The car crawled cautiously over the rocks and large branches that riddled the bushwhacked trail he only knew from dreams. He got stuck only twice in the softened earth by the mangroves, and jammed flat discs of stone between the tires and the mud, determined to reach his destination. As he pressed the gas and pulled the car forward with a wet, organic sucking sound, part of him thought he shouldn't be doing this alone. The other part told him he wasn't.
He battled that thought back like it was molded and continued driving until the trees got too thick and too dense to weave through. It didn't seem so long ago he was pulling up to this very same spot. Eight months, he thought, eight months of shit nightmares just to be back here again. Putting the car in park, he muttered a string of vulgarities, and stepped into the dewy Louisiana air. Clouds of insects swarmed between the trees as he followed the overgrown path to the house. He reminded himself to be thorough, inspecting the sawblades, looking through the lynched dolls' hollow bodies, and cracking open the door to the Swamp Gator's van in search of anything he might've missed and found nothing.
The guest house smiled with twisted wooden teeth beyond the wrought iron fence. The white paint that once covered it peeled away in crooked shards as lichen and calcified mold took its place. The huge tendril that once was Eveline hung stiffly over the shattered remains and broke apart into dust, washing the surrounding yard with grey.
"God, I hope she's dead," he breathed to himself as strange doubt clawed at his chest. He pushed the iron gate open with his shoulder as it dragged over the unkempt ground, keeping his eye on the calcified body. The gate shrieked as its hinges scraped against each other for the first time in months with a cry so piercing he expected the corpse to twitch instinctually. A flickering in the corner of his eye made it seem like she might have. He waited to see if it would happen again. The wind through the trees laughed at him, waving derisively for his attention, but the stalk of the former bioweapon remained still. His guard settled hesitantly, as if she would lurch to life as soon as it fell. "God, I really fucking hope she's fucking dead."
He approached the main house cautiously as the tri-colored cerberus called him forward. An uncharacteristic yellow swath hung underneath the three dogs' heads that he couldn't distinguish from a distance. Walking up the porch stairs that creaked and warped under his weight, he paused outside the door and saw the yellow form was a warning, embossed with Umbrella's insignia. Written in rushed, slashing strokes, it read, "Biohazard evac immediately avoid all contact" and further down, barely legible, "hold your fire and retreat do not attempt to terminate the target it will not fucking die." Ethan lifted the paper and checked the back, finding it blank, and the paper fell lazily, returning to its ominous position. "Great." Ethan muttered to himself, filling the silence that he alone occupied. "Talk about 'you missed a spot.'"
Pushing the main door open and turning his phone light on, he walked through the entry hall and the long winding hallway. Every window and crack in the split wooden walls was sealed shut with grey and white calcium veins that solidified the already tough organism. He rounded the corner into the dining room where the infestation thinned out and stood quietly for a moment, waiting to hear heavy footprints from the other room, or the breathy groans of those monsters who only knew to kill. The hum of the insects and the creaking of the old wooden walls were all that sounded near him. His guard dipped at the perceived clearance of danger but he kept his ear strained for any sign of movement that wasn't his own.
He opened a pot that sat on the kitchen counter, expecting to find the same cannibal stew that had always been there, and almost dropped the heavy lid when a half-rotten face lolled back at him instead. Its eyes rolled back and its mouth hung drily open, long grey teeth and opaque eyes growing from the open brain. The remains of its helmet donned the sign of Blue Umbrella.
He closed his eyes and turned away more out of disgust at his finding than of respect for the fallen operative and waited for the taste of bile to settle in the back of his throat. "Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me," he said gutturally, placing the back of his hand over his nose and mouth as the offensive smell of it reached him. "This shit again?" Another second passed and he opened his eyes, blinking away the burning stench and noticed a dark, evenly-dimensioned smear on the coffee table in the living room. He took one last look in the pot, said a mental apology and thanks to the life that had been laid down, a curse to the one half-created, and replaced the lid with unnerved reverence.
