– and she saw two more zombies standing below, but also a flash of movement disappearing into the alley, heading toward the bar. It was too fast to be one of the carriers. Jill only caught a glimpse of camo pants and a black combat boot, but it was enough to confirm what she'd hoped – a person. It was a living person. From the small set of steps that led down into the yard, Jill quickly dispatched both carriers, her heart pounding with hope. Camouflage gear. He or she was military, maybe someone sent in on reconnaissance; perhaps her little fantasy wasn't so far-fetched after all. She hurried past the fallen creatures, running as soon as
she hit the alley, up a few steps, ten meters of brick, and she was at the back door. Jill took a deep breath and opened the door care-fully, not wanting to surprise anyone who might be packing a gun…… and saw a zombie lurching across the tiled floor of the small bar, moaning hungrily as it reached out for a man in a tan vest, a man who pointed what looked like a small-caliber handgun at the closing creature and opened fire. Jill immediately joined him, accomplishing in two shots what he was unable to do in five; the carrier fell to its knees, and, with a final, desperate groan, it died, settling to the floor like liquid. Jill couldn't tell if it had been male or female, and at the moment, she didn't give a rat's ass. She turned her eager attention to the soldier, an in-troduction rising to her lips, and realized that it was Brad Vickers, Alpha team pilot for the disbanded
S.T.A.R.S. Brad, whose nickname had been Chicken-heart Vickers, who'd stranded the Alpha team at the Spencer estate when he'd been too afraid to stay, who'd crept out of town when he'd realized that Umbrella knew their names. A good pilot and a genius computer hacker, but when push came to shove, Brad Vickers was a grade-A weasel.
And I'm glad to see him, regardless."Brad, what are you doing here? Are you okay?"
She did her best to keep from asking how he'd man-aged to survive, though she had to wonder – espe-cially since he only seemed to be armed with a cheap.32 semi and had been the worst shot in the
S.T.A.R.S. As it was, he didn't look good – there were splatters of dried blood on his vest and his eyes were haunted, wide and rolling with barely controlled panic. "Jill! I didn't know you were still alive!" If he was glad to see her, he was hiding it well, and he still hadn't answered her question. "Yeah, well, I could say the same," she said, working not to sound too accusatory. He might have information she could use. "When did you get here? Do you know anything about what's going on outside of town?"
It was as though every word she said compounded his fear. His posture was tense, wound up, and he had the shakes. He opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. "Brad, what is it? What's wrong?" she asked, but he was already backing toward the front door of the bar, shaking his head from side to side. "It's coming for us," he breathed. "For the
S.T.A.R.S. The police are dead, they can't do anything to stop it, just like they couldn't stop this…" Brad waved one trembling hand at the bloody creature on the floor. "You'll see." He was on the edge of hysteria, his brown hair slick with sweat, his jaw clenched. Jill moved toward him, not sure what to do. His fear was contagious.
"What's coming, Brad?" "You'll see!"
With that, Brad turned and snatched the door open, blind panic tripping him as he stumbled out into the street and took off running without looking back. Jill took one step toward the closing door and stopped, suddenly thinking that maybe there were worse things than being alone. Trying to take care of anyone as she made her way out of Raccoon – particularly a hysterical man with a history of cowardice who was too scared to be reasonable – was probably a bad idea. She felt a chill thinking about what he'd said, though. What was coming, specifically for the S.T.A.R.S.? He seems to think I'll find out.
Unsettled, Jill mentally wished him luck and turned toward the polished bar, hoping that the ancient Rem-ington was still tucked under the register and wonder-ing what the hell Chickenheart Vickers was doing in Raccoon, and what, exactly, had him so terrified.
Mitch Hirami was dead. So were Sean Olson, and Deets, Bjorklund, and Waller, and Tommy, and the two new guys, who Carlos couldn't remember except one of them was always cracking his knuckles and the other one had freckles…
Stop it, just knock it off! It doesn't matter now, all that matters is getting us out of here.
The wails had fallen far enough behind for Carlos to feel they could stop for a minute, after running for what felt like forever. Randy's limp seemed to be getting worse with every step, and Carlos desperately needed to catch his breath, just to think…
…about how they died, about the woman who bit into Olson's throat and the blood that ran down her chin, and the way that Waller started to laugh, high and crazy, just before he threw his weapon away and let himself be taken, and the sound of somebody screaming prayers at the uncaring sky… Stop it!
