Raccoon City : Demon's Gate
Chapter 5
For a long time, Rowan and Kristin simply stood at the edge of the manhole, peering into the darkness that it opened to in vain hopes of finding their friend standing unharmed at the other end. But there was nobody there, and there was no trace of her...save the for splatter of crimson on the cement ledges on either side of the sewer, and the lone trickle of red flowing along with the stream of dirty water, all of which was lit by the light of a fire outside.
Despite the danger lurking down below, neither remaining girl wanted to believe the fact that their group of three had been cut down to two. Neither wanted to believe that they were without one of their own, who was taken away from them by the jaws of some ferocious creature that lurked in the murky waters beneath them.
And for all they knew, it was waiting for them to enter... Waiting for the moment to taste more fresh blood and flesh if it wasn't sated by the meal it just had.
But Rowan and Kristin had seen too much carnage, and were willing to risk themselves to be sure it didn't happen again. They clung to the fact that maybe Sarah had jumped out of the way, or got dragged within the sewers by the beast and then released from its death grip. Maybe she was huddled somewhere, wounded, or frightened, and too afraid to get up. In any case, they were going to find out - even if it meant that they would be chomped next.
They jumped into the sewers feet first, of course, with Rowan leading the way and Kristin heading in next after given the signal that all way clear. Once their feet touched the water, their faces screwed up a little at the stench of the place. Vaguely Rowan wondered how the manhole kept the reek from entering the streets... But then, the scent here was not just human waste. The overpowering smell was that of decay and blood, not strong enough to show there was something nearby, but fact enough that there were more of those undead fiends waiting in the dark.
All the more reason to find Sarah.
But they couldn't.
They searched like children looking for a treasure in a sandbox, although they were looking for more than treasure in something more than a sandbox. Yet, as noted before, the only thing they found that even pointed out that Sarah was once in existence here was the splatter of crimson. That, and the broken glasses half submerged in the murky water, and the grocery bag she held broken and ripped open with its contents lying in the liquid.
They made a shot at calling out her name, even daring to wander into the darkness that wasn't lit by the dim flame-emitted lights allowed passage by the broken manhole cover, only to dart back into the lit portion for fear of walking, unknowing, into the arms of something hungry for flesh. Although they could hear no moans, the stench of decay grew ever more stronger.
They called for what seemed an hour, desperation tingeing their voices. But there was no response. Maybe Sarah was just too weak to answer the call? But then, without her glasses to enable better vision, without a light to guide her way, and with cuts over the girl's body that would undoubtedly lead the undead stragglers to her, maybe she was...
Rowan shook her head to rid herself of the thought. Either way, they had no flashlight, and venturing further into the dark would be suicide, because they didn't know what lay behind it. So they couldn't go any further.
Yet the two continued to scream for Sarah to follow the light shining down on them by the manhole, however dim. The two stopped short, however, when the stench again drew closer, the smell of rotten meat signifying something wascoming. And then they heard the sloshing of water nearby, and a low moan...
In unison, both headed for the manhole, Kristin boosting Rowan up first before the brunette reached down to yank Kristin (which was a hard feat, seeing as Kristin was somewhat overweight. Rowan was being led by pure adrenaline now.) up and out the hole in the ground. As soon as the sweater-clad Kristin had her ankles past the hole's boundary, the torn and broken figure of a lonesome undead wandered into the lit portion of the sewers. It was a male, his lower jaw ripped off crudely and exposing a flopping tongue, his left leg ripped with numerous gashes that were made by something inhuman. That rose chills in both Rowan and Kristin.
What could there be that was possibly worse than a giant lizard in the sewers that seemed to come from urban legends, from the zombies and rotted dogs in the streets?
The zombie glanced around mindlessly, searching for the source of the scent of blood. Its sightless eyes rose and found the figure of Kristin scrambling through the manhole, and Rowan could see, through the dark, its nose working, twitching at the scent of blood. It rose its arms and moaned out that pitiful call, trying to reach for her but unable to. A moment later, his chorus was joined by three more. Two in the sewer tunnels-
and one behind the two girls.
In an instant, they were standing and running, Kristin swinging around her purse so that it smashed the zombified woman behind them in the cheek, knocking her off balance for a moment that would be their escape. They took to a run, stopping a few minutes later when they were out of reach to catch their breath, with Kristin breathing haggardly, her face flushed red.
And then they headed to the only shelter they knew. The one the three of them shared. But now, the three was cut down to two.
