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"You may kick ass all over Umbrella's monsters, but can you pilot a helicopter?" Carlos mumbled, locking a new mag to the M16. If only she'd waked him up… He headed for the door, as ready as he was going to be, trying not to breathe too deeply. It hurt, but he'd manage. He'd been in worse pain and still gotten things done; once, he'd walked six klicks on a fractured ankle, and it didn't get a whole lot worse than that. Carlos didn't waste time trying to convince himself that wanting to share Trent's info was why he was going after her. He couldn't stand by and do nothing, that was all. She was trying to protect him, he could appreciate the sentiment, but he just couldn't stay there and…
Nicholai. He's out there and she doesn 't know.
He suddenly felt sick thinking of that mad glimmer in Nicholai's eyes. Carlos hurried out of the chapel and into the moonlit rain. He had to find her.
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
Nicholai. He's out there and she doesn 't know.
He suddenly felt sick thinking of that mad glimmer in Nicholai's eyes. Carlos hurried out of the chapel and into the moonlit rain. He had to find her.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE RAIN HAD TURNED INTO A DRIZZLE, BUT Nicholai didn't notice, walking beneath the thick canopy of autumn leaves back through the cemetery. Another fifty or sixty meters and he could cut east, par-allel the trail that ran straight to the water treatment fa-cility's back entrance. He never used paths in public places when he could avoid them, not liking the sense of exposure. On last check, Terence Foster was still alive and well and filing environmental status reports from the treat-ment plant, perfectly unaware that, as the last surviving Watchdog, his hours were numbered. Nicholai had al-ready decided to just kill the man outright, to hell with talking. He'd found Chan's Watchdog data easily enough, sitting on the small table in the receiver sta-tion; he'd find Foster's, too. A quick encryption on the combined files – a little health insurance – then he'd radio for pickup and go take a meeting with the deci-sion makers. Nicholai had just reached the copse of pines behind the fence of one of the park's reflecting pools when he saw Jill Valentine, walking casually past the water's edge beneath a row of wrought-iron lamps and headed in the direction he wanted to go. The low lights re-flected off the water at her, giving her a ghostly appear-ance, but she was definitely alive. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised, but he was. The look of pain on Carlos's face when he'd talked about her… Nicholai had been sure it was real, he hadn't doubted for a second that she was dead.
Ah, well, it was the last lie he ever told. Very noble of him, to try and protect the girl from who he believes to be the dastardly villain… as if I would waste my time.
No time wasted if he killed her now. Nicholai raised the assault rifle, carefully took aim at the back of her head and hesitated, curious in spite of his resolve to finish his business in Raccoon. How had she managed to evade the S.T.A.R.S. seeker all this time? Where had she been when her Latin lover had so idiotically wan-dered into Nicholas's path at the hospital? And where, exactly, did she think she was going? He decided to follow her, at least until an easy op-portunity presented itself for him to get the answers to his questions. As it was, with her on the main trail through the park and him behind a waist-high railing, he couldn't maneuver very well; telling her to freeze, drop her weapons, and then hold still while he climbed the fence wasn't the most desirable option. Nicholai sank back into the shadows and counted slowly to twenty, letting her get far enough ahead that she shouldn't be able to hear him moving through the trees. He would trail her until the main path became the bridge over the park's large duck pond, confronting her once she was halfway across, out in the open with nowhere to run. Satisfied with his plan, Nicholai started walking, moving as quietly as he could. He'd lost sight of her on his count, but unless she was jogging, he'd catch up with her just before… "Freeze." Her voice was calm and clear, the semiau-tomatic's muzzle hard against the side of his head. "Oh, but drop the rifle first, if you would."
Nicholai did as he was told, shocked into it, unsling-ing his rifle and letting it fall. How had she spotted him? How had she managed to circle back so quietly, without his notice?
And how much does she really know about me?"Please don't shoot," he said, his voice cracking."Jill, it's me, Nicholai."The gun stayed where it was. "I know who you are.And I know you're working for Umbrella, not just as asoldier. What's Operation Watchdog, Nicholai?"
She already knew something about it. If he lied, he lost any credibility he might still have with her.
Say and do whatever it takes. "Umbrella sent me and several others in to gather information about the virus carriers," he said. "But I didn't know it was going to be like this, I swear, I never would have agreed to it if I had known. I just want to get out with my life, that's all I care about anymore."
Still the muzzle stayed pressed to his temple. She was careful, he had to give her that much.
"What do you know about the water treatment plantnear here?" she asked."Nothing. I mean, I know Umbrella owns it, butthat's it. Please, you must believe me, I just want to…"
"What about the vaccine for the virus, what you know about that?"
Nicholai's gut knotted at the very mention, but he stayed in character. "Vaccine? There's no vaccine." "Bullshit, or I'd be dead. Prove to me that you want to cooperate here, and maybe we can work something out. What have you heard about a T-virus vaccine?" Carlos. The look on his face when he talked about her… and when he saw the sample case.
Nicholai didn't trust himself to speak, the depth of his sudden and complete inner turmoil like a physical force, pushing him to act – but he couldn't, and he had to convince her that he was just another Umbrella pawn or she was going to shoot him. He opened his mouth, not sure what was going to come out…… and he was saved by the very ground beneath them. There was a deep rumble and the earth shook, pitching both of them into a drunken stumble, leaves and sticks jumping around their feet. The gun swung away from his head as Jill struggled for balance. Even as disorienting as it was to try and stay upright, Nicholai didn't think it was a real earthquake. It was lo-calized around them; for one thing, he could see that the water in the pool was barely moving. The tremor went on and on, seeming to increase in magnitude, and Nicholai knew he wasn't going to get a better opportu-nity to get away. Feigning panic, Nicholai threw up his arms and shouted, carefully noting where his rifle lay on the shaking ground. "It's one of the mutants! Run!" It was as likely to be some viral monster as it was anything else, and telling her to run would work for him – she'd think twice about shooting someone trying to help her. The quake was intensifying as Nicholai ran away from Jill, one arm still waving frantically. He yelled again for her to run as he snatched up the rifle and sprinted away, not looking back, hoping she'd bought his performance. If not, he'd feel the bullet soon enough…… and within twenty meters, the ground that he was on was practically still, although he could still feel and hear the rumbling earth behind him.
Far enough, find cover and shoot her…
There was a big oak tree straight ahead. Still run-ning, Nicholai reached out with his right arm and veered left, grabbing the tree and letting his own weight swing him around. As soon as he was safely be-hind the gnarled trunk, he darted a look back, readying the M16 as he spotted her, weaving slowly away from the quake in the opposite direction.
Now you die, you billion dollar bitch
– and the rumbling was suddenly a roar, and a huge fountain of muddy white spewed up from the ground, blocking his shot, trees crashing all around. A strange and horrible bellowing erupted from the fountain, a hissing bass note, and as the pale column twisted five meters into the air and then curved down suddenly, Nicholai realized it was an animal, one that had surely never existed before – the gnashing circle of pointed tusks and teeth that tipped the massive white worm-body were proof enough. It bellowed again, arching, a titan hybrid of maggot and lamprey eel, of waxworm and snake, as big around as a man was tall – and it dove away from Nicholai. Toward Jill Valentine. Nicholai turned and ran away, giggling, cursing Jill and Carlos as he dodged trees in the dark, heading for the plant, laughing as he damned them to everlasting hell. Jill was running, skirting the water's edge, and didn't know it was coming until it crashed to the ground only a few meters behind her. A wash of foul air blew over her, a smell of dirt and wet meat coming from the mouth of the carnivorous worm.
Holy crap!
She ran faster, wanting to get some distance before she dared to look back, one grenade load's not enough, have to run for it… Ahead, the rounded reflecting pool curved, a few benches at the corner, a stand of trees behind them. The ground was rumbling again, but Jill was almost there; if she could get around the corner she should be clear, the man-made pool was lined with cement, the thing would knock itself out if she was lucky…… and the benches and trees in front of her suddenly blew up into the air, raised up on a wave of dirt, the blind, probing worm vomiting soil from its toothed maw as it swept its head toward her. Jesus, it's fast! Jill raised the Beretta she still held tightly and buried two rounds in its bloated underbelly, the worm screaming again, deep and hissing like the roar of an attacking crocodile. Jill spun and took off, heart pounding, already hear-ing and feeling the start of another quake as she grabbed her Beretta. It would get in front of her again, she knew it, she'd never make it around either end of the long pool. Going across would slow her down too much. Think, if you can't run what can you use to stop it, dirt, water, trees, lamps…
Lamps. Several were leaning wildly from the under-ground movements of the mammoth grub, like up-rooted saplings about to fall. Into the pool. No time to plan, she had to get it into the water, she'd have to bait it out. She took a last running step and paused long enough to pivot ninety degrees right, dashing toward the pool. It was damaged, rivulets of scummy water draining from the concrete lip.
