Resident Evil. Retribution

by John Shirley

  “What are you talking about?” she signed.

  Alice smiled, and replied.

  “Talking about where to go now.”

  “Did you decide?” she asked.

  “I guess we’ll go see… the White House.”

  Tom was up on the “sail,” the submarine’s conning tower, gazing almost rapturously at Santa Catalina. Dori and Judy climbed up the ladder to stand beside him.

  “Ladies, look at that!” He waved with a flourish. “I think that’s Catalina, right there! I don’t see any Undead, and if it’s clear of them… Oh, that’d be too much to hope for.”

  “I’d love to get off this—” Judy began. But she didn’t finish saying it. She was interrupted by a bullet.

  The shot cracked off one of the transmission fixtures on the conning tower. They heard the echoing bang of the shot a moment later.

  “Get down!” Tom said, flattening.

  They all dropped down, with the periscopes, pipes, and antennae providing good cover.

  “Dori, get back inside,” Judy whispered.

  “If she tries, she might be too exposed,” Tom said urgently.

  “Someone shot at us?” Dori said. Her voice was quavering—that bullet had wounded her hopes.

  “Yeah, kid, they did,” Tom said. “That’s the bad news. The good news is, most of the Undead can’t shoot. Would there be Las Plagas on that island? Not hardly.”

  “So that means regular people…” Judy said.

  “Got to be.” Another bullet cracked by overhead. “And they’re not even trying very hard to hit us. I got a feeling all this is to scare us off.”

  Someone yelled from shore. It was too far to hear what they were saying, but the tone wasn’t friendly. Tom peeked over the edge with his binoculars. He could see something that looked like a weathered old concrete bunker, and solar power panels on a multilevel, modern-style house. He panned back and forth, looking at the beaches, what he could see of the harbor.

  No movement, except birds.

  “There really don’t seem to be any Undead on that island,” he said wonderingly. “They’d be attracted to the noise, and would be out here slaverin’ after us on the beaches.”

  “We can’t go to an island occupied by people who want to kill us,” Judy said.

  “I don’t think they’re serious,” Tom said. “They really seem to be trying to scare us off. If they were scumbags, then they’d want us to come into the island so they could kill and rob us. Take all our stuff.” He made up his mind. “I’m going to take a chance, here, Judy. I’ve got a feeling about this…”

  “Tom—don’t.”

  But he got up to a crouch, and rushed to the back of the sail. Climbed down a ladder to the Zodiac-style rubber boat that was tied up there, under a tarp. The conning tower protected him from being seen by whoever was shooting at them. His hands shaking, heart pounding, wondering if he were being a damned fool, he untied the black-rubber boat, and lowered it down into the water. Then he kept hold of it, and slipped down the side of the hull.

  It was awkward climbing onto it—he nearly overturned it, but stabilized himself. The battery-powered engine had been provided by Umbrella, and he switched it on—it hummed. He put it in neutral, then unzipped his coveralls, and pulled off his T-shirt. The tee would have to do for a white flag. He put the coveralls back on, skin prickly with the chill wind off the sea.

  Tom pulled in the line then took hold of the rudder, put the engine on drive, and took a deep breath. Was it the waves tossing the boat making him queasy—or fear?

  “Tom! Wait!” Judy called to him.

  “Got to go this alone!” he said. “Hold on…” Then he headed the boat out, over the choppy waves, toward the island, his T-shirt in his right hand.

  He got a few yards past the forward end of the sub before they started shooting again. Two rifle shots cracked, the bullets kicking up the water just in front of him. He could see smoke drifting from a firing slit on the bunker. Another muddled yell of warning echoed across to him.

  He licked his lips, took the white T-shirt in his right hand, raised it over his head and waved it. He raised his left hand to show it was empty.

  “No weapons!” he yelled, loud as he could. “Got no gun here! Peace talk!”

  “You shouldn’t even be out of bed, Bim!” Lony said. “Shooting at people… you might have an infection, or you’re gonna get one and we don’t have but a few doses of antibiotics left.”

