((Hey everyone! I normally don't do this [because we all know RE is full of gross shit] but there's a trigger warning on this chapter specifically for trypophobia. If you're not sure what that is, it's a phobia of things that have a lot of holes, specifically in conjunction with bugs. I know some people have a real problem with holes, bugs, bugs coming out of holes, and RE hasn't really done that before so just be aware it is a heavy fixture in this chapter and if it super bothers you, you may wanna skip the action sequences. Also there's a lot of body horror in this one. ILUguys!))
May 22, 1999
Ecuador
As they descended the staircase, one of the men took a shaking breath through his nose, gagged, and threw up.
"I'm gettin' there too," Carlos said, and swallowed the flood of saliva in his mouth. The door had closed behind them, and without the uncontaminated air to dilute the stench, the stairwell smelled with power overwhelming of blood, blood and something else; the smell of copper and rot, like an entire dump truck full of pennies and rancid meat. It was so cold that the dark hairs on Carlos' arms were standing up, his skin pricked with goosebumps under his corded black fatigues. "Everyone put your masks on. Got a feeling its gonna get worse the closer we get."
The team stopped, feet propped on the steps, and pulled the masks over their faces. Angled plastic pieces of equipment strapped tight against the back of their heads covered their jaws to the point at the apex of their nose-bridge in a rounded triangle, sealed off the precious mucous membranes from the outside world. Two large circular ventilators screwed onto each side of their mouth protruded from the mask like oversized bolts.
"We good?" Carlos asked. The smell abated but didn't completely disappear, still perceptible.
Good responded everyone but Kevin, who remarked with distaste about how he felt like a "fuckin' gimp" with the mask on as he tugged at its seams to make it fit, his voice projected and computerized through its ventilators.
They hit the floor, a ring of bootsoles on metal, and a scene unfolded before them that was so alien and violent that it took moments to piece together exactly what they were looking at.
There were bodies. Mostly of women, but some men, long dead and gray-skinned, bloated and blind. There were holes in their clothes, their green scrubs and white doctor's coats, as if somebody had gone to town on their bodies with some sort of grotesquely huge hole punch, left dark divots through which rib and hip and femur bones winked from their shadows. Their flesh was stripped from bone, now gray and dry, in savage, illogical animal patterns; one woman had the entirety of her spinal column and upper chest exposed, but the flesh on her face untouched. Another was missing an entire leg under her suit skirt, but nothing else.
The floor and walls were covered with slashes of dark, fetid blood, no longer glistening under the blue emergency lights but dried to thin crusts of material that flaked and scattered under the puffs of recycled air. A flash of movement caught the corner of Carlos' eye; in the junctures between the floor and the ceiling and the walls, piles of what looked like melted honeycombs made of black iron had been plastered, then plastered over again, an incongruent crust that was more hole than structure. They looked dirty and organic and disorganized against the sterling white metal plating of the walls, now struck through with filth.
Those combs squirmed with movement. Monstrosities unseen chittered and moved and weaseled behind and through the holes, climbed out of them then into them again in the frantic darting movements of insects. Carlos saw a fat, glistening larvae the color of milk, the size of one of his fingers, move behind one of the holes and then into the dark. His stomach lurched.
"You know what these are?" Kennedy whispered, coming up beside him. Carlos shook his head.
"New on me," he said, and had to move his gaze away before it would make him sick.
Then Carlos saw it. A laced black boot poked out from behind a desk. Carlos rounded the desk with careful, slow steps, one over another. A man in banded black armor lay behind the desk, stretched like a starfish, surrounded by savage hashmarks of blood, as if someone had thrown him into a blender without a lid and let the liquid fly where it may. One of the red eyepieces of his helmet was smashed out, a hole bored through his face clear to the back of his head. The red-and-white Umbrella emblazoned on his shoulder was half-torn from his uniform, the flesh of his arm underneath it missing, stolen from its connected tissues. His rifle was still in his hand.
Kennedy walked behind, taking pictures. The men grouped behind Carlos, looked down at the body.
"Poor bastard," said one.
"Umbrella…" said another, "might have known. Whenever something's fucked up, these stooges aren't far behind."
"Heavy," Kennedy said, "look. There's documents and a computer on the desk."
