Resident Evil. Retribution (12 page)

“What the hell are those things?” Barry echoed.

“I don’t know about you,” Sergei said, “but they aren’t giving me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.”

Leon put a fresh clip in his assault rifle.

“They’re infected by the Las Plagas virus. Depending on the strength of the infection, the subject retains motor skills, some degree of intelligence.” He shrugged. “It can also develop unnatural strength and speed.”

Barry snorted.

“Always with the good news.”

We’d better take them out quickly, and get the hell out of here,
Luther thought to himself. He opened his mouth to speak…

When more vehicles pulled into the square—flatbed trucks and pick-ups mounted with heavy machine guns and rocket launchers. The plague soldiers, as Luther thought of them, were dressed in tattered Russian military uniforms. And every set of eyes glowed hellish red.

“Aaaaand it gets better,” Barry remarked dryly.

A plague soldier on a flatbed truck racked back the slide of a machine gun. To Luther, it looked like a small cannon.

“Fall back!” Leon yelled. “Everyone fall back!”

They ran for cover.

Alice and Ada strolled down the middle of a deserted New York street. Bodegas, brownstones, and shops crowded each side of the street. Cars were parked in neat rows. Dimly visible in the distance, two figures were coming toward them.

Alice reached for her holstered auto pistol.

Ada put a hand on her arm.

“They’re okay.” She waved—and instantly one of the figures waved back. Something about it seemed strange.

As they drew closer, Alice realized that they were approaching a giant mirror. It cut across the street, reflecting the cars and buildings—and the two women. Ada gestured toward the mirror.

“The edges of the test environments are all like this,” she said. “Gives the illusion of depth.” They moved close to the glass, and Ada waved her hand over it. Suddenly an illuminated keypad appeared on the reflective wall.

“Most scenarios,” Ada continued, “are run at the center of an environment. The test subjects may glimpse this from a distance, but rarely get a chance to reach the edges.” She tapped the keyboard, keying in a number, and a mirrored door appeared in the glass. “After you…”

Alice stepped forward.

“Through the looking glass.”

They stepped through the door and found themselves facing a large steel wall. Ada went to a set of stairs and started to climb.

“This way.”

As they approached the top of the stairs, Alice paused, looked up—and saw a blue sky.

“It’s day!”

“It’s a sky dome,” Ada said, shaking her head without stopping. “Just paint.” Sure enough, looking closer, Alice could see the edges of the painting. “Doesn’t hold up too well if you stare at it for long,” Ada added. Alice hurried to catch up with her.

“How did people believe it?”

“When they were running a simulation, no one was looking at the clouds.”

They reached the top of the stairs and passed through a door, into another set… an iconic suburban neighborhood. It was familiar to Alice. But she wasn’t sure why. Some faded memory of a dream…

In front of them was a four-car pile-up—at the foot of a sign announcing the gateway to the
SUNDOWN MEADOWS
gated housing project. One home was a blackened ruin, and the wreckage of a helicopter poked out of a nearby garage. In the middle of the intersection was a crashed Prius, upside down like an overturned turtle.

Alice found the sight disturbing, but she wasn’t sure why.

Ada looked around, frowning.

“This is our rendezvous point.” She looked at her countdown watch, causing Alice to peer over her shoulder. Less than fifty minutes remained.

“Where are they?” Ada murmured.

Alice caught a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye. She turned, saw a curtain dropping at the upstairs window of a large house.

“The house behind us—there’s someone moving,” she said quietly. “Upstairs window.” Ada turned and looked, but the movement didn’t repeat.

“Maybe,” Alice whispered, “that’s where your friends are. Maybe they’re keeping their heads down. It’d make sense. The troopers can’t be far off.”

Ada frowned dubiously, but she led the way across the street, to the big house. They hesitated on the porch, weapons in hand. Alice reached out and turned the knob, pushed the door inward.

The anteroom was a mess. There was a wreckage of hall furniture and broken banisters—and the body of an Undead, once a man, impaled on what remained of the staircase.

Then Alice saw something else in the debris—it was her.

“What is it?” Ada asked from nearby.

