by Tim Waggoner
“Fuck you!” he yelled. It was unclear who he was addressing: the Melange, Cardoza, or Wesker. Likely all three.
A gap opened in the Melange’s discolored flesh, and Leon was pulled into it. The gap filled in, and Leon was gone.
“One down,” Wesker said.
More than one, Alice thought. All around the battlefield, military personnel were being snatched up by the Melange’s tentacles and pulled into its semi-viscous substance. Like Leon, some of the men and women shouted curses before disappearing into the disgusting flesh-blob. Some cried out in rage or fear, while others remained silent, taken so swiftly they had no time for speech. With each person lost, Alice felt anger building inside her, growing stronger and hotter with each passing second. And with the anger came the ice-pick sensation at the back of her skull, but this time it didn’t come alone. Accompanying it was a vertiginous buzzing, as if a swarm of bees was swirling around in her head. She bent down, placed her Vectors on the ground, then stood once more.
What happened to people who were pulled into the Melange? Did they slowly suffocate while frantically attempting to claw their way free? Or did the Melange’s substance work like acid, swiftly breaking their bodies down into their chemical components and absorbing them? A horrible death either way.
She heard Ada cry out then, followed by a burst of machine gun fire. She was vaguely aware of a tentacle wrapping around the former Umbrella operative, but she was unable to do anything about it. Something was happening inside her. A process had begun, and now that it had started, she couldn’t stop it if she wanted to.
Unlike Leon, Ada had managed to keep her gun arm free when the tentacle coiled around her midsection, and she fired at it, trying to sever it from the Melange’s main mass. Jill dropped her weapon and raced toward Ada. With her hands, she grabbed hold of the tentacle wrapped around the other woman and fought to dislodge it. But her fingers sank into the tentacle’s spongy substance, making it impossible for her to get a grip on it. The tentacle retracted then, pulling Ada into the air. Jill’s hands were still buried in the tentacle, and when it retracted, she was pulled off balance. Luckily, her hands came free, and while she stumbled, she managed to remain on her feet.
As the tentacle drew Ada toward the Melange’s main mass, the woman emptied the rest of her clip into the muck, giving forth a defiant battle cry as she fired. Then she too was swallowed by the Melange, and her voice was cut off.
“No!” Jill shouted, and then she turned toward Alice. “How could you stand there and let that happen? Why didn’t you help me?”
Alice wanted to answer, but she couldn’t make her mouth form words. She couldn’t do anything except stand motionless while the fire blazing inside her continued building toward a raging inferno.
“She’s a bit busy at the moment,” Wesker said. “But I believe she’s just about ready.”
“Ready for what?” Jill asked, but Wesker didn’t reply.
Alice could barely hear them through the roaring in her ears. She tilted her head backward, fixed her gaze on Cardoza’s hovering craft, then closed her eyes. She reached out with her mind and pictured the V-22’s propellers bending and twisting. She felt more than heard the metal crumpling. Then she imagined her power coalescing above the aircraft like a giant fist—and she brought that fist down upon the craft with all the strength she could muster. The impact was so loud it sounded as if a bomb had exploded on the aircraft’s surface. But that was nothing compared to the noise the craft made when it came crashing to the ground. Alice felt the earth convulse beneath her feet, and she might’ve fallen if Wesker hadn’t taken hold of her elbow to steady her.
“My God!” Jill exclaimed with equal parts wonder and horror.
Alice wasn’t done yet, though. She concentrated, and the buzzing in her head grew louder, the pain so intense that she feared she was on the verge of stroking out. She felt a trickle of wet warmth on her upper lip, and she realized her nose was bleeding. She ignored it. She gritted her teeth and told herself that she only needed to hold on a few moments longer. After that, it wouldn’t matter what happened to her. She pictured a spark flaring to life within the V-22’s fuel tanks and was rewarded with the sound of an explosion, followed by a blast of hot air stinging her face.
Only one thing left to do now.
