Resident Evil: Exodus - The Tale of Elza Walker

Chapter 15 - Reckoning

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

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

It was one of the most intense "last stand" sort of things in which Kevin could ever remember having to take part.

Elza and John, with Elza carrying Sherry on her back, had come flying down the tunnel as fast as their pumping legs would take them. Behind them, almost at their heels, came the literal zombie horde out of every pulp comic, bad movie, and schlocky video game ever made. They were of all shapes, sizes, grades of decomposition, and even color. That is, if you can count multiple shades of red and blue-tinged dead skin, occasionally accented by whatever faded, stained, and mostly obscured colors remained visible on what was left of their clothing or other attire. It seemed as if there were hundreds of them moving down that tunnel in Kevin and Rita's direction, but they were not the worst. The Crimsom Zombies were there in force as well, leading the pack and running far ahead of them, and it was they who were the closest to overtaking the trio trying to flee them. Even so, that was not the worst threat. Along with the zombie horde and its Crimson Zombie flankers, scouts, and bush-beaters came a third and new kind of threat. It was the size and general shape of a young grown man, but neither looked nor behaved like one, nor like any zombie for that matter. It skittered and scampered up and down the walls and across the tunnel ceiling at a high-speed crawl that easily kept pace with the Crimsons. It had long prehensile claws like the Crimsons, save that its claws were almost double the length. As for its appearance, it looked like somebody had taken a normal human, removed the skeleton, turned it inside-out, then stuck the skeleton back in. Everything was there, but it had the dreadful and disquieting appearance of being so exposed, like a man who had been freshly skinned and then tossed back into the street. That was bad enough, but these new monsters acted as if this was perfectly normal for them. They could apparently see, hear, and sense just as well as the Crimsons, if not better, despite their apparent lack of either functional or non-functional organs for doing so. And the peculiar corkscrew breathy hiiissssss that they made was enough to shove icicles into the spine of even the strongest person. The worst part of it was that all of this - the zombie horde, the Crimsons, and this new threat - dropped straight down on Kevin and Rita like a tidal wave, and came very close to washing them away with it. There was simply no way Kevin and Rita could hold off that entire mass of the undead all by themselves. Nevertheless they had to hold them off long enough for the others to escape their grasp. After that, it would most definitely be run-like-hell time for all of them.

It was Rita who began firing first, picking off the pink crawling things as they skittered along the walls and ceiling straight for them. "Like fish in a barrel," she muttered, as she squeezed off another around and another of the things dropped writhing to the hard concrete floor with a loud crackling splat! "I just wish I had more ammo." She used eleven of her remaining twenty-three rounds for the hunting rifle, but all hit home. She put each round in its intended target without wasting a single shot. Each time she fired, one of the pink things went down and never got up again.

While Rita sniped the overhead threat, Kevin dealt with the ones below. He fired to either side of the rapidly advancing trio of their friends, occasionally dropping a Crimson in the process. This slowed but did not stop them. One or two would completely halt to tear into their former undead comrade, but the rest of the undead mass behind soon pressed around and sometimes even over them. The Crimsons that remained on their feet quickly adapted, zig-zagging or trying to stay behind the fleeing trio for cover, prevented only from doing so by the undead horde's sheer numbers. Yet try as they might to catch their prey, Kevin and Rita's tactics were proving effective. The gap was widening. There was going to be a space of a few precious seconds between the time when they were reunited with their friends and when the horde would close on all of them.