I do not own Hellsing.
Chapter One.
Alexander Anderson had to pray to Jesus for the strength needed to refrain from killing every heathen on Rockfort island. His mission was to infiltrate the island as a prisoner, learn what he could, then kill every heathen and monster he came across.
The hardest part had been watching his fellow ragged prisoners be led off one at a time to the infirmary, a place that had become synonymous with death amongst the inmates. He had nothing against the prisoners, heathens they might very well be. To him, they were poor, suffering souls who didn't exactly deserve to be stuck where they were. He would have to answer to the Lord at judgment day for his inaction, he knew.
Anderson could not afford to be sent to the infirmary. The first prick would make it clear to them that he was something other than human and then the jig would be up, as people often said. Keeping his head down and his mouth shut while making sure his eyes and ears were always open, was the strategy he stuck to.
His discipline had its limits. There was a young man amongst the prisoners, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, who didn't belong there. The other prisoners had all been criminals or hard cases, people who had known at least a little something about what they were getting into when they had messed with Umbrella. The boy, Steve was his name, had the look of the innocent about him.
Making it a point to sit next to the boy and offer him some extra food was about the limit of what Anderson could do to help. That and tell him what he wanted to hear about the state of his father, who was being held in another part of the prison.
The desire to offer comfort to the other inmates by way of his extensive knowledge of scripture was a great temptation, but one he resisted. If the guards thought him a leader of any sort, it was off to the infirmary. Once his killing spree began, Umbrella would likely move to burry any information still on the island. He had to gather what he could before then.
One night, at meal time, he prayed briefly for his time of waiting to end. What he wanted was to over hear something that would lead him to some vital piece of information that the Iscariot Organization could use against Umbrella. What he received was a full blown air-strike on the island.
They must have thought he was crazy as he ran outside while the bombs were falling, looking up into the sky as it rained death, laughing and thanking God that the waiting was over and that he could get to the work he was meant for.
He had been impaled by a piece of shrapnel through the stomach as well as burned horribly. Pulling the shard of steel out had been painful and so had the skin sloughing off him as it grew back. "Purified," he said, thinking about all the prisoners he had seen go to the infirmary while he did nothing.
After the strike, something interesting happened. Whatever Umbrella had been cooking up on Rockfort island had been set lose by the attack. The T-virus, the one responsible for the destruction of an American city three months prior, had been released into the air, infecting over half of the prison's population and turning them into mindless, viral zombies.
Anderson had always been sorry he had missed being in Raccoon City. By all accounts, it had been nearly a literal hell on earth. When the zombies came to eat the remaining prisoners and guards, he felt his heart nearly burst with both joy. He had run down to the beach upon seeing the first wave attack a guardhouse, knowing there was a crate hidden beneath a pile of driftwood that held two bayonets and his Iscariot clothes, plain black priest clothes, a collar, and a grey overcoat.
Thanks to God, two bayonets would become many, just as Jesus himself had made enough bread to feed thousands from a mere five loaves. Running back up to the prison, he busied himself slaying the virus carriers that ran across his path. He had felled ten before wandering into a wide open patch of loose dirt, where a rumbling from the ground bellow knocked him off balance.
Thinking it was a gas tank rupturing beneath the ground, he wasn't prepared when the massive worm reared up behind him and dove down, swallowing him whole. At first he had no idea what had happened to him. One moment he was getting to his feet and the next he was surrounded by darkness and sharp teeth that were grinding at his body and forcing him down into a stinking, moist hole.
He regained consciousness after some amount of time, and awoke to the stink of putrid air. Soaked in digestive fluid, making his skin raw and red and he knew that he was going to have to get out soon or be digested. His miraculous ability to regenerate tissue was formidable, but under a constant assault such as being digested, he might succumb.
He still had a firm hold on both bayonets, and after chuckling at how similar his predicament was to the prophet Jonah, he slashed at the worm's stomach, washing himself in putrid worm blood as he hacked and hacked.
Suddenly, everything in the dark, wet stomach was forced forward, including himself. He was back in the thing's short esophagus and soon found himself vomited out onto the ground.
Sitting up, spitting out the gunk that had gotten into his mouth, he watched the worm retreat back into its hole. "That'll teach you, Leviathan," he shouted. It was raining heavily, something he was thankful for as it helped to wash the filth off him. However it meant that he had been in the creature's stomach for much longer than he had wanted to be.