"Alright," Carlos said, shaking his head. "Gather it all into a stack. We'll bring it back as we go so we can grab it on the way out and don't gotta punch too far into this shithole to get what we need if we have to evac. Kevin, you good with being on scavenger duty?"
"Yeah," Kevin said, "I gotcha." He sidled up beside the dead Umbrella mercenary. Slung his rifle around to his side, and picked up the man's gun. The dead man's hand clutched it, unwilling to relent even in the frozen throes of death — No, this is my rifle, get your own.
The men were shuffling papers and carrying monitors when Kevin cried out, and every head swung to look at him where he crouched. Legs long and thread-thin spindled out from one of the holes in the mercenary's corpse, just under his ribcage, like a beckoning finger. Kevin started back and fell onto his backside on the floor, then struggled to his feet and moved back to Carlos once more, pistol in hand. The thick muscles of his forearms tensed like shaking cables under the clinging fabric of his uniform.
"Parasites," Kennedy said, "but what are they feeding on?"
Carlos was reminded of the mosquito outside, about its tumor, the appendages that struggled to wriggle free of its host. He looked up to the combs again. He opened his mouth to speak and was interrupted by the hydraulic hiss of a door, somewhere down the hall; Carlos gestured to the team, ordered them to fall back behind the wall. They did so, and barely dove behind its cover when the sound of feet pinging against the metal floor sounded somewhere down the way, behind puffs of exhausted breath.
A man in the same black banded armor trudged down the hall at in a frantic hobble, panting through the filters of his mask, looking back over his shoulder every few steps. His arm was torn open at the bicep, bleeding and dripping onto the floor. He held his arm against a great gash across his stomach. A heavy jug of water, the kind they'd prop upside down on an office dispenser, strapped to his back. He wore a pack on his side, stuffed to bursting with angular and round objects. So distracted was he that he didn't stop to look at the pile of evidence that magically apparated in his path, instead stepped around it.
Carlos waited for him to pass and then pounced, grabbed him around his neck with one arm and then yanked him into the sea of men waiting behind the wall. The motion dislodged the jug of water and it dropped to the floor with a massive bang that echoed. The jug rolled and stopped against the dead man's boot. The man cried out in surprise, but then was silenced by the barrel of Carlos' pistol as it tapped against the side of his helmet. He held up his hands.
"Just relax man," the man panted, "just relax, okay? You need food? I got food. I—"
"Shh," Carlos said, "how many of there are you?"
"I…" The man's mask shielded his face, but the way his body language wilted, just for a flash, told more of a story than glances ever could. "I don't know," he said, "five? Maybe?"
Carlos shook his head. "Why would Umbrella only send five spec ops for an entire NEST cleanup? You lying?"
"You're not…" the man looked around to them. "You're not Umbrella."
"Bingo," Kevin said.
"Fuck. Th-they didn't send five. They sent fifteen. Now between the fucking bugs, the fights over water — there are five. Maybe. Maybe just one. I haven't seen my squad in…"
Clickety-clickety-click. The man swung his head around, looked over his shoulders. He began to shake.
"It's coming," he breathed, "they're coming. You gotta get out of the hallway."
"What's coming?" Kennedy said, turned to look. The team was distracted, distracted just long enough, that the man broke free of Carlos' grip and took off in a run, boots pounding ping ping ping against the floor as he sprinted down the hall, his energy freshly fueled by panic.
"Hey, wait—" Carlos called, but it was too late.
It pounced, quick as a flash, as if magnetically attracted to the man's body. It was an insect, huge but also breakable-thin, legs the width of string, as long as Carlos' body. It ducked against the man's neck with savage speed, burrowed through the bands of his armor, shook its head segment back and forth and shredded the black leather and plate as it did so; it hit blood, and the man's carotid artery burst, began to spray. He screamed and clutched for it, muffled by his helmet. Where there was one, then there was two, then there was three, as if attracted to him through scent or some other invisible force. The things struck him to the floor, drunk from the man's opened throat, from his wrists, from the soft insides of his groin. Savage chittering noises and squeals between sounds of sucks and clicks.
Carlos held out a hand for the men to fall back. As the man's body twitched and shook and pounded against the floor, a translucent sac on the insect's back end, once yellowish, puffed up and began to fill with the blood, blackish-red and thick.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Kennedy breathed. "They're like—"
"Fleas," Kevin said, "or leeches."
"Bedbugs," Carlos added.
