by S. D. Perry
The writer went on to talk about his girlfriend, who’d be angry that he was leaving town. Billy skipped ahead, skimming the pages for what he’d read before.
July 16th... There’s still so much we don’t know about responses to the T-virus. Depending on the species and environment, only minute doses of T bring about remarkable changes in size, aggressive behavior, and brain development... in animals, anyway. Nothing’s immune. But until the effects can be better controlled, the company’s playing with fire.
Billy turned a page.
July 19th. The day is finally approaching... I’m more anxious than I thought I’d be. The Raccoon City newspapers and TV stations have been reporting bizarre murders in the suburbs. It can’t be the virus. Can it? If it is... No. I can’t think of that now. I have to concentrate on the investigation, make sure it goes smoothly.
Changes in size, aggressive behavior, brain development. Like, say, in a dog? And that bit about “in animals, anyway.” What did this T-virus do to humans? Billy was willing to bet he’d already seen the results.
“Turns ’em into zombies,” he muttered. Or as good as zombies, anyway. The one he’d shot had definitely been looking for lunch. What was it that cannibals called humans? Long pig, that was it. That walking mess had wanted some long pig, no question.
Woods full of cannibals and monsters... he’d take his chances with the girl. She’d held her own so far, had killed at least three of those passengers and had managed to hang on to her sanity. He’d stay with her until they got out of this—and then he’d work out an escape before the rest of her team moved in, assuming there was any of her team left—
A girl, the girl screamed from overhead, a sound of pure terror. Billy grabbed his weapon and bolted up the stairs, two at a time, hoping he hadn’t waited too long to make up his mind.
* * *
At the top of the stairs was a slight curve, then a door. Rebecca opened it slowly, carefully, with the muzzle of the handgun, and stepped inside.
A thin, acrid haze of smoke greeted her, and the low flicker of fire, making shadows dance on the walls. It was a dining car, like Billy had said, and had once been beautiful, the tables covered in fine linen, the windows draped with cream-colored curtains. Now it was trashed, plates and broken glass everywhere, tables overturned, the linens soaked with spilled wine and blood... And near the back, a lone figure sat hunched over a table, the hem of the tablecloth burning, the flames licking upward. Rebecca saw a small oil lamp smashed in front of the table, the cause of the fire. The fire was still small, but it might not be for long.
The man at the table was very still—and as Rebecca walked closer, she saw that he wasn’t like the passengers below, wasn’t infected by what Billy had suggested was the T-virus. He was an older, distinguished-looking man in a brown suit, his white hair slicked back, his head bent over his chest as though he’d nodded off during dinner.
Heart attack? Or had he passed out? It didn’t seem likely that he’d broken a second-story window and climbed inside, but as far as she could tell, there was no one else in the room, no one else who could have made those heavy footsteps they’d heard.
Rebecca cleared her throat as she moved toward him. “Excuse me,” she said, stopping next to the table, noticing that his face and hands were wet, gleaming slightly in the firelight. “Sir?”
No response—but he was breathing; she could see his chest moving. She leaned in, put her hand on his shoulder. “Sir?”
He started to raise his head, turning his face toward her—and there was a sick, wet sound, like lips smacking over something slimy, and the man’s head slid from his torso and toppled to the floor.
The wet sound got louder, the decapitated body starting to shake, to bubble with movement, as though filled with living things. Rebecca stumbled backward, letting out a scream as the man’s body slid apart like badly stacked blocks, great pieces of it falling to the floor. When the pieces hit, they disintegrated, the cloth of the suit changing color, turning black, becoming many things, each the size of a fist.
Slugs, they’re like slugs—
Slugs with rows of tiny teeth, not slugs at all but leeches, fat and round and somehow able to mimic a man, even the man’s clothes... Not possible, this can’t be happening!
She stumbled back farther, sick with terror as the individual creatures came together once more, melding into one another, the mass of abnormal, bloated things growing into a glistening tower of darkness. They reformed, took shape and color—and again became the old man she’d seen sitting at the table. She stared in shock, in disbelief. Even knowing that he was made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands of the disgusting things, she couldn’t see the spaces between them, wouldn’t have known that it wasn’t a man except that she’d seen it form for herself. The shade of the suit, the shape and color of the body—the only clue that it wasn’t a man was the strangely shining quality of its skin and clothes.
It cocked its left arm back as though about to pitch a baseball, and then snapped it forward. The arm elongated, stretched impossibly. Rebecca was at least five meters away, but the glistening wet hand swatted at the air only centimeters from her face. She tripped over her own feet in her hurry to get away, falling to the floor as the arm snapped back into place—then cocked backward, ready to strike again.
Gun, stupid, shoot!
