have time to waste-on the other hand, even a scratch could infect him if it was still Hot and he'd have to shove past to get by the thing...
He stopped dead a foot in front of it and slammed a kick to its groin-with such force it literally hit the roof as it rose a good three feet off the floor, denting the ceiling, shattering its skull, neck and collarbone in the process before falling limp and soggy back to the steel floor with an awful sound, a combination of cracking bone and tearing flesh as bone shards tore through meat and muscle. Dead again, anyone could see that... He didn't move for a long moment after that, then he just started grinning like an idiot.
/Holy Shit, this stuff is GOOD!/ he couldn't help but think. Then he took off again, practically floating down the hallway, even while he reminded himself that the Steroids didn't make him immune to the Virus. He opened a locked steel double door by pounding on it until the metal bent sufficiently for him to get his fingers in the break, then heaved-so hard that the doors locking circuits blew and the hydraulics failed with a grinding crack of tortured metal being stressed far beyond the point of no return. He didn't even notice the blood coating his hands, flesh and skin hanging loose as he did so. His entire system was in overdrive, even Adrenaline and Endorphins were being mass-produced at a level nature had never intended-or allowed for. He wasn't feeling pain, he felt as though he could wrestle a Bull Elephant...and he had no idea what was happening to him, on the inside, where he couldn't see, at all. With his brain and body chemistry jacked up to beyond the max, he didn't even think of it...
The lab had six Zombies in it, two Security guards and four Researchers. Through this room was a short-cut to another corridor which led to one beyond Miss Enigma's current position-which eventually led to the way out... Zombies, what was so scary about the things anyway? All they were were the reanimated rotting physical remains of dead people, and he'd killed plenty in his time...
He stepped forwards and punched the nearest Zombie so hard its head exploded and his fist came out the back. Ripping his hand free, he grabbed the collapsing Zombie by both feet and tore its legs off before raising them like Baseball bats with a smile. A second later he was beating two more Zombies, bones snapping and cracking like rotted wood, the sheer force driving even the insensate dead to their knees as he pulverised their heads totally.
Throwing away the shattered legs as useless when done, he ripped up the steel stretcher in the middle of the lab, ripping the broad board section completely clear of its base, span it around his head-then slashed it across the Zombies fronts at neck height, barely even registering the sharp, heavy impacts as bones snapped and flesh tore. All three of the remaining Zombies fell like Dominoes as their heads fell loose to the floor, white eyes going dull and dead all over again...but for the /last/ time. Blood was everywhere, shredded flesh splattered across every surface, bits and pieces of human bodies were scattered round the lab as though someone had set off a bomb inside a body just to see what happened. He didn't even register it, just smiled and stepped forwards to the other side of the lab, rammed the stretcher up against the double door hard so hard it penetrated, then actually buckled, the doors slightly parted.
That was all he needed, he dropped the stretcher and stepped forwards, breaking the seal and forcing open the door with his bare hands, completely wrecking the technology operating the door in the process. /This is fun, I could go on all day.../ he couldn't help but think, even as he grunted away a brief pain in his chest, deciding that it must have been caused by his acrobatics with the Stretcher... Then he heard the running cat-light, almost silent footsteps of an individual he'd come to know only too well in this damned place. Coming his way...
He just smiled, how could he leave without ripping out her spine first after all? He picked up the battered stretcher, went back to the first door-then stepped outside and hurled it horizontally like a Frisbee, sending it spinning down the corridor at chest height at an impossible speed, like a massive shining-steel Scythe blade. He'd never been in the least philosophically or poetically minded, but he couldn't help but think the act seemed an appropriate form of execution for someone who called herself "Reaper" somehow...
Y
Serena's eyes shot open a split second before she frantically threw herself backwards at a dead run, crashing to the floor, rolling over and over before she came to a sudden stop. The stretcher span past a foot over her head at a speed that would have driven it right through her chest to her spine if it had connected, then continued down the hallway-a startled, frightened yell sounded from Chris, then an almighty crash echoed before silence fell.
Serena took a long moment to recover from the utter shock she felt-long enough for the first of Webb's bullets to clip the outside of her left hand before she registered the shooting, blood erupting from torn flesh. She jerked her hand down and rolled across the floor fast as Webb sprinted towards her firing his M-16 one-handed like a pistol, laughing like a lunatic. Sparks and screams of ricocheting bullets glancing and rebounding off of metal scattered all around her as she performed a spinning kick to her feet and dived forwards in a smooth Swan dive before rolling over and around in evasive patterns as fast as even her reflexes could manage, one bullet glancing off the sleeve of her jacket as the body armour did its job.
If Webb had paused for even a moment to actually aim, she knew, she'd have been dead. Quick as she was, smart as she was, agile as she was, one simply did not get to a senior rank in the Special Forces without being better than most Snipers when it came to killing people with their choice of weapon at a distance. Fortunately, Webb was clearly high on something and was too busy spraying bullets in her general direction on fully automatic to care what actually hit her, apparently.
She heard the /click/ of a trigger falling on an empty chamber and was on her feet a second later, both pistols-reloaded on the run-almost leaping into her hands... Webb's fist crashed into her chest in a flat-hand punch with such kinetic force that she was thrown twenty feet with the kind of force that suggested she'd been hit by a truck. She lost both pistols in mid-air somewhere along the way, along with all the air in her lungs and very nearly the solidarity of every bone in her chest.
The blow would have killed most people, but most people didn't have her advantage-of all things, her breasts had kept the hidden back-up Magnum concealed under them from Webb and so his punch crushed the gun into her chest rather than snapping her breastbone. That Webb /couldn't/ have gotten that close, that fast, flashed through her mind but was discarded in a moment, even as she landed hard with an agonising thud and skidded backwards on the base of her back and backside. He had, that was all that mattered, now she had to handle the situation as it presented itself.
Webb ran towards her and tried to slash a kick into her side under her ribs. She lifted herself off of the floor with only her arms, hands flat on the ground, rotated in a perfect spinning kick even as he moved and took his legs out from under him. He landed headfirst with an awful clunk, bone denting steel floor, but she had to roll away fast and back to her feet to avoid a double-footed kick counter before Webb back flipped to his feet and came after her again. He punched high /too/ fast, but she moved even faster and snapped a sharp elbow to his jaw that almost broke his neck. Snapping off a quick three-punch combination to the lower body that dropped him to his knees even as he tried to bite her, she rolled right over his shoulder to behind him before he could grab her in a bear hug and break her ribs.
Without stopping or even missing a beat, she span and launched the heel of her boot into a very specific area of his back-right into his Kidney, with more than enough force to do massive internal injury. He turned like a Bull and charged her regardless, blood spilling from his lips-she went for a Leopard Punch, aiming to smash his nose into his brain, then slashed the edges of both hands into both sides of his neck at once as he blocked in the wrong place, not fast enough to counter her. The strike crushed major arteries and damaged nerve endings, blood exploded out of his nose, mouth and ears, spraying everywhere, including over her, blinding her-his hand slammed her head against the wall like a sledgehammer strike. Her teeth cut into her cheeks inside her mouth, she nearly choked on her own blood as it filled her throat, just failing to bite off her own tongue. Sparks and Supernovas flashed behind her eyes as though she'd been put in orbit even as her legs went-she collapsed bonelessly to the floor, unable to do anything...
