Zero Hour (Resident Evil) by Perry S. D

Author:Perry, S. D. [Perry, S. D.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2012-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

Rebecca pushed herself through the air shaft, ignoring the layers of dust and cobwebs that were collecting on her hair and clothes, ignoring the suffocatingly close walls of thin metal. The map only showed the connecting shaft running between two rooms on the basement’s first floor, but there were spaces on the second, sub-basement floor that seemed to be part of the system, too. It seemed likely that one of the shafts vented outside. Billy hadn’t been overly enthusiastic—likely wasn’t the same as probably, he’d said—but they both agreed that it was worth a shot.

At least it’s not very long, she thought, edging toward the square of light not far ahead. There was a thin metal grille covering the exit, but it popped off with a few taps, clattering to the floor below.

She got a quick look at a big stone room, dank and empty in the flicker of a dying light fixture, then pushed herself out, grabbing the edge of the vent and somersaulting to a crouch. She stood up, brushing herself off, taking in the new room.

Oh, jeez. It was like some medieval dungeon, large, gloomy, a cavern made of stone. The rock walls were fixed with chains, the chains fixed with manacles. There were a number of devices sitting around that she didn’t recognize, but that could only have been made to inflict pain. There were boards with rusty nails in them, knotted ropes in bunches, and next to a scum-thick broken wall fountain was a large standing case that looked like an iron maiden. She had no doubt that the dark, faded stains in the crevices of the rough-hewn wall were blood.

“Everything okay? Over?”

She picked up her radio. “I don’t think ‘okay’ is the right word,” she said. “But I’m all right, over.”

“Is there another air shaft, over?”

She turned, searching the walls for a vent—and saw one, twenty feet overhead.

“Yeah, but it’s in the ceiling,” she said, and sighed. Even if they had a ladder to reach the vent, they couldn’t climb straight up. She spotted the room’s one door, in the southwest corner. “Where does the door from here lead, over?”

A pause. “Looks like it opens into a small room that leads back into the corridor we came through,” he said. “Should I meet you back in the corridor, over?”

Rebecca started for the door. “That makes the most sense. Maybe we can try—”

Before she could complete the sentence, a terrible sound filled the room, like nothing she’d ever heard before but also strangely familiar. It was a high, monkeylike shriek—

—that’s it. The primate house, at the zoo.

—that was echoing, howling through the cavernous space, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. Rebecca looked up just as a pale, long-limbed creature peered out at her from the ceiling vent. It bared its teeth, thick and sharp, clutching the air in front of its muscular chest with limber fingers, screeching horribly.

Before she could take a step, the creature leaped from the vent, jumping off against one rock wall before landing on the floor in a squat, on a tumble of thin boards in the middle of the room.

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