Resident Evil: Epidemic - 12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

::Panic::

We held each other for the longest time, neither wanting to let go. We were resting our heads on each other’s shoulders, and our tears were soaking through our shirts. I could hear Lucas’ dad and Mr Bosley talking, sounding agitated, but I couldn’t make out words. I felt numb.

And the pain. The pain was still there, like a dull ache just on the edge of my awareness. Like the ghost of a headache that just simply won’t go away. I hung on tightly to Lucas, needing to feel him, the warmth of his body. It was real. A sense of reality in such an unrealistic situation.

I pulled back, and looked into Lucas’ eyes. They were puffy and red from crying, and his nose was running, but I still thought he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. A new resolve flooded my veins. I couldn’t let anything happen to him. I’d burn down the whole world just to keep him safe. I would kill anyone or anything that hurt him.

Even me.

I knew then if the antidote wasn’t found in time, and I started to change, I would kill myself before I let myself harm him.

I smiled at him, and brought both hands up to the sides of his face. I used my thumbs to wipe the tears from underneath his eyes. I moved in to kiss him, but he pulled back.

I laughed as he turned his head and wiped his nose on his sleeve. I wasn’t even thinking about the snot that had run down from his nose to his mouth, but when you think about it, I guess it was kind of gross. He turned back to me, nose freshly wiped, and grinned. I leaned in again, and he didn’t pull away this time.

“Got it!” Lucas’ dad said, his voice sounding strained. Lucas and I broke apart, and looked over at the door. Lucas’ dad had pulled the door open about halfway, despite the fact that the locking mechanism was broken. We were no longer sealed in.

There was a soft clicking sound just outside the door.

“What is that?” Mr Bosley asked, looking to Lucas’ dad.

“Close the door, quick!” I yelled, but it was too late. One of the mutated dogs leapt into the room, bouncing off of Mr Bosley and knocking him and itself to the ground. It stood back up, then lowered itself as if preparing to spring off of the ground. It growled as it caught sight of me, then started to run. It leapt into the air. No one had time to react, none of us had our guns.

But I didn’t need one.

I caught the thing by the throat. I felt the force of it’s weight as it hit my hand, but I didn’t so much as flinch from the impact. I threw it to the ground so hard that it yelped in surprise.

It stood back up, but before it had time to move I closed the distance between us.

I felt the sickening crunch as it’s skull cracked when my fist connected with it’s head. It fell back down, but was not dead. My vision had gone red again, and I was vaguely aware of someone screaming. I grasped the thing’s throat and lifted it off the ground.

I tore it’s damn head off.

I literally tore it’s fucking head off!

I stood there, blood covering my forearms and hands, dripping occasionally. My chest was heaving as I struggled to get my breathing under control. Finally my vision returned to normal, and I realized that it was I that had screamed. Screamed in rage.

“We have…to hurry,” I said, in between gasps. “We don’t… have… much time.”

“Kieran,” Lucas said, cautiously.

“I’m still here,” I said. “But I wont be for much longer. We need to find it soon.”

“Your eyes…” he said. “They were…red… They didn’t even look human.”

I looked up, and saw that he was visibly shaken by what I had done to the beast. I took a deep breath, and smiled for him. He was still looking in my eyes, and as if he found only me in them again, he nodded, and a shy smile creeped across his lips.

“That was pretty freaking cool, by the way,” he said jokingly. “I thought we were dead.”

I looked over to Lucas’ father, and found him staring at me in amazement. Without a word, he nodded, and then moved to pick up the rifle I’d been carrying. I looked past him, and saw that Tyler’s body had moved onto one of the other examination tables and covered with a sheet. Dan was a few tables away, and groaned as he began to wake up.

Lucas’ dad rushed to his side, as the rest of us stood around him. His eyes opened, and he looked around at us confusedly.

“Why can’t I feel my…” he began, and then looked down at his leg. “Oh god…the spider!”

Dan freaked out. No other way to put it. If you woke up on an examination table and found out your leg had been sprayed with acid, you’d be freaking out too. And to make matters worse, he had to deal with the loss of Tyler, who he’d grown to care about very much. It was almost too much for him to handle, but somehow he managed.

