Resident Evil Legends Part Six - Escape From Raccoon City

  Chapter 28

  They walked for blocks, most of the time in silence. At the moment, there just didn’t seem to be anything worth saying out loud. Sherry was quiet, lost in her own thoughts. Claire walked with her arms crossed over her chest, looking around nervously and occasionally glaring at Ada. Leon was too busy watching out for danger to say anything, and walked forward intently with his gun drawn, even though they had not seen much the entire time they’d been walking. And Ada, apparently happy to maintain the distance between them, walked a few paces in front, her grenade launcher casually slung over her shoulder.

  They passed more abandoned houses, wrecked cars piled up at intersections, and more than a few dead bodies lying in the street. Leon wanted to shield Sherry from them, but the sad truth was that a few more bodies would not traumatize her any further. Besides, these bodies remained dead.

  Fires burned energetically in charred buildings, cars and trucks lay overturned in the streets, stray zombies wandered along the sidewalks, and in the middle of all that chaos, four complete strangers walked the deserted city like the survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Leon realized that they would find no other survivors here, not out in the city. If there were any more living people in Raccoon City, they were hidden far from view, barricaded down in basements or hidden high in attics. Leon doubted that they would come out willingly, even if they encountered other survivors. At this point, the only way people stayed alive was by hiding, and they were not likely to leave those hiding places any time soon.

  Up ahead, the street split off in a crowded 5-way intersection. The streetlights hanging above the road flashed yellow, as if there were any drivers left to signal. In the very middle of the intersection, a lone ambulance sat, its blue and white lights flashing, but the paramedics who once drove it around were probably long since dead. If any of Leon’s group was wounded, they could have used the ambulance to get medical care, but so far they were all somehow uninjured, except for Ada. Leon noticed that she had bloody gashes on the palms of both her hands, but she didn’t mention it or complain about it. Aside from their shared exhaustion, they were still otherwise in perfect health.

  Two sets of railroad tracks crossed the street off to their left, although cars were now crowded across the tracks. No trains would be coming this way though, not if Umbrella had blocked off the city.

  The entire street, like so many others, was jammed with cars. Some of them were smashed into others, one after the other as the result of a chain reaction collisions. A few of the cars were still running, but they were stuck in between other cars, and there was no way to get them free.

  “Any idea where we are?” Leon asked.

  Claire looked up at the street signs and shook her head. “Sorry, no.”

  “We have to be close to the edge of town,” Ada said, speaking up for the first time in awhile. She gestured up ahead of them, over the tops of the nearest buildings. “You can see the mountains over there. We should just keep walking in this direction. We’ll hit it sooner or later.”

  Leon looked at Claire, who only shrugged. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  “What’s that noise?” Sherry asked suddenly.

  Leon turned and listened, and for a moment heard nothing but the lazy crackling of nearby fire, and the sound of his own weary breathing. But then, from a distance, he heard a sound he recognized right away. A scream that could not have come from a person. He looked far down the abandoned street, but he couldn’t see anything coming after them. But he knew it was there.

  Claire heard it too. “Oh no,” she whispered.

  “I guess it finally climbed out of the elevator shaft,” Ada quipped, crossing her arms defiantly. “We should have known that wouldn’t hold it forever.”

  “What are we going to do?” Sherry asked.

  “Is it following us?” Claire added nervously. “I mean, is that even possible? Why would it keep coming after us like this?”

  “I don’t know,” Leon said, although that was a lie. He knew perfectly well why the creature was coming after them.

  “I think it’s chasing me,” Ada said firmly. “It chased me when I was in the sewers and somehow found me even though it fell all the way to the bottom of that huge pit. And it attacked you and me in the police station.”

  “Why would it be chasing you?” Claire asked suspiciously.

  Ada shook her head. “I have no idea, I assure you.”

  “Come on,” Leon said, heading up the sidewalk. “We have to get moving.”

  “Can we hide from it?” Claire asked.

  “I don’t think so. It must be able to smell us or something, if it’s been able to track us all this way.”

  “Then how are we supposed to get away from it?”

  “I don’t know,” Leon admitted. “But we’ve got to think of something.”

  They crossed the crowded street, weaving in between all the cars. Leon went out in front, trying to think of some kind of plan. So far, they had been lucky. But out here in the open, there were very few options. When the monster finally caught up with them, Leon didn’t think they would find an elevator conveniently lying around that they could drop on it. He wished they could find a usable vehicle, but they didn’t have time to check every single car to see if the keys were inside.

