- Indiana Jones Was A Tougher Guy Than Me-
Tall Oaks
And they were staring into the crypt that the mines had tried to be. This time it was filled with the dead. Not the undead…the dead. Sarcophagi and tombs and bodies were everywhere.
Helena went forward with Jill following her.
Jill said, amused, "You are a pig, Leon Kennedy. A sexist stereotype. I will never make you pie."
Leon seemed pensive. "I bet your pie would taste amazing, Jill Valentine."
Jill rolled her eyes at him. "Actually…yes. I make an excellent rhubarb pie…objectively."
The crypt smelled like sweaty shoes after a long run. There was that stench of old fungus and decay. No longer the acrid, cloying sweetness of new death; the remainder of decrepit corpses smelled musty and mildew. The cold stone was dry here, at least, surviving the assault of the river that had taken the mine that led down to it.
They crossed through the claustrophobic chambers while the dead stared at them from hollow skulls and naked bones. A long bridge led them over an endless drop into nothing. Ben curved a little closer to Jill as they moved. She kept her gun loose in one hand, the other atop his curls.
Leon and Helena took up the rear behind them. She said softly as they approached a massive door with snakes carved into it. "Help me stop Simmons, Leon. Please. My sister… was the sweet one of the two of us. The sweet one. She was in medical school to be a pediatrician. The President…all those people…tell me this ends with him dead or punished."
He held her gaze as they walked. "It ends with him dead…or punished."
"Thank you. I'll follow your lead. I knew when they brought you on as an attachment what you were capable of…I'd read your file. We all had. Get me revenge for the people he's killed. Help me do it…I'll bake you any fucking pie you want."
He laughed a little, and Helena smiled.
Jill was poking at the door.
The door was beautiful. It was etched with gold and copper and had an intricately laid curl of snakes in the center of it that bound it together like a lock. In the center, a message: Set Forth Evidence of Kith and Kin.
Jill blinked. Helena shrugged.
Helena said, "Anybody have anything that would work?"
Leon shook his head, "Nope. Not related…thank god. If I'd have thought about it, though? I'd have ripped off his balls to bring with us when I had the chance."
Jill was looking around in some of the wall tombs for something. The impression in the eye of the snake looked to be…a tiny circle?
Leon stopped and said, "Wait...hold on."
He reached into his pocket and shook loose the ring Ada had given him. And then he laughed. "Got it. Ada Wong…brilliant. Damn her."
He poked the ring into the indention, and the door made a grinding noise. The medallion of snakes in the center started turning to release the lock. They waited, watching it slowly rotate.
And Ben whispered, "Leon…?"
He turned his head toward where the boy was pointing.
Fifteen skeletal undead were lumbering down the bridge over which they'd come. Leon spun back with Jill and Helena. He glanced around while they started to pick off the ones they could.
On the far side of the bridge was a crank. He considered it and finally ran toward it. With a grunt, Leon started rolling the heavy crank bar. It made a whirring sound of metal grinding. The stench of sulfur filled the air. The door made a popping sound.
Leon shouted, "Move away from the door!"
And they did. Seconds later, the snake medallion spewed an enormous blast of fire from its spinning face. The fire burst free like a twenty-foot flame thrower. It hit the advancing corpses and set them ablaze. The smell of roasting bone joined the stench of rotten eggs. It was a terrible smell. It made the nose curl and the eyes squint.
Leon kept rolling the crank. And then more of the undead began to spill from the open tombs behind him. One grabbed his ankles, and another dove for his hip. He spun back and kicked the first off the bridge beside him. The other managed to have him stumbling into the wall as he kicked at it.
He turned his eyes and nearly died in horror.
Ben was running toward him.
One rotting skeleton grabbed the little boy from the floor and dragged him toward it.
Leon and Jill were both rushing now. Rushing. Ben screamed and stuck his jacket-covered arm in its descending jaws. It savaged the expensive leather but couldn't get his skin. Feeling his blood pound so hard it hurt, Leon reached them first. He kicked it in its brittle ribs and sent it rolling.
Jill drove her boot into the back of its skull as it rolled and turned its head into chunks of broken bone and congealed blood. Leon jerked Ben off the floor and into his arms. Helena grabbed the crank and started rolling it.
