by Tim Waggoner
“Jill!” Alice shouted. “Can you hear me?”
Jill didn’t react at first, but then her head jerked in Alice’s direction, the motion eerily birdlike. For a moment, Alice feared that her friend had somehow been infected with the T-virus when Wesker had attacked her, but Jill showed no outward signs of mutation. Her brain is gone, Alice thought. She’s dead, and her body just doesn’t know it yet.
Alice tried to rise to her feet, but after fighting to free herself from the tentacles, she had almost no strength left, and her head pounded as if it were on the verge of exploding. She had to get to Jill, even if there was nothing she could do for her friend. Alice owed her that much. She slumped forward onto her belly and started crawling toward Jill.
Alice hadn’t gotten more than a foot when a new tentacle emerged from the Melange and whipped toward Jill. It wrapped around the woman’s neck, and with a single savage motion, yanked her off her feet and pulled her through the air and into the Melange, where she disappeared without a sound.
“No!” Alice cried out, but there was nothing she could do. Jill was gone.
Instead of diminishing, the flames rising from the Melange began to burn brighter and hotter, as if they’d eaten through the creature’s outer layer and were beginning to consume more flammable material within. Gray ooze seeped from the edges of the Melange where its mass touched the ground, and Alice knew that Wesker had spoken the truth when he’d said the creature’s body would eventually break down, lose cohesion, and dissolve. It looked like that process was well underway, and if she could manage not to get caught by any more of its tentacles in the next few seconds, she might have a chance to—
Her thoughts broke off when she realized the Melange was beginning to flow toward her from—a quick glance confirmed—all sides. Maybe it was part of the process of dissolution or maybe in its dying moments it was desperate to reach the last bit of biological material in the area to try and heal itself. Either way, Alice knew that if the Melange managed to reach her, she’d be absorbed into the creature, burned alive in its flames, or suffocated in its muck as it dissolved. She had to get away from it, but how? There was nowhere to go, and even if there was, she was too damn weak to get there.
Tentacles emerged from all sides of the Melange, reaching inward, waving wildly through the air in a desperate attempt to find her. A glint of light caught her eye then, and she saw a small patch of metal gleaming in the ground a dozen feet away. She remembered the bump she’d felt when the tentacle around her ankle had dragged her over that section of earth. There was something beneath it, and her passage overtop had removed some of the soil that had concealed it. She had no idea what it was, but she started crawling toward it, hoping that whatever it was, it would give her some kind of chance to survive. The Melange continued flowing toward her as she crawled, but she tried not to pay attention as it drew closer. Either she’d reach the metal whatsit or she wouldn’t. All she could do was pour whatever energy she had left into getting there.
She was more than a little surprised when she made it, and even more surprised when she brushed more dirt away and realized the metal plate she was looking at was a hatch of some kind. A bolt hole, she figured, probably one of many built into the area around the White House during the initial days of the Outbreak to give the men and women trying to protect the President and her family a place to hide in safety if the grounds were overrun.
Alice wedged her fingers into the seam around the hatch and pulled. It resisted at first, but she pulled harder, adrenaline and determination boosting her rapidly waning strength. The hatch opened and Alice peered inside. It was dark, but she saw metal rungs bolted to the wall of a shaft leading downward. Without hesitation, she crawled inside and closed the hatch behind her. She turned the circular handle until she felt it lock. Hearing a loud thump from above, she knew the Melange had flowed over the metal plate. She’d made it—barely.
What else is new? she thought.
She then began climbing slowly down into the darkness.
* * *
Alice had no memory of climbing all the way down to the bottom of the shaft. She knew she must have, though, for if she’d fallen, she’d have sustained serious injuries, and other than those she’d gained during the battle against the Melange, she was unharmed.
