Chapter Five.
Seras found herself sitting on a throne made up of bleached human bones overlooking a beach made of the same material. The ocean before was blood and it lapped at the bone beach steadily while the sun, glossed over with the Umbrella logo, set on the horizon.
"You really screwed the pooch," a fat man sitting on an oversized skull said. "Yep, you really biffed this one."
"Shut up," Seras said. "Some help you were in the end."
"It's not the end, and you know it," he said. "I can still help."
"Well it won't be for a while yet," she said. "We're still on that bloody awful boat and you're still in your crate. I'll shoot you as soon as I get a chance."
A grin came over his face, hidden slightly by the fat on his cheeks. "It is a bloody awful boat, isn't it? Very bloody indeed. Try not to blow a hole in the bottom and sink the hole bloody mess, will 'ya?"
She got up off her throne and realized she was in a very tiny bikini. "You…" she scolded, picking up a femur and slipping into a pair of flip flops. "I'll teach you to give me dreams like these."
"Seras, wake up." Integra's voice boomed from the sky and the boned shifted, letting her sink into them. She blinked and saw Integra's face, looking down on her back lighted in dull red while an alarm blared. "Get up, Seras, we've got problems."
"What is it?" Seras was up and out of the coffin and looking for her machete. Her Harkonnen cannon was in its carrying case leaning against the wall and she went over to it, unsure about the need to use it.
"A biohazard outbreak on sub-deck four," Integra said. "I have no idea what the hell that could mean, but I did hear gunfire and screaming. I think something's loose."
"What?" Seras said, her mouth agape. "Dear God, it's like a running joke with these people."
Integra was about to lay down her plans when a familiar voice came over the intercom. "Would Integra Hellsing and Seras Victoria please report to the bridge," Wesker said over the ship's intercom. "Now."
"Who the blazes does he think he is?" Seras said.
"He'll know what's going on," Integra said. "Lets go."
Biting her tongue, Seras grabbed the cannon's carrying case along with a box of shells and followed Integra through the red, blaring corridors towards the bridge. They didn't meet anyone on their way to the ship's bridge, but Seras thought she smelled blood coming from one of the rooms they passed.
On the bridge, there were twelve sailors huddled together near the bow. All of them were carrying rifles they had raised when Integra and Seras came in, but lowered them upon seeing the two women. "Where's Wesker?" Integra asked.
The ranking officer stepped forward. A man in his mid-forties, his beard was graying faster than it should have. "He's not on board. He's hooked up to that terminal over there."
"Figures," Seras said. "I'll give you three guesses as to who's fault this is."
Integra said nothing and went to the bridge's communication terminal and pushed a button after picking up a headset. "Wesker," she said. "We're at the bridge. Explain yourself."
"I'm afraid there's been a bit of an accident," Wesker said. "With our limited resources, not all of our equipment gets the servicing it needs to remain free of errors."
"You're all incompetent. We were already aware of that, Wesker. No one is really surprised here, we're just a little clueless as to the exact nature of the problem."
Seras looked over at the sailors who had taken up defensive positions at the other end of the room. All of them looked to be officers of some sort and perhaps had been aware that it was a monster on the loose, not an airborne virus. Had they bothered to let their subordinates know? Likely not. If she got scuffed up by Umbrella's pet, she decided it would be one of them she fed off.
"The problem is fairly straightforward," Wesker said. "The Tyrant Retriever on that boat was let out of its containment vessel without any programming. Without programming, it will wander around and kill whatever crosses its path. The boat is on lockdown, meaning the doors to the sub-decks are locked and the boat itself has stopped moving. Your task is to neutralize the Tyrant and deactivate the lock, which can only be done from a point on the sub-decks where the outbreak occurred."
Integra looked at Seras's cannon case and rolled her eyes. "Easy enough. And for the record, I'm not convinced this was an accident. I can't fathom your reasons for doing this, but this is a big demerit for you and one you certainly can't afford."
There was a long silence from Wesker. Both Integra and Seras looked at one another, wondering what it might mean. "I'm sure the evidence will speak for itself once you're down there. One more thing," Wesker said. "Unless the security cameras are deceiving me, your plan seems to be to shoot the creature with that cannon, yes?"
Seras patted the case and smiled up at one of the cameras. "I haven't gotten to shoot it in a while," she said. "I'm looking forward to it."
"I think now would be a good time to inform you that the vessel you're on is barely seaworthy as it is. It's a much older ship than it looks, and a stray artillery round going off inside it is liable to sink it."
Seras laughed, noticing Integra was also sporting a tiny smirk. She was about to mouth-off once more when a crewman spoke up. "He's not playing," a pale, thin faced man said. "This tub aught to be scuttled. What it's doing making a transatlantic voyage with passengers and monsters is anybody's guess."
