definitely interest. Which made it all the more sur-
prising when he stepped away.
"Well, you did. Don't do it again, okay? I may not
be much of a cop, but I'm trying - and God only
knows what we're going to run into down here."
He met her gaze again, speaking softly. "I came with you because I want to help, I want to do my
job - and I can't do that if you go charging ahead.
Besides," he added, smiling a little, "if you run off, who's going to help me?"
It was Ada's turn to look away. Leon was playing it
straight with her, openly admitting to his fears and
his response to her not-so-subtle flirtation had been to
step back and tell her that he wanted to be a good cop.
Interested, but not a fool for his tool. . . and man
enough to tell me that he's unsure of his abilities.
She was forced to smile back, but it was a shaky
affair. "I'll do my best," she said.
Leon nodded and turned to inspect the hallway,
letting the conversation drop - much to Ada's relief.
She wasn't sure what she thought of him, but was
uncomfortably aware that her respect for him was
growing; not a good thing, considering the circum-
stances.
There wasn't much to see in the damp, poorly lit
hall; two doorways and a dead end. The boiler room,
where she'd tossed the keys - or plugs, rather - was
directly in front of them, the sewer disposal entrance
in a back comer; according to the sign on the wall, the
other door opened into a storage closet.
Ada followed as Leon walked to the closest of the
two doors, the storage room, hanging back as he
pushed it open with his Magnum and stepped inside.
Boxes, a table, a trunk; nothing important, but at least
no creepy-crawlies. After a quick search, he stepped
back into the hall and they moved toward the boiler
room.
"How'd you learn to shoot like that, anyway?" Leon asked as they stopped in front of the door. His tone
was casual, but she thought she detected more than casual curiosity. "You're pretty good. Were you in the military or something . . . ?"
Nice try, Officer.
Ada smiled, falling into her carefully rehearsed
character. "Paintball, believe it or not. I mean, I went target-shooting some when I was a teenager, with my
uncle, but never got into it much. And then a few
years ago, a friend at work - we're both buyers at an
art gallery in New York - dragged me to one of those
weekend survival retreats, and we had a blast. You
know, hiking, rock-climbing, stuff like that - and
paintball. It's great, we go up every couple of
months . . . although I never thought I'd have to use it
for real."
She could actually see him buy it, see that he
wanted to buy it. It probably answered a few ques-
tions that he'd been hesitant to ask.
"Well, you're better than a lot of the guys I gradu-
ated the academy with. Really. So, you ready to get on
with this?"
Ada nodded. Leon pushed the door to the boiler
room open, scanning the ancient, rusting machinery
in the wide empty space before ushering her inside.
She made a point of not looking down, wanting Leon
to find the small wrapped package that she'd tossed in
a few moments earlier.
She hadn't gotten a good look before. The room,
shaped like a sideways "H," was fitted with corroded
railings and two massive old boilers, one on either
side. Fluorescent lights sputtered overhead, the few
that still worked casting strange shadows across the
metal pipes that ran down the water-marked walls.
The door that led into the sewer system was in the far
left corner, a heavy-looking hatch next to an inset
panel.
"Hey. . ." Leon crouched down, picking up the bundle of plugs that would open the hatch. "Looks like somebody dropped something. . ."
Before Ada could go through the charade of asking
him what he'd found, she heard a noise. A soft,
slithery noise, coming from the area in the right back
corner, neatly blocked from view by one of the
boilers.
Leon heard it, too. He stood up quickly, dropping
the bundle and raising the shotgun. Ada pointed her
Beretta toward the sound, remembering how the door
had been slightly ajar when she'd come up from the
subbasement.
Oh, hell. The implant.
She knew it even before it crawled into sight - and
was shocked anyway. The little bugger had grown, and it had grovmfast, easily twenty times its former size in
half as many minutes - and it was still growing,
apparently at an exponential rate. In the few seconds
it took for the creature to move into the middle of the
room, it went from the size of a small dog to the
size - and bulk - of a ten-year-old child.
The shape had changed, was changing, too. It was
no longer the alien tadpole that had chewed its way
out of Bertolucci. The tail was gone, and the creature
that inched its way across the rusting floor had
developed limbs, stretching arms folding out of its
rubbery flesh. Claws popped out of the tan and
swimming skin that swirled over its body, accompa-
nied by a sound like gristle being punctured. Muscu-
lar legs unfurled, liquid that snapped into sinewy
shape as its stuttering crawl became smoother, almost
feline. . .
