Resident Evil: Exodus - The Tale of Elza Walker

Chapter 8 - Retreat

ASIDE - Download and read the complete novel at your leisure by cutting and pasting the link below in your Internet browser!
https://www.mediafire.com/file/f7o02jbrx2pszp6/exodus_revised_draft_v501.rar/file

--------------------

There are some horrors in life which the average person hopes to never have to face. For almost everyone, this starts with the thing that as a child you fear is lurking under the bed or in the closet, waiting to rush out and get you as soon as your parents turn out the light and close your bedroom door. That fear, in one form or another, will stay with most of us for the rest of our lives. Even the most hardened and grizzled war veteran, who has been in the worst and seen the worst, is not entirely immune to this fear. although few will admit it. Fortunately for most of us, that fear never gets realized in reality. For an unfortunate few, they have no choice but to face it, and either conquer it or be conquered by it.

Elza Walker was not a combat veteran. Even so she was a skilled hunter, and had taken on every kind of wild animal in the America Midwest from bobcats through the larger cats, wild wolves and coyotes, and on one memorable and almost fatal occasion an angry black bear. She had gone through just about every experience in dealing with wild animals which the most skilled American hunters could have within the confines of their own borders. It was fortunate she had done so. Only those experiences, and the knowledge acquired from them, helped her face the unnatural and inhuman monstrosities with which she now found herself fighting for her life. In later years, she would recall her encounter with the hunters as the single worst fight she had during her entire Outbreak experience in Raccoon City. There would be other fights, and even more deadly foes, but none of those others encounters would test her training, skills, and experiences to their limit as did this one. There was no point in hiding, as that supid Umbrella woman was trying to do even now. Those things would track her down and kill her no matter what she did. To Elza it was best to go down fighting. Maybe she could do some damage, and even take one out, if she were really lucky, before their superior speed and strength did her in.

Fortunately the odds shifted in Elza's favor almost immediately. At once the two hunters split up, with the closer one lunging towards Elza in long bounds, using its incredibly poweful legs to shorten the distance in a matter of seconds. Elza had ducked and rolled to avoid being under the thing as it came down on its final bound, then came up firing. She hit the hunter in mid air and it jerked to one side as it fell, screaming and thrashing its arms as it plowed into a nearby car. Out of the corner of her eye, Elza saw the other hunter bound to the pile of wrecked vehicles blocking the Parking Garage ramp, pick up and throw one on top of the pile out of its way, and then claw its way out through the hole it had just created. The thrown vehicle smashed into the parked vehicles at the base of the ramp, making a great crashing sound as it did and sending both metal and glass shards flying. By then Elza was on the move again, The first hunter had now regained its feet and was bounding again in her direction. She again held her fire until the last possible second, as it made its final bound to reach her. She again ducked, rolled, and came up firing with a controlled burst from her autopistol. The gun clicked empty in mid-burst, but it was enough. Again the creature went out of control, flailing as it plowed into the side of one of the parked SWAT vans. The vehicle rocked and two of its rear tires blew out as the hunter's long claws punctured them, and there was another scream of painful rage as it was smacked by pieces of flying rubber and steel cord. Elza quickly put as many vehicles between her and the hunter as she could, hurriedly reloading as she did. She only had to deal with one now, but it was all she could handle. It was too fast to allow her to escape back to the Service Bay unmolested. For that matter she didn't want it to find Sherry. As for the Umbrella woman? She'd made her choice. Now she was going to have to live with it, whatever the outcome, while Elza fought for both of their lives.