The rectangular smudge on the table remained stagnant and familiar as Ethan approached it. Shining the light on it, the plastic of the VHS tape shone glaringly in contrast to its dark matte surroundings. It sat so perfectly positioned on the table, so deliberately placed, that whoever had put it there must have wanted it to be seen. He thought back to the note on the door, pushed the image of the fallen operative quickly by, and looked down at the VHS tape with sinking dread. Its dingy, formerly white label had two words scratched into it: "Welcome Back."
The light swept the room for any indication of movement, of eyes, of the source that his paranoia dripped from in itchy, viscous, unshakable strands. He sighed wearily and rubbed his face with his free hand. By picking the tape up, he would be agreeing to play whatever little game was set before him. An unmerited wave of responsibility surged through him. He was a systems engineer from Texas, unaffiliated with the Connections, or Umbrella, or BSAA, or any political force that had a hand in the events leading up to the incident, but he'd be damned if he didn't finish what should have been finished all those months ago. He pursed his lips and lifted the tape from the table, flipping it over. "Alright," he muttered bitterly as the feeling of responsibility boosted a determination that surpassed the echoes of guilt. "You want to play?" he demanded, addressing the house, its residents, and himself, all simultaneously in one statement as he brought the tape up to the rec room. "Let's play," he challenged, pushing the tape into the VCR, and the squat little monitor buzzed to life.
The screen lit up with the color testing bars as a timer ticked rapidly in the top left corner, just above "August 28, 2017. Chris Redfield. Dulvey Incident." The color bars flickered a few times and white writing appeared in the center: "Dulvey Field Log. Baker Residence. Two Weeks Post." The words quivered and then blinked out, and the color bars were sucked to the center of the screen.
The grounds of the house were coated in ash and debris. Umbrella operatives scurried about, ducking into green tents, analysing samples. High-tech machines beeped and whirred as Redfield surveyed the premises, walking with a purpose from station to station. Gunshots padded gently in the distance.
A white synthesiser spun vessels of green fluid in calculated, even circles. Redfield waited until the slight-framed man had finished writing his data before asking, "Bennet, how's it looking?"
"Another minute before the data's ready," he said factually. "This should be our most efficient serum so far. Any personnel attacked or infected by the E-series or WM-series can receive this dose as soon as it finishes rotation."
"I'll send all reports your way." He concurred, and worked methodically along the line of stations. "Lang, any word from Lucas?"
"No, sir, our devices we put in the mines haven't picked anything up since Lurking Fear."
"Good, I don't need that son of a bitch regenerating. Let's hope the suppressants that the Connections gave him keep him as dead as his mother." Lang's smile mimicked what his must have looked like as he moved along down the tables in his physically manifested agenda. "Garza, any more information on the Swamp Man?"
"Nothing besides a few broken machines, most of them were partway through synthesis." Her voice trailed off and she got a look on her face like something more pressing had come to mind. "The girl we rescued a few days ago, Zoe Baker? She was talking about it on the way to the facility when we took her to be cleared. She seemed to think that it was her father, and that we shouldn't declare it dead until we have a body."
"E-001 was terminated," he dismissed lightly. "Without her enabling the Bakers abilities, we shouldn't have anything to worry about. Jack Baker is as dead as his wife and son without her influence." Something more somber tinged his voice this time, recognising the growing collateral of the incident. "We have E-001's body, even if it's combined all the mold in the guest house. Having hers is as good as having the whole family's."
"Well that's just the thing, Redfield. If E-001 was terminated, there shouldn't be any more molded in the area. You talked to Bennet. Operatives are still turning if they're out there in the bayou too long."
"So what, you think that she's got a little network in the molded and that she's still out there somewhere?" And as he said it out loud, a fear rose within him that it might not be too far from the truth. Eveline's decrepit old body merging into the mold in the house, Lucas's mutation even after her supposed death, and the towering monsters that rose from the bayou during Zoe Baker's rescue operation. "She banked her consciousness," he said slowly as distant gunshots punctuated each word. "That's why the serums won't work properly and the Swamp Man won't die. There's still a piece of her out there." He counted his rounds and checked his comm. "Every operative that gets infected out there is only making her stronger. We need to get everyone out of here now. I'm calling it in."