It rises up then crashes down, takes it a second or two to raise itself again – A second or two, that's how long she'd have to get out of the water. Assuming she could knock a lamp over with bullets first, and that the monstrous worm would obligingly dive into the pool. Calculating the odds meant she'd have to think, and the ground was already trembling, shaking hard enough to send her to her knees. She fell and slid through a thick layer of grass and mud, and then she was trying to get to her feet and keep the gun dry…… and it was bursting up through the edge of the pool not ten feet to her right, blotting out the cloudy sky in a blast of mud and stone, concrete and water. There was a single lamp between her and the monster, already almost touching the water.
Move!
Jill scrambled backwards, moving faster than she would have thought possible, stopping as she saw that the creature had peaked and was starting to bend over, sheets of water pouring from its swollen form. She opened fire as she rolled up onto her feet, the first shots wild, the third and fourth clanging off the metal post. The worm was coming down, creating a tidal wave of mud as the fifth shot blew out the light. It was going to crush her if she didn't move, close, gonna be close…
Bam! Bam! It was the seventh shot that did it, and the results were spectacular. There was a giant, buzzing pop as Jill threw herself backwards and to the side, the lamp im-mersed in the rapidly draining pool. The semi-gelati-nous flesh of the screaming worm shivered and shook as it raised itself up, twisting in agony. Its pallid skin began to blacken and crisp as an oily, noxious smoke poured out of its throat, the hidden length of its body thrashing up giant sprays of dirt and rock. It bellowed once more, the unearthly sound becoming choked, gur-gling -
– and then it collapsed, dead before it hit the ground, before its outer layer of skin began to curl away, revealing the cooking meat of its innards. Jill staggered to her feet, left hand pressed to her throbbing shoulder as she backed away from the frying worm, the smell of it making her gag repeatedly. She'd actually done it, she'd killed the goddamn thing! A warm swell of triumphant victory surged through her as she breathed in another wave of roasting worm smell, I did it, and then she bent over and vomited her guts out. When there was nothing left to purge, Jill shakily stood up and started walking east again, thinking about her confrontation with Nicholai. He wasn't as good a liar as he thought, and if she'd had only suspicions be-fore, she was now certain that he was extremely bad news. Her plans hadn't changed, but she was going to have to be very careful when she got to the water treatment plant. Nicholai was going to be there, she had no doubt… and if he saw her first, she'd be dead before she knew what hit her.
The roadblock was a massive pileup of cars that had actually been stacked three and four high, stretched be-tween several buildings at the end of a block in a rough semicircle. Carlos could still see the crisscross of greasy treadmarks from whatever piece of heavy machinery had managed the feat, just as he'd spotted them on the last three streets he'd tried. Umbrella and the RPD hadn't been screwing around when they'd sealed the city. He stood in front of the stacked, partly crushed metal wall, experiencing an almost desperate indecision. Go back, try heading north first, then east – or try climbing over one of the precarious barricades, which seemed to have been specifically set up to deter him from finding Jill. That's what it feels like, anyway. All that was north of the clock tower was a big park, but maybe that was the only way to get to the Umbrella facility; he couldn't imagine Jill scaling a wall of cars with a bad shoulder, and crawling through them was too dangerous…… but you're assuming she even made it this far, a nagging little voice whispered. Maybe she's already dead, maybe the Nemesis came for her, orNicholai, or…
Carlos cocked his head to one side, frowning, his thoughts disturbed by a distant sound. Shots? Possibly, but the light mist that was falling was having a dampen-ing effect, distorting and muffling noises. He couldn't even be sure from which direction the sound had come… but he was suddenly even more frantic to find Jill than before.
"After all I went through to get that vaccine, you bet-ter not get yourself killed," he murmured lightly, but it was too close to the truth to be funny. He had to do something, now.
Carlos stared at the wall of cars for another moment, picking what appeared to be the most stable route, over a minivan and two compact cars. He took as deep a breath as he was able to manage, mentally crossed his fingers, and started to climb.
Ah, well, it was the last lie he ever told. Very noble of him, to try and protect the girl from who he believes to be the dastardly villain… as if I would waste my time.
No time wasted if he killed her now. Nicholai raised the assault rifle, carefully took aim at the back of her head and hesitated, curious in spite of his resolve to finish his business in Raccoon. How had she managed to evade the S.T.A.R.S. seeker all this time? Where had she been when her Latin lover had so idiotically wan-dered into Nicholas's path at the hospital? And where, exactly, did she think she was going? He decided to follow her, at least until an easy op-portunity presented itself for him to get the answers to his questions. As it was, with her on the main trail through the park and him behind a waist-high railing, he couldn't maneuver very well; telling her to freeze, drop her weapons, and then hold still while he climbed the fence wasn't the most desirable option. Nicholai sank back into the shadows and counted slowly to twenty, letting her get far enough ahead that she shouldn't be able to hear him moving through the trees. He would trail her until the main path became the bridge over the park's large duck pond, confronting her once she was halfway across, out in the open with nowhere to run. Satisfied with his plan, Nicholai started walking, moving as quietly as he could. He'd lost sight of her on his count, but unless she was jogging, he'd catch up with her just before… "Freeze." Her voice was calm and clear, the semiau-tomatic's muzzle hard against the side of his head. "Oh, but drop the rifle first, if you would."
Nicholai did as he was told, shocked into it, unsling-ing his rifle and letting it fall. How had she spotted him? How had she managed to circle back so quietly, without his notice?
And how much does she really know about me?"Please don't shoot," he said, his voice cracking."Jill, it's me, Nicholai."The gun stayed where it was. "I know who you are.And I know you're working for Umbrella, not just as asoldier. What's Operation Watchdog, Nicholai?"
She already knew something about it. If he lied, he lost any credibility he might still have with her.
Say and do whatever it takes. "Umbrella sent me and several others in to gather information about the virus carriers," he said. "But I didn't know it was going to be like this, I swear, I never would have agreed to it if I had known. I just want to get out with my life, that's all I care about anymore."
Still the muzzle stayed pressed to his temple. She was careful, he had to give her that much.
"What do you know about the water treatment plantnear here?" she asked."Nothing. I mean, I know Umbrella owns it, butthat's it. Please, you must believe me, I just want to…"
"What about the vaccine for the virus, what you know about that?"
Nicholai's gut knotted at the very mention, but he stayed in character. "Vaccine? There's no vaccine." "Bullshit, or I'd be dead. Prove to me that you want to cooperate here, and maybe we can work something out. What have you heard about a T-virus vaccine?" Carlos. The look on his face when he talked about her… and when he saw the sample case.
Nicholai didn't trust himself to speak, the depth of his sudden and complete inner turmoil like a physical force, pushing him to act – but he couldn't, and he had to convince her that he was just another Umbrella pawn or she was going to shoot him. He opened his mouth, not sure what was going to come out…… and he was saved by the very ground beneath them. There was a deep rumble and the earth shook, pitching both of them into a drunken stumble, leaves and sticks jumping around their feet. The gun swung away from his head as Jill struggled for balance. Even as disorienting as it was to try and stay upright, Nicholai didn't think it was a real earthquake. It was lo-calized around them; for one thing, he could see that the water in the pool was barely moving. The tremor went on and on, seeming to increase in magnitude, and Nicholai knew he wasn't going to get a better opportu-nity to get away. Feigning panic, Nicholai threw up his arms and shouted, carefully noting where his rifle lay on the shaking ground. "It's one of the mutants! Run!" It was as likely to be some viral monster as it was anything else, and telling her to run would work for him – she'd think twice about shooting someone trying to help her. The quake was intensifying as Nicholai ran away from Jill, one arm still waving frantically. He yelled again for her to run as he snatched up the rifle and sprinted away, not looking back, hoping she'd bought his performance. If not, he'd feel the bullet soon enough…… and within twenty meters, the ground that he was on was practically still, although he could still feel and hear the rumbling earth behind him.
Far enough, find cover and shoot her…
There was a big oak tree straight ahead. Still run-ning, Nicholai reached out with his right arm and veered left, grabbing the tree and letting his own weight swing him around. As soon as he was safely be-hind the gnarled trunk, he darted a look back, readying the M16 as he spotted her, weaving slowly away from the quake in the opposite direction.
Now you die, you billion dollar bitch
– and the rumbling was suddenly a roar, and a huge fountain of muddy white spewed up from the ground, blocking his shot, trees crashing all around. A strange and horrible bellowing erupted from the fountain, a hissing bass note, and as the pale column twisted five meters into the air and then curved down suddenly, Nicholai realized it was an animal, one that had surely never existed before – the gnashing circle of pointed tusks and teeth that tipped the massive white worm-body were proof enough. It bellowed again, arching, a titan hybrid of maggot and lamprey eel, of waxworm and snake, as big around as a man was tall – and it dove away from Nicholai. Toward Jill Valentine. Nicholai turned and ran away, giggling, cursing Jill and Carlos as he dodged trees in the dark, heading for the plant, laughing as he damned them to everlasting hell. Jill was running, skirting the water's edge, and didn't know it was coming until it crashed to the ground only a few meters behind her. A wash of foul air blew over her, a smell of dirt and wet meat coming from the mouth of the carnivorous worm.