  “Over there,” Ada said, pointing.

  They crossed the packed intersection and continued down the street. Up ahead of them on the left was a large building located back away from the street. It appeared to be a huge warehouse with a row of smaller, single-story office buildings in front. A large sign out front read, “Arklay Valley Manufacturing.”

  The four of them hurried toward the buildings as another inhumane scream echoed down the street. Ada slid her grenade launcher off her shoulder and ran ahead. Claire and Sherry followed her, while Leon paused for a moment.

  From over the tops of the parked cars, he saw movement far down the street, a vast shape coming toward them. Leon swallowed nervously and ran after Claire and the others.

  There was a line of large shipping doors on one side of the building, some of them wide open. Two trailers were parked there, but Leon didn’t think anyone was going to unload them any time soon. The lights were on inside the building, which was the only reason it seemed like a good place to go.

  Ada climbed up onto the loading dock. Leon expected her to run off and leave them behind, but Ada helped Claire and Sherry up as well before going off, leaving Leon to climb up himself. They ran across the dock into the main section of the building.

  It was a huge manufacturing plant, with rows of gigantic machines lining the entire inside of the building. Three hulking yellow forklifts were parked by the end of the dock. There were two main aisles, marked with yellow tape on the floor, with massive machines on each side, towering green and gray behemoths with huge silver cylinders leading into giant presses. The entire plant hummed with the sound of activated machinery.

  The monster outside roared again, this time not a frustrated scream, but the frightening roar of a hunter after its prey. Claire bolted down the aisle in between the machines and looked around in a panic, Sherry clinging to her side.

  “Where are we going to hide?” Sherry asked frantically.

  “Just keep going!” Leon shouted.

  Behind them on the dock, there was a crash and the sound of tearing metal. One of the shipping doors flew off its rails and crashed to the ground, and the monster landed on top of it, its distorted body seeming to writhe with energy. Its tiny head, almost fully engulfed by the wide shoulders and thick torso, turned to the left and right, as if trying to find a scent. The gigantic yellow eyeball on its disfigured shoulder blinked a nictitating membrane and swirled around, while the beast’s massive gorilla-like arm swayed forward and back. It seemed impossible that the monster’s comparatively skinny legs could hold such uneven bulk, but the creature had no difficulty moving around. What was left of the clothing on
its body was nothing but slimy rags. To Leon, the monster seemed even less human and more mutated than it was before, as if its body was still changing shape.

  Sherry screamed and ran off, and Claire chased after her. The monster leaped off the dock platform and slammed down hard on the concrete factory floor. It growled fiercely and loped down the aisle toward Leon, its whole body lurching wildly. Leon held his ground for a moment but quickly jumped to the side and ran off in between the machines.

  Along one side of the plant were rows of smaller machines next to long tables covered in tools and spare parts. Sherry bolted past the machines and dove under the table, crawling across to the other side. Claire ran past and kept going as the monster came up behind her.

  The monster smashed its way along the row of machines, swinging its massive arm up to knock aside one of the tables, its contents flying in every direction. The table crashed down on top of a machine, splitting in half, and tools rained down across the aisle.

  Sherry crawled behind the other machines and jumped to her feet as the monster smashed into the nearest machine, knocking it off its base. She hurried along the edge of the wall, her blonde hair whipping behind her, crying in out in fear. Attracted by the sound of her voice, the monster leaped upward and landed on top of another large gray press, then jumped across the row of machines.

  A shotgun boomed out and a splatter of flesh tore off the monster’s oversized arm. Claire stood in the aisle, racked in another shell, and fired again, striking the monster squarely in the chest. It roared at her and flung itself into the air. Claire pulled the trigger again and the blast struck the monster’s upper arm, striking the huge yellow eyeball.

  The monster shrieked in pain and crashed down into the space between two machines, its body crushing a wooden pallet covered in small boxes. The creature rolled back up and shook violently like a dog shaking water from its fur. Claire threw down the empty shotgun and ran after Sherry as the monster spun around, whipping out its arm to smash aside a large metal rack full of tools.

  At the other end of the plant were two enormous machines that must have weighed twenty tons each. They sat at opposite sides of the main aisle, towering over the other machines, so tall that there were ladders propped up beside them for the maintenance workers to use. They were huge industrial presses, capable of crushing blocks of solid aluminum into a mold.

