clips to do it. It wasn't that she was low on ammo, it
was the waste of time that the bullets represented -
- twenty-six rounds and no results, except that there
were a dozen more virus-riddled corpses lying
around. And two of Umbrella's freak hybrids. . .
Ada shuddered, remembering the warped red flesh
and trumpeting shrieks of the bizarre creatures that
she'd capped in the press room. She'd never been
particularly bothered by greed, corporate or other-
wise, but Umbrella had been up to some seriously
immoral experimentation. Trent had warned her
about the Tyrant retrievers - which, thankfully,
hadn't put in an appearance yet - but the long-
tongued, clawed, bloody humanoids were an affront
to even her sensibilities. Not to mention a lot harder
to kill than the virus carriers. If they were T-Virus
products, she'd have to keep her fingers crossed that
Birkin hadn't done anything with his newest creation.
According to Trent, the G series hadn't been put to
use yet, but it was supposed to be twice as potent. . .
Ada let her gaze wander, taking in the plain,
functional office. It wasn't the most inspiring environ-
ment to take a break in, but at least it was reasonably
gore-free; with the door closed, she could hardly smell
the officers in the main part of the room. They'd been
pretty far gone when she'd put them down, that
bonelessly wet stage that apparently preceded total
collapse.
Not that it matters if I can smell them, my hair and
clothes have absorbed the goddamn smell; when they
start to go bad, it seems to happen with a bang...
She wished she'd bothered to learn more on the
science end; she knew what the T-Virus was used for,
but hadn't thought it necessary to research the physio-
chemical effects. Why bother, when she had no reason
to think that Umbrella had been planning to spill a
shitload of it in their hometown? She was getting
plenty of firsthand information about how well it
worked, but it would have been nice to know exactly
what happened in the infected party's body and mind,
what turned them from a person into a mindless flesh- eater. Instead, she could only file away her observa-
tions and make guesses at the truth.
From what she'd seen, it took less than an hour for
someone infected to turn zombie. Sometimes the
victim went into a kind of fever-coma first, which
presumably burnt out parts of the brain and only
added to the impression that they were waking from
the dead when they stood up and started looking for
fresh meat. The symptoms of the virus were the same
for everyone, but not the progression rate; she'd seen
at least three cases where the victim had turned
bloodthirsty within a couple of moments of being
infected, the stage she'd started to think of as "going
cataract." One of the few constants was that their eyes
clouded with a thin film of eggy white mucous when
they turned and although the physical deterioration
always started immediately, some fell to pieces much
faster than others ...
... and why are you thinking about it? Your job
doesn't include finding a cure, does it?
She sighed, bending over to rub her toes. True
enough. Still, it was something to think about. Focus-
ing on staying alive was tiring and all-encompassing
work; she didn't have a chance to consider the subtle-
ties of the circumstances while clearing out corridors.
She was on break, and she needed to let her brain run
around a bit, ponder a few of the job's more puzzling
aspects.
And there are about a thousand to mull over...
Trent, what Bertolucci should or shouldn't know...
and the S.T.A.R.S. - what the hell had happened to
that merry crew?
From the articles that Trent had included in the
info packet, she knew about the S.T.A.R.S.'s suspen-
sion - and considering what they'd been investigat-
ing, it didn't take a genius to figure out that they'd
been railroaded by Umbrella for uncovering part if
not all of the bioweapon operations. Umbrella had
probably offed them by now, if they hadn't gone into
hiding and she had to wonder if Trent had played
any part in the S.T.A.R.S.'s little misadventure, or if
he'd tried to contact them before or after.
Not that he would've told her; Trent was an enigma,
to be sure. She'd only had one actual meeting with
him, although he'd contacted her several times prior
to her leaving for Raccoon, mostly by phone and
although she'd always prided herself on her ability to
read people, she knew absolutely nothing about where
his interests lay, why he wanted the G-Virus or what
his gripe with Umbrella was about. It was obvious
that he had some inside connection, he knew too much about the company's workings, but if that was
the case, why not just pick up his own goddamn
sample and then quit? Hiring an outside agent was the
act of someone trying to avoid implication, but
implication of what?
Ours is not to question why. . .