Holy crap!
She ran faster, wanting to get some distance before she dared to look back, one grenade load's not enough, have to run for it… Ahead, the rounded reflecting pool curved, a few benches at the corner, a stand of trees behind them. The ground was rumbling again, but Jill was almost there; if she could get around the corner she should be clear, the man-made pool was lined with cement, the thing would knock itself out if she was lucky…… and the benches and trees in front of her suddenly blew up into the air, raised up on a wave of dirt, the blind, probing worm vomiting soil from its toothed maw as it swept its head toward her. Jesus, it's fast! Jill raised the Beretta she still held tightly and buried two rounds in its bloated underbelly, the worm screaming again, deep and hissing like the roar of an attacking crocodile. Jill spun and took off, heart pounding, already hear-ing and feeling the start of another quake as she grabbed her Beretta. It would get in front of her again, she knew it, she'd never make it around either end of the long pool. Going across would slow her down too much. Think, if you can't run what can you use to stop it, dirt, water, trees, lamps…
Lamps. Several were leaning wildly from the under-ground movements of the mammoth grub, like up-rooted saplings about to fall. Into the pool. No time to plan, she had to get it into the water, she'd have to bait it out. She took a last running step and paused long enough to pivot ninety degrees right, dashing toward the pool. It was damaged, rivulets of scummy water draining from the concrete lip.
It rises up then crashes down, takes it a second or two to raise itself again – A second or two, that's how long she'd have to get out of the water. Assuming she could knock a lamp over with bullets first, and that the monstrous worm would obligingly dive into the pool. Calculating the odds meant she'd have to think, and the ground was already trembling, shaking hard enough to send her to her knees. She fell and slid through a thick layer of grass and mud, and then she was trying to get to her feet and keep the gun dry…… and it was bursting up through the edge of the pool not ten feet to her right, blotting out the cloudy sky in a blast of mud and stone, concrete and water. There was a single lamp between her and the monster, already almost touching the water.
Move!
Jill scrambled backwards, moving faster than she would have thought possible, stopping as she saw that the creature had peaked and was starting to bend over, sheets of water pouring from its swollen form. She opened fire as she rolled up onto her feet, the first shots wild, the third and fourth clanging off the metal post. The worm was coming down, creating a tidal wave of mud as the fifth shot blew out the light. It was going to crush her if she didn't move, close, gonna be close…
Bam! Bam! It was the seventh shot that did it, and the results were spectacular. There was a giant, buzzing pop as Jill threw herself backwards and to the side, the lamp im-mersed in the rapidly draining pool. The semi-gelati-nous flesh of the screaming worm shivered and shook as it raised itself up, twisting in agony. Its pallid skin began to blacken and crisp as an oily, noxious smoke poured out of its throat, the hidden length of its body thrashing up giant sprays of dirt and rock. It bellowed once more, the unearthly sound becoming choked, gur-gling -
– and then it collapsed, dead before it hit the ground, before its outer layer of skin began to curl away, revealing the cooking meat of its innards. Jill staggered to her feet, left hand pressed to her throbbing shoulder as she backed away from the frying worm, the smell of it making her gag repeatedly. She'd actually done it, she'd killed the goddamn thing! A warm swell of triumphant victory surged through her as she breathed in another wave of roasting worm smell, I did it, and then she bent over and vomited her guts out. When there was nothing left to purge, Jill shakily stood up and started walking east again, thinking about her confrontation with Nicholai. He wasn't as good a liar as he thought, and if she'd had only suspicions be-fore, she was now certain that he was extremely bad news. Her plans hadn't changed, but she was going to have to be very careful when she got to the water treatment plant. Nicholai was going to be there, she had no doubt… and if he saw her first, she'd be dead before she knew what hit her.
The roadblock was a massive pileup of cars that had actually been stacked three and four high, stretched be-tween several buildings at the end of a block in a rough semicircle. Carlos could still see the crisscross of greasy treadmarks from whatever piece of heavy machinery had managed the feat, just as he'd spotted them on the last three streets he'd tried. Umbrella and the RPD hadn't been screwing around when they'd sealed the city. He stood in front of the stacked, partly crushed metal wall, experiencing an almost desperate indecision. Go back, try heading north first, then east – or try climbing over one of the precarious barricades, which seemed to have been specifically set up to deter him from finding Jill. That's what it feels like, anyway. All that was north of the clock tower was a big park, but maybe that was the only way to get to the Umbrella facility; he couldn't imagine Jill scaling a wall of cars with a bad shoulder, and crawling through them was too dangerous…… but you're assuming she even made it this far, a nagging little voice whispered. Maybe she's already dead, maybe the Nemesis came for her, orNicholai, or…
Carlos cocked his head to one side, frowning, his thoughts disturbed by a distant sound. Shots? Possibly, but the light mist that was falling was having a dampen-ing effect, distorting and muffling noises. He couldn't even be sure from which direction the sound had come… but he was suddenly even more frantic to find Jill than before.
"After all I went through to get that vaccine, you bet-ter not get yourself killed," he murmured lightly, but it was too close to the truth to be funny. He had to do something, now.
Carlos stared at the wall of cars for another moment, picking what appeared to be the most stable route, over a minivan and two compact cars. He took as deep a breath as he was able to manage, mentally crossed his fingers, and started to climb.
TWENTY-FIVE
"NO, LISTEN, YOU GOTTA LISTEN -I DON'T know anything, you don't want to do this. They've had me doing reports on water and soil samples, that's it, I'm no threat to you! I swear!"
Foster was working himself into a froth, and Nicholai decided that making a man wait for his death, particularly such a sad little man, was cruel. The researcher was al-ready cowering in the corner, pressed against the door in the northeast corner of his office, his pinched, ratty fea-tures flushed and sweaty. It had taken Nicholai less than five minutes to find him once he'd reached the facility. "… and I'll just leave, okay?" Foster was still bab-bling. "I'll be gone and you'll never hear from me again, swear to God, why do you want to kill me, I'm nobody. Tell me what you want and I'll do it, whatever it is, talk to me, man, okay? Let's just talk, okay?"
Nicholai suddenly realized that he was just staring at Foster, as if he'd been lulled into a trance by the rise and fall of the man's hysteria. It had been an endless day in a series of them… but as much as he wanted to get out, to be done with the entire operation, Nicholai felt oddly compelled to say something.
"There's nothing personal in this, I'm sure you un-derstand," Nicholai said. "It's about money… or it was at the beginning, but things are different now." Foster nodded quickly, eyes wide. "Yeah, sure they are, different."
Now that he'd started, Nicholai found he couldn't stop. It suddenly seemed important for someone else to understand what he'd gone through, what he was still up against – even if it was only someone like Foster.
"The money is still most of it, of course. But after I got here, after Wersbowski, I started to feel like I had come to a very special place. I felt… I felt that things were finally becoming the way they were supposed to be. The way my life should have been all along. Ex-treme circumstances, you see?"
Foster bobbed his head again but wisely said nothing.
"But then Carlos tricked me; he couldn't have died in the explosion, because Jill received the antidote. And I'm starting to think that she's the cause, that things changed because of her." As he spoke, he sensed the truth of it, as though a light was dawning in his mind's
eye. It was true, talking helped.
"Even at the beginning, she ruined the setup I had with Carlos and Mikhail. Manipulative, controlling woman, there are a lot of them like that. She probably slept with both of them, too. Seduced them." "Bitches, all of 'em," Foster sincerely agreed. "Then she got sick and sent Carlos to steal the vac-cine. I'm not excusing his part in all of this, not at all, but there's something about her… it's like her pres-ence alters things, makes everything wrong somehow. I don't even think she's dead now. If a seeker can't kill her, a mutant certainly can't."
Nicholai stood silently, lost in thought for a moment. He'd never been a superstitious man, but things really were different. Jill Valentine was…
… a woman, she's just a woman and you 're not think-ing clearly, haven't been for days.
Nicholai blinked, and the thought was gone, and Foster was still in the corner, watching him with an ex-pression of cautious terror. As though he thought Nicholai was crazy. Nicholai felt a rush of hatred for the little man, for trying to trick him, telling him to talk and then judging him for it. He deserved to die, as much as any of them. "I'm not crazy," Nicholai shouted angrily, "and I'm done talking about this! You're the last one, after you it's over and that's just the way things are, so be a man and accept it! "
Three rounds, a burst of tat tat tat through one of Ter-ence Foster's pleading green eyes, and the researcher's head snapped back, blood splashing the door he leaned against, his body collapsing lifeless to the cold floor. Nicholai felt nothing. The last Watchdog, dead, and there was no sense of accomplishment, no feeling of conquest. Just another corpse on the floor in front of him and a deeply felt desire to get out of Raccoon, where things had gone so sour. Nicholai shook his head, his heart heavy, and started to search the office for Foster's data.
