Boundless Abyss:

VII.

Women

The Queen Zenobia Cruise Ship- Main Deck- 5:13 p.m.

When they arrived in the turbulent ocean, it had been 96 minutes since Leon Kennedy's signal had been lost. They'd changed into wet suits and loaded up their weapons only to slide down rappel lines to the surface of the cruise liner. Upon landing, Jill glanced at the tossing, darkened, angry sky and surmised, "We've got a handful of minutes before Mother Nature bitch slaps us right off this ship."

Kevin landed beside her and sighed, "Why is every woman in my life a raging bitch when I get too close to her?"

Jill snorted and turned toward the door to the ship's interior. She pulled US STRATCOMS's answer to the Genesis from her belt and hit the button on the much smaller unit, scanning their surroundings.

She hit the button on the Omega to watch it light up. In a handful of moments, she knew they weren't alone. There were so many signatures that she realized what waited in that ship was mostly undead.

And two very distinct flickers of life.

Jill glanced at Kevin and blew out a breath. "He's in there."

"You sure it's him?"

The Omega beeped and threw up his face. The genetic mapping made no mistake; it was him. He was alive. The other signature beeped and came back unknown. Whoever was in the room with Leon wasn't on their radar.

Jill studied Leon's readings, and Kevin said, over her shoulder, "...fuck."

"Yeah."

Because the readings weren't great, his heart rate was low, and his breathing shallow. He was wounded. How badly was yet unknown. But wherever he was, he wasn't conscious.

And he was running out of time. The Omega gave him a sixty-nine percent survival rating. Jill lowered it and declared, "Let's move."

Kevin nodded and remarked, "Sixty-nine isn't a bad number, Jill. Let's get him out of there and into one S.T.A.T."

Her mouth twitched, and she shouldered open the door. She looked out at the darkening sky and urged in her head - hang on, Leon,wherever you are, we're coming for ya.

The Queen Zenobia - Promenade Deck - 5: 18 p.m.

It was the sound of dripping that woke him.

His eyes flickered. Something sticky slid into his eye. Blinking to get his bearings, Leon muttered, "...who farted?" Because that's what it smelled like in this room: fart. Noxious, disgusting, rotten ass laid after a night of too many nachos.

He groaned as the pain hit him. He was bound to a chair with his arms behind his back, his face battered all to hell, and missing his weapons. That was ok. Really. He'd been out of rounds before they'd taken him anyway.

The Omega had told him about the monsters. It hadn't mentioned the team that had followed him onto the ship at some point. As he'd been uploading samples, the first bullet had winged an inch from his left ear from behind.

Silent. Shadows. They were good. But not good enough. Because he'd almost smelled them.

Before the first one aimed again, he drilled them between the eyes. The helmet couldn't stop the heavy round. When the attacker went to his back in a smear of blood, Leon holstered the .45 in his hands and lifted his HK416. He opened fire at the first suggestion of movement beyond the door, backing up as he moved.

Someone shouted. Someone threw a smoke grenade. Leon hunkered down and lowered his thermal goggles. He could see them moving beyond the doors.

The smoke crept in, hissing like snakes, and he let a few come through the door in formation - likely thinking he was coughing up a lung.

They left their fallen teammate without checking him and carefully scanned the wide-open area. The Promenade Deck was expansive, covering a few offices, an eatery, and plenty of places to hide. While they searched, he stayed in the shadows, watching them.

He got the first one in a storage room. They were checking behind shelves when he slipped up behind them and delivered the coup de grace with his knife to the back of their skull. Done. He poked the dead guy's communicator in his ear to have ears and eyes on them.

The second one came around a corner in the kitchen area and got the knife straight up under their chin. No screaming. No help. Dead.

He took out a third with a swift kick to the back of the knee and a snap of the neck.

They were talking about the goal being to take him alive. The one who'd shot was new apparently and panicked. As Leon circled them like a hawk, he saw one shift into the office.

Creeping along, Leon joined him in the office to see the guy checking the computer. He lifted his head, went to raise his weapon, and Leon shook his head - aiming his silenced 9mm at the other man. The man lowered his weapon, and Leon murmured, "Who are you?"