  Lony was sitting stiffly in a chair behind the firing slit of the bunker, his leg bandaged, rifle in hand, glaring out at the sea.

  “They’re a submarine,” Jack said. He had come in with Lony. “Why are you shooting at a submarine? I mean, they might shoot a missile at us or something!”

  “I saw ’em in the binoculars,” Bim said through gritted teeth. “They’re not military people!” There was sweat beading on his forehead. “Look what happened when those other losers, came to the island. We have to keep everyone away!”

  Jack peered through another slit.

  “One of them is coming in a boat!”

  “Yeah,” Bim growled. “I tried to warn him back. I’m gonna try to hit that boat…”

  But then Jack saw someone else, below. It was Uncle Chung, walking across the beach, waving.

  “Chung’s down there!” Lony said, looking over Bim’s shoulder. “Hold your damn fire!”

  Jack grabbed up his rifle and ran outside, down the path toward the beach. He almost flew down the hillside. Puffing, he reached Chung’s side. Saw that he wasn’t armed. Uncle Chung looked at him disapprovingly.

  “You should not be here,” he said. “Not safe yet.”

  “You’re the one came down without a gun.”

  “Safer, sometimes. It all depends. That man does not appear to be armed.” He pointed at the man tooling slowly toward them in the black-rubber boat.

  “He could have a gun down in that boat, somewhere you can’t see.”

  “I don’t think so. I would have…” He shrugged. “Anyway, don’t point your gun at him. Is Bim still preparing to shoot?”

  “I think Lony’s got him in hand now. He was pretty freaked out by that bunch that came at us before”

  “Yes. And wounded. A big wound.”

  They watched as the red-faced, middle-aged man with the broad, smiling mouth came toward them, his little boat bobbing in the surf. Every so often he raised both hands, waving the white flag—it looked like a yellowed T-shirt.

  “Don’t shoot!” he called.

  “I’m going to cover him, Chung, but I won’t fire unless… you know.”

  Chung looked at him, then nodded.

  “Very well. It cannot hurt.”

  Jack raised the M1, sighted along it.

  “Just keep your hands where we can see them and I won’t shoot!” he called.

  “No problem!” the man shouted back.

  Three minutes more and he was dragging the rubber boat up onto the sand, then turning to face them, breathing hard and smiling.

  “Look at you! You don’t look like the criminals Judy was worried about!”

  Chung chuckled.

  “It’s you we worry about,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, name’s Tom. We stole that submarine! What do you think of that!”

  Jack’s mouth dropped open.

  “You stole it? From who!”

  “Umbrella Corporation. It’s an old Soviet sub. I was barely able to get it moving the right way—but we got it here.”

  “How many are you?” Chung asked.

  “Just three of us.” Tom looked like he was thinking of adding something more, and then shut his mouth firmly.

  “There’s something you just decided not to say,” Chung observed mildly. “Best tell us now.”

  Tom sighed.

  “There’s some frozen… things in that boat. Las Plagas. I think they’re in some kind of dormant state. I haven’t figured out how to do away with ’em safely like… They’r
e locked away in a kind of… freezer thing. Under a deck.”

  Jack found those remarks hard to digest, but Chung didn’t seem surprised by this.

  “Ah. Well. I am convinced you are no danger to us. You may bring the other two over. No one must be armed, not at all. We will not harm you.”

  Tom looked at Chung closely, for a long moment. Finally he nodded.

  “Okay. If they agree to come, I’ll bring them. I’m going to push to take a chance, ’cause it seems to me… is it true?”

  “Is what true?” Jack asked.

  “That you have no Undead on this island? I mean, it just seems that way to me. I figure we’d have seen ’em by now.”

  “There are none,” Chung said. “We put them all out of their misery.”

  Tom nodded, and looked pleased.

  “Well, I’ll be back soon as I can…”

  “Um, can I come and help?” Jack asked.

  “No,” Chung said. “You wait here. With me.”

