by Tim Waggoner
“What are you saying?”
“The Red Queen said there would be a traitor here. Someone loyal to Umbrella.”
Claire frowned. “You believe her?”
Alice didn’t have an answer for that. “Just watch your back.”
* * *
Alice watched as a dozen survivors used picks and shovels to dig holes into the exterior wall of the Peak. Doc, Michael, Cobalt, and a reluctant Christian were pitching in. Other residents were fitting large makeshift hooks into the holes that had already been dug.
Christian was stripped to the waist, revealing skeletal tattoos covering his body. Alice remembered what Doc had said about how some survivors tried to become the thing they feared. It seemed Christian had tried to become Death itself, or at least he was trying to show that he didn’t fear death.
“This is bullshit!” he said.
“I hate to agree with him, Doc,” Michael said, “but why are we making holes in the wall? I thought we wanted to keep them out.”
Doc swung his pick into the stone with a solid chuck. “Just keep digging,” he said.
Satisfied that the work was progressing nicely, Alice headed inside the building to check on how things were going upstairs. She didn’t look at Christian as she passed him, but she could feel the man’s glare on her as she walked by, and she knew that sooner or later, he was going to confront her, and when that happened, no one would be able to make him back down.
* * *
On the roof of the Peak, a group of residents used a makeshift crane to haul containers of gasoline onto the roof, working with a fevered intensity. Claire was in the middle of this group, urging people on and helping to move the containers into position.
“Keep it moving!” Claire called out. “We need all those gasoline cans over here.”
Alice watched a young woman working the crane. Claire had introduced her as Abigail, and she had a nose ring, short dyed hair, and tattoos of the non-skeletal variety. She wasn’t as grim-faced as most of the survivors. She smiled often, and she looked like she meant it.
Abigail was in charge of the team operating the crane, and she worked as hard as any of them. “That’s it!” she urged. “Keep pulling!”
Alice walked up to the woman and gestured to the crane. “Claire said you built this.”
Abigail continued working the crane as she spoke. “That’s right.”
“Where’d you learn something like that?”
“My father used to run a chop shop. I hated it. Preferred skating and meth.” She shrugged. “Who knew? Guess I was paying attention after all.”
Alice liked this woman. While so many of the other survivors she’d encountered over the years seemed worn down and defeated by the nightmarish world Umbrella had created, Abigail seemed—if not exactly happy—at least determined to remain positive. It was the sort of quality that would be needed if humanity hoped to rebuild some kind of civilization when this was all over. Survival of the optimistic instead of survival of the fittest.
Abigail swung the crane’s empty bucket over the edge of the building and her team started sending it down for another load.
“This crane used to be for window washing,” she said. “I made a few changes.”
“Good. Because I want you to make a few more.”
Abigail grinned. “Sounds like fun.”
* * *
Wesker watched the survivors’ preparations atop the Peak via a live satellite feed. They didn’t stand a chance in hell of winning, of course, but he found their determination to defend their pathetic excuse for a home amusing. He was even more amused to see that Alice had gotten drawn into helping them. Whether enhanced by the T-virus or not, she was a magnificent warrior. Too bad she allowed sentiment to get in the way of doing what needed to be done. Empathy was a weakness, and he was glad he possessed none. Not only did it make him more efficient at his job, it made life so much simpler.
After ingesting Dania’s head, Wesker had devoured the rest of her body. Waste not, want not. Her genetic material had allowed him to regrow a new head of his own, and more, it had helped stabilize his cellular structure… for the time being. He had lied to Dania when he’d said he was in complete control of his body. In truth, he was at constant war with it, the T-virus that gave him his enhanced abilities always threatening to take control. He had to be very careful about using his metamorphic capabilities, which had grown considerably over the years, or else he might lose molecular cohesion entirely. He supposed he could use the same antidote he’d given Alice if he wished to return his body to its human state—assuming that was possible by this point—but he had no desire to do so. He liked the power the T-virus had granted him, and besides, what was life without a little risk?
