Walking over to one of the utility closets, Spence removed a hypo-gun and a metal case. The gun fit neatly into one of the case’s slots. All the other slots were intended to house small cylindrical tubes.
He walked over to the far wall, which included a PlastiGlas window, and a horizontal slot under it. Spence opened the slot by activating a control. It slid downward, allowing him to slide the case into the small chamber.
Smoky condensation puffed out through the slot, as the temperature inside the chamber was quite low, and only the Hazmat suit kept him from feeling the overwhelming cold that issued forth.
The slot closed once the case was ensconced within. Spence activated several other controls, one of which unfurled the two waldoes from sides of the window, another of which caused the bottom of the chamber to slide open to reveal fourteen vials.
Manipulating the waldoes, Spence placed each of the vials into the slots—half the T-virus, half the anti-virus.
Once all fourteen vials were in place, the case shut automatically, and sealed itself. With the tray cleared of the vials and the case sealed, the computer would allow the slot to open once again. When it did, Spence grabbed the case and brought it out of the temperature-controlled room and into the adjacent laboratory.
He removed the Hazmat suit, put on a pair of rubber gloves, and entered the keycode. The case obligingly opened, an action that served two functions: to verify that the keycode worked and to allow Spence access to one of the vials containing the blue liquid.
Pulling out the vial with a protected hand, he sealed the case once again, placed it in a duffel bag, zipped the bag up, and hoisted it onto one shoulder.
Before departing the lab, he tossed the vial toward the center of the room, then turned, exited, and closed and locked the door.
He had to move quickly now—he had maybe five minutes before the Queen would lock down the place. It took two minutes to make it to the train station level. Moving so fast, he collided with one of the corporate twits—resulting in spilled coffee and a sarcastic “Thank you!” from the victim, but Spence didn’t bother to even acknowledge him—he made his way to the train.
As one of the two people from Security assigned to the mansion, it was easy enough to commandeer the train from the engineeer on duty. After placing the case in the storage closet, he drove the train up to the mansion, then opened the trapdoor to the undercarriage. He unplugged the connections and disconnected the train from the third rail, then went into the storage compartment to retrieve his prize.
The next thing he knew, he woke up on the train, surrounded by Alice, One, One’s goons, and some other guy he didn’t know, heading back to the Hive—only he didn’t remember who he was.
Fucking computer, she moved too quickly. And why did she gas the house and the train station, anyhow?
But it didn’t matter.
Spence remembered everything now.
“Spence?”
He turned to look at Alice.
Then he looked over at the table where she’d left Melendez’s Colt.
Did Alice remember everything?
Did it matter?
They both went for the pistol at the same time.
Spence was just a bit faster.
“Tsk tsk tsk,” he said, pointing the weapon at Alice as she got up from the flooded floor, having fallen in her abortive attempt to retrieve the Colt Spence was now holding. Then he pointed the gun at Addison to make sure he didn’t try anything, then back at Alice. He didn’t bother pointing it at Melendez. She wasn’t a factor anymore.
“We can still make it out of here,” he said. “Come with me. We can have everything we ever wanted. The money’s just out there waiting—you wouldn’t believe how much.”
Alice gave him a look that he knew all too well. Even if she didn’t have all her memory yet, her personality was definitely coming back to the fore.
Under other circumstances, Spence might’ve found it arousing.
“Was that how you thought all my dreams were gonna come true?”
Spence would have laughed, except Addison chose that moment to run down the stairs trying to make some kind of stupid hero play. That lasted right up until Spence shoved the Colt into his face.
“Please—I wouldn’t want to shoot you.” Spence smiled. “I might need the bullets.” The smile fell. “Back off.”
Addison backed off.
In a quiet voice, Alice said, “I won’t take any part of this.”
Spence had expected as much. “Okay. But you can’t just wash your hands of everything. We work for the same company.”
“I was trying to stop them.”
So she did remember. Bully for her. “You really think people like him,” he indicated Addison with the pistol, “will ever change anything? You’re wrong. Nothing ever changes.”
Her voice ragged, Melendez asked, “Where’s the anti-virus?” Spence had to give her credit—she should’ve been long gone by now, but she was holding on for dear life. Literally.
Her question provoked another chuckle. More irony. “It’s on the train, where you found me. You couldn’t have been standing more than three feet from it. I so nearly made it out. Didn’t realize that bitch of a computer had defense systems outside the Hive.” He turned to Alice. “In or out?”
She said nothing.
He repeated the query. “In or out?”
“I don’t know what we had,” she finally said, “but it’s over.”
All they had was great sex. And, great as great sex was, it was easy enough to find elsewhere.
Then he felt a body on his back and pain slicing into his left shoulder.
Pointing the gun behind him, he took three shots at the zombie in the gut. That knocked the figure off. Turning around, splashing water as he did so, he then shot the zombie—whom he recognized as Dr. Bolt, one of the people developing the virus—in the head.
Addison, being just that kind of asshole, decided to try to take advantage. He jumped Spence from behind, but Spence elbowed him in the head, and he fell down into the water.