A good principle to live by; she also wasn't getting
paid to figure out Trent. She doubted she'd be able to
even if she was getting paid for it; she'd never met
such a supremely self-controlled man as Mr. Trent. In
every interaction they'd had, she'd gotten the feeling
that he had been smiling inside, as if he knew some
intensely pleasurable secret that no one else was privy
to and yet somehow, he hadn't come across as
arrogant or overblown. He was a cool one, his genial-
ity so natural that she'd been vaguely intimidated; she
might not have been able to pick up on his motives,
but she'd seen that calm humor before it was the
real face of true power, of a man with a plan and the
means to implement it.
So has the spill upset his plans, whatever they are?
Or was he prepared for this contingency...? He may
not have planned it, but I can't imagine that "caught
unawares" is anywhere in Trent's vocabulary...
Ada leaned back, rolling her head tiredly before
pushing herself off the desk and stepping back into
her uncomfortable shoes. Enough down time, she
couldn't spare her aches and pains more than a few
minutes and didn't expect to figure out much of
anything until she was well away from Raccoon. She
still had a couple of areas to check for Bertolucci
before heading into the sewers, and she'd noticed that
some of the first-floor window barricades weren't as
solid as she might have hoped; she didn't want to end
up blocked out of a path by a new group of carriers
from outside.
There were the "secret" passages on the east side,
and the holding cells downstairs past the parking
garage. If she couldn't find him in either of those
places, she'd have to assume he'd left the station and
concentrate her efforts on obtaining the sample.
She decided to try the basement first; it seemed
unlikely that he'd stumbled across the hidden corn-
dors. From what she'd read of his work, he wasn't a
good enough reporter to find his own ass. And if he
was hiding in or near the holding cells, she wouldn't
have to spend any more time roaming the station,
facing the inevitable invasion; the entrance into the
subbasement was downstairs, so barring any compli-
cations, she could head straight for the lab.
Ada walked out of the office, wrinkling her nose at the fresh burst of rotting smell pushed at her by the
lazily spinning ceiling fans. There had to be seven or
eight bodies in the desk-filled room, all of them cops,
and at least the three that she'd shot had been fairly
rank. . .
. . . and didn't I leave five carriers still walking
around in here when I came through before?
Ada paused just outside the large and open room,
looking back in from the narrow connecting corridor
that led to the back stairs. Had there been five? She knew she'd capped a couple on her first visit; the rest
had been too slow to hassle with, and she thought
there'd been five of them. And yet she'd only had to
knock off three when she had returned for her im-
promptu break.
There were five. I may not be at peak, but I can still
count.
She wasn't in the habit of doubting her ability to
keep track of such things, and the fact that she'd only
just noticed was a sign of how tired she was; two days
ago, she would have made the observation immedi-
ately. There was no way to tell if the additional
corpses had been shot or had simply disintegrated on
their own without exposing herself to contact - they
were too messed up; but it would be wisest to assume
that there were still a few survivors wandering
around.
Not for long, one way or another...
Whether or not the zombies managed to break
through, Umbrella would act soon, if they hadn't
already. What had happened in Raccoon was a share-
holder's worst nightmare, and Umbrella certainly
wasn't going to ignore the problem; they'd probably
already worked up a fail-safe disaster and prepared
their own spin to feed to the press. And it was a
foregone conclusion that they'd try to salvage Birkin's
synthesis before putting their fail-safe into effect,
which meant that she'd have to be very careful. Birkin
had apparently been somewhat secretive about his
work, and Trent had relayed that Umbrella would
eventually send in a retrieval team ... with Raccoon
in ashes, that eventuality had probably been moved
forward a few notches.
A team of human beings, hopefully. I can handle
that. A Tyrant, though ... I don't need that kind of
pain.
Ada turned away from the room, walking toward
the closed door that would lead her to the basement
steps. Tyrant was the code name for a particular series
in Umbrella's organic weapons research, a series that
embodied the most destructive applications of the T-Virus. According to Trent, the White Umbrella scien-
Tists - the ones working in the secret labs - had just
started tests on a kind of humanoid bloodhound,
designed to hunt down any assigned scent or sub-
stance it had been encoded for with relentless and
inhuman capabilities. A Tyrant retriever, a nearly
indestructible construct of infected flesh and surgi-
cally implanted wiring - just the kind of thing that
they might send in to find, say, a sample of the
G-Virus....
Once she collected Trent's sample, she was history,
paid and drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere.
And anything she might or might not feel about it,
about how many innocents had died or what Trent
wanted the G-Virus for - it was just one more thing
to put on her list of things the job didn't call for.
Her defenses safely in place, Ada started for the
basement to see if she could find the troublesome
reporter.