He thought he’d reabsorbed all the bits and pieces of his head that Dania had splattered onto the control console, but looking at it now, he saw a tiny glob of brain matter. He scooped it up on his index finger, licked it off with a long, slender tongue that looked like a serpent’s, and then returned his attention to his work.
He flipped a switch on the panel to open a comm channel to Isaacs’ transport. Time for a chat with the good doctor. A second later, the image of the Peak vanished from the monitor, and Wesker found himself looking at Isaacs. The man was pale and sweaty, as if he were sick, or perhaps fighting off some kind of infection.
“So… how is the interrogation going?” Wesker asked.
Isaacs glared at him, and Wesker smiled slightly before going on.
“It seems you let her slip through your fingers.” He noticed the patch of Nu-Skin on the stump where Isaacs’ hand had been. “What remains of them,” he added.
Isaacs’ face turned bright red with fury. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to!” he snapped. “Where is she?”
“The settlement in Raccoon City. It seems she’s preparing for a fight.”
“Good. I’ll be there in the hour.”
Isaacs broke the connection, and the monitor screen went black for a second before resuming the satellite feed of the Peak.
So Alice and her friends had more time to prepare, and Isaacs was hardly in top condition. The situation had suddenly become very interesting.
Wesker leaned back on his chair, focused his gaze on the monitor, and waited for the show to begin.
* * *
Night was rapidly descending on Raccoon City, and Alice and the residents of the Peak were desperately trying to finish their final preparations. Outside the building’s main entrance plaza, Alice was spray-painting a number three on the ground when she sensed something. She stopped painting and turned toward a nearby pile of rubble. In the dim light she saw the dirt covering the rubble shift almost imperceptibly, indicating the slightest of vibrations. A small sign, but to Alice the message might as well have been spelled out in hundred-foot neon letters.
“They’re here,” she said to herself.
* * *
Isaacs stood in the armored turret on top of the transport. The vehicle’s headlights illuminated several dead bodies—and a single twitching Undead—hanging from an overpass. Above this was a sign that Isaacs had been waiting a long time to see.
RACCOON CITY. POP 654,765. CITY LIMITS.
He knew the current number of residents was far lower, and soon it would be zero.
He had spent much of the time since Alice’s escape amusing himself with the prisoners. Only three still lived. One currently served as bait, and the other two remained in the hold in case they were needed later. The second transport rolled alongside Isaacs’, and behind them followed the combined mass of the Undead army they had lured here. By this point, Isaacs doubted the Undead needed human bait to feel compelled to follow the vehicles. The Undead seemed eager to keep going, and more than a few of them sniffed the air, as if they’d caught wind of fresh, living meat and couldn’t wait to sink their teeth into it. There were so many Undead in the horde that their footsteps shook the earth as they walked, and Isaacs could feel the vibrations t
ravel through the turret’s metal frame to reverberate throughout his body. It was like feeling the power of God Himself channeled through thousands of ambulatory corpses. The sensation was glorious.
You’ll get your chance soon, my children, he thought. Very soon.
He felt feverish and dizzy, but it didn’t matter. He had finally arrived at his destination, where he would fulfill his mission and complete the divine plan of the most holy. He touched an icon on the turret’s digital control panel to open an audio channel to the cabins of both transports.
“Ready the weapons. High explosive rounds. No survivors.”
Isaacs then entered a series of commands into the turret’s control panel. Huge guns deployed from the front of both vehicles, and banks of floodlights came on to illuminate what would soon become their battlefield.
Now for the final touch, he thought.
He tapped an icon shaped like a small red sphere, and music began to blast from hidden speakers in both vehicles: Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War.” The composition was at once otherworldly and martial, the perfect accompaniment for Armageddon.
He closed his eyes and let the music fill him as the transports and the obscene army they led thundered onward.
