Probably. But right then, Kaplan didn’t care.
When he got to the door of the lab, Kaplan collapsed against it. He was beyond exhausted, the pain in his leg was now an inferno, and he couldn’t move another step.
Then he saw that the locking mechanism had been shot out.
Great.
Drawing on reserves that J.D. and Rain would never have given him credit for having, Kaplan dragged himself to the other door and entered the code to get it open.
He could see inside the window. Alice, Rain, and Matt were inside.
Looked like Spence was the dead one. Good.
Then he looked up and saw the monitor.
How did Spence get to the train station? And what the hell could’ve done that to him?
Shaking his head, he entered the code again.
Nothing happened.
He looked it up on his wrist-top. The code he entered was the right one.
Unless . . .
“You changed the code, didn’t you?”
“It needed to be done.”
Kaplan blinked. He hadn’t expected the Red Queen to reply.
“I need to get the door open.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
Reaching into one of the pouches in his chest, Kaplan pulled out the remote control.
“Yeah? Well, I’m not at all sorry about this.”
He pushed a button.
For the second time that day, he powered down the Red Queen. Only this time, she was permanently fried.
The door, obligingly, opened.
Alice was holding an axe, looking like she was ready to take someone’s head off. Matt was just standing there looking stupid.
Rain was kneeling in the center of the floor, hip-deep in water, looking like hammered shit. But she was the one who spoke.
“Kaplan?”
He managed a smile. “Bitch wouldn’t open the door. Had to fry her.”
That was when something smashed against the PlastiGlas window. Alice raised her axe instinctively, just as the thing smashed through the window.
They all ran past Kaplan into the hallway. Just as Kaplan shut and bolted the door, the whatever-the-hell-it-was crashed into the door, denting it.
That should not have been possible.
“What the fuck was that?”
“It’s a long story,” Alice said as she ran off.
Matt, who was now carrying Rain, filled Kaplan in on what had happened, telling him about the T-virus, the anti-virus, the strange monster that killed Spence—and the fact that all of this was Spence’s doing.
Grateful to have someone to fob his guilt off on, Kaplan hobbled behind Alice and the Rain-carrying Matt to the train station. Alice was armed only with the fire axe. Kaplan was out of ammo for his Beretta and his revolver, and he’d thrown the latter away in any case. Matt and Rain were unarmed—hell, Rain was three-quarters dead.
Kaplan tried not to think about how pathetic they were. If that thing caught up to them, they were the deadest of dead meat.
Then again, they made it this far. Over five hundred people had died, but not them.
Alice pointed at the train. “Start it up—I’ll get the virus.”
Kaplan nodded and limped into the train. The pain at this point had gone down to just a dull throb—or maybe he just had gotten used to it.
Whatever. Right now, he was just grateful to be one of the living and not one of the dead.
Or undead.
Or whatever the hell they were.
While he started the train up, he looked out the window to see Alice going for the metal case. She closed it—
—just as Spence lunged at her.
Alice dodged out of the way with little difficulty. The damage to Spence’s corpse was such that his legs were completely shot to shit, so he was reduced to pulling himself along the floor with his arms. He made Kaplan’s own struggles through the vent shaft look positively elegant.
Alice gave her “husband” a look. Kaplan swore that, if looks could kill, Spence would be a pile of ashes.
Ass-Kicking Alice, it seemed, was really and truly back.
“I’m missing you already,” she said as she hefted the axe.
Then she cut his head off.
Kaplan tried not to think about the fact that that was the second decapitation he’d witnessed today. Instead, he focused on starting up the train.
“Okay,” he said when the telltales all indicated that the train was ready to head back up to the mansion, “we’re in business. Full power.” He turned to the cab. “We’re leaving!”
Alice, he noticed, paused only long enough to remove her wedding ring and drop it next to Spence’s blood-soaked body, then retrieve both the case and Rain’s Colt before boarding.
Matt came into the engineer’s cubbyhole a minute later with a hypo-gun and some improvised bandages. He was also only wearing a white T-shirt. After staring at the blue bandages for a second, Kaplan figured it out—he’d cannibalized his shirt for the bandages.
Silently, the cop—or whoever the hell he was—injected Kaplan with the anti-virus, then started binding his wounds.
Kaplan tried not to think about the blood that felt like it covered as much of his body as Spence had on his. Instead, he focused on the report he planned to write when this was all over.
And was it going to be quite a report. Knowing that Spence was responsible for all of this emboldened him. It had freed him of the guilt in many ways. Kaplan knew that Umbrella did things their own way, but Jesus Christ. A computer that slices people who try to get at it to ribbons? A big scaly thing with no eyes and teeth the size of Rhode Island running around loose? One of your top security guys turning your supposedly secure underground facility into a horror movie? And then the kicker, a virus that kills you and animates your corpse?
In the past, Bart Kaplan had been willing to turn a blind eye to the less ethical areas of Umbrella, mostly because that eye was focused instead on the high number of zeros on his paycheck stub.
But this—this was too much.
He had no idea what he, a mere grunt in Security Division, could do, but whatever it was, he intended to find out what it was, and do it.
