Nemesis: Resident Evil III
Chapter Twenty Five: Nikolai's Fall
Thud… thud… thud…
With her vision already starting to darken from being strangled by the phone cord around her neck, Jill no longer had the strength to fight Nikolai off, or do much else besides try to stop him from forcibly removing her clothes. Gasping and choking for breath, while also hearing those horrible, heavy footsteps coming up the long stairwell form the first floor. But how was that possible? Freeing itself from the truck was one thing, but surviving the explosion of an entire building? There was just no way.
Her thoughts momentarily interrupted when the Lieutenant tightened the cord around her neck, the young woman started to panic, which seemed to please Nikolai as he kept her pinned down, and then he backhanded her probably just to add insult to injury. However as her whole body shook from the blow and she spit out more blood, her hand brushed against something… something that might just save her life.
Thud... thud… thud…
With the last of her strength, the young woman grabbed onto the handle of the knife that was on his belt, freeing it from the sheath, and causing her tormentor to howl in surprise and pain when she jammed it into his side. Jill didn't have the strength to make it pierce more than an inch or so, but it was enough to finally allow her to take a labored, gasping breath when Nikolai was forced to let go of the cord in order to jump back. Ripping the cord from herself and tossing it down before rubbing her reddened throat with her free hand, the young woman coughed hoarsely while keeping the blade pointed right at him so that he couldn't…
Bang! Once again it was Jill's turn to feel surprise and pain when the Lieutenant took the pistol out from behind his back in order to shoot the blade out of her hands. There was a burning sensation across her fingers, even though the bullet had struck the handle instead of her flesh, and with the broken pieces of the weapon falling to the floor, there was now nothing to keep Nikolai from shooting her… except for the room shaking a little when he finally seemed to notice the loud thumping sound that had now reached the top of the stairs.
"What the hell is that?" The Lieutenant asked, turning around just as a very large figure passed in front of the hallway windows. "What in the name of…
"Sstarss." The Pursuer growled, as if answering him when it stepped into the doorway.
The monster immediately made eye contact with Jill, and looked like it was starting to walk right toward her… if Nikolai hadn't started shooting at it, that is. Bang! Bang! Bang! Suddenly in a panic as he backed away, the Lieutenant pulled the trigger of his pistol again and again, sending each bullet into the exact middle of the Pursuer's forehead, which should have killed almost anything… almost. Bang! Bang! Changing clips and continuing to shoot the monster, Nikolai backed up until his legs were against the table that the radio equipment was on… and now the monster was coming toward him.
Walking right through the pistol bullets as if it didn't even feel them, the Pursuer grabbed him by the front of the shirt and lifted him off his feet. Now growling at Nikolai with what almost sounded with annoyance, it started to move its hand toward the Lieutenant's face in order to stab him with that hidden tentacle, but then a sudden flash of something catching fire out on the streets below caught the monster's attention… causing it to move its mouth as if it were smiling.
For a few moments the Pursuer just stated out the window like it was deep in though while its victim was kicking and flailing to free himself… and then Nikolai suddenly screamed when it tossed him right into the glass. Crash! The window shattered completely, raining tiny shards toward the ground below while the screaming Lieutenant vanished from sight, and then a couple seconds later there was a loud wham from below just before a car alarm started going off.
The Pursuer had stood there and watched out the window for the whole time that Nikolai was falling, turning around only after the final impact, only to growl loudly when it discovered that Jill was gone. While it had been taking its time with the Lieutenant, the young woman had made her escape, stopping only long enough to recover her pistol as well as the jammed rifle, before sneaking out of the office. By the time she heard it growling and starting to come after her, Jill was already passing the second floor landing of the stairwell, and by this time the smoke coming out of the second floor was getting so thick that it concealed her location.
"Sssstaaarrrsss!" The monster roared from above as it also entered the stairwell.