Above them, the sun was rising, its first rays of light striking vainly through the fire-induced smoke coating the entire city of Raccoon. But even the center of the solar system could not break the gloom.
Dawn rose.
The moment the two got back to the shed, its walls now covered with the blood of the torn hands of those undead that tried to get in when they were gone, and old handprints of those that attempted to break in when it was inhabited, both plopped onto the ground inside, curling up in little balls and huddling up side by side to gain warmth. After all, autumn was coming, and the wind was growing steadily bitterer. Even with Rowan's jacket on and Kristin wearing her sweatshirt, the wind still made them shiver. Even more so now because the wind held the acrid scent of fumed and smoke, and of course blood and rot.
Their weapons clanked on the cement flooring beside them, each coated with fresh blood, even when their victims appeared to be more dead than alive. They ad met their share of zombies coming back, and managed to run from one or two dogs that appeared from the alleyways or behind trash cans and the like. When the entered the yard holding the shed, they met another one...but there was no point in fighting it. The woman who was in the upper floor of the house whose property the shed sat upon became one of the creatures, and in the process of slamming into the window to get outside, since it didn't seem to have the mental capacity anymore, or the sense, to go down the stairs and use the door, the window shattered and the woman fell two stories to the ground. Her legs broken, and when Rowan and Kristin approached, she could do little more than claw towards them.
In any case, neither said a word for the first few moments. After a couple of minutes, Rowan sighed and leaned against her friend's shoulder, her look distressed and despair-ridden. Kristin looked in no better shape. She merely closed her eyes, and as Rowan began to drift off, she felt Kristin shake with a silent sob. Rowan would have cried too...but she didn't think she would be able to. After seeing her stepfather die before her, her mother, un-alive, rise to try and bite her, Victoria attack a zombie to save Rowan at the cost of her own life, Sarah swept away from something resembling, in their brief vision of it, a monster crocodile, and the whole mall of Raccoon overrun, as well as the entire city, she found it hard to show her emotions in tears. They just wouldn't come out. All the better. If she started to cry, she feared that her grip on willing to live would loosen, and she'd end her own existence.
But Kristin's silent crying broke her heart a little more. She cracked one eye open to look at the girl with tears streaming from the corners of her eyes and said, in a voice that broke as she spoke, "We'll leave soon, Kris... We'll get the hell out of this place."
"Sarah didn't," Kristin was quick to shoot back. Her voice was snappy, angry, and broken. "Vic d-didn't either... Or my family..."
"You parents might be alright still," Rowan began, alarmed at the last bit. They had yet to go searching for her family, because they lived on the opposite end of Raccoon City.
Kristin broke her off by raising her hand in the air. Within it was a sleek cell phone, splotches of red fingerprints dotting on side, blurred to show somebody tried to wipe it off. Rowan blinked, awed. "Where did you...?"
"One of...of the people... When you w-went to find your p...arents, and Sarah and I got assaulted by zombies while you were gone...one had this in his hand." She sniffed. "H-He didn't let it go even as one of...of them."
"You called your parents?"
"Sarah did too... No response. At least from Sarah's family... For me...the call w-went through. They t-talked to me... But...they..."
She fell silent. Rowan didn't have to guess what happened during the brief phone call, but what could she do? Say everything was going to be okay, that they'd all make it out? Well, she already did before. But that didn't make her feel certain. For all Rowan knew, they would die in the next thirty seconds.
She let a moment pass before asking softly, "Does the phone still work?"
"No. Line went dead. All of them..." She pointed to the door. "Out there...across the street... is a payphone. I t-tried again, but... There was nothing. No dial tone. No operator message. Just quiet."
Rowan winced. They're only other hope of getting in contact with somebody, other than roaming out into the streets to find survivors and meeting Brad Vickers, was a phone. And that was cut off. Everything, every line, every television, and so on, seemed to die along with the city. Maybe nobody was alive to operate the phones in Raccoon. Or maybe something happened to the main lines, and they got knocked down or burned or something.
But dread formed a knot in her stomach. Everything that happened - the infection of whatever made the once living now undead, the death of the phone lines, and the police precinct being one of the first things overrun - all seemed so...organized. Like somebody had planned it. Vaguely Rowan wondered if soon there would be a S.W.A.T. team entering the death city to rescue people. But without phones to contact them, and probably nobody getting out of the city alive to get help, she doubted it. Unless somebody called for help the first moment everything began...
That was only a day ago. It felt like a week.
Time flies when you're having fun, she thought bitterly.
