by S. D. Perry
Chapter Twenty-Eight
CARLOS HEARD THE THING HOWL AND KNEW what it was. He'd only caught a glimpse of the monster on its way down, but it was big and badass, and he sus-pected that they were screwed. Jill raised her voice to a shout, and Carlos could only barely hear her over the Nemesis's seemingly endless scream.
"Where's the. 357?"
Carlos shook his head. He had the M16, but he'dstowed the heavy revolver and the rest of the rifle'smagazines on the helicopter. "Grenade gun?" he shouted back, and it was Jill'sturn to shake her head. A 9mm and maybe twenty rounds left for the rifle.
We'll have to blow open the door, it's our only chance. . .
Carlos knew better even as he thought it. The frontand back doors were heavy-duty, they'd have betterluck blowing a hole in the wall. . . and the answer hit him, and he saw that Jill al-ready had it from the way she was staring at him, eyeswide and blinking. The Nemesis-monster's howl was winding down, buta horrible, wet slurping noise had begun, the sound ofsomething vast and sticky moving slowly and steadilyacross concrete.
It's coming for her. "Can you operate it?" Carlos asked, already steelinghimself for a confrontation with whatever the Nemesishad become. "Maybe, but. . . "Carlos cut her off. "I'm going to distract it -get thatthing running and let me know when to duck. "
Before Jill could protest, Carlos hurried past her, de-termined to do whatever he could to keep it from getting to her, at least it's slower than it was, if I can just slow it down a little more. . . He reached the end of the wall of equipment, took a deep breath, stepped around the corner - and cried out in involuntary disgust at the oozing, undulating mass that crept and crawled toward him, pulling it-self along with clawed, shapeless appendages the color of blisters. Fleshy lumps rose and fell like bub-bles in a pot of stew along its twisted back, thin, black fluid trickling from dozens of tiny slits on its body, wetting the floor, lubricating its meaty pas-sage. Carlos picked a slightly raised lump on top of the giant, pulsing creature and opened fire, the rounds splashing into the fleshy surface like pebbles into a stream, tat tat tat and lightning fast, one of the tentacles at the front of the body lashed out, slapping Carlos's legs hard enough to knock him down. Carlos scrambled backwards through the pain in his side, awed by its incredible speed and not a little afraid. The bulk of it moved slowly, but its reflexes were in-sanely fast, and it had reached across three meters of open space to knock him down, seemingly without strain. "Puta madre," he breathed, the worst curse he could think of as he rolled to his feet and backed away. It was already to the corner of the metal wall, ten meters or less from the cannon where Jill was wildly slapping at switches. He'd distracted it about as effectively as a fly distracted an airplane. How much time do we have left before daybreak?
Suddenly, it howled again, a chorus of sound, each small, leaking slit on its body gaping open, a thousand mouths screaming, creating a trumpeting, deafening roar. It wasn't going to stop. Carlos backed further away and opened fire again, a waste of bullets, but there was nothing else he could do. . . . . . and then he heard the powerful, rising hum of a mighty turbine spinning fast and faster, and Jill was screaming for him to move, and Carlos moved. She hadn't been able to find the power main, no but-tons or cords to connect, and she didn't know enough about machines to figure it out. She'd seen Carlos fall and her heart had stopped, but she'd forced herself to keep trying, knowing it was all they had. After a second frantic, desperate search she'd found the power switches on its base, and the machine had thrummed to beautiful, wonderful life. "Move!" Jill shouted, pushing the levers that slowly and precisely raised the cannon, its movements spelled out digitally on a small screen next to the base. She could feel the energy building, the air around her heat-ing up, and as Carlos got out of the way and the Neme-sis-entity slithered out into the open, she found herself positively thrilled, almost overcome with an intense and violent sense of self-satisfaction. It had killed Brad Vickers and tracked her merci-lessly through the city. It had murdered the rescue team and stranded them in Raccoon, it had infected her with disease, it had terrorized her and wounded Carlos - and that it had been programmed to do these things didn't matter; she hated it with everything inside of her, de-spised it more than anything she'd ever despised. The mutated, aberrant thing inched forward on a wave of slime as the cannon's hum reached an explo-sive crescendo, the sound drowning out everything. Jill's words went unheard, even by her.
"You want S. T. A. R. S. , I'll give you S. T. A. R. S. , you piece of shit," she said, and slammed her hand down on the activation switch.