Jill shot one of the undead that grabbed for Leon's ankles, and he kicked another in the head as it fell to the floor from an opening above them. Ben, shaking, was stuck to his front like a monkey now. Leon kept his left arm looped around him and fired with his right.
The fire died down. The door finished its opening roll. And the world went quiet.
Someone was breathing fast and hard. Leon drew back when he realized it was him, and the boy clutched to his front. "Look at me."
He did.
He was shaking. But he wasn't crying.
Tough damn kid for somebody barely older than a baby.
"You can't do that, Ben! You can't run for me like that. Did you see those zombies between us? You ran right into them!"
His voice, Jill thought, was shaking as he yelled at the little boy. Tough hero that he was, he was scared. She put a hand on his arm to soothe him. She put the other on Ben to do the same.
Ben made a little sound. "I sorry. They were everywhere. I didn't want them to get you."
Leon pulled three shaky breaths. And he brought the boy back into him to hold. A hand on the back of his head put Ben's face into the bend of his neck and shoulder. It soothed them both for a moment. "I know that. I know that. But what did we say?"
Ben made a little sound again and whispered, "…leave you behind."
"Yeah. Leave me behind. That was the deal, right?"
Ben nodded against him and added, "I don't want to do it. I sorry. I lied."
Leon couldn't even be mad. He couldn't be anything at the moment. He tried to remember the last time anyone had given enough of a shit about him to run through zombies to save him. Claire in Raccoon. Ada in Spain. Jill in Tall Oaks.
And this little boy.
He couldn't even be mad at him because nothing had ever meant more than that little lie.
Leon kissed the top of his dirty little head and squeezed him close. "It's ok, buddy. Can't help being a hero, right? It's just what we do."
Ben made a little wet nod against him. Ah, Leon thought, there were the tears. He rubbed his back in slow circles to comfort him. Ben whispered, "You mad at me?"
"Not mad, pal. Not mad. Scared. Sometimes I yell when I'm scared. I'm sorry about that."
Ben sniffled, "It's ok. My mom yelled at me all the time like that. She said it was a cuz she loved me. She said sometimes when you love someone; you have to be mean to protect them."
"Your Mom sounds like a smart lady."
"She was. But she couldn't make pancakes."
And now Leon laughed a little and set him down. He knelt, eyeing him. "You gotta listen to me, Ben. Please. Listen to me. I can't keep you safe if you don't listen."
Ben nodded, wiping his nose with the dirty jacket. "I will."
Leon inspected the arm beneath the ruined jacket sleeve. It was free and clear. "No bites?"
Ben shook his head again. "No bites."
"Good." Leon rose and took his hand. "Good."
Jill was waiting at the door to the next chamber. She said, "You may want to pick him up again."
Leon glanced into the room. It was filled with water. The river had found her place beyond the big door. Ben leaped on his back and clung as they moved into it. Of course, Leon mused; it was freezing cold. Naturally.
"You know," He mused as they carefully avoided broken stone and half-collapsed chunks of the rotting crypt, "Just once, I'd like to have to wade through warm water."
The room was a semicircle. The walkway moved to the left, and they gingerly picked around it. The center was nothing but an overflowing pool of deep water. Tiny waterfalls spilled continuous streams down from the fractured ceiling above them.
They eased toward the far door and something in the water…shifted. Leon froze. Helena froze. And Jill watched the fin rise out of the water. Fin? Fins made of bone. Fins made of cartilage. Fins made of something worse. The fins were as long as a man. The fins were sharp and ominous. The body they were attached to delved back into the water without being seen.
And they all moved faster down the far hallway.
Helena said, "What the fu-dge was that?"
Jill answered her, "I faced mutated sharks in Raccoon City. I'm afraid that's the newest version."
Leon said, "I fought a nasty piece of work in Spain. Nearly freaking killed me. It was a salamander or something. We don't want to wait here for Nessie back there to pop up and show us her big grin. I promise you; we are better off never meeting."
The wet tunnel narrowed, and they moved through the crypt at a faster pace. The biggest problem with treading through water was finding out about the damn corpses hiding in its depths. They'd grab ankles and try to topple you. It slowed their progress.
When they finally reached another gate, Jill turned the crank beside it, and it separated in the middle. The top went into the ceiling, and the bottom sank into the floor. They stepped through it and hurried down a flight of stairs. They were back in the water, and it was rising still.
The water was rising.
Was there no end to this damn crypt?