A little while later, we were ready to go. There was a sterile looking stainless steel and gray canvas wheelchair parked in the corner of the room. I’d thought it was a bit convenient that it was there, then I shuddered at the thought that most of the patients who came into this room probably didn’t do so under their own power. Lucas’ father had found a bottle of some pretty strong painkillers, which he’s given to Dan to carry. Mr Bosley led our group with the shotgun, followed by Lucas’ father with the rifle. Lucas had the pistol, and walked beside me as I pushed Dan’s wheelchair.

“Where are we going?” Dan asked. He was shaking a bit, as if he were cold.

“We have to find the antidote for the virus,” Lucas said. He glanced over at me with a worried look in his eye.

“Why?” Dan asked, confused. “It’s not going to do the zombies any good.”

Lucas told Dan what had happened to me, and then he craned his neck around to look at me.

“Maybe Lucas should be pushing this thing,” he said nervously.

“Shut up,” I said, and then intentionally bumped the wall. He looked scared for a second, until I smiled at him.

“Asshole,” he said, chuckling.

We came to what seemed like a dead end, with a locked door blocking the path, but as we checked the map hanging on the wall, we discovered that the lab continued through a network of smaller rooms. It looked as if the designer had decided to make the most confusing layout he possibly could when he designed this lab.

The door directly ahead of us was magnetically sealed with the only access being through a card reader. There was a red light next to it, showing it was locked.

“How do we get through?” Lucas asked. We all stood around for a moment, scratching our heads on this one.

“Oh, wait!” Mr Bosley said. “The card key! The one Kieran found by Macy’s body!”

He fished around in his pocket until he pulled out the small plastic card.

“Yeah, I found it when Bobby tried to bash my head in with a baseball bat,” I said sarcastically.

“Where’d they run off to?” Lucas asked. “Why weren't Bobby and Becky with the coach?”

Mr Bosley slid the card through the card reader.

Nothing happened.

He turned the card over, the right way, and slid it again. The door made a soft click, and then creaked open slightly. Lucas’ dad readied the shotgun, and Mr Bosley pushed the door open.

We found out what happened to Bobby and Becky. Lucas looked through the door and immediately turned away and threw up in the corner. I covered my mouth in horror, as did Lucas’ dad and Mr Bosley. Dan squeaked out what might have been the beginning of a scream, had he not clamped his hand over his mouth.

They were hung by the neck, gently swaying from side to side. Both were nude, and vicious slashes were visible all over their bodies, done by a large knife of some kind. Blood was everywhere, it covered them from the neck down, dripping to the floor. Strangely, their faces were left untouched, mouths still open, frozen in a scream of agony. Eyes peeled wide in horror.

There was a handwritten sign pinned to Becky’s noose, with splotches of red all over it, and I had to squint to make out the scratchy writing.

Consult the Black Queen. She’s your only hope now.

“Reynolds…” Mr Bosley said. “He’s completely insane. God…these are children! When I get my hands on him…”

Nothing more needed to be said. We all were itching to get a piece of that bastard. As much as I’d hated Bobby before, I didn’t want this. No one deserves to die like this.

No one wanted to enter the room. But time was of the essence. None of us knew how long it would take for me to change. Hell, none of us knew what I was changing into. But judging by the horrific things we’d seen so far, there was no way we wanted to wait and see.

We entered, scooting past the bodies of Bobby and Becky, trying not to touch them as they swung gently. As we passed them, we noticed the smell.

The air smelled so strongly of blood that any number of those horrible things could catch the scent and come running.

The room was filled with desks, workstations with computers, and each one had some personal effects from whoever had worked there. Family pictures, figurines, books, all number of different things that show that Umbrella is made up of people, not the monsters they create. Real people with thoughts and emotions and hopes and dreams. Knowing this seemed to make what the evil the corporation was doing seem much, much worse.

We were going to leave the room as quickly as possible, but something caught my eye. Perhaps it was a glimmer of light reflecting off of a shiny surface, I couldn’t tell you, but it drew my eye all the same.

