“Caw!
Caw!” A few crows roosting in the bell tower, startled awake by the thunder, wheeled above the church.
Shadows of ill omen circled the house of God.
The rain came down harder and harder, as if the church itself were weeping.
“Door’s open.” Billy’s voice came from Ivan’s right.
Ivan pulled his gaze back and turned his attention to the doors ahead.
Just as Billy said, the church stood wide open, orange lamplight spilling out through the gap.
Through it he could just make out the nave beyond – infected bats sprawled everywhere, littering the floor.
“Look out!
Contact!” Rebecca’s sharp cry cut through the rain, her night-vision goggles marking the incoming threat with perfect clarity.
“Thump-thump-thump.” A heartbeat later, the sweet muffled report of an M4A1 fitted with a suppressor arrived right on schedule.
“Whoosh!” Wings tore through the air.
Ivan reacted on instinct, squeezing the trigger, pouring fire toward the source of the sound.
Billy was no slower, opening up right behind him.
“Thump-thump-thump, thump-thump-thump!” Three tongues of flame crossed in the dark, and a storm of lead met the crows diving out of the sky.
The raw stopping power of the 5.56mm round showed itself plainly in that instant.
In the space of a breath, better than ten crows carrying the t-Virus were dead before they could even shriek.
Their bodies came apart into scattered fragments…
Black feathers burst into shreds first, ripping free of torsos, splintered bone showing through.
Then entrails drew thin red threads through the curtain of rain before dissolving into it.
Only one or two lucky wretches left behind enough of a body to smack down onto the hard flagstones.
Leaving a splash or two of muddy red on the rainy night.
The fight was over.
Nothing else moved in the green wash of the night-vision goggles.
Billy ran a hand tenderly along the body of his rifle.
Heh – Lady M4, you beauty.
This gun was something else.
“Ivan, Rebecca, how are you two doing over there?
Nobody hurt?” Ivan bared his teeth in a grin and flashed him an OK sign.
Billy shook his head, amused.
His own savior was forever pulling stunts that made it impossible to keep a straight face.
Those big white teeth through the night-vision goggles – talk about bright.
Rebecca finished a nervous sweep of their surroundings, still shaken, and caught sight of that toothy grin.
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
“I’m fine over here.” She gathered her thoughts and looked toward the church doors.
“Just to be safe, we should get inside, quickly.” “It’s too dangerous out here.
We can’t rest properly in the open.” Neither of them had any objection to Rebecca’s suggestion.
In a few quick strides, Ivan’s squad was inside the nave.
From within, at closer range, they could finally take in the state of the place.
A USS operative lay dead before the statue of God.
Rebecca examined him: there were bite marks from the bats on his neck, his shoulders, everywhere.
The wounds ran deep – proof that the virus had strengthened the bats’ jaws.
Lower down, what remained of his upper body carried a foul, scorched stench, and his legs were gone entirely.
Judging from the crater beneath where his feet should have been – roughly half a meter deep – it was obvious.
He had been caught in an explosion before he died.
Rebecca lifted her eyes from the corpse and scanned the floor around it.
“What’s this?” A blackened, gummy lump on the stone had caught her attention.
She picked it up.
Rebecca turned it over, studying it.
The little thing was nearly unrecognizable, but from its general outline and a few surviving features, the answer was clear enough.
It was a leech.
Ivan finished his circuit of the room and came back to her side.
Seeing her staring at something, lost in thought, he asked, “What is it?
Find something?” Hearing Ivan, Rebecca held the leech’s remains up in front of him.
She prodded at the thing in her palm with a fingertip as she explained, her voice soft.
“Mm.
Look – this is a leech.
Very likely from the same batch as the ones we ran into on the train.” “From what I’ve observed, these have to be the ones James Marcus mentioned, the ones used in the t-Virus experiments.” “They’re extremely dangerous.
They don’t just carry the t-Virus – they can detonate.” Billy, done searching the church himself, rejoined them.
He looked at the leech remains in Rebecca’s hand, and his expression darkened.
“Detonate?
What the hell were those mad scientists working on?” Ivan picked up the thread.
“I keep going back to the train, when the leeches swarmed us.
I still don’t understand why the man in the white robes held back.” At that, Billy’s brows knotted together.
Right – why?
It made no sense at all.
If the white-robed man had wanted them dead, the three of them would have had no way to fight back.
Seeing them both sink into thought, Rebecca broke in gently.
“All right, you two busy men.
Before you start theorizing, shut the door.” “We don’t know how much farther we have to go.
Let’s find a spot and eat first.” Her words pulled the two of them back to the present.
They closed the church doors, checked the surroundings once more, and only when they were sure nothing posed a threat did they settle down.
Then the three of them started on the bread, ham sausage and bottled water Rebecca pulled from her pack.
All of it scavenged from the train, all of it easy to keep.
As for whether a meal was appropriate in surroundings like these – none of them had the energy left to care.
From around seven in the evening until now, 11:25.
One fight after another had left Ivan’s squad ravenous.
Billy swallowed a hunk of bread whole and then tipped back his water bottle with grand abandon.
“Glug, glug.” He washed the bread down, and once that was done he couldn’t leave the earlier subject alone.
“Ivan, Rebecca – who do you think this guy actually is?” “And what’s he after?” Ivan bit off a piece of ham sausage while his mind worked through everything that had happened, breaking it down, running it again.
Putting himself in the other man’s place.
Compared to when this all started, his thoughts moved as though someone had oiled the gears.
That sensation of looking through a layer of fog was completely gone.
His memories still hadn’t fully returned, but the sharpness of his thinking was in another class entirely.
(If I were the white-robed man, why would I do it this way?
What would I want?) (…) While Ivan was busy storming through the possibilities, Rebecca took a few swallows of water.
With her throat no longer parched, she offered her own take, from a professional angle.
“I think he carries a very intense hatred for Umbrella.
You can see it in the state of the train, and in the leech remains next to the USS operative.” “So my guess is that he’s an executive trainee who was used for human experimentation.” Rebecca took a bite of bread and went on.
“Whatever James Marcus did to him is why he can control the leeches.” “And his goal has to be revenge on Umbrella.” Billy nodded.
He had no trouble accepting Rebecca’s theory.
The logic held, and it fit everything they had pieced together so far.
____ 👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan on P a t r e o n🔥👻 🔥 New history: Zenless Zone Zero: