by Tim Waggoner
We make quite a team, Claire thought, and despite the grave nature of their situation, she couldn’t help smiling.
When Claire, Doc, Christian, and Cobalt had taken out enough Undead to give them a few seconds of breathing room, Christian and Cobalt stopped firing and hurried to close the gate. Still shooting, Claire and Doc stepped back as the gate swung shut before the rest of the Undead could reach them. But Claire knew it would only provide temporary respite.
“Move!” she ordered, and she, Doc, Christian, and Cobalt ran toward the Peak’s main entrance, and quickly disappeared inside the building, each of them passing over a spray-painted number one as they did so.
* * *
On the roof, Alice watched through her binoculars as the transport fired a rocket at the gate. The blast tore the makeshift construction apart, and an instant later the horde of Undead surged over and past the twisted chunks of metal, and when the first of them ran across the number one, she raised her walkie to her mouth.
“Final marker! Now!”
7
“Final marker! Now!”
On the building’s tenth floor, Michael heard Alice’s command over the walkie tucked into his belt. He stood with a team of residents next to a large block of concrete and rebar which teetered on the edge of the balcony above the Peak’s main entrance. A cable was wrapped around the block, its lower end trailing downward past the balcony.
“You heard her!” Michael shouted. “Now push! Push! Put your backs into it!”
Michael and his team pressed their bodies against the block of concrete and shoved with all their might, jaws clenched and faces strained from the effort. At first the concrete refused to budge, but then Michael poured every last bit of strength he had into pushing, and that made the difference. The concrete slowly tipped forward, and then it went over the edge.
The block fell three stories before the cable wrapped around it pulled tight. The other end of the cable was attached to a series of smaller cables, each of which stretched to the metal hooks Doc and Christian had embedded in the outside wall. The block pulled the hooks out of the wall, which in turn caused the wall to break apart. Great chunks of the building’s exterior wall rained down, crushing hundreds if not thousands of Undead below in an instant.
Michael and his team cheered, savoring this spectacular moment of triumph. But their victory was short-lived. In the main plaza, thousands more Undead charged through the swirling dust, clambering over the debris and the mangled bodies of their own kind, surging through the shattered gate and into the Peak.
Michael watched with despair as the creatures flooded into the building. He feared that no matter how hard they fought, this was a battle they simply could not win. He prayed he was wrong.
* * *
Inside the remaining transport, Commander Lee turned to Isaacs.
“We’ve breached the gates,” he said. “They’re falling back.”
Isaacs felt a profound sense of peace settle within him. Alice and her comrades had done their best, and they’d fallen far short. This night—as it was always intended—belonged to the Lord… and to him.
“Looks like they’re out of tricks. Target the roof.”
“Targeting roof,” Lee said.
* * *
Alice watched as the turret atop the transport swung around, guns raising as they aimed toward the roof.
“Take cover!” she shouted. “Everyone get down!” Everyone threw themselves to the roof as a hailstorm of fifty-caliber rounds began tearing apart everything around them.
* * *
Inside the Peak’s central atrium, the exits were blocked by makeshift barricades and stretches of mesh fencing. The residents fought desperately from behind the barricades as thousands of Undead filled the giant circular space. Claire, Doc, Cobalt, and Christian were in the thick of it, fighting savagely, killing the Undead as the horde pressed forward.
“Come on! Push!” Claire urged.
“Push them back!” Doc echoed.
The residents gave everything they had, but the sheer mass of the Undead horde was unstoppable. Claire watched in despair as all around her barricades began to give way under the Undead’s assault.
Out of the corner of her eye, Claire saw the barricade Cobalt and Christian were behind collapse. Undead flooded forward, grabbed hold of Cobalt and dragged her down screaming as they tore into her flesh.
“No!” Christian shouted. He fired his submachine gun, blasting the Undead off her, but it was too late. She was already dead.
Claire didn’t have time to mourn for her fallen friend. She and Doc fought to shore up their barricade as the Undead flung themselves against it, but she knew there was nothing they could do to prevent the creatures from overwhelming their defenses. The Undead would be through the barricades and devouring them all within moments.