He went to one of the desks and tore a sheet off one of the manilla folders. In rushed, scratchy handwriting, he wrote "biohazard... evac immediately…. avoid all contact." The comm on his shoulder crackled, the gunfire grew closer and cumbersome, heavy rounds thundered through the stippling of handguns.
"It's too bad," a thick voice drawled from the doorway. "I hardly got to have any fun with them."
Ethan turned slowly, knowing the voice without needing to see the face. For a moment, he hardly recognised the disintegrated figure who lumbered towards him. Swaths of skin and pieces of his body were missing, with wounds so open and festering that not even the maggots would salvage it. His swamp-bloated appearance didn't mask the small circular glasses or the familiar bow-legged gait, or the surprisingly high-pitched voice that had constantly rung in his head. "You," the word fell heavily from his mouth as Jack advanced. This scene had played out in the theatre of his dreams before, but this time there was no waking up. "Why did you call me back here?"
"Why?" Jack repeated, lunatic laughter tinged his voice. "I only told you so often. Surely you must have been listening or you wouldn't have come back." His tone turned menacing as he drew within an arm's reach. "You missed a spot, city-boy. Did you miss me?" he sneered and backhanded Ethan with superhuman force, swiping his displayed knuckles upwards across his face. A loud crack sounded as bones collided with bones, snapping Ethan's head back with a teeth-shattering force.
Ethan staggered backward, only to be stopped by the wall, and leaned into it as he regained himself. He blinked and shook the static from his eyes and dazedly watched a long string of blood rappel from his lip to the floor. Stumbling through cloudy thoughts, he reached into his pocket and dug for the knife. Any damage he could do or time he could buy could grant him the chance of escape.
"You got a job to do here, boy," Jack reminded him, striking him again so the knuckles aligned with his temple, and the force dug into the vulnerable point with what felt like the intent to kill.
Half of Ethan's remaining consciousness was expelled into the room with a vocalisation that overlapped with the bursting of blood vessels by his brain. The rough hilt of the knife slipped loosely between his fingers as he fell clattering to his hands and knees. He trembled trying to hold himself up, then bowed to one elbow, breathing heavily as the room swam around him, and fought to focus his eyes on the coin-sized dribble of blood that grew on the floor with stop-motion blinks.
"You ain't gettin away this time," Jack hissed, grabbing the shoulder seam in Ethan's button down and lifting him by his shirt. "You took my family from me, you hear?" He threw Ethan to the wall and pinned him there, one fist clenched immovably around the fabric and the other at his throat to stabilise him as his consciousness wilted. He continued with a sing-song quality to his voice, "You owe me one, Ethan! You'll make it up to us, for everything you did! Do you still have her gift?"
Ethan slurred something incomprehensible as his cheek rolled onto Jack's fingers, eyes burning with a despairing hatred before they flickered involuntarily closed. Intense pressure swelled in his bruised and bleeding jaw as Jack grabbed it so tightly that it bent his loosened teeth in towards his tongue. He choked on a gasp before his eyes opened, widened, rolled back, and an irrepressible scream erupted from his chest.
Jack released him contemptuously, throwing his head to the side with pointed impertinence before demanding, "What'd you say?"
Ethan spat a mucousy clot unsuccessfully down his chin instead of into Jack's face. "Fuck you," he croaked.
Jack smiled with black mossy teeth."Well, now, I'll take it that you don't. I don't know what serums that no-good corporation might have given you to try and take her gift away, but don't worry! It's easy to give." He replaced his hand on Ethan's face, setting his thumb on one cheek and his middle finger on the other, and pinched the joint between Ethan's molars so the hinge of his jaw gave way. He worked his fingers in purposeful circles, finding the gaps and angles that he could wedge between and squeezing them tightly to pry his jaw open further. Ethan's breathing elevated with fear as he tried to combat the physical manipulation Jack was imposing on him. He tried to bite down but only met Jack's fingers wrapped in the flesh of his cheek, and doing so only gave a better implication of where to press next. Jack wedged and squeezed his mouth open with a crushing, inhuman strength until every muscle and ligament was hyperextended and Ethan cried out from pain and protest.
