Chapter Three.
Seras looked down from atop the lighthouse and felt the urge to spit. Floating in the water, howling on the rocks, and banging on the lighthouse doors were more zombies than she could count.
"What a bloody mess," Seras said for the hundredth time. "God, look at them all."
"I see them, Seras," Integra said. "They woke me up, remember?"
Seras spit over the rail, hating the rotting things despite herself. "Well what now? We're trapped and soon they'll be in the house where our supplies are kept."
"My supplies," Integra said. "You don't need to eat."
She looked at the side of Integra's calm features as her face pointed downward into the writhing figures lurching about the gloom. "What's that supposed to mean?" Seras said.
Integra shrugged. "It means you've got nothing to worry about, aside from maybe me."
Seras licked the back of her teeth, thinking she might say something. Integra had been a puzzle to her lately, being as pragmatic and optimistic as ever, but saying odd things every so often. "Yes, I'm worried about you," she said. "What else have I got to worry me?"
"You should write for greeting card companies," Integra said. "Let's discuss how we're going to get rid of them and not worry about where they all came from, shall we?"
The problem was that most were floating around in the rough waves and couldn't be practically dispatched until the tide went out or they washed up on the rock. Seras could, eventually, kill them all but more would always come and it would be tiring to hack them all up. She would need to drink blood after it was all said and done, and the nomads she had met by the cliff a week or so earlier had gone off, leaving only Integra.
She'd had a few drops of Integra's blood before, back when she was having trouble getting over being a vampire and needing to drink the stuff. She hadn't drank it since, and these days, didn't want to.
"I could bring up my Harkonnen and blast them all to bits," Seras said.
"Seems like a waste of ammo," Integra said. "But let's not rule it out."
"You could sit on the roof with a harpoon on a rope."
"That's silly," Integra said. "And it would take forever. We need to keep them out of the lighthouse living area, so there's a time limit. They might even break in before the tide goes back out."
They had moved as many supplies up into the lighthouse tower as they could fit, but it wasn't much. Losing the living area to zombies was a bad scenario, Seras thought, worse than Integra was making it out to be.
"Why don't I just go down there and clear the ones near the house off for now," Seras said. "Shouldn't be too much trouble."
She was about to head down when the sound of a motor caught in her ears. She looked to the shore first, but then realized it was a boat motor. Both Integra and Seras came around to the seaside of the tower and looked, with Seras spotting the source of the noise. "It's a rubber boat," she said. "I think I see a proper ship out a ways as well."
Neither made any attempt to hail the rubber boat, or to warn it. "I'll go take care of it," Seras said, leaping over the rail and swinging into the side of the lighthouse. As she fell, she skimmed the side of the house until near the bottom where she pushed off and landed on the roof of the lighthouse's living section. Walking to the edge of the roof, she stopped and got a better look at who was in the boat as it tooled its way over splashing corpses towards a section of the rock where he would be able to disembark.
The motor cut out and the man with slicked back blond hair jumped out of the boat and onto the shore like some sort of grasshopper. He was dressed in a black wetsuit with red trim and didn't seem to particularly mind the zombies lunging at him. He batted them away with his gloved fists, pulping their skulls as they got close.
Seeing Seras atop the lighthouse roof, he took a running jump up onto it with her, making her draw her machete. "Who the blazes are you?" she said.
The man was wearing sunglasses and keeping his face a mask. "I had hoped to meet you under less stressful conditions," he said. "I'm afraid who I am and who I represent are going to be…off-putting."
"You're already putting me off," Seras said. "You're not human, that's for certain."
The man shrugged. "It goes against my better judgment, but I'll open with the deal-breaker. My name is Albert Wesker and I work for Umbrella."
He ducked her machete and tried to sweep her legs from beneath her with a kick. She was ready for it and jumped, bringing her machete down and forcing him to roll off to the side. The machete bit into the shingled roof, but was pulled out easily. Seras wasted no time coming at him again, swinging the machete from side to side at different arks and angles, giving him no opening to counter attack.
At the end of a swing, he bull rushed her, getting inside of her arc and putting his arms up to shove her backward. Instead of backing up, she stepped forward to meet him, colliding. Putting one leg behind his, she twisted, taking them both down with her on top and slightly off to the side.
Seras struggled to get the machete into a place where she could impale him as he did his best to roll onto his back and grab her wrists. "Hear me out," he said through clenched teeth. "We need your help."
"I'll help you," Seras said, her teeth lengthening and becoming sharp. Her eyes must have gone red as well, as she felt herself becoming angrier and less coherent in thought. "I'll help you die," she said.
"Seras!" Integra shouted above the zombie wails and the waves. "Seras, hear him out. I've got you covered."
Integra's marksmanship was nothing to scoff at, and so she stopped trying to stab Wesker. She had managed to straddle him and had the machete in both hands, pointed down towards his chest. His own strength had so far stopped her.
Wesker used the pause to pull his legs up and shove Seras off him. Rolling backward, he got to his feet. There was a gunshot and a hole in the roof between his legs. "Move and the next one goes in your head," Integra shouted.
"If you've still got it," Seras said.
"I expected a poor reception," Wesker said. "But not such poor communication circumstances. Can we discuss this somewhere where we wouldn't have to shout?"
