Nemesis: Resident Evil III

Chapter Forty One: The Hunt Resumes

Even though the tunneling monster had gone off in the completely opposite direction and not stopped even after leaving the cemetery, Jill kept moving slowly after passing through the smaller open gate that was behind the cabin, er… where the cabin used to be. Walking on her tip-toes, with Carlos doing the same just a short distance behind her, the two of them would have had to slow down anyway since unlike the other pathways near the park, this one was heavily neglected in the areas of maintenance.

Grass and shrubs were not cut back from the pathway, nor was there pavement for them to walk on, only dirt and thick roots from nearby oak trees that crisscrossed the narrow open area like a bed of frozen snakes. There were also no light fixtures, well there were, they were just not operational, leaving the full moon's pale silvery light as the only illumination now that the rain had finally stopped. Everything was still wet and slippery though, with the young woman nearly tripping over roots or starting to slide a couple of times as they continued down the slope toward the old water treatment plant.

Part of her brain still couldn't process the possibility of the whole city being nuked at dawn, or if such a thing was even possible… not that Umbrella was ever bound by what people thought was possible or not… but still, even though Raccoon City was overrun with the T-Virus, probably beyond hope… it was so hard to imagine all of it just being... gone. Whether it was possible or not, the only thing Jill knew was that they had to get out of there as soon as possible… and it was a good thing that she and Carlos hadn't spent any more time in that security office, like they both wanted to… a nuclear blast was not something she wanted to wake up to, after all.

After following the dimly illuminated path for what felt like a long time, the young woman started to hear the sound of moving water, meaning that the Circular River was just ahead, with the treatment plant just on the other side. Regardless of if the Supervisors had a way out of the city from there directly, or if she and Carlos were going to have to stick with their original plan of using Ivy Street to escape on foot, there was still one obstacle between them and the edge of the city itself.

That obstacle was an old bridge; consisting of a metal frame and wooden planks, just wide enough for two people to cross at the same time, it was set right at the end of the path, just after a really small clearing that had at one time been a smoking area for treatment plant employees, the bridge crossed a wide canyon where the river flowed far below, with the old treatment plant sitting just on the other side. This bridge was the only obstacle, because all they had to do after that was run around the outside of the plant, and then keep running down the road into the forest, since this was the boundary of Raccoon City.

Rat-a-tat! Suddenly a flash of light and noise, making the young woman freeze in place as three bullets were sent flying toward her from the tiny clearing up ahead. In the flash from the rifle's muzzle, Jill could see that the shooter was sitting on the ground, leaning against a section of old chain-link fence that had been partially absorbed into the forest, which was probably why his aim was so bad that one bullet struck the ground near her feet, and the others were sent flying randomly into the trees.

"Don't come any closer!" The shooter warned, clicking on his rifle's flashlight. "That was just a warning!"

She knew that it was the last remaining Umbrella Supervisor who had been with Nikolai, even without being able to see him because of the powerful light beam in her eyes… even though his hands were so shaky that the beam only stayed in one place for a couple seconds. There was also a lot of pain in his voice, pain and fear as if only now becoming aware of how dangerous things were in the city. The man's breathing was rapid, but also shallow and labored as if… as if he had been shot.

"Don't even think about… aiming those weapons!" The Supervisor continued, trying to pull himself up to his feet by grabbing the fence, but failing. "Nikolai… Nikolai shot me, but I'm not… I'm not gonna lay here and… and die while he gets… away! Now walk… walk over here slowly!"

The young woman doubted that this guy could have hit the broad side of a barn at ten paces, but that didn't mean that she was looking for any more trouble than she had already gone through in the past few days. From the way the Supervisor was clutching his stomach with his free hand, it appeared that this was where the Lieutenant had shot him, but while it would have been really easy to simply kill him and move on, Jill needed him in order to figure out how the Supervisors, er… well, just Nikolai now, had been planning to escape.

"I'm not gonna let him… get away, oh no!" The man continued, his aim getting even shakier. "Now, we're gonna go to the… to the plant together, one of you is… is gonna help me walk… the other is gonna… other is gonna watch our backs! Help me kill him and… and I'll take you with me!"

Thud… thud… thud…

Clutching his wound, the Supervisor was rambling on about a helicopter hidden at the old water treatment plant, but Jill wasn't really listening, since a familiar sound now reached her ears… a sound that made her stomach turn into a knot. She and Carlos had just reached the wounded man, who it turns out was bleeding even more intensely than Mikhail before the cable car, when the young woman heard the sound of slow, heavy footsteps approaching from behind. Part of her didn't even want to turn around to look, wanting to believe that it wasn't possible, but no matter how much Jill denied what was happening, the footsteps were getting closer, and now the others were noticing as well.

