Mechanical Animals: Resident Evil 4

19

"Ooh," Rose cooed as they rounded a caged storage area. She plucked up a grenade and handed it over to Leon. She may have (mostly) gotten over her dislike of explosions, but that didn't mean she had to willingly carry an explosive on her person. The room was cramped, with narrow footpaths to get from one end of the room to the other. It was nearly claustrophobic. The room was large but felt so small because of all the junk piled up. It was very clear that the people here cared even less about their environment than the cultists at the castle had. At least the castle had somewhat clean rooms and things weren't just tossed on the floor carelessly. She would have thought a military base would have been a bit more put together.

The sound of dripping water annoyed her, and the floor was wet in a storage container that acted as a hallway. As Leon walked towards it, something moved, creaking a loud metallic banging sound. Something tall and leathery slithered out of an air duct and squirmed to its feet. Rose felt her throat tighten with a mix of revulsion and fear. She'd faced monsters before, but this—this thing—was something different. The stench of it hit her instantly: like rot, blood, and the metallic tang of something much more ancient and much more evil than anything she had encountered.

It was towering—its gaunt, leathery body bending awkwardly, the way a wounded animal might struggle to rise. Its skin stretched over skeletal limbs and shimmered with an oily sheen that made it look even more unnatural under the dim, flickering lights above. But what really struck Rose were its eyes—those glowing, malevolent red eyes, too bright in the dark, as if they were staring directly into her soul.

The creature wheezed a sickly, breathy sound that echoed off the walls of the cramped storage hallway, rattling Rose to the core. Its jaw gaped open, showing a horrific set of elongated, spear-like teeth, the kind that would have torn through flesh and bone with ease. The jagged teeth jutted out from its mouth in an unnatural way, making it impossible for the creature to close its lips. The sight alone made her stomach turn.

Leon's arm shot out to push her and Ashley back, but his voice was calm and focused. "Stay behind me," he ordered, his hand steady on his gun.

Rose's hand instinctively went to her pistol as she took a few steps back, trying to put distance between herself and the monstrosity. Ashley's breath came out in shallow gasps beside her, but Rose couldn't take her eyes off the creature, even as it continued to wheeze, its movements jerky, disjointed.

"What the is that?" Ashley whispered, voice trembling.

Rose didn't answer. Her mind was racing—calculating, analyzing the situation. It looked like something out of a nightmare. The creature's body twitched in spasms as if it wasn't fully in control of itself. Whatever it was, it was desperate, hungry, and far too dangerous.

"I have been calling it a Regenerator," Leon explained as he shot it. He aimed for three specific parts on the body, the plaga exploding on it's hip. He riddled the thing with bullets and it screamed as it fell. It then began to writhe on the ground as it grew spikes all over it's body. "What the fuck?" Leon cursed as he reloaded. "You stubborn son-of-a-bitch!" The creature screamed, its back arching and spikes extending out of it's body so long that even though they were nowhere near it, they had to dodge to avoid being hit by the spikes. Leon had blown its arm off, but Rose watched in absolute horror as the limb grew back like a lizard that had lost its tail.

"You've fought these things before?" Ashley yelled, cowering behind the agents as they backed up to give it more space. Leon unhooked the grenade Rose had given him.

"Take cover!"

Rose grabbed Ashley and yanked her back into the previous room as Leon unpinned the grenade and tossed it at the feet of the Regenerator. He turned around and ran. The grenade went off, making the walls and floors vibrate. Rose swallowed her discomfort and peered back into the room to see the creature had exploded from the waist up. Its legs took two more steps and then fell forward. She met Leon's eyes, in complete disbelief. "Unlike anything, huh?"