Chapter 3

Wesker stumbled awkwardly against his own weight; it wasn't from his wounds, but from the change that was occurring in his body. Misery toured his veins and nervous system. Like a vulture pecking away dead flesh, the virus was pecking away the remains of the man that they called Wesker, only to be reborn with a new husk. He would become more powerful than any BOW that could be made by the fools at Umbrella, the best way to attain his revenge.

His throat soils with churning blood, before it seethes through his lips and gushes down the curves of his bare chest. It seeps like a maze through the coal colored scorched flesh that silhouetted the left side of his upper body.

Wesker buffers the side of a tree, the barking scraping at his back as he lets his weight slide down to a sitting position at the bottom.

"It's only a matter of time before I fully take in the virus. Just have to give it time." His teeth gritted through every word.

A waft of blood tittered on the wind, exciting the senses of a nearby zombie. As it hobbled over the roughs of the dirt, its ragged tan pants braced over its shrunken ankles, its once bright white oxford shirt, almost brown from the filth that it had collected, its greenish gray skin faded horribly.

Wesker gave it an eye, with an edge of defiance to it. It gives off an effortless moan as it sidles near him. Brittle and dry sinew crackles as the zombie bends down to feast on what it sees as a wounded meal. Wesker's brutal fingers clasp around the thicken neck of the zombie and twist through the flesh of the creature, snapping its neck.

"What use is it having an superior power, if I can only test it on something so lowly.' His evilness is spoken with the twine of a poet. "Though it will make my mission in the city that much easier." Wesker begins his laughter; he liked nothing more than to laugh, when he knew that everything was perfectly laid out for him.

The slough of depressing trees came even heavy as they climbed higher into the mountains, the sun completely obstructed by the haze of trees. They had only walked a mile and a half in the forest, but it seemed like each step they had taken, they walked back two. Nothing mattered more than getting 'The Subject' back into the hands of Umbrella.

"What is this BOW, that we are after, anyways? Ivy questioned.

"From what they told me, it's supposed to be one of the most powerful BOWs made, but one of the most uncontrollable ones. The reason why Umbrella wants it so badly is so they can unlock the secrets of why the damn thing won't die, no matter what it has been subjected to." Hunk speaks calmly, no emotive to his voice. "But I am sure that we can beat it."

As the two talk, Riot strays from their glancing eyes, his own catching something odd. In the allusive shadows, he captures the image of a figure lying under a tree, but it doesn't look like an ordinary zombie to him. Smudged by the shadows, the body glistens slightly, like it has a layer of Vaseline over its body. The shape is of a man's, but its features are different, its hands are fingered with claws, its joints in its legs knotted at odd angles, and an expose brain pulsates above its eyeless face.

"Fuck…it looks like someone skinned a zombie. What the hell would have done this"? Riot verbalizes his thoughts as he nudges closer to the corpse.

His head sweeps under the coating branches, the flouncing leaves scrapping over the hard plastic of his helmet. Riot gets an even closer look of the twisted body, its spinal cord protruding from its back, but still bedded deep in the stringy muscle tissue, its whole body laced in a solid coating of membranes. Riot's shoulders bend down to prod at the creature with the barrel of his gun.

Parting trees limbs and leaves open to Riot's face, in the break of the lapping foliage, an eyeless face spooks from the shade. Its lower jaw frees itself from its locked state, letting its tongue progress beyond normal limits. It wades in the air, measuring around Riot's helmet.

Riot lets the thing's tongue bath against his helmet, lifting his gun up as slow as it moved its tongue.

"Your move you ugly son of a b…" His words are strangled from his throat as the thing's tongue pulls around his neck.

His feet dangle feebly below him as the being cranes his weight with its tongue. Riot's face sprawls with blocking air, his eyes expanding under the pressure. His fingers know nothing more than to compress the trigger of the gun, firing a score of rattling bullets harmlessly into the trunk of the tree.

The one that lied under his feet, silent until now, hisses quietly. Unfastening rage circuits its body as it leaps and sweeps at the worn coughs of Riot, with its wearing bladed claws, sagging into Riot's rough material of his vest and jumpsuit and into his stomach. Tough flesh gives way to soft and oozing organs that seep through the widening slits that graced Riot's stomach. The jangle of dropping rounds that trickled from the rumbling gun click to a stop as the lost one plummets, along with Riot's life.

Tangles of throwing bullets and screams sounds in the hushed woods, singling to Hunk and Ivy that everything wasn't right. Their eyes take in the scene, but Riot's form still hasn't popped out in front of them.

"Riot, where the hell are you?" Ivy screams, the trees sheltering their ears away from all the sound.

Hunk spots the rush of flaring fire, the indicator of a firing gun. His boots are claimed into the darken vista that lays under the trees. A bubble of red played as a wart in the shadows. Hunk eased closer, sighting the bubble as Riot's intestines, seethed in the dirt, rotting in their own juices. The leaves spasmed above the gloomy area, spraying a basket of leaves from their bush of branches.

Thicken pinkish flesh, broad and flat lances like a jogging spear in Hunk's direction. With a hunter's reflexes, Hunk avoids the blade of flesh, but his gloved fingers catches it mid-air. The tongue takes on a life of its own, vaulting in Hunk's hand. His other hand fiddles the handle of his combat knife, working it into his hand. Swiping metal edges through the fatten meat, breaking the tension of the stretched tongue, the end hanging like a wilted flower in Hunk's hand. Hunk follows the ruined end of the tongue as it spits blood like a swinging hose. Lines of shredding bullets follow it back into the tree and don't stop until he hears a sawing scream buzz through the air. Not just one body comes down, but three, two that belonged to the creatures and one that belonged to Riot's.

