Resident Evil: Exodus - The Tale of Elza Walker

Chapter 21 - Recovery

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Elza was alone, drifting weightlessly in a silent black void that seemed to extend to infinity. Her nude body felt no heat, no cold, no sensation of any kind. She could feel nothing, see nothing, taste or smell nothing, and sense nothing at all, as if mere existence was all that was needed. She was just there. "The limbo of the lost," she thought to herself. It was the first thing she could remember thinking after losing consciousness. Maybe she was still out. Maybe she was dead. No, she refused to accept it. She tried to move, to look around, to call out, but she couldn't. There seemed to be some tremendous disconnect between her mind and her body. It welcomed the void and strove to embrace it, while her mind fought to reject it, to escape from it, to let all the world know that Elizabeth Ann Walker was still alive. She wasn't dead yet, not by a long shot, but how could she return to the land of the living?

Elza willed herself to live with every fiber of her mortal existence. Slowly at first, then with increasing awareness, she began to feel a rising sensation. It seemed to pick up speed even as the void around her began to lighten. It went from pitch black to the darkest of featureless greys, then dark grey, then still lighter, as her weightless body continued to rise and pick up speed. She was aware of a brilliant light that had appeared somewhere above her, but she was unable to look up and see its source. She was also aware of a faint voice that had just intruded on the extreme edge of her hearing. It too increased in volume as her body continued to rise and the light continued to brighten. She thought she recognized the speaker, and she thought it was calling her name. She tried to ratchet up her willpower even higher, and was instantly rewarded with an abrupt increase in the rushing sensation. Like a bullet shot from a gun, her body shot upwards into the light, was completely engulfed by it, and then disappeared.

The first sensation Elza felt when she finally came to her senses was that of pain. Not the pain she would or should have felt, given the seriousness of her injuries; nevertheless, it was there. It was more like the sensation felt by a long-distance marathon runner at the end of a particularly grueling race, when it seems that every part of the body aches and is trembling on the point of collapse. Elza knew there was far more pain hidden somewhere, for it too made its presence known as a sluggishly numb sensation in those parts of her body where she knew she must have taken serious injury. For now it only lurked on the edge of her present pain threshold like a dark shadow, with its presence merely an implied threat. Elza guessed that she had been heavily sedated, and probably for her own good. She did not relish the idea that she might have awakened in a screaming frenzy, a near-mindless wailing banshee who was simply unable to bear with the levels of pain that she knew she probably would have been feeling otherwise. She had been cared for then. That was good. That meant at least one of the others was still alive, and that was something. Now to go on.

Elza tried to open her eyes. Only the right eye would respond. Something wrapped around her head seemed to hold the left closed. That was where her head had slammed into that steel beam, she remembered grimly. She next tried to take a deep breath, and was instantly rewarded for her trouble by a sharp pain that stabbed through the left side of her chest. She gasped in spite of herself. She hadn't felt that much pain since she been mauled by that angry mama bear, and this was only one part of her injuries. How badly am I torn up? she wondered, as she fought to settle herself back down to a point where she could tolerate the new level of pain that now came with the simple act of breathing.