- - - - - Mission Report File No. 008391
- - - - Match File No. 066
- - - Cpl. Kyle Brandon
- - May 17, 1986
As planned, we dropped down in some dank, humid part of the Congo around 0100 hours. From the start, Sergeant Brist was convinced we were fucked. Since his famous gut had never failed us before, the rest of us quickly despaired as well. Our chopper had gone in completely blind, and had somehow managed to land on the one patch of dry land for miles. The rest was nothing but swamp and dick-high marshwater filled with Zachary. Of course, we weren't issued radios with which to demand an immediate evac. No, radio signals were too easy to intercept, and the chopper wouldn't be returning 'til 0600 regardless of how loudly we pitched a bitch.
At least we had the elements of stealth and surprise. Neither the Congolese branchies, nor Zachary currently knew of our existence, but we had no doubts that the latter would be upon us in mere minutes.
We could already hear them. What other people might mistake as the ambient roar of the jungle, we knew to be the starved chorus of Umbrella's most recent experiments. "Into the swamp, lads," I remember Brist saying, "And if you feel something nibbling on your ass, it's probably not a fish." The humor failed to set in, so Brist just grunted and hopped in first. One by one, the rest of us held our FAMAS over our heads, and splashed into the black muck. It promised death, but we flipped it the bird and told it to suck our nips. On the way into the muck, we noticed an average-sized satellite beacon off to the side, bearing the Umbrella logo. The Congolese branchies certainly pick unsafe places for their gear.
I don't remember when Roland died, though I do remember a sudden splash early on. I assume he was dragged under so fast that he couldn't even manage a shout. I count myself lucky I never so much as saw one of those infamous T-Crocs. I'm also glad this particular beast didn't hunt in packs.
Besides screaming our lives away as we were being gored beneath the murk, we mostly kept quiet. We were far too intent on trying our best to maintain some semblance of awareness. As it stood, we could barely see above the water, much less below it. Sure we had flashlights, but the dense foliage ensured that we never had more than a few feet's visibility. Strangely, there were no birds croaking, nor crickets chirping. There was never any wildlife where the undead were found. The result was an eerie silence, punctuated and perforated every so often by a rattle or croaking scream. And as always, there was the moaning.
That fucking moaning.
Though he wasn’t the first to die, Haley was the first one that we actually SAW perish. He was trudging right in front of me, when suddenly his head exploded for no apparent reason. Of course, when we heard the boom half a millisecond later, we realized it was a sniper that had killed our friend. Fucking Haley, always in front. Fuck…
Immediately, we snapped off our flashlights and dove into the muck. You’re not supposed to get your firearm wet if you can avoid it, but the FAMAS is a sturdy gun. And you don’t take any risks with a sniper. Brist stayed above the water, though his light was turned off as well. When I heard the second shot, I was all too happy to resurface. If you think wading through a swamp is scary, try swimming under one. I’m just glad Brist managed to find the green glow of the Congolese branchy’s goggles so fast. Panic had naturally caused my air to run out very quickly.
We found Haley’s body immediately after. His brain was missing its frontal lobe, and was floating out the new opening in his skull, still attached to the rest of his body by the chord. We quickly re-examined our roster, and determined there were five of us… Five? There were supposed to be seven. That’s when we realized Roland was missing.
That fucking moaning, again.
It was even more unnerving, now that we were missing 28.5% of our squad.
“Move your asses if you don’t want to end up the same,” Brist growled at us after we’d closed Haley’s remaining eye and whispered half a prayer. His wasn’t even close to the most gruesome death our team had suffered over the years. Kamar, Joel, Rhett, Bigley, and Deacon had been especially horrid cases. Especially Bigley. There was only a severed hand, and a mannequin in his casket. We were mostly scared for our own hides. Due to the high mortality rate, we usually didn’t get much time to know each other. Besides Sergeant Brist, I was our most senior member, having survived two years and a whopping ten missions thus far.
And at the moment, I was convinced this would be my last one. Nonetheless, we trudged on. If anything guarantees death in our line of work, it’s listlessness. And if anything guarantees listlessness, it’s fumbling over the dead and dying.
And then Zachary dropped in to say high. First one. Then four. Then a fuckload. It happened lightning-quick, and there was literally no margin for error. The jungle was so thick that as soon as you got a clear shot, the bastards were already at your throat. Luckily, the water we feared so much proved to be our saving grace, cutting Zack’s movement speed considerably. “The head!!” I remember one of the guys shouting, “Shoot them in the fucking head!”
And shoot them in the head we did. First one. Then four. Then a fuckload. There’s a reason I’d lived so much longer than the majority of my peers. Being a southern boy, you naturally learn how to handle a gun from an early age, if you’ve got any sort of dick attached to your groin. One by one, I killed corpses, blowing their teeth to stubs and their eyes to mush as their skulls and rotting green brains exploded in a brilliant display of gore and decomposing funk.
And then I felt it around my leg.
And then I was underwater.
Next to crocodiles and other random boogums, your biggest threat when operating in a T-infested swamp is a submerged zombie. And one had crawled right up to me and pulled me down with him.
I tried to pull the trigger, but there was no trigger to pull. My trusty FAMAS was gone, my teammates were another world away, and I had zero visibility. Therefore I simply bent to the pressure around my leg, pulled my knife from my boot, and stabbed wildly. Suddenly, another pressure clamped down around my ankle. The bastard was trying to bite me, but my combat boots would be having none of that.