She jerked the weapon up and fired, the first two shots going wild, the third and fourth disappearing into the thing’s lurching body. She could see the not-flesh ripple when the bullets hit, the suit and the body beneath it undulating slightly, as though she were seeing it through heat waves off of asphalt on a summer day. The creature barely hesitated before whipping its arm toward her once more. She dodged, but the hand made contact, slapping against her left cheek. She screamed again, more from the feel of the hand than the strength of the blow—it was cold and slimy and rough, like sharkskin dipped in pond scum—and before it withdrew, it slapped at her again, this time knocking the nine-millimeter from her hand. The weapon skittered across the floor, ending up beneath one of the tables. The old man-creature took another oddly lurching step, was now close enough that its next blow likely wouldn’t be so easily evaded, and Rebecca just had time to think that she was dead—
—and bam-bam-bam, the creature was staggering back, and someone was firing again and again, the unexpected sound making her cringe as she staggered to her feet. The first few shots disappeared into its form like before, but the shooter kept at it, finding the monster’s aged and shining face, its shining eyes. Dark liquid flew from sudden openings in the collective, leeches blowing to pieces, and on the sixth or seventh shot, the man-thing began to melt back into its component parts, the small, black animals slithering toward the broken windows as they hit the floor.
Rebecca looked back at the door and saw Billy Coen standing there in a classic shooter’s position, both hands on his weapon, his gaze fixed on the monstrosity in front of them as it finished its silent collapse, becoming many once more. The leeches continued to make for the windows, sliding on trails of slime over the debris-littered floor and up the stained walls, slipping effortlessly over the jagged edges of glass and into the storming night. They had finished their attack, it seemed.
A strange, high singing drifted in over the sound of the rain. Still in shock, Rebecca walked to the window, carefully avoiding the remaining leeches as they streamed out of the car, retrieving her weapon before looking out to find the source of the singing. Billy joined her, making no effort to step over the strange creatures; several popped wetly beneath his boot heels.
In a flash of lightning, they saw him. Standing on a low hill west of the train, a lone figure—male, from his height, from the width of the shoulders—raised long arms, a gesture of welcome, and sang in a surprisingly sweet soprano, his voice young and rich and strong. Latin, like something from church. As if that weren’t bizarre enough, he seemed to be standing in a low, shallow lake, the ground rippling slightly all around him. It was to
o dark to see well, only deep shadow and silhouette marking the lonely singer.
“Oh, Christ,” Billy said. “Look at that.”
Rebecca felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, her mouth turning down in a grimace of disgust. There was no lake. The ground was covered with leeches, thousands of them, all moving toward the singing young man. She could see the hem of his long coat or robe flapping as the creatures flowed upward, disappearing beneath it.
“Who is that guy?” Billy asked, and Rebecca shook her head. Maybe like the old man, made from the creatures—
The train lurched suddenly. A rising, heavy mechanical sound filled the car, the floor vibrating beneath their feet—and then the train was moving, slowly at first, quickly picking up speed.
She looked at Billy, saw the same confused surprise on his face that she knew she wore, and for the first time, felt something besides angry disdain for the criminal. He was stuck in this—this nightmare, same as she was. And he did just save my life...
“Still handling things yourself?” he asked, smirking, and she felt the tenuous bond between them disappear. Before she could say anything, though, he seemed to realize that his passive-aggressive stab at humor wasn’t what the situation called for.
“I think we could both use a little help here,” he said. “How about it? Just until we’re out of this, all right?”
Rebecca thought about the viral victims she’d seen, those she’d killed, about what Edward had said, that the woods were full of zombies and monsters. She thought about the man made of leeches, and their strange, singing master out in the rain, and finally about the fact that someone, or some thing had started the train. Even if Enrico and the rest of the team were still alive, they were falling farther and farther away by the minute.
“Yeah, okay,” she said, and though his grim and arrogant demeanor didn’t change, she thought that Billy was relieved. And she knew that she was.
FOUR
The solitary figure on the hill watched as the train gathered speed and disappeared into the storm, his heart full of the song that spilled from his lips, that rang so sweetly through the wild air, calling his minions back to him. They had done well, readying the train for the inevitable cleanup crew as soon as the sun had gone down, leading most of the infected away through the woods, locking the doors, powering the engine; he wanted the leeches to feed, not the virus carriers, and once the Umbrella team boarded, there would be no escape. The rain washed over the many as they crept up the hill, beckoned by his voice, by his desires.
He received them with a smile as he finished his song. All was going as well as he might have wished. After so long a wait, it wouldn’t be long, now. He would fulfill his dream; he would become Umbrella’s nightmare, and then the world’s.
* * *
“We need to stop this train, first thing,” Rebecca said.
Billy nodded. “Any suggestions?”
“We split up,” she said calmly. Surprisingly calmly, considering what she’d just been through. “The car at the front of the train is locked—where we met? We need to get that door open, to get to the engine.”
“So, we shoot the lock,” Billy said.
Rebecca shook her head. “Magnetic card reader. We have to find a keycard.”
“I saw a conductor’s office—”
“Locked,” Rebecca said. “We’ll have to dig up one ourselves.”
“That could take awhile,” Billy said. “We should stick together.”
“It’ll take us twice as long. And I’d rather get off this thing before it ends up wherever it’s going.”
As much as he didn’t want to wander the train alone, didn’t want her to wander it alone, he couldn’t argue with the logic.
“I’ll start at the back, work forward,” she said. “You take the second floor. We’ll meet at the front.”
