Chapter Five: Lost
The Stalker had its prey in its grasp. Unlike its cousins, the Silencers, it didn't make sure to keep its victim quiet before it killed them. The man in its grip screamed and struggled to get away, though it wouldn't have done him much good, not with nearly foot long claws digging into his arms and legs. Pain flared in the creature's side; One of the others had shot at it. As if the man in its grip was nothing more than a stick, it wrenched the arms that held him in opposite directions, making an audible snap as his back broke. The Stalker dropped him, and advanced on the others, who were backing away, guns trained on it. The Stalker hissed at them, rising up on 2 of its 6 legs. An attack position.
One of them shouted something and after a few hesitating steps backward, all of them turned and ran. The Stalker dropped back onto all it's feet. It had done all it needed to do. And that had been to get any threat away from its meal.
Not until they were well away from the creature did they stop running. And only then because none of them could move another inch without a break. Billy leaned against the wall, trying to breathe so fast as to hyperventilate. He glanced at the others, all breathing as heavily as he was. Ada and her team wore shocked or sad expressions, some a mixture of both. The rest, like Billy, were all stunned. How had the thing snuck up on them like that? How had something so large been able to move that quietly?
And one question that was easy to answer; Why hadn't it chased them? Because it only wanted food...It didn't care about killing all of us, it only wanted to eat in peace. Billy didn't know what was worse: that something would chase them only because it was for ntohing more than killing, or that once it had its food it would leave them alone until it was hungry again.
True, only chasing them when it was hungry meant they didn't have to worry about it as much. But what if it didn't kill the next person it chose for dinner...What if it left them alive..would any of them really be able to leave that person behind while they escaped?
He knew the answer to that question as well, for some of them anyway.
"What..." said Leon, still gasping, "What was that?"
"A Stalker," Ada replied, "They're a mutation of the Silencers...We don't know what comes after the Stalker..."
Another scream rang out through the halls, sending chills down all their spines. Moans started to sound off every now nd then through the silence, and Claire began to get nervous. She had never wanted to hear that sound again. None of them had.
------------------------------
Krauser was in the lab. It hadn't been hard really. It was a simple matter to destroy the bars over the windows, then break the glass to get in. Pitifully easy. He would have expected more from Spencer...but then, there was still the rest of the place, which had to be full of traps. Hearing the same scream he'd heard earlier, he smiled... there were monsters too. Hopefully they would prove more challenging than the creatures in the other lab had.
He heard muffled voices filtering through the open door. Quietly he appraoched it and listened carefully. One voice was certainly Wesker's. The other he didn't recognize the other, but it was female.
"They've already lost one man to the Stalker sir: Booker," said the female voice.
"Hmm. Good...Maybe that will dishearten them a bit,"
"Doubtful sir. It will only make them more vigilant I think. She has the STARS with her, sir,"
There was a long pause. Krauser knew Wesker well enough to know that he was trying to get his temper under control before he spoke. "What? How?"
"She knew they were coming, sir. She had Phyllis and Tim capture them several hours ago,"
"So, Ryan and Green, hmmm...What of Matheson and Le?"
"They're with her to,"
Krauser didn't listen to any more. He had no need to. Gathering information about who was with who was not what he was here for. He was here for Ada and Leon...The rest would be mere entertainment.
--------------------------------
Just my luck... Chris thought, trying to see through the darkness, I'd have to end up in the area where the emergency lights don't work... The group had gotten split up when one of those creatures, a Silencer Ada had called them before, had attacked..at least, it had started as one. Three more had joined the fray not long after. Unlike the Stalker, they didn't want food, they were out to kill anything they could. He shifted the weight of his load a bit. One of Ada's group, Phyllis, had been with him. One of the Silencers had given her a nasty knock to the head. She had been out cold since. At least she wasn't to heavy, despite her height.
He was trying to decide the best course of action when his burden groaned and raised her head. She didn't speak, but Chris could make out enough of her form to see her nod in thanks. She stood fully on her own, "Where are we? Where are the others?"
"I don't know," He replied, "I was hoping you could tell me the first one,"
She didn't answer, but he could hear her moving about in the dark. He jumped when something behind him clanked, "What the?"
"Just me...trying to find the switch for the emergency lights...Though they should have been on,"
A dull light filled the room as Phyllis returned to his side. "I don't know why they were off..."
Chris looked up, hearing something. The ceiling was twices as tall as it was in the other rooms. He didn't like what he saw.