"Oh hush," Jack whispered indignantly, his breath hot on Ethan's face. His words dragged out slowly, buried under a sadistic smile."Accept it," he cooed through tightly grit teeth. His fingers squeezed one notch tighter on Ethan's cheeks, inducing a pain so excruciating it sent a dense wave of black static into his peripheral vision.
Ethan reeled, closing his eyes to the spots that flooded into the edges of perception. I gotta stay awake, he thought, repeating it in his head with every elevated exhale, I gotta stay awake. If I pass out now, I won't know what he did to me. I gotta stay awake. I can't get help for things I won't know about. He battled back the static in his eyes and tried to distinguish color and definition from the muddy image before him. Hardly sparing the energy to resist the vice-like hand, he blinked laboriously, and hadn't opened his eyes again when Jack pulled his face forward. Their open mouths connected, wide and dewy and consuming. Ethan's raspy exhales crescendoed into wordless, vocal protests, emphatic and successive as he tried to shake his head free. Jack gripped with expectant tenacity, and affixed Ethan's dizzy, swimming head in his palm, fervently easing Ethan's mouth closed with his own.
Squeezing the joint again, Ethan's jaw yawned open, and Jack's cold tongue filled the empty space between the seal of their lips, muffling Ethan's vocalisations and abbreviated them to one whimpered objection, short and breaking. The grip loosened, almost teasingly, before tightening again as the hand that controlled him allowed their mouths to ebb and flow together, rising and falling with similar rhythm. The tongue probed his adjoined mouth thoroughly, tasting his blood and gauging wobbling teeth, neither eager nor rushing to feel and taste more than what the open space allowed before the motion receded.
He made his way around his mouth as if all Ethan's secrets were printed in braille across his teeth, his tongue, his palette, and he could only read them with the tip of his tongue tracing across every centimeter. When Jack had felt each little detail he could find there, he pressed forward on an inhale and pushed Ethan back against the wall, leaning into him and the crumbling surface with such vehemence that it sent paint chips fluttering to the floor. The impact forced a grimace to Ethan's face and elicited a breathy "mmh" from his throat. Jack probed further, filling the deep reaches of his mouth and caressing the unexplored nooks and crannies in his anatomy and making final, ambitious strokes at the back of his throat. The resistance of the wall prevented Ethan from pulling away as Jack graced his tonsils and the arches that surrounded them. Ethan choked and gagged with stunted whimpers, lurching and shaking as he drew shallow, compromised breaths around the blood that drained down is throat and the bile that had begun to rise. Reflexive, overwhelmed tears collected along his waterline as he suppressed coughs and sputtered around the multiple obstacles that got in the way. His agency slipped before his faltering vocalised protests stopped and his body melted between Jack and the wall.
Taking this as a cue, Jack's gestures grew shallower and regressed to Ethan's palette, to his tongue, to his teeth, until he released his jaw and pressed his lips to the other's once, and then once more with quick, impulsive succession. He pulled away with a red smear across his lips, vermillion pearls dribbling down and crawling through his beard like oily crimson beetles. Ethan's vision had almost completely washed to black flecks before he remembered he could breathe on his own, and the ring of blood and saliva that circled his mouth cooled and crusted over rapidly with every shallow breath he drew in.
Jack released his shoulder seam and Ethan clattered back into the wall, unable to lock his knees in time, swept with such an acute relief that a death-like peace came over him. "Oh, fuck," he mouthed, barely audible as he swayed on his feet. "Fuck, no, no," he begged, as his brain rewarded him for maintaining his consciousness by letting solace take it from him. His unseeing eyes crossed and rolled, and Jack's howling laugh echoed as he sank to the floor, into the first dreamless sleep he'd had in months.