The Mother

Chapter 2

Ethan let out a surprised noise when they both clicked their flashlights back on and was looking directly at a dead man. Looking around they noted that the space beneath the house was filled with corpses, a lot of them, and shuddered. Scarlett could feel the phantom presence of whatever the hell had attacked the old man and called out for Ethan to be cautious. Ethan moved bodies around to clear a path through, Scarlett following behind him slowly until he stopped at the sight of movement ahead.

  Suddenly, something came from the side and bit into Ethan's left hand as he screamed out in pian. Scarlett was knocked back as it knocked Ethan onto his back and ripped his pinky and ring finger off at the joints and a large chunk of the side of his hand before roaring loudly and pulling the man up before throwing him against the wall. Ethan crashed through and landed out in the snowy yard while the thing tried to grab Scarlett who was already back up and lunging through the hole. She used her momentum to roll into a crouched position and watched as the monster followed them out.

   "What the fuck was that?!" Ethan yelled as it roared again and he turned to see it coming from the darkness of the hole, stalking toward them slowly as Ethan yelled for it to stay back as he scooted away. Scarlett didn't waste time and brought her pistol up and shot it in the chest making it stumble while Ethan got to his feet and shot it as well. It seemed tougher than a lot of the things they had both dealt with together and what she dealt with alone, but it still went down with a well-placed headshot.

    "What the hell?" Ethan asked as she crouched down to inspect it, she found that it had jagged sharp teeth, long blackened claws and was very hairy, but the hair was almost like fur. She noted that it's face had also taken the form of a shifting werewolf you'd see on tv and came to an almost unreal conclusion.

  "I can feel the mold inside it but it's different, weaker somehow meaning it could be infected with something else, something new, along side the mold. It looks, as cliché as this is going to sound, like a werewolf or more specifically the beginning stages of lycanthropy you'd see in a horror movie." She told him and he looked pale, probably from the news and the blood still pouring steadily from his hand.

  "You-You're telling me we're dealing with an infection that turns people into Lycans? What's next fucking vampires?" Ethan asked more shell shocked than in disbelief, he knew she was good at her job and would go along with almost anything she said so he wasn't questioning her he was just surprised. She shrugged, she had seen stranger things and heard of even stranger beings made from viruses, parasites and the mold. She recalled Leon telling her that Simmons had transformed into a large dog, a t-rex and then a larger fly when the China incident happened so she wouldn't rule out anything when it came to b.o.w's.

  "Come on, I want to see if the old man had any thing to stop that bleeding, I can't believe I never restocked my healing items for my bag." Scarlett said, trying to break him from the thoughts that were no doubt racing through his mind at a rapid, disorienting pace. He nodded and followed her back into the house they had just escaped from and looked around, she found a few bandages and luckily a potted herb she plucked and crushed into a paste.

  "This isn't going to feel good, brace yourself." She warned wrapping her left hand around Ethan's wrist to keep him from pulling it away before applying the herb paste to the wounds, wiping the access into a foil she thankfully still carried at all times in her bag before closing it and putting It back into her pocket, she already saw the bleeding slow and wrapped the bandage around what was left of that side of his hand and the fingers he'd had pieces of left. She slipped the ring off before hand and made him put it on his right ring finger before they checked the place a little more thoroughly and found bolt cutters, they used to open the gate that was locked out bac of the house.