Resident Evil: Exodus - The Tale of Elza Walker

Chapter 23 - Redirect

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It wasn't long before Kevin and John reappeared in the Pi Section Arrival Area, bringing a laden gurney with them. On it were all of the things they had rounded up during their little excursion to the lower levels and back again. Before he did anything else, Kevin pulled a large old-style magneto-optical (M-O) disc out of one of his pockets and handed it to Rita. "Better put this in that accordion folder along with that stuff from Chief Clemons," he advised.

"Why?" asked Rita, as she took the M-O disc and did as he asked.

"Because it's the next to last backup of the big computer server downstairs," Kevin answered, "the one that I'm guessing services this entire section of the Lab. I couldn't get the most recent one, because it was still in the machine and still backing up, but there was a shelf full of older backups in the Server Room. I took the most recent one I could find." He grinned. "I'm glad whoever was doing these wrote the dates on them."

Rita nodded. "Good thinking. There's probably all kinds of research records and stuff on here that anybody investigating Umbrella will find very interesting. How was it down there?"

"Bad, and it got worse the farther we went down," Kevin said. He was helping John get the supplies off of the gurney as he talked, wrapping them inside one of its included blankets for easier carrying. "Linda was right. There's no easy zombies and monsters anywhere in here, leastways of what we've seen so far. And while we haven't seen any infected gorillas, we did run across something that's almost as bad."

"What was it?" Rita said, as she held the door open, while the two men lugged the blanket with their bundled supplies into the Security Office.

Kevin helped John set the supplies down and then looked at Rita. "It looked like something straight out of that remake of The Fly, except that this looked like a cross between a man and spider. Half hairy spider, like a tarantula or something. Well, you can guess how John reacted."

"Oh, yeah," Rita said, rolling her eyes.

"And the damn things were almost as strong as those hunters, although easier to kill. Once John figured out that a couple of good blasts from my SPAS-12 would kill them, he started going after them with a vengeance. I almost had to hold him back at times, so he wouldn't waste ammo trying to hunt them down." Kevin gave Rita a worried look. "Some of them may have followed us back up here. They seem to like crawling around in the air vents."

Rita suddenly looked up at the two air vents in the Security Office. They were much too small to let in anything as big as the creature Kevin was describing, but what if there were any little ones? She started to speak, but Linda beat her to the punch and spoke first. "Sounds like either a chimera or an arachnoid, Officer Ryman, and I'm guessing the latter from what you said."

"What's the difference?" Kevin asked.

"One is genetically engineered with the DNA of a fly, and the other with a spider," Linda stated. "Both have body hair and are like what you described."

Kevin thought for a moment. "Their heads looked more spider than fly."

Linda nodded. "They would be arachnoids, then. By the way, there's a connection between both of these creature types and the hunters that may help you understand the similarities."