Hunk expertly walks towards the mass of bodies. He seeps to his knee and his hand triggers around Riot's extra submachine gun clips that he held in his hip pack.

"That only leaves the two of us to finish the mission." Ivy crept behind Hunk, laying a feminine hand on his shoulder.

"The mission stays on schedule, no matter how many are left. What I am worried about is that fact these BOWs are something new, a mutation. So, that means we don't know what else is out there, things that even Umbrella doesn't know about. " Hunk rummaged through this new mystery, but didn't let it get in the way of the mission. "We have to move faster, it's already been several hours and the longer we wait, the more ammo we spend." Hunk stops himself, "Listen…" His ears drummed to whatever he just heard.

A stumbling march of feet patters the ground suddenly, following the scent that they left behind; whatever it was it coming for only warm flesh.

Albert Wesker flushes with tense muscles as he stands his grounds.

"I can feel it…my transformation is almost complete. Enviable power is finally mine. My revenge is soon at hand. It's only a matter of time that the G-virus will be in our hands and Umbrella will be done for. Birkin, its time that we turn the tables on them."

His body cradles into itself, squalling with tender pain and pumping blood. His hands wobble untamed, fidgeting like a hyper child, before they are clenched into fists. Wesker's features become rigid like someone was pulling on them with meat hooks. His eyelids lock like steel shutters. Wesker clenches his teeth, nearly breaking them in half. Then his body is calm.

Wesker's eyes opened, flamed with a glow of red to them, it streaking behind him as he disappears as a unclear blur in-between the trees.

They were at least a dozen of them and Hunk knew why they were here. He knew that this mission seemed to easy, even knowing, that most of the infected had been destroyed by the explosion from the mansion's self destruct system, that there was still a lot of them in the area around it that escaped the explosion. And even though they didn't seem them on their way in, that the infected knew that they were there, they could smell their flesh and gun powder, hear the screams from their dying friends, exciting them. And all it meant was that their fight just got even harder.

"Ivy, I want you to use your handgun and combat knife on them, save your submachine gun ammo for 'The Subject. And one thing, don't stop moving." Hunk didn't keep his eyes off them as they stalked in and out of the trees, only ten yards away.

Five of them lead the front, their attire the same as the all the rest, dressed as researchers: lab coats, nice shirt, dress pants; the three female zombies had skirts on, but still retained the swaying lab coat that daunted their shoulders. Most of their flesh had taken a grayish white tone to it with tints of green in it, aside from the exposed muscles that came from the rotting clumps over their bodies. The sour, dried smell that fall off them like powder even came through the powerful filters of Hunk and Ivy's gas masks.

Hunk slides his MP5 through the straps of the two canisters that he carries on his back, the glass clanks against the plastic of the gun. His fingers tip the grip of his combat knife, the blade still slick with blood.

"No reason to wait for them." Hunk lets his legs dash, running straight for the pack of zombies that desired his flesh.

Ivy hesitated, but knew that they had to get this fight over soon and waiting around wasn't something that they could do.

Hunk's clenched fist packed against the leading zombies' face, the blow staggering the unstable creature so much that it collapsed to the ground. As Hunk enters their range, their direction compress towards him. Hunk idles in front of the next one, waiting for it to get close enough; it nearly trips, almost stumbling into Hunk's arms. It's head sways towards the ground, the zombie's eyes not focused on Hunk. His fingers fasten around the zombie's cheeks, firm and planted, before he twist its head hard enough to hear the fatal snap from its spinal cord. Like the first, it gave into the ground.

Ivy's Vp-70 cracked with discharging rounds, the first one embedding into the sagging forehead of one of the female zombies. Dry, crisp fingers, void of any moisture grasped Ivy's forearm, constricting against the tough material of her jumpsuit. She tilts the gun to the side, tapping it against the yawning zombie's head, before she pressed round through its frontal lobe.

"There's too many of them. And I am running out of ammo." Ivy shouts as another takes the place that just fell.

Hunk thrust his knife from the temple of zombie that he just impaled, he going down with only a whispering moan.

"Just hold on." Hunk scales his leg for his radio, carting to his mouthpiece as his other hand grabs on to the throat of another reaching zombie. "Running low on ammo. Send out "The Package."

His knife is lifted under the jaw of the rotten creature, the tip of the blade piercing its brain. The knife greases from the wound as Hunk pulls it out, swinging out a spill of coagulated blood along with it.

"Package is being delivered." It came in clear over the testing noise that enclosed the area.

The ramp of the Chinook bounces as plastic wheels lift a large, orange tube, tipping about ten feet in height, typed across the front of it read, T-03. The pilot drives it from the back of the helicopter on a dolly, letting its immense weight do most of the work as it rolls down the ramp.

The pilot raises it to a standing position, the capsule shadowing him in its stance. With a brittle hiss, the doors of the container unclasp and a weighty boot stages from the pod. Sly green leather streaks over the boot, belonging to the oversized trench coat that wrapped the tall being in its embrace. A face drought of emotion laid dull in its whitish gray tone. As its face was void of expression, its head was null of hair, giving it an even more sinister manner.

The forest shook with the footsteps of their waiting backup.