So now here she was, above ground again, fully human once more, and apparently the sole survivor of the battle on the White House grounds. Except for Wesker, of course, although she was certain the bastard would be long gone by now. She hoped there was one other survivor, though: Becky. And although she wanted to grieve the loss of Leon, Ada, and especially Jill, living in the post-apocalyptic world brought to you by the friendly folks at Umbrella had taught her that sometimes you had to put your emotions on hold and get on with what needed doing. And right now, what she needed to do was find Becky.
Alice made her way to the White House—or rather, what was left of it. The building was a shattered ruin, and seeing it like that made her stomach drop. If Becky had still been inside when it had collapsed… She forced herself not to think about that. She wasn’t going to give up on Becky until she knew for certain that no hope was left.
The air felt greasy, heavy with the stink of the burning Melange. Of the Melange itself, there was no sign aside from some moist patches of earth that she assumed were remnants of the creature. The thing had dissolved entirely. It actually made for an effective weapon, she thought. Once it had done its work, it disappeared, leaving the area free for the victors to move in. Whoever Dania Cardoza had been, Alice couldn’t help feeling a small measure of grudging admiration for her. She almost wished the woman had survived the crash of her aircraft, if for no other reason than so she could continue making Wesker’s life miserable, but given the state of the downed V-22, she seriously doubted anyone had walked away from that particular landing.
She was surprised to see bodies on the ground. Not many, and some of those were only partials, a significant amount of their substance having likely been dissolved by the Melange. But evidently the Melange hadn’t quite gobbled up everything in sight. That gave her more hope that Becky might still be alive. Encouraged, she continued toward the ruins of the White House.
* * *
An hour later, Alice’s hope was gone. The White House was in such bad condition that she hadn’t been able to get very far inside, and at one point a section of the roof collapsed, nearly burying her. She encountered bodies of men and women who’d died during the fall of the White House—which she assumed had been caused by the Melange—but Becky wasn’t among them, and for that, at least, she was grateful. Unable to make it any farther into the building, she’d left the way she’d come. Now she walked aimlessly, emotionally numb, moving more from blind habit than anything else. That was how you stayed alive in Umbrella’s world: you kept going, whether you wanted to or not.
She was unarmed. She hadn’t been able to reach the White House’s armory, so she would have to scavenge what weapons she could. But the discarded weapons she found were out of ammo and useless. She kept an eye out for her katana, but she saw no sign of it. She had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, she could use the blade, but on the other, finding it would be confirmation that Jill was dead.
She told herself that just because she hadn’t found Becky didn’t mean the girl was dead. She was smart and tough—she’d proved that during their escape from Umbrella Prime. It was entirely possible that she had gotten out of the White House before it collapsed. She could be out here somewhere, hiding, waiting for her “mother” to find her. And until Alice learned otherwise, she intended to keep believing that. Unfortunately, she couldn’t simply walk around calling Becky’s name and hope the girl heard her. Becky was deaf. The only way Alice would find her was by staying out in the open so Becky could see her, so that’s what she would do.
She continued walking, exhausted, throat raw and lungs aching from inhaling the foul smoke the Melange had given off while it burned. She hurt all over,
and it was becoming an effort to keep picking up her feet and putting them down, one after the other. When was the last time she’d eaten or had anything to drink? She couldn’t remember. It was too bad her powers had only been temporarily restored. She wouldn’t have minded having her rapid healing capabilities back right now.
Everywhere she looked, she saw ruins. She’d never been to D.C. before, but she’d seen pictures of what it had looked like before the world turned to shit. The city hadn’t weathered the apocalypse any better than others she’d seen on her journeys across the country. Years of battling the Undead and Umbrella’s obscene mutations had reduced a place that had once been a symbol of freedom the world over into just another desolate graveyard. After all the noise during the battle with the Melange, the silence that filled the ruins should have come as a relief to Alice, but it didn’t. It felt oppressive, a heavy weight pressing down on her, making it even harder for her to keep going. She was so exhausted that she wasn’t completely aware of her path, and it came as something of a surprise when she realized she’d reached the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The Washington Monument lay beyond the far end of the long, rectangular pool, the top of the monument missing, lost during some past battle, leaving it resembling a broken, jagged tooth. The Reflecting Pool was a third of a mile long and over 150 feet wide, with walking paths and trees on both sides. Once, the trees had been full of leaves and provided shade, but now they were empty, dead things. Alice imagined that in the world before Umbrella, this had been a peaceful place of inspiration and contemplation. Now it was just a big pool of water flanked by dead trees, with no one to appreciate it. Except for her, of course, but right then she wasn’t interested in the pool’s beauty and cultural significance. All she cared about was its water.