The man shook his head with a sharply worded, "Go fuck yourself."

And Leon shot him in the face.

If he wasn't going to play ball, he was useless alive. Turning, Leon crouched down at the window and listened to another man come around the corner. He turned into the office and spotted his dead comrade. Before he could shout, Leon shot him in the back of the head.

He collapsed in a parody of a 69 on his dead ally. Face down in each other's junk for all eternity. It was fitting for a couple of dicks.

He picked off another one like it was nothing from the balcony while the guy paused to look at a magazine with naked women in it. Idiot, Leon thought; who stops in the middle of a mission to oogle tits? He splattered the guy's brains all over the woman's impressive double-ds.

Someone shouted and came running. He peppered them from the balcony as two more spotted him to return fire. Holding cover, Leon called down, "You keep coming; I'm gonna turn every one of you into Swiss cheese."

"Surrender or will cut off your cock!"

Amused now, Leon returned, "At least you'd have one then, you cowering cunt."

That worked. Pissed now, they rushed the stairs. He shot the first one in the face, sending him backward into his friends. There was a small, terrified squeak from his left.

Leon glanced over to find a cowering girl in a dirty waitress uniform near the cafe. She saw him looking at her and moved like she'd come out, and Leon shook his head to tell her to stay put. One of the men threw a grenade.

It pinged with a metallic sound as it hit and rolled, and Leon dove toward the girl. He tackled her to the floor and rolled them behind the counter to serve drinks. She clutched at him and cringed as he covered her with his body, and the grenade went off.

Boom.

Cacophonus.

It echoed so severely that he almost went deaf in one ear as the tables and chairs exploded along with part of the wall. Fools. They were on a ship. Did they think they couldn't blow fucking hole in the thing and sink it?

Leon pulled the girl up and stuck his finger to his lips, gesturing with his head for her to move. What was she doing here? She was young, blonde, maybe twenty. Her dark hair was slick with blood and goop. He guided her along the wall before him, covering them from the back. He shot the last two men while they moved.

She slipped around a corner in the hallway, and he joined her, covering both ways until he was sure it was clear.

When the silence pervaded, he rose beside her. "Are you alright?"

The girl nodded rapidly and asked, "Are you here to help?"

Leon nodded and carefully moved her toward the door leading to the ship's main lobby. "What are you doing here?"

She swayed on her feet, and he hurried forward to put her arm over his shoulders. She half collapsed against him in fear and relief. She was filthy but didn't look too severely wounded.

The Omega had told him there was a human on board. But genetic mapping wasn't available for them. He'd just assumed it was Ada. After all, she'd been the one to tell him about the ship.

He eased open the door to find the most beautiful main hall he'd ever seen in his life. The place was polished marble and chandeliers. It was almost glittering with light and flecked brown in the shade of a good redwood. He stared at it for a second, just a second, and that second was all it took.

"Waiting for you."

He went to look down at her face when her tone changed, and she stuck the taser in her hands in his ribs. It crackled. It sent volt after volt of electricity through his body as he let go of her and went down, jerking like a landed fish.

And he remembered he was supposed to never underestimate a woman.

As she stood over him, the blonde smiled cockily, "They said you were an invincible machine," she cocked her head to the side, "You look like a man to me. Sorta."

She tased him again when he twitched on the ground and delighted in his spastic body.

The girl straddled his body and laid the taser against the big pulse in his throat. "Mr. Kennedy, you're a bad, bad boy," she cooed as she leaned down and put them nose to nose, "fucking sexy as hell, though. Shame we're gonna have to ruin that."

She pressed a kiss to his slack mouth as boots sounded behind her, and she called, "Truss him up like a turkey," and she rose as she spat, "Next time you offer me back up, Raymond, it better be someone with half a fucking brain."

Leon was rolled to his face, divested of his weapons, and zip tied at the wrists. His body kept jerking, annoying him, even as he was already thinking about how to escape. One of the men snapped, "He's the fucking Executioner, Rachel. What did you expect?"

"I don't know," Rachel rolled her eyes as she trailed behind the men jerking Leon into step with them, "skills? Your men are worse than toddlers, Raymond. I could have paid monkeys to back me up back there."