She thought she was dead, then realised that she wasn't and slowly forced stubborn eyelids open. Webb's face swam into focus in front of her, drenched in blood and spittle, his eyes mad and staring straight into Hell, full of such utter hatred and anger at her that it was almost a physical assault. He was lying on the ground too, bloody and broken, clearly incapable of even spitting on her. His last assault must have been one final act of desperation...
She sneered at him, resisted the urge to bite out his eyes and instead focused on forcing her body to respond. It took maybe a minute, but she felt her fingers twitch, then her toes, then feeling started to seep back into her limbs. Slowly, far too slowly, she was able to sit up and then stand, bracing herself against the wall on shaking legs. Her whole body was shaking and she couldn't stop it, part of the physical and mental trauma of the brutal fight she'd barely survived she silently diagnosed. Worse was the grinding ache behind the eyes and in the skull, the tremors running up and down her spine like electric shocks. A severe Concussion if she was any judge, it was very likely that she shouldn't even be standing up, let alone trying to do /more/...of course, that had never stopped her before, either.
With a smirk, she spat bloody saliva on Webb and left him to bleed out, cold, clinical certainty telling her that the man was no longer a threat. Her legs weak, she slowly reached and retrieved her pistols, holstering them carefully with the safeties on, then picked up Creig's case, recalling the mission that Chris and the others had been detailed to complete here. They'd need everything in this case to do so, no question. Virus, Anti-Virus, Vaccine… She just needed to find Chris, now, then retrieve Aaron, dodge the Behemoth and they could get the Hell out of here…
When she did finally spot Chris, though, she almost wished she hadn't.
Y
Chris had made the mistake of diving forwards when he saw the Stretcher coming at him like a circle of metal death straight from Hell, then realised his mistake too late and tried to throw himself to one side even as he went down. He didn't have Serena's instincts or her reflexes and it showed, he would freely admit as much later...
The blunt edge of the spinning stretcher at one corner cracked into his head with such force that it wobbled on its course, slewed to one side, bounced off a wall and fell to the ground with an almighty crash. Blood exploded from his head as a chunk of flesh was torn right out, the metal denting the bone of his skull with no more than a glancing strike. Chris span in mid-air like a propeller, rolling right over and slamming down on his back even as blood flooded down from his wounded scalp over his face and neck, soaking into his shirt. He went instantly blind and found that he could no longer tell which way was up as his centre of gravity had simply failed him, part of him instantly deciding that he must be literally in Hell as everything had turned into a sheet of bright, horrible, terrifying red. Only the screaming of a saner part telling him he was hurt, not dead, saved his sanity.
He thought he might have howled in pain, but everything was so scrambled inside his head after the awful impact that he simply couldn't be sure. He knew that his muscles were wrenching him around as he couldn't consciously control them, that he was rolling around on the floor helpless, hands on his face only getting smeared with his own blood, but he couldn't stop...
"Chris!"
Was that a voice/Serena's/ voice!
"/Chris/ Its alright, its alright, I'm here! Relax! Let me look at you"! snapped Serena's voice. He couldn't think of her as anything but a voice at the moment, he could be blind, he could be crippled, he might never, ever see her again... He felt strong hands grab his wrists, force his hands away from his face...then he felt something cool and soft being pressed against his head wound. The pain abruptly subsided as the flow of blood was drastically slowed, the ache in his head reducing, letting him recover some control over himself. He stopped writhing, relaxed a little.
Something splashed over his eyes, making his head jerk involuntarily, then again, even as something was pressed to his face. He started to see distinct spots, blinked again and again quickly-everything suddenly snapped into focus as the wadded-up edge of his own shirt finally cleaned away enough blood that he could see again.
The first thing he said was "Bloody Hell!" which, he would think a moment later, might not have been the wisest place to start.
Serena was a mess, a real mess. The left side of her face was swelling up, clearly heavily bruised, the left eye bloodshot. Her head was moving stiffly as she glanced at him, so she had to have hurt her neck as well. Blood had dried around her mouth while fresh traces stained her lips and chin. He could sense rather than see the wince as she slowly-/too/ slowly-stood and noted a chest injury, too, a significant one from the way she was moving. It didn't help that she involuntarily, momentarily grabbed at the centre of her chest, a blink-and-you-miss-it shift that he didn't. Worst of all were the almost invisible tremors that shook her entire body constantly, something she /couldn't/ hide which made it very clear she was in real pain. He'd been out minutes at most, how had this happened in this time? Webb...?
"For the record, ouch. Now, can you stand up by yourself?" she asked, wincing again and reaching a hand up to massage the back of her neck. That was not an encouraging sign, but he was relieved to discover that, while sore-in the case of his head, it felt like he'd been beaten with a red-hot Poker-everything still responded the way it should. It took him real concentration to sit up and he felt sick once he had, but he was mobile. He stood up very slowly and carefully, braced himself and took a step. It hurt, a lot, but he could move. /Thank God/.
He noticed that she was holding a case-Creig's case, the one that had to have all of the Virus samples in it... Could they even /possibly/ take that out of here? After all of this? He felt the urge to take the case and repeatedly mangle Creig's dead body with it-he suddenly felt faint, but held his feet until the spell passed. Serena looked at him critically, then shook her head.
"Chris, I've put a pressure bandage on your head and used an adhesive to keep it on, but you've lost a lot of blood. I strongly recommend against running and jumping around until you've either had a little time to recover, maybe a week, or been fixed up at a Hospital. On the other hand, we've no choice in the matter, so lets snap to it" said Serena, holding out a hand. He took it in an unsteady handshake and somehow managed a smile. Damn but this hurt...
Serena gestured at him to follow her and walked stiffly towards where she'd come from. He saw the bloodied, unmoving body of Webb and was very tempted to empty the man's head with a point-blank execution style shot, just to see if the man actually /had/ any brains, but it was Serena so he didn't. Considering the growing pool of blood around Webb's body now, she'd been as efficient and professional at killing him as she'd been at everything else so far...
He could manage a slow but steady trot at best, barely enough to keep ahead of any of the faster Zombies-had he actually just put Zombies in a sentence as though they were kind of thing you could meet on a day in the park/Damn, this place was getting to him. Serena was barely any better, but he got the impression that she would have found a way to keep going on two broken ankles so he didn't even try to suggest that she should take any of the painkillers he knew she was carrying.
The gunshot wound in his arm had finally stopped bleeding, fortunately being only a flesh wound which had missed muscle and bone, apparently, but his left hand was covered in flaking dried blood. His right arm was liberally streaked with dried blood, his shirtsleeve being soaked, now crunching every time he moved. More blood trailed over his scalp and face, not all of it dry, some dripping off of his cheeks and chin to the floor. It stank and was freaking him out, to put it mildly. Worse, given the way Zombies seemed to react to the scent and sight of fresh blood, he suspected that he might as well have a gigantic neon sign above his head stating "LUNCH!"...
They came to a lab entrance where two sealed double doors had been forced open to reveal a scene of carnage, six brutalised Zombies slaughtered and effectively torn to pieces all over the place, scattered body parts, blood, flesh and bone all over. He suspected that a Chainsaw would have done less damage, but he also saw the open second set of doors across the lab opened into another corridor. Another way out...? Serena glanced at him, sapphire-blue eyes cutting deep into his with searing intensity.
"Chris, this is where we part company, at least for now. Were both in bad shape, but I just can't move that quickly now and you can, even though you shouldn't. I know now that Webb knew this place far better than any of us, so he had to know a way out. This is it, but that's only part of it" she said, before pausing to breathe in deeply, never breaking eye contact.