A chess piece, slick with blood, lying on the keyboard of a computer.

I moved closer to it, and found it to be a black queen.

Everyone had followed me over, and were silent as I moved the mouse connected to the computer. The screen lit back up, coming out of sleep mode. A program was running, and it looked to be an old style DOS prompt, but slightly different.

Execute BLCKQN.EXE, Y or N?

“Should I?” I asked, reading what was on the screen.

“Why not?” Lucas said. “Maybe it’ll give us some answers.”

I looked around, and everyone else was nodding, so I punched the “Y” key, then “Enter”.

There was a mechanical ‘whirring’ sound, and all of us tensed up. I jumped back about a foot as a beam of light shot out of what looked like a security camera, and a young girl, seemingly made out of the light, materialized to my left.

“What the hell?” Mr Bosley, Lucas’ dad, Lucas, Dan, and I all said at the same time.

“What are you doing in here?” she asked, the voice not coming from her, but from the speakers on the computer. She had a British accent, very proper sounding, and she looked at us in confusion. She was wearing a black dress, and as she looked at us, she crossed her arms.

“What are you?” I asked.

“Access to this lab and all its contents are restricted,” she said, her voice sounding tinny over the speakers. “Notifying security of a breach.”

“There is no security,” Dan said from his wheelchair. “Everyone’s dead, There’re creatures running loose all over the town, and if you don’t start answering our questions, we’ll deactivate you again.”

We all looked at Dan, surprised at how angry he sounded. I guess we shouldn’t have been, with what he’d been through, but still, it was unexpected.

She paused, her image dimming slightly. It looked as if she were a still frame in a movie, completely motionless. You don’t realize how much a person moves when they breathe until you see an absence of it. Then as quickly as it froze, she sprung back in motion again, as if fast forwarding to where she should have been all along.

“A check of the sensors around this facility prove you to be correct,” she said, her voice thoughtful. “Tell me, how did this happen?”

“We were hoping you could tell us that,” Mr Bosley said.

“Many of my circuits were damaged when I was shut down,” she said. “I have been inactive for…” she paused again, momentarily this time. “Thirty-seven days.”

“Great,” I said sarcastically. “So you don’t know any more than we do. Terrific.”

“Why are dead people walking around trying to eat us?” Lucas asked, calm as could be.

“Access to information on experimental projects is restricted,” she said, her voice as cold as ice.

“Restricted by who?” Lucas’ dad asked. “Everyone is dead!”

“Access to information about personnel is restricted,” she droned.

“Wait,” Mr Bosley said, Then he pulled out the card key he used in the door and slid it through the reader attached to the monitor. “Why are zombies everywhere?” he asked her again.

“Reanimation is a side effect of the Tyrant Virus, a virus that was originally created when trying to create a formula to reverse the aging process,” she said immediately after the card was swiped.

“Tyrant Virus?” Lucas asked, his eyes wide. “What is the Tyrant T-002 Project?”

The image paused again, then flickered. Suddenly her image was replaced by a large, hulking brute, at least seven feet tall, and although it looked humanoid, it was utterly unlike any person I’d ever seen.

“Oh god don’t kill me!” I screamed, leaping backwards away from it.

“It’s another hologram, Kieran!” Lucas said, snapping me out of it.

I opened one eye, and took another look at the thing I was going to become. It’s skin was an ashen gray, with thick protruding veins, it’s body was muscular to the point of looking like a body builder. It had a large, grotesque mass on the outside of it’s chest, appearing to be it’s heart. It’s right hand was a mass of bony, razor sharp claws, so long they hung down to almost the middle of it’s calf. And it didn’t have a penis or vagina. It was sexless. In a word, it was horrifying.

“The Tyrant project is an attempt to weaponize the Tyrant virus, into the perfect, emotionless killing machine,” her voice said over the speakers, but thankfully, the thing’s lips didn’t move. I’d handled about enough weirdness for now.

