For all disclaimers: see earlier Chapters.
Faith
Chapter Eight
/January 4th 2001, northern Afghanistan/
18:52:09
As the Licker came through the wrecked door so hard and fast it wouldn't have stopped even if it had hit a wall on the other side, all three of the soldiers waiting for it reacted differently. They also reacted very quickly.
Most people, men or women, when faced with a flesh-coloured impossible monstrosity that resembled a Lizard crossed with a giant feral dog crossed with a Sabre tooth Tiger, would have been shocked into both utter silence and stillness for the second that the Licker would have needed to tear them to pieces with its massive claws. One sweep of its massive claws would have torn flesh and shattered bone, gutted its targets and left nothing but cooling meat on the floor, at least to its primitive brain. That was why, in fact, the Licker was so deadly-one never fought a creature like this twice, so never had a chance to grow accustomed to the sheer shock of seeing such a creature.
The three soldiers facing it, though, were Veterans who'd seen nightmares in the waking world for years, spilled so much blood and ended so many lives that the physical sight of even a creature like the Licker was more annoying than frightening, let alone shocking. Even as the Licker went for them, they were moving.
Xenia dropped flat and rolled under the Licker as it jumped, easily dodging its claws before coming to her feet directly behind it with a spinning kick that shot her upright so fast it was as though she'd stepped around the Licker rather than ducked it. Without hesitation, still moving in one long, graceful dance of physical skill, she leapt onto the Lickers back and rammed her knife into its throat as deep as she could. She wrenched left to right deeply across its whole throat with such force that she nearly dislocated her right shoulder as her muscles contorted with the strain. Even as grey-green blood tinged with red spilled all over her hands, she just hoped it had arteries to cut.
Anna deflected the Lickers claws slashes with blurring parries from her clubs, moving so fast that Matt couldn't properly follow her movements. Wood chips scattered through the air as claws nicked wood, but then the Licker suddenly reminded them where it had gotten its name and fired a thick red tongue that looked like it could drill through concrete at them both.
Without blinking, Anna caught the tongue between crossed clubs and, with a sharp and savage twist of the wrists, redirected it into the roof. The Lickers tongue cut at least a foot into the roof before stopping, but before it did stop Anna had thrown herself past the tongue at the Licker itself. Her clubs connected with all the force her long, powerful body could provide, directly opposite one another and angled slightly up, against the Lickers misshapen skull. Both clubs actually shattered the force of impact was so great, but Matt could see the effect the attack had had. Bloody, deep dents were easily visible where Anna had struck the Licker and, if he was right, fragments of shattered skull were in amongst the slick of torn flesh and monster blood.
Matt couldn't use his own weapon for fear of striking both women at such close quarters, but he had to do something. He considered running in and simply kicking the Licker in the head, but Anna beat him to it with a double-fisted uppercut that connected so solidly the Licker was actually staggered, its head snapping backwards. She landed a two-footed kick using herself as a missile on its right front leg as it staggered and a wet crack announced her success as it almost fell, but before she could jump clear it let out a hiss of pain that grew into a roar of fury and reared like a maddened horse.
It body-slammed Anna with such force her entire body hit the roof hard enough to imprint her back in the metal before she slammed back down to the ground and rolled away over and over like a spinning top, her entire body flailing around in a way that told Matt she'd been unconscious before she hit the ground. Small pools of blood marked her passage and he had no doubt that her head wound had reopened, although a glimpse of blood around her nose and mouth made him realise that the sheer force of the impact had possibly made her bite deeply into her own tongue or lips.
Xenia ignored the brief fight and rammed the knife into the already gaping wound in the Lickers throat so hard that the entire weapon disappeared into the wound. She'd never know what she hit, but whatever it was it was clearly important because the Licker went berserk.
The Licker leapt straight up into the air so suddenly all Xenia could do was take the impact as she hit the roof, so hard that she was astonished she didn't hear ribs snapping as she was flattened between steel, bone and meat, the air blasted from her lungs so abruptly she saw stars and darkness for long seconds. The Licker fell back to the ground and writhed so madly that Xenia's whole body was contorted in ways nature had never intended even as she didn't dare let go, her back on fire as every muscle in her body screamed at her. She couldn't get a solid grip on the Lickers slick hide, though, so it was only a matter of time until it threw her off...
The Licker suddenly screamed so loudly and shrilly almost in her ear that she was left effectively deaf, for the long moment before it finally managed to throw her off and into a wall-which she collided with face-first with no time to react. A hideous crack and a terrible shock of pain made her think her neck had broken, before she slumped to the floor and found herself trying to breathe blood, her entire body feeling like a rubber band. Her nose was broken, not her neck, not that the fact did her much good under the circumstances...
Matt was left with only one choice to do something, no matter how insane it seemed. He was not going to die down here, especially not at the claws of a monstrosity like this. He had too much to live for, Melissa being just one excellent reason he had to survive. Another was that, after this, he no longer had any doubts about just how much Umbrella owed to the world in pain, suffering and destruction. The corporation was going to pay if he had to see to it himself, one drop of blood at a time.
He charged the maddened Licker, dodging its tongue with the edge of speed only desperation granted you, rammed the silver letter-opener up to the hilt in its forehead with a shuddering crack that almost broke his wrist as he applied all the force he could to drive it through bone, then he twisted the hairspray canister just enough that gas started to escape before throwing the entire canister down the Lickers throat. He'd played a lot of football back in High School, so he had a good eye and an even better throwing arm. When he followed the hairspray canister with the lit lighter a second later, he was glad he'd always excelled at running track too. But first-
He lunged forwards and head butted the Licker with such force that he drove it right down into the floor, barely avoiding the letter opener in the process, and, head swimming in agony, followed through with a brutal kick to the ribs that finally succeeded in rolling the Licker onto its back, where it started flailing around even more wildly than before. He had no doubt that it would be up again in seconds, but it didn't matter.