They leaned against the back wall of a convenience store, a fenced recycling area with only one way in and a clear view of the street. There was no sound except the faraway singing of birds, wafting over them on a cooling, late afternoon breeze that smelled faintly of rot. Randy had slid into a sitting position, pulling his right boot off to take a look at his wound. His lower pant leg was shiny wet with blood, as was the collar of his shirt. He and Randy were the only two that had made it, and just barely; already, it seemed like some impossible dream. The others in the squad had already gone down, and there were at least six of the cannibal zombies still coming at him and Randy. Carlos had fired again and again, the smells of burning gunpowder and blood combining with the stench of decay, all of it making him dizzy with adrenaline-driven horror, so disori-ented that he hadn't seen Randy fall, hadn't realized it until he'd heard the sound of Randy's skull smacking into the pavement, loud even over the cries of the dead. A crawling one had grabbed Randy and bitten through the leather of his boot; Carlos had slammed the butt of his M16 down, breaking its neck, his mind screaming uselessly that it had been eating Randy's ankle, and he'd scooped up the half-conscious soldier with a strength he didn't know he possessed. And they had run, Carlos dragging his injured comrade away from the slaughter, his thoughts incoherent and wild and, in their own way, as terrifying to him as the rest of it. For a few minutes, he'd been loco, unable to understand what had happened, what was still hap-pening…
"Aw, Jesus, man…"
Carlos looked down at the sound of Randy's voice, noticing with some alarm that his words were a little slurred, and saw the ragged edges of a deep bite maybe two inches above the top of his foot. Thick blood oozed steadily out, the inside of Randy's boot drenched with it.
"Bit me, goddamn thing bit right in. But it was dead, Carlos. They were all dead… weren't they?" Randy looked up at him, his eyes dazed with pain and some-thing more, something that neither of them could af-ford – confusion, bad enough that Randy could barely focus. Concussion, maybe. Whatever it was, Randy needed a hospital. Carlos crouched next to him, his heart sick as he tore off a piece of Randy's shirt and quickly folded it into a compress.
We're screwed, there were no cops out there, no paramedics, this city is dying or already dead. If we want help, we're going to have to find it ourselves, and
he's in no shape to fight. "This may hurt a little, 'mono, but we gotta stop you from getting your boot all wet," Carlos said, trying to sound relaxed as he pressed the folded material against Randy's bleeding ankle. There was no point in scaring him, especially if he was as whacked out as Carlos thought. "Hold it down tight, okay?" Randy clenched his jaw, a violent tremor running through him, but he did as Carlos asked and held the makeshift bandage in place. As Randy leaned forward, Carlos studied the back of his head, wincing inwardly at the bloody, slightly misshapen spot beneath his tan-gled black curls. It didn't seem to be bleeding anymore, at least. "We gotta get outta here, Carlos," Randy said. "Let's go home, okay? I want to go home." "Soon," Carlos said softly. "Let's just sit here and rest for another minute, and then we'll go."
He thought about all of the wrecked cars they'd run past, the piles of broken furniture and wood and brick in the streets, hastily assembled blockades. Assuming they could even find a car with keys in it, just about every street was impassable. Carlos didn't have a pilot's license, but he had flown a helicopter a few times – fine, if they happened to stumble across an airport.
We'll never make it on foot, though. Even if Randy wasn't hurt, the entire U.B.C.S. was taken out, or damn near close. There's gotta be hundreds, maybe thou-sands of those things out there.
If they could find other survivors, group to-gether… but tracking anyone down in this nightmare would be a nightmare all its own. The thought of Trent's restaurant occurred to him briefly, but he ig-nored it; to hell with that crazy shit, they needed to get out of town, and they needed help to do it. The squad leaders were the only ones who'd known the plan for pickup, or had radios, and there was no way Carlos was going to go back -
– but I don't have to, do I?