"Would that be why the lights were out?"
He pointed up, and Phyllis looked at the celing as well. Above their heads, in one huge furry mass were bats...Very large bats.
----------------------------------
Rebecca sat curled up as tight as she could behind a larged statue of a knight. She could hear the Stalker eating it's last victim. It had been chasing her, after she had gotten away from the silencers. It had been by pure luck -(for her anyway)-, that the man had suddenly come around the corner...The Stalker had grabbed him instead, and Rebecca had hidden. She knew she needed to run before it got done eating, but she was frozen in place. She didn't want to leave the shelter of that statue and see what the monster had done to the man's body.
She gritted her teether after a moment...She had to get back to the others..she had been separated from them when the silencers had attacked them. Telling herself over and over and over again she was not going to look at the body, Rebecca crawled out from behind the statue, stood, and ran as fast as her legs could go. She heard a low growl, as if the Stalker was warning her to leave it be, and nothing more.
She didn't stop running until she was around a corner in the hall.
The sound of flesh and bone being ripped and chewed, though faint, was still audible. Rebecca squeezed her eyes shut, wishing more than anything that she would open them to find herself in her old room, to find that this was just a nightmare. Wished that she could just pull the covers over her head and go back to sleep, possibly to have a slightly more pleasant dream. But when she opened them, she was still in the nightmare. Still in that dark and forbidding hall.
Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to continue on. She had to find the others. It wasn't safe to be alone.
-----------------------------------
Amber stalked through the empty halls. Not really caring one way or another if she found her team. In the end, only one person mattered, and that was her. She'd always been in this business for nothing more than the money. Sure it might be a little sad that the men -(and women)- that she'd gotten to know would die, but she'd get over it. She always did. She'd had other teams, other 'friends', and she'd gotten over their deaths just as easily. Some of them she'd even known longer than her current team.
A moan up ahead caught her attention. It was the first zombie she'd seen since the Stalker had been let loose. But this wasn't like the T-virus zombies that she had seen so often being used as target practice for the soldiers around there. This was another type of zombie..one created by the S-virus... Its arms had changed; split in 2 up to the elbow. The fingers on each half had merged together, and the fingernails had changed into long claws. It's teeth were longer and sharper than they should have been, though a few were missing. And unlike the regular zombies, it would not simply shuffle towards it's prey, it would run at them, faster than even the fastest of humans could run.
They were also the slightest bit more intelligent than a normal zombie; they would work together and ambush prey. Though they were still exetremely stupid...and often their attempts at ambushes would fail. Amber smiled in a rather evil way, and aimed her assault rifle towards the thing. Shooting things was always fun. She doubted this would be any less entertaining than her normal target practice.
-----------------------------
Billy was about ready to slam his head against the wall. He and Justin had been stuck in this dark, rancid smelling room for the past hour, trying to figure out how to get out. Why are there always puzzles? He wondered. Even Justin didn't know what to do, and he worked in the place.
In front of them was a large panel with 4 round indentions. Inscribed above them were the words "The Snake devours the Rat. The Eagle devours the Snake. The Wolf devours them all." What the hell did that mean? They would have gone back out the way they came, but, as Billy had come to expect, the door had locked behind them.
They had been searching the room continuosly and had come up with three silver disks. Each had a faint engraving on them, but without being cleaned it would be impossible to tell what they were, and even then it wouldn't do any good until they had four (if there were four) of them. And knew what order to place them in.
"Found one!" Justin said, holding out a fourth disk.
This one wasn't as dirty as the rest, and the egraving was worn. This one was clearly a wolf's head. Billy rubbed the others clean with his shirt-(which needed a good wash of it's own)- and placed them beside him. There was a rat, an eagle, and a snake. And of course the wolf.
"Okay..so what order do they go in?"
Justin shrugged, "I dunno...I'd guess rat, snake, eagle, then wolf..or it could be the other way around.."
Billy nodded, collected the disks, and placed them in the indentions. at first, nothing happened, then they heard a grating sound, and dust fell from the ceiling in thick clouds.Billy looked up, and saw what he'd expected to see: The ceiling was lowering ever so slowly...And the doors still weren't open. Fumbling to pull the disks out, Billy tried to think of a different combonation.
----------------------------
Claire pounded on the door as hard as she could, trying to get in. Tim was behind her, shouting about the silencer getting closer. She shoved against the door with all her might, and rammed her shoulder into it. It accomplished nothing more than a bruised shoulder blade.
