Before I begin this chapter I'd like to make a couple of statments. First of all, many thanks to those who have left reviews, especially E.P.O. Secondly, I would like to recommend the following Silent Hill fanfictions:
Silent Hill: Ashes to Ashes
Silent Hill: Cracks in the Ice
Sin's of the Father
If you have not at least checked out these stories already, I highly urge you to do so. rubs hands together Now, time to get on with the show, no?
CHAPTER FIVE
A crappy ballpoint pen drew a blue line across the map, pointing to an intersection. At the other end of the line were two messily scrawled words. MET BRAD.
Rachel put the cap back on her pen and stuck it back in her pocket. She then folded up the map, not wanting to be a static target. She cast a nervous eye about the fog; far off, the red of traffic lights caught her eyes, barely penetrating the mist. She turned towards one, ninety degrees away from the direction of Bradley, and it immediately turned red.
That's a bad omen. It was a coincidence, of course. She knew that.
To her left, a light turned green.
Curious. Still, it wasn't as if Rachel had anywhere else to go. She didn't really have any place to be, and the green light was as good a direction as any - anywhere would be acceptable really. She just had to get off the streets. Find a good place to hide, something...she went in the direction of the light, ears pricked for any more monsters.
She made the light before anything could attack her. As she moved into the intersection, the traffic light instantly switched to red - no yellow. It didn't mean anything, of course, but the suddenness of it caused Rachel to skip a beat and stop momentarily.
It was to her right that she could see a red light, a ways away but cutting through the fog. As the one in front of her went red, it had gone green. Slowly, Rachel turned towards the peripheral image, standing still. She stared at it for several seconds before checking her watch. It was 6:03.
She continued to stare, but the light didn't change. It was a long time before she checked her watch again.
6:09.
That's a long green light.
With much forcing, her right foot finally started forward, carrying her towards the green light. The other followed, and it wasn't long before she had reached the green light; she stood at the end of the individual road, right before the stop line that signaled the beginning of the intersection. Rachel hesitated, foot in midair, and cast a look up at the light. Green.
The shoe came down past the stop line. Red.
Beyond it, a previously crimson light turned green.
Rachel pulled out her tire iron, lifting it to a striking position in her right hand. She also held her flashlight in her left, though she kept it off. Slowly, she edged forward.
Nothing happened before she reached the next light. As expected, it turned off and another switched to green, to her left this time. However, along this path there came something behind her - a sound, sort of like a hose being dragged through gravel. Rachel paused, then turned around, trying to peer through the fog without the aid of the flashlight. Perhaps it wouldn't notice her...
No luck. Rachel just made out a dim shadow in the fog before something long and thin shot out and slapped her on the side of the face. It didn't have much weight behind it, which was good because it had more than enough speed and her head snapped to the side. Rachel reeled, regained her footing, and saw the long thin weapon - all that she could tell in the darkness was that it was sort of like a whip - snap through the air to her right. She raised the flashlight and clicked it on.
It was humanoid in shape, at least. Tall and mostly gangly, though she noticed its shoulders were broad and obscenely bloated biceps stood out on its upper arms. It had no face; where it would have been, on the front of the head, it was simply rounded smoothness. There was not a spot of hair on the body, including the head, she noticed as it lumbered forward, though its skin was covered in blood and pus colours. Its left hand even had a rudimentary hand, underdeveloped fingers like thick sausages and no thumb; however, its right arm simply continued into a long tendril several feet long, finally ending some sharp metal sliver, knife-sharp. It jerked back its arm, and Rachel realized she was right - it was a whip.
She was still taking in the image when the tendril flew forward, but this time it didn't hit her with its side. This was better aimed, and its bladed tip hit her instead. The edge slashed along the inside of her left elbow, going right through the sleeve and effortlessly cutting into the soft flesh. A fine spray of blood droplets was leased into the air before she even felt the pain. With a cry, she dropped the flashlight. Its hard plastic side hit the asphalt, bounced once, and continued to shine upon the monster.
It yanked its whip back again and was about to launch it forward when Rachel charged. She leapt forward, heaving her tire iron, not willing to let it get a strike on her again. The tire iron's stainless steel head smashed the side of the monster's, but it barely reacted. Its left hand came up, uppercutting her chin, but it was clumsy and ineffectual and did barely more than throw her off her rhythm. The tire iron came down again on the thing, this time on its shoulder, letting loose a dribble of maroon blood. Rachel took a step to the side in order to avoid another blow from the malformed hand, but wasn't concerned, not really. It wasn't as dangerous as the others, this Whip-Arm - as she had already termed it in her mind - if you stayed up close. You couldn't really use a whip up clos-
The long tendril arm snapped towards her, much more precise than any inanimate strip of leather. Its side hit the left of her throat, but didn't knock her away. It held on, and the tendril beyond kept up the curve around her throat until it had encircled it tightly once, twice, thrice - Rachel suddenly lost count as it tightened. She couldn't breathe.