"I need you to run right around the Behemoth, find a way to Aaron and get him out of here. If I live I'll meet you at the entrance, I'll beat you there if I do. I'll either find a way to kill the thing, trap it in here or simply make sure you have enough time to escape. Either that, or I'll die trying. If you do get out without me, you know the drill, so don't wait. Are we clear?" she asked, her voice and manner cool, calm and collected, as always. Chris just nodded, then groaned in pain even as she handed him Creig's case.
"Good, just one last thing then..." she said, then she stepped into his arms and kissed him full on the lips.
The kiss was long, slow and sensual, far beyond electrifying and so full of suggested pleasures that the memory of the first, almost clumsy, one in the midnight camp before their trip into Hell had ever really begun was simply washed away on a tidal wave of pleasure. First they embraced, then her hands traced the muscles of his chest, his arms, his throat, the lines of his face, even slipping under his shirt to caress warm skin and hard muscle, tracing with indescribable effect gently across his belly, just over his belt, hinting at passionate pleasures he couldn't even imagine yet to come.
His hands roved all over her body like wildfire, his lips devoured hers, he drank in the taste of sweetest strawberries and the earthy scent of deep forest added to a hint of leather, gunpowder, even blood. She was even more fine to the touch than to the eye, perfect muscle, skin and bones, firm full curves and a beauty so incredible, so flawlessly perfect that the fact it was his alone to have and to hold almost stopped him dead. His hands caressed her back, her belly, her face, her throat, her breasts, even finer than imagination suggested... She was finer than even the finest fantasy could ever be and she was /his/. If this was a dream he /never/ wanted to wake up, but he knew it wasn't. He didn't know which scared him more...
When Serena slowly, so slowly, pulled back and away from him, it was the first time he'd ever seen her even remotely shaken when he got a good look at her face. She didn't seem to be breathing at all, her eyes were full of emotions he couldn't even begin to take in as they swirled past, like the edges of a whirlpool momentarily throwing up scattered glimpses of all kinds of things. Her grip on his upper arms would have snapped a thick length of wood in two and he could practically feel her racing heartbeat threatening to burst her heart right out of her chest. She bowed her head and wouldn't meet his eyes-it was pretty obvious that she was almost completely unused to dealing with emotions of the variety that could literally paralyse you when she was personally involved. He'd known her for going on three days now and she'd fallen for him so hard that it was doing this to her...
If he wasn't suffering ten times anything and everything she was, he'd have been surprised and/or worried. As it was, since he didn't simply die on the spot he thought that, just maybe, intense experiences really did forge a bond between two people like no other. Of course, it didn't hurt that they'd been flirting on the way here starting on the same day they met... Was he missing something?
Serena suddenly let go of him entirely. "Stay alive, Chris" she said, then turned and took off at a jog-her whole posture making it clear that she was hurt, the liquid grace and animal agility that he'd automatically associated with her movements severely reduced, along with her incredible speed. Yep, she was hurt alright, but wasn't letting on how badly. Typical...
He took a last, longing glance at her, then gave Webb's body a vicious kick for the Hell of it before taking off himself at a dead run...
Y
It didn't take her long to reach the point that she could hear the grinding, crashing slam of the Behemoths footsteps coming her way, but she still found time to stop after Chris was out of sight to gingery, gently unstrap her chest holster, still containing the backup mini-Magnum. It came free and she breathed a sigh of relief, feeling a large part of what had been causing the agonising ache in her ribs and chest go away. Critically examining the wrecked weapon, she could easily identify the bent, twisted metal, cracked grip and jammed chamber still loaded with two shells.
It /was/ wrecked/totally/. She'd had to perform "emergency surgery" on just about every weapon she'd ever used at some point in the past in the field and she knew when something was finished. Still, given the force required to damage metal like that...well, if Webb had hit her square-on, flesh and bone against the same, her rib-cage would have disintegrated and bone shards would have perforated her internal organs if she hadn't bled out inside from the force of the impact first. An horrific death...she slung the chest holster over her shoulder and tied it in a knot. She was hardly sentimental, but there was no way she was so casually disposing of something which had saved her life like that. She'd think of something appropriate if she lived...
The crashing, grinding sounds of the Behemoths footsteps came closer slowly but steadily. At least they made it impossible for the thing to sneak, she reflected. The last thing even she'd ever see if it could would be its fist closing on her head if it came through the wall right next to her...
She unslung her rifle for the first time, checked the load, activated the scope and levelled it, looking through a sea-green glow that eliminated shadows while illuminating blind spots automatically. It also automatically compensated for the darkness if she lost daylight or the artificial kind completely, or even partially, a function which had proved very useful before now. She had a three-shot option, BASE, AP and HI-EX, so she set the switch to AP-Armour Piercing-and wondered whether or not she knew what she was doing. If she didn't, could she outrun it in her state? Yes. Escape it? Maybe not...
It came around the corner, so she cut the psychic chatter out of her mind, took careful aim and started firing...
Y
Chris Redfield pistol-whipped a Zombie so hard he nearly broke his fingers, threw it in a shoulder throw to the floor and stamped on its neck so hard its skull splintered as well as the neck. Once you got used to these things they weren't scary, or even really dangerous, he reflected. Slow as snails, about as agile as a brick and totally devoid of intellect... Hell, he could have danced a jig ten metres in front of one and still run rings around it literally before it got anywhere near him. The things were only dangerous in large numbers-unless you were Serena, he thought, recalling her terrifying display of utterly lethal accuracy earlier-or if you tried to fight them hand to hand, when a scratch, let alone a bite, could infect you with a Virus that would do worse than kill you. One that had no cure…
He sprinted on, slipping for a moment on his blood-slick boot, trying and barely managing to keep some sense of direction in his mind so he didn't accidentally end up running in circles on the long road to nowhere. His head hurt and he suspected that his skull was cracked, blood was running down his face and scalp, dripping from his chin and jaw to the floor, leaving a clear trail, but he didn't stop. He /couldn't/ stop, too many good people had died on this mission already and he wasn't going to be responsible for any more. Messed up Aaron was, but he could walk, talk, think and even still fight if he absolutely had to, which meant that Orders to leave anyone incapable or wounded behind dead could go take a cold shower in Hell as far as he was concerned.
Did he recognise that hallway…? Yes! He was almost there!
When he turned the corner and saw the what he'd been running for, what went through his head at the sight of what was in his way was indescribable, even by the standards of what he'd already seen and done over the whole of the day. He said several bad words, very loudly…
Y
Aaron Bradley was so badly injured that movement beyond mere breathing was akin to sadistic torture. Every nerve ending felt like it was set in a slow-burning fire, every part of his body and every bone was telling him in intense detail that he hurt more than he could imagine. His mind was so numbed from the haze of pain he was floating in that it was all he could really do to stay conscious somehow, anything going on in reality was almost beyond him.
