She had a plan, not the best plan, but she was still going to go with it. The temptation to sit and procrastinate, trying to come up with a perfect plan and get nothing done was too strong. Far better than to act on one that was good enough, than not do anything at all.
What she needed was proof, and if she wasn't going to find anything by researching the company, she'd have to take a more direct approach. The Spencer Mansion was in ruins and, more likely than not, so was the training facility, but there was no way that everything was gone. Something remained, if not any papers and files, physical evidence of the monsters that Umbrella was making. She had a disposable camera so all she had to do was go there, take pictures of what she found, and go to the press with them. If she was really lucky, she'd find a dead monster and be able to bring part of it back, irrevocable proof of what had happened.
So she worked on her plan, smoothing out little details and checking to make sure she knew what she was doing. A dozen times over she'd looked over the bus schedules and routes, trying to figure out which would bring her closest to the mansion. There were three stops roughly the same distance away, a few miles apart from each other, but with all of them, she was still looking at close to an eight mile walk to the mansion down a series of twisting backroads. She'd memorized the names of all of them, knew exactly which turns to take and where, but it was one thing to read it on a map and another to actually walk it out, especially if the weather was nice. Walking for miles in the sun with no access to water, other than what she could carry, would be an ordeal. Getting a backpack and carrying a few spare gallons of water with her was an option, but how much would the weight slow her down? She'd have to find a balance between how much she could carry, and how much the extra weight would slow her, and she didn't have time for that.
There was a way to cut her walk nearly in half though, get off at a different stop, walk two miles down the highway, and then cut into the woods. If she could keep going in a straight line, it was just about two more miles to get to the mansion. That was something she could do, and the trees would block the light enough that she probably wouldn't have to worry about the leeches getting dehydrated too quickly. If she started first thing in the morning, timed everything right and didn't spend too long at the mansion, she'd be done with plenty of time to spare. The hardest part would be waiting, however long it took for the bus to show up at the stop when she was done with it all.
It was a good plan, not perfect, but it was a plan that would work.
Never mind the crazy stories that there'd been in the local papers lately, the cannibal murders and similar horrible things, she knew the real reason behind it, someone ending up infected with the Tyrant virus, either from Marcus' leeches or some other source. She'd checked the name of the reporter who'd been following the story, knew the paper he worked for, and planned on going to him with her story, once she had pictures. It was still a crazy story, but with pictures they'd have to believe her, and if they asked why she hadn't gone to the police, she'd explain all that too. There was no way Umbrella would be able to defend itself from that, being linked to an absolutely horrific set of murders and after that, everything else would come out into the open.
She wouldn't let herself worry that there was nothing left, because it was obvious to her that there was something. They'd called off the cleanup effort at the mansion, unsafe conditions being cited, but she was sure of the real reason, that something remained, perhaps the entirety of the basement level lab and all the computers and specimens in it were still there. Just to be on the safe side, she went to an electronics store and bought a whole box of floppy disks so she could copy any information she found if, somehow, there was still power and she was able to get one of the computers running.
A few days of prep work and she was ready, what she was doing even looked natural, easy to explain on the off chance someone noticed her and asked what she was doing. She had her camera, her backpack with some spare water and sandwiches too, in case she got hungry, a compass and even an old set of binoculars, to properly check things out before getting too close to the mansion. The last thing she wanted was to get attacked by something. Zombies, if there were any left, wouldn't be a problem, but other things might have survived, monsters that would attack her.
Anyone who saw her would just assume that she was an ordinary hiker, out for a relaxing day of wandering through the woods.
She'd considered calling Barry, or Jill, or Chris, but decided against it. She figured that they all had their own plans that they were carrying out, and she didn't want to pull them away from what they were doing to help out, besides, she wasn't sure how well she'd be able to handle things and if something went wrong, it would be easier for her to abandon her plan if she was alone. Explaining to someone else would mean that she might end up having to explain the leeches, and she wasn't ready for that.
She didn't want to have to explain that she was a monster herself, because that was what it came down to when she was willing to face the truth and stop pretending otherwise. Three weeks was enough for her to, if not accept that, at least give consideration to what it meant.