Bossy little thing, aren’t you? he thought, but kept it to himself. At some point in the not-too-distant future, she might be the only thing keeping him from becoming somebody’s lunch.
“And I will shoot you if you try anything funny,” she added. Billy started to snap back at her, then saw the shine in her eyes. She wasn’t serious. Not entirely.
She nodded at his weapon. “You need ammo for that thing?”
“I’m good,” he said. “You?”
Another nod, and she started for the door. When she reached it, she turned back.
“Thanks,” she said, motioning vaguely toward the back of the car. “I owe you.”
Before he could answer, she was gone. Billy stared after her a moment, somewhat amazed by her willingness to face the train’s dangers on her own. Had he been so brave when he was her age?
It’s called “denial of mortality” when you’re that young, he thought. Yeah, he’d thought he’d live forever then, too. Being sentenced to death made one take a slightly different view on things.
He spent a brief moment checking the dining car, scowling at the smashed and liquid remains of a few dozen leech-things as he hurriedly checked behind the small bar, beneath the tables. There was a locked door at the front of the room, but a swift kick and a glance showed him an empty service cabin with a hole in the roof. He didn’t linger, figuring their best bet would be searching the bodies of the train workers, anyway.
He headed down the stairs, pausing at the bottom a moment, looking toward the rear of the train before continuing on. Rebecca Chambers seemed capable of taking care of herself; better if he watched his own ass.
Back through the double doors, through the first passenger car, still empty, and a deep breath before heading into the second. A quick look to make sure there wasn’t anyone walking around and he headed up the stairs, not wanting to look at the body of the man he’d killed. He’d killed before, but it was never something you got used to, not if you had a conscience.
The smell hit him before he reached the second floor and he slowed, breathing shallowly. Like sea water and rot. When he got to the top, he saw the source and swallowed back bile.
Now we know where they came from.
He’d stepped onto a landing at the top of the stairs, one that turned into a corridor to his immediate right, turning right again a few meters ahead—and from floor to ceiling, the corner of the landing to his left was webbed with what appeared to be hundreds of empty egg sacs, creating something like a spider’s nest—only these sacs were black and wet, shining in the low light of a half-buried wall sconce. They swayed slightly as the train rocked back and forth on the track, making them appear almost alive. At least they were empty. He hoped to God he wouldn’t run into whatever had laid them.
He edged away from the webbed corner, stepping on strings of the glistening matter that spread across the hall’s fine carpet, vaguely wondering if the jeep accident had been such a blessing, after all. He didn’t want to die in any manner, but a nice, clean firing squad beat the shit out of being devoured by shape-changing leeches.
Knock it off, soldier. Be where you are.
Right. He walked the corridor, relaxing slightly once he realized it was empty. There were two closed cabin doors, one on each side of the narrow passage, each marked by a number. From that and the hall’s luxurious decor, he guessed they were private cabins. It was a good guess. He pushed open the first door, 102, and found a small bedroom, well-appointed and thankfully free of blood and bodies. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else, either, though he did find a clutter of personal belongings in the tiny closet. There were papers, a clutch of photographs, a jewelry box. He opened the box, revealing a silver ring, unusual in design; it looked like a single part of one of those interlocking ring sets, notched and warped in a distinct pattern... And since he wasn’t jewelry shopping, he put it back, heading out to the next cabin.
When he opened the door to 101, he felt a rush of hope. There, lying on the floor like a gift, was a shotgun. Billy scooped it up and cracked it, his hope turning to a guarded happiness. It was a Western, over-under, loaded with two twelve-gauge shell
s. Further searching turned up another handful of shells, though no keycard.
Magnetic lock or no, this’ll probably open that door, he thought, comforted by the weight of the heavy weapon as he stuffed the shells into his front pocket. He was tempted to go find Rebecca immediately, but decided he might as well finish what he’d started. There was a door at the end of the hall, presumably leading to the next car’s second floor, and it would lead him closer to the front of the train, anyway—the sooner to reunite with the kid. He wasn’t scared to be on his own, it wasn’t that, and it wasn’t even concern for Rebecca, though that was there, too—it was too many years spent in service. If he’d learned anything, it was that being alone in combat was the worst way to be.
The door was unlocked, and opened into an empty lounge car, an extremely snazzy one. There was a polished wooden bar to his right, well stocked, and small, elegant tables lined either wall, leaving the wide, expensively carpeted floor open beneath low-hanging chandeliers. Like the last car, no blood or bodies. Billy checked the counters behind the bar, then headed for the door at the far end, feeling strangely ill at ease crossing the open space. He clutched the heavy shotgun firmly.
When he was almost across the room, something crashed onto the roof.
The sound was thunderous, huge, the impact so strong that a chandelier back by the bar hit the floor, the glass globes shattering. The train car rocked on its rails, causing him to stumble, almost fall.
He kept his feet, turning to look. Where the chandelier had fallen, the roof was actually indented, the thick metal twisted out of shape—and as he watched, one, two giant things pierced through, about two meters apart, one after the other.
Billy stared, not sure what he was seeing. Big, pointed cylindrical, each piercing piece appeared to be bisected, split down the middle. They looked like... claws?