That he was going to die was a fact never far from his mind. He'd seen men die from slow-killing injuries before, bleeding to death inside and out, battle shock preventing someone from realising they'd lost a limb until they died from the trauma. He /was/ bleeding inside, he could tell from the increasing pains in his chest and the light-headed feeling he was suffering, which was getting wore and worse. That was why he hadn't, ever, dropped the gun, the Desert Eagle being clasped /very/ tight in his good hand. Sooner than faint and never wake up or simply throw up his guts until there was nothing left inside him, he'd swallow a bullet and die clean…
When he noticed, on a dim level of awareness that slowly filtered into his mind through what was left of his senses, the first Zombie moans coming closer, he almost took care of matters. One fate was worse than death to him, even worse than being Undead-being eaten /by/ the Undead, your rotting Corpse violated and abused in every way imaginable by things which belonged in a grave a long time since. It took a long moment for the increasingly faint hope of rescue to reassert itself, to save his life. Then he heard more moans, many more. It took no thought at all to absorb the fact that several Zombies had tracked him down, not a shock since he was half-dead and bleeding from cuts and gashes everywhere on his body from shards of shattered glass, facts which had to make him a good meal for such creatures. He couldn't even defend himself…
/This is it/ he thought.
He placed the gun barrel in his mouth, his finger tightened on the trigger-the roar of sudden gunfire was so abrupt, such a shock that he almost died. The trigger was a hairline away from shoving his brains against the ceiling with a bullet when it happened…
Y
/Get this wrong, your dead/ was the one thought that ran through her mind as she began her assault.
The Behemoth was eight feet tall, four wide and had the physical dimensions of a tank crossed with a boulder built of reinforced titanium around carved granite. Taking it on without air support, an Anti-Tank missile or six to hand or, at the very least, a large amount of high explosives to hand was Suicide. She'd killed hundreds of people, killed almost anything that had ever walked, slithered or crawled one way or another. She'd used every weapon known to man and woman to do so, short of a Nuke. She'd seen death in every way, shape and form imaginable and worse… So she could say, with complete authority, that she was sure that was the case. She was going to die here…
Well, that was the bad news. The good news was that the Reaper had never learnt how to quit, ever, while Serena Baccarin, once Liparti, had survived anything and everything the world had to offer from the age of seventeen, starting with her Mothers Murder, her Fathers Insanity, then death in every way that could and couldn't be imagined on the path that had led her here. If the whole world couldn't force her to lie down and die, the Behemoth didn't stand a chance in Hell. Time to make her mark again…
/Breathe out. Breathe in/.
She fired, the bullet entered the "mouth" hole with perfect trajectory and failed to have any visible impact at all. She shifted to the nose and tried again, but still had no visible effect. A slight smile creased her lips. She switched to HI-EX-High Explosive-and fired right down its throat through its mouth again. She saw the silent explosion flash inside its gullet-bits and pieces of /something/ scattered out and around its "face", but no liquid. So it didn't bleed? She could live with that. She could smash stone and bend steel just as easily as she could rip and tear flesh…
Y
Seven Zombies were within touching distance, with one more step taking them closer, of Aaron Bradley. Chris screamed something even he didn't understand in a demented roar of fury and pain, put on a burst of speed and charged the Zombies like a Linebacker in a football game. Some of them stopped, some of them didn't, one started to turn-he crashed into the nearest and took it right off of its feet, hit the next two as well and collapsed all three like a set of Dominoes.
His shoulder crashed into the Zombies chest, snapped bones and crushed internal organs. It coughed, before he grabbed its neck and head in a Wrestling hold and broke its neck with his bare hands. He shot the second Zombie in the stomach /through/ the first, the Desert Eagle easily smashing a shell through flesh and bone and on into more. It gave him enough time to wrench free and shoot the wounded Zombie in the head to finish it off before he slammed his boot heel down on the thirds head with such force that its head literally exploded up and down his leg. He punched the fourth in the face, smashing it from its feet with a broken nose, shot the fifth in the head-and went over backwards with a frantic yelp as his blood-slicked boots traction on the steel floor finally failed, the force of the shot throwing off his balance entirely, knocking him off his feet. The Zombie was down, but so was he.
The injured Zombie lurched about on the floor, unable to rise, but managed to slither closer using its claw-like hands even as Chris frantically tried to shove himself away-its teeth sank deep into his boot. Horrified and utterly disgusted, Chris repeatedly kicked it in the head even while he said a silent Prayer in thanks of tough boot leather. Bones snapped and cracked, flesh tore, his kicks finally snapped its neck on top of damaging its brain and it slumped again, dead. He was too late, though, the last two were going for Aaron, who wasn't even aware they were there-
Aaron lurched upright with a roar of deep anger and backhanded the nearest Zombie so hard that, with his immense strength, bulk and the pistol in his hand combined, he broke every bone in its body from the skull to the spine. Dead before it hit the floor with an awful wet thump, Aaron, not fully aware of what he was doing, lurched around and emptied his entire clip into the last Zombie even as it scratched at his shirt. Five of the hits would have killed outright anything human, two hit the creature in the head and effectively decapitated it. Blood exploded everywhere as the creatures head burst like an over-ripe Pumpkin, even as flesh was torn out of its chest and back to slap against the wall surrounded by slick splatters of blood. The last Zombie collapsed, mangled almost beyond recognition and dead all over again-before Aaron's knees buckled and he collapsed to a kneeling position with a resounding clang…
"AARON-!" Chris shouted, leaping to his feet and almost materialising by Aaron's side just fast enough to catch him and prevent him from collapsing altogether through a massive application of brute strength. Aaron's dead weight was almost more than he could handle alone…
Aaron's face was pasty white, his eyes were terribly bloodshot, even his lips were pale. Spittle was running down from his mouth while beads of sweat were almost flooding down his face, his uniform already soaked. Blood, dried and fresh, was tracked everywhere on the big mans body, as were cuts and bruises almost too numerous to count, with massively varying levels of injury apparent. Aaron was also barely conscious, a fact that didn't surprise Chris at all.
He'd never seen anyone hurt as bad as this upright and mobile, let alone conscious and shooting. Hell, the last person he'd seen in close to this state had been in Intensive Care in Hospital. As he recalled, the Doctors hadn't been hopeful he'd pull through either…
Aaron's head twitched, then he slowly looked around at Chris. His eyes took far too long to focus given their proximity, but finally did. "Ch-Chris?" Aaron managed, his voice so faint that Chris had to strain to hear it.
"Yes, I'm here. Your safe, Aaron" Chris replied, with what he hoped was conviction in his voice. Obviously, he later reflected, it wasn't.
Aaron actually managed a weak chuckle at that somehow, then all expression left his battered face and eyes. "This is Hell…Chris, not even…Death…is sacred…here. Safety is an…illusion…of possibility, so do me a…favour" Aaron said slowly, having increasing trouble focusing on anything as time went on, let alone speaking with his broken jaw.
"Name it" replied Chris, not even considering it as he worked out a way to carry and, if necessary, drag Aaron all the way to the exit if he had too-without killing himself, or Aaron. He /could/ do it, all that was important was /how/-which was why Aaron's next words stopped him dead.
"Do yourself a favour…leave me here with a bullet in my gun, run…and…/LIVE!" snarled Aaron, his exclamation carrying more verbal force than Chris would have thought possible under the circumstances. All that Chris could, or would, do after that was stop and stare into the tormented eyes of the injured man for what seemed like the moment before the End of the World…
Y
Serena aim was flawless, better than perfect, she didn't hit anything nine times out of ten, she hit it EVERY time. That was what informed her that the Behemoths eyes had some kind of impervious invisible lid over them when she shot it with an explosive bullet that exploded against its face but did no apparent damage-there was no question at all she'd hit what she was aiming at. The thing didn't bleed, internal detonations were having no visible effect asides from blowing out bits it could clearly function without occasionally and wherever it kept its brain was a point she couldn't reach.