She was dead, a monster, something utterly inhuman and she was the only one who knew. It was easily the most isolated she'd ever felt. Being the youngest in her classes at college had been nothing compared to this. Even the fear and embarrassment she'd endured as the youngest, and least qualified, member of S.T.A.R.S. had been bearable, even if there had been nights when she went home and cried. This was different, there was no getting over being dead, no telling herself that things would change, because if they did change, it would only be for the worse. All she had left was dread, and that wasn't something she wanted to live with, hence her obsession with doing something, even if she had to manage it on her own.
Which was terrifying, but not as terrifying as trying to explain to someone what had happened to her, how she'd died, because it wasn't really that cut and dried. She was dead, the leeches had replaced her, but somehow she was still herself and that was the problem
Being an actual monster wouldn't have been this bad. All the ones she'd encountered had been mindless things, barely even possessing an animal level of awareness. If that had happened to her, there wouldn't be enough left to worry. And even if there had been something left, even if she had remained aware the same as she was now, she'd at least have had reason to seek out help. People would be able to see that there was something wrong. Billy would have seen it, which wouldn't have mattered since he'd abandoned her anyway, but Chris Redfield would have believed her. That would have made all the difference in the world.
If there'd been something obviously dangerous about her, something that made her blatantly inhuman, the decision would have been taken out of her hands and everything would have been easy. With the leeches, she had to weigh the risks of being found out against the benefits of seeking help.
The risks were countless, especially with Umbrella out there, employing a good ten percent of the population in one way or another. Word might get back to them about her unique condition, someone might put two and two together and best case scenario, she'd end up working for them whether she wanted to or not, worst case was that she ended up just another experiment and somehow, indirectly, she'd end up hurting people. She might not have been dangerous, but Marcus had proven that the leeches could be.
There was nothing she could do, except try and handle things on her own.
Besides, it would be a way of making sure that she and the others hadn't died in vain. Taking down Umbrella wouldn't fix any of that, but it would prevent anyone else from dying, and that had to count for something.
And beneath it all there was another reason, a purely selfish one, she was enough of an adult to admit to. There was the faint, and likely futile, hope that if she were to succeed, if she were the one to take down Umbrella, then she'd be a hero and since getting rid of the leeches wasn't an option, maybe people would be willing to look the other way, because of all the good she'd done. It wouldn't be a normal life, not by any stretch, but in time she might find a way to adjust to the leeches and figure out a way to make it so things weren't so bad.
And that was why, after taking an extra long shower and making sure the leeches had plenty of food, she set out to the bus stop and rode across the city.
o0o
She'd been right, no one had paid any attention to her on the bus, and for the entire two mile walk along the road, no one even slowed down to ask what she was doing. It was funny how it worked out that way, the part that had worried her the most turning out to be so easy.
Now that she'd reached the point where she had to leave the road and go into the woods, she was frightened and not for any rational reason. There was nothing for her to be afraid of, not in broad daylight, and not when the leeches meant that she was safe from zombies. This time she was prepared, she knew what she was getting into, besides, if she encountered anything too bad, all she had to do was take pictures of it and hurry to safety. It would be the proof she needed, and after that everything would take care of itself.
In the end, it was the leeches that got her to act. As she stood there, fighting her fear of the unknown, she could feel them shifting and rolling over, making their displeasure at waiting out in the sunlight known. They hadn't liked the walk, but she'd been able to ignore them, now that she was just standing and waiting it wasn't so easy.
Taking a deep breath and feeling the leeches squirm in protest at her pointless action, she stepped into the woods.
Less than twenty feet in and she could already feel a difference. It was shaded, cooler and noticeably easier for the leeches to breathe. She could actually feel them starting to relax. They'd been relaxed in her apartment, because it smelled like her and they'd picked up from her that it was her home. Here in the woods it was different, on some more instinctual level they were at ease. How aware they were was disconcerting.
Half an hour later, she realized that there was a flaw in her plan. Going through the woods might still technically make things easier, but it wouldn't necessarily shave that much time off her trip. Her initial assumption that half the distance would take half the time, left out little details like the fact that she was making her way over uneven ground, there were no trails and using a compass to navigate wasn't as easy as she'd thought from the books she'd read at the library. Constantly having to check that she was going in the right direction, and then reorient herself any time, she had to go around an obstacle or force her way through dense undergrowth made for slow going. She wasn't lost, so there was that, but she wasn't going to turn around and go back just yet, not when she'd spent so much time convincing herself that she could do this.
