[1-2] The Tail

[Albert Wesker]

"Trouble, do you think?" Granite voiced the obvious question.

Colonel's response came in the form of a swift turnabout to face back toward the wreckage of the plane half and a darkening of his expression. "Of some kind, undoubtedly." And he was off, breaking into a swift trot across the uneven sands. "Let's not wait around to find out. Back to the plane." His short, quick strides left the gargoyle in the proverbial -- though perhaps thankfully not literal, given the environs -- dust, though he was likewise moving, following along with great lumbering strides.

The scene that greeted the soldier program's eyes as he finally registered it was enough to bring even him to a halt in his tracks. "What in the name of..."

Granite, coming up behind him, was much more...subdued in his reaction. "They...they were all dead, were they not?" he inquired, surveying the scene warily.

One of the corpses who decided it was a good time to not stay dead turned its face toward the machine and man of stone. It was dumb, blank, and didn't seem to hold any trace of what might have been called humanity remaining in it. Only a dull sort of...hunger? Was that what it was? Regardless, it didn't seem to be in the mood for pleasant conversation, if anything. It turned the rest of its body around to follow the movement of its head, lurching into a ragged, stuttering rush forward.

"Much less dead than we originally assumed," Colonel responded calmly, observing this display, and bringing his saber up to bear. "...but the dead should stay dead. However they died, that's a constant. We should see to it they go back to being dead." He knew, if his digital assistant had been here, he would have piped up with some comment along the lines of "My, but how thoughtful of you, sir. And I didn't think you actually cared!" It was enough to bring a twinge of sadness to his features, but it passed almost immediately, stamped out and forced aside by his focus on the matter at hand.

There were several of them to contend with -- at least a few dozen, by just a quick count. That left them seriously outnumbered here. And outnumbered was a poor situation to be in. For a moment, he briefly considered whether it would be wiser to fight or to fall back. It didn't take a tactical genius to figure out how poorly this could go, and how easily -- and quickly, for that matter -- it could go that poorly. But it took him only until the nearest of the once-corpses was close enough for its shuffling through the sand to be audible for his decision to be made.

A single stride forward, throwing his opposite shoulder into the charge and breaking the deceased former passenger's momentum, and earning himself a shower of loose sand and a flailing, scrabbling grab from the zombie, and then a flash of green and the corpse staggered back, a deep gash scored across its torso, bits of severed bone gleaming among the mass of blood and viscera.

Colonel watched dispassionately as it struggled back upright, refusing to fall, and lurching at him again. It was intercepted with a horrendous crunch as the side of its face was caved in, the stone fist of Granite earning itself a bath in dark red as the thing toppled to the sands, going still and returning to true death once more.

The man of stone just stared at his still-outstretched fist, blinking slowly. His expression was...difficult to read.

"Focus," Colonel said sharply. "If you dwell on it, it'll only get worse. Just move. Act, don't think: solve the problem, worry about it afterward." And he was off, energy saber at the ready.

649 words, according to the site.
649/2400 this round