The shotgun and Beretta sounded at the same time,
a string of massive blasts peppered with the higher
whine of the nine-millimeter. The creature was still
shifting, standing, mutating into a humanoid shape
and its response to the booming shots that smacked
into its twisting flesh was to open its mouth and
vomit, a grunting projectile scream of rotten green
bile that hit the floor and started moving. The stream
that gushed from its wide, flat face was alive and the
dozen or so crab-like creatures that tumbled out of the
monster's gaping mouth like liquid seemed to know
exactly where the threat was to their fetid, mutant
womb. The skittering, multi-legged animals swarmed
toward Ada and Leon in a silent wave as the implant
monster took one massive step forward, pulsing cords
standing out on its impossibly long, thick neck.
Leon had the heavier firepower. "Got 'em!" Ada shouted, already targeting and shooting at the closest
of the tiny, bilious green crabs. They were fast, but she
was faster; she pointed and squeezed, pointed and
squeezed, and the baby monsters exploded into small
fountains of dark, ichorous fluid, dying as silently as
they'd come.
Leon blasted again and again with the shotgun, but
Ada couldn't spare a glance to see how he was faring
with the mother beast. Five of the crawling babies left,
three more rounds and she'd be dry. . .
. . .and she heard the shotgun clatter to the floor,
heard the deeper but less powerful fire of the .50 AE
rounds resounding through the metal room as she
picked off" two more of the spidering creatures, and
her weapon clicked empty.
Without stopping to think, Ada let go of the Beretta
and dropped to the floor. She grabbed the shotgun by the barrel, rolling up into a crouch beneath Leon's
line of fire, and swung the weapon down, hard. Two of
the mutant animals were smashed into goo by the
heavy stock, but the third, the last of them, sprang
forward in an unexpected burst of speed
and landed on her thigh, catching hold with
needle-sharp claws. Ada dropped the shotgun, crying
out as the animal scuttled up her leg, the warm, damp
weight of it making her frantic with disgust.
Off get it OFF. . .
She fell backwards, slapping at the creature that
had already reached her shoulder and was skittering
toward her face, toward her mouth...
... and then Leon was grabbing her, roughly pulling
her up with one hand as he snatched at the animal
with the other. Ada stumbled against him, clutching
at his waist to keep from falling. The bug clung
tenaciously to the tight fabric of her dress, but Leon
had a good grip. He tore it away, shouting as he flung
the flailing thing across the room.
"The Magnum!"
The weapon was stuck in Leon's belt. Ada jerked it
free, saw the creature land near the giant, motionless
heap that had birthed it, blasted to death by Leon...
... and fired, managing to get a clean shot despite
how off-balance she was, how deeply unnerved she
was by how close she'd come to being implanted. The
heavy round clanged against the floor, rust chips
spattering up and the creature was blown into an
ugly stain against the back wall. Obliterated.
Nothing moved, and the two of them just stood for
a moment, leaning against each other like survivors of
some sudden, terrible accident - which, in a way,
they were. The entire firefight had taken place in less
than a minute, and they had come out unscathed,
but Ada wasn't going to kid herself about how close it
had been, or what they had just managed to destroy.
G-Virus.
She was sure of it; the T-Virus couldn't have
created such a complicated creature, not without a
team of surgeons - and they'd seen it growing; how
big, how powerful would the creature have become if
they hadn't walked in when they had? The beast
might have been some early G-strain experiment, but
what if it had been the result of a leak? What if there
were more of them?
The sewers, the factory, the underground levels -
- dark, shadowy places, secret places, where anything
could be growing . . .
Whatever the situation, the trip to the labs wasn't
looking like a walk anymore and Ada was suddenly very glad that Leon had decided to come along. Since
he was so goddamn insistent on going first, if some-
thing attacked, she'd have a better chance of surviv-
ing...
"Are you okay? Did it hurt you?"
Leon, one arm still supporting her, looking into her
eyes with a heartfelt concern. Ada realized that she
could smell him, a clean, soapy smell, and pushed
herself away. She handed the Magnum back to him
and straightened her dress, studiously inspecting it for
rips to avoid looking at him.
"Thanks, I'm fine. Don't sweat it."
It came out harsher than she meant it to, but she
was rattled, and not just by the implant's vicious
attack. She glanced at him, and wasn't sure how to
feel when she saw that her response had caught him
off guard. He blinked slowly, and a kind of coolness
settled into his gaze, indicating a strength of character
that she hadn't bothered to give him credit for.
"Paintball, huh?" he said mildly, and without an- other word, he turned to pick up the package she'd
planted.