Matt put a hand on his shoulder when he was done. Kaplan gave him a nod in return. He had no idea who this guy really was, and right now he didn’t give a shit. The four of them had been through all nine circles of hell today, and lived to tell the tale. Right now, that was all Kaplan cared about.
“I don’t want to be one of those things.”
Kaplan turned to look at Rain when she said those words. Alice was treating her, same as Matt had been doing for Kaplan.
“Walking around without a soul,” Rain continued. “When the time comes, you’ll take care of it.”
It wasn’t a question.
Alice just said, “Hey—no one else is gonna die.”
Rain removed the watch from her wrist and handed it to Alice.
Then her head slumped forward.
Any other time, Kaplan might have figured she was just lapsing into a coma or something. But he’d seen way too much death today.
Rain Melendez was dead.
Shit.
“Rain?” Alice spoke in a soft voice.
Nothing.
Kaplan shook his head. He never even liked Rain all that much—she and J.D. spent way too much time giving Kaplan a hard time—but they were still comrades, still teammates, and when it mattered, they looked out for each other, depended on each other.
Now Kaplan was the only one left.
The hilarious thing was that J.D. had always said that if they ever took on casualties, that Kaplan would probably be the first one to go.
Instead, he was the last survivor.
Alice reached for Rain’s Colt.
Her entire face quivering in a way Kaplan never would’ve expected from Ass-Kicking Alice, she held the gun to Rain’s head.
Clicked off the safety.
Then Rain reached up
and grabbed Alice’s wrist.
“I’m not dead yet,” Rain said.
Kaplan couldn’t help but grin to go with his sigh of relief. Suddenly, he found himself looking forward to getting more shit from Rain in the future.
Rain, meanwhile, took the Colt from Alice’s hands. “Maybe I’d better have that back.”
Alice laughed. “I could kiss you, you bitch.”
Kaplan was then startled by the wrenching of metal, which echoed through the train, piercing through the noise of the train’s engine. He turned to see a massive claw slice through the train’s wall and leave three scratches on Matt’s left shoulder.
“Get us the fuck outta here!” Matt cried to Kaplan.
“Any faster and we’re gonna come off the rails.”
He turned back to face the front, right when the wall to his left was ripped away.
An elongated face with no eyes, and teeth that were now the size of Pennsylvania looked back at Kaplan.
After the day he’d had, Kaplan had thought he’d seen everything.
He was wrong.
His last thought as the creature ripped into him with its claws and teeth was anger that he’d never get to write that fucking report . . .
TWENTY-SEVEN
IT TOOK MATT A SECOND TO RECOVER FROM the shock of seeing Kaplan torn to pieces by the monster.
Then he shut the engineer’s cabin door.
He’d already mourned Kaplan once. Hell, he had mourned all of them. The black guy and the others who died in the Red Queen’s chamber. Kaplan. J.D. The employees of the Hive. Even Spence, the fuckhead.
And Lisa.
Umbrella had done this. They created the virus, they let Spence into the top of their Security Division, and they created this thing, which was now running along the top of the train. It killed Spence, it killed Kaplan, it wounded Matt, and now it was well on its way to killing the remaining three of them.
Then Matt noticed that the door on the opposite end of the train was unlatched.
Alice had recovered Rain’s Colt and was in a crouch in the center of the train, ready for anything. As time had gone by, Matt was seeing more and more of the formidable presence that Alice was, and was really grateful she was on his side—in more ways than one. Lisa had picked her contact well.
Running across the cab, Matt latched the other door, just as the monster tried to smash through it.
This held it back only temporarily. On its second punch, it knocked the door inward, hitting Matt full on and knocking him to the floor. He managed to get his hands up to keep the door from damaging his face, but it still hurt both when the door hit him and he hit the floor.
Alice shot it three times in the head, which, if nothing else, distracted it from Matt. Taking advantage, Matt clambered out from under the door and ran back to the other side of the cab where the bundled metal tubes hung.
Matt had noticed the tubes when they first rode down into the Hive. He wasn’t in a position to ask what they were doing there then, and he didn’t give a tinker’s damn what they were doing there now.
What did matter was that they could be used as a weapon.
The creature’s impossibly long tongue came shooting out of its mouth and wrapped itself around Alice’s left leg.
Then it pulled.
Alice fell on her back, dropping the Colt.
She tried to hang onto the gridwork of the trapdoors to keep from being pulled in even as Matt undid the cable that kept the tubes secured in the corner.
He then charged forward, using the tubes as a battering ram to slam into the monster’s head.
The creature stumbled backward, not nearly as hurt as Matt hoped it would be, but, at least, it released its tongue’s grip on Alice’s leg. She quickly scrambled over toward the gun, but before she could, the tongue flew out again and literally slapped Alice down.
Oddly, she gave up on the gun, and instead grabbed two of the tubes, which had come out of the bundle.
With the first, she slammed it down horizontally onto the end of the monster’s tongue, holding it secured to the floor.
With the second, she drove it down vertically like a spear, through both the tongue and the gridwork of the trapdoor, skewering it.
