ache to see.
God, Karen, I'm so, so sorry!
"Double time," he said, already turning for the door. "Let's move."
They quickly jogged for the front of the building,
John's jaw clenched, his thoughts a grimly determined
loop of angry intention.
No way some goddamn bug is taking Karen down,
no chance, and if I find the bastard who set this
nightmare up he's Dead, capital D, Dead meat. Not
Karen, no way in hell...
They reached the front door and silently drew
weapons, checking them, tensely impatient for David to give the signal. Karen, always so cool and collected
in times of stress, had a shocked vagueness about her,
like she'd just been kicked in the gut and hadn't yet
managed to take a breath. It was the same look that
John had seen time and again on the faces of disaster
Survivors - the haunted disbelief in the eyes, the slack
and terrible blankness of expression that spoke of a
yawning emptiness deep inside. It hurt him to see her
like that, hurt him and made him even angrier. Karen
Driver wasn't supposed to look like that.
"I lead, John in back, straight line," David said softly.
John saw that he looked almost as freaked as Karen,
though in a different way. It was guilt gnawing at their
captain, he could see it in his reluctant gaze, the tight
set of his mouth. John wished he could tell him that
blaming himself was wrong, but there wasn't time and
he didn't have the right words for it. David would
have to take care of himself, just as they all would.
"Ready? Go."
David pushed the door open and then they were
slipping through, back into the gentle hiss of waves
and the pale blue light of the moon. David, then
Karen, Steve, Rebecca, and finally John, crouched
and running across the packed dirt of the open
compound.
There was darkness and the scent of pine, of salt,
but John's soldier mind wasn't telling him anything
he didn't already know as they pounded through the
shadows. There was only anger, and fear for Karen...
...making the sudden blast of M-16 fire a total surprise.
Shit!
John dove for the ground as the thundering rattle
opened up to their right, saw that they were just over
halfway to block E as he rolled and started to fire.
Then the air was filled with the blast of nine-millime-
ter rounds, crashing over the steady pulse of automat-
ic rifles.
Can't see, can't target. . .
He found the muzzle flashes at three o'clock and
jerked the Beretta around, squeezing the trigger six,
seven, eight times. The stutter of orange-white light
blocked the shooters from view but he saw one of the
flashes disappear, heard the clatter decrease
and a rage overtook him, not the "soldier mind"
but a blinding, screaming fury at the diseased attack-
ers that far exceeded any he'd ever known. They
wanted Karen to die, those numb, brainless night-
mares wanted to stop them from saving her.
Not Karen. NOT KAREN.
A strange, feral howl beat at his ears as he pushed away from the dusty earth and then he was standing,
running, firing. Only when he heard the shouts of the
others, the Berettas except for his holding fire, did he
realize that the howl was coming from him.
John ran forward, screaming as he fired again and
again at the things that meant to slow them up, to kill
them, to claim Karen as one of their own. His
thoughts were no longer words, just an endless, form-
less negative - a denial of their existence and what
had created them.
He charged ahead, not seeing that they had stopped
firing, that they were falling, that the shadows had
fallen silent except for the thunder of his semi and the
scream that poured from his shaking body. Then he
was standing over them and the Beretta had stopped
crashing and jumping, even though he still pulled the
trigger.
Three of them, white where there was no red,
decayed flesh bursts covering their pitiful, wasted
forms.
Click. Click. Click.
One of them had a face that was a mass of puckered
scar tissue, twisting white risers of gnarled skin except
for where a fresh, bloody hole had punched through
its forehead. Another, one eye spattered against its
withered cheek, pooling viscous fluid in the rotting
cup of its ear.
Click. Click.
The third was still alive. Half of its throat was gone,
tattered to pulp, and its mouth opened and closed
soundlessly, opened and closed, its filmed dark eyes
blinking slowly up at him.
Click.
He was dry-firing, the scream dying away in his
ragged throat. It was the sound of the hammer falling
uselessly against hot metal that finally released him
from the rage - that, and the slow, helpless blink of
the wretched thing at his feet.
It didn't know what it was. It didn't know who they
were. Once it had been a man, and now it was rotting
garbage with a gun and a mission it couldn't possibly
understand.
They took his soul. . .
"John?"
A warm hand on his back, Karen's voice low and
easy next to him. Steve and David stepped into view,
staring down at the gaping, blinking shell of humanity
in the shaded moonlight, the last remnant of an
experiment in madness.
"Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah, I'm here."
David trained his Beretta on the monster's skull and spoke softly. "Stand back."
John turned away, started walking back for their
last destination with Karen at his side, Rebecca's
slight form in front of him. The shot was incredibly
loud, a booming crack that seemed to shake the
ground beneath their feet.
Not Karen, oh please not one of us. That's no way to
go out, no way to die. . .
Then David and Steve were with them and without
speaking, they broke into a jog for block E, moving
quickly through the emptiness that had claimed the
night. The Trisquads were no more, but the disease
that made them might even now be coursing through
Karen's body, turning her into a creature with no
mind, no soul, doomed to a fate worse than death.
John picked up speed, silently swearing to himself
that if they found this Dr. Griffith, he was going to be
awfully goddamned sorry that they did.
THIRTEEN
THE E BLOCK WAS NO DIFFERENT THAN THE
first four they'd encountered, as bland and industrial
and stale as the rest of them, a study in concrete
efficiency. They moved quickly through the stuffy
halls, turning on lights as they went, searching for the
room that held the final clue to Dr. Ammon's secret.
It didn't take long; almost half of the structure was
taken up by an indoor shooting range, where David
had found boxes of loaded M-16 mags, but no rifles
to go with them. John had asked if he should retrieve
the Trisquad's weapons, which Rebecca promptly
vetoed. The rifles were hot, probably crawling with
virus.
Like Karen's blood by now, streams of replicating
virions bursting from cells, searching for new cells to
attach to and use and destroy...
"Here!" Steve called from farther down the wind- ing corridor, and Rebecca hurried toward him, Karen
and John not far behind. David was already standing
with Steve by the closed door, the red, green, and blue
triangles a sign that they'd hit on the right room.
Steve's gaze seemed to seek her out, but was blank of
all emotion except worry. She didn't mind, noted it
only absently. Karen's infection, John's insane run at
the Trisquad - there wasn't room in her for anything
but the need to find the lab, to find help for Karen.
Steve opened the door and they filed inside,
Rebecca continuing to watch Karen closely for signs
that the virus had progressed and wondering what
she should do with the information she'd picked up so far about the amplification time. She didn't really
have any doubts that Karen had been exposed, and
knew that no one else did, either, but what should
she say?
Do I tell her that it might only take hours? Do I pull
David aside? If there's a cure, she has to get it before
the damage is too great, before it starts to fry her
brain - before it dumps so much dopamine into her
that she stops being Karen Driver and becomes. . .
something else.
Rebecca didn't know how to handle it. They were
already doing all that they could, as fast as they could,
and she didn't know enough about the T-Virus to
assume anything. She also didn't want to see Karen
any more terrified than she was already. The woman
was doing her best to control it, but it was obvious
that she was on the edge of a breakdown, from the
desperation in her bloodred eyes to the growing
tremor of her hands. And the Trisquads had almost
certainly been injected with much larger amounts
than Karen had been exposed to; maybe she had
days. . .
. . .first symptoms in less than an hour?Don't kid
yourself. You have to tell her, to warn her and everyone
else of what could happen. Soon.
She pushed the thought aside almost frantically,
looking around at the room they'd entered. It was
smaller than the test chambers they'd come across,
and emptier. There was a long meeting table pushed
to the back, a half dozen chairs behind it. In the front
of the room was a small shelf coming off the wall, only
a few feet long and a foot deep. There were three large
buttons on the flat surface, red, green, and blue. The
wall behind the shelf was tiled in large, smooth gray
tiles made from some kind of industrial plastic.
"That's it," Steve said. "Blue to access."
With barely a second's hesitation, David walked to
the counter and pushed the blue button.
A woman's voice spoke coolly from a hidden
speaker above, startling them. It was a recording, the
bland tone eerily reminding Rebecca of the final
moments at the Spencer estate, the triggering system
tape.
"Blue series completed. Access reward."
One of the tiles behind the shelf slid away, revealing
a dark recess set into the concrete. As David reached
into the hidden space, Rebecca felt a surge of frus-
trated anger and disgust for Umbrella, for what she
realized they had done. It was despicable.
All those tests, all that work - set up to dole out
treats to T-Virus victims. Get through the red series, good dog, here's your bone. . . and what was their
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