Chapter 5: Octopus's Garden
Disclaimer: I own nothing, save for Octavia "Canary" West.
We had just escaped a huge swarm of undead and we were currently catching our breath in the lobby of the Morris' Point Aquarium. The undead were either too stupid to have noticed us or they had given us up as a lost cause and had gone looking for an easier meal. In any case, it was also a relief too be out of the cold and wet of the rain. All of a sudden, I remembered a conversation that Wesker and I had had earlier in the day and I started to giggle. That eventually evolved into a full-blown cackle. Yes, I cackle when I laugh. I honestly don't laugh out loud that much in public because of the fact that I'm kind of self conscious about it. At the time though, I didn't care about my cackling or the fact that Wesker was looking at me like I had lost my mind.
"Look Wesker, we got to visit the aquarium after all!" I couldn't help but see the humor in this. We had gone to a diner for lunch, had an undead person attack the diner, and survived an explosion. We had also ransacked a gun store and fought a handful of undead persons for our lives. It had already been a long day and I had a very strong feeling that it was going to get much, much worse. The day had been hard and being able to laugh like that was helping me relieve not all, but a lot of the stress from the fear and tension.
What did that book I read last month say? "Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." Huh, that is something that is perfectly applicable here and now. I'm going to quit letting this get to me and get through this.
I straightened back up from my bent over position on the floor and got my crowbar back into the strap on my backpack. I unholstered my handgun and started to survey the room Wesker and I were currently holed up in. The walls were painted a clear blue that complimented the sand colored tile that lined the floor. Red tweed couches and chairs were clustered around the large lobby of the aquarium. The place was pretty cluttered though. A section of wall had been opened up to work on what looked like some plumbing. There were some rather well done paintings of octopi… I mean octopuses… octopodes.
What the hell is the plural form of octopus?
In any case, immediately next to the impressionist painting of a blue octopus, there was the entrance to the aquarium proper; the doors wide open. I immediately got to work on my plan now that I had the lay of the room. The customer service desk next to the painting of a black octopus hiding in a diver's helmet had what I needed. The colorful maps of the aquarium were folded neatly and stacked on the hard acrylic desk. I grabbed two of them and began to unfold one ignoring the thumps coming from the front entrance of the aquarium lobby. I spread out the map and began to take off my jacket, tying it around my waist so I could have better mobility.
From what I could tell from reading the map spread out all over the customer service desk with Wesker leaning over my shoulder, there were three fire exits and one service entrance located in the aquarium. The service entrance was probably our best bet for a safe exit. There might even be a van that the aquarium used for transporting supplies parked there.
"If we want to get out of here safely, we should leave through the service exit."
"The fire exits are much closer than the service entrance."
"The fire exits are also wired to set off the fire alarms if they're opened, which will draw every undead in the vicinity right to us. Also, I doubt that the undead can open car doors or break through the side of a van, so it'll be safer and more importantly, quicker than getting out of the town proper on foot."
"Good point."
The doors to the rest of the aquarium were wide open and as we entered I closed the doors, trying not to think of what we had left waiting outside the building.
The doors led to what the plaque above the door said was the Tidepool Room. The Tidepool Room was made up to look like a rocky beach area with craggy, fake brown rock lining the walls and floor making benches and framing the fish tanks. The tank closest to us held the spherical, spiny bodies of sea urchins. The purple-black creatures were motionless, save for the occasional twitch of one of their pointed spines. In another tank, I could see a group of orange, red, and red-violet sea stars. The bench in front of the sea star tank was stained with blood that so fresh that some of it was still red and wet looking pooled in the cushion.
This is very, very bad; this means that there are undead here.
As soon as we walked by another bench, a grayish hand suddenly shot out from behind and grabbed onto my ankle. I fell to the floor and pulled my gun from its holster and aimed it at the face of the undead holing on to my ankle. One gunshot and I could scramble away from the decomposing corpse. I swept over the room with my eyes, breathing heavily, searching for any undead that could be lurking anywhere else in the room.
The undead had grabbed me by my pant leg, so it hadn't scratched me and it didn't have the chance to bite me. I could have kicked myself the aquarium's doors had been wide open when Wesker and I had made our dash for safety. The doors to the rest of the aquarium had been open. Why hadn't I thought of the possibility that there could be undead in here?