Jill stood in front of the narrow bridge that con-nected Memorial Park's back gate to the second floor of the Umbrella facility, suspended over what had to be a marsh or swamp, from the gassy-mud smell. It was too dark to tell by looking, but the odor was unmistak-able – and so were the fresh bootprints that led from where she stood to the door on the opposite side. As she'd expected, Nicholai was here.
Wonderful. What a treat.
Nicholai aside, she was glad to have found the bridge; she'd been concerned that the park would turn out to be a dead end and that she'd have to backtrack. The bridge also conveniently led to the second floor; it made sense that the offices and control rooms – hope-fully at least one of them would have a transmitter sys-tem – would be on the second floor of the two-story building, the first floor being where the water treatment took place. Assuming Umbrella had bothered with a sensible layout, she should be able to get in and out easily enough. If there was no radio, she'd circle around to the front of the building's first floor and see about the roads. She carefully edged out onto the wood-and-metal span, breathing deeply, focusing herself as she reached for the low wood railing to steady herself. Dealing with Umbrella's creatures, bred or created, took skill and concentration, but facing a human adversary took more than that; people were much less predictable than ani-mals, and if she meant to keep away from Nicholai, she had to be as fully alert as possible, her intuition and awareness jacked up to feel an oncoming attack -
– like now.
Jill froze halfway across the bridge, feeling for the Beretta's safety with her thumb, something was very wrong but she couldn't tell… Ka thud! Behind her. Jill spun, heart racing, and saw the Nemesis stand-ing twenty feet away, its freakish body hideously transformed by fire and buckshot. Its chest and arms were bare, giving her a clear look at how the waving tentacles were attached, sprouting from its upper back and shoulders. Much of its skin had burned off, re-vealing fibrous red muscle tissue in patches of ashy black. "Starsss," it rumbled, limping forward a step, and she saw that much of its lower right side was mangled from where she'd hit it with the grenade gun. The flesh from the bottom of its rib cage to about midthigh looked like burned spaghetti, smashed and shredded, but she doubted very much that it felt pain, and she had few illusions about its strength being overly affected. In an instant, her adrenaline-pumped mind flashed through a hundred options and latched on to her best bet. The ledge at the clock tower. Carlos had pushed it right off, but it had been blinded, distracted…
… distract this, freak!
She opened fire, aiming at the most obvious part of its deformed face, its improbably white teeth – and saw at least two shots shatter through the eerie grin, pale splinters exploding out in a spray.
The S.T.A.R.S. killer howled, its flesh tentacles spreading like a cape behind it, framing the beast in a coiling, quivering sunburst.
– not in pain, maybe, but it feels something
– GO NOW!
Jill continued to fire as she ran for it, her instincts screaming at her to run the other way, her logic remind-ing her that she couldn't possibly run fast enough. The Nemesis was still howling when Jill smashed into it, pushing up and out to smack into its chest the way Carlos had, inwardly cringing at the feel of its skin against her palms, wet, gritty, cold -
– and it staggered backwards, landing heavily at the very edge of the bridge, inches from empty space. Its weight and mass worked for Jill as she'd prayed it would, she could hear the explosive crack of the weath-ered board beneath its heels, the side rail crunching as the giant fell against the slats…… but two, three of the twisting tentacles were grab-bing at the undamaged railing on the other side, the reeling Nemesis putting its hands out, struggling to re-gain its balance. Jill jumped, twisting, knowing that she couldn't let it stand up again, and landed both feet against its ravaged abdomen, kicking off from the monster's body with all of her strength. She fell solidly to the wood planking, involuntarily crying out in pain as her wounded shoulder absorbed much of the impact, but the sight of those fleshy ropes, flailing at air as the Nemesis lost its grip and plunged over the side, did her a world of good… as did the murky, thunderous splash she heard a beat later. She stumbled to her feet and across the rest of the bridge, silently cheering as the door that led into the fa-cility swung open, unlocked. Inside, a short hall turned left fifteen feet ahead, all utilitarian metal grate floors and concrete walls. She quickly deadbolted the door behind her and sagged against it, pointing her weapon at the blind corner while she caught her breath. No footsteps outside or in, nothing but a faint me-chanical hum coming from somewhere deeper in the facility. When she could breathe almost normally again, she moved forward, anxious to get out before the Nemesis returned. She had to get out and call for help, or just get out; the Nemesis wasn't going to give up, and she couldn't hope to elude it forever. She edged further down the hall and saw that a metal shutter stood at the right end, facing the corridor she couldn't see. Another step forward, and she darted a look around the corner. Clear, another short hall that turned right. She stepped back and took a closer look at the metal shutter, the kind that opened with a key card. The room's name was just above the door, in black stencil: COMMUNICATIONS. Jill felt a rush of hope, then saw that there was no manual lock. The key card reader to the right of the shutter was the only way in. Frustrated, Jill turned away. Running into the Neme-sis had changed things. She could leave, get far away from it and Nicholai and try to come up with some-thing new, or she could continue on, search for the card and keep looking for other possibilities. Jill smiled wearily. Both options sounded terrible, actually, but the latter seemed to suck a little less. At least her clothes would have a chance to dry. Shivering, Jill started down the adjoining corridor, feeling vaguely envious of Carlos, warm and sleeping back at the chapel.
The Umbrella facility was a series of small single-level buildings and one large two-story one, set among several open areas that had been stacked high with crap piles of lumber, old cars, and scrap metal being the main competitors for space. If there were heli-copters on the site, Carlos thought they'd be behind one of the warehouses – nearly impossible to get around, of course, unless he wanted to scale another stack of cars. Not unless I have to, thank you very much. His ear-lier climb had been enough to last him the rest of his life. He'd banged the hell out of both his knees when he'd come down hard on the cab of a flatbed truck, and he'd limped most of the rest of the way to the fa-cility. He stood in a small and crowded yard, which he'd hopped a fence to get to, memorizing the compound's sprawling layout as best he could before moving to-ward the main building. He wanted to make sure Jill was okay before he went hunting for a 'copter. As soon as he reached the building, Carlos broke the first win-dow he could reach with the M16's stock and boosted himself up. He sat on the frame, looking into a long, narrow, bunkerlike room, dimly lit and littered with bodies. To the right was a set of doors with an exit sign overhead, probably leading out to the main warehouse; he'd have to try the doors when he went for the helicopters. To his left, though, was a metal ladder that went straight up to a hatch in the ceiling. He couldn't have asked for more. Well, an elevator, maybe, he thought as he pulled himself through the window, his taped ribs protesting.
Although as long as I'm wishing, suddenly waking up and finding out this has all been a bad dream would be pretty nice, too.
The room smelled like blood and rot, a smell that he had gotten used to, he realized. It smelled like Rac-coon, and as he slowly climbed the ladder, he thought that he would die a happy man if he could just do it breathing fresh, untainted air. The square metal hatch at the top lifted easily, swinging up and back on hinges to lean against a three-sided railing. Carlos ascended carefully into another dim room with a bunker feel, lined with consoles and cabinets, no bodies… "Caramba," he breathed, stepping away from the ladder to the desk console against the front wall, set beneath large windows that looked out over the mostly dark yard. It was an old communications relay system, and even as he reached out to pick up the headset, a crackle of static hissed from a small speaker set into a side panel, followed by a woman's cool, clear voice.
"Attention. The Raccoon City project has been aban-doned. Political maneuvering to delay federal plans has failed. All personnel must evacuate immediately to out-side of the ten-mile blast radius. Missiles will be launched at daybreak. This message is being broadcast on all available channels, and will repeat in five min-utes."
Stunned, Carlos looked at his watch and felt his stomach knot. It was half past four in the morning, which left them an hour, maybe a little more. He snatched up the headset and started pushing but-tons. "Hello? Does anybody read me, I'm still in the city, hello?"
Nothing. Carlos ran for the door at the back of the room, his thoughts repeating in an endless loop, day-break, Jill, helicopter, daybreak, Jill…
… and the door, a metal shutter, was firmly locked. No keyhole, no nothing. He couldn't get into the building.
And I don't even know if she's here, maybe she started back already, maybe…
Maybe a lot of things, and as much as he wanted to find her, if he didn't secure a way for them to escape the city, they weren't going to make it. He turned away from the door, not wanting to leave, knowing he didn't have a choice. He had to find one of those helicopters that Trent had told him about and make sure it was fueled up and working. Maybe he could buzz the facility, get her attention from outside, or find her on her way back to the clock tower. And if I can't… He didn't finish the thought, well
aware of Jill's fate if he failed.Hardly noticing the pain in his side, Carlos ran forthe ladder, his heart pounding and filled with dread.