"I was gonna say vampires, but okay." Kennedy finished, with a look on his face that wasn't sure what the fuck the other two had seen in their lives, but he was glad he wasn't along for the ride.
They stood in silence, and one of the men looked up to the combs attached to the ceiling. Look, he said, in a whisper. One of the insects disengaged from the mercenary's body, its sac engorged, and crawled back up to the structure between the wall and the ceiling. They all watched as it regurgitated the man's blood and worked its spindly forelegs, patted the blood along the structure in its thin spots. Some of it dripped to the floor, down the wall. Those milk-white larvae, wet and shining, squirmed out of the holes and began to feed.
Suddenly Carlos realized what those nests were made of. Why the smell was so strong. Why there were no animals outside, why the only victim they'd found was a mosquito, an animal that fed on…
"Blood," Carlos said, "this was an HIV clinic back in the day, they said."
The men turned to him, eyes wide.
"It went straight for him cause he was injured," Kevin said, "but not for us?"
"We can't be sure," Carlos said, scooped up the tankard of water by its handle, and passed it to one of the other men, who hugged onto it like a child. "But we gotta get the fuck out of this hallway."
"There," Kevin pointed. Down the hall, buried in its navy shadows, was a display small enough to be missed by any except the keenest sights; the computer panel outside the door said LOCKED in a scrolling marquee with a Ghostbusters-style "no" sign around it, a red circle with a line drawn at an angle. "He was runnin' that way. That's gotta be where he was hiding out."
"It's a start," Carlos said, watching the insects. They burrowed and sucked at the man's body, unsatisfied with the paltry amount of blood they'd drawn. Still hungry. They chittered like crickets. "I'm gonna throw a molotov, then that's our cue to get the fuck out of here down to that doorway. You think you can open it?"
Kennedy shook his head. "Probably not."
"I got it," Kevin said, and unslung his rifle. Its laminated walnut stock gleamed in the light. "I'll get us in there, just say when."
"Kennedy — you rolling?"
"Got it all," he replied. "Let's do it."
Kevin knelt, aimed, and as sure as the sun rose and set, shot the panel clean off of the wall with a single crack. The door malfunctioned, started to shake and rattle.
Security protocol initiated, a robotic female voice said in the distance, pneumatic door controls disabled. Have a fantastic day!
Carlos yanked the circular key out of the top of the grenade, rolled it underhand along the floor; it clinked and bounced. The insects ignored it, still trying to feed on what remained of the man's body. The grenade exploded in a plume of flame and smoke, flashing out in a wide blast of heat, and the insects screamed, thrashing.
"Go," Carlos yelled, "go!"
They ran. Kennedy was fastest, his long legs carrying him with balletic grace in a hurdle jump over the mercenary's body and the smoldering insects; Kevin followed, cradling his rifle as he ran, huffing and puffing in the signature smoker's struggle; the rest followed at their pace, sprinted for the open door. Carlos barreled through the smoke and the smell of burning blood; the heat seared at his eyes, singed the fine hairs on his face. A great buzzing like the world itself had begun to vibrate on its axis, a great crowd of the things freed themselves from the holes on the ceiling and the floor. Wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Carlos headed up the end of the line, covering them from behind with rattling reports of his assault rifle. The muzzle flashes lit the corridor in bursts. When it was clear there were too many of them to take out, he grunted and turned, trucked down the hallway on heavy footfalls after his men.
"Heavy, come on!" One of the men cried. He knelt, drew a bead, and began to fire into the crowd, but the sound behind didn't die; where one fell, five took it place, tapping against the metal with insistent, hungry speed.
Kennedy and the rest of the team pulled on the door, their fingers curled around its heft, pulled with all their might. It slid open, heavy and solid, and the men piled into the room. Carlos shoved the last teammate in ahead of him and then slammed the door shut by a large steel loop welded to the inside, huffing and puffing for breath.
"Heavy?" said Kennedy, his voice quiet, wary.
Carlos turned.
A woman, her hair braided flat against her head away from her scarred umber-brown face, clutched a shotgun with a drum barrel. Her sleek, matte black armor was slashed and scarred and broken open in places by what looked like massive claw marks. Two men flanked her on either side, pistols aimed at the crowd of men from the other side of the room. Her eyes were dark and shining, like glittering chips of some black gemstone, and she crept towards them. Kevin already had his pistol in his hand, aimed at her head. Their sole equalizer.