"He took out like a thousand fucking ganados in Spain, you bitch, "Raymond complained as they turned into a shower room with multiple heads on the walls, "did you think it would be a cakewalk?"

"If your first dipshit hadn't panicked and missed with the tranq, yeah, " Rachel admonished as they tossed Leon into a chair. She straddled his lap again and looped her arms around his neck as she tilted his head back to look at her, "Is this good for you, handsome?"

Leon, teeth still chattering, said nothing.

"Really?" Rachel tilted her head, "Silence? How about this?"

Rachel cocked a brow and reached behind her ass. She grabbed his balls, squeezed hard, and watched his face turn bright red as she grinned wolfishly. "There we go, hotshot; how about we try that question again? Is this good for you?"

Voice hoarse and hissing with pain, Leon commented almost drolly, "I've had better."

Her face lit up with humor as she kept her fist around his babymakers and pressed another kiss to his mouth. He turned his head to the side, and her lips slid down his cheek as she hooted, "Goddamn, you're gonna be fun to break. Balls in a vice and still cocky."

The door opened behind her as a few more men joined them.

Raymond admonished with a tone of censure, "You gotta do that in front of us?"

"Hell yes, I do," Rachel released her grip enough Leon could draw a full breath, "this is what happens to men. Men get their balls grabbed when they're stupid."

Stupid might have been a little harsh, Leon thought as he felt his nuts start throbbing, but she wasn't entirely wrong. He knew better. How many goddamn times did he have to see a woman and think - victim- before he realized they were dangerous? His white knight syndrome was showing its ugly head.

Rachel shifted her hand and put the taser against his balls instead.

So, not really an improvement.

She batted her lashes on her gorgeous face and mused, "So, how about we start with the basics?" She bounced her big butt on his lap and faked a girlish giggle, "Oooh baby, that's nice. You fuck as pretty as you look?"

Leon answered gruffly, "Take off the zip ties and find out."

Rachel tapped his balls with the taser and made him wince. "No, no. No smart remarks. You're my fuckboy, baby, not the badass I was told to fear. So, answer me nicely, or I will see how many volts it takes to make you sterile."

Leon cleared his throat and licked his dry lips, "What was the question again?"

"You fuck as good as you look?"

He laughed dryly, "Is there a right way to answer that?"

"Yep. Honesty."

"Then yes, I do."

She grinned. "You kill a thousand ganados in one day?"

"...something like that."

"You here to sink this ship?"

He held her eyes and answered, "Sure. After I'm done with it."

Rachel nodded, grabbed a handful of his hair to peel it back from his face, and forced his neck to full extension, "I was told to take you alive."

Leon grunted, "I heard. Why?"

She shook her head and shoved the taser harder into his balls. He grunted again as she stated, "No. No questions from the peanut gallery. Just mine. Where's your backup?"

"I don't have any."

Her smile bloomed big and happy. "So, that's true too. You fucking lone ranger. You tough guy. No backup. You know there's like eight hundred infected on this damn ship, right?"

"Yes."

She shook her head, "This fucking guy. Legend for a reason, am I right? What the hell is with men being such big dick dumbasses?" She glanced at the men around her and demanded, "Huh? Anyone want to answer that one?"

The men surrounding her shifted but said nothing.

Amused, Rachel sighed, "See? Too wimpy to answer me."

Leon responded drolly, "Or maybe they're just afraid of getting their family jewels burnt off."

Rachel cooed, "You afraid of me, too, baby? Hmm?" She shifted her hand and rubbed his balls instead, massaging them in her palm. "You like that, baby?"

His mouth twitched as he returned, "Better than the shock rod, sure."

Rachel spoke against his mouth, lips brushing, "This can be hard or easy, baby. That's up to you."

He eyed her quietly and answered, "I'm a fan of both sometimes."

Flashing with amusement, Rachel licked his chin and remarked, "Raymond - send those two chumps out for the clamps."

Raymond cleared his throat, "We're not supposed to kill him."

"I'm not killing him," Rachel decided and grinned as she rolled her hips atop Leon in a parody of sex, "I'm playing rough with him. He likes it, don'tcha, baby?"