  Claire grabbed Sherry’s arm and ran toward the machine. She swung up the large metal gate, daring one quick glance over her shoulder. Sherry jumped inside the empty press and Claire climbed in after her, slamming the metal gate down after her. She grabbed Sherry protectively and together, they pulled back away from the gate as the monster ran at the machine and slammed into it with a furious roar. The impact rattled them, as if a tank had crashed into the machine.

  The gate buckled inward a few inches, but it held. Claire and Sherry were trapped inside, but the monster could not open the gate. It screamed and howled in a rampage, smashing the machine with its gigantic fists. But for once, the monster encountered something that it wasn’t strong enough to just smash out of its way. The industrial press was an immovable object, immune to the monster’s brute strength. It smashed away at the sides of the press, smashing off the control box, metal pipes, and other attachments, but the sliding gate remained intact.

  Sherry clutched onto Claire, trembling in fear, and peeked with one eye at the monster as it thrashed viciously at the gate. In the back of her mind, something about the monster felt familiar. But she was too afraid, too tired, to make any connection.

  Suddenly, the gate bent inward with a screech, one side breaking completely off the hinge that it slid on. The gate buckled, half broken off, only a few more hits from breaking off completely. Claire grabbed onto Sherry even tighter and closed her eyes as the world seemed to close in on her.

  And then, there was the loud, rumbling sound of an engine. From around the corner, a huge yellow forklift sped towards them, the long metal forks raised several feet off the ground. Leon sat in the driver’s seat, leaning forward and gripping the steering wheel tightly. The monster braced itself and bellowed furiously as the forklift slammed right into it, impaling the monster on the vehicle’s steel forks. The tips of the forks burst out the monster’s back, splashing blood across the side of the machine, and the impact knocked the monster right off its feet.

  It screamed in pain, smashing its arms into the front panel of the forklift, but the forklift kept going, as Leon kept his foot on the accelerator. The lift pushed the monster forward and crashed into the wall with a boom, as the metal wall of the plant buckled with the impact. The monster screamed and thrashed psychotically, slamming its fists into the sides of the forklift, blood gushing onto the floor, as it was pinned firmly in between the heavy forklift and the wall, the metal forks stabbing straight through its body.

  Leon ducked down behind the wheel, protected by the roll cage. He pulled down the parking brake and shut off the engine before jumping clear. He hit the ground running.

  With trembling arms, Claire lifted up the broken gate and crawled through the opening, Sherry coming out after her. She sobbed and jumped into Leon’s arms, tears streaming down her face.

  “Where’s Ada?” Leon asked urgently.

  “I don’t know, she ran off,” Claire sobbed. Sherry stood beside her, wavering on her feet, staring ahead blankly at the monster as it thrashed against the front of the lift.

  “God damn it!” Leon shouted. “She has the grenade launcher! We could kill that thing right now!”

  “Let’s just go!” Claire begged him.

  The monster swung its arm back with a tremendous roar and dented the wall. It struggled with the forklift but could not move it, so it swung back again and smashed the wall once more. The whole wall seemed to quake, knocking dust loose from the ceiling beams. Leon realized with a sense of impending doom that if the monster could not get rid of the forklift, it would just smash its way clear through the metal wall. Within a few minutes, it was going to get free again.

  Claire was pulling on his arm. “Come on!” she cried.

  Leon let himself be pulled away from the machines, and together, the three of them ran to the other side of the factory, followed the entire time by the monster’s screams of rage. They escaped out a side door to a narrow parking lot on the rear side of the building and continued on to a side street beyond.

  Leon picked Sherry up and she lay limply in his arms, quietly panting for breath. Claire managed to wipe her eyes with her sleeve and temporarily regain her composure. But all three of them were so tired, so emotionally drained, that Leon doubted that they could last much longer. They could still hear the monster screaming after them as they went down the street. Once it finally broke free, Leon didn’t think they could get away from it again.

  At the end of the dark avenue, they found themselves in the middle of a huge sprawling intersection of railroad tracks. All around, there were parked railroad cars loaded with blue and red rectangular shipping containers. There was a huge building like an airplane hangar nearby, as well as several smaller gray buildings, and a narrow, three-story building at the far end of the railroad complex.

  A sign hanging above the tracks read “Arklay Shipping And Railway Transportation Hub.”