by S. D. Perry
His gut knotted. That was exactly what they were, like a giant crab’s or scorpion’s claws, and as he watched, they both opened, revealing thickly serrated edges. The huge pincers turned inward and up, began to actually saw through the steel roof, the sound of ripping metal like a high scream.
He’d seen enough. He turned and ran the last few meters to the door out, aware that he’d broken out in a cold sweat. Behind him, the scream of tortured metal went on and on, and he grabbed the handle, jerked—
—and it was locked. Of course.
He spun back just in time to see the owner of the massive pincers jump down through the jagged entrance it had made, blocking the only other means of escape.
* * *
Rebecca had just decided the last car was safe when the dog attacked.
After leaving Billy, she’d made her way through a kitchen area in the last car, one awash in blood and fallen cookware, but otherwise empty. She was starting to wonder if some of the passengers and crew might have gotten off, perhaps when the train had first been attacked. There was a lot of blood around for so few bodies. Considering the state of the few passengers she’d run into, maybe that was for the best.
Her feet skidded through a puddle of cooking oil as she surveyed the kitchen, but her search was otherwise uneventful. The door to the rest of the car—presumably a storage area of some kind—was locked, but there was a crawl space that ran beneath the floor, with a covering she managed to pry up without too much trouble. She wasn’t happy about having to crawl into a dark hole, but it was a short tunnel, just a couple of meters. Besides, she’d told Billy she would start at the back of the train, and she meant to be thorough. Doing a decent job was something to hold on to in the midst of such madness. The virus victims were bad enough, and that man made out of leeches...
...Don’t think about it. Find the keycard, stop the train, go get some real help. Someone besides a convicted killer, thank you very much. Billy was her only port in the storm, so to speak, and he’d certainly saved her ass, but trusting him any further than she absolutely had to would be idiotic.
She’d been right about the next compartment. After a thankfully brief claustrophobic crawl, she stood up in a storage space, barely lit by a single hanging bulb. There were boxes and bins along the walls, mostly hidden in deep shadow. She swept the darkness with her weapon. Nothing moved but the train itself, rocking along the track.
At the back of the compartment was a door with a window in it. Rebecca stepped closer, nine-millimeter extended, saw darkness and movement on the other side, the sound of the train louder, and realized she was actually in the last car, looking out over the track. She felt a flutter of something like relief, just knowing that the world still existed out there—and that if worse came to worst, she could always jump. The train was going pretty fast, but it was an option.
Click.
She spun at the soft sound behind her, heart hammering, aiming at nothing. The train kept rolling along, the shadows pitching and swaying, the sound not repeated. After a tense moment, she took a deep breath, blew it out. Probably one of the boxes shifting. Like the rest of this car—well, the first floor, anyway—the storage compartment seemed to be safe. She doubted there’d be a keycard floating around, but at least she could say she’d looked—
—click. Click. Click-click-click.
Rebecca froze. The sound was right next to her, and she knew what it was, anyone who’d ever had a dog would know: the tick of toenails on a hard surface. She slowly turned her head to the right, to where she now saw there were a couple of dog carriers, both with their doors standing open. And emerging from the shadows behind the closest—
It all happened fast. With a vicious snarl, the dog leaped. She had time to register that it was like the others she’d seen—huge, infected, damaged—and then her right foot came up, the action reflexive. She kicked out, hard, and caught one side of the creature’s barrel chest with her heel. With a horrible wet tearing sound, she heard as well as felt a sizable flap of the animal’s chest slough away, the skin sliding off the graying muscle, the wet and matted fur sticking to the bottom of her oily shoe.
Incredibly, the dog ignored the wound and kept coming, its jaws wide and dripping. It would have her before she could get the gun up, she knew it, she could already feel the teeth clamping on her arm, and she also knew that a bite from this dog would kill her, would turn her into one of the walking near-dead—
—and before the teeth actually touched, her other foot, slick with oil, skidded out from beneath her. Rebecca hit the floor, banging her hip, and the dog flew overhead, a smell like rotten meat washing over her. It actually stepped on her, one back paw smearing dirt on her left shoulder as it bounded over, the momentum of its lunge carrying it past.