She slammed into it again, and was rewarded with the sound of wood splintering. Another slam. More splintering. She could hear Tim's gun going off, but paid no attention. Her shoulder was aching now, and she could feel bits of wood pericing her flesh. It would be alot of trouble trying to pick eack splinter out later, but that didn't matter now.
She slammed into the door one last time, and it flung open. "Come on!" she yelled to Tim, and ran down the hall the door had opened into. Tim was quick to obey, and caught up to her in a matter of seconds. They could hear the thing behind them, trying to catch up, but Tim had wounded it to much, and now it was clumsy and slow.
With one last burst of strength, the silencer launched its self at the two, and slammed into them. It felt like a ton of bricks had suddenly been dropped on Claire's back as Time and the silencer landed on her. The monster kept rolling. , squishing Claire and Tim even further. It stopped rolling maybe 10 feet away, and it was a moment before it quit moving comepletely. With groan, Tim pushed himself off of Claire, and stretched, his back popping several times. Claire shoved herself up as well, dusting her jeans off.
"That hurt..." she said, half in jest, half in earnest. She also stretched, though her back didn't snap. She spit when she tasted someting coppery in her mouth and found that she was bleeding. must've bit my cheek when I fell, she thought, spitting more blood out.
"You okay?" Tim asked, looking at her with genuine concern.
Claire smiled and nodded. She knew she must've looked silly, smiling, since her teeth were more than likely red with blood, but she didn't care. They set off down the hall, careful to go around the silencer.
------------------------------
Tyler glanced around nervously...When it was well lit, he could find his way around the mansion fairly well, but in the dark, and not having time to watch where he was going; no way. He and one of the women, Jill he thought her name was, were comepletely lost. Around them were no less than 10 bodies...all of them missing limbs, and each of them very dead...But things never stayed dead in an Umbrella lab...Tyler knew that from having worked for them.
Jill was carefully avoiding stepping on any of the bodies as they made their way across the room...The silencers had made short work of these people. He knew it wasn't the Stalker, because there wouldn't have been that many bodies if it had been.
Jill was at the door now, trying to open it. He didn't need to ask her if it was locked or not when she slammed her fist against it. She rattled the door knob a couple more times, as if to see if maybe the door had been playing a trick on her the first time. This time she kicked it.
"It- Wait!" she started and intreupted herself. She looked as though she'd suddenly had a genius idea. She dug through her pants pockets, until she found what she was looking for. Tyler recognized it as a lock picking set. She went to work on the door, muttering curses every now and then. Tyler was content to wait for her to unlock the door...until a body near his feet started to move. It's arms started to split in two, and the fingers and finger nails began to form into claws.
"Uh...Could you maybe hurry up with that door?" he said nervously as bodies all around began to move and change.
-----------------------------
"Where are the others?"
"I don't know,"
"Where are we?"
"I don't know,"
This was Leon and Ada's conversation as they walked through the mansion. Constant questions and answers. Well, Ada's answers weren't much... They certainly didn't help matters. It had been quite awhile since they'd been separated for the group, and they hadn't been able to find hide nor hair of them.
A grating sound to the left caught their attention. "Falling ceilings..." Ada muttered, and turned in the direction the sound came from. Leon hesitated for a moment, he'd had his share of falling ceilings-(spiked, no less)- in spain...He didn't want to end up in a situation where he might not be able to shut the thing off. But Ada was heading for the battered old door across the room, it was obvious she wasn't going to wait for him. Sighing, he ran to catch up with her. She was halfway down the pitch black hallway by the time he was next to her again. He was about to say something when the door they'd come through slammed shut on it's own, blocking off any source of light they had.
"Shit" Ada grumbled, "Watch out...this c-"
She had no more time to speak before the floor dropped from beneath them, sending the plunging down.
They landed in a pool of water maybe 2 feet deep. A dull thud signalled the floor sliding back into place. Ada pushed herself up out of the water, her language getting more and more colorful by the second. Leon heard bits of other words in between the profanity, mostly about the pain she would inflict upon the man who'd designed that place. Leon stood as well, trying not to laugh at her. He doubted she would take kindly to being laughed at. He glanced at their surroundings. The 'room' was circular, and solid stone. Granite from the look of things. The water was only in the center of the room. The outer edges were dry...Or had been until the pair had fallen, soaking the whole floor with the water.