On her way through the factory, she'd coughed and
coughed and then vomited from the pain a thin and
acidic string of bile that had made dark bubbles burst
in front of her eyes, the darkness staying for so long
that she thought she might actually lose her sight -
- it's almost over.
Clutching the thought like a lost love, she found the
latch to the metal room and went inside. The controls,
pushed. The movement and sound of movement
engulfing her as she lay across one soft metal bench
and closed her eyes. A few moments of rest, and it was
almost over...
Annette sank into the dark, the humming motors
lulling her into a deep and instant sleep. She was
going down, her muscles relaxing, her aches and
miseries loosening their hold - and for some endless reach of time, she found a silence...
... until a howling, terrible scream knifed into her
darkness, a shriek of such fury and pain that it spoke
for her heart, and she jerked back to life, panting and
afraid...
... and then realized what had snapped her out of
her dreamless sleep, and her thoughts came together,
giving her one more clear and constant thing to hold
on to.
It was William. William had come home, he had
followed her and Umbrella would have nothing,
because the thing that had been her husband had
come back into the blast radius.
The scream sounded again, this time echoing away
into one of the lab's many secret places as the lift went
down and down.
Annette closed her eyes again, the new thought
joining her lost love from before, the two of them
together making her happy at last.
William has come home. It's almost over.
The third followed naturally, added as she slipped
back into the silence, knowing that she had to get up
too soon, to begin the final journey. When the lift
stopped, she'd wake up and be ready.
Umbrella will suffer for what they've done - and
everybody dies at the very end.
She smiled, and fell asleep, dreaming of William.
TWENTY-FOUR
LEON FINALLY STARTED TO FEEL LIKE HIM-
self again, sitting in the control room where Ada had
left him. She'd found a medkit in one of the dust-
covered cabinets, along with a bottle of water; she'd
only been gone for about ten minutes, but the aspirin
was starting to kick in, and the water had worked
wonders.
He sat in front of a switch-covered console, trying
to piece together what had happened after the explo-
sion in the sewers; the last thing he really remembered
clearly was seeing the headless crocodile collapse, and
then being overwhelmed by a light-headed weakness.
Ada had bandaged him up and then led him through
tunnels...
... and a subway, we were on a subway for a minute
or two...
... and finally to this room, where she'd told him to
rest while she went to check on something. Leon had
protested, reminding her that it wasn't safe, but had
still been too fuzzy to do much more than sit where
she'd put him. He'd never felt so helpless, or so totally dependent on another person. Once he'd gulped
about half of the gallon jug of water, though, he'd
started to snap out of it. Apparently, blood loss
tended to dehydrate ...
... so she gave me the water and then went to check
on what, exactly? And how did she know to come this
way?
He'd barely been able to walk, let alone ask any
questions, but even in his delirium, he'd noticed
how certain she was, how she'd chosen their path with
unwavering precision. How could she know? She was
an art buyer from New York, how could she know
anything about the sewer system of Raccoon City?
And where is she? Why hasn't she come back?
She'd helped him, she'd most probably saved his
Life, but he just couldn't keep believing that she was
who she said she was. He wanted to know what she
was doing, and he wanted to know now, and not just
because she'd been keeping secrets; Claire was still
somewhere in the sewers, and if Ada knew the way
out of the city, Leon owed it to her to try and find out.
Leon stood up slowly, holding onto the back of the
chair, and took a deep breath. Still weak, but no
dizziness, and his arm didn't hurt as badly, either -
- the aspirin, perhaps. He drew his Magnum and
walked to the door of the small, dusty room, promis-
ing himself that he wasn't going to accept any more
vague answers or smiling brush-offs.
He opened the door and stepped out into an open-
ended warehouse almost big enough to be an aircraft
hangar, it was empty, decrepit, and heavily shadowed,
but the brisk night air that breezed through made it
almost pleasant...
... and there was Ada, stepping onto a raised plat-
form just outside of the hangar, disappearing behind
what looked like a section of a train. It was an
industrial transport lift - and from the well-oiled
look of the rails that ran through the warehouse, it
was one part of the abandoned factory that hadn't
been completely abandoned.
Ada!"
Keeping his wounded arm tightly pressed to his
body, Leon ran toward the lift and felt dull anger as
he heard the rising thrum of the transport's engines,
the heavy mechanical sound spilling out into the clear
night sky. Ada was leaving, she hadn't gone to
"check" on anything...
... but she's not going anywhere until she tells me
why.