The wildly lucky fall had only bought her a second. She rolled onto her stomach, extended her arm and fired, catching the animal as it turned to lunge again. The first shot went high; the second found its mark, just below the poor beast’s left eye.
The dog sagged to the floor, dead before it had stopped moving. Blood began to spread around the fallen dog, and Rebecca scrambled away, pushing herself to her feet. Beyond the very basics, virology wasn’t her specialty, but she was willing to bet that the dog’s blood was hot, highly infective, and she wasn’t interested in catching whatever was going around. This wasn’t a common head cold.
Assuming this is a virus, she thought, staring down at the decayed mess that had been a canine. It made as much sense as anything else, the mysterious T-virus Billy had talked about. How had it spread? What was the rate of toxicity, how quickly did it amplify once inside a host body?
She scraped the sole of her shoe against one of the kennels, hoping that she’d be able to erase that wet ripping sound from her memory as easily—and saw something glitter from the shadows. She leaned down, picked up a small gold ring, notched in an unusual design. It didn’t appear to be real gold, was probably worthless, but it was pretty. And she was lucky to be standing there looking at it, all things considered.
“Which makes this a lucky ring,” she said, and slipped it on her left index finger. It was very nearly a perfect fit.
The ring was all she found. There was no keycard lying around, nothing useful. She stepped out onto the back platform for a moment and was instantly drenched. The storm was torrential, and the train was moving much too quickly to consider jumping. Her hopes soared briefly when she saw a panel labeled EMERGENCY BRAKE LINE, but a few taps at the controls proved it to be powerless. So much for emergencies.
She went back inside, pushing her wet hair off her forehead. Time to head forward, try searching the bodies of the men that she and Billy had killed. As distasteful as the thought was, there wasn’t much of an alternative. They didn’t know if anyone was driving the train, or if it was a runaway; either way, they needed to get control.
She looked back at the dog one more time before leaving—by the door, this time—thinking of how lucky she’d been, how easily she could have been bitten or mauled to death. No way would she let her guard down again; she only hoped Billy was having better luck.
* * *
Christ on a cross.
Billy stared, his mouth hanging open, his mind numb with the impossibility of the thing not ten meters in front of him.
It might have looked something like a scorpion, if scorpions grew as big as sports cars. The monster that fell through the train’s roof was insectile, maybe three meters long, with a pair of giant, armored claws snapping around its flat face, a long, bloated tail that curved up over its back, that ended in a curled stinger bigger than Billy’s head. There were multiple legs, but Billy wasn’t in a counting mood—not with the thing moving toward him, emitting a sound like an overheated engine as its massive, jointed legs pounded across the floor. Rain poured down from the hole in the roof, making the scene all the more hellish, the creature emerging from the wet haze like a bad dream.
No time to think. Billy shouldered and cocked
the hunting gun and aimed for the thing’s low, flat skull. Between the motion of the train and the monstrosity’s loping scrabble, it took him a few seconds to be sure of the shot, a few seconds that seemed like an eternity. The creature scrabbled closer, its stiffly haired feet gouging up flaps of the expensive carpet with each rumbling step.
Billy squeezed, boom, the shotgun slapping against his shoulder hard enough to bruise. A hit, and the thing screeched, a splash of milky fluid erupting from the plated skull. He didn’t pause to assess damage, only re-aimed and fired again, boom.
The thing was screeching ever louder, but still coming. Billy broke the shotgun, jerked the empty shells out, dug for more. He fumbled, shells spilling to the carpet, the shrieking monster closing the distance fast, too fast.