Integra clenched her fist and spun around in the swivel chair to face Seras. "This is all they could muster to send us to the states," she said. "A leaky boat with mutant rat problem. They're falling apart, Seras."
"And that makes them trustworthy?" Seras said.
"Pardon me," Wesker said. "But if you opt not to sink yourselves with that artillery piece you carry, there is another option. Near the creature's holding tank is a red box containing a large syringe. It's idiot proof and contains a large enough dose of a special kind of tranquilizer to kill roughly a dozen elephants. Inject the creature anywhere on its body, although the heart is preferable, and it will become comatose."
Without saying anything, Seras left the room and headed down the stairs on her way to the sub-decks. She thumped the side of the wall with her fist, leaving a small dent. Part of her knew Wesker had let the monster go via remote. Their scuffle at the lighthouse must not have been satisfactory evidence of her combat abilities and this was some sort of insane test. The ship was likely able to take four or five of her Harkonnen rounds, but Wesker had duped everyone into thinking otherwise, including Sir Integra.
She hoped wherever they landed in America was nice, as the thought of helping Umbrella any further was not on her agenda any longer. The whole situation on the boat was just too convenient, just too like Umbrella.
Coming to a locked door, she tore it off its hinges and sent it flying down the hall, bent in the middle. She changed her mind. There was no one in the world she wanted to speak with more than this Alice person. Alice would know something about Umbrella's inner workings and Alice was likely to hate Umbrella like a normal person should. Maybe together they could take over a research installation and force the scientists there to make a cure or a vaccine. A real one they could give to everybody, not just surviving Umbrella executives.
After going down a few more levels, she stopped in the middle of a hallway and ceased her musings. Instead of a locked door at the end of the hall, there was a large humanoid shape blocking the red light from behind. It turned slowly, making her realize its back had facing her. Now she could see through the gloom its pale skin, the red pulsing tumor that was its heart in the center of its chest, and the permanent grin stuck to its face by a lipless mouth.
She backed up to the door she had punched open and tore it off its hinges. The hallway was high and long, but not wide. None of them were, and of the creature charged there was no way around it. Holding the door in front of her like a shield, she ran forward.
Slamming into the creature, she lowered her center of gravity and pushed hard. It was incredibly strong and heavy and she had to exert herself to push the monster back into the large room it had come from. Once in the room, she slid around to the monster's side and nimbly danced out of the way as it swung its fist at her.
The attack was slow and deliberate, and she realized there must be something wrong with the monster. The giant tank lying broken on its side explained it. Fluid covered the floor and bizarre instruments used to administer fluids intravenously laid trickling on the floor.
Seras spotted the red box on the floor next to the tank just as the creature put on a burst of speed she hadn't expected. Seras leapt forward, towards the box, as the creature took an upward swipe at her with its massive clawed hand. The tip caught her left shin and sliced it open deep into the bone, throwing off her jump and causing her flop hard onto the floor.
Wanting to avoid the use of tricks to conserve blood, she reluctantly let her left arm dissolve into a pool of liquid shadow, which she sent streaking for the red box. The tendrils grasped it and pulled it in towards her, just as something massive and sharp stabbed through her back, pinning her to the floor.
She shrieked and felt the blood vessels and organs within her rupture, causing precious blood to spill into places it didn't belong, namely out of her and onto the floor. With the box in her solid right hand, she sent the shadowy around behind her and pierced the monsters with half a dozen shadowy spears.
The creature didn't bellow in anger or pain, in merely drove its own claws in deeper, forcing a gout of blood to well out of Seras's mouth. With an angry yell, she shoved the monster backward, causing the claws to come out of her and release even more blood to mix with the dubious fluids on the floor.
Keeping her left arm a wall of stabbing spines, she focused the rest of her efforts on healing her spinal column. The healing went quickly and once she was able to move her legs, she got the syringe out from the box.
Wesker had been right, the thing looked idiot proof. It was also comically big and she wondered if any researcher would seriously have thought to use such a thing on an escaped Tyrant.
She dropped her shadowy wall and streamlined it into a long, scythe-like whip. Holding the syringe in her normal hand, she thought she might wait for the monster to charge her once so she could stick the thing in as it went by, like a matador fighting a bull.
Another, better idea occurred to her, as the monster swung at her shadow arm with its normal fist. Shaping the shadow of her arm into something resembling an apple corer, she stabbed the monster through the chest, over its heart and yanked backward taking the organ out along with a chunk of the thing's flesh.
It fell to its knees as black blood flooded forth from the hole in its chest. With a loud, wet flop it landed on its face, dead. Looking at the syringe, she slid it discretely into a pouch on her belt and took one last look at the Tyrant's holding tank. It looked as though a rusty bolt had snapped near the top. Just to be sure, she examined the severed bolt.
She knew the difference between torn and cut, and thought she should go and apologize to Integra. Not before something to eat and a long shower, though.
To be continued…