And she could do it, making it to the mansion and looking around wouldn't be that hard compared to what she'd already been through. She'd survived a helicopter crash, being chased through the woods by monsters, run into an honest to goodness war criminal, and escaped director Marcus and the monsters that he'd let out. After that, she'd made her way through the woods alone at night, wandered through a zombie infested mansion, killed a number of those zombies, and managed to meet up with the surviving members of Alpha Team.
When she looked at things that way, what she'd managed was actually kind of impressive, more than she'd ever imagined that she'd be able to do when she first joined S.T.A.R.S. If she thought of things that way, rather than focusing on how terribly wrong most of it had gone, walking through the woods during the day wasn't all that bad.
Besides, there was no telling how much of it all she might have avoided if she'd been more proactive from the start.
She might not have died in the first place.
Checking her compass once again, just to be sure, she made her way deeper into the woods.
The mansion was bound to have what she needed, but if not, there was always the training facility and it would be easier to get there. All she'd have to do was follow the railroad tracks.
And now she was second guessing herself, wondering if she should have tried the training facility first.
No, there wasn't time for that not when –
She stopped, listening and trying to figure out what it was that she was hearing.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
So why was she so nervous, what had changed?
The light levels were the same.
The leeches weren't upset.
Nothing was moving nearby.
There were no out of place sounds, no howling or moaning, indicating that zombies or other monsters were in the area, so what was wrong?
Overhead, cicadas buzzed loudly. She'd always called them heat bugs when she was little, because they only seemed to come out during the hottest days of August.
Just to be safe, she took her thermos out of her backpack and took a drink.
Earlier she'd passed a stream, so if she needed more water there wouldn't be a problem. She was past worrying about things like clean water, not when the leeches were constantly in the trash, crawling around catching mice in the walls and crawling all over everything. Whatever might have been in the water, it was nothing that would be any danger to her.
Nearby, a small black and white bird flapped noisily and settled on a branch, no more than ten feet from her.
It made an awful lot of noise for such a little thing, as it hopped back and forth several times before finally breaking out into a repetitive two note call.
Somewhere not too far away, another bird answered with the same call.
In the distance, something let out a burbling series of sounds and was answered by a noise, halfway between a squeaky door and a meow.
Listening carefully, she put her thermos away and started walking again.
This time, she heard it when it happened.
Sudden silence.
Not total silence, the cicadas were still buzzing incessantly, but the birds had stopped.
Something had made them fall silent, and it wasn't her. Slowing down, she got her camera out and ready. There was no reason to suspect that it would be anything useful, but she had the feeling that it was something.
What sounded like a whole family of crows cawed and jeered before taking flight.
It took her some time to figure out where they were, and by that point, they'd already passed overhead, but assuming that they'd been moving in a straight line, she knew the direction they'd come from. A quick check of her compass and she adjusted her course.
Caught up in the moment, she was too excited to be frightened, using the sounds of the forest to track something, like one of the heroes in the old adventure stories she'd been obsessed with one summer back in middle school. Until now, she'd forgotten about that year, endless hours pretending that the line of trees and brush behind the house was a huge forest like the one she was in now. Somehow remembering that was reassuring, proof that there was more to her than the leeches. Because every little bit helped, every little thing that she could think of that was unique to who she was made things easier.
If it turned out to be a zombie, she'd deal with it, take plenty of pictures, and then go tell people what she'd found, not the police, but the newspapers and bring a reporter to see firsthand. Which meant that she'd have to take pictures of it before she killed it, prove that it had been up and walking, and that she wasn't just a hiker that had stumbled across a long dead body.
She had a plan, she could do this.
No birds, not even cicadas. She had to be getting close.
"Hey! You there! What are you doing?"
She froze, camera held ready as three men in green fatigues came into view in front of her.
"I'm…just hiking?" she swallowed back fear, though there was no reason for her to be afraid. No reason to assume the worst. It might have been hunting season. She couldn't remember for sure, but she was fairly sure that it started around this time of year. They might even have been hikers, in which case she should probably warn them to stay clear of the area.
No, they had to be hunters, one of them had a gun.
A rifle, she mentally corrected herself, a very serious looking rifle that she probably should have been able to identify, but firearms had never been her strong suit.
The men glared at her.
It was embarrassing that they'd been able to sneak up on her like that, when she thought that she'd been paying attention. They weren't even wearing camouflage, just green.
"You shouldn't be here," the one with the rifle warned.
She looked closer, little details sinking in. They all had rifles.