There was a single shell left in his pocket. He got it out, jammed it home and brought the rifle up to his hip... This better be the one—
The shot hit the monster square in the center of its dark, ugly face, only a meter from where Billy stood, close enough that he felt the heat of gunpowder residue hitting his bare skin, embedding there. Its screech died as a large, jagged chunk of exoskeleton blew out the back of its head, splattering the spasming tail with blood and brain matter. It shivered all over, its huge claws whipping outward, opening and closing, its stinger jabbing at air. With a final gurgling cry, it sank to the floor, seeming to deflate as its heavy claws, its body, came to rest.
The smell of it, like dirt and hot, sour grease was nearly overwhelming, but Billy didn’t move for a full minute, wanting to be sure it was dead. He could see where the first two rounds had hit—the shotgun pulled slightly to the left, though the final shot had been dead on—chipping away at the thick armor that shaded its beady black eyes.
What is it? He stared down at the horror, not sure he wanted to know. It had to be connected to the dogs and walking dead, to the T-virus. That journal he’d found had said something about even small doses causing changes in size and aggressiveness...
Which means this guy must have snorted a couple of gallons, minimum. Accidentally? No chance. The journal also said something about a laboratory. And controlling the effects of the virus, about how until they could control it, the company was “playing with fire.”
The implications were clear enough. Maybe the T-virus had gotten out by accident, but this company, whatever it was, had obviously known what it could do beforehand. Had experimented with it.
For the moment, though, all that mattered was that it was dead—and he was done searching for any keycard. Screw going it alone. If the scorpion king had any brothers or sisters wandering around, Billy wanted someone else to take up the slack.
He picked up the shells he’d dropped and reloaded. Then he carefully stepped around the massive, stinking carcass, and set off to find Rebecca. Maybe she’d had better luck than he had.
* * *
Just after she stepped into the front car, Rebecca thought she heard weapon fire, from back the way she came. She stood in the doorway, holding on to the frame, staring blankly at the one dead dog visible from her position as she strained to hear. Thunder rumbled outside. After a moment, she gave up, and walked toward the front of the train.
She moved slowly, steeling herself to see Edward again, wishing she’d thought to grab a blanket or something from the mess back in the passenger cars. Maybe a coat off one of the dead men; she certainly hadn’t gotten anything else, except a rising sense of indignation with whoever had loosed the T-virus, and a headache from holding her breath. No keys, nothing to help. That train worker’s body at the front of the car, where she’d met Billy, though—perhaps the key in its dead hand would turn out to be useful somehow.
She reached the turn in the corridor and forced herself past it, skirting the pool of fluids that had leaked from the dog—
—and Edward was gone.
Rebecca stopped, stared. The second dog was still there—but a wad of red gauze and a few bloody splatters were all that remained where Edward’s body had been. That, and the thick smell of rot. Cool, wet air breezed in through the windows, but the smell was too strong for it.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion as she looked down, saw the tracks in the dog blood. She followed them with her gaze, looked toward the front, seeing the boot prints in red, smeared, as though whoever had worn them was drunk, or... or sick...
No. She’d felt for a pulse.
Time slowed even more, her gaze finally rising from the floor. She saw the edge of a bare arm, someone standing just out of sight at the end of the hall. Someone tall. Someone wearing boots.
“No,” she said, and Edward stepped away from the wall, stepped into view. When he saw her, his bloodless lips opened, a moan emerging. He staggered toward her, his face gray, his eyes filmed almost white.
“Edward?”
He kept walking, reeling really, his blood drenched shoulder trailing along the wall, his arms slack at his sides, his face empty and mindless. This was Edward, this was her buddy, and she raised her handgun, taking a step back, taking aim.
“Don’t make me,” she said, a part of her mind wondering at how deathlike the virus made its victims seem, must have slowed his heart rate—
Edward moaned again. He sounded desperately hungry, and though his eyes were barely visible through the haze of white, she could see them well enough to understand that this wasn’t Edward anymore. He staggered closer.
“Be at peace,” she whispered, and shot him, the round drilling a neat hole in his left temple. He stood perfectly still for a beat, his expression of dull hunger unchanging, and then collapsed to the floor.