Suddenly, I felt a third pressure around the back of my throat. “This is it.” I thought, “They got me.” But then, I was above the water, gasping for air and spitting up algae. “Watch your ass!!” Brist shouted, firing wildly into the water near my feet. Whatever attacked me, it didn’t try again.
That’s when I noticed there were only four of us. Gavin was missing, and I could hear screams coming from somewhere in the jungle nearby. His fate wasn’t a mystery for long. “Shoot you dumbass, shoot!!!” Someone shouted at me. But my FAMAS might as well have dissolved into thin air, because I had no chance of finding it. Gritting my teeth, I jammed my knife between my belt, pulled out my L9A1, shoved the rest of my FAMAS clips into Billy and Jordan’s confused arms, and began my assault anew. I managed to plug three ghouls in the face before the shit that hit the fan… Well, hit an even bigger fan.
A horrid scream caused me to jerk around in mid-shot. Mere inches away, Sergeant Brist was flailing in the dead water with a zombie attached to his throat by the teeth. I fired two shots at the fucker, the first of which missed. The second one hit true, and Brist’s killer was no more. Screeching growls caused me to jerk around again, only to slam into a fresh ghoul. Pointing my Pistol up, I fired through its chin and out the brain. “What the fuck do we do now?!!” I heard Billy shout. It took me a minute to realize he was talking to me.
I was our leader, now.
“Run!!!” I shouted, heading the charge through a scrap of tangles. The other two bolted off after me, firing the whole time as crimson death grasped and gasped at us. However, right as I started to go, I was halted by a familiar voice. “Here..! Come here..!” It said, weakly.
Turning to the noise, I realized it was Brist, half floating in the muck. His throat was a bloody ruin, and I was amazed he yet lived. Wordlessly, he held up his FAMAS and grinned for the last time. Then he went limp, and I barely managed to catch the gun before it could fall under the water.
Then I was off like a flash, desperately trying to catch up to my men, who apparently hadn’t stopped to wait for me. Suddenly I regretted giving Billy and Jordan all my ammo. “Dear God, please fuck my asshole!!!” I shouted, very nearly careening into a wall of zombies. Where were those two fucktards? I let spray with the rapid fire, squandering many a bullet on non-lethal body-shots. At the same time, I held my pistol in my left hand, which I fired randomly.
All of my training. It fell through the cracks of my mind as it broke under the stress.
Suddenly, two clicks, and I was out of ammo again. Throwing the useless submachinegun asside, I jammed my last clip into my L9A1, and suddenly regained some of my sanity. Popping the brains out of two zombies directly in front of me, I ran through the gap, lept over a weeded mount, and arrived on dry land.
And there it was. Our objective; A small building in the middle of nowhere.
And there were my men, lying dead on the ground. Two Congolese branchies were standing over them, weapons drawn across their black suits. In the dim light, I could see the Umbrella logos across their shoulders.
The element of surprise was enough to purchase the life of the first guard, which I downed with two shots to the nose. I didn’t know how many shots I had left but I knew it wasn’t many.
The second guy was quicker; he got a shot off way before I did, and an absurd pain tore through my chest cavity. Stunned, I fired randomly at the guy, somehow managing to shoot his gun out of his hand. Bewildered, he desperately tore at his chest, trying to produce his pistol. This time, I was the quicker shot.
I fired.
It clicked.
My heart stopped, if only for a moment. Pain wracked my entire being, emanating from my likely-mortal wound, but I only had one way out, and I went for it. I charged the guy.
He pulled out his gun right as I smashed into him, having drawn my knife from my belt. He fired, but it landed in something that wasn’t me. Driving my knife into his eye with all of my might, we both fell to the ground.
Rolling off of his corpse, I struggled to my knees and coughed up blood. I checked my wound, and realized that the bullet couldn’t have hit anything except my heart or lung. Since I was still alive, I assumed it had hit neither major organ. Stumbling to my feet, I collected Jordan’s gun and ventured into the outpost, where I found three unarmed techies, or something like that, huddled into a corner. They died in a hail of lead.
With feet of stone, I stumbled to the monitor I recognized from our briefing.
But it was different.
We had been misinformed.
There was no way I’d be able to hack this particular system. The data transmitted through an external location before arriving here in a heavily encrypted form. That meant the only way for me to get the information I needed was to somehow capture a…
I blanched.
Then I threw up.
A satellite… All I had to do was grab one of Umbrella’s nearby satellite dishes… We fucking dropped down right next to a goddamn satellite dish. The irony danced around my wound, filling me with a different kind of pain.
In a drunken stupor, I stumbled from the outpost, and fell to the ground at the feet of one of the many zombies that had followed me. I had no strength to continue the fight.
I waited patiently for those steel jaws to take me home. Blood-loss took control; A factor I had failed to consider. Fucking arteries.
Everything went black. I woke up two days later in the hospital. A man in camouflage informed me that our chopper had gotten shot down and made a crash landing shortly after dropping us off. Apparently, the pilot and co-pilot had somehow managed to land within a quarter mile of the outpost, though we’d never noticed it. He said a split second and a 9mm bullet was all that separated me from death. By the grace of god, our co-pilot also happened to be a medic... And the lucky bastard had a radio.
He never told me if they got that satellite dish. I assume they didn’t. Soldiers have died for less in the past.
