"I'll pass on the ghouls. I'll move faster without them."
"Fair enough. Good luck. Try not to die." I turned and headed toward the call. Yes, the call hadn't faded—if anything, it had grown louder and more insistent—but now I could ignore it, almost without paying attention. Either I'd grown used to it, or my mutations had granted me something like immunity.
"You too." Without turning around, Yamata replied at the edge of audibility—this time meant for my ears alone—then accelerated and quickly vanished from sight.
Very funny. I'm not entirely alive yet. My tissues are steadily reddening, reviving, and my heart has started beating again—once every minute or minute and a half (after the second stage it had stopped altogether, as far as I could tell). It's not hard to notice such things when you're missing skin on seventy-five percent of the places where it's supposed to be. I simply can't bring myself to call this half-burned, half-exposed muscle tissue "skin."
I hope Lisa's blood will change that—at least partially.
My gradual return to life in this current state was also one of the reasons I couldn't afford to delay. Right now, I don't feel pain or any of the other "joys" of pseudo-life. But what about later? I imagine the sensations will be on par with Birkin or Nemesis—only with exposed flesh... In short, that's more than enough motivation to squeeze every ounce of effort out of the ghouls, not allowing them to stray from our path (and these creatures occasionally tried to hunt other infected). It's a pity, but though they moved quickly, it was clearly not at the level of true acceleration. Perhaps I simply expected too much of them? Or maybe it's just that I'm so impatient to come alive again in proper form. I think both factors play a part.
Less than two hours passed—though to me it felt like barely one—before we reached the pit where Lisa Trevor still lingered. The ghouls showed no reaction to the call of the bearer of that truly horrifying collection of viruses. Much had been tested on her, and even if the Progenitor virus absorbed everything else, as my own case demonstrated, that didn't mean it stopped evolving.
I had to grab Kate by the collar more than once when Lisa, clearly sensing prey—or what were we to her?—intensified the pressure of her call.
"Sic 'em!" Reaching the edge of the pit and pointing at the lone monstrous figure below, I gave the command. As expected, the ghouls easily interpreted it, finding an equivalent in their fragmented memories, and deftly began descending the sheer walls.
Damn, it feels like I ended up in Aliens rather than Resident Evil. If they'd looked any less human, I would've sworn that was the case. Even Kate shuddered beside me—though she shouldn't have had that association. It's doubtful that movie even existed in this world, and in any case, it came out later.
The first strike, oddly enough, was delivered by Lisa herself. With her tentacles, she crushed one of the nearly descended ghouls into fragments. But that didn't save her from being buried under the mass of ghouls that rushed her—some of them leaping straight from the wall at their opponent.
Watching the fight from above was monotonous and dull, yet my instinct for self-preservation kept me from climbing down. So Miss Warren and I observed the writhing knot of bodies, listened to the howls, and noted how this or that ghoul was hurled out of the melee—more often than not already reduced to a heap of mangled flesh. Those that were hurled out relatively intact crawled back again, even if they were missing their lower halves—or had sustained other similar damage—to fulfill my order. Obedient. Extremely so.
From time to time, as the mass of bodies shifted—Lisa clearly thrashing within it—the spot it had occupied would reveal the pitiful remains of my creations. Some lay headless; others had gaping holes where their heads had been, openings the size of a tentacle. The penetrating force of any of Trevor's limbs was monstrous.
Yet so far, I hadn't noticed her becoming less active herself. Perhaps her hide was even tougher than Birkin's. But even if that were true, the ghouls should wear her down eventually. And I would not allow her to replenish her strength by snacking on them.
(End of Chapter)
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