Alice was lying dead on the floor. Her face had been ripped apart, but there was just enough left to identify her.

Her mouth felt papery dry.

“They used clones of me…”

Ada nodded slowly.

“Of course. You were one of the basic models.”

“Basic models…” Alice shook her head in disgust, then looked at her companion. “Why would your associates be in here?”

“We don’t know that they…”

There was a creak of floorboards, a bumping sound from upstairs.

Alice drew her pistol and started climbing. Her mind was racing, though, making it difficult to focus.

Have I been here before?
She shook her head.
No. It’s impossible.

She passed a rotting Undead and looked carefully, half expecting it to come alive. But it seemed to have died for good. Finally she got to the top of the stairs— where there was more disarray. An overturned table, clothing strewn everywhere. She walked down the hallway, feeling strangely drawn to explore it. She’d definitely seen something at the window.

Maybe just an Undead.

She hoped it would be something else—maybe Ada’s team. Maybe a survivor.

Not likely…

She reached the door to the nursery—it was slightly open. No sign of a baby, or the family that once lived here. But there was something… someone.

The closet.

She moved past the broken crib and, licking her dry lips, she put her hand on the louver doors. Slowly pushed them aside—

The Undead leapt out at her. It knocked her back, tackling her, and they crashed heavily to the floor. Alice straight-armed the creature, knocking it back from her just enough that the mandibles emerging from its gnashing, reeking jaws snapped the air an inch from the end of her nose.

When the thing tried to force itself closer to her throat, Alice twisted, brought a knee up, and flipped the creature over so it crashed into a dresser, splintering it into a million pieces. She rolled the other way, got to her feet just as her slavering opponent was up, charging at her.

She fired, blowing off the top of its skull, and stepped aside to let the corpse fall limply beside her. Then she heard a scuffling sound from behind.

Spinning, she was startled to see a little girl in the closet, pushing aside the blankets that had hidden her, jumping up and rushing at her. Her first instinct was to shoot it, but she stopped herself—it wasn’t an Undead charging her. It was a healthy human child.

As she recovered from the shock, Alice realized that the child who hugged her was deaf, and spoke to her in hand signs. Thanks to her training, Alice understood.

“You
came back!”
There were tears of joy in the little girl’s eyes. “I hid—just like you told me to! I love you, Mom, I love you so much!”

Mom? What…
Alice sank to the ground in shock, still holding the child in her arms.

The girl began to calm down. She looked up and signed again.

“What happened to your clothes? And your hair?”

Times Square was lit by strong ceiling lights. Jill Valentine and her squad halted in the midst of a forgotten traffic jam. The cars were there but the drivers had gone, as if they’d just gotten out and walked away.

Strange thoughts came to Jill, sometimes…

She led her squad onward, toward the enemy.

Why were they the enemy? Because the scarab said so. Umbrella said so. Reason enough, wasn’t it?

An electric shock punished her, like a bee sting to the skull—a shot of electricity, warning her that she was having unauthorized thoughts.

Just keep going,
the scarab said.
Do your job.

The traffic lights hung like dead things; the cars showed no headlights, the signs were dead.

“How are our guests?” Jill asked. The African-American clone trooper put on a set of tactical glasses, checked the surveillance feed.

“Still alive.”

“Let’s change that,” Jill said firmly.

“Yes ma’am,” the trooper replied. He tapped the tactical glasses, peered at the heads-up display, and issued a few commands.

Luther and the others had taken shelter in the GUM department store—where they were trying to repel an army of Las Plagas Undead.

The strike team was crouched behind the display case podiums for the department store’s front windows—the window glass was gone, shot away, and the mannequins were blown to pieces. Heads and limbs littered the floor around them.

The surreal nature of their situation struck him as he blasted at a motorcyclist plague soldier riding by. It hadn’t felt so strange to be firing from the old prison they’d taken over, back in Los Angeles. But this place—with its ornate, neoclassical architecture commissioned by Catherine the Second—was a strange bunker in which to be hunkered down.