She would have reached up to try and pull it off, but she was yanked off her feet towards the Whip-Arm. She landed on her knees at its feet, one hand still holding the tire iron. She tried to pull away, but to no avail. She could feel steel muscle under its smooth and oddly dry skin. Wildly, she whacked at the tendril with her tire iron, hoping for some reaction. It wracked under the blows, skin splitting, but held firm.
But, more suddenly than it had grabbed her, it let her go. Specifically, the tendril drew back and unwound itself from her neck, the entire length sliding off like a string being pulled from a top, until finally its blade slashed through her skin and was gone. The blade cut through the skin starting at the back of her neck right up to behind the left side of her jaw. Blood flew as Rachel spun, thrown to the ground.
A slight bit more force, and it'd have broken her neck.
A slash in a slightly different place, and it would have severed an artery.
A cut slightly deeper, and it would have seperated her vertebrae.
Time to go.
Rachel bounded to her feet and dashed for the green light, plucking the torch off the ground as she did so. She got two steps before she felt the tendril wrap around her left ankle and yank, throwing her to the ground, but didn't stop. She was kicking when she hit the ground and half-crawled half-jumped for two seconds before regaining her footing and moving back up to a run.
She could hear the Whip-Arm's footsteps behind her, giving chase, but didn't dare look back. She passed into one intersection, saw her light go red, and another green. She turned and kept running. The Whip-Arm, based on what she could hear, not only kept up with her but seemed to do so without much trouble. She couldn't slow down for anything.
Red light. Green light. Red light. Green light. The torch's beam cut through the fog in front of her, bobbing as she ran, when it suddenly illuminated a sign in front of her. The road she was on ended in a T-intersection, just beyond it the shadowy shape of some large building against the fog and night. The sign had a name she recognized: Lion Heights. However, this was all pushed into the back of her mind when her green light turned red, and all the other red lights…didn't change.
Rachel looked all around without slowing down, her head turning frantically, but there were only bright red spots in the black sky. Her looking for green light gained her only one thing - a short fall, as she tripped over the unseen curb.
She slammed against the ground, but the most pain by far lanced out from her hip as something seemed to stab into her skin. Must have landed on my goddamn keys, she thought, getting back up even though she had run out of places to go. Illogically, madly, her mind turned to her key ring in her pocket, little metal bastards with little metal teeth, for her van and her apartment and her -
L H.
Still prone, Rachel turned her flashlight's beam once again on the sign.
Lion Heights.
But it couldn't be - it was a coincidence, it wasn't as if -
A metal blade stabbed forward, drawing a crimson line across her lower back. Rachel pushed herself to her feet instantly, already running for the hotel's entrance. Her feet flew across the frosted grass lawn, before she saw a pair of glass doors directly in front of her. She didn't even slow down as she came for them, fishing for her keys in her pocket and just yanked them out as she smashed into the thick glass and metal. She bounced off and then bent over, stabbing the rusty key into the lock and turning as a metal blade rang out on the doorframe at standing head height. The door opened and she fell inside, pulling the door closed after her. She feverishly locked it behind her just before the Whip-Arm slammed into the door, its emotionless nonface staring at her. Rachel turned and kept running, the features of the employee's room flashing past her as she heard the Whip-Arm banging on the door behind her. She grabbed the next door and flew through, landing in what looked like a storeroom before staggering and finally falling to her knees, wheezing exhaustedly.
Then there was a scuffle, something dragging across the concrete floor. Rachel's head rose sharply, looking though the gloom of the poorly-lit storeroom as a figure had emerged from behind some pile of Christmas decorations.
The first she saw was a pair of black boots in a sort of combat or military style, leading up to two legs in what appeared to be moderately loose-fitting black leather pants. At their crest was a belt holding several items including a radio, nightstick and gun holster, and just above that a snug but not skintight sky blue button-up shirt, short-sleeved and with the letters S.H.P.D. in tiny print on the right breast. Out of the shirt came two arms and a woman's head. Her medium-brown skin and dark eyes contrasted with her obviously bleached straw-coloured hair.
"Are you alright?" the policewoman asked, an obviously concerned expression on her face.