Mother Russia

Chapter Seventeen

Ada couldn’t see the helicopter but she knew it had to be close by, she could hear it up in the air not too far away. She ran down the street, hoping that whoever it was would wait just a few minutes longer. She had already heard a few scattered blasts of gunfire, which meant it had to be the UBCF finally making an effort to combat the outbreak. Although Ada had no love for Umbrella, she had nothing but respect for most of the UBCF units, knowing they weren’t to blame for the decisions of their corporate bosses. She would gladly team up with the UBCF if it got her out of Yatovska.

Up ahead, she noticed a mass of figures heading in the same direction she was, shambling across front lawns and shuffling unevenly down the street. She had no choice but too slow down and stop.

Thirty or forty zombies, attracted by the sound of the helicopter, had gathered in an unruly mob and were going after it as well. After a moment of indecision, Ada cut between some houses and tried to run parallel to the mob in the hopes of getting ahead of them. But the block of houses were separated by bushes and wooden fences, making it hard to make her way through. She made it down the next street and kept going in the direction of the helicopter, and suddenly glimpsed its flashing lights in between the branches of some trees up ahead. By her best guess, the helicopter was at least four or five blocks ahead of her, but it wasn’t moving, it appeared to be hovering in place.

A surge of energy made her hurry up, although it hurt to run in bare feet, and she still had to glance nervously at every shadow and dark place, just in case more zombies jumped out after her. She was just a few blocks away when she heard the familiar spine-tingling roar of Konstantin Rykov, but it wasn’t behind her, it was up in front of her.

“Oh, shit, not now,” she said to herself, trying to run even faster

A barrage of gunfire opened up, echoing across the whole neighborhood, but it was drowned out by Konstantin’s furious screaming. Ada cut across an intersection and glanced up to see the helicopter lifting off, and then a huge dark shape soared into the air and collided with it. Ada stumbled to a halt in the middle of the street and a scream escaped her lips.

There was an explosion and the she watched in horror as the helicopter wildly spun around, its back rotor completely gone. The helicopter whirled around a few times and Ada struggled to keep track of it. Suddenly it dropped out of view and there was a blinding flash of light, almost certainly from power lines, and then the entire sky lit up in a huge ball of fire.

Ada stepped in the direction of the explosion, but suddenly there was smashing and destruction off to her right, and she had to duck behind some abandoned cars as Konstantin’s huge form crashed through a line of chainlink fences, tearing them out of the ground and thrashing to get free of them, like someone tangled up in a dog leash. Ada scrambled out of sight and crawled under one of the cars, scraping her knees on the concrete. She glimpsed sight of Konstantin swinging a huge fist into a house and smashing away a chunk of wall, splinters of wood raining down around him. He bellowed again and Ada covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

Konstantin glared around, red eyes glowing, and Ada had the terrifying thought that he might be able to smell her nearby. But he loped off down the street, away from the wreckage, which was still making the sky glow orange. Ada remained under the car for another minute, trying to catch her breath and giving Konstantin plenty of time to get as far away from her as possible. She didn’t have any reason to be in a hurry now that the helicopter was gone.

It was like he was haunting her. She had managed to get away from him the first time, and just when she thought she had a chance to escape the city, he showed up just in time to destroy her ride out. It was like being back in Raccoon City and chased through the sewers by William Birkin.

Why did she always seem to draw the primary hosts? Because she was cursed, that’s why. She had come to Yatovska specifically to draw the attention of an Umbrella scientist, and she had certainly accomplished that mission.

She looked out from under the car and saw shuffling feet on the other side of the street. She immediately crawled out before they got closer. There were about fifteen of them this time.

Ada jogged ahead of them, easily keeping her distance, until she saw the glowing flames up ahead, illuminating the entire block like a huge bonfire. She could feel the heat of the fire fifty yards away. Shattered bits of broken metal wreckage littered the street, and she picked her way across the field of debris until she made it to the opposite sidewalk. A stray zombie lurched in her direction, half its face chewed away, but she ignored it and continued down the block until the crash site was behind her.

A mass of bullet-riddled corpses were widely scattered off to Ada’s left, some of them on the street and others sprawled on nearby front lawns. There was also a single dead body at the intersection in the middle of the street, but this one was wearing a military uniform, and it wasn’t UBCF. The uniform was plain gray-and-black urban camo, but Ada didn’t recognize it. Carefully, she knelt next to the mangled corpse, taking care not to look at his face, and pulled back part of the dead man’s sleeve until she saw the Tricell logo.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered. If they were from Tricell, that meant Wesker must have sent them, probably to find her. And she had been so close, she just missed them. She stood up and looked around. No one was there except the lone zombie, which was thirty feet away but was still staggering hungrily towards her.

“Hey!” she shouted. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Is anyone there?”

If the soldiers were still within earshot, maybe they would come to her. She waited but there was no response except the increasingly-annoying moaning coming from behind her.

It occurred to Ada that all of the other soldiers might have been aboard the helicopter, but she was certain that she had heard shooting after the crash, probably at the jumble of dead zombies all over. More likely, the remaining soldiers had retreated to another position, but they couldn’t have gotten very far.

The zombie was close now. Unfortunately, it looked like the soldiers had taken their dead comrade’s weapons. However, he did have a combat knife in a sheath at his belt, which Ada pulled free. She walked at the zombie and jammed the blade into its eye. Its arms flopped to its sides and it gurgled and fell to the street.

However, more were coming. At the far end of the street, the larger crowd of zombies finally arrived, drawn to the crash site like undead moths to a flame.

Ada looked around, trying to figure out which way the soldiers must have gone. To the right was a row of houses, to the left was the street full of dead zombies, and straight ahead was an empty avenue with traffic lights visible about four or five blocks away. That seemed like the logical choice.

She walked off after them, hoping that they had another way out of the city.

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