It also made her choke a little, too, but that only mattered until she had reached the bottom of the stairs, crossed the lobby, and shouldered her way through the front doors back out onto the street. The good news here was that she could breathe again, and Nikolai had been dealt with before he could rape and kill her, but in Raccoon City there was always bad news to go right along with it, and this time that bad news came in the form of the Pursuer when it broke the press building's doors off its hinges when it chased her out into the street.
Sprinting as hard and fast as she could, Jill's only hope was to somehow get back to the cable car before it caught her, and now that the power was on there shouldn't have been a problem getting the transit started up… as long as she could make it there. Unfortunately, even for as big and heavy as the monster was, it could run a lot faster than she could, and the young woman had to fight back the tears from fright that were starting to well up in her eyes as she heard it getting closer… and closer…
With an angry growl, the Pursuer reached out to grab her once it was within arms range, but missed when Jill dropped to the ground, rolled a couple times, and then scrambled off in a different direction back toward the construction site. As for the monster, it had been running so fast that it was unable to stop after failing to reach the young woman, resulting with an irritated growl when it tripped and fell on its face, sliding a foot or so across the concrete while the young woman went around one of the finished walls of the new building in order to break the line of sight between them.
Thankfully, she and Nikolai had cleared out most of the infected people along the fastest route through the construction site, so Jill was not immediately set upon by zombies, and in turn able to find some cover before the monster passed through the construction fence, itself. It stopped almost immediately, though, squinting its single eye while turning its scarred head to look over the area, and this gave the young woman hope because it meant that it didn't know where she was yet.
Thud… thud… thud… moving again, this time at a slow walking pace, the monster began to look around all of the walls and equipment that it came to, making the young woman glad that there was only a few minutes of daylight left, since the dim orange light and severely elongated shadows allowed her to move away from the Pursuer in the opposite direction. Once there was some distance between them, it became easier to move place to place, so long as she listened for the monster's movements in order to tell where it was before coming out of hiding.
"That's right, you big, stupid bastard." She whispered as it went further away. "Go that way so I can…
Jill was so intent on avoiding the monster, that she didn't notice the hard-hat wearing zombie that was just around the corner of the wall she was passing by, and now it was groaning very loudly as it shambled forward, drooling with arms outstretched. Bang! Taken completely by surprise, and startled into a reflexive action, the young woman aimed her pistol and shot the infected man in the head, putting a hole right through its hard-hat, before feeling a knot form in her stomach upon realizing what she had just done.
"Sstarss!" The Pursuer's deep, inhuman voice yelled.
Thud-thud-thud-thud! With a roar that echoed throughout the construction site, she could hear the monster's thundering footsteps as it ran toward where the gunshot came from. Any second now it was going to be on her, and the only place that she could think of to hide were around the wall where she had just killed that zombie, and over nearby one of the large dump trucks that had been abandoned on the site. Once the monster saw the dead zombie, it was definitely going to search around the wall, so Jill ran for the big truck, crawling underneath it, and then climbing up so that she was lying on top of the large driveshaft.
As she expected, the monster ran right over to where the infected man had been shot, and the young woman tried to stay quiet while it could be heard walking around the finished wall. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought to herself, how on Earth could she have been so God damn dim-witted as to not only let a zombie wearing a bright yellow hard-hat sneak up on her, but also to use her pistol when the worst thing in the world was chasing her? These chastising thoughts were then interrupted when the Pursuer's huge leather boots appeared right next to the truck, causing the young woman to hold her breath, clamping her hand over her mouth… while the monster bent down to look underneath.
It growled and snorted, large amounts of drool flowing out from behind its big human-looking teeth while looking around, and this time Jill knew that if it's single eye turned upward, there would have been nowhere for her to go. By some miracle, however, the monster didn't see her; standing back upright and then moving away to continue its search… while the young woman silently climbed down from on top of the drive shaft. While the Pursuer headed back toward the partially constructed building, Jill crawled out from under the truck and went in the other direction, staying crouched down and hoping to get the rest of the way back to the cable car without being discovered again.