She tried to run toward the pool, but the best she could manage was a tired jog. Sunlight glittered off the water’s surface, and Alice thought she’d never seen anything so inviting in her life. As she approached the pool, a small voice in the back of her mind warned her that she had no way of knowing if the water was safe to drink, but she ignored it. As thirsty as she was, she’d risk drinking the sweat off a Licker’s nether regions.
Her legs gave out as she reached the pool, and she went down on her knees. She was tempted to let herself fall face-first into the cool water, but instead she dipped one hand in, intending to bring some to her mouth. But before she could drink, the water’s calm surface erupted in a shower of spray as a humanoid figure burst from the pool.
Startled, Alice fell backward onto her rear and reflexively reached for guns she no longer carried. The creature was clearly Undead, but like none she’d ever seen before. Its eyes were large and rounded, with small pupils, the irises filled with tiny specks of yellow. But those weren’t the creature’s only eyes. It possessed clusters of smaller ones spread across its face and forehead, like acne. The flesh around those extra eyes was red and sore, as if the skin surrounding them had been peeled away. Blue-violet veins were visible beneath the undamaged skin on its face, and its discolored teeth were jagged and uneven. But as revolting as its eye-acne was, the creature had been made even more disgusting for having been submerged in the pool for days, maybe weeks. Its body was swollen, the flesh slimy, its clothes dark, sodden, and ragged. What hair remained to the creature was plastered to the top of its head and the sides of its face, almost as if it had merged with the thing’s water-softened skin. The Undead had spent so much time submerged that Alice couldn’t tell what gender it had been in life. But as bad as all that was, it was nothing compared to the stench the creature gave off. A fetid miasma of rotting flesh and stagnant water, it hit Alice like a solid blow, and her stomach began to heave even though it had no contents to empty.
The Undead lunged out of the pool toward Alice, jagged teeth gnashing, and puffy, sausage-like fingers grasping, as eager to tear into her flesh as she’d been to drink from its hiding place only a moment before. As the Undead fell on top of Alice, adrenaline came to her rescue, giving her tired body a boost of energy. She grabbed the multi-eyed monster by the wrists before it could sink its claw-like fingernails into her. It snapped and snarled in frustration, sounding more like a wild beast than something that had once been human. It struggled to lean its bloated face closer to Alice, desperate to get its teeth on her. She looked up at the thing’s eyes, and saw that all of them—large and small—gleamed with madness and hunger.
Alice felt her grip on the Undead’s wrists began to slip, and at first she thought the creature’s wet flesh was making it hard to maintain a hold on it. But then she realized it was far more disgusting than that. The skin and muscle surrounding the bone had decayed to the point where it had become a slimy soap-like substance, and the creature’s flesh sloughed away under her hands. She tightened her grip, hoping she’d be able to continue holding onto the monster, but her hands were coated with the creature’s soapy muck, and she couldn’t do it. The Undead slipped its arms free, and with a roar that almost sounded like a cry of triumph, it thrust its snapping jaws toward Alice’s face.