Looking around the room I thought back to what I had heard about the Raccoon City. From what I had heard, whatever virus had brought the city to its knees wasn't limited to just humans. This was pretty odd in it's own right. Most diseases tend to be limited to certain species. It is actually pretty rare for diseases to cross the species gap but it happens. For example, the only animals that suffer from leprosy are human beings and armadillos. Yes, I'm perfectly serious; we share a disease with armadillos.
Moving on, in addition to humans becoming undead, there were also reports of dogs rising from the dead along with birds and even cockroaches. I had also heard tall tales about scaly green gorillas that ripped people to shreds. There were multiple reports of skinless monsters with claws that killed people with their sharp pointed tongues and crawled on ceilings. There were also reports of animals that had grown to enormous sizes like spiders and moths that had started to hunt humans. There was even one report about a giant crocodile that had almost eaten some people and another about a giant man-eating millipede in the graveyard. My main source about the outbreak had spoken of the infection of all the zoo animals, especially how they still had nightmares about the undead elephant. The rumors about giant sized shark sightings around Raccoon University had also been widespread.
Lets hope that thing was the only kind of, if not the only undead in the building.
Wesker and I had just walked past the tank containing a number of hermit crabs when I had noticed something sparkling on the bench in front of the brightly colored anemone tank. It was lying on top of a newspaper that seemed to have been carelessly thrown away. I picked up the sparkling trinket and examined it. It was a golden disc, like a medallion, that had a black jewel carved to look like an octopus set in the center. It seemed like the black jewel might be an onyx and the detail on the medallion seemed like something that would be found in an ancient Greek temple.
Oooooh, fancy!
I stuck the weird little trinket in my backpack, if anything I now had a neat little souvenir for when I survived. Wesker raised his eyebrows a bit but said nothing, as usual.
The next room was dominated by a massive fishtank that took up an entire wall from ceiling to floor. The graceful figures of manta rays and spotted eagle rays floated and glided in the water. Unfortunately, there was also an undead that tried to vomit on us as soon as we entered the room. Wesker shot and killed the thing but not before I got a nasty acid burn on my left arm. I don't favor one arm over the other but acid burns hurt pretty freaking bad to say the least. Trust me, the stomach acid ate through my shirt.
Owshitdamnhellfuckthathurtslikeabitch!
I sat down in front of the smaller tank that held a few different species of ray than the ones in the larger tank. I pulled out one of the leaves of the "Green Herb" that Wesker had taken from the gun store. We had found a few other plants during our skulk through the alleys, one in someone's window box and the other in a potted plant found outside the backdoor of a stripclub. Trust me, the only thing worse than a zombie is a scantily clad zombie trying to jump on you and tear your throat out with it teeth.
"I just eat one of these and the pain will go away", I asked with a pained grimace.
"I would actually recommend that you eat the whole plant after grinding it up to get the most of its healing effects" Wesker smoothly informed me while messing around with what looked like a red version of the plant I held in my hand.
"Really, okay. Bottoms up."
I can now state with certainty that "Green Herb" tastes like a cross between okra and black licorice with a minty aftertaste. For the record, I hate okra because it has the same taste and consistency of nylon stockings and licorice is pretty much my least favorite candy. The aftertaste was okay but weird. The herb did work pretty quickly though, and I didn't feel any pain in my arm but I could still use it. It even helped with the pain from my road rash and the bruises from hitting the pavement because of the explosion. It helped to remember that my grandfather tended to say that if a medicine tastes horrible, it's probably working just fine.
Why else would hospital food taste so bad?
"So, what kind of plant is that you're holding?"
"This is a Red Herb. It can cure poison."
"Poison? What kind? Neurotoxins, hemotoxins, opioids, or is it for alcohol poisoning?"
What? My last boyfriend was working towards a medical degree with a serious interest in poisons and how to cure them. There is no such thing as a cure for all poisons. Different poisons have different cures and the wrong antidote for a poison can do nothing at all or cause some serious harm. Fun fact: never suck out the poison from rattlesnake bites. If you do you'll just poison yourself.