Ada stared after him, telling herself how absolutely
ridiculous it was to care what he thought of her. They
were about to embark on a journey in which she
might have to desert him, or watch him sacrifice his
life in order to save her own . . .
. . . or kill him myself. Let's not forget that, friends
and neighbors. So who gives a shit if he thinks I'm an
ungrateful bitch?
Straight up. She should thank him, for reminding
her.
Ada stooped down to retrieve the shotgun, feeling
like she needed to do a better job of keeping her
priorities straight and feeling an emptiness inside
that she hadn't noticed in a long, long time.
TWENTY
MR. IRONS HAD BEEN A VERY BAD MAN. A
sick man. Sherry supposed she'd known it all along on
some level, but seeing his secret torture chamber, like
some mad doctor's workshop, made it a lot more real.
The room was just gross, bones and bottles and a
smell even worse than the zombies. Perhaps that was
why seeing the shape on the floor, the incomplete
body shape beneath the bloodstained tarp, didn't
bother her half as much as Claire seemed to think it
would. Sherry stared at it, wondering what had hap-
pened exactly.
"Come on, sweetie, let's get going," Claire said, and the forced note of brightness in her voice told Sherry
that Mr. Irons had been severely messed up. All Claire
had told her was that Mr. Irons had attacked her, and
then something had attacked him, and that there was
a chance they could get somewhere safe if they went
down into the basement. Sherry had been so relieved
to see Claire at all that she hadn't bothered to ask
questions.
Not big enough to be a whole person under there . . .
did he get eaten? Or chopped into pieces?
"Sherry? Let's go, okay?"
Claire laid a hand on her shoulder, gently pulling
her away from what was left of the police chief. Sherry
let herself be led toward the dark hole in the corner,
deciding that it was best to keep her questions to
herself. She thought about saying that she didn't care
that Mr. Irons was dead, but she didn't want to
appear rude or disrespectful. Besides which, Claire
was trying to take care of her, and Sherry didn't mind
that at all.
Claire went down the ladder first, and after a
second, called up to her that it was safe to come down.
Sherry stepped carefully on the metal rungs, feeling
really happy for the first time in days. They were
doing something, they were getting out of the RPD
station and headed for escape; whatever else hap-
pened, it was a good way to feel.
Claire helped her down the last couple of rungs,
lifting her and setting her on the metal floor. Sherry
turned and looked around, her eyes widening.
"Wow," she said, and the word whispered away into the dim shadows and came whispering back,
reflected off" the strange walls.
"Yeah," Claire said. "Come on."
Claire started walking, her boots clanking out ech-
oes, and Sherry followed closely, still looking around
in amazement. It was like a bad guy's lair in a spy
movie, some factory passage inside of a mountain or
something. They were on a catwalk surrounded by
rails, a murky green light coming up through the grate
floor from somewhere far below and although there
was rough brick to their right, to the left was an actual
cave wall. She could see giant, dripping pillars of
stone that stretched off into the dark, natural forma-
tions of rock that were stained green by the weak and
ghostly light.
Sherry wrinkled her nose. As interesting as it was, it
smelled pretty rotten. And she didn't like the way that
sound carried in the chill air, making everything seem
hollow.
"What do you think this place is?" she asked softly. Claire shook her head. "I'm not sure. Between the smell and the location, I'd say we're in part of a
sewage treatment plant."
Sherry nodded, glad to know and even more glad
to see the way out just ahead of them. The walkway
wasn't very long; it turned left, and there was another
ladder at the end, one that went up. When they got to
it, Claire hesitated, peering up at the opening over-
head and then back around at the dark and empty
cave.
"I should go up first . . . how 'bout you climb up
right behind, but stay on the ladder until I say it's
clear?"
Sherry nodded, relieved. For a second, she'd been
afraid that Claire was going to tell her to stay down
here and wait, like before.
No way. It's dark, stinky, and lonely. If I were a
monster, this is where I'd be. . .
Claire went up, boosting herself easily through the
hole, and Sherry clambered up just behind, holding
the cool metal of the rungs tightly. After a few
seconds, Claire's long, slender arms reached down to
help her out.
They were back on solid ground, a short cement
hallway that seemed incredibly bright after the cave.
Sherry figured they were still in the sewage plant; the
smell wasn't as bad, but the hall was bordered on the
left by a motionless river of sludge water, maybe a
foot deep and five or six feet across; the muddy water
ran off in either direction, one end through a low,
rounded tunnel, the other stopped by a big metal
door. It was all overlooked by a kind of balcony, but
Sherry didn't see any stairs.
Which means . . . oh, yuck.