No, one of them had a shotgun, but not a normal one, or not what she thought of as a normal one with a long black barrel and wooden handle. This was something shorter and all black and gray, military looking or maybe like something one of her fellow S.T.A.R.S. members would have used.
They weren't S.T.A.R.S. though. She didn't recognize any of them, and they clearly didn't recognize her, and she'd been unfortunately well known in S.T.A.R.S. thanks to having managed to accomplish so many embarrassing mistakes in her short time as a member.
"Why not?" she tried to sound innocent, confused, which wasn't that hard.
There still wasn't any reason for her to assume the worst, none of them were actually pointing their weapons at her.
"Bad stuff's going down around here," the one with the shotgun spoke up with a smile, "Really nasty. You read the papers?"
"Yes," she did, but what did that have to do with anything. She'd read a lot of nasty stuff and been through worse.
Her grip on her camera tightened as she took a step to the side, trying to move so that there was a tree between her and them, just to be safe. In the process, she caught a glimpse of something unmistakable, a circle of red and white against the green of shotgun's sleeve.
The Umbrella logo.
Why had she assumed that S.T.A.R.S. had been unique?
They weren't zombies, but she'd found her proof.
Backing up a bit, to show that she was willing to leave she tried to snap several pictures, hoping that at least one of them would turn out okay and that her efforts would go unnoticed.
The one that had been silent so far tilted his head to the side and made some small gesture before raising his rifle.
The first that had spoken nodded, "Drop the camera."
"Why?" She tried backing away, only for shotgun to lift his weapon as well. That frightened her more than the rifle. She didn't know enough to identify the gun, but she knew the kind of damage that it could do, and that wasn't even taking into account the different kinds of slugs there were. A rifle could put a little or not so little hole in her, maybe kill a few of the leeches. A shotgun though…
That might do some serious damage.
The leeches shifted restlessly. They knew something was wrong, because she was afraid and she worried that they might try to scatter.
And now that she'd thought of the idea, it was a very real possibility. She didn't want to get hurt, they didn't want to die.
"No questions," he took a step forward, motioning for the other two to hold their fire, "Just give me the camera and you can go home. Don't worry about anything, you just let us do our job and everything'll be okay."
"You work for Umbrella," she blurted out before she could stop herself.
The man smiled, "Yes, we work for Umbrella. Just following up on what happened with S.T.A.R.S., you read about what happened to those guys? Is that why you're snooping around out here, playing Nancy Drew?"
"I…uh…never liked those books. Too formulaic."
She said the dumbest things when she was afraid, but somehow it worked to her advantage when all three of them laughed.
The tension eased ever so slightly with that, gave her a chance to think.
If she ran she'd be a moving target, if she zigzagged she'd be harder to hit, and the trees would give her some cover so she'd just have to worry about outrunning them. She had a pretty good idea of what her limits were thanks to joining S.T.A.R.S., but had they changed? What exactly had the leeches done to her in terms of physical abilities?
"Listen," he sighed and gestured for the other two to relax, "I really don't want to hurt you. I just want to get done with this section of woods, move on to the next and call it a day. Just drop the camera and let's go our separate ways, okay?"
She could tell he was telling the truth, that he honestly didn't want to shoot her.
Shotgun and the quiet one lowered their weapons.
"Okay, yeah, sorry," she let the camera drop, so it was hanging from her wrist by the rubber band that she'd put on it to use as a strap.
Then she took off running as fast as she could.
Gunshots split the air, branches fell and tatters of leaves fluttered around her.
The creek, she had to make it to the creek.
The brush was denser there, lots of fallen trees and reeds, plenty of places for her to hide.
Behind her, the men were shouting, hurrying through the woods, trying to catch up with her.
Her backpack caught on a low hanging branch, and she shrugged her way out of it.
Thin twigs slapped at her arms and face, snagging her jacket. Something impacted her back low down near the bottom of her ribs. There was pressure, but not much pain, just enough to upset the leeches. Alarm spread through them as they caught the scent of their own dead. She could feel them moving beneath her clothing, sliding against each other.
Stop it. She willed them to be still, to calm down, but they refused to listen.
Another impact, high up by her shoulder.
More leeches came loose, clinging to her, but not holding shape as they moved to eat the dead ones and figure out what had killed them.
The leeches were puzzled.
Shouting and cursing behind her.
She plowed through brambles.
That was good, she'd had to avoid them earlier, so she knew she was going the right way.
Thorns hooked into her jacket, and she had to thrash her way out of it to keep going.