She began slowly moving her hands and fingers in the air, almost as if she were a musician playing an invisible instrument or a puppeteer manipulating unseen strings. Flames rose from the wreckage of Cardoza’s aircraft, swiftly growing in size and intensity. When Alice felt the fire was ready, she brought her hands together, palms touching, and then flung her arms wide. As she performed this gesture, the flames spread outward from the downed V-22 and raced across the surface of the Melange. Discolored flesh burned, the diseased meat giving off a sickening stench as it cooked. Up to this point, the surface of the Melange had been featureless, but now a thousand toothless maws opened on the creature’s skin, and a deafening chorus of agony filled the air.
The buzzing in Alice’s head stopped abruptly, and while she was still in pain, it lessened considerably. She felt weak and drained, though. Fire and thick clouds of foul smoke rose into the air, and the shattered remains of the V-22 rested several hundred yards from where she, Jill, and Wesker stood. The craft was engulfed in flame, and Alice doubted that any of its crew—Cardoza included—had survived. She wasn’t exactly heartbroken by this realization.
The Melange might have been dying, but it wasn’t going down easily. It thrashed and bucked, burning tentacles flailing, shrieks blasting forth from its makeshift mouths.
Alice turned to Wesker.
“You son of a bitch. You used me.”
Wesker gave her a reptilian smile. “Of course. It’s what I do.”
Despite her weakness, Alice bent down, grabbed hold of her Vectors, stood, and pointed the guns at Wesker, intending to literally blast that smug smile off his face. But before she could fire, Wesker snatched the weapons from her hands with unimaginable speed and tossed them far away. The guns arced through the air and fell, disappearing into the flames.
Alice stared at Wesker, stunned.
“I forgot to mention that the injection that restored your powers contained two separate substances: the T-virus and an antidote, the latter designed to activate soon after you exercised your telekinetic powers. I may have needed your powers restored so you could eliminate Cardoza for me, but I wasn’t about to let you keep your special abilities. I’m not stupid.”
Wesker backhanded Alice then, and she fell to the ground, struggling to hold onto consciousness.
2
“Bastard!” Jill shouted. She raised her gun, intending to finish what Alice had started. But Wesker pointed his index finger at her, and it extended, breaking through the black leather of his glove. As it lengthened, the finger became a mottled tentacle not unlike those the Melange had formed. The finger-tentacle shot toward Jill, the tip sharpening to a point as it went. It plunged through her left eye and deep into her brain. She stiffened as blood gushed from the wound, her mouth opened as if to scream, but nothing came out. Wesker wiggled his finger, stirring it around in her brain. Jill’s remaining eye rolled white, her body spasmed several times and then fell still. She went limp, but she did not fall. Alice realized it was because Wesker’s finger-tentacle was holding her up. Wesker continued supporting her for a moment, cocking his head slightly to the side, as if he were examining his work. He retracted his finger then, and Jill fell to the ground, dead.
Alice, too weak to do anything but lie on the ground, could only gaze upon the face of her dead friend and moan in despair. Jill, Ada, and Leon had survived Umbrella Prime only to follow her to D.C. and die solely so Wesker could eliminate a rival. Worst of all, none of them had been important to his plan, only Alice. To Wesker, the others were nothing more than collateral damage.
Hatred took hold of Alice’s heart, and she tried to push herself to her feet so she could attack Wesker and make him pay for what he had done t
o her. She still wore the katana on her back, and if she could stand and draw it from its sheath, she could try to slice the fucker’s head off. But the best she could do in her current condition was push herself onto her elbows and knees, and she could only maintain that position for a few seconds before her strength gave out and she collapsed once more.
“Murdering… bastard,” she managed to say, her voice a harsh whisper.
Wesker bowed from the waist. “I do my best.”
He straightened and regarded Alice for several moments. He licked Jill’s blood from his index finger while he thought. “I should do to you what I did to your friend. After all, you did eliminate Dania for me, and that should earn you an easy death. But I don’t want to make things easy for you, Alice. Not after all the trouble you’ve caused Umbrella—and me—over the years.”