“The DNA required to make a Tyrant is incredibly rare, as the project is still in it’s testing phase, but many experiments are being done to correct this problem,” the hologram of the monster faded out, replaced once again with the girl in the black dress.

“Where is the antivirus?” Lucas asked.

“Room 357-B,” the Black Queen responded. “I can show you the way on the map, but some of the doors are electronically locked. Would you like me to unlock the doors?”

On the computer screen, the map of the lab appeared, with a line showing the route through the rooms, and the rooms we’d need to take were highlighted. The two locked doors, which were fairly large rooms, were highlighted in red.

“Is there another way around? Without going through those doors?” Mr. Bosley asked.

“No, the only way is through the decontamination chamber and then through laboratory 14-C,” she said.

We all looked at each other. There was nothing more to think about. We’d already spent too much time in this room as it was, seeing that the bloody mess that had once been Becky Reilly and Bobby Gibson was no doubt attracting all sorts of disgusting creatures. The smell was heavy in the room, and since we opened the door, it was no doubt spreading.

“We need to get moving, the smell of blood is way too thick for these things not to notice,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Lucas’ dad asked. “The smell isn’t that bad. I can hardly smell it over here.”

I looked at him for a second, my mouth hanging open.

“What? I can taste it, it’s so bad,” I said.

“I don’t really smell it either,” Dan said, and Lucas and Mr Bosley both nodded in agreement.

“Okay then,” I said as I realized why I could smell it so strongly. “If I can smell it, they certainly can.”

It finally dawned on them, and they decided to agree with me that it was time to get going.

“My access to the security cameras is limited,” the Black Queen said. “Something is locking me out of certain areas, but I still have access to the intercom system. If something is blocking your path in one of the rooms I still have access to, I should be able to warn you.”

“Thank you,” Lucas told the hologram. It nodded her head, and then disappeared.

We moved to the back of the room, to the door that would lead us in the right direction. Mr Bosley turned the door handle and pushed the door open. In the hall outside were two regular zombies, and as soon as they smelled the air that rushed out of the room, the started shuffling after us.

Lucas’ dad raised the rifle and easily took them both out, one shot each. We continued on our way. We’d gone through three rooms, and another hallway before we heard the voice of the Black Queen again.

“You are approaching the door to the decontamination room,” she said. “I am locked out of this room’s security cameras, so I do not know what is inside.”

We heard an audible click as she disengaged the locking mechanism. Mr Bosley opened the door.

Inside, the room was very large, and there were huge glass cylinders filled with murky fluid hooked up to some monitors. I moved closer to one of them, and wiped away the condensation on the outside, enabling me to see inside.

It was big. Not quite as big as the tyrant, but twice as horrible looking. It was vaguely humanoid, but far less so than the tyrant. It’s skin was green and reptilian, making it look like a cross between a human and a lizard. It had sharp talons on the ends of it’s fingers.

I shuddered, and turned to the others.

“You do not want to know what’s inside here,” I said.

I turned to take one last look at the thing…

And came eye-to-eye with it.

It screamed, and then began frantically beating on the glass. I jumped back in terror, and looked to Mr Bosley, Lucas, and Lucas’ father, who were all pointing their weapons at the tube.

The thing slammed against the tube again, and the glass cracked under the pressure.

“Run!” I yelled, pointing to the door on the other side of the room.

No one needed to be told twice, and we all ran for the door. Lucas put the pistol in the waistband of his pants and grabbed Dan’s wheelchair, pushing him out in front of him. I was the last to reach the door.

But I didn’t make it outside. The door slammed shut, locking me inside with the green, lizard-man. I turned around just as the glass shattered and the creature leapt out of it’s container. It turned it’s horribly ugly face, looking me in the eye again.

It screamed, this time not muffled by the glass. It sounded like I would imagine the unholy shrieking in the pit of Hell to sound like, and it made my ears hurt to hear it. But it did something to me. I no longer had any fear of it. It pissed me off!

As my vision went red again, and I felt the monster inside of me rear it’s head once again, the thing charged me.

I smiled, legs spread and arms ready to give it the beating of its pathetically short and disgusting life.