Foster was working himself into a froth, and Nicholai decided that making a man wait for his death, particularly such a sad little man, was cruel. The researcher was al-ready cowering in the corner, pressed against the door in the northeast corner of his office, his pinched, ratty fea-tures flushed and sweaty. It had taken Nicholai less than five minutes to find him once he'd reached the facility. "… and I'll just leave, okay?" Foster was still bab-bling. "I'll be gone and you'll never hear from me again, swear to God, why do you want to kill me, I'm nobody. Tell me what you want and I'll do it, whatever it is, talk to me, man, okay? Let's just talk, okay?"
Nicholai suddenly realized that he was just staring at Foster, as if he'd been lulled into a trance by the rise and fall of the man's hysteria. It had been an endless day in a series of them… but as much as he wanted to get out, to be done with the entire operation, Nicholai felt oddly compelled to say something.
"There's nothing personal in this, I'm sure you un-derstand," Nicholai said. "It's about money… or it was at the beginning, but things are different now." Foster nodded quickly, eyes wide. "Yeah, sure they are, different."
Now that he'd started, Nicholai found he couldn't stop. It suddenly seemed important for someone else to understand what he'd gone through, what he was still up against – even if it was only someone like Foster.
"The money is still most of it, of course. But after I got here, after Wersbowski, I started to feel like I had come to a very special place. I felt… I felt that things were finally becoming the way they were supposed to be. The way my life should have been all along. Ex-treme circumstances, you see?"
Foster bobbed his head again but wisely said nothing.
"But then Carlos tricked me; he couldn't have died in the explosion, because Jill received the antidote. And I'm starting to think that she's the cause, that things changed because of her." As he spoke, he sensed the truth of it, as though a light was dawning in his mind's
eye. It was true, talking helped.
"Even at the beginning, she ruined the setup I had with Carlos and Mikhail. Manipulative, controlling woman, there are a lot of them like that. She probably slept with both of them, too. Seduced them." "Bitches, all of 'em," Foster sincerely agreed. "Then she got sick and sent Carlos to steal the vac-cine. I'm not excusing his part in all of this, not at all, but there's something about her… it's like her pres-ence alters things, makes everything wrong somehow. I don't even think she's dead now. If a seeker can't kill her, a mutant certainly can't."
Nicholai stood silently, lost in thought for a moment. He'd never been a superstitious man, but things really were different. Jill Valentine was…
… a woman, she's just a woman and you 're not think-ing clearly, haven't been for days.
Nicholai blinked, and the thought was gone, and Foster was still in the corner, watching him with an ex-pression of cautious terror. As though he thought Nicholai was crazy. Nicholai felt a rush of hatred for the little man, for trying to trick him, telling him to talk and then judging him for it. He deserved to die, as much as any of them. "I'm not crazy," Nicholai shouted angrily, "and I'm done talking about this! You're the last one, after you it's over and that's just the way things are, so be a man and accept it! "
Three rounds, a burst of tat tat tat through one of Ter-ence Foster's pleading green eyes, and the researcher's head snapped back, blood splashing the door he leaned against, his body collapsing lifeless to the cold floor. Nicholai felt nothing. The last Watchdog, dead, and there was no sense of accomplishment, no feeling of conquest. Just another corpse on the floor in front of him and a deeply felt desire to get out of Raccoon, where things had gone so sour. Nicholai shook his head, his heart heavy, and started to search the office for Foster's data.
Jill stood in front of the narrow bridge that con-nected Memorial Park's back gate to the second floor of the Umbrella facility, suspended over what had to be a marsh or swamp, from the gassy-mud smell. It was too dark to tell by looking, but the odor was unmistak-able – and so were the fresh bootprints that led from where she stood to the door on the opposite side. As she'd expected, Nicholai was here.
Wonderful. What a treat.
Nicholai aside, she was glad to have found the bridge; she'd been concerned that the park would turn out to be a dead end and that she'd have to backtrack. The bridge also conveniently led to the second floor; it made sense that the offices and control rooms – hope-fully at least one of them would have a transmitter sys-tem – would be on the second floor of the two-story building, the first floor being where the water treatment took place. Assuming Umbrella had bothered with a sensible layout, she should be able to get in and out easily enough. If there was no radio, she'd circle around to the front of the building's first floor and see about the roads. She carefully edged out onto the wood-and-metal span, breathing deeply, focusing herself as she reached for the low wood railing to steady herself. Dealing with Umbrella's creatures, bred or created, took skill and concentration, but facing a human adversary took more than that; people were much less predictable than ani-mals, and if she meant to keep away from Nicholai, she had to be as fully alert as possible, her intuition and awareness jacked up to feel an oncoming attack -
– like now.
Jill froze halfway across the bridge, feeling for the Beretta's safety with her thumb, something was very wrong but she couldn't tell… Ka thud! Behind her. Jill spun, heart racing, and saw the Nemesis stand-ing twenty feet away, its freakish body hideously transformed by fire and buckshot. Its chest and arms were bare, giving her a clear look at how the waving tentacles were attached, sprouting from its upper back and shoulders. Much of its skin had burned off, re-vealing fibrous red muscle tissue in patches of ashy black. "Starsss," it rumbled, limping forward a step, and she saw that much of its lower right side was mangled from where she'd hit it with the grenade gun. The flesh from the bottom of its rib cage to about midthigh looked like burned spaghetti, smashed and shredded, but she doubted very much that it felt pain, and she had few illusions about its strength being overly affected. In an instant, her adrenaline-pumped mind flashed through a hundred options and latched on to her best bet. The ledge at the clock tower. Carlos had pushed it right off, but it had been blinded, distracted…
… distract this, freak!
She opened fire, aiming at the most obvious part of its deformed face, its improbably white teeth – and saw at least two shots shatter through the eerie grin, pale splinters exploding out in a spray.
The S.T.A.R.S. killer howled, its flesh tentacles spreading like a cape behind it, framing the beast in a coiling, quivering sunburst.
– not in pain, maybe, but it feels something
– GO NOW!
Jill continued to fire as she ran for it, her instincts screaming at her to run the other way, her logic remind-ing her that she couldn't possibly run fast enough. The Nemesis was still howling when Jill smashed into it, pushing up and out to smack into its chest the way Carlos had, inwardly cringing at the feel of its skin against her palms, wet, gritty, cold -
– and it staggered backwards, landing heavily at the very edge of the bridge, inches from empty space. Its weight and mass worked for Jill as she'd prayed it would, she could hear the explosive crack of the weath-ered board beneath its heels, the side rail crunching as the giant fell against the slats…… but two, three of the twisting tentacles were grab-bing at the undamaged railing on the other side, the reeling Nemesis putting its hands out, struggling to re-gain its balance. Jill jumped, twisting, knowing that she couldn't let it stand up again, and landed both feet against its ravaged abdomen, kicking off from the monster's body with all of her strength. She fell solidly to the wood planking, involuntarily crying out in pain as her wounded shoulder absorbed much of the impact, but the sight of those fleshy ropes, flailing at air as the Nemesis lost its grip and plunged over the side, did her a world of good… as did the murky, thunderous splash she heard a beat later. She stumbled to her feet and across the rest of the bridge, silently cheering as the door that led into the fa-cility swung open, unlocked. Inside, a short hall turned left fifteen feet ahead, all utilitarian metal grate floors and concrete walls. She quickly deadbolted the door behind her and sagged against it, pointing her weapon at the blind corner while she caught her breath. No footsteps outside or in, nothing but a faint me-chanical hum coming from somewhere deeper in the facility. When she could breathe almost normally again, she moved forward, anxious to get out before the Nemesis returned. She had to get out and call for help, or just get out; the Nemesis wasn't going to give up, and she couldn't hope to elude it forever. She edged further down the hall and saw that a metal shutter stood at the right end, facing the corridor she couldn't see. Another step forward, and she darted a look around the corner. Clear, another short hall that turned right. She stepped back and took a closer look at the metal shutter, the kind that opened with a key card. The room's name was just above the door, in black stencil: COMMUNICATIONS. Jill felt a rush of hope, then saw that there was no manual lock. The key card reader to the right of the shutter was the only way in. Frustrated, Jill turned away. Running into the Neme-sis had changed things. She could leave, get far away from it and Nicholai and try to come up with some-thing new, or she could continue on, search for the card and keep looking for other possibilities. Jill smiled wearily. Both options sounded terrible, actually, but the latter seemed to suck a little less. At least her clothes would have a chance to dry. Shivering, Jill started down the adjoining corridor, feeling vaguely envious of Carlos, warm and sleeping back at the chapel.
