Chris pushed at the knob, and the door swung open.
Warm, humid air flooded out of the shadowy room,
thick and tropical, but with a nasty undertone, like
the taint of spoiled fruit. Chris instinctively pushed
Rebecca behind him as he saw the walls of the
chamber. They were completely covered in the same
kind of strange, straggling growth that was in the
hall, but here, the scaling ivy was lush and bloated, a
bilious verdant green.
There was a faint whispering coming from inside
the room, a subtle sense of movement and Chris
realized that it was coming from the sickly plant
matter itself, the walls quivering in a weird optical
illusion as the draping tendrils crept and grew.
Rebecca started to step past him and Chris pushed
her back. "What, are you nuts? I thought you said this thing sucks blood!"
She shook her head, staring at the whispering walls.
"That's not Plant 42, at least not the part the report
talked about. Plant 42 is gonna be a lot bigger, and a
lot more mobile. I never did much with phytobiology,
but according to that study, we'll be looking for an
angiosperm with motile foliage."
She smiled a quick, nervous smile. "Sorry. Think of a great big plant bulb with ten to twenty foot vines
waving around it."
Chris grimaced. "Great. Thanks for putting my mind at rest."
They edged into the large room, careful not to walk
too closely to the hissing walls. There were three
doors besides the one they came through: one directly
across from the entrance and the other two facing
each other to their left, where the room opened up.
Chris led them toward the door opposite the entrance,
figuring it as the most likely to lead out of the
bunkhouse.
The door was unlocked, and Chris started to push it
open. . .
BAM!
The door slammed shut, causing them both to jump
back, weapons raised. A series of heavy, sliding
thumps followed, like someone on the other side was
kicking at the walls - except the sounds were every-
where, above and below the door's sturdy frame,
beating against every corner of the sealed room.
"Lots of vines, you said?" Chris asked.
Rebecca nodded. "I think we just found Plant 42." They listened for a moment, Chris thinking about
the kind of strength and weight it would take to slam
the door so solidly.
No kidding, bigger and more mobile . . . and maybe
blocking the only exit to this place. Terrific.
They backed away, turning into the open area and
looking at the other two doors. The one on their right
had the number "002" above it. Chris fished out the
keys he'd found and flipped through them, finding
one with a matching number.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside, Rebecca
behind him. There was a smaller door to the left that
opened to a bathroom, quiet and dusty. The room
itself was another bedroom, a bunk, a desk, a couple
of shelves. Nothing of interest.
There was another series of dull thumps from
behind the far wall and they quickly moved back into
the humid, whispering room, Chris fighting a growing
certainty that they were going to have to deal with the
plant if they wanted to get out.
Not necessarily, there could still be another way. . .
The way things had been going so far, he didn't
think so. From the shuffling zombies lurking in the
main house to the run through the courtyard, snakes
dropping from the trees, every part of the Spencer
estate seemed to be designed to keep them from
leaving.
Chris shook the negative thoughts aside as they
approached the shadowy chamber's final door, but
they came rushing back at the sight of the small green keypad set next to the frame. He rattled the knob but
there was no give. It was another dead end.
"Security lock," he said, sighing. "No way to get in without the code."
Rebecca frowned down at the pattern of tiny red
lights set above the numbered buttons. "We could just try numbers until we run across the right combina-
tion."
Chris shook his head. "You know what our chances are of just stumbling across the right..."
He stopped, staring at her, then fumbled the key
ring out of his pocket.
"Try three-four-five," he said, watching eagerly as Rebecca dutifully punched in the number.
Come on, Mr. Alias, don't fail us now.
The pattern of red lights flashed, then blinked out,
one by one. As the last tiny light faded, there was a
click from inside the door.
Chris grinned, pushing the door open and felt his
hope dwindle as he glanced around the tiny room.
Dusty shelves filled with tiny glass bottles and a rust
stained sink; not the exit he'd expected.
No, that would have been too easy, God knows we
can't have that...
Rebecca walked quickly to one of the shelves and
looked over the glass bottles, mumbling to herself.
"Hyoscyamine, anhydride, dieldrin . . ."
She turned back to him, grinning widely. "Chris, we can kill the plant! That V-Jolt, the phytotoxin - I can
make it here. If we can get to the basement, find the
plant's root."
Chris smiled back. "Then we can destroy it
without having to fight the damned thing! Rebecca,
you're brilliant. How long do you need?"
"Ten, fifteen minutes."
"You got it. Stay here, I'll be back as soon as I can."