Even after all she’d been through since arriving in D.C., her reflexes—honed by countless life-and-death battles—didn’t let her down. She managed to grab hold of the Undead’s face and hold it at bay. The creature growled in frustration, jaws snapping, multiple eyes blazing with anger. Its teeth were mere inches from Alice’s face, and the stink of its carrion breath was so intense, Alice wouldn’t have been surprised if it had melted her flesh. Just as had happened with the Undead’s wrists, she felt her grip on the thing’s face begin to loosen, and she knew she had only seconds before her hands slipped away and the damned thing began tearing away chunks of her own face with its jagged teeth. So instead of waiting for that to happen, Alice decided to beat the creature at its own game. She began clawing at the Undead’s face, dislodging hunks of rotten meat—along with several of its smaller eyes—which fell off the bone as easily as meat sliding off an overcooked chicken. The dislodged pieces pelted her face like grisly, semisolid rain, and she squinted her eyes and closed her mouth tight. She’d seen animals that had become infected by feeding on the Undead, and she didn’t want to take any chances. If even a little of the creature’s gore got inside her, it could be game over for her.
She wasn’t certain if the creature felt the flesh being torn from its skull, but it clawed at her with its hands, as if attempting to make her stop. When enough of its flesh was gone, she knew she wouldn’t be able to maintain a grip on the slimy bones of its skull, and it would slip free and finally get its teeth into her. She couldn’t let that happen.
She drew her right leg toward her chest, positioned it beneath the Undead’s body, angled her foot back, and then shoved outward with all the strength she could muster. Her foot was planted in the thing’s water-bloated stomach, and she felt the flesh pop beneath the pressure. Her foot sank into the creature’s watery guts and connected with its spine. The blow knocked the Undead back several feet, and it pulled free of Alice’s boot with a sickening sucking sound. Alice took the opportunity to scuttle backward away from the Undead, but she’d only managed to cover a few feet before the creature snarled and lunged toward her once more. The adrenaline that had kept her alive so far was nearly spent, and her body felt as heavy and awkward as a big block of lead. She didn’t think she had the strength to fight off the goddamned thing a second time.
But before the multi-eyed Undead could reach her, it jerked to a stop. It snarled and swiped the air, straining to move the last few inches it needed in order to feast on its prey, but something held it back.
Alice saw then that razor wire was wrapped around one of the creature’s legs, and the other end stretched back into the pool, where it was no doubt caught on something. Alice had no idea what razor wire was doing in the Reflecting Pool, nor did she care. She was simply grateful for its presence.
Exhausted and on the verge of losing consciousness, Alice looked up at the sky. She didn’t do this out of a desire to thank some high
er power for sparing her life. She wasn’t religious. Who could be in a nightmarish world like this? She wasn’t sure why she did it. Maybe simply so that she wouldn’t have to look at the Undead’s disgusting ruin of a face anymore. But as she turned her face skyward, she found herself momentarily reconsidering her lack of religious belief. For up there, in the high stratosphere if she guessed right, was a faint glimmer of light. But she quickly realized what she saw wasn’t a divine sign, but rather one that was more mundane, although high-tech. It was the light of the sun catching on a satellite. Umbrella or government? she wondered. Then again, she supposed all satellites belonged to Umbrella these days.
Suddenly a mournful wail cut through the air, and Alice recognized it as a siren of some sort. Was it a warning? And if so, a warning about what? Another attack?
She lowered her head, expecting to see the waterlogged Undead still straining to catch hold of her, but it was gone. All she saw was the loop of razor wire that had been wrapped around the Undead’s leg, strips of rotten flesh clinging to its sharp edges. What happened? Had the siren frightened it?
Aching all over, body trembling with the effort, Alice rose to her feet and looked around. She saw no footprints, no gobbets of flesh the Undead had left in its wake as it fled. Had it returned to the pool and submerged itself once more? Maybe it felt safer there. She took a moment to catch her breath. Not long ago she’d been strong enough to take on a dozen Undead bare-handed. But as wiped out as she felt now, she didn’t think she could survive an attack by an Undead butterfly.
The siren continued wailing, sounding louder now, almost insistent. A thought occurred to her then. Maybe Becky was still alive and she’d found a way to signal her. Alice tried not to let herself feel too hopeful. She’d learned a long time ago that in this world, hope could be crueler than any monster you might encounter. Then again, sometimes hope, no matter how irrational or foolish, was the only thing that kept you going.