He lifted his gaze from Alice and looked at the Melange. The flames consuming it still burned bright, but the conglomerate creature’s exertions had lessened, and its chorus of screams had dwindled to feeble moans. Alice doubted the thing would last much longer. Evidently, Wesker came to the same conclusion, for he said, “I think it unlikely that the Melange will be able to get hold of you before it dies. There’s too much distance between you and it, and its reach isn’t what it was. Luckily, I can fix that.”
Wesker, moving with speed that a short time ago Alice could’ve matched, bent down, took hold of her wrists, and swiftly dragged her to the Melange’s closest edge until Alice was less than ten feet from it. She felt searing heat rolling off the mutated monstrosity, and this close the stench of burning flesh was so thick, she found it almost impossible to breathe. Wesker released her wrists and her arms fell to the ground, limp and useless. He looked down at her, and this time when he smiled, he showed his teeth.
“The Melange will be desperate to repair itself before the end, and it will seek out any undamaged biological material it can find and absorb it in an attempt to heal itself. It won’t work, of course. The creature’s injuries are too severe, and in any event—”
Wesker paused as a flaming tentacle reached for him. He deftly dodged its attempt to grab hold of him, and it fell to the ground not far from where Alice lay, twitching as the fire continued to consume it.
Wesker continued. “As I was saying, in any event, the Melange’s time would soon be up even if it wasn’t aflame. So I suppose there’s a chance you might survive long enough for it to die first. But I doubt it.”
A second flaming tentacle streaked toward him. Wesker batted it away as if it were nothing more than an annoying insect.
“Goodbye, Alice. I hope your death is excruciating.”
And then Wesker was running, a blur once more. Alice tried to track him as he fled, but she quickly lost sight of him. She had no idea how he intended to get past the burning Melange, since the creature’s body encircled them like a coiled serpent, but she had no doubt he would. Not only did he possess enhanced abilities granted by the T-virus, but he was a master schemer who always had an exit plan for himself. But she didn’t have time to worry about Wesker, nor did she have time to mourn her dead friends. She needed to do everything she could to stay alive because Becky was out there somewhere. Still in the White House, maybe. Assuming the woman who’d offered to care for her wasn’t another damn Umbrella operative. Regardless, Becky needed her, and Alice had pledged to keep the girl safe, and she had no intention of failing her—not after she’d failed Leon, Ada, and Jill.
She mustered what remained of her strength and started crawling away from the edge of the Melange. The creature sent out fiery tentacles to try and grab hold of her, but it was dying and growing weaker by the second. Because of this, its aim was erratic, and while flaming tentacles slapped the ground near her, none of them came close enough to touch her. Her progress was agonizingly slow. Every inch of her body ached, and her muscles felt weak and watery. Her head pounded as if there were a giant Licker inside slamming against her skull over and over. At least she wasn’t bleeding from the nose anymore. That was something.
Alice’s plan was simple: reach the center of the Melange-free zone—the eye of the firestorm—and hope the creature wouldn’t be able to reach her there. She could rest and attempt to regain her strength as the Melange died. Then she would get up and start looking for Becky, starting with the White House. But she only managed to crawl three feet before the Melange finally got a tentacle on her. It wrapped around her left leg, and she felt the heat from its fiery embrace even through her boot. She drew in a heavy breath, and with her other leg, she began kicking at the tentacle, trying to free herself from its grasp. The heel of her boot made moist squishing sounds as it connected with the tentacle, and she knew the Melange’s substance was beginning to break down, just as Wesker had said it would. Still, the tentacle held on stubbornly, resisting her attempts to dislodge it. But between the fire damage and its encroaching liquefaction, it eventually ran out of strength. Its grip slackened, and Alice was able to pull free.