She could deal with that. Covering her face with her arms she kept going, the leeches moving in such a way that the thorns slid harmlessly against her arms.
One advantage she had, one thing that she could be thankful for, was that she wasn't getting tired or out of breath.
The same couldn't be said for the men from Umbrella, and they also had to worry about the brush. She'd reached the point where it seemed that they couldn't line up a clean shot, though that didn't keep them from trying. Branches and leaves continued to fall around her, bits of bark splintering off trees as they continued trying to shoot her.
A little farther, the creek had to be somewhere around here.
Up ahead there was a line in the woods. She couldn't think of any other way of putting it. It was an area of dense brush and thinner gray trees. She made that her goal, because somehow she'd missed the creak.
Thirty feet.
The trees were different here.
Twenty feet.
No time to try and make sense of it.
Ten feet.
She was almost there.
Five feet.
One more step and –
She fell down the side of the ravine before she even had time to scream.
Tumbling head over heels, she fell fifteen feet down and splashed into the creek.
She hadn't realized that she'd been moving upwards, but it made sense. They were technically in the mountains.
Scrabbling to her hands and knees, she looked around, and spotting a fallen, but still living, tree she rushed for it, hoping to hide amidst the branches and leaves.
Hidden by the leaves, she pressed herself against the spongy ground, sinking deep into the thick layer of dead leaves that had been caught by the tree's branches.
At the top of the ravine, they were arguing. They knew she was down there, but none of them wanted to be the first to slide down and start looking.
Carefully, in an attempt to better hide herself, she tried to cover herself with handfuls of dead leaves.
The arguing stopped, she could hear rocks and leaves rolling down the slope as one of them slid down.
She tensed, wondering if she was going to have to run. It wasn't as though she'd tried to conceal her trail, make it harder for them to track her.
What had she been thinking, assuming that she'd be able to hide? She had no clue what she was doing, just like every other time she'd tried anything.
The leeches were still moving, seemingly unaware of the danger she was in, even though she was sure that she was broadcasting it to them as clearly as anything. More and more of them were coming loose, investigating the leaves she'd tossed over herself and the damp ground all around her. Of course they wouldn't worry, wouldn't understand, this was a fine place for them.
Something slid down the side of her face.
A leech.
It stretched out, tapping at the ground around it with its front end, then reared up to look at her.
They did that when they wanted attention.
A food seeking behavior modified into something new.
Her leeches wanted attention the same way a normal leech would want food.
Her leeches.
It watched her watching it.
Like before, her vision grew blurry as what it saw began to overlay with what she was seeing.
Movement.
The leaves were moving, the leeches were moving, nearby she could see the man's boots tromping steadily closer to her.
He was talking, shouting up to the others, but she couldn't quite hear him.
She had to run, but when she tried to push herself up off the ground, she found that she could hardly move her arms.
What was wrong with her?
She'd been shot, but that shouldn't have been a problem. She'd been shot before and gotten over it.
Had the leeches gotten it into their heads that their mimicry had to be accurate down to her passing out from blood loss? Because she could feel them sliding away, spreading out around her.
Why were they abandoning her, leaving her to die?
More leeches fell down her face, inching away from her.
She could hardly see, just light and movement and shadow, noise and vibrations.
Any moment she expected to pass out, lose what little awareness remained.
That never happened, instead the leeches continued to transmit information to her with their limited senses. Spread out as they were, it was over far larger an area than she'd expected and the amount of information, equal in all directions was hard for her to parse.
Another of the men had come down, while the first had started to move away from her. Except at the same time he was moving closer to other leeches, so it was more likely he was walking past her. Direction was hard to figure out, because different groups of leeches were aware of different things at different times. She had to rely on delay, but it was all happening at once and the leeches were sharing it with each other.
Shadows and noise and smell very close.
The leeches stopped moving.
Light.
One of the men was pushing the branches away.
He'd see her.
Noise, motion, but not the frantic burst of activity that she expected.
He reached out, directly above her. He was going to brush the leaves aside and find her.
So close, she could feel him.
Taste.
No! Don't bite him!
There was the movement she'd expected.
Sudden light, but the shadows returned as he let go of the leaves and fell back. She could actually feel the impact.
Also motion, frantic motion and air moving, light and air drying a small part of her out.
She focused on that part fear and…frustration at being in the light and away and unable to act.
Motion so close.
