Biohazard: Resident Evil VII

Chapter Forty Two: End of the Night

The warning section on the instructions to make the necrotoxin had been clear about subjects becoming more hostile during cellular breakdown, but this… standing there watching as the now elderly Eveline morphed into a giant mass of swirling black mold… this was beyond anything Ethan had expected. The good news was that there was some whiteness beginning to form across the outer edges of the mass, but each time it appeared, the mold would shift so that it was swallowed up, as if Eveline was fighting the process.

He heard her scream in rage again, and there seemed to be no end to the amount of liquefied mold that she could summon, as if Eveline were recalling every bit of the black substance that she had ever vomited, in an attempt to overpower the necrotoxin. More and more holes were busted in the walls, allowing the black substance to flow in at greater volumes, and now the guest house was shaking even more violently.

"Zoe!" Ethan called, rushing over to her. "Zoe, wake up!"

For a moment he was worried that the blow she had taken from Eveline had done serious damage, but let out a sigh of relief when the short-haired woman started to move around almost immediately once he helped her sit up. There was no time to wait for her to recover, so Ethan scooped Zoe up in his arms, and she must've opened her eyes after he took a few steps, because the short-haired woman suddenly gripped him tightly while crying out in fright.

"What the fuck is that?!" She shrieked, pointing behind him as he kept moving toward the stairs. "What is… oh, my God, it's got her face!"

Again, Ethan knew that he should have just kept going, but upon hearing those words, he couldn't help turning around to take a look just before reaching the stairs. The thing that had once been Eveline was no longer a formless, swirling mass… it had now reconfigured itself so that it had what appeared to be tentacles anchoring itself to the walls and floor, and every couple of seconds the main bulk of it would move in such a way that there was, in fact, the distorted image of Eveline's face in the center.

The monster roared as it tried to shake off the expanding whiteness, shaking the house so hard that pieces of the ceiling broke off at the same time, and reminding Ethan that he really needed to start running. So down the stairs he want, struggling to keep his balance while carrying Zoe, and then breaking into a dead sprint once he reached the first floor. There was now no longer anything blocking his way to the exit, and he rammed into the door at full speed, flooding the entryway with light as he ran out onto the front porch.

Now that the sun was higher in the sky, he was able to see the path that would lead him and Zoe back past the abandoned Sewer Gators van, and onto the road a short distance later. However, he had just barely gotten away from the front porch, when there was a massive explosion that knocked them to the ground while wood and stone debris rained down around them. Shielding Zoe as his own body was stung by several small rocks and wood splinters, the two of them looked back once it stopped, only to gasp at what they saw.

The mass of black mold had crashed its way through the roof of the guest house, now sticking out like the head of a black snake, and the worst part was that the Eveline's face could be clearly seen at the very end… massive, and scowling angrily as it turned down to look at them. It looked like she was trying to say something, but the words turned into groans of irritation, since her attempts to shake off the now rapidly spreading whiteness were hardly having any success at all.

"Damn you, Ethan!" The monster roared as the whiteness started to touch its face like encroaching fingers. "Damn you all… to hell!"

The monster then shrieked as it swooped down toward them, opening its mouth to consume them like a snake coming after a field mouse, and Ethan covered Zoe with his body while she screamed as well, not that there was anything that he could really do to protect her once the monster reached them. So he shut his eyes tightly, hugging the short-haired woman as he waited for the end… and waited… and waited…

Now several seconds had passed by without feeling the final agony of being consumed by Eveline, and actually… the whole world seemed to have fallen silent. For the longest time Ethan didn't want to open his eyes, afraid that the monster would still be there, and when he finally turned to look… it was. He gasped upon seeing the massive and angry face of Eveline just a few feet from where he and Zoe were lying… but it wasn't moving. It was just hovering there like a statue, and it took Ethan a couple seconds to realize that it had turned completely white.

"Is… is she dead?" Zoe asked, barely in a whisper.

Suddenly it moved, making the short-haired woman shriek as she buried her head in Ethan's chest, but it turns out that Eveline was no longer coming after them. In fact, the movement was the start of her body's complete collapse as cracks quickly spread across the surface, and piece by piece, the monster that was once Eveline started to fall apart. Just as it had happened with Jack, Marguerite, Lucas, and Mia, Eveline had become completely calcified. She was now crumbling, and although a large amount of her body remained sticking out of the roof, the face had become nothing but powder.

"Yeah, Zoe." Ethan replied, still holding her as he laid down on the ground. "I think she's dead."

The short-haired woman started to cry a little, and why not? For her a nightmare that lasted three whole years and consumed her entire family was finally over. She hugged him again, and he squeezed her as well, giving her a kiss on the cheek… and then receiving one from her on the lips when she turned to look at him. This caught Ethan by surprise, since it was the last thing he expected to happen after everything they had been through… but it was still nice… the first nice thing that he had felt in what seemed like forever.

So they kissed again, both with tears running down their cheeks; feeling a mixture of sadness for the loved ones they had lost, and also an uncontrollable joy at managing to survive something that had claimed the lives of so many others. These tears intensified as they both started to cry, and Ethan held Zoe as tightly as he could. There was something that Mia had told him once… that when one door closed, another one opened. In the three years that she had been gone, he had just barely started to accept it… and then she was back… only to be taken away a second time.

"Take me away from here, Ethan." Zoe sobbed into his shoulder. "Somewhere far, far, away… I don't never wanna see this place again."

So was this the way it was supposed to be? Now that the door to a life with Mia had been slammed in his face, had another door opened? One where he still had a future… but one with Zoe Baker? He supposed that there would be plenty of time to figure this out on the way into town, but then all of his thoughts were interrupted by a new sound. It was barely audible at first, but quickly intensified until he recognized it as the sound of a helicopter. Yes, there was a large helicopter coming into view as it circled the Baker estate… but who was it?

There was a logo on the side that Ethan could see when it stopped to hover above them… a logo that said Umbrella Corporation, and now some ropes were lowered from the helicopter, which several heavily armed men used to slide down to the ground. But who were these people, Ethan wondered as they spread out to survey the area? Were they the fabled Calvary, arriving about a day late and a dollar short to save the day? Or were they the ones that Lucas had been trying to signal? The ones who Mia worked for… the ones that made Eveline.

There wasn't much that he or Zoe would have been able to do if these guys were the enemy, since they were both exhausted to the point of being unable to move… but then one of the armed men started walking toward them. He waved to the others, announcing that it looked like they had two survivors, and then he knelt down with them as a pair of stretchers were starting to be lowered from the helicopter. On the man's radio, a report could be heard coming in from other teams that no other survivors had been located on the property.

"It's all right, you're safe now." The armed man said as he removed his gasmask. "I'm Redfield, and we're gonna get you out of here, so just hold tight."

Reports continued coming in on Redfield's radio, this time about locating the source of an enemy transmission they had intercepted, but that there was no sign of the agent who had sent it. Well, as far as Ethan could figure, this made the armed men the good guys, and he was never happier in his life than when the two of them were secured onto the stretchers, and hooked onto the ropes in order to be taken up.

"The fuck took ya'll so long?" Zoe asked just before they were lifted.