Resident Evil

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Resident Evil Page 16

by S. D. Perry


  The monster’s grin widened as its knees bent slightly, as it readied to spring—

  —and then it was moving, only a few running steps and it would be on her. Rebecca flew, ducked and ran, slamming into the elevator door, grabbing at it with trembling, hurried hands. She jerked the door open, blundered inside, turned to close the door—

  —and the thing was already fixed on her again, already moving fast, much too fast. The door wouldn’t hold, she knew it. She brought the shotgun up, no time to aim, fired.

  The blast caught its right shoulder. It staggered back, screaming, blood flying from its shredded wound, and then Rebecca saw nothing more. She slammed the door closed, hit the lowest button on the board, squeezed her eyes shut and started to pray.

  Seconds passed. The elevator continued down, down—and finally came to a stop. She stopped praying long enough to hear the rushing water outside—must be the sewer—but she was too freaked to care much for the moment, her body still trembling wildly.

  After what seemed a long time, the shaking subsided. She was okay... or alive, at least, and that was something. With a final prayer that she might never see that thing again, Rebecca pushed the door open and stepped out.

  * * *

  William Birkin was finally—finally!—leaving when he heard the inhuman scream echo through the otherwise silent facility, a scream of pure rage. He stopped at the entrance to the small, underground tunnel that led to the outside, looking back toward the executive control room. He’d spent the last two hours in the tiny, hidden area, first struggling to make the decision, then struggling to make the computer obey his override commands. The destruct sequence was set for just over an hour; as Wesker had suggested, the obliteration of the facility and its surrounding complex would coincide with the beginning of a new day.

  That scream... He’d never heard anything like it, but knew immediately what it was, having seen the project in its final stages. Nothing else could make such a sound. The Tyrant prototype was loose.

  The shadows that bordered the narrow tunnel suddenly seemed too deep, too lonely. Too capable of secrecy. Birkin turned and hurried away, sure now that he’d made the right decision.

  It was all going to burn.

  * * *

  Billy heard something. He lifted his heavy head, managed to turn it slightly. There, to his left, a door opened onto the walkway, and out stepped a human figure.

  “Hey,” he called, but he couldn’t manage any volume, the sound of his voice lost to the rushing water. He closed his eyes.

  “Billy!”

  He looked again, felt warmth welling up deep inside. Rebecca, it was Rebecca leaning over the railing, calling his name, and the sight and sound of her brought him around some, pushed the bone-weary exhaustion away, just a little.

  “Rebecca,” he said, raising his voice, not sure if she could hear. He tried to think of something to tell her, some action she should take, but could only say her name again; the situation was self-explanatory, and he was in a bad way. If she wanted to help him, she’d have to come up with something on her own.

  “Billy, look out!” Rebecca was gesturing wildly with one hand, fumbling for her handgun with the other.

  The terror in her voice woke him up. He clutched the support pillar tighter, tried to pull himself up, to see what she was pointing at—and caught just a glimpse of something moving fast, something long and dark slipping through the water like a giant serpent, rushing at him.

  He tried to move, to edge around the pillar, but the water was too fast, he couldn’t let go. He’d be lost in less than a second.

  Rebecca fired, once, twice—and the unseen creature slammed into the support pillar hard enough to shake him free.

  He yelled, paddling furiously to stay above the frothing water, to resist the pull of the emptying pipe, but it was no good. In seconds, he was swept into the dark, pushed and pummeled, the sound of the water filling his ears as it carried him away.

  FOURTEEN

  In the midst of Rebecca’s brief battle with the proto-Tyrant, William Birkin sneaked out of the facility, his head low, his proverbial tail tucked between his legs. The young man had lost track of him a few hours earlier, had assumed that the scientist had followed Wesker up and out—those people from Rebecca’s little adventure team had, only moments before—but there he was, half running through one of the hidden exit tunnels, his pallid, twitching face a mask of fear. Terrified by the sounds of the battle, certainly, entirely unaware that he was alive only because his life was so very unimportant.