* * *
Alice and the others stood on the roof of the Peak as the transports and the Undead horde entered the plaza below, music blasting from the vehicles. Alice watched their approach through her binoculars, and despite herself, she had to admit that Isaacs knew how to put on one hell of a performance.
The last time she’d faced a horde of monsters—only a couple days ago, though it seemed much longer—she’d had full command of her enhanced abilities, but now she was only human. That was okay, though. She’d just have to do this the old-fashioned way. She lowered her binoculars but continued to watch the transports move into the plaza, Undead following close behind.
“My God,” Abigail said, her voice filled with awe and terror. “There’s just too many of them.”
Claire and Doc stood next to each other, and Alice noticed their hands meet. Doc squeezed Claire’s hand in an attempt to be reassuring, but judging by Claire’s ashen face, Doc’s gesture didn’t help.
“What are we going to do?” Cobalt asked. She no longer sounded like a ready-to-throw-down badass. Instead, she sounded like a scared child.
Alice turned to face the others—Claire, Doc, Michael, Christian, Cobalt, Abigail—and she saw how terrified and desperate they all looked. She deliberately kept her voice calm as she answered Cobalt’s question.
“We’re going to kill every last one of them.”
She watched their faces, and while she still saw fear in their eyes, she also saw them fighting to control it. They were as ready as they were going to get.
She raised a walkie-talkie to her mouth. “Stations everyone,” she ordered.
They all moved off to attend to their assigned duties without a word. Not even Christian protested, which was a testament to how truly terrified he must be, Alice thought.
She turned to Abigail. Over the course of the last several hours, the woman had transformed the crane into a trebuchet. In the bucket of the device sat a lump of concrete wrapped in blankets and soaked with gasoline. One of Abigail’s team handed her a flaming torch, and she touched it to the sodden blanket. The gasoline ignited with a whoosh, followed by a blast of heat.
Alice turned toward the building’s edge and looked through her binoculars once more. She focused on the number three she’d spray-painted on the ground earlier, and when the wheels of the first transport rolled over the number, she shouted, “Fire!”
Alice kept the binoculars trained on the transport as Abigail threw the trebuchet’s trigger, sending the device’s counterweight plunging downward, which in turn brought its throwing arm swinging upward with rapidly increasing speed, and then the trebuchet flung its deadly cargo high into the air.
“Reload!” Alice ordered, and Abigail and her team leaped into action.
Alice tracked the burning missile’s progress through her binoculars. Someone other than Isaacs stood in this vehicle’s turret—she assumed this meant it wasn’t his transport—and the man looked up in time to see the fireball coming toward him. But there was nothing he could do. The flaming chunk of concrete crashed into the turret, crushing the man and spilling burning gasoline through the open roof hatch and into the crew cabin. Alice watched as thick smoke billowed up from within the transport, and she smiled grimly as she imagined the chaotic scene occurring inside the vehicle. She watched with satisfaction as the transport veered off course and crashed into the remnants of a building across the street. The impact caused the ruined structure to collapse on top of the transport, burying it.
That’s one, Alice thought.
* * *
Isaacs watched as the second transport disappeared beneath the rubble of the fallen building.
“Damn her!” he swore.
Isaacs seethed with fury. That bitch thought she was better than him, better than everyone. But there was nothing special about her. Project Alice was an abject failure, and he intended to prove that to her. No one defied the will of the Lord—or that of his chosen servant. Not without paying the ultimate price.
He abandoned the turret and climbed down through the open hatch into the crew cabin.
“Seal it up!” he commanded, and a trooper sealed the hatch behind him.
“Full stop!” he ordered Commander Lee. “Release the bait!”
Lee raised an eyebrow at that, but he did as Isaacs wished.