Wondering how the remaining prisoners and guards had faired in their battle without him, he cursed himself for being careless and once again not being there to help those in need, especially when that help involved massacring the undead.
Making his way through an old graveyard, made in the days when the people on Rockfort had cared about burying the dead, he spied a structure to his right. It was the processing cell where new prisoners were held. He remembered seeing a helicopter come in, the kind that normally shipped prisoners the day before and wondered if anyone was in there.
A dim red emergency light illuminated the long corridor as Anderson walked down it and into the holding cell near the back. Fearing nothing, he walked in and saw a desk with a lit oil lamp.
"Who's there?" a female voice said from the prison cell's shadows. It was a brave voice, but there was a hint of fear in it. Anderson grabbed the oil lamp and walked over to the cell, revealing the woman within as she gasped at the sight of him.
She was pretty and athletic looking. She wore red boots, blue jeans and a red vest over a black shirt than showed off her mid-rift. Her brown hair was tied in a high pony tail and she was sporting a lump on the side of her head.
"My name is Father Anderson," he said. "Who might you be, my child?"
"Claire Redfield. Can you get me out of here?"
He grabbed the bar near the lock and tugged, breaking it off its hinge. Eyes wide, Claire took a step back. "What are you?" she asked , bracing for a fight. "That lock was made of iron."
"You might say I'm an humble agent of the Lord's divine wrath," he said, smiling. "I'm not your enemy, if that's what you were worried about."
Still wary, Claire didn't move. "What happened outside? I heard all of this noise and the place was shaking."
"An air strike by the look of it," Anderson said. "It's over now, but Umbrella's little pets seem to have escaped." Judging by the look on her face, she knew what he was talking about. Fear, not confusion was spread across her features. Her mere presence at the prison suggested she wasn't totally ignorant of what Umbrella did behind closed doors. "How did a young lady such as yourself manage to get here of all places?"
"I was looking for my brother at an Umbrella facility in Paris. I guess I tripped an alarm."
"Redfield you said?" Anderson was thinking, trying to remember some reports Maxwell had asked him to read over. "Your brother's name is Chris…a member of STARS?"
Claire's eyes narrowed, perhaps thinking she had been to free with her information. "Yes, and I think if you want me to trust you, you're going to have to tell me a little more about who and what you are. Are you really a priest? How did you open the door so easily? What are you doing here?"
Those were fair questions, ones he didn't mind answering. "I work for a section of the Vatican that's not supposed to exist. I was sent here to masquerade as a prisoner and gather intelligence until the time was right to strike. I was able to rip the door off because I have faith and the Lord is with me."
His forthrightness seemed to relax Claire a little, but she still looked on edge. It was a sad fact that young people had little trust in the church in this day and age. "I'm going to try to get out of here," she said. "You should do the same. I don't know what you've seen out there, but I can guarantee it's worse than you think."
He felt a grin spread across his face and a deep seated feeling of content excitement form in his chest. "Were you in Raccoon City by any chance?"
Claire made a disgusted face. "Unfortunately. I almost didn't make it out."
Anderson clapped his thigh and laughed. "Oh, my dear, you'll have to tell me all about it when you get a chance. I've only read reports. I've never talked to anyone who was there…and you're right, it is bad out there; a regular hell on earth. You'd be wise to stick close to me."
"You're a lunatic," Claire said flatly.
"Ah, but I'm an armed lunatic," he said, holding up a bayonet. "I don't fancy you'd want to take on one of them zombies alone and unarmed, now would you? Let's go. I'll collect my data and then we'll find a way off this hellish rock."
He wasn't much of a charmer, that he knew, but he hoped his honest desire to keep her safe would shine through his antisocial tendencies. In truth, he almost wished he hadn't found her. Alone, he was free to slaughter the heathen monsters of Rockfort, but with someone to protect, he had to be careful.
"Actually," Claire said. "If you're looking to give Umbrella a black eye, I'd be glad to help."
That surprised and pleased him. She was most likely a heathen girl, destined for Hell, but she was brave and she knew what real evil was. Perhaps there was a chance for her soul to be redeemed at the End of Days, and so he would keep her alive so she would have that chance.
He prayed silently, for her soul and the strength to keep her safe as well as get his job done. Once done, he looked up at her. "Let's go."
To be continued…