While Wesker ground up the rest of our useful healing plants and informed me of their use (apparently Red Herbs work very well on animal and plant based poisons which makes about as much sense as me eating my own pants), I unwrapped and ate some of my taffy and waited for my wound to finish healing. I looked down at the informational plaque at the bottom of the tank I was leaning against. Apparently the rays that were in this tank were from the torpedo genus of fish, which sounded pretty awesome. I tossed some taffy to Wesker after asking if he was hungry.
I checked my gun and reloaded it, taking care to clean the barrel with the gun maintenance kit I had swiped from the gun store. When I was done I checked on my arm and I was shocked. Not only was the pain gone, but also there wasn't a trace of any damage from the stomach acid besides the fact that I had lost a few freckles. I was seriously impressed. I got up to my feet and took the ground up herbs that Wesker handed me and stuck them in a pocket on my purse.
"This stuff really does work. It's like my arm wasn't burned at all."
"Of course. Would I lie to you?" Then Wesker had a sort of pained tremor go through his upper body.
"Hell, are you okay?"
"I think the unfortunate explosion on the pier managed to aggravate an old injury."
"Crap, do you need some health spray or something? Do need to rest for a bit?"
"No, I'll be fine. Thank you for your concern though dear heart", he said somewhat flirtingly.
"Uh, no problem. And hey, don't call me that" I grated out with a slight blush.
Is he trying to hit on me?
The jellyfish room was the next room in the aquarium and unlike the other rooms; it was only lit by the barest man-made illumination. It only the hazy glow of the deadly, yet elegant creatures that resided within this room more prevalent. If there hadn't been an infestation of undead roaming around the island, I could have stayed and watched the poisonous beauties for hours.
I immediately saw three undead shuffling around the room, one of them vomiting bile onto the floor. I aimed and shot at the undead that was vomiting, but only managed to hit it in the chest. It lurched towards me hands extended, before I nailed it in the head with a bullet round. Meanwhile, Wesker killed the other undead with a headshot through the nose as soon as he went through the door. I immediately aimed my gun at the last undead, getting a clean shot in between the thing's eyes.
I am not going to get barfed on again! Once was bad enough.
After that the undead started to decompose, and I thought back to the acid burn I had gotten not even an hour earlier. Regular stomach acid wasn't powerful enough to burn me like it had burned my arm. My hypothesis was the virus that was bringing the infected back to life, was possibly changing the digestive system. The potency of the stomach acid could possibly mean that the bodies of the undead needed to break down their food much faster than a non-infected person. Maybe part of the disease that had spread through the town rapidly sped up the metabolism. That would make the ridiculously fast decomposition I had been seeing make sense.
And now I was making useless conjecture without decent proof. Again. I really need to quit doing that. It's going to get me in trouble on of these days. What am I saying? I'm in a real life zombie attack! If that doesn't count as trouble, nothing does.
As we made our way through the room, I spotted a door between the Moon Jellyfish Tank and the Box Jellyfish tank. There was a silver plate on the door with a very similar looking fish emblem. I stopped and rummaged around in my pockets for the silver key I had gotten off of the second undead that had jumped us today. The design on the key was an exact match down to every last detail to the design on the door.
You have got to be kidding me. What are the chances?
"Hey Albert, remember that key I got off of that undead guy that tried to eat our faces? I think I found the door it goes to", I said, holding the old-fashioned key up so he could see.
"Albert? You're calling me by my given name now?"
"Do you not want me to use it", I queried while using the key to unlock the door.
"Please continue, in fact I rather like you using my name."
The office was a cluttered mess, to say the least. There were papers thrown everywhere all over the desk and several wadded paper balls piled in and around the wastebasket. There were several notices about making sure the water bill was being paid and a pink slip for some guy named John Smith.
Sucks to be him.
On a whim, I picked up the phone from its cradle and tried to dial the police. I didn't even get a dial tone. Great, which meant that the phone lines were down and there wouldn't be any communication between the island and the mainland. I slammed the phone back into the cradle and that's when I saw the bulletin board next to the door.
The thing was pretty bare except for one note:
WARNING:
The Octopus door has been closed in order to protect the rest of the aquarium from the shark tank infestation. In case of an emergency, The keys have been scattered throughout the aquarium with the Onyx Crest in the Tidepool Room. The Aquamarine Crest can be found in the Penguin Exhibit. The Garnet Crest is in the Seahorse Room near the Leafy Sea Dragon tank. The Spinel Crest is located near the Clownfish Tank in the Tropical Fish Room. The Topaz Crest is in the Otter exhibit. The crest sequence is the same as it always is.