She had, in essence, nailed it to the floor.
“Open the door!” she yelled at Matt.
Matt turned to push the red button that would open the trapdoor the monster was standing on—and couldn’t move from, now that Alice had secured it—but there was someone standing between him and the button.
Rain.
Her eyes were watery.
Her movements were sluggish.
Her mouth opened wide, showing blackening teeth.
She moved to bite him, just as Lisa had.
This time, Matt was ready, and he pushed her off. Reaching down, he picked up the Colt.
“Open the door now!” Alice screamed.
With his sister, Matt hesitated. When Alice thought Rain was dead a few minutes ago, she hesitated.
Now, Matt unhesitatingly shot Rain in the head.
She fell backward, right onto the red button.
The monster fell right into the undercarriage, slamming against the tracks while travelling at some sixty miles an hour or so.
The friction caused a huge conflagration that Matt could feel and smell even more than he could see. The heat was like an inferno, and the stench of burning flesh seared his nostrils, even as the fire climbed into the cab.
It wasn’t pretty.
It was, however, deserved.
Matt then pushed the red button again. It shut the door, slicing off the thing’s tongue, and leaving it behind to burn on the tracks.
He and Alice exchanged glances. Matt felt more tired than he’d ever been in his life.
Alice looked more alive than she had since he first met her a couple of hours ago.
What a fucking day.
He opened the door to the engineer’s cubbyhole. It didn’t take too long to figure out how to slow the thing down—they made it fairly idiot-proof. He did so as the train pulled into the other terminus.
Terminus. What a fucking appropriate word.
In silence, they disembarked. Matt still carried Rain Melendez’s Colt. Alice held the case with both virus and anti-virus.
They walked quickly amongst the crates and boxes, heading toward the giant staircase that would take them back to the lavish mansion.
At one point, they passed the metal bar J.D. had placed by the blast doors. Its countdown was at less than ten seconds.
As they went up the staircase, the blast doors closed behind them.
Lisa and Matt’s parents had raised their kids to be Catholic, but both of them had lapsed pretty thoroughly by the time they hit their teen years.
Nevertheless, Matt found himself praying for Lisa, for Kaplan, for Rain, and for all the others who died down there.
As they walked through the dining hall toward the front door, Matt noticed that Alice was starting to stumble.
By the time they reached the vestibule outside the door, she collapsed in a heap, dropping the case next to her.
Matt knelt down next to her, seeing that sobs were now wracking her body.
“I failed,” she said, her voice catching. “All of them. I failed them.”
Survivor’s guilt. Matt knew way too much about that—hell, he was experiencing it himself. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw his sister, face twisted, trying to bite his neck. You want to talk failure . . .
But that way lay madness.
“Listen,” he said firmly, “there was nothing you could have done. The corporation is to blame here, not you.” He indicated the case. “And we finally have the proof. That means Umbrella can’t get awa—”
He cut himself off as a throb of pain shot through his left arm.
Shaking his head, he went on. “Get away with this. We can—”
The pain returned, much more than a throb this time, and focused on the three wounds the eye
less monster had given him on the train. At the same time, he lost all feeling in his arm below those wounds.
“What is it?” Alice asked.
A scream suddenly ripped from his mouth as the pain coursed throughout his body, and he fell onto his back.
“You’re infected. You’ll be okay—I’m not losing you.”
Matt barely heard Alice’s words. He lay on the floor, twitching, writhing from the agony that flared through every joint, every muscle, every cell, and he screamed and screamed and screamed . . .
Then everything went white . . .
TWENTY-EIGHT
JUST AS ALICE WAS ABOUT TO MINISTER TO Matt, the door opened.
Shielding her eyes from the blinding white light, she saw at least half-a-dozen people in Hazmat suits.
“What’s happening? What’re you doing?”
One of them reached for her, while two others knelt down beside Matt.
“Stop!”
She fought off the one by her with a few well-placed punches. Then three more tried to grab her, even as others picked Matt up and carried him out into the hall.
It took her all of four seconds to subdue the three trying to hold her. Hell, after what she’d just faced, three bozos in Hazmat suits were not going to be a challenge for her.
“Matt!”
The hall had been converted into a sterile zone of some kind, with some stuff that looked like hospital equipment, and a single examination table.
Several of the Hazmat-suited people were laying Matt on that table.
Small tentacles started to grow out of the three wounds on Matt’s arm.
One of the Hazmats spoke. “He’s mutating. I want him in the Nemesis Program.”
Alice ran to grab Matt, but two more Hazmats grabbed her first, even as they strapped down Matt and started to wheel him outside.
Shattering the faceplate of one Hazmat with a single punch, and kicking another in the nuts, she again screamed, “Matt!”
For every two Hazmats she knocked down, though, three more seemed to take their place.
And she honestly was exhausted, mentally and physically. Even she had her limits, and she had finally reached them.
She felt a needle puncturing her thigh. Kicking with that leg, she cracked another faceplate, but even as she did so, her limbs stopped responding to her brain’s commands.
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