Before Alice could try something similar, he raised the Colt again.
“Back! Back the fuck off.”
He moved slowly backwards up the stairs. Alice moved right with him, staring at him with those fucking blue eyes of hers.
Those same eyes that he looked into when they took their “wedding picture,” and thought that she’d be fantastic in bed.
Those same eyes that gazed longingly up at him—or down at him, depending—when he finally did get her in the sack.
Now, those eyes only held a promise that, given half a chance, she’d kick his ass instead of compliment him on it.
Well, her tough shit. He had the gun.
“I’m missin’ you already.”
He moved back through the door and shut it.
Then he shot out the locking mechanism.
With any luck, Melendez would die and eat the other two alive. Then it’d all be cleaned up. No witnesses, no trace of what happened to the virus.
And Spence home free to sell his newfound acquisition.
First, though, he needed to inject some of the green stuff into his own bloodstream, now that he was infected. But that would be a simple matter—and he could spare it. After all, because he broke one of the virus vials when he infected the Hive, he had an uneven number, so using the anti-virus on himself wasn’t much of a big deal.
For the second time that day, he ran toward the upper levels of the Hive to make his escape.
TWENTY-FIVE
MATT SUPPOSED HE SHOULD’VE BEEN RElieved that Alice wasn’t the bad guy here, that Lisa’s instincts had been correct to trust her, but finding out that it was Spence who was singlehandedly responsible for this entire nightmare made him sick to his stomach.
Or, rather, sicker.
Alice threw off her jacket. Matt remembered that it was actually Spence’s jacket, given to her outside this very lab to keep her warm.
He went over
to the door and tried to pull the handle so it would open. It didn’t work.
“Your boyfriend’s a real asshole,” Rain muttered.
“He shot the locking mechanism out.” Matt gave up on the door and turned to face the two women. “I can’t believe that son of a bitch is gonna get away with this.”
“I don’t think so.”
All three of them turned to look at the monitor that was now lit up with the Umbrella logo. A speaker near the monitor sounded with the child voice of the Red Queen.
“I’ve been a bad bad girl.”
Matt watched as the monitor provided a view of Spence running up the stairs to the train station.
The view switched to that of an overhead security camera located right by the train itself, which was right where they’d left it several lifetimes ago. Spence went to the train, opened the outer door to the same closet J.D. had found him in. He pulled out a duffel bag, unzipped it, then removed a shiny metal case that had four circles in the four corners and a codepad.
Entering a code into the pad, the four circles all turned, and then the top slid open.
A smile of relief spread over Spence’s face. Matt wished he could say the same for himself. That was the case Alice had been planning to steal and give to Lisa—and which Lisa was going to give to him.
The T-virus.
The motherlode.
The means through which Matt and Aaron and the rest of them were finally going to expose Umbrella.
Matt ground his teeth. He had to get out of here somehow and get that fucking case!
Spence wrapped a strap around his biceps, tapped his arms to bring up a vein, then prepared the hypo-gun for an injection.
Before he finished, though, he stopped and looked up. It appeared as if he’d heard something.
Then some—thing fell from the ceiling and ate Spence alive.
Matt had a vivid imagination, fueled by reading too many comic books when he was a kid, not to mention some of the vile and depraved acts he saw while working the Federal Marshal’s office.
But this—this was so far beyond the pale as to be in another hemisphere. In his wildest dreams, he couldn’t imagine anything as revolting as this.
Whatever the thing was, it looked like a cross between a rhino and a human. The skin was corded and plated, with horns sticking out of various spots. It had opposable thumbs, but huge claws sticking out of its fingers and toes.
It had a tongue as long as a snake, and it had more teeth than a piranha.
Those teeth were chowing down on Spence right now.
Then it turned its head up toward the camera.
Whatever that thing was, it didn’t have any eyes.
Matt’s determination to bring down Umbrella prior to today was a votive candle compared to the inferno it was now. There was no way in hell he was letting this company stay in business.
Eventually, he found his voice. “What—the fuck—is that?”
“One of the Hive’s early experiments, produced by injecting the T-virus directly into living tissue. The results were unstable. It was being held in stasis until you cut the power to its storage unit. Now that it has fed on fresh DNA, it will mutate, becoming a stronger, faster hunter.”
As the Red Queen spoke, Matt watched as the eyeless thing’s flesh—if you could call it flesh—rippled and expanded. The head altered, becoming more angular. The claws expanded, and the torso lengthened.
“Great,” Rain muttered.
“If you knew it was loose, why didn’t you warn us?” Matt asked the computer.
Alice, however, was the one who provided the answer. “Because she was saving it for us—isn’t that right?”
The computer spoke matter-of-factly. “I didn’t think any of you would make it this far—not without infection.”
Rain turned her sweat-drenched head and looked at the monitor. “Why didn’t you tell us about the anti-virus?”
“This long after infection, there’s no guarantee it would work.”
“But there’s a chance, right?”
“I don’t deal in chance.”