There was a door waiting at the end of a long tunnel. The two levers waited for them to pull them and show the path. Jill and Helena grabbed them while Leon covered them. They tugged, and there was a clunk from the door.
But it didn't open.
The floor did.
It jerked and thunked and spilled them down into the depths beneath it. Again, they were falling through the cold and the rushing air. They hit the ground and grunted; they groaned, and someone laughed.
Leon queried, exasperated, "Why are we always falling!?"
Jill helped him up. Ben, the trooper, had held on while they'd fallen. They were on a narrow stone platform—one of several. And there was nothing around them now. They were suspended on platforms with pillars of stone beneath them. The platforms were crumbling. The pillars were crumbling. The cave they'd fallen into was crumbling. The water was coming. He wasn't sure anymore if they'd beat it or not. What happened if they didn't?
They'd be trapped in the Simmons family, sinking crypt for all eternity drowned. And Simmons? Well, he got away with it if that happened. Leon shook his head, irritated. The bad guys always had the advantage. The good guys were always the damn underdog. Why could the good side, just once, win the day without getting the shit kicked out of it first?
Geez.
The only way between platforms was to jump. Naturally, they were wobbling and shaking. The ground was unsteady and sinking and slick. They moved, jumping, hurrying. There was a set of doors down the long, winding root at the far side of the cave.
As they moved, the platforms got smaller. And the jumps got longer. And the fear started to gnaw at the back of the throat like a living thing.
A rickety, narrow, shivering bridge spanned the distance between two lurching platforms. It blew in the breeze from the rushing water around it and the promise of death to any who attempted to cross it. What choice did they have?
They started across.
They were halfway there, none of them breathing right, when something moved out from behind the pillar on the far platform. And they were face to face with one of the big fat nasty freaks that had tried to stop the bus from fleeing in Tall Oaks. This one was male. It had a blubbery gut that looked like it had eaten the bus and five chins on its bloated face. It had hair like Homer Simpson and was rotting in places as the flesh sloughed off and plopped grotesquely on the ground around it.
"Jill." Just her name, but she knew what he wanted. She took Ben from his back. She and Helena backed up the bridge, slowly, toward where they'd been.
Leon rolled the sniper rifle into his hands and lifted it, bracing it on his shoulder. The big fatty stomped its feet, shaking the platform it was on. If it got to the bridge, Leon doubted the thing would hold. The weight on the damn fatty had to be six hundred pounds.
He adjusted the scope, aimed for that fat face and all its chins…and the fatty let out a yell and started charging toward the bridge. Leon pulled the trigger when it was a foot from the first plank. The heavy round took the top of its head off. He turned the ugly face into a canoe. The fat body stumbled. The fat body tumbled.
Leon shouted, "Go on! Get it done! Humpty Dumpty and die already!"
He reshot it in the fat chest with the sniper rifle. This time, the heavy round did its job; it blew the fat body backward and sent it down in an earthquake of movement. The platform shook. The bridge trembled. Leon held his feet – courtesy of years of training.
And the damn fatty rolled as it fell. It took a chunk of the platform with it. It sent it careening to the side. They ran. What else could they do? They ran across the rocking platform. There was a snap of rock and stone popping. There was a roar of shifting movement.
They reached the far side and dived to the adjacent platform. And the one with the back half of the bridge toppled. It went right, left, jerked, and snapped the bridge in two…and hit the platform they were on while it went down.
That was it.
They were done.
They could do nothing now but run and jump. Run…and dive. Run…and pray. They leaped. They fell. Ben was tossed between them. They stumbled. They staggered and slid. Leon went over the side, and Jill yanked him back up with a desperate strength that impressed him.
He threw Ben the last distance to the outcropping in the wall. Jill caught him and went down on her butt. Leon tucked, rolled, and skidded out as the final platform tumbled into the darkness with a grumbling crunch of falling stone.
Helena helped him to his feet. They watched the last vestiges of their route tumble down into the darkness with a rushing burst of water, "Ok? Everybody ok?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Jesus." Jill gushed.
"I know. I don't get paid enough for this kind of shit. You wanna know something else? The healthcare coverage sucks. I have to pay for my own glasses."
Jill's mouth twitched.
He held her gaze. "Why am I running around in crypts, getting farted on by monsters, getting the sh-art knocked out of me by fatties…when they don't even pay for my glasses!? What kind of bull is that, Jill? Seriously? The vision plan offered by the government is utter clown shoes."