  Although he’d wished to deal with him personally, the young man let the scientist go now, prey for another day. He was too enraptured by the fight, too eager to see Rebecca torn limb from limb. Instead, he saw her duck her fate yet again, a combination of deftness and stupid luck that was quite a marvel to behold. He watched as she left the Tyrant behind and came across Billy only a moment later, somehow still alive, clinging like a barnacle to a rock as a sea of sewer water churned around him. A single blow by one of the water creatures sent him spiraling away to one of the plant’s many filter rooms, left Rebecca screaming after him, surely half mad with frustration, with loss and crushed hope.

  The young man smiled, a cold and nasty smile, calmer than he’d felt for some time as he watched Rebecca cross the walkway, find another elevator in the plant’s operations room, wend her way toward the depths of the plant—where he and his hive waited, curling together in their cocoon of glittering liquid excretions. With luck, she’d come across Billy soon, possibly even alive. Probably, in fact. He understood now, that he’d simply tried too hard to rush matters, to hurry their fate. A confrontation was inevitable... And hadn’t he truly wanted an audience all along, someone to appreciate his magnificent undertaking? Besides, the dawn would be soon, a dangerous time for the children, their delicate bodies easily burned by even the weakest sunlight; better that he let the two interlopers come to him. They would know his glory before he crushed them himself.

  He watched and waited, excited for the final chapter of his triumph to begin.

  * * *

  Rebecca wasn’t sure where she was, the descending levels and rooms of the new building impossibly tangled, but she kept going, kept moving down. The hallways were clear, but two of the rooms she moved through—yet another small control room of unknown purpose, and a wrecked employee lounge—were infested with zombies. She only had to shoot two of seven that she saw, the rest too decrepit, too slow-moving to constitute a real threat. She wished she had the time and the ammo to put all of them down, to spare them what their lives had become, but seeing Billy again kept her hurrying. He was hurt but alive, and hidden somewhere in the depths of the confusing layout.

  The new facility was a water treatment plant, she could tell that from the pervasive odor, if not from the signs and control boards that seemed to litter every other room, but she thought that it was also a front for more of Umbrella’s illegal activities; why else would it be connected to the training facility, albeit indirectly? She went through a small courtyard area on the seventh basement level—at least, she thought it was the seventh—that had been under construction before the virus had hit, and she doubted very much that the rock-carved bunker—replete with forklift—had much to do with water treatment.

  Yeah, but what the hell do I know, she thought randomly, pushing herself to move faster, through another door, a room with a sunken pit full of crates to one side. Until tonight, she hadn’t believed in zombies, or bio-weapon conspiracies... Truth be told, she hadn’t really believed that such deliberate evil could exist. What she’d seen, what she’d experienced since stepping onto that train all those hours ago... Everything was different, now. She didn’t know that she’d ever again be able to turn such a naive eye to the world around her, that she’d ever be able to look at a person or place without wondering what hidden face lay behind what she saw. She wasn’t sure if she should be angry or grateful for the loss of innocence; if she stayed with the S.T.A.R.S.,
it would undoubtedly serve her well.

  At the back of the room with the crates, a metal staircase. Rebecca stopped at the top, caught her breath as she looked down, grimacing with distaste, unsure of how to proceed. There were leeches on the stairs, at least a few dozen scattered across the steps, hanging from threads of slime or tracking glistening paths across the gray metal. She didn’t want to get near them, afraid that they might attack if she got too close, or hurt one of them—but she didn’t want to backtrack, either. She felt like time was speeding up, like things were happening faster and faster, that she had to keep up or risk being lost.

  Or risk running into that thing again. That clawed killing machine. Its angry scream still echoed in her mind. She’d wounded it, but the chances that it had crawled away in some dark corner to die were slim to none. Things like that were never so accommodating.

  Gritting her teeth, she carefully stepped over and around the leeches, pausing after each step, swallowing bile as one slid over the toe of her boot before continuing on its way. It was a short flight, at least; she got down without stepping on any of the horrid little things, reaching the door at the bottom without further incident.