Rebecca was already pulling down bottles as Chris
closed the door and jogged back toward the corridor,
past the whispering walls of shadowy green.
They were going to beat this place, and once they
got out, Umbrella was going down hard.
Barry was standing over Enrico's cold body,
Wesker's map crumpled in one hand. Jill had been
gone when he'd returned and rather than look for
her, he'd found himself unable to move, to even tear
his gaze away from the corpse of his murdered friend.
It's my fault. If I hadn't helped Wesker get out of the
house, you'd still be alive...
Barry stared miserably at Enrico's face, so filled
with guilt and shame that he didn't know what to do anymore. He knew he had to find Jill, keep her from
getting to Wesker, keep his family from being hurt,
but still, he couldn't seem to force himself to walk
away. What he wanted more than anything was to be
able to explain himself to Enrico, make him under-
stand how things had come to be the way they were.
He's got Kathy and the babies, Rico . . . what else
could I have done? What can I do but follow his orders?
The Bravo stared back at him with glazed, unseeing
eyes. No accusation, no acceptance, no nothing. For-
ever. Even if Barry continued to help the captain and
everything else turned out the way it was supposed to,
Rico Marini would still be dead and Barry didn't
know how he was going to live with the knowledge
that he was responsible...
Shots echoed through the tunnels. A lot of them.
Jill!
Barry's head snapped around. He reached for his
weapon automatically, the sounds spurring him to
action as anger flushed through his system. There
could only be one explanation; Wesker had found Jill.
Barry turned and ran, sick at the thought of another
S.T.A.R.S. member dead by Wesker's treacherous
hand, furious with himself for believing the captain's
lies.
The door in front of him slammed open and Barry
stopped dead in his tracks, all thoughts of Wesker and
Jill and Enrico wiped away by the sight of the crouch-
ing thing in front of him. His mind couldn't grasp
what he saw, his stunned gaze feeding him bits of
information that didn't make sense.
Green skin. Piercing, orange-white eyes. Talons.
It screamed, a horrible, squealing cry and Barry
didn't think anymore. He squeezed the trigger and the
shriek turned into a bubbling, choking gasp as the
heavy round tore into its throat and knocked it down.
The thing flailed its limbs wildly as blood spurted
from the smoking hole. Barry heard several sharp
cracks like breaking bones, saw more blood pour from
its fists as long, thick claws snapped off against rock.
Barry stared in mute astonishment as the creature
continued to spasm violently, burbling through the
ragged hole in its throat as if still trying to scream.
The shot should have blown its head off its neck, but
it was another full minute before it died, its frenzied
thrashings gradually weakening as blood continued to
pump out at a tremendous rate. Finally, it stopped
moving and from the dark, noxious lake it had
created, Barry realized that it had bled to death,
conscious until the end.
What did I just kill? What the fu...
From the tunnel outside, another shrieking howl
resounded through the clammy air and was joined
by a second, then third. The animal cries rose up,
furious and unnatural, the screams of creatures that
shouldn't exist.
Barry dug into his hip pack with shaking hands and
pulled out more rounds for the Colt, praying to God
that he had enough and that those shots he'd heard
before hadn't been Jill's last stand.
SIXTEEN
IT COULD HAVE ONCE BEEN A SPIDER, IF
spiders ever got to be the size of cattle. From the thick
layer of white web that covered the room, floor to
ceiling, it couldn't have been anything else.
Jill stared down at the curled, bristling legs of the
abomination, her skin crawling. The creature that had
attacked her by the courtyard entrance had been
terrifying, but so alien that she hadn't been able to
relate it to anything. Spiders, on the other hand . . .
she already hated them, hated their dark, bustling
bodies and skittering legs. This one had been the
mother of all of them and even dead, it frightened
her.
Hasn't been dead long, though . . .
She forced herself to look at it, at the slick puddles
of greenish ichor that dripped from the holes in its
rounded, hairy body. It had been shot several times
and from the noxious ooze that seeped from the
wounds, she guessed that it had still been alive and
crawling not twenty minutes ago, maybe less.
She shuddered and stepped away toward the double
metal doors that led out of the webbed chamber.
Whispering streams of the sticky stuff clung to her
boots, making it a struggle to move. She took careful,
deliberate steps, determined not to fall. The thought
of being covered in spider web, having it clinging to
her entire body . . . she shuddered again, swallowing
thickly.
Think about something else, anything.
At least she knew she was on the right track, and
close behind whoever had triggered the tunnel mecha-