Seras had Wesker clasp his hands behind his back as she led him inside the lighthouse, past the zombies, and up the tower where Integra stood with a gun, feeling confident she could split him down the middle if he tried anything. She tapped him lightly with the machete before he rounded the apex of the lighthouse's window. If he wanted to attack Integra, he would have to do it on a curve or break through a lot of glass and metal.
"Umbrella must be suffering a personnel shortage," Integra said, "to be sending you."
"Perhaps we should hire you as a consultant on dealing with personnel shortages," Wesker said.
"Not likely. State your case, Wesker, as you and your people are currently at the very top of my 'To Kill' list."
Wesker cracked a smile. "This isn't the world Umbrella had envisioned," he said. "The goal was order and peace, not chaos and death."
Seras felt her arm twitch with the urge to strike Wesker's head off, but she fought it. If this was Wesker's opening argument, she would likely get her chance in a few minutes.
"You must realize how hollow and ridiculous you sound," Integra said. "If you don't cut to the core of this little visit, I'm going to have my vampire kill you."
"Umbrella is working on a cure for the virus," Wesker said. "But we need certain things before we can proceed. I've come to ask for your cooperation in obtaining those things."
Integra laughed. "You think vampirism is the answer to the T-virus? That line of research is a dead end; crazier people than you have tried."
"No," Wesker said quickly. "We're not looking to use vampires in that manner. What we need is the DNA of a certain individual who had bonded with the T-virus so completely that there are no negative side-effects. With that DNA sample we could vaccinate the remains of humanity and even eliminate or perhaps domesticate the T-virus carriers."
After a pause, Integra laughed even louder. Even Seras let a menacing grin spread across her face, anticipating burying her blade in Wesker's skull. She wondered if he even had red blood and a grey brain, or was it just a mass of ooze, like an insect, inside his cranium.
"Am I supposed to believe that you'll use whatever vaccine or cure you create to help the people who are left?" Integra said. "You must think the apocalypse has driven me insane or addled my brains. I can assure you, it hasn't. If you did make such a thing, you would most likely keep it to yourselves and rebuild the world from your own putrid stock."
"Your naiveté astounds me, Sir Hellsing," Wesker said. "Or perhaps it's your cynicism. In either case, do you seriously believe that all of Umbrella's current employees are heartless monsters?"
"Yes," Both women answered in unison.
Wesker cleared his throat. "Fair enough. Granted, I'm a horrible monster by the general definition and so are many of our executives and researchers. I have to wonder though, what would you say about their families?"
"Is this the part where you pull out pictures of the Umbrella orphanage or wherever the ones who've managed to breed store their children?" Integra asked.
Wesker shifted slightly. "I was told to bring family photos, but there's no reason you should believe a photograph," Wesker said. "However, if wasting the resources it would take to show you actual children of Umbrella employees would encourage you to accept our offer, we can make arrangements."
"Let me give you a tip on negotiations," Integra said. "Words mean absolutely nothing. You'll say anything to make us cooperate, and there's nothing you can say that I can't rule out as an utter fabrication. Your actions are what's going to win my trust, and even those will be highly suspect."
Wesker said nothing for a long moment. Just as the tension in the air began to mount, Wesker broke the silence. "Information is the only thing tangible I currently have on me. I hope it will do," he said. "What we need is the DNA of a woman named Alice who has bonded on a genetic level with the T-virus in a manner we haven't seen before. Even her clones have provided inferior samples. There's something about her physiology that is the key to solving this problem."
Taking a deep breath, Integra closed her eyes briefly. "Then why are you speaking to us, Wesker? Shouldn't you be wasting your breath with this Alice person?"
"Many reasons," Wesker said. "One, we have even less of an idea where she is than we did with you. Two, she hates Umbrella more than you ever could, and three, she would attack and kill Umbrella employees on sight. I need you two to help find her and convince, or otherwise coerce, her into working with us."
"Your story just keeps getting worse," Seras said, unable to remain silent any longer. "Don't you get it? You're the problem, not the solution. What is it with you horrible people and that way of thinking? First it's world peace through awful bioweapons, and now it's curing the disease you've created and unleashed with that very same disease and using your enemies to help you to boot. You're all as stupid as you are insane."
Wesker chuckled. "I suppose Hellsing would know all about the folly of fighting fire with fire," Wesker said. "I don't have time to trade more quips. I'll come back in two nights, if you'll let me leave, for your answer. I'll also leave you with this: what is there to lose? The T-virus will finish off everything, that's a certainty. Even if I happen to be lying, you've got nothing to lose but a few sad, short years as nomads on the run from that down there," he said, pointing to the crawling, putrid serf bellow.
He stepped forward and looked about to leap clear over the side of the rail when Integra said "Hold." Wesker stopped and so did Seras's machete. "We don't need two nights," Integra said. "We'll work with you. Have a boat down on the shore when the tide goes out, as I'm not mucking about with those zombies more than I have to."
"W-what?" Seras said. "You can't…he…"
"His story is so stupid and obviously desperate there must be something to it. I'd like to know what that something is, and liar or not, he has a point about there being little at stake."
Wesker now turned, slowly to face Integra with his head angled towards Seras. "Well then, if there's nothing else, perhaps we should leave. Could I get some help in clearing out bellow?" He now looked at Seras.
"Help him, Seras. I'll get out things in order."
"If you're playing us, you'll regret it," Seras said, waiting until Wesker descended the lighthouse tower before following.
To be continued…