The bugs outside threw themselves at the door, slamming and squawking in protest.
"Put it down," Kevin warned, "I ain't givin' you another warning."
"American?" She asked, in a thick French accent.
"You're damn right," Kevin said, "and I said, in American, to put it the fuck down before I turn your head into a canoe."
"Watch it," said one of the men beside her, also creeping towards him, "looks like there's three guns over here and only one over there, Desperado."
"Pff," Kevin sneered, "I don't need three guns for you assholes. Pull and see what happens."
With that, neither group moved; the air quivered and vibrated, and Kevin held his ground.
"Put your weapons down." Carlos said, from behind the sights of his assault rifle. "This don't gotta get ugly, but I ain't opposed to it."
"And if we don't?" She asked. It took a second or two to disentangle her words from one another.
"We got food," Carlos said, and then pointed to the jug held by one of his men without looking away, "and water. Enough for everyone. You need both, last I heard."
Her eyes flashed to the jug on the floor, then back to Carlos. "Where did you find that?" She asked, sharp.
"Around," he said, "don't worry about it."
"If we disarm, you'll give us the water?" She asked.
"If you disarm we won't turn you into bug food," Carlos responded, "food and water, you gotta give me something better than that. Like intel."
"It's a trap," one man whispered, "don't give 'em shit, Heavy."
"Weapons," Carlos repeated, and projected his voice. "Unload 'em and put 'em down. Now." On the last word it boomed, bounced around the room and reverberated back to them off of the metal walls. It made Kennedy jump.
"Tu aimes jouer à des jeux, espèce de connard malade?" One of her men fired back in rapid-fire speed, "Une fois que nous serons sortis d'ici, nous verrons qui joue à quels jeux avec qui. Attends, putain."
"Hey, that's cool," Kevin called, "but lemme give you the American translation." Then he began to cluck like a chicken. The men all began to laugh, except for Carlos, whose gaze was still focused on the woman with the braids.
She held a hand to the man beside her, silent, a gesture that cut his posturing short and had him fall back a step.
"So if we do not talk, you kill us?" She asked. "Is this the deal?"
"If you don't talk we ain't inclined to help you not get killed," Carlos responded, "looks like you've been havin' some trouble with that so far."
"If you do not, we die anyway, and you are no closer to what you're here for."
"You know what we're here for, huh?" He asked. Her expression faltered, as if she'd just been caught. "Who are we?"
Again, her eyes went to the water, then back to Carlos. On her silent command, they hesitated and then unloaded their guns, rounds plinking to the floor. They jiggled the catches, opened the drums to show no rounds were left, then crouched, placed them on the floor, and stood. Raised their hands in surrender. She was the last, but eventually followed suit, her chin jutted, proud and obstinate. The men on Carlos' team retrieved the weapons, shoved the loose bullets into their carrying pouches. On his order they patted the mercenaries down, came back with knives and garrote wires and backup weapons of all kinds.
She watched them.
"Eff bee see," she said, "Americans. Come to collect Umbrella data."
Carlos nodded. "Any reason you're also here and have a mass grave dug outside, just for the occasion?"
She was silent.
"Jesus," Kevin mumbled.
"We only do what we are order to," she said, "like you."
"Where've I heard that before," Kennedy sneered.
"We disarmed," she said, "we can give you more information. But we need water. And food."
Carlos considered this. "We had a deal," he said, "Kevin, fill a canteen and give them some of the food in the bag."
Behind Carlos' back, his men exchanged looks, unsure. Kevin did as he was bade; she leaned forward and snatched it like she expected them to round on her as she extended her hand. They tore the packages open and devoured the food cold with their hands, made short work of the tankard of water, and extended it for a refill.
"Not until you talk," Carlos said, "that's all for now."
She glared at him, cold and murderous.
"Your men need information," she said, "mine need water. You told us the truth… so you can stay. But one of my men will watch. You understand?"
One of the men behind her protested. She barked something at him, sharp and guttural and loud. The man retracted.
"Fine," Carlos said, "we'll both post a guard. We'll stay on this side of the room, you over there. When everyone's fresh we can come up with an escape plan."
"Teamwork," she said, and something in her face made Kevin shudder beside him, as if he'd caught a chill. "Good."