  When she opened the door, a cool mist sprayed across her sweating skin, the roar of emptying pipes like music. It was a big room, dominated by huge, jutting conduits to one side, water from them splashing down and over a series of mesh filters—

  —and there, amid a scatter of random flotsam—

  “Billy!”

  Rebecca ran to Billy’s prone form, a bitter waterfall splashing down beside them as she crouched, reached for his throat. She pushed his dog tags aside, shaking inside... But there was a strong, even pulse—and at her touch, he opened his eyes, looked blearily up at her.

  “Rebecca?” He coughed, started to sit up, and she gently placed one hand on his chest, pushing him down. He had a purpling knot on his left temple, a big one.

  “Just rest a minute,” she said, having to force the words around the hardness in her throat. She’d wanted to believe he’d be all right, but it had been so hard... “Let me check you out.”

  A faint smile played across his lips. “ ’Kay, but then it’s my turn,” he mumbled, and coughed again.

  He answered her questions without any confusion as she pushed and prodded, checked his range of motion, cleaned a few of his deeper scratches. The knot on his head seemed to be the worst of his injuries, causing him some dizziness and nausea, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d feared—and after only a few minutes of her ministrations, he pushed himself into a sit, turning a weak smile her way.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, wincing as she touched his temple. “I’ll survive, but not if you keep poking me.”

  “Right,” she said, sitting back on her heels, feeling a surprisingly deep satisfaction; she’d set out to find him, and had. She’d had no idea that such a basic sense of accomplishment could be so fulfilling, could so easily overwhelm all of the negatives in their situation, even if only for a moment. “I’m glad you’re alive, Billy.”

  He nodded, wincing again at the movement. “You and me both.”

  She helped him to his feet, supporting him as he found his balance. When he was steady enough, he stepped away—and she saw a look of disgust cross his face, his mouth curving down as he moved past her, toward one corner of the room where a slick of dark water poured over another mesh filter.

  The corner of the room was heaped with bones. Human bones, worn smooth by years of falling water, thick with a greenish bacterial slime. Rebecca counted at least eleven skulls among the tumble of femurs and cracked ribs, most of them crushed or broken.

  “Some of Marcus’s old experiments?” Bill’s tone was low; it wasn’t really a question, and Rebecca didn’t answer it, only nodding.

  “It’s Umbrella,” she added, after a moment. “They encouraged it. They were all in it together.”

  Now Billy didn’t answer, only stared at the bones, some unknown emotion in his dark gaze. After a second, he shook it off, turned away from the sad remnants of human life.

  “What say we blow this Popsicle stand?” he asked, and though his words were light, neither of them smiled.

  “Yeah,” she said, reaching out to grab his hand for a moment, just a moment, squeezing his fingers tightly in her own. He squeezed back. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

  * * *

  Billy felt like shit, but he soldiered on as Rebecca led them vaguely eastward, wanting more than anything to get free of Marcus’s damned playground before he allowed himself to collapse. As they wandered through a maze of corridors and rooms—Billy was hopelessly lost after their second turn—she told him what had happened to her since he’d been dragged off the cable car platform. She’d had a run-in with her team leader, and a fight with some super-creature Frankenstein that she very nearly didn’t survive. She’d also found a .50 Magnum revolver to match the ammo he’d been lugging around, some serious firepower, and had managed to hang on to the shotgun. In all, he thought she’d done better than he probably would have, in the same circumstances.

  They found an empty bunkroom and loaded up, Billy taking the Magnum, Rebecca keeping the shotgun. There was a sealed gallon jug of water under one of the bunks and they took turns gulping it down, both of them desperate for hydration. It turned out that swimming in sewer water didn’t do much for one’s thirst.

  Refreshed by the water, holding decent and fully loaded weapons, Billy finally felt like he might recover from his ride through the rapids. They took the southern exit from the bunkroom, through an industrial treatment room, then another. The rooms of the plant blurred together for Billy, all looked the same—rusting metal walls and floors, pipe railings, huge walls of unknown equipment covered with dials and switches. Some of the equipment was working, filling the large rooms with echoing blasts of mechanical sound, though God only knew what it was controlling. Billy found that he didn’t much care, though as they continued on, they could both hear the rush of water getting closer, big water—and when they went through a massive pump room that opened out into the chill of predawn, they found a walkway that spanned an actual dam.

