Resident Evil: Exodus - The Tale of Elza Walker

Chapter 10 - Recoil

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Elza was trying on a new jacket she had found in one of the lockers in the Break Room, a brown leather bomber-like affair with the Heaven Club logo on the back, and which happened to be about her size, when she heard the screaming and additional splashing coming from the channel outside. Quick as thought her autopistol was in hand and she was dashing through the door. The first thing she saw was Sherry's head peeking around the turn in the L-tunnel, looking as scared as Elza had ever seen her. She probably would have broken and ran had she known where to go. Instead, she turned to Elza as soon as the young woman appeared in the Break Room doorway. "Miss Elza!!" she cried above the din. The second thing she saw was from where all the noise was coming, and Linda's screams in particular. It was coming from the other end of the L-tunnel, next to the ladder shaft which led up to the North Canal collection tank. Linda, still half-out of her coverall, had been cornered there by what had been the two dead bodies floating in the center channel. Now they were fully revived zombies, and they were making a valiant go at taking Linda down. Two things were stopping them. The first was the fact that they were soaking wet, and had also made everything around them wet as they commenced their attack. For every two lunges and lurches forward, they slipped and slid one-and-a-half back. The other was Linda. She had one arm firmly latched around one of the rails of the nearby ladder, and was using the fist of the other to rain a furiously wild series of blows on whichever zombie was in range almost as fast as the kicks she was delivering with her one free leg. The other leg had its ankle locked in a viselike grip by the nearest of the two sewer zombies, and it was the one receiving the most blows from Linda. Its face and upper part of its head were now a bloody and misshapen beaten mass. It was valiantly trying to get a grip on her with its other hand. but it kept getting hit or kicked away. The other sewer zombie was doing best to avoid the desperately flailing Linda as it closed on her, making slow but steady progress up the center channel, moving around the pair for a different angle of attack. Linda had but seconds, and then it would all be over for her.

"Sherry! Break Room!!" Elza ordered, not even bothering to look, knowing that she would do as she was told. Even as she heard Sherry's running feet behind her, she thumbed her autopistol to single-shot mode, took careful aim, and opened fire. Elza put three shots into the nape of the neck of the zombie which had Linda in its grip, severing its spinal cord from its brain. It jerked and twisted around, letting go of Linda as it fell back with a splash into the channel. Elza's next four rounds went into the other zombie. As soon as its companion had been hit with the first bullet, it had turned around and then tried to charge through the water-filled channel at Elza. It never came close, for by that time Elza had thumbed her autopistol over to automatic fire. It danced like a man caught in a high-voltage electrical charge as a steady stream of well-aimed nine millimeter parabellum rounds slammed into it from top to bottom. It spun around on one leg and then splashed back into the channel. The water downstream began to turn red as it jerked about, still trying to come back to its feet. Elza walked up, thumbing her autopistol back to single-shot mode as she did so, pointed down, and put one last bullet into the thing's head. The splashing subsided, and what had once passed for a waterfall-accented quietness came back over the L-tunnel, save for the blubbering Linda. She was sobbing hysterically as she clung to the ladder shaft rail, taking in everything with wide-open yet unseeing eyes. Elza watching as the bodies which had fallen into the center channel bobbed and jerked like a piece of wood caught in some fast-moving current, as they were swept away. They passed down its full length, bounced arond the sharp turn of the L, and were then lost from sight.