The Umbrella facility was a series of small single-level buildings and one large two-story one, set among several open areas that had been stacked high with crap piles of lumber, old cars, and scrap metal being the main competitors for space. If there were heli-copters on the site, Carlos thought they'd be behind one of the warehouses – nearly impossible to get around, of course, unless he wanted to scale another stack of cars. Not unless I have to, thank you very much. His ear-lier climb had been enough to last him the rest of his life. He'd banged the hell out of both his knees when he'd come down hard on the cab of a flatbed truck, and he'd limped most of the rest of the way to the fa-cility. He stood in a small and crowded yard, which he'd hopped a fence to get to, memorizing the compound's sprawling layout as best he could before moving to-ward the main building. He wanted to make sure Jill was okay before he went hunting for a 'copter. As soon as he reached the building, Carlos broke the first win-dow he could reach with the M16's stock and boosted himself up. He sat on the frame, looking into a long, narrow, bunkerlike room, dimly lit and littered with bodies. To the right was a set of doors with an exit sign overhead, probably leading out to the main warehouse; he'd have to try the doors when he went for the helicopters. To his left, though, was a metal ladder that went straight up to a hatch in the ceiling. He couldn't have asked for more. Well, an elevator, maybe, he thought as he pulled himself through the window, his taped ribs protesting.
Although as long as I'm wishing, suddenly waking up and finding out this has all been a bad dream would be pretty nice, too.
The room smelled like blood and rot, a smell that he had gotten used to, he realized. It smelled like Rac-coon, and as he slowly climbed the ladder, he thought that he would die a happy man if he could just do it breathing fresh, untainted air. The square metal hatch at the top lifted easily, swinging up and back on hinges to lean against a three-sided railing. Carlos ascended carefully into another dim room with a bunker feel, lined with consoles and cabinets, no bodies… "Caramba," he breathed, stepping away from the ladder to the desk console against the front wall, set beneath large windows that looked out over the mostly dark yard. It was an old communications relay system, and even as he reached out to pick up the headset, a crackle of static hissed from a small speaker set into a side panel, followed by a woman's cool, clear voice.
"Attention. The Raccoon City project has been aban-doned. Political maneuvering to delay federal plans has failed. All personnel must evacuate immediately to out-side of the ten-mile blast radius. Missiles will be launched at daybreak. This message is being broadcast on all available channels, and will repeat in five min-utes."
Stunned, Carlos looked at his watch and felt his stomach knot. It was half past four in the morning, which left them an hour, maybe a little more. He snatched up the headset and started pushing but-tons. "Hello? Does anybody read me, I'm still in the city, hello?"
Nothing. Carlos ran for the door at the back of the room, his thoughts repeating in an endless loop, day-break, Jill, helicopter, daybreak, Jill…
… and the door, a metal shutter, was firmly locked. No keyhole, no nothing. He couldn't get into the building.
And I don't even know if she's here, maybe she started back already, maybe…
Maybe a lot of things, and as much as he wanted to find her, if he didn't secure a way for them to escape the city, they weren't going to make it. He turned away from the door, not wanting to leave, knowing he didn't have a choice. He had to find one of those helicopters that Trent had told him about and make sure it was fueled up and working. Maybe he could buzz the facility, get her attention from outside, or find her on her way back to the clock tower. And if I can't… He didn't finish the thought, well
aware of Jill's fate if he failed.Hardly noticing the pain in his side, Carlos ran forthe ladder, his heart pounding and filled with dread.
TWENTY-SIX
WHEN NICHOLAI SAW JILL STEP HESITANTLY through the door into treatment operations, he immedi-ately slipped back out of view, through the security side door and into a large, empty corridor that led to the chemical tank room. A fierce joy took hold of him as he eased the door closed, feelings of vindication and self-affirmation lifting his spirits high. After he'd found Foster's data disk, he'd set up his laptop to combine files. That's when he'd seen the warning from H.Q. Not much of a surprise, it had been one of several possible outcomes projected, but it had further depressed him. A part of him had still wanted to get closure with Jill and Carlos, for what they had done to him, and he'd even been considering a final look around before calling for pickup. There was no time for that with missiles coming, and he'd been on his way to place the call when he'd heard footsteps.
She's here, I was right about her and now she's here!
He had to be right, or whatever fates were working in Raccoon wouldn't have sent her. He could see now that everything that had happened since he'd arrived in Raccoon had been predestined. Fate, testing him, sending him gifts and then pulling them away, to see what he would do. It all made perfect sense, and now there was a ticking clock, he had to get out, and here she was.
I won't fail. I've succeeded so far, and that's why this synchronicity has occurred. So that I can reestablish the control I command before I return to civilization.
He could ask her about Carlos and Mikhail, he could question her thoroughly… and if there was time, he could dominate her in a more pleasurable fashion, a farewell that he could reflect back upon for years to come. Nicholai quickly moved behind the door, his boot-steps echoing in the roomwide corridor, rifle ready. He'd earned this, and he was going to get exactly what he deserved. Jill walked into some kind of operations room, her senses on high alert as she looked across the open space, decorated in classic Umbrella laboratory style
– blank, cold, cement walls, metal railings that separated the bi-level room in an absolutely functional way, noth-ing bright or colorful in sight. Unless blood counts… Dried splashes of it stained the floor all around the low worktable that dominated the room. Probably not Nicholai's work, unlike the corpse she'd found in the office next to the room with the broken steam pipes. A short man in his mid-30s, shot in the face, his body still warm. She had no doubt that Nicholai was close, and she found herself almost hoping she'd run into him soon, just so she could stand down, not have to look over her shoulder with every step. She didn't see anything resembling a key card or a radio in the room, so she decided to move on – she could head through the side door in the nook to her left or go down. Side door, she decided, on the off chance that Nicholai had headed that way; so far, she'd been through every room she could get into on the second floor and didn't want to go downstairs and risk letting him get behind her. She walked to the door, wondering again what had been done with the bodies of those who had died in the facility. She'd seen plenty of blood and fluid stains, but only a handful of corpses. Maybe they were dumped downstairs…, she thought, pulling the security door open and sweeping left to right with the Beretta. A corridor as big as a room, with a small offshoot at the back wall that headed right. Totally empty. She stepped inside… or Umbrella ordered everything cleaned up so their employees didn't have to spend the crisis stepping over their dead coworkers… "Freeze, bitch," Nicholai said from behind her, roughly jamming the barrel of his rifle into her lower back. "But drop your weapon first, if you wouldn't mind."
A sarcastic rephrasing of what she'd said to him in the park, and she couldn't miss the thread of almost hysterical glee in his voice. She'd been careless, and she was going to die for it. "Okay, okay," she said, letting the 9mm slip from her fingers and clatter to the floor. She still had the grenade gun on her back, but it was useless – in the time it would take her to unstrap the thing, he could empty a mag into her and have a chance to reload.
'Turn around slowly and back away, hands clasped in front of you. Like you're praying."
Jill did what he wanted, backing across the room until her back touched the wall, more afraid than she wanted to admit when she saw the constantly twitching smile, and the way his eyes rolled from side to side.
He's gone over. Whatever was wrong with him to start, being in Raccoon sparked it into a full-blown psychosis. The way he looked her up and down filled her with a different kind of fear. She knew of several effective ways to stop a rapist's attack, but that was assuming she was still able-bodied enough to fight, and she doubted very much that Nicholai would approach her without firing a few well-placed shots first. She glanced to her left, down a narrow hall that dead ended at a closed door. Won't make it, try to talk to him. "I thought you just wanted to get out of the city," she said neutrally, not sure what tack to use. She'd always heard that crazy people should be humored, but she couldn't see that it was going to make much of a differ-ence; Nicholai meant to kill her, period. He casually walked toward her, smiling his trem-bling smile. Thunder rumbled overhead, a distant sound. "I want to get out now, now that I have all the information. I killed all of the others for theirs, the Watchdogs. Umbrella is going to have to deal with me, and only me, and I'm going to be extremely wealthy. It's all balanced out, and now that you're here, my suc-cess is assured." In spite of herself, Jill was curious. "Why me?" Nicholai moved closer but stayed a safe distance away. "Because you took the antidote," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Carlos stole it at your bidding, don't try to deny it. Tell me, are you working on your own initiative, or were you sent to interfere with my plans? How much do Carlos and Mikhail know?" Christ, what do I say to that? Again thunder mut-tered overhead, and Jill found herself distracted by it, too confused by Nicholai's bizarre reasoning to answer him right away. Strange, that they could hear it through the heavily insulated ceiling…… not as strange as thinking about the weather at a time like this. She had to say something, to at least try and prolong her life; as long as she was breathing, there was a chance.