Her strategy of hit something vital with an attack from the inside and slow it down or stop it long enough for them to get away was very clearly not working. Chucking a Frag grenade down its throat might have had some effect, but even high-velocity explosive bullets just weren't doing the job. She could have brought a minitiurised bomb the size of her hand that would have blown a hole right through a tank in here with her, but she'd decided that all she needed was an anti-personnel effort…
That settled it, next time she went on a mission even remotely resembling this one she was bringing focused C4 charges at the very least, "just in case". For now, she'd just have to improvise. Fortunately, she was very good at that.
She listed her options and ran through them, fast-then made a decision. She holstered her rifle down her back, turned and ran for the lab, as fast as her battered body could manage. She was no Chemist, but she could build a bomb or ammunition out of just about anything and she /did/ know her Periodic Table. If the lab just had what she thought she could use to force her way past this things hide… She stopped, dead.
Delta Force Colonel Mickey Webb had been lying in a pool of blood where she was standing, his own blood. He'd been physically incapable, fatally injured and worse. He'd been slowly drowning in his own blood, bleeding heavily inside and out much to her satisfaction. Now he was /gone/.
The thick trail of blood led right through the lab, across the battered, torn-up remains of the Zombies he'd killed and out the other doors. It went on into the corridor and disappeared from view, at no point the amount of blood he had to be loosing making it look anything even remotely like a possibility that he could be conscious, let alone mobile, even in such a limited state that he could only crawl. The man was /DEAD/…
She ground her teeth so hard that she almost cracked several. What she was thinking at that moment defied description but involved terrible pain and greater suffering. Her path was drowned in blood and littered with bodies, the faces something that never bothered her at night-but his would. She honestly didn't think that she'd ever met someone so deserving of killing, a fact that was so fascinating by itself-she'd killed innocents in their sleep, soldiers on the battlefield and Psychopathic Madmen all over the world. She'd terrified Drug Dealers, Arms Traders and any number of scumbag "Hard Men" who had thought themselves safe hidden away in an underworld no-one could search, or even find. Her death-count had passed triple figures long ago. /But/ she'd never really /hated/ anyone before now-excepting the men who'd butchered her Mother and driven her Father Insane, that was.
Mickey Webb didn't have any idea just how bad the things she was going to do to his Corpse were, let alone what she was going to do to him while he was, somehow, still alive-but that could all wait, he had no escape. She contented herself with the fact that he had most likely infected himself with the T-Virus dragging his ruined body over the remains of the destroyed Zombies and got to work.
Her eyes flickered across the lab and found a secured station containing Drugs and Chemicals for a variety of purposes, some she couldn't even comprehend, thankfully. She could have opened it with a paperclip in ten seconds flat, but a quick search produced a key on one of the Zombies remains. She opened the station-and smiled like the proverbial Cheshire Cat.
/NOW/ she was in business…
Y
Under other circumstances, Chris would have punched Aaron in the face for saying what he just had. That just wasn't how he did things, a fact Aaron was well aware of, he /knew/ that. /But, Aaron was so badly injured that just one more strike in a vital area, even in a less serious part perhaps, would pretty much finish him off. He could strangle him, but he needed the huge man conscious and alert, not barely breathing and semi-conscious at best…
He settled for grabbing the front of Aaron's shirt, drenched in blood now, dragging the man's face down so they had to stare straight into each others eyes and shooting him a look that would have made Webb think twice before saying anything else.
"Aaron, quick word of advice: DO NOT EVER ASK ME TO LEAVE ANYONE BEHIND! It will NOT happen! Clear!" shouted Chris, right into Aaron's face at such a volume Aaron attempted to physically retreat. The big man flinched, then shrugged helplessly.
"Chris…I can't walk by…myself, can barely stand, and…nearly killed myself flailing around like a madman just…trying to kill two of…those things. I'm almost blind and…a physical…wreck. I can't even see well…enough to shoot…straight and probably couldn't…hit a Barn door…at five paces. You don't have the muscle to carry me…your hurt…and you'll need both hands…free to fight and defend yourself if…either of us is going to get…out of here alive. Just /what/…are you actually…planning, to do?" Aaron managed to get out slowly, even his breathing becoming increasingly painful.
Chris just grinned in a way which suggested he was the Mouse who'd not only dodged the Mousetrap and the Cat but had his cheese and was going to eat it too.
Y
Serena noticed the eight-sided "Umbrella" symbol on all of the stock in the secure station and frowned, but she had considerably more important things to worry about now. Filling the largest flask she could find, a foot-tall goose-neck one, with a combination of acids and chemicals that would have made any Chemist run away screaming, she capped it with a sturdy bung and took off back towards the Behemoth.
It didn't take her long to meet it, it was still tearing up the corridor and occasionally ripping huge, deep gashes in the walls without apparent effort, getting closer all the time. Its arms slammed upwards into the roof, claws digging deep, then it wrenched so hard that the roof was partially torn down. If she'd had any doubt at all about what had happened to the mutilated Zombie remains she'd found earlier, she didn't now. How and why it would have hidden the remains as it had wasn't a thing of interest to her.
She drew back her arm, then hurled the flask from twenty foot away with a throwing arm any Pitcher would envy for the rest of their life. It span end over end-she snapped out a pistol and shot the flask just before it made contact. Glass shards exploded everywhere, acids and chemicals drenching its head like the summer rain concentrated from the whole season into a five-second Monsoon.
The Behemoths head started to smoke, so did the coverings of its eyes. That got an odd noise from it, a rumble so deep sounded from inside its chest it was as though she'd opened a Gate into Hell. Ignoring it, she pulled her second pistol and started shooting, focusing on the spot on its head precisely where the flasks contents had hit most directly. Flecks of skin and whatever passed for its flesh started to rupture under the hail of steel-jacketed sharp metal-a bullet ricocheted off of dense bone, striking sparks before screeching away. Its head caught fire even as parts of its scalp and face started to literally melt. That /definitely/ got its attention, it was starting to make random movements and jerk in bizarre fashion, as thought it was suffering real /pain/. Looked like she'd hit on something…
Her pistols ran empty. Without bothering to reload, she ejected both clips and drew her rifle. It was still set to HI-EX, just what she wanted. She aimed at the same spot, then opened fire. She yet again made a silent note to thank the rifles designers in Area 51-assuming she ever actually met them-for managing to create a weapon which would "reload" itself as long as you didn't exceed a set amount of shots over a set period of time. That she didn't understand the science was a given, that she knew it worked was all that mattered.
More skin and flesh was blasted clear, gleaming bone as hard as granite started to chip away as the explosive shells did their work. Her shot-sensor was redlined, she was almost at her limit for the next hour, but it looked like it just might do the trick-a massive fragment of bone flew free, exposing something grey, rough-edged and terribly mobile, as though the brain itself was shifting around inside the damaged skull, as though it knew what was coming… That odd rumbling noise sounded again, higher-pitched this time, longer and loud. Was it howling in agony or fury?
More to the point, who cared?
She switched back to AP and put a perfect shot straight through the gap in its skull-or was that armour?-into its brain, or whatever it had that passed for one. A spurt of yellow gooish liquid, kind of like honey mixed with bits of grey bacon she thought, erupted from the impact point instantly. The Behemoth jerked so hard it almost fell over, then staggered badly and started shaking uncontrollably. It was still coming, but in that state it couldn't have caught, let alone killed, even Aaron in the state he was in without falling on him by accident…
She smiled, a cruel smile of pursed lips and a promise of pain.