"Go back to HELL!" he snarled, then span and sprinted away so fast it was as though he was eighteen all over again. Xenia and Anna were both professional soldiers, they'd understand his actions-
The thunderclap detonation in the confined space hit Matt with a blast wave which lifted him off of his feet from twenty foot away and catapulted him forwards in a way which suggested he'd been hit by a hammer wielded by God. His clothes started to catch fire even as he span through the air as the air superheated, bouncing off of the walls literally like an out-of-control missile. He might have screamed, he honestly wasn't sure things were so impossibly chaotic in those last seconds.
He span right over in mid air and, suddenly, his head cracked against the floor so hard that he was slammed full-length into the ground with such brute force he could feel every bone and joint in his body grind even as he continued to almost forced along the corridor by the blast wave. His head was compressed against the floor as though he was under a vice, just like the rest of his body and, as he was battered black and blue against every rough surface, the accumulation of physical abuse finally caught up with him as his eyesight shrank to needle point before fading away entirely with dangerous speed.
He wondered if he was dying. He wondered if what he thought mattered at all, given what had just happened. He last thought was that he hoped he lived, because he wasn't ready to die just yet...
15:12:57
Y
Leon Kennedy had come to a stop, almost a literal dead stop in fact, less than thirty yards into the complex. He'd been running at a flat-out sprint, seeing all of the damage and realising that the complex had already been hit made his decision easy, when he'd suddenly caught the stink of smoke. He'd tried to stop immediately, but his boots had skidded on the torn-up steel floor and he'd fallen to his back before rolling over and over again the direction he'd been running. He'd barely had time to take in the increasingly dense smoke even as he finally skidded to a stop, before he'd realised that the fire he was lying next to had set fire to his jacket arm...
He'd rolled frantically away from the fire and patted out the hints of flame on his sleeve, smothering it for good measure, before scrambling to his feet and taking a good look at the only way forwards. It was engulfed in a river of fire that left mo weak spots he could even possibly force his way through, a fire that was slowly spreading both deeper into and further out of the complex-or what was left of it-from what he could tell. That was a problem.
Sprinkler systems clearly weren't working, had probably been knocked out by the initial blast that had uncovered this place. The damage to the structure itself wasn't helping, uncovered stone would heat up, crack and collapse in the heat while damaged steel would have lost a large part of its fire-retardant qualities and would quickly melt. The whole place was going to cave in if it didn't blow up in very short order if the rest of the place was in the same state as the corridor, which he had little doubt it was.
Worse again, the only light source he had was the dim sunshine getting past the edges of the door he'd forced open to gain access and firelight, which meant that he could barely see beyond a dull glow of illumination that looked as though it originated in Hell. He had very limited fire fighting gear available as part of his weapons and gear pack, but nothing close too what he'd need to punch a safe path through a blaze like the one he was confronted with.
No fire extinguisher, no source of water, no fire blankets or other equipment? He wasn't going any further into the facility short of a miracle or what amounted to a Suicide attempt if he felt like trying to run through the fire regardless of risk. He was stuck...
He staggered as a strange sound echoed in a way that somehow affected the air pressure, almost reverberating inside his ears. Unable to hold his feet, he went down on one knee with a grimace of pain, only to spot the flames suddenly die down to almost nothing. The whistle of moving air grew louder and stronger, he felt blood start to run down from his ears, but his eyes were so wide as he realised what was happening that he only dimly registered anything else.
A massive shift in the air currents and therefore the pressure in the facility had just happened very suddenly. In such a confined space a great enough shift of air from one place to the other could kill by collapsing the lungs of anyone caught in it, or by scarring the throat and lungs so terribly that breathing without the aid of technological assistance was an impossibility. Or, which was what was happening here, it could draw in all of the air in the area in a very tight and small area before releasing it in a sudden and massive surge. The air released like that would, of course, be catapulted directly towards all of the exit points at great speed, along with anything it might have picked up along the way...
Leon's face went pale, even as he forced himself back to his feet, turned and drove himself into a hard run. Flash fire, the entire corridor would be swept by an inferno for seconds when the air came back, but even one second was all it would take for him to be boiled alive or seared to a crisp. He wondered if he'd make it in time...
14:33:06
Y
Ada Wong, after Racoon City, let alone after all of the other missions she'd gone on where she'd had to deal with Zombies, monsters, Mutants and even worse, was an old hand with fear and shock. Four Zombies were barely enough to get her attention, so she'd employed the tried and true methods and shot each of them between the eyes with flawless headshots. That, though, she could have handled in her sleep.
The real problem was a Nuclear reactor running wild and unshielded with failing safeties she would only be able to shut down with the Manual Override. She didn't even know where the switch, if there was one, was, but if she had to use a computer program she could be in very serious trouble. She could hack her way around most security systems, but Umbrella's never failed to be top-notch and very difficult to bypass. She simply didn't have that kind of time in the here and now.
12:12:52
She hurried over to the damaged reactor, trying to stay as far away from the damaged section as she could, found a battered-looking control panel and immediately typed in the old Emergency Shutdown Code she'd been given for emergencies back when she'd worked for Umbrella. It was worth a try, but not at all to her surprise it didn't work. She gritted her teeth and accessed the main menu, then initiated Shutdown procedures. That didn't work either, the system was damaged and a "Malfunction" warning came up when she initiated it. That made her hiss between her teeth with displeasure.
She used her knife to prise the control panel loose and started to look inside for any shorts or wirework which needed repair, all the while keeping one eye open for anything else helpful or dangerous. She'd find something and stop this, she would.
She had to.
/End of Part Eight. All Reviews welcomed/.