Calm Before The Storm

Chapter Twenty

Momentary flashes of memory flickered at the edges of its eyesight like tiny flickers of lightning. He could sense feelings and emotions like some long-remembered dream, impressing on his mind like a song stuck in his head. But that’s all they were, just flashes, just brief glimpses. The immediate present managed to keep them at bay. But if he slowed down for even a second, the memories would come back and nag at him. So he kept moving.

His large feet, bare now, splashed in the filthy water of the sewer. Rats and other vermin, as if sensing his approach, ran for cover. His pants were shredded, hanging in tatters from his legs, barely held on by the belt still fastened at his waist. His shirt and lab coat were also ripped up, the blood splashed across them dry now. He didn’t even know whose blood it was, his own or someone else’s. Those memories were too recent for him to grasp.

His right arm was now a massive club of flesh almost as large as his torso, so heavy that he had to swing it as he walked, swaying his body from side to side like a gorilla. Rippling under the transparent skin of his upper shoulder was a roving eyeball, sliding around without looking directly at anything. The huge arm ended in a hand with long bony claws coming from each thick finger.

His skin was dissolving slowly, becoming transparent, his huge arm now mostly revealed muscle. Slowly, the skin across his chest was changing as well. His huge neck seemed ready to swallow his head. And those were just the first changes, the first stage. He could feel inside his body that more changes were coming, more drastic and more extreme than the first.

He was after something. It pulled him along like an invisible leash. Stomping through the murky sewer tunnels, spreading disease wherever he went, he slowly pursued his goal. He didn’t even know what it was, at least not completely. His mind was so scattered, so muddled, that he could barely maintain a coherent thought. But his body knew the goal, his body urged him forward on his mission.

The virus that had altered his DNA so dramatically was like a living parasite, and a parasite’s only goals are to survive and to spread.

But the virus did not want to just spread to any host. Interacting with new, different strands of DNA would only cause different combinations and more mutations. The virus coursing through his blood did not want to change, it wanted to continue its growth in a new host with the same DNA.

And there was only one creature with the same DNA that he had. One of his offspring, his only offspring. As he moved through the empty sewer tunnels, he could see images of her flashing in his mind, little reminders of the purpose of his search. His search for the one creature with the same DNA as his own.

Soon, he could find her. And anyone, anything, that got in his way would be destroyed.

The End

<--Previous Chapter|Next Chapter-->

Start Reading the Next Story in the Series

Return to Resident Evil Page

Return to Main Page