Closer and closer and –
Impact, pulling free and more motion and air and –
Impact again, against soft leaves.
Burrow down into the shadows and damp.
It took her a moment to realize what had happened, one of the leeches had crawled on to the man's hand and he'd first tried to shake it off before flicking it off himself. The leech was fine, it hadn't bitten him.
Light again, he was pushing the branches away.
This time more of the leeches moved, some, but not all of them.
Lots of noise and vibration.
They were looking right at her.
Why didn't they see her?
She hadn't done that good a job of hiding.
Something jabbed into the ground right in the middle of where she was.
It should have hit her, but there was nothing, she hardly even felt anything, just a few leeches being brushed aside, others holding together, clinging to her shirt.
The leeches were spread out too far for there to be anything solid. The ones on her shirt were covering it, keeping it hidden.
More talking, words she couldn't hear.
The man let go of the branches and in the shade the leeches relaxed slightly.
They were nervous, because she was nervous, but they also liked this area. It was, based on her research, the sort of place where you'd find normal leeches, so it made sense that they found it comfortable.
One of them had found…something and was eating it, calling the others over to join it.
Spread out the way she was, she discovered that she was hungry, or at least some parts of her were. Those were the bits at the edges of her awareness, exploring, looking for things to eat and finding them too. Information was spread across the network of leeches. Food here, light here, moving water here.
She had to keep them away from the water, because the last thing she needed was for them to get washed away from her. If they did she had no idea how she'd find them again and if enough of them washed away, she might not be able to recover. They got the idea, the creek wasn't like a shower or the bathtub, and they were careful to avoid it.
The men walked back and forth, looking for her and finding nothing.
Eventually, they vanished from her range of awareness, but she was afraid that they'd return.
She'd wait before leaving her hiding spot, in no small part due to the fact that she needed to figure out how to leave in the first place. She could move, she was moving just fine, just not in any way that was useful to her.
It was a matter of getting back before she got up. She had to get the leeches back together.
Once she'd gotten the idea, it spread throughout the group and they began to crawl back to where she was, or the majority of her at least.
After that, instinct guided them and they began to assemble. She could feel her thoughts and senses becoming clearer as more and more of them returned. Her hearing returned, allowing her to listen to birdsong and the rustle of leaves.
No sign of the men that she'd encountered, which was good.
The blur of swirling motion that had been the limit of her sight began to condense into actual shapes that slowly came into focus. The leeches were the first thing she noticed, not because they were particularly visible against the mud and dead leaves, but because of her shared awareness with them. In fact, when she looked closer, actually paying attention to shape and color rather than just leeches, she realized that the majority of them should have been invisible, having flattened themselves out and changed color to resemble dead leaves. It made sense, how well they mimicked things, the way that they had changed color to blend in with her skin, that they could camouflage themselves, but she hadn't considered the implications until now. They were indistinguishable from the leaf litter she was laying on, and by crawling on top of her clothing, they'd effectively hidden her from sight.
Useful, she decided as she sat up, but not something she ever wanted to have to rely on again, since it required the leeches to disperse.
Brushing the leaves and mud off her shirt, she felt something tumble down her back. Without thinking she reached behind herself and picked it up.
It was a short, gently curved length of bone, one of her floating ribs.
Terrified of what she was going to see, she lifted her shirt. There were places where the leeches had gotten back together, blended into normal looking skin, but they were few and far between. Most of her chest and stomach were a mass of squirming black shapes, carefully working their way back into position, blending in and expanding the edges of smooth, pink skin. Those areas felt normal to the touch, but everywhere else was a nearly fluid mass of leeches that rippled and flowed beneath her fingers.
Gingerly, she ran her hands over her chest, finding places where her fingers sank in until she could feel bone. Poking and prodding, she was able to find where the rib was supposed to be, and for lack of any better idea, pressed it against her side.
The leeches parted and then wrapped around it, pulling the bone into place.
Sensing her distress, the leeches were returning faster now, rebuilding her until they'd all vanished from sight.
Once again, she was unable to see or feel them.
She sat in the shade for a long while, legs against her chest, arms wrapped around them. Her body felt solid, normal, but that was just an illusion, the same as everything else.
Eventually, boredom overcame self-pity and she left her hiding spot, and took stock of her situation.
The three men were long gone, which was good. Getting shot hadn't hurt her, but she didn't want to go through it again. Next time, she might not be so lucky and find a place to hide.