"Why should I tell you anything? You're going to kill me anyway," she said, as though there was something to tell. Nicholai's smile faltered, and then he brightened again, nodding. "You're right, I am." He aimed the rifle at her left knee and licked his lips. "But not before we get to know each other a little better, I think we have enough time…"
Crash! Jill fell backwards, sure she'd been hit, but he didn't fire, it was thunder -
– and the ceiling was falling, part of it, chunks of drywall and concrete raining down as Nicholai screamed, firing wildly…… and disappeared. Nicholai had her within his control, she was going to bleed and cry and he would be victorious, he had won…… and then the ceiling gave way, debris crashing over him and something giant and cold and hard wrapped around the back of his neck. Nicholai fired, screaming, A witch, she's…… and he was yanked up into the dark by the mas-sive, icy thing, a hand, Jill's shocked face the last thing he saw before the fingers tightened, before a cold and living rope coiled around his waist. The hand and rope pulled in opposite directions, and Nicholai felt his bones crack, skin and muscle stretching as blood filled his mouth, screaming -
– this is wrong I control stop
– and he was torn in half, and he knew no more. Jill could only see part of what happened, but it was enough. As a river of blood poured over the hole's ragged edge, splashing to the floor, she heard the rum-bling growl of the Nemesis and saw a tentacle snake down through the steaming red gush, searching… She didn't dare run beneath it. She turned and ran down the offshoot, scrabbling for the grenade gun, her only weapon…… bam, she hit the heavy door and was through, into a dark and echoing abyss, a wave of stench hitting her like a slap. She slammed the door closed and reached for the only light she could see, a glowing red square in a panel next to the entrance. It was a light switch, and as rows of fluorescent bars fluttered on, she saw and understood two things simulta-neously. The dead Umbrella workers had been dumped here in a huge pile, the source of the incredible odor and there were no other doors. She was trapped and had a single load of buckshot with which to defend herself.
Oh man, think, think…
Outside, she heard the Nemesis howl the only word it knew, the terrible cry encouraging her to move, to do something. She ran for the tremendous mound of corpses, the only thing in the giant U-shaped chamber that wasn't bolted to the floor. Maybe one of them had a weapon. The segmented metal floor rang hollowly beneath her feet, telling her where she was – some kind of garbage dumping room, the floor obviously capable of opening up to drop waste into some unknown below, vats of chemicals, a Dumpster, the sewers. Didn't mat-ter, because she had no idea how to operate such a sys-tem; all she cared about at the moment was finding something she could use against the Nemesis. The dead people were all in advanced stages of decay, thick, hot, gaseous waves of stink radiating from the darkening, bloated bodies, the pile almost as high as her chin. Jill couldn't afford to be particular; she dropped the grenade gun and immediately started to paw at the corpses, lifting sticky lab coats, jamming her hands into pockets that squished beneath her flying fin-gers. Pens and pencils, soggy packs of cigarettes, loose change – a key card, probably the very one she'd been looking for, Wonderful, isn't that just… BOOM! BOOM! Giant fists hammered at the door, echoing in the large chamber. The door was going to give in seconds, she'd have to go with what she had. No way she could kill it, but she could try to get around it. Tucking the key card into the top of her left boot, she grabbed the gun and ran back toward the door, thinking that Nicholai had at least left her with a good idea, least he could do, the crazy bastard…
Jill took a position next to the door, close to where it would swing back upon opening. She didn't stand di-rectly behind it, the plan kind of fell to shit if she ended up crushed. BOOM, and the door flew open, slamming into the wall inches from where she stood, the Nemesis storm-ing in, arms and tentacles spread wide as it howled for blood.
It's changing, getting bigger…
Jill aimed at its already mangled lower back and fired,the load tearing into its flesh from less than ten feet away.Screaming, the creature stumbled forward, and be-fore it could stand up straight again, Jill was throughthe door and gone, praying that she'd have time to callfor help and get away before it found her again. Shepounded through the corridor, snatched up the Beretta,and sped into the next room, out into the hallway.At least time to call; she may not survive to meet res-cue, but Carlos still could, God willing.
There was only one helicopter, but it was in excellentshape, fueled and ready to fly. If he could find Jill, Car-los thought they might make it after all.He sat in the pilot's seat, looking over the controls,running over the basics as best he could remember.He'd been taught by another mere with no formal train-ing, and it had been a while, but he was pretty sure hecould pull it off. The 'copter was an older two seaterwith a hover ceiling of about 4,000 feet, range, maybe200 miles. He still didn't know what some of theswitches and buttons did on the control panels, but hedidn't need to, to get the thing airborne. The cycliccontrol stick moved the bird forward, back, and side-ways. The collective control altered the thrust, control-ling height.Carlos checked his watch and was unhappily startled to
see mat twenty minutes had passed since he'd heard the announcement about the missiles. He'd spent a few min-utes checking the helicopter, and there'd been a couple of zombies roaming around in the yard he'd had to shoot… Didn't matter. They now had between twenty and forty minutes, tops. The facility compound was too big, he'd never be able to cover it all in time -
– so use the goddamn radio, dumbass!
Carlos reached for the headset, amazed that he hadn't thought of it, promising himself that he would smack himself silly for the oversight later, when he had time. Assuming there was a later.
"Hello, this is Carlos Oliveira with Umbrella, I am in Raccoon City, copy? There are still people alive here. If you can hear me, you have to stop the missile launch. Hello? Copy?"
No way to know if someone was getting his signal. Umbrella probably had a block on all outgoing trans-missions, he'd just have to try and…
"Carlos? Is that you, over?" Jill!
He felt weak with relief as her voice crackled into his ear, perhaps the sweetest sound he'd ever heard.
"Yes! Jill, I found a helicopter, we have to get out ofhere, now! Where are you, over?"In a radio room, at the Umbrella facility – what didyou say about a missile launch, over?"She was so close! Carlos laughed, We're outta here,it's over! "The feds are gonna blow up the city in likehalf an hour, at dawn, but it's okay, we're ready tofly – do you see that ladder in the middle of the room?Over."Yeah, it's – they're going to blow up Raccoon, areyou sure?" She sounded totally bewildered and forgotto use radio protocol.
We don't have time for this!"Jill, I'm positive. Listen to me – go down the ladderand start running, you'll end up where I am, there'snowhere else to go. Through a cement room to the exitsign, then outside, then through this huge warehouse -
– there's some kind of a power generator in there, you'll have to run around some equipment. The back door will be at about… eleven o'clock from the front, got it? I'll be on the other side. And you better bust ass to get here, no dicking around."
There was the slightest pause, and Carlos could hear the tight smile in her voice when she responded. "Dick-ing around you wish. On my way, over and out."
Grinning, Carlos powered up the 'copter as the deep, navy blue sky began to lighten, preparing for dawn.
She's here, I was right about her and now she's here!
He had to be right, or whatever fates were working in Raccoon wouldn't have sent her. He could see now that everything that had happened since he'd arrived in Raccoon had been predestined. Fate, testing him, sending him gifts and then pulling them away, to see what he would do. It all made perfect sense, and now there was a ticking clock, he had to get out, and here she was.
I won't fail. I've succeeded so far, and that's why this synchronicity has occurred. So that I can reestablish the control I command before I return to civilization.
He could ask her about Carlos and Mikhail, he could question her thoroughly… and if there was time, he could dominate her in a more pleasurable fashion, a farewell that he could reflect back upon for years to come. Nicholai quickly moved behind the door, his boot-steps echoing in the roomwide corridor, rifle ready. He'd earned this, and he was going to get exactly what he deserved. Jill walked into some kind of operations room, her senses on high alert as she looked across the open space, decorated in classic Umbrella laboratory style
– blank, cold, cement walls, metal railings that separated the bi-level room in an absolutely functional way, noth-ing bright or colorful in sight. Unless blood counts… Dried splashes of it stained the floor all around the low worktable that dominated the room. Probably not Nicholai's work, unlike the corpse she'd found in the office next to the room with the broken steam pipes. A short man in his mid-30s, shot in the face, his body still warm. She had no doubt that Nicholai was close, and she found herself almost hoping she'd run into him soon, just so she could stand down, not have to look over her shoulder with every step. She didn't see anything resembling a key card or a radio in the room, so she decided to move on – she could head through the side door in the nook to her left or go down. Side door, she decided, on the off chance that Nicholai had headed that way; so far, she'd been through every room she could get into on the second floor and didn't want to go downstairs and risk letting him get behind her. She walked to the door, wondering again what had been done with the bodies of those who had died in the facility. She'd seen plenty of blood and fluid stains, but only a handful of corpses. Maybe they were dumped downstairs…, she thought, pulling the security door open and sweeping left to right with the Beretta. A corridor as big as a room, with a small offshoot at the back wall that headed right. Totally empty. She stepped inside… or Umbrella ordered everything cleaned up so their employees didn't have to spend the crisis stepping over their dead coworkers… "Freeze, bitch," Nicholai said from behind her, roughly jamming the barrel of his rifle into her lower back. "But drop your weapon first, if you wouldn't mind."
A sarcastic rephrasing of what she'd said to him in the park, and she couldn't miss the thread of almost hysterical glee in his voice. She'd been careless, and she was going to die for it. "Okay, okay," she said, letting the 9mm slip from her fingers and clatter to the floor. She still had the grenade gun on her back, but it was useless – in the time it would take her to unstrap the thing, he could empty a mag into her and have a chance to reload.