Do not open the door. The Neptunes have managed to get into the main shark tank and have already decimated the tank's shark population. The tanks are still intact but it is unlikely they will hold indefinitely. They aggressively attack anything in their line of sight and have repeatedly rammed the sides of the tank trying to eat aquarium employees. We don't need a biohazard incident let alone the water damage from flooding the broken shark tank would cause.
Contact Umbrella immediately for capture and clean-up!
Right next to the bulletin board was a key hook with a set of car keys under the label of "TRANSPORT VAN".
Yay! Now I won't have to try and waste time trying to hotwire the damn thing. Hey, what the hell is a Neptune? Somehow, I doubt that they're talking about an ancient god of the sea. Hmm, sounds dangerous. If anything Umbrella was involved with something here, so I better keep the note. Evidence is a wonderful thing.
I showed the keys to Wesker and then stuck them in my pocket along with the note.
"Looks like we have a ride out of here."
The next room that was connected to the jellyfish room was a circular room with several tanks of various sizes set into the wall. I had learned from earlier and had started to emulate what Albert had been doing.
I mean, who has had all the close encounters of the undead kind? Not him. It isn't bad luck either; I've just been reckless and impulsive. I need to be more cautious.
I had peered around the doorframe on the side, couching down low while Albert took the high ground. We quickly picked of the four undead that had been in the room, taking our time to inspect what the rotting corpses had left behind. The only thing left was some ammo that was compatible with Albert's gun and some handgun bullets.
Curving around the room was a sort of art deco sculpture of a giant octopus; which was appropriate given the tentacled denizens of the room. The oddest thing about the room besides Octozilla, was the fact that when I consulted the map I had taken from the customer service desk, the door that would lead us to the service entrance was missing. Upon double-checking the map, the exhibit that connected the Octopus Room and the service entrance was the Shark Exhibit.
Of course it was. It's not like
The doorway that was blocked by a solid sheet of metal that had no keyhole that I could discern. Then I looked up and saw the four empty slots and one filled with a medallion like the one I had found in the Tidepool Room.
"Damn it!"
I pulled out the medallion I had found from my backpack. They were both made of gold and had a carved octopus set into it. The one above the door had a yellow-brown jewel. If I went by the note, this was probably the Topaz Crest. The crest I was holding was supposedly the Onyx Crest. That left three more of these things to find and fit into the door. Then we had to figure out the combination of how the crests fit into the door.
The only other open door in the Octopus Room was the Tropical Fish Room. The Tropical Fish Room was an explosion of color and motion. Fish of every color and shape flitted around the fake coral reefs. There was a tank of many different species of angelfish positioned right between the tank of striped beakfish and the tank full of butterfly fish. I could see the orange and white of the clownfish tank at the far end of the room. If this had been a normal aquarium, this wouldn't be a problem. As it was, there were about five zombies near the center of the room in a sort of crowd. I felt the corners of my lips twitch up in a mad smirk. I gently tugged Albert's sleeve to get him to move back and I pulled a grenade from the pocket of the jacket tied around my waist. I pulled the pin and pitched the grenade with a mad giggle right into the center of the group of undead. I ducked behind the tank full of red and white lionfish before the explosive went off and the immediate area where the undead were was covered in the entrails of the undead, shattered glass, and water along with flopping fish. Peeking my head around the tank, I could see that only one zombie was still moving, and the explosion had taken out its legs. Four out of five undead wasn't bad, but I unloaded a bullet into its head to finish the job.
I don't care what anyone says, explosions are fun and useful. I would also like to thank the lunatic who left these babies on top of a recycling bin.
After Albert grabbed the pink-jeweled crest from the bench in front of the clownfish tank, I took out the map to check where we needed to go next. The Tropical Fish Room split off into two rooms in addition to the Octopus Room: The Penguin Room and the Seahorse Room. What we were doing was taking too long. I didn't think we were making good enough time on this but I wasn't going to break one of the horror movie survival rules. Splitting up is always a bad idea in a survival situation.
