The Arklay Outbreak

Chapter Eight

Dave Prindle joined Umbrella after a short and unsuccessful career in the Army, and had worked in their security department for eight years. Umbrella shifted around their security personnel on a regular basis to keep them from getting bored or lax in their duties. In the past two years, he had been assigned to various facilities in cities like Vancouver, Flagstaff, Minneapolis, and Baton Rouge. His current assignment was a lab compound in the middle of the Arklay Mountains near a town called Raccoon City, and it was by far the most boring place he had ever been to.

In his down time, he checked out the history of the place. Ever since the old training facility was shut down almost fifteen years before, the chemical treatment plant had not seen much use. It still received regular shipments from the main labs at the Arklay facility, but the plant had obviously been built to keep pace with a much greater workload. Once, the plant had its own maintenance and hazardous disposal technicians, but now the only on-site personnel was security.

The six security guards ran three split shifts. Dave was on duty from midnight to four a.m. and from noon to four p.m., walking the grounds for one four-hour shift and watching the cameras for the other. The Arklay lab had its own small security team, but Dave and his coworkers also performed additional security at the lab on a weekly basis, just to keep their schedule from getting too routine.

After years of disuse, much of the treatment plant was badly in need of repair. Pipes rusted and leaked insistently, machinery broke down, fuses and electrical boxes blew out on a regular basis. And since much of the plant was no longer functioning at all, numerous rooms, hallways, and entire wings of the compound became infested with vermin, cobwebs, and collected debris and garbage. However, since some work was still done there, security remained on patrol even in those unused areas. But it was painfully boring work. They all got used to doing nothing all day, since there was nothing to do but monitor the grounds and stare at television screens displaying views from the dozens of security cameras still in place.

It was Dave’s turn to walk the grounds. He glanced at his watch as he walked down a long corridor within the plant, water dripping down from rusted pipes overhead and steam rising up from below the metal grating floor. His boots made a rhythmic clunking noise as he walked down the hallway. It was only one-thirty. His shift wasn’t even half over yet. He sighed and readjusted the sling holding his assault rifle over his shoulder.

Suddenly, his walkie-talkie came to life. “Dave! Where are you? We got a prowler in sub-basement three!”

Dave snatched the walkie from his belt. “What? You better not be ragging me, Jeff. I’m not running down there for a rabbit or something.”

“This ain’t a joke!” the walkie screamed back. “I saw him on the camera!”

“How could anybody possibly get down there?”

“I don’t know!”

Pulling his gun down and switching off the safety, Dave hurried back where he had come from, to the central maintenance elevator. “I’m on my way there now,” he said into the walkie. “Let me know if you see him again.”

He rode the one-man elevator down two floors into sub-basement three, an area of the plant he had only been to a few times. The elevator stopped in a crowded room full of rusted, motionless machinery. Strands of cobwebs hung from the ceiling and the musty odor of decay assaulted him. He switched on the lights. Naked yellow light bulbs glowed dully in their sockets along the edge of the ceiling, casting dim light and creating long, dark shadows in each corner.

Dave snuck forward, holding his gun out with one hand and covering his nose and mouth with the other. The smell was awful, like rotten food mixed with the stink of stagnant pond water. The air seemed thick with it, like a fog of poison gas. Distantly, he heard the sound of running machinery above him, along with the steady drip of water and hiss of steam. He waited, trying to listen for any other noise, but heard nothing.

Sub-basement three had not been in use in more than ten years, and the place looked it. The floor was littered with discarded junk and obsolete equipment, and a thick coating of dust and oily grime showed his footprints when he walked through it. Insects crawled along the walls and floor, scurrying from him as he approached.

He pushed open a door and it squeaked loudly with the movement. He cursed himself for making so much noise. The hallway beyond was lined with rusted, broken machine consoles, covered with cracked dials and smudged read-out screens. Everything was coated with grime; the place looked like it had been abandoned for fifty years instead of just ten. A few of the old fluorescent lights blinked intermittently.

Just as Dave began to suspect that his coworkers were screwing with him, he heard it. A crash, the sound of glass breaking. Not too far away, by the sound of it. Dave eased his way down the corridor, walking softly, and looked around the corner. He heard another sound from one of the rooms down at the end of the hall.

He turned the volume on his walkie-talkie down low, and quietly spoke into it. “I hear someone in one of the rooms down here. How in the world did they even get here? Isn’t the elevator the only way down?”

“We don’t know, man. He just appeared out of nowhere.”

“Did you get a good look? Is he armed?”

“No, he wasn’t carrying anything. He looked like some dirty bum.”

“Okay, I’m going to try to confront him. Send someone else down here to back me up.”

“Already done. Trevor and Eric are coming down right now.”

“Good. You better call security at the lab, too.”

“I’m on it.”

He crept down the hallway, crouched down with his assault rifle facing in front of him. It almost felt exciting to finally see some action, although he doubted it would amount to anything. Some vagrant or homeless person, he supposed. But how did the person get this far into the treatment plant without being spotted?

Dave peeked into the room and saw an open door to an adjacent room. In faded black letters on the door window were the words “Equipment Storage Room 4.” No lights were on inside. He heard another crash, a bottle being dropped, and muffled noises like someone muttering to himself.

And suddenly, the prowler appeared. Cloaked in shadows, he swept out of the room and began opening up some old wooden cupboards. The man, whoever he was, wore tattered gray pants and a dingy gray overshirt that hung to his knees. Patches of his shirt and pants were tinged green as if with mildew or mold. His hair was long and greasy black.

Dave silently moved back until he was a few paces down the hall. Moments later, the man came out of the room and headed in the other direction, never even glancing in Dave’s direction, his long hair obscuring his face.

“Halt!” Dave shouted, raising his gun to eye level. The man stopped in his tracks, but otherwise did not react.

“Turn around!”

The man clenched and unclenched his fists. There was a significant pause, and Dave could hear the man’s ragged breath.

“I said turn around! And put your hands in the air!”

The man spun around with blinding speed, and Dave did not even have time to pull the trigger before something flew at him and struck him directly in the face. He screamed, hurling the gun to the floor, and grabbed the thing latched onto his cheek, feeling a splinter of burning pain. He frantically tore it away, losing his balance and slipping on the grimy floor. He fell onto his back and stared in horror at his hands, which came away soaked with blood. And then there were more of them, fast black shapes lunging at him, too many to fight off. He screamed in agony as they tore into his body, his screams echoing around the abandoned hallways and rooms, before his voice finally cut off and he remained still, the small black shapes still squirming across his motionless body.

Just then, the other two guards burst through the doors, guns drawn, faces stretched wide in fear by the agonized screams of their fallen comrade. They opened fire as soon as they saw the intruder, but none of their bullets hit their mark.

Terrifying black shapes leaped from the man, and the two guards joined their coworker in death, scrambling and writhing as a mass of hungry parasites engulfed them. Their screams reverberated all the way up the narrow maintenance elevator shaft to the floors above.

The man knelt down, oblivious to the screams, and ran a finger along the edge of one of the dropped assault rifles. His memory was imperfect, full of gaps and small holes of uncertainty, leaving only sharp recollections of specific, unrelated events. His mind was a film sequence with half of the frames missing. He touched the gun and felt a memory rise to the surface. It was a memory of pain. He remembered guns like these.

After the guards were dead, the small black shapes flowed away from their half-devoured corpses and back to the man, like rats called by the Pied Piper. But they were not rats.

They were leeches.

<--Previous Chapter|Next Chapter-->