'Turn around slowly and back away, hands clasped in front of you. Like you're praying."
Jill did what he wanted, backing across the room until her back touched the wall, more afraid than she wanted to admit when she saw the constantly twitching smile, and the way his eyes rolled from side to side.
He's gone over. Whatever was wrong with him to start, being in Raccoon sparked it into a full-blown psychosis. The way he looked her up and down filled her with a different kind of fear. She knew of several effective ways to stop a rapist's attack, but that was assuming she was still able-bodied enough to fight, and she doubted very much that Nicholai would approach her without firing a few well-placed shots first. She glanced to her left, down a narrow hall that dead ended at a closed door. Won't make it, try to talk to him. "I thought you just wanted to get out of the city," she said neutrally, not sure what tack to use. She'd always heard that crazy people should be humored, but she couldn't see that it was going to make much of a differ-ence; Nicholai meant to kill her, period. He casually walked toward her, smiling his trem-bling smile. Thunder rumbled overhead, a distant sound. "I want to get out now, now that I have all the information. I killed all of the others for theirs, the Watchdogs. Umbrella is going to have to deal with me, and only me, and I'm going to be extremely wealthy. It's all balanced out, and now that you're here, my suc-cess is assured." In spite of herself, Jill was curious. "Why me?" Nicholai moved closer but stayed a safe distance away. "Because you took the antidote," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Carlos stole it at your bidding, don't try to deny it. Tell me, are you working on your own initiative, or were you sent to interfere with my plans? How much do Carlos and Mikhail know?" Christ, what do I say to that? Again thunder mut-tered overhead, and Jill found herself distracted by it, too confused by Nicholai's bizarre reasoning to answer him right away. Strange, that they could hear it through the heavily insulated ceiling…… not as strange as thinking about the weather at a time like this. She had to say something, to at least try and prolong her life; as long as she was breathing, there was a chance.
"Why should I tell you anything? You're going to kill me anyway," she said, as though there was something to tell. Nicholai's smile faltered, and then he brightened again, nodding. "You're right, I am." He aimed the rifle at her left knee and licked his lips. "But not before we get to know each other a little better, I think we have enough time…"
Crash! Jill fell backwards, sure she'd been hit, but he didn't fire, it was thunder -
– and the ceiling was falling, part of it, chunks of drywall and concrete raining down as Nicholai screamed, firing wildly…… and disappeared. Nicholai had her within his control, she was going to bleed and cry and he would be victorious, he had won…… and then the ceiling gave way, debris crashing over him and something giant and cold and hard wrapped around the back of his neck. Nicholai fired, screaming, A witch, she's…… and he was yanked up into the dark by the mas-sive, icy thing, a hand, Jill's shocked face the last thing he saw before the fingers tightened, before a cold and living rope coiled around his waist. The hand and rope pulled in opposite directions, and Nicholai felt his bones crack, skin and muscle stretching as blood filled his mouth, screaming -
– this is wrong I control stop
– and he was torn in half, and he knew no more. Jill could only see part of what happened, but it was enough. As a river of blood poured over the hole's ragged edge, splashing to the floor, she heard the rum-bling growl of the Nemesis and saw a tentacle snake down through the steaming red gush, searching… She didn't dare run beneath it. She turned and ran down the offshoot, scrabbling for the grenade gun, her only weapon…… bam, she hit the heavy door and was through, into a dark and echoing abyss, a wave of stench hitting her like a slap. She slammed the door closed and reached for the only light she could see, a glowing red square in a panel next to the entrance. It was a light switch, and as rows of fluorescent bars fluttered on, she saw and understood two things simulta-neously. The dead Umbrella workers had been dumped here in a huge pile, the source of the incredible odor and there were no other doors. She was trapped and had a single load of buckshot with which to defend herself.
Oh man, think, think…
Outside, she heard the Nemesis howl the only word it knew, the terrible cry encouraging her to move, to do something. She ran for the tremendous mound of corpses, the only thing in the giant U-shaped chamber that wasn't bolted to the floor. Maybe one of them had a weapon. The segmented metal floor rang hollowly beneath her feet, telling her where she was – some kind of garbage dumping room, the floor obviously capable of opening up to drop waste into some unknown below, vats of chemicals, a Dumpster, the sewers. Didn't mat-ter, because she had no idea how to operate such a sys-tem; all she cared about at the moment was finding something she could use against the Nemesis. The dead people were all in advanced stages of decay, thick, hot, gaseous waves of stink radiating from the darkening, bloated bodies, the pile almost as high as her chin. Jill couldn't afford to be particular; she dropped the grenade gun and immediately started to paw at the corpses, lifting sticky lab coats, jamming her hands into pockets that squished beneath her flying fin-gers. Pens and pencils, soggy packs of cigarettes, loose change – a key card, probably the very one she'd been looking for, Wonderful, isn't that just… BOOM! BOOM! Giant fists hammered at the door, echoing in the large chamber. The door was going to give in seconds, she'd have to go with what she had. No way she could kill it, but she could try to get around it. Tucking the key card into the top of her left boot, she grabbed the gun and ran back toward the door, thinking that Nicholai had at least left her with a good idea, least he could do, the crazy bastard…
Jill took a position next to the door, close to where it would swing back upon opening. She didn't stand di-rectly behind it, the plan kind of fell to shit if she ended up crushed. BOOM, and the door flew open, slamming into the wall inches from where she stood, the Nemesis storm-ing in, arms and tentacles spread wide as it howled for blood.
It's changing, getting bigger…
Jill aimed at its already mangled lower back and fired,the load tearing into its flesh from less than ten feet away.Screaming, the creature stumbled forward, and be-fore it could stand up straight again, Jill was throughthe door and gone, praying that she'd have time to callfor help and get away before it found her again. Shepounded through the corridor, snatched up the Beretta,and sped into the next room, out into the hallway.At least time to call; she may not survive to meet res-cue, but Carlos still could, God willing.
There was only one helicopter, but it was in excellentshape, fueled and ready to fly. If he could find Jill, Car-los thought they might make it after all.He sat in the pilot's seat, looking over the controls,running over the basics as best he could remember.He'd been taught by another mere with no formal train-ing, and it had been a while, but he was pretty sure hecould pull it off. The 'copter was an older two seaterwith a hover ceiling of about 4,000 feet, range, maybe200 miles. He still didn't know what some of theswitches and buttons did on the control panels, but hedidn't need to, to get the thing airborne. The cycliccontrol stick moved the bird forward, back, and side-ways. The collective control altered the thrust, control-ling height.Carlos checked his watch and was unhappily startled to
see mat twenty minutes had passed since he'd heard the announcement about the missiles. He'd spent a few min-utes checking the helicopter, and there'd been a couple of zombies roaming around in the yard he'd had to shoot… Didn't matter. They now had between twenty and forty minutes, tops. The facility compound was too big, he'd never be able to cover it all in time -
– so use the goddamn radio, dumbass!
Carlos reached for the headset, amazed that he hadn't thought of it, promising himself that he would smack himself silly for the oversight later, when he had time. Assuming there was a later.
"Hello, this is Carlos Oliveira with Umbrella, I am in Raccoon City, copy? There are still people alive here. If you can hear me, you have to stop the missile launch. Hello? Copy?"
No way to know if someone was getting his signal. Umbrella probably had a block on all outgoing trans-missions, he'd just have to try and…
"Carlos? Is that you, over?" Jill!
He felt weak with relief as her voice crackled into his ear, perhaps the sweetest sound he'd ever heard.
"Yes! Jill, I found a helicopter, we have to get out ofhere, now! Where are you, over?"In a radio room, at the Umbrella facility – what didyou say about a missile launch, over?"She was so close! Carlos laughed, We're outta here,it's over! "The feds are gonna blow up the city in likehalf an hour, at dawn, but it's okay, we're ready tofly – do you see that ladder in the middle of the room?Over."Yeah, it's – they're going to blow up Raccoon, areyou sure?" She sounded totally bewildered and forgotto use radio protocol.
We don't have time for this!"Jill, I'm positive. Listen to me – go down the ladderand start running, you'll end up where I am, there'snowhere else to go. Through a cement room to the exitsign, then outside, then through this huge warehouse -
– there's some kind of a power generator in there, you'll have to run around some equipment. The back door will be at about… eleven o'clock from the front, got it? I'll be on the other side. And you better bust ass to get here, no dicking around."
There was the slightest pause, and Carlos could hear the tight smile in her voice when she responded. "Dick-ing around you wish. On my way, over and out."
Grinning, Carlos powered up the 'copter as the deep, navy blue sky began to lighten, preparing for dawn.
TWENTY-SEVEN
JILL SLID DOWN THE LADDER AND STARTED running, her mind reeling with the news about Rac-coon. She couldn't imagine what had been going on outside of the city in past days that the conclusion had been reached to blast a quarantine site out of existence.