Luther popped shots from his auto pistol, out the store windows past remnants of mannequins wearing the hot new fashions of a few years back. He had the pistol set on single-shot to conserve ammo. The Undead hadn’t organized into a charge, yet. They roared back and forth in front of the store, firing their weapons and presenting surprisingly inviting targets.

Windows shattered under the impacts of bullets, rocket launchers blew up pieces of the store’s ornate façade—but so far no one on the team had been hit. It had been a close thing, running in here with bullets from that machine gun strafing up right behind them. But they’d made it to good cover.

Only, it wasn’t going to last.

The plague soldiers, dim-witted though they were, would inevitably charge into the store. The strike team was heavily outnumbered.

What’s gonna happen if we don’t get out of here,
Luther wondered,
before those explosives go off?

Suddenly the fighting dropped off for a moment. The plague soldiers seemed to be regrouping.

And then they began to advance, moving forward like a wall of rotting flesh, eyes ablaze, firing as they came.

“They can’t shoot for shit!” Barry said as the bullets cut the air overhead.

“Yeah, but there’s plenty of them!” Leon said, firing a burst from his machine rifle. He hit a motorcycle’s gas tank, and it exploded in an orange ball of flame, the Undead driver continuing to drive it, the ball of flame rocketing along on two wheels until it crashed through a false wall.

A rippling line of Las Plagas plague soldiers came at them, firing, creating a storm of bullets overhead. If Luther had stood up, he’d have been perforated— turned into raw hamburger. The noise of it racketed and echoed in the GUM store spaces; like someone was pounding directly on Luther’s eardrums.

The enemy fire slackened for a moment. Leon jumped up and unleashed a long stream of machine rifle fire. The strafe cut a swath through the onrushing soldiers, many of them falling—but others came after them, stepping on the bodies of the fallen without even glancing down. Others, ripped across the middle by bullets, kept staggering onward.

“And they don’t go down easy,” Leon growled, as he ducked down again.

Luther fired several more single shots, bringing down a couple of their attackers, And then, all at once, the enemy gunfire stopped.

Silence—except for the ringing in his ears.

“Now what?” Leon asked.

“Maybe they’re giving up?” Barry suggested. Luther had to look to see if he was serious.

Leon gave Barry a look of mild disgust.

Luther looked back through the ruined window, wondered how the plague soldiers were communicating. He hadn’t seen any of them giving orders, but somehow they’d all decided to hold off for a moment… and they’d decided it all at once.

Some kind of telepathic connection, maybe?

And what were they up to?

Then he saw it. On the back of a flatbed truck, a plague soldier was leveling a rocket launcher—aiming it right at the department store. And the deep cough of the rocket launcher sounded as he fired.

Oh, crap!

It was headed straight for Leon.

“RPG!” Luther shouted. “Down!”

They flattened, and the RPG round exploded, blowing out a nearby chunk of the GUM façade. Debris rained down on them. His ears ringing more than ever, Luther saw Leon lifting up to look accusingly at Barry.

Barry just shrugged, causing bits of debris to fall from his shoulders.

“Can’t be right all the time.”

A new sound caused Luther to turn. The plague soldiers had used the rocket attack as their moment, their opportunity. While the smoke was still clearing, they charged, pouring in through the ruined gap made by the RPG shell.

Luther and Leon jumped up, fighting side by side as the plague soldiers rushed them. Bullets whipped past—then a soldier was leaping at Leon, swinging its weapon like a club. Leon ducked under the swing and pivoted into a kick, slamming the Undead in the jaw with his boot, drilling shards of broken bone into its brain.

Luther kicked another in the balls, was surprised at how much effect it had—the Undead buckled up, and Luther stuck the barrel of his auto pistol in its mouth, firing—splashing the thing’s brains into the glowing red eyes of the soldier coming after it, temporarily blinding the creature so that he was able to yank his pistol free and mix the first one’s brains with the shattered gray matter of the second.

Leon shot two other charging plague soldiers, delivering quick, effective headshots, and then another came in—and Luther saw with a chill it was the one with the chainsaw. The big machine, held in both its hands, was grinding away, roaring, the chain whirring. Tony shot at the Undead but it blocked with the saw, the rounds ricocheting from the blade’s metal.