He closed his eyes for a minute, realizing that he'd missed the obvious; maybe he was more freaked than he thought. There was more than one radio in the world; all he had to do was find one. Send out a call to the transports – hell, to anyone listening – and wait for somebody to show up. "I don't feel so good," Randy said, so quietly that Carlos almost didn't hear him, the slur of his words more pronounced than before. "Itches, it itches." Carlos squeezed his shoulder lightly, the heat from Randy's feverish skin radiating out from beneath his
T-shirt. "You're going to be okay, bro, just hang on, I'm going to get us out of here."
He sounded confident enough. Carlos only wished that he could convince himself.
SIX
TED MARTIN, A THIN MAN IN HIS LATE 30s, had been shot several times in the head. Nicholai couldn't tell if he'd been murdered or if he'd been put down after contracting the virus, and he didn't care; what mattered was that Martin, whose official title was Personal and Political Liaison to the Chief of Police, had saved Nicholai the time it would have taken to track him down. "Most kind of you," Nicholai said, smiling down at the very dead Watchdog. He'd also had the courtesy to die near where he was supposed to be, in the detective squadroom's office of the RPD's east wing.
An excellent start to my adventure; if they're all this easy, it will be a very short night.
Nicholai stepped over the body and crouched down next to the floor safe in the corner, quickly dialing in the simple four-digit combination given to him by his Umbrella contact: 2236. The steel door swung open, re-vealing a few papers – one looked like a map for the police station – a box of shotgun shells, and what would surely become Nicholai's best friend until he left Raccoon: a state-of-the-art cellular modem, designed to look like a piece of shit but more advanced than any-thing on the market. Grinning, he lifted out the PC lap-top and carried it to the desk, the safe door closing itself behind him. His trip to the station had been reasonably uneventful, except for the seven undead he'd dispatched point-blank to avoid too much noise; they were embarrassingly easy to kill, as long as one paid attention to one's surround-ings. He hadn't yet come across any of Umbrella's pets, the only real challenge he expected to face; there was one nicknamed "brain sucker" that he was very much looking forward to meeting, a multi-legged crawler with killing claws…
One thing at a time; right now, you need information.
He'd already committed the names and faces of his victims to memory and had a general idea of where each one was supposed to make contact, if not neces-sarily when; all of the Watchdogs were on different schedules, subject to change but mostly accurate. Mar-tin, for instance, was due to report to Umbrella from a computer terminal at the RPD building's front desk at 1750 hours, about twenty minutes from now; his last report should have been just after noon.
"Let's see if you succeeded, Officer Martin,"
Nicholai said, quickly punching in the codes he'd ac-quired to access Umbrella's updated progress reports.
"Martin, Martin… ah, there you are!"
The policeman had missed his last two assigned win-dows, suggesting that he'd been dead or incapacitated for at least nine hours now. No information to collect there. Nicholai carefully read the numbers on the other Watchdogs, pleased with what he saw. Of the eight Watchdogs left after Martin, three others had failed to make their last assigned reports – one of the scientists, one Umbrella worker, and the woman who worked for the city's water department. Assuming they were dead – and Nicholai was willing to bet that they were -
– that left only five.
Two soldiers, two scientists, and the other Umbrella man…
Nicholai frowned, looking at the designated contact points for each of them. One scientist, Janice Thomlm-son, would be in the underground laboratory facility, the other at the hospital near the city park; the Um-brella worker was to report in from an allegedly aban-doned water treatment facility on the outskirts of town, a cover for its use as an Umbrella chemical testing site. Nicholai didn't foresee any problems finding them, but both of the soldier Watchdogs had been taken off the map. "Where are you going to be, men…," Nicholai said absently, tapping at the keys, his frustration growing. At his last check only the night before, they had both been assigned to call in from the St. Michael Clock Tower…
Shit!
There they were, their names listed next to his; both men had been moved to portable status, just like him. They'd report in from Umbrella laptops or wherever was most convenient, and were only required to file once a day -which meant that they could be anywhere in Raccoon City, anywhere at all. A seething haze of red enveloped him, tearing at him. Without thinking, Nicholai charged across the of-fice and kicked Martin's body as hard as he could, once, twice, venting his rage, feeling a deep satisfac-tion at the wet sounds his boot made, the jerking move-ment of the body and the crunch of ribs giving way -
– and then it was over, and he was himself once again, still frustrated but in control. He exhaled sharply and moved back to the desk, ready to revise his plans. It was simply going to take longer to find them, that was all; it wasn't the end of the world. And perhaps they would fail to report in, conveniently dying just like Martin and the other three. He could hope but wouldn't count on it. What he could count on was his own perseverance and skill. Umbrella wouldn't send in their pickup for nearly a week – the longest, they believed, that they could keep the disaster quiet – unless the Watchdogs called in with complete results, unlikely at best. With six days to find only five people, Nicholai was certain that he would be the only one left to pick up. "I won't even need all six," Nicholai said, nodding firmly at Martin's sprawled, lumpy corpse. "Three days, I'm sure I can do it in three."