Rebecca was still standing there, aiming at the corpse of her friend when Billy found her a few minutes later.
FIVE
William Birkin hurried through the underbelly of the water treatment plant, spooked by the echoing clang of his footsteps through the cavernous corridors as he made his way toward control B on the first basement level. The place felt cold and dead, like a tomb—which was not a bad analogy at all, except he knew what wandered behind the locked doors he passed, knew that he was surrounded by an abundance of life, such as it was. Somehow, that awareness made the distant echoes of his every movement seem that much more sacrilegious, like shouting in a mortuary.
Which it is, really. They’re not dead yet. Your colleagues, your friends...
Get a grip on yourself. They all knew this was a possibility, all of them. Bad luck, is all.
Bad luck for them. He and Annette had been at the facility downtown when the spill had occurred, finalizing the breakdown of the new synthesis.
He’d reached the executive stairwell at the back of B4 and started to climb, wondering if Wesker was already waiting. Probably. Birkin was running late, he hadn’t wanted to leave his work for even a moment, and Albert Wesker was a precise and punctual man, among other things. A soldier. A researcher. A sociopath.
And maybe he was the one. Maybe he leaked it. It was possible; Wesker’s loyalties lay with Wesker, always had, and though he’d been with Umbrella for a long time, Birkin knew he was looking for an exit. On the other hand, crapping in his own backyard wasn’t his style, and Birkin had known the man for twenty years, give or take. If Wesker had caused the leak, he certainly wouldn’t be sticking around to see what happened next.
Birkin topped the flight, made a turn and started up the next. Allegedly, the elevators still worked, but he didn’t want to risk it. There was no one around to help if something went wrong. No one but Wesker, and for all he knew, the S.T.A.R.S. commander had decided to go home.
At the top of the second flight, Birkin heard something, a soft sound from behind the door that marked the second basement level. He paused a moment, imagining some poor soul pressed against the door on the other side, perhaps mindlessly beating his or her dying body against the obstacle again and again, vaguely wishing to be free. When the infection had originally been identified, the internal doors had locked automatically, trapping most of the i
nfected workers and escaped test subjects. The main pathways were clear, at least to and from the control rooms.
He glanced at his watch, and started up the final flight. He didn’t want to miss Wesker if he was still around.
So, if Wesker didn’t do it, then who? How? They’d all thought it was an accident; he still had until a few hours ago, when Wesker had called him about the train. That was one accident too many. Lord knew there were enough people who had reason to sabotage Umbrella, but it wasn’t easy to obtain even a low-level clearance pass for any of the Raccoon labs.
What if... Wesker had said something about the company wanting real data on the virus, not just sims but hands-on; maybe they had unleashed it themselves, sent in one of their squads to pop a cork that shouldn’t have been popped, so to speak.
Or maybe this is how they plan to get to the G-virus. Create all this chaos, then slip in and steal it.
Birkin’s jaw tightened. No. They didn’t know yet how close he was, and wouldn’t know until he was goddamn good and ready. He’d taken precautions, hidden things, and Annette had bribed the watchdogs to keep away. He’d seen it happen too many times, the company taking away a doctor’s research because they wanted instant results, handing it over to new blood... and in at least two cases that he knew of personally, the original scientist had been eliminated, the better to keep him from moving to the competition.
Not me. And not the G-virus. It was his life’s work, but he’d destroy it before he’d let it be taken away.
He reached the control room he wanted, an observation platform, really, that shared space with the plant’s backup generator, now thankfully silent. The lights were down, but as he walked around the mesh catwalk, he could see Wesker sitting in front of the observation screens, his back outlined by the glow from the monitors. As he often did, Wesker wore his sunglasses, an affectation that had always unnerved Birkin; the guy could see in the dark.
Before he’d announced his presence, Wesker was beckoning him over, raising a hand without even looking over his shoulder.
