by John Shirley
If those things reached her and Becky, there’d be nothing left but a couple of blood puddles. She couldn’t fight them all. So Alice braced herself and jerked on the cable. The grapnel was stuck in the concrete and didn’t want to come loose. She gave it one more hard tug and the grapnel pulled free, unreeling back to the gun.
“Come on!” she signed, and, taking Becky by the wrist, she led her down the horizontal shaft, deeper into Umbrella Prime.
She had no idea at all where they were going to end up. They simply ran—into the unknown.
18
The strike team member who remained was firing burst after burst, using up his ammunition—but effectively keeping Jill’s squadron suppressed. Crouching behind the concrete post, she shouted orders.
“Bring up the prisoner!”
With luck the team would react stupidly, blindly emotional enough to sacrifice themselves in the hope of saving Ada Wong.
The Rain clone pushed the bruised and battered woman up, into the line of fire. She was wearing a hood, and Jill reached over and pulled it away so they could see clearly who it was. Electronic handcuffs secured her wrists behind her, and “Rain” pressed a gun to her head.
“Cease your firing!” the trooper shouted. “Or I execute her!”
Ada struggled to pull free—but the trooper cracked her upside the head, hard, and she sagged to her knees.
The firing from the strike team cut short.
“Now!” the trooper yelled. “Throw down your guns and step out!”
And Jill waited.
Clambering onto the elevator platform, Leon muttered to Luther.
“Strap yourself down!”
Luther wondered what exactly Leon was expecting. But when he thought about the placement of the explosives, and the fact that the tide would be at its high point, up there, he thought he knew.
So he pulled off his belt, working with one hand— the other limb mangled, mostly numb—and wrapped it around a rail on the platform, then wound the other end around his good arm.
Leon tried to see what the troopers were doing— but there was a post in the way. He couldn’t tell what they were up to. Then he peered at his comrade.
“Barry! What are you doing?” he gritted.
The wounded man looked up at Leon and Luther— nodded to Luther, then turned to Leon.
“See you around, old friend!”
“Barry—no!” Leon yelled.
“Step out now, or she dies!” the trooper shouted.
Barry stepped into plain sight, hands aloft, guns held high—and the trooper opened fire on him.
Several slugs hammered into his chest and he lost his grip on his guns. He was knocked off his feet and fell back, feeling cold and hearing broken bones shattered by bullets, grating on one another. Before he quite hit the ground he looked up to see one of his guns falling toward him, end over end. Time seemed to slow down for Barry, in that moment. As if it were letting him prolong, and fully experience, his last moments alive.
He watched the gun fall toward him. And he hissed, “Fuck it!” between his teeth as he snatched it out of the air, his fingers instinctively finding the grip and the trigger. The strength was flowing out of him, but he had just enough left to aim and fire.
One shot.
The black trooper went down with a bullet in his head.
Ha, see you in Hell, you bastard.
The other troopers opened up on him, their rounds tearing him apart, kicking him around the floor as if there was an invisible thug there, stomping him. The darkness welled up from the wounds—it was as if he was bleeding darkness, and the world was flooding with it. Then he was drowning in it, was sinking in it.
But he smiled as he died.
“Who are you? What are you going to do?
The grimy man didn’t immediately answer. He just grinned at Dori with uneven yellow teeth. He was older, with a red face and curly red hair streaked with gray. He wore a mechanic’s coveralls, oily and greasy, and had a big black gun in his hand—which was pointed at Dori.
They were sitting at one of the tables, across from one another, as the stranger took time to evaluate her—at least, that’s what it seemed like he was doing. Who knew what he had in mind? He was looking at her pretty oddly…
Finally he spoke.
“My name’s Tom Pepper. I used to work for Umbrella. Like maybe you did—only probably you didn’t know it. I’m guessing you’re a clone. That right kid?”
She nodded, and he continued.