"Tell the Devil the Reapers been busy again" she said, her voice colder than Arctic ice. Then she set her rifle to HI-EX and aimed one last time.
The last shot she fired, the one that maxed out her magazine, went dead centre into its brain. After the tiny-but-powerful explosion erupted in the core of its cranium amidst the one vital organ she sincerely hoped it couldn't function, or even survive, without, the inside of its head hit the roof and walls-literally.
It stood utterly still for a long, long moment, then, with the inevitability of the greatest of trees finally falling to the labour of ages of both women and men, it slowly leaned over-before crashing to the floor with an almighty "BOOM", the awful crashing sound added to by the screech of torn and buckling steel giving way all around it.
Serena Baccarin paused to catch her breath, then wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, irritably noticing the still bleeding wound. It was a flesh wound, not incapacitating or even particularly painful, but she needed to fix it. The last thing she needed was something in here following her out on the trail of no more than her own blood… First things first, though.
It was the work of seconds to reload her pistols, then she started to head back to pick up Webb's trail even as she pulled off her glove to bind her wound…
Y
"I feel like freaking Moses" muttered Chris, a random memory from a childhood learning of the Bible-in part-floating through his mind for no good reason, sparking the words. Aaron, behind him, one good arm and hand wrapped around Chris's shoulders, just snorted, his grip briefly tightening. He didn't bother with the comment that that would make him a man being led to the promised land, appropriate as that would have really been.
Apart from a single Zombie already missing both legs-someone had taken an axe to it after it had "risen again", apparently-they'd almost made it to the evacuation point. He'd kicked in the lone Zombies head, literally, then kept going. He had to, really, only Willpower was keeping him on his feet. He'd been confident he could stay on his feet and act as Aaron's walking crutch for long enough to get the injured man to the escape tunnel, where Serena would be waiting to help-but every muscle was screaming now, his back felt like he was being lowered onto a Blast Furnace slowly, he was seeing black spots and could taste blood in his mouth from where he'd almost bitten through his lip to keep from screaming.
How Aaron was mobile at all was something he didn't want to consider and could never understand, that kind of pain ate someone alive, chewed them up and spat them out. The longer this went on, the more respect he was developing for the big Engineer. Aaron Bradley was the kind of man who would be actually dead long before he ever gave up...
They reached the corridor-and Chris's eyes lit up like Searchlights at the sight of the battered and bloody but ever lethal, and lovely, Serena. He wanted to pick up Aaron and run at the sight, but even the thought almost caused him to faint so he developed a massive grin and forced himself onwards with a new sense of hope. That grin faded when he saw her crouch on the floor to inspect something-blood, he could see it now. She was looking at blood, smeared into the ground in the shape of a boot print...
She shifted smoothly to stare directly at him, looked him straight in the eyes and said one word that almost killed him, that told him everything he needed to know.
"Webb".
Y
Serena and Chris supported Aaron one under each arm, being careful of his broken arm and ribs, then effectively picked him up and got as close as they could to a run. She'd pulled out a Stopwatch and her expression had told him everything. She was glad that it had, she didn't want to tell him the truth.
09:03
09:02
09:01
Aaron was sliding slowly in and out of consciousness, but mainly out. He was heading towards Delirium and Fever, which would eventually lead to a Coma and then death without proper treatment-and soon. That much she knew without question, she'd seen it happen, her Medical training just confirmed it. The fact that he was still even slightly alert said he had a Constitution of solid rock, but no one could last forever. They /had/ to get out of here/now/.
09:01
09:00
08:59
It occurred to her that most facilities like this had warning signals and sirens which were activated at a specific point if the Self-Destruct system was activated, warning valuable staff to evacuate now to a safe distance. It also occurred to her that Robert Creig was an Insane Sociopath who had killed everyone in the facility without hesitation just to preserve his "intellectual property" as he presumerably saw it-the Virus samples in the case Chris was still carrying. He'd have shut down the warning systems just in case of survivors by some freak event or incredible luck, to make sure they didn't know when to escape or even that they needed to. She'd done the whole world a favour by evacuating the inside of his skull, nothing and no one on Earth could have predicted what was going to come next from such a madman...
08:59
08:58
08:57
Could she hear Helicopter engines?
08:57
08:56
08:55
Maybe the question wasn't /how/ Webb had escaped despite his injuries, but /who/ had come for him...?
They reached the tunnel entrance that led out into the damaged old refinery-and everything but the immediate abruptly became a moot point as every sense she had went off as though warning of Apocalypse five seconds before her ears caught the slightest trace of sound where there should /not/ have been any. She was already moving when the three figures came out of nowhere. That saved her life...
Y
Chris Redfield didn't even have time to blink before a tall man came out of nowhere, rappelling down a rope clad head-to-foot in jet black Commando gear, landed right in front of him and pulled an Uzi. The man had it against Chris's chest over his heart, he pulled the trigger-Serena straight-armed him so hard that Chris felt rather than heard the mans jaw snap as he span from his feet, tumbling to the ground with a thump of dead weight. Chris barely even registered the slash of red-hot pain that creased his ribs momentarily...
Chris still hadn't even blinked when the two other men went after Serena with an extremely complicated Martial Arts routine-not that they had a problem fighting dirty, as one suddenly threw a handful of dust into Serena's face. A kick cracked into her side hard, an elbow snapped her head around, blood exploding from her mouth. A knife flicked out, she barely shifted fast enough to avoid it doing far more than drawing a line of blood across her throat. Off-balance and already injured, she couldn't keep up and a slashing kick took away her legs. She slammed down to her back with a grunt of pain-she caught an axe-handle kick at her breastbone with crossed arms as a parry, but the second man drove his knife into her side. It went deep and came out dark, dripping liquid ruby red up to the hilt...
Chris snapped out of his paralysis at the sight of the woman he was falling so deeply for being killed in front of him in less than ten seconds, but the maelstrom of lethal combat was so quick and savage that he was almost too late. Without time to think, Chris dropped Aaron and charged, aiming for the man with the knife. The man saw him coming, but shifted to a combat stance in challenge-Chris didn't even bother trying, he simply launched himself at the big man like a human missile feet-first.
The expression on the mans darkened face was almost comical as Chris flew straight into him boots-first, knocking the man flat with an awful crack as his whole weight slammed the man to the ground. Chris landed on top of him, but had to roll frantically away as the mans knife slashed his forearm. Even injured and down, the man was lethal, armed and ready. Wonderful, this was going to be fun...
The man struggled to his feet, obviously hurt, but displayed no sign of his injuries when a perfect counter with the knife nearly took Chris's fingers off at an attempted punch, the blade cutting deep. Chris howled in pain, but kept his focus, backed off, circled-the man leapt and slashed his knife right across Chris's ribs in a wave of agonising pain and blood that should have dropped Chris to the floor in an instant, in agony that couldn't /be/ imagined.
Chris had had enough pain for one lifetime today, he didn't intend to suffer any more. Ever.