  They stood for a moment, looking out over the dark length of reservoir that ran alongside the building they’d emerged from, the crashing curtain of water that punctuated it at the far end. It was too loud for them to talk, and they stepped back into the pump room, both of them smiling. They’d found a way out, at least; true, the walkway over the dam led to another building, but just seeing the fading stars, the sinking moon, gave Billy a real boost. Their nightmare run through the Umbrella complex would be over soon, he could feel it, the end in sight as surely as the new day would soon dawn.

  “My team probably went this way, cleared us a path,” Rebecca said, looking hopeful. She had to speak up to be heard over the cascade of water just outside, the surging pumps that took up half of the room. Her voice rang slightly against the metal walk that surrounded a pool of water in the room’s center. “He said they were going east. We’re practically out of here already.”

  “I thought you said Enrico took that elevator up,” Billy said.

  “Oh, right,” she said, her expression sagging. She blinked, and he realized how very tired she had to be. “Sorry. Forgot.”

  “Understandable,” Billy said. “But you’re right, we are practically out of here.” He touched the Magnum on his belt, the loose handcuff on his wrist banging into it, a sudden reminder of his life before the jeep accident. That life seemed so far away now, like it had happened to a different man... But it was still waiting for him, somewhere outside.

  Thoughts for later, for if. He managed a smile, patted the Magnum. “This is kind of a universal key—unlocks doors, clears out unwanted disease carriers, you name it.”

  Rebecca smiled back, started to say something—and stopped, staring into his eyes, both of them frozen at the sound of water splashing across the metal walk. As one, they turned to look—to see a giant rising up from the pool
a few meters away, a thing that Billy knew instantly was the monster she’d told him about, from the elevator. It was huge, white, covered with blood and sores; it reached out to pull itself from the pool with insanely long, knifelike claws, the tips screeching against the walk.

  Billy grabbed the Magnum, backing away, trying to push Rebecca behind him. She easily evaded his grasp, standing her ground with the shotgun, and Bill’s heroic ideals dropped away when the creature saw them and let out a terrible scream, a deep, mind-ripping sound of hatred, of lust not just to kill, but to rend and mutilate. Facing it alone wasn’t macho; it was suicidally stupid.

  “When it gets moving, it doesn’t maneuver well,” Rebecca said quickly, half under her breath. He had to strain to hear her over the rhythmic beat of the powerful pump engines. “If we can get it away from the door, get it running, we can get past it when it tries to turn.”

  Billy took careful aim at the thing’s rough-hewn face. It took a step toward them, and they both backed away. “How about we kill it instead?”

  “Don’t,” Rebecca said, her voice edged with panic. “You’ll just make it mad. What you’re seeing now is after two shotgun blasts, one of them almost point blank.”

  The thing took another step and lowered itself slightly, tensing its legs as though about to spring.

  “Run!”

  Billy didn’t need to hear it twice. They both turned and ran, pivoted left where the walk did. Behind them, two, three massive, ringing steps sounded against the protesting metal—and then the monster’s claws ripped down and across the wall at the corner, a tremendous shriek of sound as the thick steel curled up like wood shavings.

  Billy turned, raised the Magnum as the stopped monster slowly turned to face them.

  “Keep going!” he shouted to Rebecca, aiming for the pulsing red tumor half buried in its chest, what had to be its heart. The monster took a single step, its opaque gray eyes fixing on Billy, its claws raising.

  Billy fired, the weapon jumping in his hand, roaring, deafening. A hole erupted in the thing’s breast bone, not a direct hit to the heart but close. Blood poured from the hole, ran down its thick white gut. It howled, the sound even louder than the blast from the hand-cannon, and infinitely more deadly, but it didn’t go down.

 

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