She managed to crawl another eighteen inches before the next tentacle caught hold of her. This one was stronger than the last, and it began to drag her backward. She still had the katana, but she didn’t know if she had the strength to draw it, let alone wield it. She shifted onto her side to make the maneuver easier, then she reached up, gripped the katana’s handle, and drew it from its sheath with a soft metallic whisper. She hit some kind of a bump then and almost lost her grip on the sword, but she managed to hold onto it. She attempted to shift into a sitting position to both give her more leverage and shorten the distance she’d have to swing in order to strike the tentacle. At first her body refused to cooperate, and she feared she’d be dragged into the Melange’s main mass before she could cut herself free. If that happened, she didn’t know if she’d be absorbed by the Melange or if she’d be burned by the flames her powers had created. She supposed it didn’t matter. She’d be dead either way. She gritted her teeth and poured whatever energy she had left into moving into a sitting position. Her vision grayed around the edges, and for an instant she thought she might black out, but then her vision cleared and she found she was sitting up.
Score one for the good guys, she thought.
The tentacle began to pull her faster now, as if the Melange sensed what she was about to do. Wesker had said the creature would seek out biological material in a desperate attempt to heal itself, and it seemed the damn thing was getting more desperate by the second. Up to this point, Alice’s body armor had protected her from the friction of being dragged across the ground, but she was starting to feel the heat now. That would be nothing compared to what it would feel like once she was pulled into the Melange’s flames.
She raised the katana and prepared to strike. The tentacle was coiled around her left ankle, and she planned to sever it at a point several inches below her foot. But just as she started to bring the blade down, another tentacle—this one also wreathed in flame—came lashing toward her from the side. It encircled her wrist, and the flames seared her flesh. She cried out in pain, and her hand reflexively sprang open, releasing the katana. The blade fell to the ground and was lost to her. The tentacle around her foot pulled her for another few seconds, until the tentacle around her wrist went taut. Alice was then lifted off the ground several inches as both tentacles pulled her in opposite directions. Pain flared in her right shoulder and left hip as the tentacles each fought to claim her, and she screamed, feeling as if she were being pulled apart. She thrashed, desperately trying to free herself, but she was too weak and the tentacles too strong. Despair overwhelmed her then. Not that she was going to die. She’d almost died hundreds of times since the initial T-virus outbreak, and she’d always known her luck couldn’t hold out forever. But what filled her with sorrow was the thought that if she died, she’d fail in her promise to protect Becky. The girl would be all alone, and she’d never know what had happened to Alice. All she’d know is that the woman she thought of as her mother had never returned to her.
S
he thrashed harder, whipping her body back and forth, determined that if she was going to die this day, she’d go down fighting. The tentacles redoubled their efforts, and Alice screamed again. She thought she could feel both her arm and leg begging to separate from her body, and she knew she had only seconds before what was left of the Melange pulled her apart like a wishbone.
She saw movement from the corner of her eye then, and she turned her head toward it. At first she thought she was hallucinating, because there stood Jill, one eye missing, blood streaked across her face and chest. The woman held Alice’s katana above her head in a two-handed grip. Her expression was blank, her remaining eye glassy, as if her mind was gone and her body was running on autopilot. Jill brought the katana down in a lurching swing and sliced through the tentacle wrapped around Alice’s wrist. The tentacle parted with ease, gray goop squirting out from the severed ends.
Alice had no time to react to what Jill had done, for without the other tentacle pulling against it, the one around her leg was able to resume pulling her toward the Melange. But seeing that Jill had survived—although severely injured—gave Alice a sense of hope. She bent forward farther, grabbed hold of the tentacle around her ankle with both hands, and squeezed as hard as she could. The fire had mostly died away by now, but its surface was still hot. Alice ignored the burning heat as she dug her fingers into the tentacle’s spongy substance. It resisted her for a moment, then she felt a pop as her fingers penetrated its hide and plunged into the muck within. A cloud of horrid stink wafted up from the gray goop, making Alice’s gorge rise. She squeezed harder until her fingers interlocked and the tentacle tore apart, freeing her. She slid to a stop, while the rest of the tentacle retracted into the Melange’s main mass, leaving behind a trail of gray slime from its oozing wound.
The tentacle fragment that clung to Alice’s ankle slackened, and she was able to dislodge it with a quick shake of her leg. Still in a sitting position, she turned to look back at Jill. She hadn’t moved, her face still holding a vacant expression, and while she continued to hold the katana—its blade smeared with gray muck—it dangled at her side, almost as if she wasn’t aware it was still in her hand.
