Chapter 26
"Dammit!" Barry swore as he and Jill rounded the corner, seeing the dead body of Joseph Frost accompanied by the body of whatever creature it was that had dragged him away.
"What the hell is that thing?" Jill asked as she poked it with a rifle. "Looks like someone got fed steroids and turned inside out."
"Whatever it was, it managed to tear up Joe in no time at all," Barry said as he knelt and ripped the dog tags off of the Alpha Team member's neck. "We'll have to come back and recover his body at some point. He deserves a proper burial," Barry continued taking care of some final rights and then turned quickly as he heard a sharp intake of breath from his partner.
"Barry, don't make any sudden moves," Jill breathed out as she saw two more of the creatures that had just killed Frost perched on the ceiling.
"Focus fire on the closest one?" Barry whispered back.
Jill just nodded, not wanting to speak for fear that the creatures would move quickly.
Jill flipped her fire selector switch from single to full auto, the small click seemingly setting off whatever triggers the creatures were waiting for.
Pulling the trigger, Jill stitched a line of rounds up and into the creature, leaping to the side and continuing to fire as it leaped past while Barry slam-fired his shotgun, operating the pump as fast as humanly possible until he was out of rounds.
"Reloading!" Jill called out as she fished another magazine from her magazine pouch and slammed it into her rifle.
"Covering!" Barry yelled back as he shoved another shell into his shotgun and fired it before drawing his Samurai Edge to continue firing while Jill was reloading.
Seeing the first creature die, the second jumped out of the way, seeming to fade into the darkness of another hallway, leaving Jill and Barry alone with the dead
"You got his dog tags?" Jill asked Barry as she slapped the bolt release on her rifle, sending the bolt home and chambering a new round.
"Yeah, I got 'em'," Barry replied as he reloaded his shotgun.
"Then let's find the others and get out of here," She responded. "If Bravo Team ran into these kinds of freaks then I doubt any of them are still alive, so let's just find Chris and the Captain and get outta here."
"Marini is one tough SOB though," Barry replied. "If there's a chance that any of them are still alive then we owe it to them to see if we can at least recover their bodies."
"Sure," Jill shrugged. "Preferable with some special forces and a lot more firepower up here."
"If we could reach Brad then I'd have already called him to go get backup," Barry reminded Jill. "Now let's get moving, there might be more of those things out there for all we know."
"You just had to piss off the giant snake!" I yelled at Edward as we split off from the rest of Bravo Team, my side aching as the bandages began to slip and I started to bleed again.
"It was a goddamn sneeze!" Dewey yelled back as we cut another corner and then ducked down as the snake rammed into and through the wall of a T-shaped corridor.
"You think we lost it?" I asked as I passed my rifle over to Dewey and drew my handgun while checking the wound in my side.
"Nope," Dewey replied as he began shooting at the giant snake that rounded the corner to come after us again. "It's back!"
"Eyes and mouth look like the only unarmoured targets," I said as I fired my pistol at the roof of the snake's open mouth.
"We don't have enough penetration to get through the scales," Edward said as he sling my rifle and bodily grabbed me to begin running again. "We'll have to improvise."
The two of us eventually found a room with a giant fish tank of some sort, a catwalk hanging over it as the snake's body causing the walkway to buckle slightly under the extra weight.
"Ed, just keep running," I said as I glanced down into the water and saw a mouthful of teeth. "Don't stop for anything."
Reaching the end of the walkway, we began running down the stairs as a giant shark shot up and caught the snake in its jaws, the snake curling around the shark as the two began to struggle for supremacy.
"Not a fucking word," I breathed out to the other Bravo Team member.
"Got it," Edward nodded as we slowed down and looked back at the tank. "Who do you think will win?"
"Doesn't matter," I shrugged. "Whichever one does will just be pissed off at us for getting away and want to kill us even more."
"Point made," Edward said as he tried to hand me my rifle back only for me to wave him off.
"I can't use it very well right now," I said with a small gesture at the wound that had resumed bleeding. "Speaking of which, we're going to have to stop in a minute for me to redo this, otherwise I may bleed out."
"Too bad our radios aren't working," Edward sighed wearily. "We could have used some backup again."
"We've made it work all night," I replied as we found a small room for us to hide in while I redressed my wound. "We'll regroup with the others eventually, with yet another crazy story to tell them."
"What a fucking day," Edward leaned back against the wall. "When we get back to Raccoon City I'm going to sleep for a week."
"Keep that energy," I pulled my bandage tight and grunted as it compressed the wound on my side. "It's what will get us out of here alive."
"Is this the right address?" Rain asked as she pulled the Hummer down the streets of Raccoon City.
"Looks like it," Kaplan said as he looked up from the map. "Think there'll be enough space for all of us?"
"Anything will be better than the HIVE after tonight," Alice said with a groan as she stretched out in the back seat next to Natalia and J.D.
"Looks like it's a 2/2," J.D. said as he found the fake brick and opened it to reveal a spare key. "Let's see what the interior's like."
"Pretty sparse," Rain said as she drew the handgun she kept concealed and cleared the main rooms of the house. "But at least it's furnished."
"Ladies go shower first," Kaplan said as he set his backpack down on the kitchen counter. "We'll see if there's any grub left in the house."
"He's got two showers," Alice said. "I'm okay with waiting for the two of you to finish."
"Sounds good to me," Natalia replied, her accent becoming stronger for a minute. "I'll try not to take up all of the hot water da?"
"Even a cold shower would be welcome!" J.D. yelled back with a grin as he poked his head out of the fridge, an armful of containers and ziplock bags stacked up carefully. "Man, he's got some pretty good leftovers here, he even labeled and dated them."
"Just save me something good," Rain called out from the master bedroom's attached bathroom. "You know what kind of food I like."
"Wilco," J.D. said as he began to preheat the oven for some of the leftovers. "I'll make sure we all get something decent."
"Wake me up when the other two are out of the showers," Alice said as she reclined on the couch. "I'm taking a nap."
"I'm glad we pulled all of our cash out," Kaplan said as he glanced at the laptop screen. "Looks like Umbrella just closed all of our accounts due to us being registered as 'dead."
"Damn," J.D. shook his head as he handed a slice of pizza to the resident technician. "Looks like Mark was right."
"I'm still decrypting the files," Kaplan said through a mouthful of pizza. "But it looks like this sort of thing goes way deeper than I could have ever imagined. It's like anyone who was actually important knew about the kind of things Umbrella was into."
"Is she on the up and up?" J.D. asked under his breath just loud enough for Kaplan to hear.
"Yeah," Kaplan replied. "She checks out. It looks like most of the people at HIVE were doing legitimate research on things that are approved by the WHO and CDC. It was only a small percentage that were into the freaky shit."
"Good," a weight seemingly lifted off of J.D.'s shoulders. "I was worried I'd have to shoot her."
"Nah," Kaplan finished off his slice of pizza before reaching for a plate of biscuits and gravy that J.D. set on the counter in front of him. "We're clear."