She laughed. She laughed and shook her head.
Jill said, "You're so dumb sometimes. We're running for our lives, and you're concerned about your glasses?"
"No?" He turned with her and Helena to move toward the archway before them. "That would be stupid, right? So no. I was not thinking of that. I was entirely focused on survival."
Jill glanced up at his face, smirking. "I bet they're adorable glasses."
And he winked at her.
Yeah, she thought, they were adorable. She could almost see them on his face right now. Was it wrong to be jealous of glasses?
Jill paused, "Leon…."
"Hmm?"
"Aren't you kinda your own boss?"
"…potentially. Well, I guess now, I'm kinda unemployed. And potentially a fugitive…so maybe not. But what's the point here?"
She held his gaze. And her mouth split into a grin. "You idiot. You pick your own healthcare plan! Why would you pick something with bad vision coverage?"
He opened his mouth to admit to picking the first plan they'd thrown on his desk, and there was a burst of sound. He turned back. Helena shouted. Jill grabbed Ben. And the ceiling burst apart in a crunching, gushing, explosive spill of rock and water.
Leon grunted as it hit him full in the face. They were all thrown up, thrown back, tossed away as the water raced into them and pushed them into the abyss. He hit a wall, felt rocks cut up his face, jarred his shoulder, and they were being sucked down the cave into the nether regions.
There was no hope of doing anything but trying to keep from smashing into the ceiling or the walls or the floor and getting knocked out. Where was everyone else? It was impossible to know.
He was sucked clear out the end of the mad rush of water and suspended for one shining second before plummeting into the freezing water beneath. He sunk, sputtering, flailing. And just started swimming.
The first outcropping he came to, he shot up for air, gasping desperately. It was a tiny opening. There was no room for anything but his head. He breathed, ragged and thick. And he tried to shout, "JILL!? BEN!? HELENA!? Is anyone out there?!"
There was no answer.
Had he really expected one?
Leon sank into the water with no other choice and kept swimming forward. He could hear the muffled, obscured sounds of movement in the water around him. He was an excellent swimmer, superb. Naturally, it was part of his training. He did breaststrokes through the dark, freezing water. He brushed against floating bodies and pulled his knife just to be safe.
He popped up for air and sank to keep swimming. His heart was hammering. It was pounding. He wasn't sure how long he was swimming now. How long? He hadn't seen anyone. He hadn't caught a glimpse of anything.
His mind said: Prepare for the idea that you might be the last one alive.
He shook his head, denying it.
He swam forward, trying not to panic. Where were they? Shouldn't he have found them by now? His arms turned him, his body navigated, and his brain punished him with fear. Fear. And he hadn't been afraid so far. Correction, his mind said, you hadn't been terrified so far. He was getting there now.
The fear of the bus going down. The fear of finding Jill gone afterward. That lingered. It stayed with him. It was magnified now. It was horrible.
Leon popped up for air and sobbed out a breath. His hands grabbed a jutting piece of stone and held on. He breathed, finding his center, harnessing his fucking chi, or looking for answers in the universe. He didn't know. He was just trying to keep it together. He bared down on the stone and breathed, harsh, low.
Something grabbed his ankle. He panicked, kicking at it. And it popped up in front of him. He put the knife to it and shoved it hard against the other end of the opening.
And he almost killed her before he realized who it was.
Jill gasped, breathy and harsh, "It's ok. It's me. It's ok. Ben is with Helena. They are ok. We're ok. We couldn't find you. I backtracked. I'm glad I backtracked. I'm glad. I couldn't find you."
She was babbling. She was rambling. She knew a dose of fear so broad and sharp when they'd gathered in an opening without him. Without him. It leveled her. She could barely breathe. Ben had started crying. Helena had him now, protecting him while Jill had gone back to look.
She hadn't really thought she'd find him. At first, seeing his boots dangling, she'd thought he was dead. She thought he was dead and floating. But then she realized he was up there getting air. And she could breathe too. She could breathe again.
He slid the knife off her throat.
Jill whispered, grabbing handfuls of his shirt as they both trod water. "You're ok? Leon? You're alright?"
He needed something to ground him here. He needed something from her to make him feel solid.
He grunted, "Stop scaring the shit out of me, Jill. I mean it."