With that, Nicholai leaned forward and started to call up the maps he would need, happy again. Jill hadn't been able to find any shells for the 12-gauge, but she took it anyway, aware that her ammo wouldn't last forever; it would make a good club, and she might find shells for it later. She'd just about de-cided to try climbing over one of the western blockades when she saw something that changed her mind, some-thing she had fervently hoped never to see again.
A Hunter. Like the ones at the estate, in the tunnels.
She'd stood on the fire escape outside of an uptown boutique, seen it in the street just past one of the vans that blocked the fire escape's alley. It didn't see her; she watched it lope by and out of sight, a little different than the ones from before, but close enough – the same strangely graceful, malignant carriage, the heavy, curved talons, the dark mud green color. She held her breath, her stomach in knots, remembering…… hunched over so that its impossibly long arms al-most touched the stone floor of the tunnel, both its hands and feet tipped with thick, brutal claws. Tiny, light-colored eyes peering out at her from aflat reptil-ian skull, its tremendous, high-pitched screech echoing through the dark underground just before it sprang…
She'd killed it, but it had taken her fifteen 9mm rounds to do it, an entire magazine. Later, Barry had told her that he'd heard them referred to as Hunters, one of Umbrella's bio-organic weapons. There had been other kinds on the estate – feral, skinned-looking dogs; a kind of giant, flesh-eating plant that Chris and Rebecca had destroyed; spiders the size of small cattle; and the dark, mutant things with bladed hooks for hands, the ones that hung from the ceiling of the es-tate's boiler room, skittering overhead like spined mon-keys.
And the Tyrant, somehow the worst because you could see that it had been human once; before the surgeries, before the genetic tampering and the T-virus.
So it wasn't just the T-virus loose in Raccoon. As awful as the realization was, it wasn't exactly shocking; Umbrella had been messing around with some very dangerous stuff, breeding slaughtering, nightmare chil-dren like some aberrant God without preparing for the inevitable consequences; sometimes, nightmares didn't just go away.
Unless… unless they did this on purpose.No. If they'd meant to destroy Raccoon City, theywould have evacuated their own people… wouldn'tthey?
It was a question that haunted her on her journey to the police station. Seeing the Hunter had made up her mind for her about what to do next; she simply had to have more ammo, and she knew there'd be some in the
S.T.A.R.S. office, in the gun safe – 9mm, probably shotgun shells, maybe even one of Barry's old re-volvers. The station wasn't too far away, at least. She stuck to the growing shadows, easily dodging the few zom-bies she passed; many of them had decayed too much to move any faster than a slow walk. One of the gates she had to pass through to get to the station had been heavily roped and knotted, the knots soaked with oil. She gave herself a mental kick for forget-ting to bring a knife; lucky for her she'd picked up a lighter at the Bar Jack, although she worried some about the smoke drawing attention to her position until she got through the gate and saw the heap of burning debris farther ahead, just in front of Um-brella's medical sales offices. Damage left over from the riots, she guessed. She thought about stopping to put out the flames, but there didn't seem to be any danger of their spreading in the cement and brick al-leyway. So, here she was, standing at the gates to the RPD courtyard. The rioting had been bad here. Trashed cars, broken barricades, and orange emergency cones littered the street, though there were no bodies amidst the rubble. To her right, a fire hydrant spewed a foun-tain of hissing water into the air. The gentle sound of splashing water might even have been pleasant in an-other circumstance – a hot summer day, children laughing and playing. Knowing that no fireman or city worker would be coming to fix the gushing hydrant made her ache inside, and the thought of chil-dren… it was too much; she blocked it out, deter-mined not to let herself start thinking about things she couldn't fix. She had enough to worry about.
