Resident Evil

by Tim Waggoner

  He realized then that he might not be alone after all. Presumably, this transport had prisoners in the hold just as his original vehicle had. He didn’t know for certain because he hadn’t bothered to check. Well, it was too late now, and anyway, what did it matter? Armageddon was nigh and soon they all would be dead. He was actually looking forward to it, and not solely because it was his greatest desire to fulfill his holy purpose. He was tired—so very tired—and burning up with the fever of infection. Death would not only supply him with release. Frankly, he could use the rest.

  As he watched the rim of the crater come into view of the transport’s floodlights, he realized that he wasn’t precisely sure how he was going to maneuver the vehicle down into the crater. Then again, the transport was a tough, durable machine, and the Lord had given it to Isaacs to use as his chariot. God had brought him this far, hadn’t He? He wouldn’t abandon him now, not when he was so close.

  Have a little faith, he told himself.

  He gripped the steering wheel tighter and aimed the transport at the crater.

  The vehicle bounced and shook as its wheels rolled over broken concrete and pieces of metal left by the partial collapse of Raven’s Gate Bridge. Isaacs hadn’t bothered to strap on a seat belt, and if he hadn’t been holding onto the steering wheel, he would’ve been thrown out of his seat by the vehicle’s violent motions. He gritted his teeth, pressed the accelerator, and the engine roared as the transport’s full power was directed to getting it over and past the debris. Then the vehicle reached the rim of the crater, rose upward, paused—perfectly balanced on the edge—and then slowly began to descend. The transport quickly picked up speed, shaking back and forth as it went, as if it were caught in the throes of a massive earthquake.

  Yes, yes, yes! Isaacs thought.

  And then there was a sudden violent jolt, and the transport slammed to a stop. The impact caused Isaacs’ head to collide with the steering wheel, and bright light flashed behind his retinas. He sat there for a couple seconds, momentarily stunned, and tried to figure out what had happened. Through the windshield, he saw that the wall of the crater was lined with jagged boulders, and he guessed that the transport’s wheels were stuck between the rocks.

  The vehicle was still running, and Isaacs gave it the gas, trying to power the transport forward and out of the boulders that had trapped it. The vehicle rocked forward, but it didn’t break free. Isaacs put the engine in reverse and tried to back out.

  “Come on. Come on!”

  Nothing.

  He tried alternating between drive and reverse, but without success. Finally, Isaacs gave up and switched off the engine. The transport might be finished, but he wasn’t. He rose from the driver’s seat and moved through the crew cabin toward the ladder that led toward the ceiling hatch closest to the weapons turret. He climbed upward, unlocked the hatch, shoved the door open, and climbed out onto the roof.

  The transport rested at a downward angle, and Isaacs had to move in a slow crouch to make sure he didn’t lose his balance. He made his way to the back of the transport and saw hundreds of Undead milling around aimlessly, with more climbing over the crater’s rim every second. Brenner’s body—the bait Isaacs had used to lure the creatures—was little more than scraps of bloody meat and bone that the Undead were picking over.

  The transport’s rear doors had come open when it crashed to a halt, and Isaacs could hear the sounds of Undead moving around inside. If there had been any prisoners in there, they were dead now. Well, if no one was left to serve as bait, he supposed he’d have to do the job himself.

  He made his way back to the open hatch and began slamming the door closed over and over, hoping the sound of metal clanging against metal would draw the Undead’s attention. For good measure, he shouted, “Over here! That’s right! Look at me!”

  One by one, the heads of all the Undead around the transport turned toward Isaacs. Mouths dropped open and leathery black tongues licked cracked, worm-like lips. Dead eyes gleamed with hunger, and a chorus of aggressive snarls and eager moans filled the air.

  As the mass of Undead began to surge toward the transport, Isaacs used one of the outer access ladders to climb down from the vehicle’s roof. He moved away from the transport just as the first Undead made a grab for him.

  “Come on!” he urged. “That’s it! Follow me!”

  Then he turned and, like some demented Pied Piper, began to lead the horde deeper into the crater.

  * * *

  Wesker lay on the floor, crushed leg still trapped beneath the blast door. Streams of blood continued flowing away from his leg, as his T-virus-infused cells proceeded with their evacuation. He continued to hold the detonator in his hand, but his face was chalk-white and his grip unsteady. Alicia knew he was dying. Considering that the son of a bitch had killed her father, she was glad to be present during his final moments. She hoped his dying hurt like hell.

  Alicia sat before a computer monitor. A pair of high-tech probes sat on the table next to it, somewhat resembling a pair of earphones, only these devices weren’t for listening to sound.

  The Red Queen hovered nearby. “Are you ready?”

  Alicia nodded and with great difficulty she slipped the probes onto her head and fitted them snugly against her temples.

  “Help me,” Wesker pleaded.

  She didn’t look at him as she began entering commands into the computer.