  They waited—Jack in a fever of impatience—and watched as the boat went back out to the submarine. They could see Tom arguing with someone on the big conning tower. Was that a woman up there? They talked for a long time, but at last the boat was on its way back—and with the man were two women.

  Chung looked at his nephew and chuckled.

  “Strange! You look very pale! Do women frighten you?”

  “What? Pale? Fright… what?”

  Chung just laughed.

  The boat arrived, and Jack and Chung helped Tom pull it partly onto the beach. The two women clambered out, ankle deep in the surf. Impulsively, Jack stuck out his hand to help the younger one come up onto the beach. She stared at him, looked at the rifle over his shoulder, at his face, at his outstretched hand. She was a teenage girl, slender, with large brown eyes. Her lips looked soft and full. Both women, he saw, were wearing sailor suits that didn’t fit them.

  At last she took his hand and he helped her onto the beach. She quickly detached her hand from his, and turned to look at the woman. Tom was helping her out of the boat.

  “My name’s Jack—this is Chung,” Jack said, looking at the girl. He felt like a hot wind was blowing through him.

  She looked at him, and swallowed.

  “I’m… Dori.” She said in a small voice. “That’s JudyTech.”

  “Judy… teck?”

  “I’ll explain that later, kid,” Tom said. “Any more on the island we can meet?”

  “Only two others,” Jack said.

  Chung frowned, probably not wanting to give Tom that much information. Chung seemed to want to trust these people—but he was being careful.

  Jack simply didn’t care.

  “Come on,” he said, smiling at Dori. “Come and meet them. And… welcome to Catalina.”

  29

  “Two minutes to the LZ,” the pilot said as they flew through the night to over what had been the nation’s capital.

  Alice was standing with Becky, just behind the cockpit of the helicopter, as they approached the heart of Washington, D.C. She went to a port and looked down, trying to see what kind of shape the city was in. The lights of the choppers swung over the Lincoln Memorial, and as they swung past, the monument looked quite intact. So did the Washington Monument. Fires from slowly burning gas lines illuminated portions of the city as they banked past the Capitol Building. That particular tourist attraction hadn’t come through the apocalypse as well. The dome was cracked and burned; the windows were blackened, the glass shattered. Bodies lay scattered about, outside, mostly chewed down to the bone.

  She saw a great many Undead surging about, but it was hard to see how many there were, in the darkness. Then they swung around over the Potomac River—which was choked with floating bodies—and back toward the White House. A dark mass surged on Pennsylvania Avenue, but it was hard to make out what it was, with the glare of lights from the White House. The grounds were dotted with spotlights, all watching the skies, probing the clouds. Most of the eighteen acres around the White House were crowded with missile emplacements, helipads, tanks, and bunkers.

  There were only a few trees left standing. The grass of the great lawn was overgrown in some places, trampled and crushed to the dirt in others. Flower beds were ground away under tank treads, and around the grounds enormous barricades had been erected, a new fortress, topped with razor wire and guard posts.

  The White House itself seemed more or less intact but there were gun emplacements on the roof, and more spotlights that locked onto the helicopter as it descended toward the grounds.

  The pilot was busily talking into the mike, getting permission to land, reciting code phrases. Then they were spiraling down, headed into a helipad.

  Alice shook her head, looking at all the armed men, the weapons, around that helipad. She was getting into something it was going to be hard to get out of. Had she made a big mistake, bringing Becky here?

  She’d had a choice—she could have risked both their lives to escape. Now she was stuck.

  But Jill was right. Wait and watch. Look for your chance…

  The helicopter settled on the helipad with a double thump of finality. The rotors whined, and slowed. Then a big man with flat-top hair, a scar down his cheek, and paramilitary togs stood outside the hatch of the chopper as it lowered to become a ramp. He had an assault rifle hung over his shoulder on a strap. Alice thought she remembered him.

  “Grady?” she asked, as she came down the ramp.

  “Yeah, Alice. It’s Grady,” he rumbled. He’d worked in the lower echelons of Umbrella Security at one time, under her authority.

  “You still with Umbrella?” she asked, but she was pretty sure she knew the answer.