“It’s what I figured. That combat suit doesn’t fit you very good—you’re too young to be a trooper. So I figure you’re hiding out, like me. Doesn’t prove I can trust you, though.” He paused a moment, then continued. “Me, I’m a mechanic. When the Undead started overrunning the place like cockroaches, why, that ended my job. My partner at the truck garage tried to eat me. I had to run the poor bastard over. Sorry to do that to him.”
“JudyTech says it’s not them anymore,” Dori said, trying to sound reassuring. “She says the people they used to be are dead. This is just their bodies with a disease in it. She says it’s like the virus is using the body for a car to drive around in, and it gets its fuel from eating people.”
“Whoa!” he laughed. “That’s a lot of information out of a little slip of a girl.”
“You’re the one talking so much,” she replied, feeling a bit indignant. “And I’m not that small—I’m only three, chronologically, but I’m fifteen in ‘effective maturation.’”
“Yeah? Well I’m fifty-two,” he said, “every inch of me. Anyway, you friend’s right—he wasn’t my partner no more, really. Just his body turned into a nasty thing. So I had to find me a job with Umbrella, because they were about the only ones who had anything happening. You’d see a chopper go over, and it’d have their insignia on it. You didn’t see any other aircraft around anymore. And I got a smart younger brother—half-brother, really—who I don’t even know that well. We grew up separate places. But he worked at Umbrella, and I had a cell phone number for him. They were still working back then. So he got me in here—and turns out it’s not much better than being out there.”
“Are you a mechanic for the submarine?”
“Nah, I’m…” He tilted his head and looked at her with pursed lips. “Can I trust you? That’s the question. You don’t have the scarab on you… you don’t seem like you’re old enough to be any kind of trooper or… an agent for them. But who knows? You could have cameras in your eyes. You could be a robot or a mutant. The world’s crazy—and it’s Umbrella made it that way.”
“Well, how do I know if I can trust you?” Dori responded. But she found that she wasn’t afraid of Tom Pepper. She wasn’t sure why, since he’d grabbed her, and he had a big gun in his hand.
“Why shouldn’t you?” he asked, seeming surprised.
“To begin with, you’re pointing a gun at me.”
He looked down at it.
“Kinda forgot about it,” he confessed. “Okay, I’ll put the gun down—but don’t make any funny moves.” He laid the gun down in front of him, and then looked philosophically at the ceiling, seeming to consider how to continue his story. She had the impression he hadn’t talked to anyone in a long time, and that he was enjoying it.
She kept her eyes on him—but she darted her hands out and grabbed the gun, pointing it at him.
“Is that what you mean by a funny move?” she asked.
His eyes widened.
“You are fast, girl!”
“I have an Alice overlay for certain fighting reflexes.” She waved around the pistol.
“Be careful with that thing!”
Suddenly a voice came from behind her, and Dori jumped, almost dropping the weapon.
“You didn’t answer her question,” the voice said. She didn’t have to turn around. She knew JudyTech’s voice.
Tom turned and looked.
“You’re that Judy, maybe,” he said. “Judy Tucker or Tecker or whatever she said?”
“I’m Judy Gordon. She calls me JudyTech. Keep your eye on him, Dori. We don’t know if we can trust him.” Then she looked around the room. “But first things first—is there any food here?”
Tom sighed.
“Yeah. Yeah there is…”
“Then we’d better eat soon. There’s gunfire outside—and things could get worse. Who knows what’ll happen. We might be safe in here or we might not. But we’ll need our strength.”
Alice dropped from the vent, then caught Becky as she dropped down. They turned to look around. They were in a cavernous circular chamber a hundred feet high. Around the walls were transparent, cylindrical growing vats—and in them were clones, hooked up to tubes and wires, each floating in a state of dormancy, awaiting someone or something that might at last awaken them.
A dozen of the clones seemed to be Rain. She was a popular model, it seemed. Alice supposed they’d acquired the actual Rain’s DNA when she was working for Umbrella.