Leon ran out into the moonlit open, hearing the
door to the transport slam shut as he skirted a control console and stepped up to the vibrating metal plat-
form, nearly tripping on the brightly painted steps.
Before he could catch his balance, the transport
started its descent; three-foot-high panels of corru-
gated metal rose all the way around the train, contain-
ing the large platform as it slid smoothly down into
the ground.
Leon grabbed for the door handle as the darkness
swept up around the humming transport, the sky
dwindling into a smaller and smaller starry patch
overhead. The cool, pale light of the moon and stars
was quickly replaced by the electric orange of the
transport's mercury lamps.
He stumbled inside, and saw the startled look on
Ada's face as she stood up from a bench bolted to one
side, as she half-raised her Beretta and then lowered it
again - and a flash of guilt, there and gone in the time
it took for him to close the door.
For a moment, neither of them spoke, staring at
each other as the room continued its smooth descent.
Leon could almost see her working to come up with
an explanation and as tired as he was, he decided
that he just wasn't in the mood.
"Where are we going?" he asked, making no effort to keep the anger out of his voice.
Ada sighed and sat down again, her shoulders
sagging. "I think it's the way out," she said quietly. She looked up at him, her dark gaze searching his.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have tried to leave without
you, but I was afraid..."
He could hear real sorrow in her voice, see it in her
eyes, and felt his anger give a little. "Afraid of what?"
"That you wouldn't make it. That you wouldn't make
it, trying to keep both of us safe."
"Ada, what are you talking about?" Leon moved to the bench, sitting down beside her. She looked down
at her hands, speaking softly.
"When I was looking for you, back in the sewers, I
found a map," she said. "It showed what looked like some kind of an underground laboratory or factory
and if the map was right, there's a tunnel that runs
from there to somewhere outside of the city."
She met his gaze again, honestly distressed. "Leon, I didn't think you were in any condition to make a
trip like that, like this - and I was scared that if I
brought you with me, if it was a dead end or some-
thing attacked us. . ."
Leon nodded slowly. She'd been trying to protect
herself - and him.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I should have told you, I shouldn't have just left you there like that. After all you've done for me, I ... I at least owed you the truth."
The guilt and shame in her eyes wasn't something
that could be faked. Leon reached for her hand, ready
to tell her that he understood and that he didn't blame
her...
... when there was a resounding thump outside. The
entire transport shook, just a slight tremble, but
enough to make both of them tense.
"Probably a rough spot in the track..." Leon
said, and Ada nodded, gazing at him with an intensity
that made him pleasantly uncomfortable, a warmth
spreading through his entire body...
BAM!
... and Ada flew off the bench, thrown to the floor as
a massive, curled thing slammed through the wall,
crashing through the sheet metal of the vehicle's side
as though it were made of paper. It was a fist, a fist
with bone claws, each of them nearly a foot long, the
claws dripping with...
"Ada!"
The giant hand withdrew, its bloody talons ripping
new holes in the metal wall as Leon dropped to the
floor, grabbing Ada's limp body, pulling her into the
center of the transport. A terrible shriek pealed
through the moving darkness outside and it was the
same furious cry that they'd heard in the station, but
louder, more violent and even less human than
before.
Leon held on to Ada with his one good arm, feeling
the warm trickle of blood seeping out from her right
side, feeling her dead weight against his heaving chest.
"Ada, wake up! Ada!"
Nothing. He lowered her gently to the floor, then
pulled at the bloody hole in her dress, just above her
hip. Blood was welling up from two deep punctures;
there was no way to tell how bad, and he ripped at the
fabric, tearing off" the bottom few inches of her short
dress and pressing the wadded material against the
wound...
... and again the monster screamed, and the rage in
its throaty howl was nothing to what Leon was feeling,
staring down at Ada's still and closed face. He
stretched her tight dress over the makeshift bandage,
fixing it in place as best he could, then stood up and
unstrapped the Remington.
Ada had taken care of him, had protected him when
he couldn't protect himself. Leon loaded the shotgun grimly, feeling no pain at all as he prepared to return
the favor.
When they reached what looked like the end of the
line, it was Sherry who figured out where her mother
must have gone. They'd walked into yet another open,
shadowy room, but it only had the one door; there
seemed to be no other way out of the cavernous
chamber, unless Annette had jumped off the raised
floor and trekked off through the unlit emptiness that
surrounded them.