"What...d-do we do?" Kristin asked, looking down at Rowan with confused sadness. For not for the first time, Rowan felt like she was being burdened with the weight of playing leader, and she didn't like it. But she would do all she could. She would make sure that at least Kristin and she got out of the city alive, even though she failed miserably in helping Sarah, Victoria, and even her parents.
"We sleep," she whispered in reply. "We'll leave soon...Maybe a couple of hours. And head to the R.P.D. Brad said he'd meet us there, and I've no reason to believe he won't keep to his word." Unless the beast that hunted him got him and his teammate... She winced. "Before we go, we stock up, though. Head to Kendo's or something to get firepower."
"None of us handled a gone before," Kristin whispered, closing her eyes again.
"We can learn."
Kristin sighed and leaned against Rowan's head resting on her shoulder. She didn't speak for a minute, then whispered in a tired voice, "I need a shower."
"You and me both," Rowan replied, the faintest hint of a weak smile on her features.
She closed her eyes and two minutes after Kristin started to snore, she was asleep.
They were jostled awake once or twice by the hammering of fists against the shed, or the scraping and slams along the bottom of the outside of the shed from the broken-legged zombie outside. Despite the danger without, they tried to ignore it within and kept on trying to get at least some rest.
In the end, each gained about a half hour of rest. Rowan's fears of dying in the midst of chaos now combined with the fear of falling asleep while walking outside, if that was possible. Her desperate need for weaponry to fend off the beasts out there combined with the desperate need for caffeine. From the rough look of Kristin, she could see she needed the same.
Rowan gave a groan as another fist pounded against the wall, accompanied by the low moan of the hungry beast outside. Actually, there were about four moans, not including the one closer to the ground, the one with the broken legs. For a moment she considered going back to sleep and ignoring their cries. God knew they needed it.
But then there was another slam against the shed, this time falling in unison with the screech of metal. Rowan was awake and looking about in an instant, looking towards the source of the sound. Kristin was already gawking at it, and Rowan could see why she was so surprised by the sound.
That was because there was no a dent in the wall of the shed, the tin caving in slightly to form half the figure of a palm.
There was another screech of metal, and another dent on the opposite side.
The shed wall was weakening. They needed to get out. Now.
"Let's get out of here!" Rowan shouted.
She was first up, reaching for the crowbar that was her weapon of choice and her bag of food, she headed for the barricaded shed doors, waiting as patiently as possible as Kristin scooped up her axe and slung her purse over her shoulder. Why she dragged that thing with her was a mystery to Rowan... Maybe because it was a secondary melee weapon, or maybe because she didn't want to lose what was in it.
If they didn't hurry, they would be losing more than what was within the purse. Already another dent appeared in the shed walls, and in one of the already formed dents, a hand broke through, the fingers that hit the tin looking broken and battered. But the monster that's arm it was attached to felt no pain.
Kristin nodded and was running to the door beside Rowan when another fist broke through the wall. This one lost about two fingers courtesy of the jagged pieces of metal around the broken hole. By the time a third hole was opened, the barricade was removed and Rowan shoved the door open, running out and swinging her crowbar and at the same time trying to keep her grocery bag still.
She was met with resistance, naturally. There were two more zombies shambling towards the shed, arms outstretched. Behind them, the ones trying to break in noticed the noise from the front of the shed and were heading in their direction. Rowan didn't have the weaponry or the speed to take all of them down. She could merely swipe the first two heading to them from the street on the head, knocking them off balance and sending them stumbling off in the other direction. Before they could return to chasing after her, Kristin was out of the shed with her axe raised, and the two whip-lashed undead sudden had no eyes to look at the humans they couldn't see through their glaze, much less a mouth to bite them with.
Before the others could even round the corner of the makeshift shelter to come in contact with them, Rowan and Kristin were running.
The trip afterwards was a brief one, without many events. Of course there were more of the acclaimed zombies in the road, and once they caught their scent the undead began to head in for the kill, but old Night of the Living Dead movies proved not to be so wrong at the fact that they were slow-moving overall. Many of the zombies tried to speed up their walking pace to catch them, but many of them also fell, their legs weak thanks to the rotting of cells within. Those that didn't fall didn't give Rowan or Kristin a run for their money. A simple strike to the head or temple, or even the chest to push them back or their legs to knock them down, got them out of danger.
The dogs, on the other hand... Well, strangely, they only saw one, and that one was dispatched by a flaming beam of metal that fell the ceiling from inside a house they passed and broke out of a window. Luck ensured that the beam fell on the dog, capturing it beneath the wooden ceiling pillar and burning it alive.