* * *
Alice watched as the remaining transport came to an abrupt halt. The Undead surged forward, clawing at the bait being dragged behind the vehicle in chains. Alice recognized the emaciated woman that she had saved from Isaacs when she’d been held prisoner. She felt an overwhelming rush of hatred for the son of a bitch and what he’d done to that poor woman, but she fought to keep the emotion in check. She had to keep a clear head if they were to have any hope of winning this battle.
She continued watching as the electronic lock on the woman’s chains disengaged, and her manacles dropped away from her wrists, and the belt keeping her chained to the transport fell away from her waist. Freed, the woman leaped to her feet and ran from the Undead, who followed in pursuit. The woman ran toward the Peak, bringing the mass of Undead with her.
Alice watched the woman run across a number two spray-painted on the ground. She waited until the woman was past the marker and the first of the Undead reached it.
“Marker Two!” she shouted. “Fire!”
Abigail threw the trebuchet’s trigger, and the device released a second flaming missile. Alice watched the block of concrete land behind the fleeing woman, crushing dozens of Undead and setting many more ablaze. The flames spread quickly, igniting the creatures’ dry, desiccated flesh, and within seconds hundreds more were on fire.
Alice lowered her gaze until the binoculars were focused on a large makeshift gate fashioned from a patchwork of metal that the survivors had erected in front of the Peak’s main entrance. Claire, Doc, Christian, and Cobalt stood behind the gate, watching as the emaciated woman ran toward them. Claire saw her, and she and Doc hurried to open the gate to allow her inside, while Christian and Cobalt provided covering fire. But the Undead were too close to the woman, and Alice knew the monsters would bring her down before she could reach safety.
Claire drew her Beretta and fired at the woman. Doc grabbed hold of her arm to try and stop her, but Claire shrugged him off and kept firing. None of Claire’s bullets struck the woman, and Alice knew that if Claire had wanted her dead, she’d have dropped the woman with the first shot. Alice thought she knew what Claire intended, and when she saw the woman dodge to one side to avoid Claire’s gunfire, she knew she’d guessed right. She couldn’t see Michael from her vantage point, but she knew he was there when she saw the telegraph pole swing into the space the woman had occupied only seconds before. The pole—now with extra weight added—cu
t a swath through the Undead, crushing dozens of the ravenous creatures. Claire and Michael had just saved the woman’s life.
* * *
Inside the transport, Isaacs watched coldly as the emaciated woman desperately ran for her life. His face showed no expression as the building’s defenders fought to save her, but once they’d sprung their pole trap and the woman was just within reach of the open gate, he smiled.
“Fire,” he ordered.
* * *
Alice watched in horror as the guns mounted on the transport opened fire, cutting down the fleeing woman in an instant. Her body jerked as the fifty cals tore through her, spraying the air with blood, and then she fell. An instant later, Undead descended on her, ripping at her flesh with hands and teeth, snarling at each other as they fought over her remains.
Alice lowered her binoculars, unable to watch further. Whatever else happened this night, she vowed that Isaacs wouldn’t survive to see the dawn. He was a worse monster than anything Umbrella had cooked up in a lab, and one way or another, she was going to take the bastard down.
* * *
Claire stood stunned as she watched the woman fall. A number of Undead immediately began feeding on her body, but many more kept on coming toward the gate, hungry gazes fixed on the meat standing on the other side. Christian and Cobalt fired continuously, but although they dropped one Undead after another, there were far too many of the creatures for them to handle alone.
“Close the gate!” Doc shouted.
His words broke through Claire’s paralysis. She saw that the first of the Undead would reach the gate before they could close it, and she leaped to the defense, standing in the gate’s opening and firing upon the onrushing monsters. Doc joined her, and the two of them fought side by side, cutting down the Undead in their tracks. Claire’s fighting skills had been honed to a razor-sharp edge during her time leading a caravan of survivors across the wasteland that America had become thanks to the destructive effects of the T-virus. Doc hadn’t had the same amount of experience fighting for his life and the lives of others, but it was clear he knew how to handle himself.
