Chapter 16
The supply rooms were long-abandoned and lined with a thick layer of dust. The security guards just left them locked and never went inside. He had to break the window on the door and reach in to unlock it. The glass cut his hand, but the wounds already closed up by themselves.
A closet in the back of the deserted room contained what he was looking for: old lab uniforms. He peeled off his slimy, filthy clothes and dropped them on the floor, where they puffed up dust. He wiped his greasy skin from head to toe with some old rags, cleaning himself up just enough. He dressed slowly in new clothes, dry ones that didn’t stink of the grave. Blue pants and a shirt belonging to the janitorial staff, and a new lab coat to replace his previous one. His feet remained bare.
The zombies left him alone. He walked right by them and they seemed to ignore his presence, as if he wasn’t really there. He walked down the rusted-out, foul-smelling hallways of the plant without being harassed and went up the elevator to the first level. He disabled all of the security cameras he passed. They would not be able to watch him unless he wanted them to.
Their names escaped him. He remembered faces, but the identities remained elusive. In his mind, he could see an old man, old like he himself used to be, with a harsh, pointed face and dark eyes behind thin glasses. And he saw a young man with short blond hair, with dark glasses hiding his eyes. He saw them both and felt a deep hatred. They did this to him, both of them together. And they would both pay. Everyone would pay.
He walked through the woods like a ghost haunting the wilderness. It was still light outside, but the sun had set behind the hills and it would be dark soon. Slowly, he made his way through the forest and up a steep hillside, far from the treatment plant and the old laboratory.
The laboratory stirred his memory. He worked there in the past, but his memories were too blurry for him to know how long ago it had been. Hazy, incomplete visions of walking down brightly lit hallways, performing experiments in darkened rooms. He saw himself there, alone for days, doing important work. Even now, the work felt important to him, like a burning coal in his chest. He was not doing the work anymore, but he still felt how meaningful it was.
The work, the labs. He tried to remember what he had done, clenched his fists and his teeth and strained at the unwilling memories, but he could not remember. He had made something, created something.
As if called there, one of his pets appeared on his arm. He touched it with his other hand and it vibrated softly, purring its contentment. It disappeared up his sleeve, sending a calming sensation of warmth throughout his body.
His pets. That’s what he created. He created his pets and they stayed with him, even through death, even through the long, agonizing purgatory in the bottom of that terrible hole underneath the treatment plant. He remembered the soldiers and their guns, and the flashing lights as pain blossomed in his chest. He remembered the pain. It was like a blinding explosion in his brain, the memories bursting into his consciousness like fireworks.
He leaned heavily upon an outcropping of rock to steady himself. They killed him, murdered him, and dumped his body in a hole filled with other dead bodies, to rot there until the end of time. And for years he laid there, suffering a tortuous purgatory, neither alive nor dead, until he was brought back. He was reborn, resurrected.
His body was no longer his own. He and his pets were now one symbiotic organism. They were one and the same.
They came to him at will, like an extension of his being. Their bond was more than simply psychic or physical; he controlled his pets and they controlled him simultaneously. Perfect mutual symbiosis.
He climbed the rest of the hillside and upward onto the rocky cliff on the end of the ridge. He stood on the peak and looked down at the surrounding Arklay Mountains. In the distance, he could almost see the glowing skyline of the nearby town, although its name escaped him. Twilight descended upon the area like a cold fog. The wind blew by, rustling the folds of his lab coat and blowing his hair across his face.
This is where it would begin. They tried to kill him, tried to take what was rightfully his, and they succeeded. But his precious pets, what they tried to steal from him, brought him back from the underworld, resurrected him and pulled him back from the brink of oblivion. They saved him from death and gave him a brand new life.
And for them, he would wreak terrible vengeance upon his enemies. Spencer. Wesker. They would pay for what they did. He would have his revenge on them for sending him to the black pit of death. And then the whole world would follow them.
Railroad tracks went along the base of the hill, weaving through the mountains like a river, heading into the city. There was a train coming, the bright headlight on its locomotive shining like a beacon as it passed through the trees. He heard it coming long before it reached him.
It was not a freight train hauling coal or shipping containers, but a passenger train. Its design hearkened back to the previous century; the passenger cars had fake wooden siding with golden borders and accents. Written on the side of the locomotive in large golden letters were the words “The Ecliptic Express.” It was a small train, only twelve cars long, moving at a slow pace. A train for casual travelers and tourists, making its weekly circuit through the mountains.
He watched the train as it approached. His pets were hungry, urging him on. He raised his arm, giving a silent order, and his pets obeyed eagerly. They poured from his body like water from a fountain, streaming down the cliffside like an avalanche.
He felt them. When he closed his own eyes, he could see through theirs. His pets flooded across the surface of the train and squeezed in through every small space, each open window, each ventilation shaft, each exposed seam on the connected doorways between cars. They infiltrated the passenger cars and spread like a plague to the people traveling within. He sensed their hunger, experienced their pleasure as they attacked the helpless passengers. He breathed deeply, inhaling the cool spring air, feeling the wind flow around him.
Distantly, he heard the train’s brake come to life with a loud metallic screech. A spray or yellow sparks erupted from under the cars, flashing like fire along the rails. His pets spread along the entire train, infecting everyone they came across, leaving no one alive. He looked through his pets’ eyes at the victims as they died. He saw the horror in their eyes, heard their terrified screams, tasted their flesh.
Gradually, he recovered from his out of body experience and opened his own eyes. The night greeted him calmly, and he cast his gaze downward to see his pets coming back to him, moving up the cliff like a reverse waterfall. Far below was the train, now stopped, silent and dead. His pets returned to him and he stared down into the valley, surveying the area. Nothing moved, nothing saw him.
Rain began to fall.