One good thing about the whole situation was that she'd gotten a picture of them, not much, but it was proof that Umbrella was up to something, probably cleanup, getting rid of the zombies and escaped monsters. The only problem was that she had no clue where her camera was.
She retraced her steps, but to no avail.
Her jacket was there, still caught in the brush, small ragged holes in it from where she'd been shot. There was blood, or what she assumed was blood, around them, something dark green and tacky to the touch. It could have been worse though, much worse. One of the shots could have hit something vital like…
No, she realized, there wasn't anything vital left as far as she could tell. Maybe a headshot could have done some damage, but she honestly wasn't sure about that. She wanted to believe that some part of her nervous system was still there, but the more time passed the less likely that seemed. The leeches were mimicking a rough approximation of her body, shape and appearance and not much else. They weren't functioning as any organs or organ systems, independently breathing and eating for themselves. There was no way, even if she was infected with the Tyrant virus, that they could be keeping any part of her alive.
But somehow she was.
She continued on, retracing her steps as best as she was able.
Her backpack was easy to find, a group of crows noisily picking through its scattered contents, eating her lunch. They took flight the moment she got near. First, she found her thermos, drank the entire thing, then she looked at what else was left. Her sandwich was entirely eaten, which was annoying, since enough of the leeches were still hungry enough that she was hungry. They'd been finding things to eat at the creek, but she wasn't about to eat the same sorts of things that they would, nor would she let them wander and eat on their own. That might give them ideas and she couldn't let that happen, not when she might not be able to call them back together again.
The leeches squirmed in place, rubbing against each other, seeking reassurance through contact. Apparently, they liked that idea as little as she did. That was good, which made for a total of one good thing out of the whole day.
She never managed to find her camera, which left her to assume that one of the three men had found it and picked it up. Her compass was also missing and the little flashlight she'd put in her backpack had come apart when it fell out or was tossed aside when the men searched through her things. She'd put it back together, but it didn't turn on. At least what she'd carried were all normal hiker things, no reason for them to suspect that she was up to anything, otherwise they might have put more effort into finding her.
Retracing her steps out of the woods was going to take a while, so she returned to the creek to refill her thermos and then went on her way, trying to use the sun to orient herself as she looked for anything vaguely familiar.
The noises around her changed, the birdsong growing louder as more and more joined in, and a different set of bugs emerged to buzz and chirp as the shadows grew deeper.
By the time it started to get dark, she was forced to admit that she was lost, but she'd been smart enough to plan for that. Following the slope of the terrain downhill, she managed to get back to the creek. If she followed it in either direction she'd make it out of the woods. In one direction it would reach the road, in the other it should take her within sight of the Spencer Estate.
She hoped that the way she was going would take her to the road.
As it grew darker, she made an unpleasant discovery about the leeches. Being photosensitive wasn't the same as having night vision and once the sun was down, she was as blind as any normal person would be with no moon or stars to navigate by, thanks to it starting to get cloudy.
When forcing her way through the dense brush around the creek got too difficult, she gave up and walked into it, trudging through mud and water that rarely got more than ankle deep. It was miserable, but it would have been worse if not for the leeches. They were actually happy with her needing to walk in the creek and she wasn't about to begrudge them that when they'd saved her earlier.
Eventually, the darkness began to turn to a dreary gray and she could hear cars in the distance.
She'd found the highway.
After being lost in the woods all night, she'd made it out on her own. Except she hadn't even been that lost. She'd known where she'd been going and that she'd make it out. That was more than she'd thought she was capable of on her own and she'd learned from the experience. Next time, she'd be more careful, because there was going to be a next time. She'd get a new disposable camera and try again, following the railroad tracks to the training facility and try there. Being farther out of the way, Umbrella wouldn't have reason to have so much security around the building. If she was careful, used what the leeches could do to her advantage, she'd be able to do it.
Walking alongside the road, she hitchhiked, several cars passing by without slowing down before someone finally stopped.
"What happened to you?" the driver asked as he rolled down the passenger side window to talk to her.
"I went out hiking," she smiled weakly, climbing in when he unlocked the door for her, "Ran into some trouble and ended up in the woods all night."
"You got lucky," the driver said sagely, "There've been stories of some bad stuff happening out there."
Rebecca looked out the window, the first fat drops of rain were beginning to patter against it, "I know."
Bad things were happening, but she was going to do everything she could to put a stop to them.