Leon felt the zip tie on his hands loosen, "Oh, you bet, sweetheart. But could you at least show me some tits? If I gotta die today, I think I'd like to motorboat."

Rachel's eyes twinkled as she shrugged and shifted a hand. She slid down the zipper on her uniform to her navel and revealed some pretty impressive cleavage. "Better, baby?"

He grunted as she jerked on his hair when he didn't answer fast enough. The two men behind her disappeared out the door and left her alone in the room with just him, Raymond, and one more man. Leon studied the man against the wall as Rachel rolled her chest against his and her hips over his groin. The big guy held the M16 in his hands like he knew how to use it. Raymond stood like a sentry, not looking at the show but aware of it. Raymond was lean but muscular through the shoulders.

In the fraction of a second it took him to determine the situation, he knew two things: the big guy would be trouble if he had to fight him hand-to-hand. And Raymond was the real problem. He shifted and moved like a guy who knew his body, how to use it, and where to hurt you. Which meant he had to take his chances with the big guy first.

Rachel yanked on his hair, squeezed his sack until he felt needles of pain from feet to face, and demanded, "You ignoring me, baby? Don't make me hurt you. Answer the question. You like these titties?"

And Leon simply said, "I've seen better."

She squeezed his balls hard enough that he felt the fire in his belly and head-butted her. Boom. No thinking. The pain cleared out the cobwebs of torture from the other one the moment his balls were released from her grip.

She reeled back, falling to the side, and Leon threw his chair backward as the big guy came for him.

Leon rolled, kicked Rachel in the face as she grabbed for the taser, and got it instead, rising to his feet in a swift movement. She shouted, "Take him down!" through a mouth full of blood.

Leon kicked the chair at the big guy coming for him, and the wooden perch smacked into his face before he could swing his arm to stop it. He staggered, Leon stuck him in the ribs with the taser, and Raymond lunged. Raymond got two good uppercuts into Leon's side before he could swing around with the taser.

He blocked the next one, swung around with an elbow, and Raymond took a solid hit to the face before he brought his knee up toward Leon's belly. They tussled, Leon, blocking the knee and driving a kick into the other man's hip. It spun Raymond around and got him a Taser in the neck for his trouble.

Leon lugged the other man in front of him like a shield as Rachel aimed her gun at him.

She snapped, "You think that'll stop me?! Really!?"

And Leon answered, "No." He shoved Raymond at her, and she shot; the bullet went into the vest of the other man, and Leon ripped the pistol from Raymond's thigh as she tried to shove his dead weight off her.

She collapsed under Raymond's weight with a grunt to the floor, and the door flew open.

Leon shot the first one that emerged through the left eye. His goggles shattered on his helmet, and the next one fired. The bullet thunked into Leon's chest plate, and took his breath for a moment as he dropped to a crouch, and Rachel shouted on the floor, "Don't kill him, goddamnit!"

He shot the next man that came through the door in the throat. The next one shouted, "What the hell are we supposed to do if we can't shoot him!?"

Rachel roared, "I said don't kill him! Not don't shoot him!"

Well, Leon thought, there went his leverage. He shifted to the left and around the curve in the shower, using the wall as cover. Someone threw a smoke grenade into the bathroom, and the world was suddenly dense with fog. He waited, watching, and shot twice as the fog shivered.

Someone shouted. There was a thud, and Rachel complained, "For fuck's sake! He's one guy!"

A chunk of the wall blew away an inch from Leon's left eye as he leaned out of cover and fired again. He ducked, hunkered back a little, and aimed from the crouch. Another shout. Another ping of a grenade being thrown.

This one landed behind him and forced him to roll out of the way of the blast zone. It went off, throwing tiles and shattered glass everywhere. A pipe fell and caught his shoulder, making him stumble as he went to one knee.

And a fist came out of the fog. It hit him cleanly in the face and threw him to his back on the floor. He was already rolling through the fall to his feet when the attacker swished the knife at him. It sliced a breath away from his chest as Leon cross-barred the blade, swept out a foot, and shot the man in the face as he fell to the ground.