And she laughed a little. "I'm sorry. You ready?"
"Ready might be overstretching it. But we'll go with…begrudgingly willing."
Jill smiled at him looking like a drowned rat. "Stay with me. Please."
"You kidding? If we weren't eyeballing deep in horror and freezing water, I'd probably be trying to drill you through my pants right now."
Her look was droll. He managed to look sheepish. "...sometimes...I go off on tangents..."
"Clearly."
She was laughing as she sunk below the water and swam away. He followed her, feeling the panic take a back seat to the relief and anchor him. It was insane.
They swam smoothly through the murky water. He finally popped into an opening, and Jill sprang up in front of him. She took deep breaths. It was so small they had to press together in the opening. She said, "I left them a few meters up. We pushed a grate and climbed through. They're waiting on a little ledge. Although honestly, Leon, I don't know that there's much over there. This place is so derelict. I don't know how we'll get out."
"We'll just keep swimming, right? There's got to be an egress point for the water somewhere. If we can find the river; we can find a way out. Simmons won't wait, Jill. He'll blast Tall Oaks off the map soon. We need to get the hell out of this place. What's the likelihood the B.S.A.A rescued those in the cathedral?"
Jill floated a little closer to him. The narrow outcropping was barely head and shoulders wide. He lifted his arms and grasped the protruding stone above him. It shifted his body enough that Jill could wedge in closer to him and get better access to air. It put their mouths even and their eyes inches away. Intimate, Jill thought, if they weren't fighting for their lives here.
Also, that iconic hair of his? Still, something to see soaking wet.
She answered, "Most likely. I had guys all over the area. If they were still in Whispering Pines, Leon, the evacuation should be done by now."
Leon nodded, "Good. Good. There's still some hope there, then. Hopefully, Hunnigan got the message out before Simmons put the muzzle on her."
Jill nodded a little. Their noses brushed together. She said softly, "Ready for the final push?"
He tilted his nose against her. "Grab this thing above us. Just for a minute. It takes the pressure off your legs and gives them a break."
"Yeah?" She reached up and grabbed it.
Offhandedly, he remarked, "I won the 100-meter freestyle in high school at State."
"Oh yeah? Champion swimmer?"
"Three years running. Lost out my senior year because I was too interested in getting ass…." Jill burst with a delighted laugh. He was so disarming. His charm came from, honestly, having a missing filter. He laughed a little, "And I'm digressing all over the place because I have to swim down into the murky water where some kind of enormous mutant…thing…is lurking."
Jill laughed, her blonde hair streaming all around her, "Yeah. It does put a damper on the mood a little."
He blew out a breath that made him look young and hesitant. "...ok. Game time."
He ducked down and she followed.
They swam the last distance to the grate. They popped up to Ben and Helena sitting on a tiny ledge. And he saw what she meant. Ben was barely able to sit comfortably. Helena half dangled in the water. There didn't seem to be a way out that he could find.
"…just my luck."
Jill nodded and trod water over to Ben to check on him. He said, "I didn't even hold my nose!"
And made Leon grin, "Good job, pal. You're a fish, huh?"
"Oh, yeah. I'm a good swimmer."
Jill smiled and floated back to Leon in the center of the outcropping. "What now? You want to scout ahead down there and see if we can find another route?"
Leon nodded a little, scooping his sopping hair out of his eyes with one hand. "Yeah. Helena? You want to wait here with Ben? It's probably safest that way."
Helena nodded, "Yep. Swimming? Not my favorite thing."
Leon nodded. He glanced at Jill. "Ladies first?"
She gasped. She grabbed his arm. She grabbed it so tight it hurt. He caught her shoulder. "Jill? Honey?"
And the water turned red around them. His guts turned to ice. "Jill?"
She grabbed his face, and her eyes rolled back in her head. She sunk down, and he went with her. The moment he broke beneath the surface of the water, he saw it. IT. It was a nasty clown that became a monster. This IT was a nasty beast that might have been a shark…maybe… a whale…or never been anything seen on Earth before at all.
It had Jill in its mouth. It had Jill in its jaws.
It whipped her around and took off into the murky darkness. But it didn't go alone because he grabbed one of its horrible, protruding, boney dorsal fins and held on. They were whipped through the water. It was fast and desperate. There was no time to consider if you could breathe or if you could panic.
You just…held on.