Chapter Three: Inklings

The thing opened its mouth and screamed as Sheva's bullets struck its hide. It was short, squat, with long, gangly arms that would drag the ground if it didn't hold them up, hands set into permanent claws, long nails flecked with red. Its yellow eyes shone in the starting rain, dark green hide, scaled like a reptile's, starting to speckle and glint before the clouds completely consumed the sun. The mouth, though, was the most frightening. Rows of teeth, too white for something so foul, lined a blood red mouth, tongue pointed and fat.

The monster reared its head back, shrieked again. Its voice was a high pitched squeal, stretching out for several moments. Then it focused its vision, charging towards the two, running and swinging each arm back and forth as it did. The two agents started firing, emptying their clips into the beast, and it fell back, blaring out and lashing its limbs in a futile effort to stand, then went limp. Sheva automatically dropped the clip from her Beretta and replaced it, running the slide as soon as the new clip hit home.

"What…..was that?" She shook her head. She had seen a lot of things, and this could, and would, be counted as one of them. "Is that our B.O.W.?" Jin-ho cocked his head.

"I would say so, Alomar," he started for the dead monster, gun trained on it. The gun itself was an old Sig Pro 2340, barrel adjusted to fire Sig. 357 rounds. So much stopping power and it had not easily taken down this beast. "It's like the one I took out so long ago."

"The one that nobody else walked away from?" Sheva asked, coming towards the downed creature.

"That was it, a Hunter." Hin-ho nodded his head. "They are hard to kill to say the least. If I'd known it was this, I'd have brought a lot more than this," he waved his Sig in the air. "But if that's it…"

"Then where is the rest of the town?" Everything was curious, and questions abounded. And now it was raining, making Sheva miserable at best. Her hair was starting to stick to her forehead, and mud clinging to her boots. "And where did this come from?"

"I don't know. Way back when, the local police assumed that it was from Veltro, maybe something they let loose to test, or something of the sort. It was just after the Terragrigia attack, after all. This time," he shrugged, "I could not pretend to guess." He holstered his sidearm, rubbed his hands together. "Let's look around a bit, shall we?" He looked at the dead B.O.W. again. "Together, this time."

"It doesn't look like we'll have much choice," Sheva said, looking behind the jeep's rear, and Jin-ho followed her gaze, and raised his gun in the direction with a start, taking a couple of steps back. Two more of the B.O.W.s stood in their stooping manner, reminiscent of reptilian gorillas, claws dragging into the ground. Sheva held her Beretta up, lining her sights with one of the monsters' heads.

"Run?" She asked, risking a glimpse at her partner.

"Run!" He agreed and turned away, charging back down the road. Sheva followed, turned back to shoot at the creatures as they came running after them, long arms held up ridiculously and swinging back and forth. The light rain splattered against her sights, cutting off their bright white dots and distorting them, and she fired blind, striking one hunter in the shoulder. It didn't even flinch as it ran. She fired twice more, and lost it. The Hunter was gone from its spot.

And Sheva fell, face slamming into the ground, shoulders pinched hard by something landing on her back and head buzzing by the B.O.W. screeching in its high pitched voice. This is it, Sheva hated to think it, heart threatening to tear out of her chest. Soon, the Hunter would do so literally. A loud crack and the beast tumbled off her back, hissing in the dirt, waving its legs, and Jin-ho pulled her up by the shoulder. She ignored the bloody stinging in her back and ran again, hair sticking to her forehead and this time she didn't dare turn back. Feet hitting the dirt hard, she listened hard for the B.O.W.s behind, screeching again and again.

At the fork in the road, both turned without a word the way Jin-ho had originally gone, passing rickety buildings sagging with rust. The sound of metal ripping burst through the air, and beside her Sheva saw a hovel collapse under the weight of one of the jumping Hunters, and a green flash in front of her showing the other landing before her, forcing her to dig her heels into the dirt to keep from crashing into it.

Jin-ho didn't stop, only drew his arm back as he put his left fist into the side of the Hunter's face. It fell to its side and before it could hop back to its face, he was firing into its face, breaking the bone and scale into a glob of mush. It didn't move anymore, but the other Hunter emerged from the rubble that was once a structure, baring its teeth and shaking rust off its flanks. Sheva put two shots into its chest, forcing the thing back a bit, and the monster hopped, coming too close to her for comfort. Jin-ho started firing at it, slow shots aimed deliberately, the second causing a snap in its shoulder, and the arm went limp, twisted backwards.

Hissing, the Hunter bared its free arm and glared and Jin-ho. Sheva took the chance aimed, blasted out its eye, and it fell with a final shriek, cupping the socket that once held a yellow orb and now was a mess of slime and ooze. Then the hand fell away from the eye and stayed limp.

"That was too close," Sheva took several slow breaths. "It seems like we have more than a stray on our hands."

"More like a pack," Jin-ho agreed. "But how many more are there, I wonder. This is worse than reported."

"Speaking of which, where is everybody? This place looks like it's been deserted for a while." She looked around, turning in a slow three sixty degrees, looking at the old hovels. "Wait a minute…" She turned back, walked towards a building wall. The building was trashed wood, unkempt and caked with dirt. She ran her hand over it, uncovered a black stain, caked in jagged lines. Holstering her handgun, she wiped more and more of the dirt away with both hands. She was almost finished but for small dustings of the dirt, the dark letters emerged into readable view.

We are abandoned.

Sheva used her nail to peel at one of the letters, cocked her head and stared at the flakes for a moment. That was it. The blackness was…blood. Old blood, coagulated and darkened by age and dirt.

"How long has this been going on?" She didn't realize she was thinking aloud at first, but Jin-ho heard.

"And who sent the call to the BSAA yesterday? And the pictures?"

Sheva hated to think of what was really going on. "Somebody wanted the BSAA here." The rain drowned away the crusted blood on her hand, dripping into the ground and it was lost forever.