Rowan was also pleased to note, somewhat, that stopping at a gas station a few moments later proved useful. The electricity in the store was still running, although the television and radio still didn't work, and there was still no dial tone to the phone. There wasn't much use of the gas station other than grabbing up a few bits of food to replace Kristin's broken bag. They were also lucky enough to get a pot of coffee set up, after getting a container of Foldgers, some hot water, and locking the zombified cashier in the back room of the gas station/store.
They walked out about twenty minutes later, both armed with a weapon, a bag of groceries, a steaming cup of coffee, and Kristin's infamous purse. Their weapons were in one hand, the bag looped around their opposite arm and that same opposite arm holding the coffee. Rowan almost laughed at the frustration on Kristin's face when she tried to carry her purse and bag in the same hand without having it make too much noise, and the sweatshirt-clad Kristin looked relieved when she finished her coffee and tossed the styrofoam cup on the ground carelessly.
Rowan finished her own a few moments later as they strolled past a group of straggling zombies, and didn't hesitate to chuck her cup at one of them and make it swing around, only to ram into another.
Although she felt guilty afterwards because of the thought that that zombie was once a human with a life, for the moment she felt the first gleam of joy breaking through her own personal gloom. Kristin's laugh tickled her heart, and for once, she gave a pure smile.
And all the time they were unaware. Something was watching from above, its yellow eyesglaring attheir movements intensely. In only a few moments, everything was about to change.
It was so sudden that Rowan fell backwards, her arms flailing in an attempt to catch her balance and the bag groceries clattering to the ground along with her crowbar. Kristin stood still, giving a wild shriek and then jumping back, tempted to run but holding firm to her new location for the sake of helping her friend. She raised her axe with some difficulty because of what was on her arm, then shrugged off the bag and purse, grimacing at the sound of cans within the plastic bag slamming onto the pavement.
"Jeeeesus," Rowan could only whisper, now standing still and straight. Her eyes were on the beast in front of them, and on its horrible, yellow eyes gazing at them hungrily.
"The fuck is it?" Kristin hissed, stalking backwards. She hurried her pace when the beast began to mimic her, but by moving forwards.
"I don't know, but move!" Rowan shouted severely, and she stretched out an arm to grab Kristin just as the beast raised one of its own long, segmented forelimbs and swept it across the ground like a farmer harvesting a crop with a scythe.
She felt the wind blow past them as it zipped over them, heard Kristin's pained screech as it caught her in the arm, and fell back and to the ground with the larger girl beside her. Kristin caught her arm, blood seeping through her fingers, and Rowan took note of her pained expression before she struggled to stand. But her arm was trapped beneath the other girl.
Not for long.
In a single second, Kristin was no longer there, but rather within the segmented arm it swiped at ground with before. The claw at the end of it coiled around her, squeezing and slicing into her flesh, then pulled her closer to what looked like its mouth.
Rowan could only stare in shock for a moment because insects didn't have mouths that big... But then, it wasn't really an insect, was it?
Beforehand, after they walked past and beyond the group of zombies and their reach, Kristin was the first to notice the sound of clicking... Very loud clicking, coming from above them. They looked up, only to find a monstrosity hanging over them, clinging to the side of the building they stood next to with claws of one side of the body, and reaching down with claws on the other side. It swiped, they dodged, and then it dropped to the ground and faced them, hissing with anticipation of a meal.
Now, that same hiss drifted from what could have been its mouth. The mandibles on either side of its opened jaw twitched excitedly, and saliva dripped from its small, but sharp, fangs. Rowan was staring blankly at it, and was only snapped out of her horror when Kristin's scream sliced through her like a knife. The girl was merely inches from the creature's mouth!
"Rowan!" she was yelling, over and over again, pleading for help.
"Shit, Kristin!" Rowan shrieked back. Her eyes paced the ground anxiously, found her crowbar, picked it up and ran forward. "Hold on!"
She swung the crowbar as she neared, and its found home, burying itself into the one leg of the beast because it stood too tall for her to get a hit at its skull. It stood a good fourteen feet tall at the least.
"Let go, you sonnuva bitch!"
But it didn't seem to notice the gaping wound in its leg. It ignored Rowan altogether. It was more focused on its future meal. Kristin's screams became more frantic as the inches lessened to centimeters.
