[Deerington] "Holding on I'm lost in a haze Fighting life to the end of my days"

[subject_013]

Content Warnings: Mild violence, fictional pathogens, violence against an undead deer, animal attack, blood and severe physical trauma.

March 9th, 2009

At least the BSAA had clemency on him, though Wesker finds it hard to see during an operation in the dead of a Maine winter, patrolling the perimeter erected around a supposed abandoned Umbrella storage facility hidden deep in the woods close to the Canadian border. Local authorities had reported unusual activity in the local deer population, a pathogen causing aggression and an appearance uncannily suggestive of T-virus zombies. The commlink is so full of grumbling at the cold from the younger operatives, he wants to mute his earpiece. No doubt that would constitute some breach of the terms of his continued existence at the clemency of the World Court, who deemed him enough of a liability that he required constant surveillance, and yet enough an asset that the BSAA could make use of his strengths. He will never set foot in a laboratory again, per the terms of his confinement, however, they had ample use for his strength and stamina, albeit keeping him on a near-constant slow drip of the anti-viral serum via a device similar to an insulin pump. Couldn't risk a missed dose in the middle of an operation and have him run berserk. But at least he could continue to live, occupying a secure and heavily watched apartment close to the BSAA's main facility, a space where he had started penning his memoirs and continuing his studies of the paranormal and unusual, of dreams and their nature.

Or least he occupied it when he wasn't mobilized. Like now, cleaning up the scraps Umbrella had thought they had carefully hidden, which Tricell hadn't come to claim. Until now. Dear Chris had yet to see the dark marks on the record of his band of boy scouts. Perhaps that's why their respective superiors kept them well apart.

"Why would Umbrella have a storage facility this far away from Caliban Cove?" one of the privates asks over the commlink, snapping him back to the present operation.

"Why build their U.S. headquarters in a large rural town in Missouri?" Wesker replied.

"You must be in your element, Al: a walk in the woods in Maine," the same private said.

"Gerson, let's focus on the mission," their commander's voice came over the link.

"The girl's not wrong: Some nights, I dream of that world. And you know I'm always spotting deer on the edges of a location." Wesker replies.

"See any deer now?" the commander asks.

"It's probably for the best if none of us do." As soon as he said this, a dark shape staggered from the trees, a deer with too many tines on its antlers, too big for a white tail, too slight to be a moose, moving awkwardly, its coat matted with blood. "And I speak too soon." He raised his rifle, firing on the monstrosity.

The zombie deer charged, right into his line of fire, dropping into the snow,

"Target subdued, though I doubt I have seen the last of them," he says, lowering the rifle and keeping watch on the shadows.

He almost doesn't hear the low wash of sound like the wind coming from under the firs behind him, almost doesn't see the dark creature rushing him, a black deer the size of an elk with especially vicious looking antlers, its red eyes blazing. And then it is upon him, goring him through his torso, lifting him from the snowy ground.

*Wesker, do you read me?" the commander calls.

"Gahh, this is painfully familiar." He fumbles for the pistol strapped to his thigh, his rifle dropped in the commotion. Instead, his hand finds one side pocket of his utility pants, the bit of antler inside...