Thud… thud… thud…

"Jill… Jill!" Carlos exclaimed, urgently shaking her by the shoulder, fear and panic in his voice as he looked back the way he came. "Dios ayundanos, no se puede matar eso!"

No, no, no! The young woman's mind screamed, now trying to fight back tears as the walls of her denial came crashing down when she heard an all too familiar growl when the footsteps got even closer… causing her to finally turn around just as the wounded Supervisor aimed his rifle's flashlight back up the path from the direction that she and Carlos had come from down the overgrown path.

"Sstarss." That awful, deep and inhuman voice growled as the light beam shined clearly onto the approaching Pursuer.

There was no escaping the fact that regardless of how many times the monster had been shot, blown up with rockets and grenades, hit with a truck, and crushed by giant rubble, the thing just kept coming… as if it really was invincible… Wesker's dream of the ultimate biological weapon finally realized. But something was different this time… most of the monster's clothes had been burned away, leaving only its pants and heavy boots, showing that its scarred and mutated flesh was even more hideous and deformed than before, and maybe it was a trick of the light, but the Pursuer itself seemed… bigger?

"What the… what the fuck is that?!" The wounded Supervisor yelled as it got closer, groaning as more blood spewed out from his abdomen. "Get away from me! Get away!"

Not only was the Pursuer slightly more physically imposing now for… whatever reason had caused it, but now it seemed to have grown more long purple tentacles like the ones that had been hidden underneath the sleeves of its black coat, and the half a dozen appendages were sticking out its back and shoulders in addition to its arms. Like snakes sticking up from underneath the ground, all of its tentacles twitched and waved back and forth through the air, but then Jill's paralysis was broken when the small clearing was illuminated by the muzzle flash of gunfire.

Ratta-tatta-ratta-tatta! The wounded Supervisor screamed as he started shooting at the monster, most of his shots missing, but hitting its massive body enough to make the thing mad. Now roaring and throwing its head back, the Pursuer charged down the remainder of the path, heading right for the wounded man with such speed and ferocity that Jill and Carlos barely had time to dive out of the way before it overtook them.

Ripping the rifle out of the Supervisor's hands, and angrily tossing the weapon away so that it flew over the bridge and down into the river canyon, the monster backhanded the wounded man so hard that a few teeth were spit onto the ground when he fell onto his stomach, and then the Pursuer shot out the tentacle from its left arm so that it tightly wrapped around the man's waist. The young woman fumbled to get her grenade launcher off her back while the screaming man was lifted up off the ground, but by the time she was able to load another grenade shell into the chamber, the monster had already swung him around like he weighed nothing… taking the Supervisor all the way up into the air, and then bringing him back down hard.

Both she and Carlos had to look away for a second when the wounded man's head was completely busted open on a large rock, but then there was no more time to be squeamish as the Pursuer discarded the body by flinging it into the forest… before turning its attention back to them. Having already started backing up, Jill and the young man were almost halfway across the bridge by the time that the monster made it start to shake with its heavy footsteps, only to stop when she aimed the grenade launcher at it, as if it remembered what the weapon could do.

Fwoosh-boom! The good news here was that the young woman had finally managed to get a shot off, but unfortunately her hands were so shaky from encountering this thing again, that the grenade struck the wooden planks of the bridge several feet in front of the Pursuer, leaving it unharmed while the bridge itself was engulfed in the blue, freezing mist that exploded outward in all directions.

When the mist cleared after a couple seconds, an entire section of the rusted and partially rotted bridge was frozen solid, shining brightly as it reflected the pale silvery moonlight while the monster growled in annoyance. She struggled to open the chamber in order to load another freezing shell, but there was no time when the Pursuer crouched down, and leapt right over the ice, landing so hard on the other side of it that the whole bridge shook… and the frozen part completely shattered behind it.

Shards of ice rained down into the river canyon as a whole section of the already old and neglected bridge simply disappeared, and now without the combined strength of the entire thing to hold itself up, the weight was too much for the part that was bolted into the rock behind where Jill and Carlos were standing. Screech! The whole structure now started to tip downward as the old rusted bolts were literally ripped out of their foundations, giving the young woman just enough time to run toward the other side, and leap to safety, with her and Carlos landing on the rocky ground just before the whole bridge, and the Pursuer with it, dropped down from sight.

"SSTARSS!" It screamed while falling.

Unfortunately, there was no time to rest when one of the monster's tentacles shot upward from below, wrapping itself around the bridge's foundation while the rest of the bridge was heard crashing down into the river far below. The Pursuer's roar than filled the air as its tentacle began to pull the monster back up toward the cliff where Jill and the young man were desperately trying to figure out how they were going to survive this.