She glanced at Doc. She didn’t want to die, but if she had to, she couldn’t think of anyone better to have by her side. He gave her a sad smile, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. Whatever happened next, they would face it together.
She pulled her walkie from her belt and raised it to her mouth.
“Alice! We can’t hold them much longer!”
* * *
Alice received Claire’s message. The transport was still firing at the roof, so she rose and kept low as she ran to the roof’s inner ledge, which faced the building’s atrium. She leaned over and saw that the hollow central core of the Peak was filled with Undead. Just as she’d planned.
The atrium side of the roof was lined with gasoline cans which sat next to a makeshift gutter system Abigail and her team had constructed. They crouched next to the fuel containers, and when Alice gave them the command, they stood, removed the caps, and poured the gasoline into the gutter. Alice watched as the gasoline was channeled into two waterfalls which flowed over the edge of the roof below, soaking the army of the Undead in a chemical rain.
Alice moved to one of the waterfalls and took a flaming torch from one of Abigail’s team. Abigail stood next to the other waterfall, also holding a torch. Alice gave her a nod and together the two women touched their torches to the waterfalls and set them ablaze, causing the falling torrents of liquid to turn instantly into twin pillars of fire. The sight was apocalyptic, Alice thought. Almost biblical. A shame Isaacs wasn’t down there to appreciate it.
Claire and the other surviving residents on the ground abandoned their posts as the whole central atrium was consumed by flame. The ground floor became a lake of fire, filled with countless writhing bodies.
Not as easy as in D.C., but just as effective, Alice thought.
She then turned back toward the outer edge of the roof, which was now lined with gasoline cans. The transport had stopped firing—perhaps because Isaacs was more concerned with what was happening in the atrium—and she, Abigail, and the team had no trouble lifting the cans and dumping them into the gutter on this side and then igniting the gas. The fifty cals had peppered the gutter with holes, but the system worked well enough. As had happened in the atrium, the waterfalls of liquid transformed into columns of flame, raining apocalyptic fire onto the mass of Undead that had survived the collapse of the Peak’s façade.
Now for the fun part…
She handed off her binoculars and climbed onto the building’s ledge. Abigail had attached a high-tensile electricity cable to the ledge’s concrete, and Alice—the three-barreled Hydra tucked in her belt—gripped a pair of bicycle handlebars attached to the cable. The arrangement didn’t look all that sturdy to Alice, but it was too late to back out now. She crouched on the ledge, gripped the handlebars, and jumped.
The initial jerk sent fiery jolts of pain through her damaged ribs, and she swung from side to side a few times before managing to steady herself. Once she did, she began to pick up speed until she was riding the makeshift zipline at close to seventy miles per hour. The other end of the cable was bolted to a metal plate Abigail had fastened to the street in front of the Peak. The cable h
ad survived the transport’s assault and the survivors’ response—something of a miracle as far as Alice was concerned. As she reached the end of the zipline, she let go of the handlebars, tucked, and rolled.
A half-dozen Undead charged her, but Alice drew the Hydra as she came up on her feet. She pointed the short-barreled shotgun at the oncoming monsters and fired, discharging all three barrels at once. The gun boomed, and all six Undead went down, reduced to so much shredded meat. Alice had admired the Hydra before, but now she thought she might be in love with it. She didn’t pause to admire the weapon’s handiwork, though, and she quickly took cover behind a chunk of concrete that had fallen from the Peak. She wanted nothing more than to charge straight toward Isaacs’ transport, but she had something she had to pick up first. She ran to a camouflaged sheet of cloth hidden within the rubble and threw it back to reveal a cache of gasoline cans. Thankfully, the flaming rain they’d sent down from the roof hadn’t ignited them. She grabbed one and kept moving.
* * *
Inside the transport, Isaacs watched in frustration as Alice disappeared behind a section of rubble. His fever had worsened as the battle progressed, and now he felt as if he were burning up. The patch of Nu-Skin over his wrist stump itched, and without thinking, he scratched at it with the fingers of his remaining hand.