In the corner of her eye, Alice detected movement, somewhere off in the shadows. She watched—and waited.
The next group of clones was all Alice.
“Mommy, who are they?” Becky asked, her voice betraying shock. She was signing as well as talking as she stared at all the clones. Of the woman she thought of as her mother. And beside them, a line of other clones…
Becky. Lots and lots of Beckys.
More movement in the shadowy part of the big room. A Licker, creeping into view. All around them. She began pulling the pins on grenades, adjusting the timer on each one…
“Mommy, who are they?” Becky repeated, staring at the other clone little girls, sleeping so peacefully in their vats. She turned to look at Alice.
“Mommy, who are you?” she asked.
Alice had no idea how to explain the clones to Becky, not in brief—and there was no time for any kind of discussion. So she didn’t answer, just kept preparing one grenade after another.
“You are my mommy… aren’t you?” Becky asked, signing desperately.
As the Licker crept closer, Alice dropped the belt of incendiary grenades Luther had given her. The grenades rolled free of it, humming warningly.
“I am now,” Alice signed. All of a sudden she swept up the little girl with her left arm, her right hand firing the hook gun at the ceiling. As she did, the gigantic Licker reared over her, throwing its shadow across them. Its jaws were wide, its razor teeth glistening, its tongue unreeling…
And then the grapnel caught the ceiling and Alice hit the rewind so that she and Becky were pulled straight upward, just as the scattered grenades exploded across the floor. A lake of napalm fire spread across the room, consuming the monster and sending a wave of heat after them.
The creature screamed almost piteously as it was cooked alive. But Alice felt no pity for it.
The trooper crept along the wall, hoping to get to the elevator without being seen—and planning to nail his two targets the second he got there. He’d get the drop on them and blow their heads off. His name was Carlos, and he’d volunteered for this.
He had to make good.
Today was the day he was at last going to make Jill Valentine notice him. He lived to please her—it was what kept him going, kept him pretending. His scarab didn’t work very well. Something in it had broken down, and it wasn’t transmitting to him much. So a lot of unfamiliar impulses rose up in him—things the others couldn’t feel.
Sometimes he fantasized about removing her scarab, and taking her with him, out of here. But where would they go? The world was a worse hell outside than it was in here. So he waited. And when he could he tried to impress her, so she’d keep him close to her.
Now he crept up close to the elevator—and stepped out from the wall. There they were. Designations “Leon” and “Luther.”
Well, Leon, he thought, your new designation is ‘terminated.’ He sighted through his rifle’s scope, and settled the crosshairs on Leon’s head.
The target was looking at his watch and saying something to the man who was with him, shaking that head.
Up on the surface, high tide surged up around the bases of the ventilator towers. At precisely the right moment, the bombs affixed to the towers exploded, shattering the rotating fans, causing the structures to collapse inward.
The debris went tumbling down the shafts, followed by countless tons of rushing seawater…
19
Just as Carlos was about to squeeze the trigger and send Leon to his maker, the triple boom of a series of powerful explosions made the floor quake… and caused Carlos miss his shot.
The bullets zipped past Leon—who jumped back, deeper into the elevator platform. Carlos fired again but he no longer had a good shooting angle. And then he was aware of a thunderous roar, a roar that was getting louder and louder.
“Run!”
It was Commander Valentine, and when Carlos turned to see what she meant, he saw an oncoming tidal wave, sweeping toward the submarine pens. A wall of sea-green, flecked with ice, as if the ice floes were its teeth, roaring right at him…
He stared, and realized there was no place to run. He couldn’t get under cover—he’d be drowned wherever he ran. There was no time to get to the submarines.
The temperature dropped, a cold exhalation of the wave as it rushed toward him, pushing super-cooled air before it. He didn’t have to wait long. A moment later, the green jaws closed over him.