Matt looked around the room. He saw the other door, the one with the number pad.
What the hell.
He went over to the door and started entering numbers at random. At this point, they didn’t have a damn thing to lose.
Rain had gotten up, grabbed the fire axe, and looked at the large window.
“Fuck it.”
Then she collapsed onto a chair.
“No pressure, guys.”
“You require the four-digit access code.”
Matt resisted the urge to shout, “No shit!” Instead, he just tried more numbers at random. Maybe he’d get lucky.
Right, lucky. Hey, there was a first time for everything, and after thirty years of life, he was due to have good luck with something.
“I can give you the code, but first you must do something for me.”
Matt stopped entering numbers and looked up. The computer was dealing?
“What do you want?” Alice asked.
“One of your group is infected. I require her life for the code.”
Matt recalled Rain’s earlier characterization of the Red Queen as a “homicidal bitch.” That seemed a lot less hyperbolic now.
Alice was livid. She pointed at the monitor, which still showed what was left of Spence’s body next to the metal case he’d stolen from this very room. “The anti-virus is right there on the platform—it’s right there!”
“I’m sorry, but it’s a risk I cannot take.”
Before Alice could yell again, Rain spoke.
“She’s right.”
She tossed the axe she was holding at Alice, who caught it unerringly.
“It’s the only way. You’re gonna have to kill me.”
Matt shook his head. First Kaplan, now Rain. Did Umbrella train these idiots to all be suicidal?
“No.” Alice spoke with finality.
“Otherwise we all die down here.”
No, not suicidal, pragmatic. To a fault.
A sudden noise grabbed Matt’s attention. He looked up to see the thing that killed Spence throwing itself against the window.
Matt had no idea what the window was made of—it obviously was some kind of Plexiglas or some other extra-tough substance—but it may not have been tough enough. The monster’s first attack left a hairline crack.
It was only a matter of time before it got through.
“The PlastiGlas won’t hold forever.”
Rain got down on her knees and leaned forward, like she was a French Revolutionary waiting for King Louis to take her head.
Or maybe a samurai warrior about to commit seppuku.
“Do it,” she said.
Alice looked as aghast as Matt felt. “Don’t. Get up.”
“Do it.”
“Rain, please, get up.”
“You don’t have long to decide.”
“Do it.”
“Kill her.”
“No.”
“Do it now!”
The creature smashed into the window.
“Kill her.”
“Do it!”
“Rain—”
“Do it!”
“Kill her.”
“No!”
Alice screamed, hefted the axe—
—and smashed the Red Queen’s monitor.
A second later, all the lights went out, and what few systems were working powered down.
Emergency lights came on a moment later.
“That’s some axe you got there,” Matt said.
Alice shook her head. “The axe didn’t do this.”
A clicking sound came from the door.
Matt whirled around to see the door start to open . . .
TWENTY-SIX
BART KAPLAN WATCHED ALICE, RAIN, AND the others go off into the vent even as he stuck the barrel of the revolver into his mouth.
This was it.
He’d fucked up enough. His stupi
dity got One, Warner, Drew, and Olga killed. His panic indirectly got J.D. killed. Hell, his shutting down the Red Queen was what let these zombies loose.
He should pay for what he did.
Even as a zombie that used to be one of the doctors clambered up the pipe toward him, he prepared himself to pull the trigger.
At the last second he pulled the gun out of his mouth and shot Dr. Zombie in the head instead.
Then he threw the gun at the one behind the doctor. “You’re gonna have to work for your meal!”
Suicide was for quitters. Kaplan was many things, but he was not a quitter. Yeah, he fucked up, but dammit, he was doing his job. He followed orders, he did what he was told. Sometimes, mistakes were made, but he was not gonna let himself take the fall.
Kaplan didn’t release the T-virus into the Hive. Whoever did that was responsible.
Not Kaplan.
Pain slicing through his leg where it had been bitten, Kaplan clambered into the crawl space behind him. It led to a vent. If he was lucky, even with his wound, he could keep ahead of the zombie hordes—especially since they seemed to be temporarily fixated on the corpse of the doctor.
He didn’t think, didn’t obsess, didn’t panic, didn’t do anything except focus on putting one hand in front of the other as he crawled through the vent.
That worked right up until he reached the dead end.
Fuck.
He turned around. His leg was bleeding profusely, and he could hear the march of the zombies as they came after him.
Looking up, he saw a grate.
It took about a minute for him to climb up into the hallway. The agony in his leg was white hot, but he did everything he could to ignore it and not to scream.
At that last, he wasn’t entirely successful, but there wasn’t anyone else around to see or hear him.
Favoring his injured leg, he limped down the corridor. Opening his wrist-top, he tapped into the Red Queen, trying to get a heat-signature scan. It wouldn’t pick up any of the zombies, but he could at least find the others.
Some of the others, anyhow. Three heat signatures were in one of the labs. The lowest of the three body temperatures was probably Rain. Kaplan couldn’t tell who the other two were.
He wondered which of them died.
Was it uncharitable to hope that it was Spence?
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