How could this have happened? They’d had two transports, a full complement of arms, highly trained crews, and an army of bloodthirsty Undead. Taking the building and destroying its occupants should’ve been child’s play. Now here they were, not defeated but nowhere close to victorious. But he knew why the tables had turned so completely. It was a one-word answer: Alice. Perhaps he should’ve waited to attack at the appointed time in coordination with the other Umbrella forces spread around the world instead of jumping the gun. But Alice’s presence in Raccoon City had demanded immediate action. No, the decision to attack early had been a sound tactical one, he was certain of that, and it had nothing to do with his personal feelings toward the fucking bitch. Nothing at all.
Commander Lee stood at the vehicle’s control console, looking over the sensor readouts.
“We lost her,” he said.
Fear and fury warred within Isaacs. He was so overcome with frustration that if he’d been holding a gun, he’d have shoved the muzzle against the back of Lee’s head and pulled the trigger. Instead, he demanded, “Where did she go? Where is she?”
Lee checked the readouts again. “I don’t have anything.”
“Turn on thermal imaging. She can’t hide from us.”
Lee’s sensor screen switched to a thermal image of the battleground around the transport, and almost immediately a red-outlined figure came into view.
“I have her,” Lee said.
Isaacs scratched at the Nu-Skin so hard it began to bleed.
“Fire!”
* * *
The transport’s fifty-caliber guns blazed into life, their bullets tearing apart an Undead wreathed in flame. More and more burning Undead staggered away from the Peak and moved past the vehicle.
Alice sat on top of the transport’s turret as it swiveled around, searching for another target. She removed the cap on the gas can she carried, hopped off the turret, and walked toward an air vent on the roof. She then poured gasoline into the vent and, when the can was empty, she tossed it over the side of the vehicle. Pulling a pack of matches from a pocket, she knelt down, lit one, used it to set the entire pack ablaze, and then slid it into the vent. An instant later she heard shouts of alarm coming from the crew cabin, followed by smoke wafting upward through the vent. She stood and turned toward the hatch, and a second later it flew open, and from inside a woman shouted, “Don’t shoot! We’re coming out!”
The Umbrella trooper emerged, firing a 9mm as she came. Alice leveled the Hydra at her and fired one barrel. The blast caught the woman in the face and upper chest, and she fell back in a spray of blood, dead, only halfway out of the hatch. Her corpse blocked the opening, and black smoke curled around her body. Alice kept the Hydra aimed at the hatch, waiting for another of the crew to pull the woman’s body out of the way so they could escape the flames and smoke. But no one did anything to remove their dead comrade.
Alice heard a soft creaking sound behind her, and she spun around in time to see a second hatch spring open—this one disguised to be hidden from the naked eye. An Asian man emerged from the cabin and leaped toward her. He moved fast and closed the short distance between them before Alice could bring the Hydra to bear. He wore a sidearm—a SIG-Sauer—but it was holstered at his side. He hadn’t carried it as he’d climbed because he hadn’t wanted it to slow him down, she guessed. Smart.
When the man was in range, he swept out his left foot and knocked the Hydra out of Alice’s grasp before she could fire. The weapon flew out of her hands, hit the roof, and skittered away. For a moment, she feared the Hydra would go over the side, but it came to a stop less than a foot from the edge.
Once she was disarmed, the man tried to draw his pistol, but the instant the weapon cleared the holster, Alice stepped forward and slammed the heel of her right hand into his chin. As his head snapped back, she grabbed hold of his wrist with her left hand and twisted. The man drew in a sharp hiss of air, and Alice twisted harder until his hand was forced open and he lost hold of his gun. As it fell, Alice tried to catch it with her other hand, but she only possessed human speed now, and she missed. The gun hit the roof, bounced a couple times, slid toward the edge, and went over.