They stood at the edge of the darkness, trying to see
down into the shadows and having no luck. The room
was set up almost like a loading dock: a railed
platform ran from the door along the back wall, then
ended abruptly, giving way to a seemingly endless
void. Either Annette had climbed down and navi-
gated some secret path through the dark, or Claire
had been mistaken about which way she'd gone.
So what now? Go back, or try to follow?
She didn't want to do either one - although going
back pretty much beat the crap out of the idea of
walking into a pitch-black abyss. And Leon was
probably still back there somewhere . . .
"Could it be a train? Is this like a train station?"
Sherry asked, and as soon as she said "train," Claire
gave herself a solid mental kick in the ass.
Platform, railings, about a thousand overhead
"pipes."...
Claire grinned at Sherry, shaking her head at her
own stupidity; she was getting flaky, no doubt
about it.
"Yeah, I think it is," she said, "though you guessed it, not me. My brain must be on strike..."
The small computer console on one side of the
platform, the one she'd dismissed as unimportant,
was probably the control board. Claire headed for it,
Sherry following along and clutching absently at her
gold locket as she described the noises she'd heard,
down in the drainage well.
"... and it was moving away, like a train would. It
scared me pretty bad, too. It was loud."
Sure enough, just beneath the small monitor screen
on the standing console was a recall command code
and a ten-key. Claire tapped in the code and hit
"enter" - and the chamber was filled with the smooth
hum of working machinery: the sound of a train.
"You're one smart cookie, you know that?" Claire said, and Sherry practically beamed, her entire face
crinkling with her sweet smile. Claire wrapped an arm
around her shoulders and they walked back to the
edge of the platform to wait.
The tram's light appeared after a few seconds, the
tiny circle of brightness getting bigger as they watched. After the trials they'd been through, Claire
decided to be as fantastically optimistic about this
new development as she could - primarily to keep
from worrying about what horrible thing would prob-
ably happen next. The train would lead out of the city,
of course, and it would be well-stocked with food and
water; it'd have showers and fresh, warm clothes -
- nah, scratch that. A hot tub, and a couple of those
thick terry robes, for after. And slippers.
Nice, but she'd settle for anything that didn't in-
clude monsters or crazy people. She glanced at Sher-
ry, and noticed that she was still rubbing her locket.
"So what's in there?" she asked, wanting to make Sherry smile again. "You got a picture of your boy- friend, or what?"
"Inside? Oh, it's not a locket," Sherry said, and Claire was pleased to see a faint blush rise in her
cheeks. "My mom gave it to me, it's a good-luck charm and I don't have a boyfriend. Boys my age
are totally immature."
Claire grinned. "Get used to it, sweetie. As far as I can tell, some of them never grow out of it."
The train was close enough now for them to see its
shape, a single car about twenty or twenty-five feet
long riding smoothly along its overhead track.
"Where do you think it goes?" Sherry asked, and before Claire could answer, the door to the platform
exploded.
The hatch blew inward, torn off its hinges in a
squeal of metal and clanging to the floor
and Claire grabbed Sherry, pulling her close as
the towering Mr. X stepped into the room, bending
low and sideways to squeeze through the opening, his
soulless gaze turning toward them at once.
"Get behind me!" Claire shouted, pulling Irons's handgun, risking a glance back at the approaching
train. Ten seconds, they needed ten seconds,
but X took a giant step toward them, and she
knew they didn't have them. His bland, terrible face,
expressionless, his giant hands already rising, still
twenty feet away but only four steps in his massive
stride...
"Get on the train when it stops!" Claire screamed, and pulled the trigger.
Four, five, six shots, beating into his chest. The
seventh hit one dead-white cheek, but Mr. X didn't
blink, didn't bleed - and didn't stop. Another mighty
step, the black, smoking pit in his face a testament to
his inhumanity. Claire lowered her aim, legs, knees...
Bam-bam-bam!
... and he paused as the rounds smashed into him, at least one a direct hit to his left knee, the black eyes
fixed on her, marking her...
"... here, come on!"
Sherry was pulling at her vest, screaming, and
Claire backed away, squeezing the trigger again. Two
more rounds hit him in the gut...
... and then she was on the train, and Sherry had
found the control for the door. It whooshed shut, Mr.
X framed in the tiny window, not coming forward
anymore but still not falling. Not dying.
"Follow me!" Claire shouted, spotting the board of blinking lights to her right, knowing that the door
wouldn't hold for a second if the giant, terrible
creature started walking again.
She ran for the control board with Sherry at her
side, thanking God that the designer had been user-
friendly as the red "go" button snapped down be-