"Fuck!" cursed Rowan, and again she swung, and again, and again. She struck the leg a total of five times before she was noticed at all, and the end result was the beast raising the wounded leg to push her aside, annoyed with her. At the same time, her friend's shriek became a pained yowl followed by the sound of ripping flesh.
Rowan's eyes widened. "No!"
Rowan didn't need to look to know what happened. Instead, she found herself in a grip of rage. If she hadn't been so focused on destroying the beast, she may have been able to think logically. But logic was useless to her now. All she knew that her friend was dead or dying, and that Rowan would make the monster pay.
Again and again, she struck with the metal weapon, striking with the sharpened in and then driving the whole thing into its leg. Only then, and most likely only because she felt the crowbar hit something hard that must have hit a bone, did the beast give any consideration to her. The sound of ripping stopped, and Kristin's mangled and bloody body was dropped from its mouth, the various teeth marks along the throat and belly and everything else showing that the damage was fatal.
Rowan's rage ended at the sight of the body. And her heart fell. Her knees weakened and she collapsed to the ground. Before her, lying bleeding on the pavement, was a Kristin who was inches away from death, and miles away from Rowan. From life. Her mouth moved, trying to speak but only emitting gurgles. Her eyes were rolling, looking here and there for no particular thing...but when they found Rowan's, they stopped. They locked gazes for a moment, Kristin's hazed eyes looked at Rowan's hazel orbswith intensity, then weakness...and then nothing. In the few seconds they matched glances, Kristin was gone.
But the monster was not.
Rowan felt it moving closer to her, heard its hiss become louder as its mouth drifted closer to her body. Somewhere within her was the will to fight it away, to slaughter it for destroying her life that was already buried in rubble. But that will faded, and her body was weak. Her mind wanted nothing more than to let go, as did every other part of her. She wanted out, and didn't want to suffer anymore. So Rowan closed her eyes and waited for the beast's jaws to close around her, and spill her life's blood.
Rowan leaned slightly to the ground, brushing the pavement with her hands and grimaced as she waited for her inevitable doom...but then her hands found something. Something with a wooden handle. At first, she was alarmed, because her crowbar was lost within the flesh of the monster and wasn't wooden, but as she opened her eyes, she realized with a twinge of her heart what it was.
Kristin's axe.
In the frenzy that occurred only moments ago, the girl had dropped it. She didn't notice it. Neither did, until now.
As the monster's mouth lowered to her body, Rowan's hands clasped around the wooden neck of the axe. Slowly, she lifted it, felt its power, felt, in a sense, Kristin's strength, and felt the newfound rage and hatred that started to boil up inside her again.
And giving a scream that could be related to something of the war cry of a banshee, she lifted the sharp weapon, swung it to the side where the creature's hiss came from-
and buried it within its skull.
What happened next was chilling enough to send Rowan scrambling back in fear, unarmed again because the axe was embedded in the bone of the beast's head. The monster, whatever it was, let out such a screech that the only surviving girl in front of the beast could hear windows shattering above them. She could see shards of glass falling to the earth as the octave the monster reached rose and quavered and as its body slammed into the building it climbed down from. Then it was silent. The body of the beast came crashing down, its insectile limbs twitching, its eyes opening and closing as if refusing to give into the dark.
Then it stopped.
Rowan waited a few more minutes before she forced herself to stand and walk to the fallen insectile. Her hands found the wooden handle of the axe and yanked it out of the skull with a sickening squelching sound. Her fingers tightened around it as she stared at the insect creature, and her rage found her again and forced her to release it. The skull of the monster was nothing more than shards of bone and mush when Rowan stepped away, her clothes and skin bloodied and the axe coated red.
Somehow she found the mental strength to walk to Kristin and stared down at her. Then she fell to her knees, dropped the weapon, covered her eyes, and wept.
And when Kristin got up again only ten minutes later, Rowan was there and barely able to gather up the strength to end her, to keep her from living that miserable existence as a zombie.
The old Rowan was gone.
She was alone.
Sorry for the delay, again. Just got Word, so, yeah.
Meethrill: Yer name sounds like mythril. Sounds neat. Thanks for the reviews, and sorreh, but Sarah's not coming back... I liked her too, though. So I feel horrible for getting rid of her... As for the heartbeat thing, sorry about that but it was the only way I could get the page to break. Using the underlines and stuff didn't work for me when I put it on and since I just finished Outbreak a couple of months ago, and the heartbeat was a sound effect to it, I figured it would be a nice addition.
Meowth's Toon Dragon: Meowth! I love that kitty. Thanks for the review.