The man recovered quickly from the strike to his chin. He brought his head forward and slammed it against Alice’s forehead. White light flashed behind her eyes, and she released her grip on his wrist and staggered backward a couple steps. The man pressed his advantage. He drew a KA-BAR knife from a sheath on his belt and rushed forward, thrusting the blade at her heart.
Alice’s ears rang and her vision was blurry, but she saw the strike coming and managed to turn sideways to avoid it. She then moved forward, grabbed the man’s outstretched hand by the wrist, and with her other hand grabbed hold of his forearm below the elbow. She then yanked his arm downward, bringing her knee up toward his elbow at the same time. Knee struck bone, and the man cried out in pain as his elbow was dislocated. Alice then twisted his arm, and he howled and dropped the knife. She kept pressure on the man’s wrist, and he sank to one knee, grimacing in agony. She relaxed her grip on his forearm and gave him a strong right cross for good measure. The blow left him dazed and semiconscious, and if Alice hadn’t still been holding onto his wrist, he probably would have collapsed to the roof.
She was about to question the man, but before she could say anything, another trooper emerged from the hatch. Alice prepared to use her defeated opponent as a shield, but the trooper was unarmed—even if he had been carrying a weapon, he was coughing too hard to use it. He put his hands on top of his head in a gesture of surrender.
“Lie down on your belly and keep your hands on your head,” she ordered.
Still coughing, the man nodded and did as she ordered.
Thick black smoke billowed from both hatches now, and she waited another moment for Isaacs to emerge from the crew cabin, but no one else came out.
She looked down at her semiconscious captive.
“Where is he?” she demanded.
* * *
Several moments later Alice, Hydra in hand, dropped through the open hatch and into the transport’s cramped crew cabin. The interior was filled with smoke and residual flame, and since she didn’t have anything to cover her mouth, she did her best to breathe shallowly. Through the gloom, she saw two crew members lying on the floor. Both had been reduced to charred corpses, but she could make out enough of their features to determine that neither was Isaacs.
She continued searching, moving cautiously through the smoke and the darkness. But as she passed one of the corpses, it lunged toward her and grabbed her arm. Alice felt a sharp stab of fear as the corpse’s blackened fingers pressed against her, and at fir
st she thought it was an Undead. She swung the Hydra around to blast it in the face, but then the man’s grasp weakened, and he let go of her and fell back to the floor. He was just a human who’d expended the last of his strength to reach for her, maybe trying to attack her, maybe seeking help or just the solace of human contact as his life drained away. Whichever the case, he was gone now, and Alice was glad she hadn’t fired at him, if for no other reason than because she hadn’t ended up wasting ammo.
She moved on.
She reached the bulkhead that separated the crew cabin from the hold, and she opened the door and stepped through. The collection of crucifixes still hung from the ceiling, and while there was no smoke in here, the stink of unwashed bodies, blood, piss, shit, and fear was far worse. Of the prisoners Alice had once shared the hold with, only two remained: Scars and the Thin Man. Both were still manacled and chained to the wall, and they faced a computer monitor that had been brought in and placed where the Emaciated Woman had sat. That struck Alice as odd.
When Scars saw her, he began babbling, clearly afraid.
“I’m sorry! Please don’t shoot me!” he said.
The Thin Man only looked at her. Even if he’d wanted to speak, Alice remembered that he had no tongue.
She ignored the two men and raced to the back doors of the transport. They hung wide open, and when she looked out and scanned the battlefield, she saw no sign of Isaacs.
“Damn it,” she said softly.
Michael walked by then, along with a handful of other survivors. They were spreading through the plaza, shooting burning Undead as they staggered by.
“Save your ammo,” Alice said. She had a better idea how to deal with the remaining Undead.
* * *
It was full dark now. The plaza was lit by the flickering flames left over from the gasoline waterfalls that had incinerated the Undead. The dancing fires cast undulating shadows everywhere, and despite the situation, Alice found the effect strangely beautiful. Far less pleasant was the stomach-churning stink of burnt flesh, but better to endure a little nausea than be filling the bellies of the Undead, as far as she was concerned.