Debris rained down on him as he moved, picking the knife up from the floor, gun up and ready. He eased along the wall, aiming in the smoke, and the taser crackled as Rachel shouted, "Give up, you moron, or I will shove this up your ass!"

Leon muttered, "...women," and kept moving.

A gun went off, and he rolled left a second too late as the bullet hit him in the shoulder. The gun came down from the pain, just a touch, just enough that the man who'd shot him could use that second of pain to throw a roundhouse kick at his crouched head. It glanced over his hair, Leon shoved the knife upward into his exposed groin, and the blade sank beside his balls in his thigh, buried, bleeding, gushing so fast that the man couldn't even shout. Femoral artery. He was finished.

He collapsed as Leon jerked the knife clean and moved around his body. He made it to the doorway, and a shot nearly took his face off as he started to peep around the corner. He shot blindly from the cover and heard them shout down the hallway.

And then? Well, then, the monsters made their appearance. He heard the noises in the duct above him. There was a groan of metal, and something burst free of the jagged sheet steel to grab for his face. It got a fist into his goddamn hair and jerked, pulling him up and off his feet, dangling him like Rapunzel dropping her hair to the eager Prince.

He should have cut the shit off years ago. It would be his fucking hair that got him killed. A stupid, preventable, ridiculous way to meet his end. It should have been a cosmic joke. Instead, it was the story of his life.

He struggled, aiming the gun up at the mutated thing above him, and fired into the mess of blood and dripping rot. It thrust what appeared to be a mouth made into an uncircumcised dick at him, and Leon fired until the gun clicked empty. It bled all over him as it dropped him to the floor and dangled, arms and chest hanging out of the duct, body twitching.

He grabbed the knife, and someone shot him in the chest again.

It threw him back, he slid over the floor, and the man aimed at his face and shouted, "Stay down!"

Leon answered, "No thanks, bro." And kicked the guy's left knee. The shot he squeezed tore up the floor by Leon's face as he fell to the side, and they fought for the rifle in his hands.

Leon punched him in the side, the man jerked the rifle and kicked Leon in the thigh, and they hit the wall as they surged against each other. Leon grunted, shoved his whole body into the other man, and thrust his shoulder into his belly. The guy grunted; Leon jerked, tossed him over his shoulders, and threw him onto his back on the floor.

He reached for the rifle, and the next guy tackled him. Head on. No bullshit.

Leon held his feet, barely and locked arms with the guy. He went over his back, down between his legs as he slid, got a grip around the dude's waist, and jerked - throwing the guy over his head into a suplex. Crunch. Helmet and bone in symphony as Leon jerked the gun off the guy's thigh and spun around.

He popped off a shot, got Raymond in the chest with it, and Raymond threw what was in his hand. It wasn't a grenade. It was boiling water. It hit Leon in the face, made him roar in pain, and Leon staggered as the other man went to his back on the floor. Temporarily blind, Leon fired wildly down the hall as he tried to determine if he was severely damaged.

Two shots echoed his and hit him in the vest. It threw him to his back against the wall as he cut left around the hallway and ran blindly. He couldn't see out of his left eye; it was shot, too wounded or too soon to tell. His right one was blurry.

He burst into another room and kicked the door shut behind him, turning to start shoving the row of bunkbeds there against it to secure it. He tugged, and a hand reached out from under the bed. It gripped his ankle, he shot down into the bed and blew mattress chunks sky high, and it jerked so hard he was thrown to his back on the floor.

The thing clawed up his body from the floor, making gurgling sounds like a kid blowing bubbles underwater, and Leon pulled the trigger as it went. The gun clicked empty. The thing was inches from his face, peeling back to deep throat him with that damn protuberance from its mouth, and a gun went off above him. Boom. Boom.

Boom.

It collapsed atop him as Rachel came into his blurry vision. "You son of a bitch," she panted, bleeding from her busted nose and mouth, "I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of this."

The blood was all over those impressive tits, her hair in her face, as she leaned down and shoved the taser against his balls. It hurt so badly that he couldn't even breathe. She kept the trigger pressed until he stopped screaming, and the darkness closed over his last blurry eye.