Such as stocking up on supplies… so what are you waiting for, anyway? A written invitation?
Jill took a deep breath and pushed the gates open, wincing at the squeal of rusty metal. A quick scan told her the small, fenced yard was empty; she lowered her weapon, relieved, and carefully closed the gates before moving toward the heavy wooden doors of the RPD building. A lot of cops had died out in the streets, which would make this easier for her, as terrible as that was; not as many carriers to deal with once she got in-side… Sqreeak! Behind her, the gates swung open. Jill spun, almost firing at the figure that crashed into the yard, until she realized who it was.
"Brad!"
He stumbled toward the sound of her voice, and she saw that he was badly wounded. He clutched his right side, blood dripping over his fingers, a look of com-plete terror on his face as he reached toward her with his free hand, gasping.
"juh… Jill!"
She stepped toward him, so focused on him that when he suddenly disappeared, she didn't understand what had happened. A wall of black had sprung up be-tween them, a blackness that emitted a deep, rumbling howl of fury, that started toward Brad and shook the ground with each massive step. "Sstaarrss," it clearly said, the word nearly hidden beneath a wavering growl like that of a wild animal, and Jill knew what it was without seeing its face; she knew it like she knew her own dreams.
Tyrant.
Brad fell backwards, shaking his head as if to deny the approaching creature, staggering in a half circle and stopping when his back hit brick. In the split second before it reached him, Jill could see it in profile; time seemed to stop for that instant, allowing her to really see it, to see that it wasn't her nightmare Tyrant, but no less horrible for that; in fact, it was worse. Between seven and eight feet tall, humanoid, its shoulders impossibly broad, its arms longer than they should have been. Only its hands and head were visi-ble, the rest of its strangely proportioned body clothed in black, except for what appeared to be tentacles, slightly pulsing ropes of flesh that were only half tucked under its collar, their points of origin unseen. Its hairless skin was the color and texture of badly healed scar tissue, and its face looked as though whoever had designed the creature had decided not to bother, instead pulling a too-tight sack of torn leather over its rudimen-tary skull. Misshapen white slits for eyes were set too low and separated by an irregular line of thick surgical staples. Its nose was barely formed, but the dominant feature by far was its mouth, or lack thereof; the lower half of its face was teeth, giant and square, lipless, set against dark red gums. Time started again when the creature reached out and covered Brad's entire face with one hand, still growling as Brad tried to say something, panting in high, wheezing gasps beneath its palm…… and there was an awful, wet squishing sound, heavy but slick, like someone punching a hole in meat. Jill saw a flesh tentacle sticking out from the back of Brad's neck and understood that he was dead, that he would bleed out in seconds. Numbly, she saw that the ropelike appendage was moving, swaying like a blind snake, droplets of blood falling from its muscular length. The Tyrant-thing grasped Brad's skull, and in a single, fluid motion, it lifted the dead pilot and tossed him aside, retracting the killing tentacle back into its sleeve before Brad hit the ground. "Sstaarrss," it said again, turning to face her, and as it focused its attention to her, Jill felt a fear greater than any she'd ever known. The Beretta would be useless. She turned and sprinted, barreling through the doors to the RPD, slam-ming and dead-bolting them behind her, all on instinct; she was too frightened to think about what she was doing, too frightened to do anything but back away from the double doors as the monster slammed into them, rattling them on their hinges. They held. Jill was very still, listening to the pound of blood in her ears, waiting for the next blow. Long seconds dragged by, and nothing happened, but full minutes passed before she dared to look away, and even the realization that it had stopped for the moment brought her no relief. Brad had been right, it was coming for them and now that he was dead, it would be coming for her.