Leon stood in the ransacked basement weapons
locker, adjusting the holster straps and thinking about
where Claire might be. From what little he'd seen so
far, the station wasn't too bad. Cold and dim and
stinking of the bodies heaped in the hallways, but not
as actively dangerous as the streets. It wasn't much to
be grateful for, but he'd take what he could get.
He'd killed two of his fellow officers and a woman
in the tatters of a traffic patrol uniform on his way to
the basement - the cops upstairs and the woman just
outside the morgue, a few yards from the small room
that housed the RPD armament. Only three zombies
since he'd reached the station, not including the few
he'd been able to avoid in the detectives' room, but
he'd passed over a dozen corpses on the short journey
and had been able to make out the bullet holes on
about half of them, through the eyes or directly to the
temple. Between the cleanly "dispatched" creatures
and the number of weapons missing from the lockers,
he dared to hope that Branagh had been right about
there being survivors.
Marvin Branagh ... probably dead by now. Does
that mean he'll turn into a zombie?If Umbrella's really
behind all this, it has to be some kind of a plague or
disease, they're a pharmaceutical company - so how
do you catch it? Is it a contact thing, or can you get it
from taking a deep breath...
Leon dropped that train of thought, fast; as cool
and humid as the basement was, the thought that he
could be infected by the zombie sickness made him
break out in a sudden feverish sweat. What if all of Raccoon was still hot, and he'd caught it just driving
into town? The cluttered shelves of the storage room
seemed to close in just a bit, in an anxiety flash of epic
proportions.
But before real panic set in, he heard his mind's
voice remind him of the reality - and the acceptance
of the reality came with it, allowing him to let go of
the fear.
If you're sick, you're sick. You can eat a bullet before
it gets bad. If you're not sick, maybe you can survive to
tell your grandkids about all this. Either way, there's
probably nothing you can do about it now - except try
to be a cop.
Leon nodded to himself, sighing. A better plan than
worrying about it, and he now had the equipment to
boost his chances. The electronic lock for the weapons
store had been shot through, saving him from having
to go searching for a key card or shooting it himself;
the door had obviously been pried open, the external
locks and handle practically shredded. On his first dig
through the room, he'd been disappointed, and not a
little freaked. There had been no handguns at all and
very little ammo left in the dented green lockers - but
he had found a box of shotgun shells, and after a
second, more desperately thorough search, he'd un-
covered a twelve-gauge hidden behind a high stack of
boxes. There were a couple of shoulder harnesses for
the Remington model still hanging on a wall hook, as
well as a bigger utility belt than the one he already
wore; it even had a sidepack deep enough to hold all
of the loaded Magnum clips.
With a final cinch on the harness, he decided that it
would be best to start searching the most obvious
places first, every connecting corridor from every
possible entrance. He'd head back to the lobby first,
find something to leave a note on...
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Shots fired, close, and the echoing tone said it was
the garage just down the hall. Leon yanked the
Magnum out and ran for the door, precious seconds
wasted as he fumbled at the mangled handle.
The hall was clear, except for the dead traffic cop on
the floor to his right. Straight ahead was the entrance
to the parking garage, and Leon hurried toward it,
reminding himself that he wanted to go in easy, that
he didn't want to get shot by a panicked gunman.
Take it slow, get a good look before you move,
identify yourself clearly...
The door, set into the wall to his right, was standing
open and as Leon darted a look into wide and open
space, his body shielded by the concrete-block wall, he saw something that startled him into forgetting
about the shooter.
The dog. It's the same goddamn dog.
Impossible - but the sprawled, lifeless animal in
the middle of the car-lined chamber looked the same.
Even with the barest glimpse he'd had before, the
slimy wet demon in canine form that had nearly
scared him into a crash ten miles outside the city
could have come from the same litter. Beneath the
sputtering fluorescent strips that lit the cold, oil-
stained garage, Leon could see how truly abnormal it
was.
There didn't seem to be anything moving, and no
sound except for the buzz of lights. Still holding the
Magnum ready, Leon stepped into the garage, deter-
mined to get a closer look at the creature - and saw a
second one next to a parked squad car, apparently just
as dead as the first. Both lay in sticky red pools of
their own blood, their long, skinned-looking limbs
splayed brokenly.
Umbrella. The wild animal attacks, the disease...
... how long has this shit been going on? And how did they
manage to keep it quiet after all those murders?
What was even more confusing was why Raccoon
wasn't crawling with support services already; Um-
brella may have been able to keep their involvement
with the "cannibal" murders silent, but how could