He channelled all of the pain and anger into undiluted white-hot rage, then screamed and crashed in as he went off like an erupting Volcano. The man's knife bit deep just under his ribs, but Chris head-butted the man so hard that he drove the taller man to his knees-just before he slammed home an almighty knee to the groin with such force that he lifted the man clean off of the floor. The man reeled over, collapsed backwards and sideways with a very strange high-pitched sound. Chris just stamped on his throat so hard that he almost decapitated the man. /One/ down…
Suddenly arms were wrapped around his head from behind with such force that he felt his skull start to crack. His air was cut off in a Choke Hold instantly and, before he could do more than gasp, hard, sharp fingers bit deep, deep inside his head wound… The pain this caused him was so indescribably awful that every part of him simply shut down in a moment in a final, desperate attempt to escape it…
Y
Serena saw Chris fall as the man she'd broken the jaw of woke up and jumped him from behind, using his injured body against him in the worst way possible-the sound which escaped her lips shouldn't have come from anything human. The pain in her side was nothing, the wound was nothing, they hadn't learnt the first lesson of the Reaper: if she wasn't dead, you were.
She shoved up with both arms so hard and fast that the man attacking her had to hop backwards and nearly fell, staggering badly. She had both hands on the floor beside her head and launched herself at him feet-first faster than he could follow, the heels of her boots slamming straight into his breastbone just over his heart with all her weight and muscle behind it. He was wearing Body Armour, but it was the bulletproof kind, not intended to stop sharp impacts from blunt objects in vital areas. His ribs snapped and cracked, his breastbone snapped and a big shard punctured his heart, a fact she knew from the ghastly expression on his face, the sudden blood on his lips. She rolled backwards and over to see the last man drop Chris, pull a pair of hunting knives with razor points and serrated edges from leg sheaths and smile past the pain. Not even a flicker of worry or troubled thought, despite the fact they'd killed Chris rather than her, which made them all dead...
He was a professional-and showed it by coming at her a split-second later, before nine of ten people could have even breathed in. Her knives were in her hands before he got there, her right parried his left while her left tore right through his right forearm, ruining his arm and drawing a grunt of pain. He dropped the knife but drew a fast defensive figure eight with the other over her chest, very fast, but not good enough. Knife fighting was all about coordination and reflexes, you had to fight before you thought or you didn't have time. If someone came at you with a knife and knew how to use it you were dead if you didn't, or if you were stupid enough to think that you were just better somehow. The key wasn't confidence, it was simple cold skill and the ability to be ruthless enough to use it to win. That she /did/ have, in prodigious quantity...
It was over very quickly. He struck three more times, she parried twice and slipped under the third. Her first strike was to his good shoulder joint, her second to his left thigh right to the bone, the last a crosswise sweep right across the belly with both knives. He fell to one knee as his last knife fell useless to the ground, dead on his feet as slippery red intestines spilled out of his belly-she grabbed a double handful, wrapped them around his throat and wrenched for all she was worth. He fell to the floor, writhing, choking, trying to scream, both of his useless arms twitching frantically...his tongue and eyes stood out, his face went completely white, he coughed one last time and went utterly still.
"CHRIS!" she shouted, trying to get any kind of response from the young mans still form. Nothing happened at all in response, making her swear a blue streak.
She didn't let go for another few seconds, just to be sure, then ran over to Chris. That she was too late was something she simply couldn't accept, even when she saw that his chest wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing /or/ moving in any way at all...
Y
Chris Redfield was dimly, so dimly, aware of things fading away to a kind of grey-black at the last as he died. It was so very quiet, he couldn't help but think, even as he drifted off towards somewhere peaceful, or at least that was what it felt like, he couldn't focus on anything at all...
Warm air suddenly flooded his starved lungs as a sharp pain in his chest started, with terrible abruptness. His chest was moving and it wasn't him-more air flooded into his lungs, he felt a surge in his chest at the second pain. His heart was beating again, he could breathe...air air air /AIR!
He jerked upright with savage speed, mouth opening and closing, trying to suck in all the air in the world with one breath. Sights and sounds flooded in, overwhelming a mind starved of any input for almost too long, forcing him to roll over onto his chest and lean on his arms, choking, coughing, gasping, shivering and shaking uncontrollably all at once. He slowly, dimly realised that someone was pounding him on the back, trying to help him clear his lungs, breathe... He caught sight of the battered Aaron sitting upright on the stone and sand ground, clutching his broken arm gingerly, a moment before he registered that Serena, who was pounding him on the back, had just saved his life by Resuscitating him...
She abruptly grabbed him and span him to face her, looking him in the eyes. Then she simply leaned in and kissed him full on the lips, Chris never realising that she did it in part to hide the tear she could never admit to that was running down her face. After all, she was a cold-blooded utterly ruthless professional killing machine who didn't have any care for human life at all. How could she care for just some young man, even younger than her, who was so simple he could never even begin to understand her world?
Y
Serena, for a long, glorious moment, forgot where she was, who she was, what she was doing and who she was with. She just screened it out completely, let it all slide and enjoyed the simple act of passion involved in such easy intimacy. It felt so /good/... Then reality kicked down the door as an alarm went off inside her head and she realised that Aaron was staring at the two of them, goggle-eyed. She pulled clear of the still-stunned Chris and glared at Aaron with such a lethal expression on her face that he literally shrank back away from her.
"Not /ONE/ word to anyone, do not even /think/ of so much as /SUGGESTING/ that you saw this or anything like it happen, or I will personally make sure you never feel safe again. Am I clear?" snapped Serena, her voice glacial. His only response was frantic nodding-she got the impression that he was too scared to speak. Good, even though she seemed to have that effect on most people if they'd seen her work anyway...
She turned around and, carefully, peeled away the remains of the pressure bandage on the still-seated Chris's head. Blood was already drenching his face again, some had even touched hers, but he was too out of it still to realise just how badly he was hurt. Removing the bandage fully dropped a great dollop of blood over his face, but let her pad and then tightly bandage the wound, this time wrapping the bandages around his head. It slowed down the bleeding but, again, didn't stop it. If they didn't get to real help soon he was going to bleed to death, so was Aaron if none of his other injuries killed him first. They had to get out of here, now...
06:09
06:08
06:07
"Chris, get UP! On your FEET, Soldier! Were not done yet!" snapped Serena, literally dragging the battered Chris to his feet before, in near-desperation, slapping him so hard she almost drew blood. That actually worked, he blinked, shook his head slowly, then coughed and blinked again before shaking his head hard, quickly and sharply, as though to wake himself up. Then he looked at her and managed something of a smile...
The two of them could just about manage a staggering run, with Aaron's added effective dead weight it was more of a fast jog, especially when adding in the fact that Chris apparently couldn't se straight. Serena took most of the weight and had to lead the way, but forced them forwards at some pace through sheer force of will. As they moved, just after they'd cleared the centre of the ruined refinery, she heard the "Whup Whup Whup" of helicopter engines coming close again. She caught a glimpse of a jet black trooper chopper with side-mounted automatic cannons-not something the Iraqi's would ever have, she was totally sure-which was totally lacking in identifying marks, glancing through a breach in the damaged roof at just the right moment. Thankfully, it was irrelevant now. There was no way the Pilot or crew could know where they'd gone and the truck was under Desert Camouflage, you'd have had to have known where to look to find it.
05:40
05:39
05:38
They reached the truck in little enough time, Chris dragged Aaron aboard while she released the hooks restraining the camouflage and let the wind just blow it away. It carried no identifying marks, after all. That done, she leapt in the drivers seat, turned the engine over and floored the accelerator so fast she nearly rolled the truck as she wrenched the wheel from side to side to break free of the clinging sand. The wind was waking up and blowing stronger and stronger, whipping sand against the trucks sides, doors and windows. No problem, the whipping wind would make it harder for anyone to zero them by eye or sound. More to the point, in the state they were all in they needed every advantage they could get.