  “You don’t need any help, Wesker. You’re dying. Just get on with it. You’ve obviously used the T-virus to enhance yourself since I went to sleep, but it seems like whatever powers it granted you have deserted you now. What happened? No, let me guess. The results were unstable, difficult to control. If you tried to use your powers now—with all the genetic material you’ve lost from bleeding out—the strain on your system would tear you apart.” She paused, and now she did glance over at him. “I bet the only reason you’re begging me for help is so you can lure me close enough to kill me and absorb my genetic material. As damaged as it is, it still might stabilize you enough to allow you to pull your way free of the door and heal your wound. I’m insulted that you think I’d be stupid enough to fall for such an obvious ploy.” She returned her attention to the monitor and resumed typing.

  Wesker didn’t address her last statement, which was how she knew she’d been right.

  “Why would you do this?” he asked. “Why would you turn against your own people?”

  She finished typing and sat back in her chair. “I went along with Doctor Isaacs because I thought humanity was doomed. That we had no other choice. But then I realized that there might be another way.”

  “The system is ready,” the Red Queen pronounced.

  “Let’s begin,” Alicia said. Her skin began to tingle where the probes touched it, and on the monitor in front of her images appeared, flashing from one to another in rapid succession, all from her childhood. She smiled as she watched them. Despite everything, it hadn’t been an altogether bad life, she thought. And memories—even bad ones—were precious.

  She settled back and enjoyed the show.

  * * *

  Isaacs exited the illuminated walkway and hurried toward the room elevator that Alice and Doc had used earlier. He still held the helix containing the antivirus, and he knew that if he hurled the vial to the ground here and shattered it, spilling the contents onto the rocks, Alice would be unable to use it. The problem with that was then he wouldn’t be able to use it either. The antivirus was the key to the final stage in his plan. Once the Earth had been scoured clean of its… undesirable elements, the antivirus would be released to destroy all the Undead and the various mutations to make the world safe for the people slumbering in the Hive’s cryostasis tubes—people carefully selected for their intelligence, skills, and most important of all, breeding—to wake and begin making the world into the paradise it always should’ve been.

  And it wasn’t as if he could simply make more of the antivirus. It was devilishly difficult to produce, extre
mely unstable, and it had taken thousands of attempts just to get this much of it. This was all there was, and all he had to do was keep it out of Alice’s hands for a few more more minutes until the final coordinated assault on the last surviving human settlements occurred. And for his plan to come to full fruition, all of those men, women, and children—every one an undesirable—had to die. Although they came from inferior stock, they possessed one great strength: they bred like goddamn rabbits. There might be only a few thousand left, but if they were spared, it wouldn’t be long before their kind overran the planet again, bringing back the destructive ways of the old world: beginning wars, wasting resources, contaminating the environment, elevating superstition over reason, eventually reduced to fighting like animals over whatever meager scraps were left. He couldn’t let that happen again. He wouldn’t!

  He stepped on the elevator platform, the shaft above him rising two hundred feet to the room’s original position. He took a seat before the computer terminal that Alice had used earlier and typed in a quick command. The Red Queen’s face appeared on the screen before him. There was a small metal rectangle on the keyboard, and he placed his thumb on it.

  “This is Doctor Alexander Roland Isaacs. Confirm DNA Scan and Voice Print Identification.”

  “Identity confirmed.”

  “Confirm Security Override Four-Three-Six-Five.”

  “Override confirmed.”

  “You will now take yourself offline and place all functions under my sole control.”

  A slight hesitation, and then, “As you wish. Shutting down now.”

  This was the moment of truth. The Red Queen might have a mind of her own, but in the end, she was just a machine, and like the fabled genie in the lamp, regardless of how she might feel about it, she had no choice but to obey when given a command by her master. Assuming, that is, that she hadn’t found some way to circumvent her programming. But a moment later her image flickered and disappeared.

  Isaacs then sensed something behind him. He didn’t have to turn and look to know who it was.

  “Your little friend won’t be able to help you now.”

  “And you can’t run anymore,” Alice said.

  Isaacs rose and turned to see Alice and Claire standing in the room’s doorway. He tucked the helix vial into his belt, and then gave them a triumphant smile.

  “I wasn’t running.”

  Through his bio-implants, he sent a signal to the elevator, and the room lurched as it began to ascend. The sudden movement threw Alice and Claire off balance, and that’s when Isaacs made his move.

  Both women recovered quickly and began firing their weapons at him, but he’d already shifted into hyper-awareness mode. Computer graphics scrolled across his vision, gathering, calculating, and analyzing data with unimaginable speed as his senses assessed the environment and presented him with possible courses of action. The bullets the women had fired seemed to be coming at him in slow motion, and the bio-implants in his legs enabled him to dash forward, weaving past the bullets with ease.

  Isaacs reached Claire first and he backhanded her with inhuman strength. She flew across the room, slammed into the wall of the elevator shaft, bounced like a rag doll, and smashed into a stack of computers before falling to the floor, unmoving. Isaacs didn’t bother using his senses to determine if the woman was dead or merely unconscious. As long as she was no longer a threat, her condition was of no importance to him.

  Alice screamed in rage, tossed aside her empty gun, and charged Isaacs.

  He grinned like an excited little boy as she came at him. This was going to be fun.

  12

  Alice’s chest felt like it was on fire, but she ignored the pain. She knew there was a chance one of her broken ribs might puncture a lung, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was getting the antivirus from Isaacs in the next few minutes.