"I think we should split up to cover more ground. The faster we get out of here, the faster we can get to safety."
I did a mental jaw drop at Albert's question. Bad idea, very bad idea!
"Okay, I'll take the Penguin Room. Do you want to take the Seahorse Room?"
Bad mouth, stupid mouth! Why are you trying to get me killed?
"That is acceptable. Take care, Miss West."
I watched Albert walk into the Seahorse room before making my way into the Penguin room. The Penguin Room was one of the biggest draws to the aquarium for tourism. It's kind of a given that the black and white birds are one of the animals that most people can agree are cute. Coca-Cola uses them for their holiday advertising for a reason.
Dammit, now I'm thirsty.
The penguins were isolated from the rest of the aquarium by the large glass enclosure that separated the birds from the tourists; made up of four walls, and a metal roof painted to look like the night sky. The only way in to the penguin habitat was a door set in the very back of the enclosure that was kept tightly locked and only accessible from the staff and maintenance area.
The penguins were penguining around, swimming in their pool, hopping on rocks, and making loud squawking noises. They didn't look infected in any way or form, but I didn't need to go into the habitat anyway. I didn't see any undead but I had my gun pointed up and at the ready. I also couldn't smell the undead, if there were any in the room the smell of decay was covered up by the penguin's stench. Trust me, the little tuxedo birds are cute but they smell like rotting fish and bird crap.
There was a sparkle coming from around the raised pedestal holding realistic scale models of male penguins keeping their eggs warm. I lightly stepped towards the models and saw an Octopus Crest with a light blue jewel at the feet of the Rockhopper Penguin model. I grabbed the trinket and began to back away, when suddenly a decaying gray arm came from behind the other side of the models trying to bat at me through the fake penguins. It startled me into dropping the crest but I unloaded two bullets into its brain.
I picked up the Aquamarine Crest off of the floor and stuck it into my backpack alongside the Onyx Crest. I surveyed the room and other than a soda machine that was plugged into the wall opposite to the penguins, I saw nothing that caught my eyes. I made my way towards the soda machine and put enough money in for two bottles of water. I tossed them into my backpack. That's when I saw something shiny hanging out over the top of the soda machine. I pulled it off and found another key except this one had a shark fin on it.
What is it with this town and leaving stuff lying around in random places? This is an obsessive compulsive's worst nightmare! Then again, the dead have come back to life and are dead set on spreading the condition around. Dead set, oh hell, bad pun!
I carefully made my way towards the Octopus room, avoiding the undead entrails and broken glass. There weren't any more undead, all the dead bodies in here were fully motionless or in resting in pieces. As I moved towards the door I heard something making crunching noises in the water and broken glass. I swung around and pointed my gun at whatever was coming towards me. It was a good thing I didn't shoot because it was Albert.
"For the good reason of not scaring me to death, can you please avoid giving me a heart attack and say something next time?"
"I apologize. I didn't mean to startle you."
"It's fine. I just don't want to accidentally shoot you!"
We could hear the thunder from the storm outside when we got back inside of the Octopus Room, and I pulled out my two crests from my backpack along with a bottle of water for Albert. Albert got his two crests from his brown trenchcoat. There were five slots in the door, the very last one occupied by the yellow Topaz Crest. Now that I was looking at all the octopus crests I think I could remember something similar in the lobby. The lobby had had some paintings, each one having a different colored octopus as a focal point.
If I went by the order of the paintings in the lobby; maybe that would be the code to opening this ridiculous roadblock if I could remember them correctly. That means that the first slot would be the Spinel Crest because of the painting of a pink octopus making an ink cloud. The Aquamarine Crest would be next because of the painting of a blue octopus on the left side of the main aquarium entrance. Then the Garnet Crest after that, because of the painting of a red octopus in a shipwreck on the other side of the entrance. Second to the last would be the Onyx Crest because of the painting by the Customer Service desk. Last of all would be the Topaz crest, already in its place in the door.
I placed the crests in the door in the order I remembered. As soon as I placed the last crest in its slot, the door began to open.
AN: The book that Canary quoted is Dune by Frank Herbert. This chapter was made under the influence of a Glee marathon on Netflix, several shark and alligator movies on the Syfy network, and Finding Nemo. Reviews are always welcome.