She could have find the Evacuation Chopper with her eyes shut walking backwards in the Desert with no Compass. Stopping next to it, she left the truck running, rolled under the camouflage and up against the concrete wall. The lock for the maintenance door was surprisingly sophisticated, but she was still inside in seconds. Inside it was the work of moments to activate the power, disconnect the fuel lines and start up the lift-thankfully, the paranoid Dictator in Baghdad made sure that all of his escape routes were regularly checked, double and triple checked and always ready to go at a moments notice. Everything under way, she slapped on the switches to open the main door, rolled under it back outside and wrenched out camouflage netting that was pinned down in the way.
Chris was out of the truck and standing ready, still woozy but willing to help. She showed him how the rails had to be laid out and he staggered to one side while she did the other, allowing the chopper to be rolled outside on its strut feet even as the electronics warmed up. The two of them grabbed Aaron and manhandled him into the rear, strapping him into the seat securely before she took the pilots seat and Chris the co-pilots, both of them putting on radio headsets so that they could talk.
She hit the switch to unfold the rotor wings and started up the engines, the rotors automatically starting to rotate-she heard the beat of heavier helicopter engines than their four-seater fast passenger effort and looked around. The trooper had found them, not surprising given the dust trail of the truck. Thankfully, it was slower and less manoeuvrable than their own and was coming from just over the Refinery. If they could just get into the air, they could loose it easy. /If/.
Their chopper got to take-off speed quick, thanks to a sturdy, well-maintained engine and good design. She heaved it up and off of the ground so fast Aaron yelped in pain, rotated and slammed the throttles against their stops. The trooper was going to be in shooting range in ten seconds, they weren't even under way yet. This was going to be /close/...
03:30
03:29
03:28
Their chopper leaned forwards and started to pound through the air, fast, even as she kept it low to build up speed as fast as possible. It wasn't enough, as cannon fire whipped through the air they'd been in a second before with a blur of grey steel before clipping the tail of their chopper with a "thunk" that jerked the whole machine-just before Serena took evasive action by nearly stalling the chopper through a fast vertical climb which took them out of the line of fire. They lost most of their momentum, though, and the trooper just reoriented and tried again, forcing her to throw the chopper into a sharp turn to avoid the worst even as the salvo clipped the fuselage.
They weren't going to escape by flying away at speed, which left plan B. She really was going to wish her rifle was functioning in about ten seconds... She hauled them around hard and flew straight at the trooper, ducking and diving, dodging and weaving to avoid its fire even as a stray shell cracked the windscreen. Then she grinned at Chris, a feral grin which made him very worried. "Take the wheel! One pass by the cockpit! My side!" she shouted, pulling both pistols and releasing her seatbelt before forcing her door open.
"YOU are INSANE!" Chris bellowed over the screaming air and heavy metallic thump suddenly allowed in by the open door, even as he grabbed the controls and frantically fought to maintain control. She heard a sharp thump somewhere behind Aaron and cursed as she smelt smoke. The trooper had hit something they needed, she could only hope that it wasn't critical...
They were right next to the big trooper even as it shot at them, she could almost see the pilots inside even as she loaded her pistols, one with Armour Piercing, one with Incendiaries-then let fly at point-blank range into the troopers cockpit. It was stupid, suicidal, wind shear, gravity, even the laws of physics were against her hitting anything, but that had never stopped her. It didn't this time, as the windscreen shattered under multiple impacts before disintegrating, blasts of fire erupting everywhere even as the pilots jerked under the impacts of several shots, bullets destroying instruments and controls...
The trooper fell out of the sky like a rock, totally out of control, its engines screaming like Banshees under strain they weren't deigned to withstand-then it hit the ground, hard, shattering on impact as still-spinning rotor blades were thrown tens of metres across the Desert. Shards of debris and bits and pieces of people were thrown any and every way with a terrible sense of finality, its fuel tanks cooking off and exploding seconds later. The thought that there might have been people not involved in anything that had occurred today in the trooper's passenger hold never bothered her...
01:19
01:18
01:17
Chris swung them around and pointed them back the way she'd been going, before, silently, fainting. She just had time to slam the door and grab the controls before the choppers slow dive became dangerous, then levelled them off. The chopper hung steady in the air, the controls responded normally, fuel was fine-it was over, they were out of here. She grinned a slightly manic grin before pulling up and setting the throttles back to max.
/Groovy/.
After all of this, she wasn't even going to pay attention to a Border patrol she could bypass in her sleep. She almost absently noticed that her chest wound was still bleeding freely, if not heavily, although it was starting to clot. Idiots hadn't even known how deep to drive the knife. They might have been professional killers, but they were strictly amateur league in her world. Where she lived, you either had it or you didn't. She did, she was alive, end of discussion.
An almighty roar sounded from not that far away, followed by a blinding white light as the Self-Destruct utterly immolated the complex at last. She just glanced at the case still held in a death-grip by Chris and shook her head. Mission accomplished, but that was the last time she /ever/ so simply accepted a mission involving the T-Virus and anything connected to it. Just a scratch, a bite, it could have been her down there...
The Exceptional Tasks Commission was going to get a Report it wouldn't believe on this one, even though it was all going to be true. She wondered what Chris and Aaron would say? Of course, she would get to read their Reports before they were published so she'd know sooner rather than later...
She would later always smile at the memory of the expression of their CIA contact in the north when they got out of the helicopter just as he started to ask for the Password. She'd actually though he really was dead for a moment, rather than in deep shock...
Something which never made her smile was the fact that, months later, she would discover the near-total lack of memory Aaron and Chris later displayed regarding their Mission and the events and people concerned was a permanent condition. They didn't have Amnesia, their conscious minds had simply been unable to cope with such constant and extraordinary physical and mental trauma to the degree that they had dealt with it by blanking everything possible. The massive head trauma both men had suffered left what little they /did/ remember as barely more than disjointed images that could sometimes wake them up screaming in the night for no reason they could ever name. Neither of them would /ever/ fully recall just what went on and who did what down there, in Hell...
That made the fact that Chris recalled with perfect clarity every single one of their personal encounters even more annoying, since he half-remembered events the two of them had been closely involved in and knew that she'd saved his life more than once. However, the good things that came from that more than made up for it...
/June 8th 1996, the USA, the Pentagon/
The single gunshot from the Generals office could be heard from halfway across the building when it happened. Security were there in two minutes flat, weapons drawn and ready, but no-one was fast enough to stop a horrified soldier who had served under the old man years ago breaking down the locked door and smashing his way inside-where he saw a sight from Hell he would never, could never forget.
Dressed in full dress uniform, General Lucas Moralto had, as calmly and coolly as he had done everything in his life, dealt with his personal affairs and effects before locking shut his office door. He had then written out the note, before drawing his service revolver-the first weapon he'd ever carried as an officer-placing the muzzle against the inside of his mouth and pulling the trigger, taking the back of his head off.
That was the way the soldier found him. All that the note said-he had no family, after all, the Military had always been everything to him-was:
I never broke a promiseNor forsook a trust
Until now
I hope that God can one day forgive me
I hope that he can help them
Until then I do my duty one last time
Goodbye
General Lucas Bassire MoraltoBorn January 5th 1927
Died June 8th 1996
/End of Chapter Ten. All Reviews welcomed./
P.S. This is really "The End". Chapter Eleven will be an Epilogue of sorts. Everyone out there, all Reviews, flames or otherwise, are welcomed.