  She feinted at Isaacs, starting a punch with her right hand, and when he ducked the blow like she thought he would, she hit him with a hard left. His predictive combat software allowed him to anticipate an opponent’s moves, so if she was going to have any hope of defeating him, she was going to have to improvise, be unpredictable, do the unexpected and keep him on the defensive. One thing she had going for her: his bio-implants might make him fast and strong, but they couldn’t give him battle experience to match hers. She hoped it would be enough to make the difference.

  She started to follow her punch with a kick to his kneecap, but when he shifted his body in anticipation of the strike, she instead brought her left arm swinging back and delivered a swift chop to his throat. He staggered backward, struggling to draw in air, but Alice didn’t let up. She moved to drive her knee into his crotch, and as he hunched over to protect his genitals, she clapped her hands against his ears as hard as she could. This blow caught him by surprise as well, and the resulting pain caused him to take several more steps backward. He was now within several feet of the wall of the shaft. Hoping that he was too stunned to heed the warnings of his software, she rushed toward him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and slammed him against the wall.

  The wall appeared to be moving downward as the elevator room rose upward, and she pressed Isaacs’ head against the shaft, hoping the friction would cause him some damage, maybe flay the skin from his back. Hell, she’d be happy if it only caused enough pain to keep him from concentrating on using his enhanced abilities. She kept him pressed against the shaft wall with her right hand, while she reached for the antivirus with her left. But while she’d managed to take him by surprise, it wasn’t enough.

  Isaacs shot a hand toward her palm first and struck a hard blow to her breast bone. She gasped in pain and staggered backward. Isaacs stepped forward, anticipation shining in his eyes. She launched a kick toward his head, but he caught her leg easily and shoved her backward. She lost her balance and fell, but she twisted as she did so, rolled, drew her knife from its boot sheath, came up in a standing position and hurled the blade at Isaacs. The knife streaked toward his throat, but he batted the weapon aside as easily as a normal human might swat away a lazy, slow-moving fly.

  Alice realized then that she was outmatched. She had the skills and experience of a trained warrior, but thanks to his technological enhancements, Isaacs moved fast, hit hard, and was almost impossible to hurt. She understood that he was only toying with her and that he could kill her any time he wanted. But despite all of this, she refused to give up. She would continue fighting until she had the antivirus or Isaacs killed her.

  Isaacs had forced Alice to retreat to the edge of the elevator room, and the wall of the shaft was only a few feet behind her. Every thirty feet a thick concrete ledge protruded from the wall, and she saw Isaacs’ gaze flick toward the next ledge. Moving in a blur, he kicked Alice’s legs out from under her, and she fell back hard, broken ribs once more screaming in protest at how they were being treated. As she looked up, she realized that her head was perfectly positioned for the next concrete ledge—which they were rapidly approaching—to decapitate her. Another couple of seconds, and she’d be dead.

  She glanced to the right and saw another canvas bag that had been left by the Sanitation Team all those years ago. At the last instant, Alice rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding death. She came to rest right next to the equipment bag. After a moment, she rose to her feet to face Isaacs once more. She attempted to strike at a nerve bundle in his right shoulder, hoping to temporarily render that arm useless, but even though she landed the blow, it had no impact on him.

  Alice felt the floor shudder beneath her as the elevator room reached its original location and came to a stop. Isaacs struck a flat-handed blow to her throat, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

  “Just returning the favor,” he said.

  Alice staggered backward, choking, and Isaacs pressed his advantage. He came at her and began pummeling her relentlessly with a flurry of savage blows. She couldn’t think, couldn’t react. All she could do was keep stepping backward as Isaacs struck her. He was hi
tting her so hard and fast that after a while the strikes themselves were the only things keeping her on her feet. If he stopped hitting her, she knew she’d slump to the ground and lie there, unable to move.

  He did stop then, but instead of letting her fall, he grabbed her upper arm and hurled her toward the open doorway. She flew into the Glass Corridor, hit the floor, and slid several feet before coming to a stop. She lay there for a few seconds, desperately hoping to catch her breath. Pain beyond anything she had ever known suffused her entire body, and all she wanted to do was lie still and wait for it to stop, one way or another. But she couldn’t permit herself that luxury, and she forced herself to her feet, bracing herself by placing a hand on the wall. Getting up was one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, and she thought of Alicia, her—what? Mother? Sister? Cell donor? Was this what it was like for her, even the simplest of movements requiring Herculean physical effort and strength of will? Alicia might’ve looked old and feeble on the outside, but Alice thought the woman was one of the strongest people she’d ever met.

  Through the observation window, Alice saw Isaacs standing before the computer monitor, typing something on the keyboard. She then heard a tinny, electronic voice come over the computer’s speakers.

  “Security systems activated.”

  The words made her blood run cold. She heard a deep humming sound come from within the corridor’s walls, and a single horizontal laser beam appeared at neck height and scythed toward her. She forced her pain-wracked body to move into a crouching position, the beam missing her as it passed overhead. She straightened and saw several strands of black hair drift to the floor around her, and she realized just how close her escape had been.