SEVEN
GOD HELP ME, I'VE FINALLY SEEN IT FOR MYSELF;God help us all.They lied to us. Dr. Robison and the Umbrella peopleheld a press conference at the hospital just this morning,and they damn near insisted that there's no need topanic – that the cases being called in were isolated events,that the victims were suffering from the flu; not, accord-ing to them, the so-called cannibal disease that the
S.T.A.R.S. were going on about in July, in spite of what a few "paranoid" citizens are now saying. Chief Irons was there, too, he backed the docs up and reiterated his views on the defunct S.T.A.R.S.'s incompetence; case closed, right? Nothing to worry about. We were on our way back to the office from the press conference, south on Cole Street, and there was a commo-tion holding up traffic, a couple of stopped cars and a gath-ering crowd. No cops on the scene. I thought it was some minor accident and started to back up, but Dave wanted to get a few shots; he still had two rolls of film left from the hospital, what the hell. We got out and suddenly people were running, screaming for help, and we saw three pedes-trians down in the middle of the street, and there was blood everywhere. The attacker was young, barely twenty, white male – he was straddling an older man, and… My hands are shaking, I don't know how to say it, I don't want to say it but it's my job. People have to know. I can't let this get to me. He was eating one of the older man's eyes. The other two victims were dead, slaughtered, an elderly woman and a younger one, both of them with bloody throats and faces. The younger woman's abdomen had been ripped open. It was chaos, total hysteria – crying, shouting, even some crazy laughter. Dave snapped two pies and then threw up on himself. I wanted to do something, I did, but those people were already dead and I was afraid. The young man slurped away, digging his fingers into the man's other eye, seemingly oblivious to everything else; he was actually moaning like he couldn't get enough, gore all over him. We heard the sirens and backed off along with everyone else. Most people left, but a few stayed, pale and sick and frightened. I got the story from a chubby shopkeeper who couldn't stop wringing his hands, though there wasn't much else to tell – the kid apparently just wandered onto the street and grabbed a woman, started biting her. The shopkeeper said the woman's name was Joelle something-or-other, and she was walking with her mother, a Mrs. Mur-ray (the shopkeeper didn't know her first name). Mrs. Murray tried to stop the attack, and the kid turned on her. A couple of men tried to help, jumping the kid, and he managed to get one of them, too. After that, nobody tried to help anymore. The cops showed up and before they even looked at the mess in the street – at the freakshow kid lunching on his fellow man – they cleared and secured the scene. Three squad cars surrounded the attacker, blocking him from view. The shopkeeper was actually told to close up and go home, along with the rest of us. When I told one of the offi-cers that Dave and I were with the press, he confiscated Dave's camera; said it was evidence, which is total and utter bullshit, like they have a right… Listen to me, worried about freedom of the press at this point. It doesn't matter. At four o'clock this afternoon, one hour ago, Mayor Harris declared martial law; blockades have been set up all over the place, and we've been cut off from the outside. According to Harris, the city's been quar-antined so that the "unfortunate illness that is plaguing some of our citizens" won't spread. He wouldn't call it the cannibal disease, but there's obviously no question – and according to our police scanner, the attacks are multiply-ing exponentially. I believe that it may already be too late for all of us. The disease isn't airborne or we'd all have it, but the evidence strongly suggests that you get it when you're bitten by one of them, just like in the movies I used to watch on the Dou-ble Creature Feature when I was a boy. That would explain the incredible growth rate of the attacks – but it also tells me that unless the cavalry comes in very soon, we're all going to die, one way or another. The cops have closed down the press, but I'm going to try to get the word out anyway, even if I have to go door-to-door. Dave, Tom, Kathy, Mr. Bradson – everyone else has gone home to be with their families. They don't care about letting the people know anymore, but it's all I have left. I don't want to I just heard glass breaking downstairs. Somebody's coming.
There wasn't any more. Carlos lowered the crum-pled sheets he'd found, placing them on the reporter's desk, his mouth a grim line. He'd killed two zombies in the hallway… maybe one of them had been the writer, a distressing thought made all the worse by its application -how long had it taken for the writer to change? And if he's right about the disease, how long does Randy have?
A police scanner and some kind of handheld radio sat on a countertop across the room, but suddenly all he could think of was Randy, downstairs and getting sicker, waiting for Carlos to come back. He'd held up pretty well so far, managing to crawl through two of the blockades with only a little help, but by the time they'd reached the Raccoon Press building, he'd hardly been able to stand up on his own. Carlos had left him propped up beneath a dead pay phone on the first floor, not wanting to drag him up the stairs; a few small fires were smoldering on the lower landing, and Carlos had been afraid that Randy might trip and get burned…… which might be the least of his worries right now. Puta, what a balls-up. Why didn't they tell us what we were getting into?