As the upper levels of the facility were quickly flooded by seawater and crushed ice, the invading elements exerting colossal pressure on the inner structures of Umbrella Prime, so that the giant underwater framework could no longer maintain its integrity.
It began to implode.
To the crescendo of the roaring waters was added the cracking, booming, and squealing of metal girders breaking apart, a pandemonium of sound generated by a breakdown on a titanic scale.
On the elevator platform Luther stared up at the ladder that Alice had climbed to the vent.
“She didn’t make it,” he said. He was shocked that she hadn’t made it. He’d have thought that if anyone could’ve, it would be Alice… Because she was larger than life.
Leon gripped the railing and shouted above the noise of the oncoming wall of water.
“Hold on!”
The seawater hit the bottom of the elevator shaft first and surged upwards, jarring the freight platform from its stuck position and sending it rocketing up.
“This was your plan?” Luther demanded. This was their plan B? They’d planned use the water to get up to the surface?
Crazy motherfuckers…
The water surged around them, painfully cold, but the movement of the platform kept their heads above it. Luther wondered if he’d die of hypothermia before they got out of this. This water was the coldest damn thing he’d ever felt in his entire life. The only good part was it numbed his wounded arm. A sharp chunk of ice hit him hard, and he didn’t even feel it.
That’s okay, he thought, I’ll feel it later.
The wave roared like a dozen speeding locomotives and a hundred bulldozers, filling up the coliseumsized room, slamming the submarines with chunks of ice… making the vessels rise up out of their pens.
And then the room was out of sight, and Luther and Leon were still rising up, through the shaft. They left the water behind, and it drained away around them, to Luther’s enormous relief. Pieces of ice littered the platform at their feet.
Leon stepped over it to the control panel, flipping open a plastic cover, revealing a button labeled EMERGENCY BRAKE.
He kept his hand poised over the button as they rushed upward, shivering, cold air blasting past them.
New York City. Times Square.
Undead wandered through the streets—those the maintenance bots hadn’t got hold of yet. They staggered about, mouths open, endlessly hungry, maddeningly hungry, no relief to be found. Something deep down inside each one of them, a little spark of humanity, yearned for an end to it. For an end to the
wandering. For an end to the mindless searching, the perpetual pain, the feverish hunting that never ended… as hours became days without sleep, without rest, without end.
And then, the ice-cold hand of the world blessed them, at last. It offered relief. It offered surcease from their unliving hell.
Because that’s when the tidal wave, the internal tsunami, swept through the testing floor, smashing buildings, flattening false fronts, picking up cars and flipping them around as unruly children played with toys. Sparkling billboards crackled and short circuited, spitting sparks; windows shattered and blasted broken glass through the air, speckling the rising waves, mixing with the ice; debris churned like the blades of a garbage disposal, cutting up anything and anyone in it.
Charged wires spat and leapt over the water, then the lights went off across “Times Square,” as if the seawater was throwing switches methodically as it went.
The Undead were caught in the wave, and made instinctive efforts to thrash out of it, to escape. But at heart—deep inside—something at the cellular level whimpered in release as the cold of cosmic entropy crushed them to itself, smothered them, and ended their suffering at last, at long last…
If you can drown joyfully, that’s what they did.
Shibuya Scramble, Tokyo.
The JumboTron screens were shivering, shaking, their looping images flickering, the giant faces of pretty people—models who had died in the great rising of the Undead—were electronically corroding, warping, pitting, as if they were becoming digital zombies. The distant false ceiling was dropping bits of paint chips and dust; a piece of a cornice fell down with a crash.
Puzzled troopers on clean-up duty looked around. Some of them seemed to take little dance steps backwards, as the ground shook…
And then the wall of seawater rushed in upon them. They felt a wave of cold air first, and then turned to find the great white curtain of foam sweeping down on them, tumbling cars and vans and the bodies of tester clones and prop furniture from storefronts along ahead of it. Mannequins swept from window displays seemed to thrash about as if trying to swim.