  “Would I be working here?” he responded. “Nah. Come on—I got to get you and your little entourage into the big white place. We’re gonna have some doctors look you over, see what needs to be patched up. Might even feed you. Then you’re all going to see the Big Guy…”

  The Big Guy?

  Wesker.

  Storage hold three seemed kind of spooky to Jack. He wasn’t sure why. It was just a ship’s hold, filled with shelves. Most of the stored goods were gone now— he, Lony, Tom, Judy, and Dori had spent most of the day unloading anything useful from the submarine. They were especially glad to get the medical supplies. By the time they were done, the only thing left on the shelves were a few big plastic bottles of engine-cleaning fluid.

  Tom and Jack were alone now—Lony had gone back to the island, with Dori and Judy, to show them around, and to check on Bim.

  “You think that fella that shot at us is ever going to be… you know, friendly, at all?” Tom asked, as they walked between the shelves. Tom was carrying the Desert Eagle they’d taken off Paco, and it was fully loaded. They’d made up their minds to trust him.

  Jack had his M1.

  “Sure, he’s a good guy. He was wounded and mad and not in the mood to trust anyone.”

  “Oh, I don’t blame him, the shape the world’s in now…”

  “What are we looking for, here?”

  Tom stopped, and hunkered over the floor.

  “Right here—got to flip this back, punch in this code… And there she goes.”

  Jack felt a sick feeling of dread as the trap door lifted up, whirring on its servos, to show the eerie light below.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Tom said.

  “What?”

  “I have to have a closer look to be sure…”

  He climbed down the ladder, and Jack climbed after him. Both of them stared through the glass of the container, flush with the floor, containing the Las Plagas Undead.

  “You see?” Tom said. “There’s no ice. It’s not as cold in here. See, just before we got here we had problems with the ship’s power. It just failed—and I had to go to some emergency diesel back ups. And meanwhile, this thing… wasn’t refrigerated.”

  Jack crouched down and looked closely.

  “Aren’t they dead?”


  “I don’t know—but I don’t think so. When they got that glow in their eyes, the spark of life is still there. And there it is!” Jack could see the red glow seeping from between the eyelids of the recumbent Las Plagas, and jumped a little when he saw those eyelids twitch.

  “Oh, shit. I think I saw one blink.”

  “Yeah. Well, I got that cabin cruiser tied up out back—well see if I can get this thing headed out to sea. You still willing to stand guard while I do that?”

  “Yeah.”

  His mouth was dry. His hands were sweaty and cold. But Jack didn’t want to seem like a coward. This man was Dori’s friend. If he impressed Tom—maybe that would impress Dori.

  And he’d do anything to impress Dori. It had been love at first sight. Maybe the only sight of a young woman he’d get for years… if ever.

  “Okay. But you don’t wait down here. Come on.” He led the way back up the ladder, and they closed the trap door. “Let’s shove some of these shelves down over the trap door,” Tom suggested. “And whatever else we can find. Those fire extinguishers, that box of bolts there—just pile up the weight.”

  In twenty minutes they’d got it done. The room was a wreck, its shelves, and everything else they could find, piled up on the trap door.

  “That should hold them,” Jack said, though he wasn’t sure. From what Tom had told him about those things…

  “Alright, keep an eye on it. I’m gonna turn this thing around, and set it up to sink out to sea.”

  Jack nodded, and Tom left the hold.

  Back in the attack center, Tom was dismayed to see he could only get a few of the systems online. The main batteries had been corroded, and he hadn’t been able to recharge them. The reactors weren’t pumping, and he couldn’t figure out why. Luckily there was the diesel backup.

  He directed the submarine to back up, then to swing slowly about till it was pointed west, out into the Pacific Ocean. He put it on top speed—wanted it to get as far from the island as possible before it went down—and tapped the controls to open up the valves for the ballast. Then he found the override on the hatches, which would keep them open even as the ship was submerging.

  SCUTTLE ENGAGED

  The notice began blinking on the control panel. He’d set it to start sinking in about thirty minutes.