of a virus carrier; the carrier's bullet-riddled body was
nearby. The victims' flesh had been gnawed, their skulls
crushed and empty. The fifth corpse, a young man, had
shot himself in the head, presumably after dispatching
the zombie. Had he killed himself out of despair at the
sight of his half-eaten friends? Had he been responsible
somehow? Or had he known the virus carrier well, and
taken his life after being forced to kill it?
No way we can ever know. It's just another handful
of lives lost in some untold tragedy, one among this
city's thousands.
Carlos moved closer to the bodies, frowning. From
the grim look on his face, she got the impression that
he knew who they were. He crouched down and pulled
a blood-streaked duffel bag out from in between two of
them, drawing a trail of red across the tile. Jill could
hear metal touching metal inside, and it was obviously
heavy, Carlos's bicep straining to lift the bag.
"Is that what I think it is?" Jill asked.
Carlos took the bag to one of the tables and eased the
contents out. Jill felt a sudden, unexpected burst of glee
at what was there; she hurried to the table, hardly able
to believe their luck.
A half dozen hand grenades like the one Mikhail had
used, RG34s; eight M16 thirty-round magazines,
loaded as far as she could tell; and, more than she could
have hoped for, a US M79 grenade launcher with a
handful of fat 40mm cartridges.
"Weapons at the clock tower," Carlos said thought-fully. Before Jill could ask what he meant, he picked up
one of the rifle grenades and whistled softly.
"Buckshot loads," he said. "One of these would have blasted the living shit out of that Nemesis espantajo."
Jill raised her eyebrows. " 'Espantajo'?"
"Literally, a scarecrow," Carlos said, "but it's used like weirdo, or freak."
Appropriate. Jill nodded toward the men who had
carried the weapons. "Do you recognize these people?" Carlos shrugged uncomfortably, handing her three of
the hand grenades. "They're all U.B.C.S., I've seen them around, but I don't - I didn't know them. They were just dumb grunts, they probably had no idea what
they were getting into when they joined Umbrella, or
when we were sent here. Like me."
He seemed angry and a little sad, and he abruptly
changed the topic, suddenly remembering how close
they were to escaping Raccoon City. "Do you want to carry the grenade gun?"
"I thought you'd never ask," Jill said, smiling. She could use a weapon that would, as Carlos so colorfully
put it, blast the living shit out of the Nemesis freak.
"Now all we have to do is find a button somewhere,
push it, and wait for our taxi to arrive."
Carlos smiled faintly in turn, tucking M16 mags into
his vest pockets. "And try not to end up dead, like everyone else in this goddamn place."
Jill had no response to that. "Upstairs?"
Carlos nodded. Armed and ready, they started up.
The clock tower's second floor was really only a bal-
cony that overlooked the front room. It ran along three
sides of the building, and there was a single door where
it ended, which had to lead to another set of staks - to
the belfry, if Carlos remembered the term correctly.
Where the bells were.
Almost over, this is almost over, almost over... He let the repeating thought drive away almost everything
else, too fatigued to consider his feelings of anger and
sorrow and fear, aware that his breaking point wasn't
all that far off. He could sort through his emotions once
they left Raccoon behind.
The balcony itself was as richly adorned as the
lobby, blue tiles that matched the blue of the stained-
glass windows, an arched overhang supported by
white columns. They could see almost all of the fine
balcony from the top of the stairs, and it appeared to
be clear, not a zombie or monster in sight. Carlos
breathed easier and saw that Jill also seemed more at
ease. She carried the Colt Python and wore the
grenade gun on her back, using Carlos's belt as a
sling.
How did Trent know there would be weapons here?
Did he know I'd be taking them from dead men?
Carlos realized suddenly that he was overestimating
Trent's reach. There had to be another cache of
weapons somewhere in the building, that was all, he
and Jill had just happened across the duffel bag. The al-
ternative - that Trent had somehow known about the
dead soldiers - was too bizarre to consider.
They started down the first leg of the balcony side by
side, Carlos wondering what Jill would say if he told
her about Trent. She'd probably think he was kidding, the whole thing was so spy-novel mysterious...
Something moved. Ahead of them and around the
first corner, something on the ceiling, a flash of dark
movement. Carlos stepped to the railing and leaned out
to look, but, whatever it was, it was either hidden be-
hind one of the hanging arches or something that his
exhausted brain had come up with to keep him awake.
"What?" Jill whispered at his shoulder, holding her revolver ready.
Carlos searched a few seconds longer and then shook
his head, turning away. "Nothing, I guess, thought I saw something on the ceiling, but..."
"Shit!"
Carlos swung around as Jill jerked her weapon up,
pointing at the ceiling just in front of them as a creature
the size of a large dog skittered in their direction, a
thing with a humped body and multiple legs, its thickly
furred feet thumping stickily across the ceiling faster
than seemed possible.
Jill unloaded three rounds into it before Carlos could
blink, but not before he registered what he was looking
at. It was a spider, big enough for Carlos to see his own
reflection in its shining eyes as it crashed to the floor.
Dark fluids spouted from its back as it thrashed its mul-
ticolored legs in the air, ichorous blood pooling beneath
it. The wild, silent dance lasted only a second or two
before it curled into itself, dead.
"I hate spiders," Jill said, a look of revulsion on her face as she started forward again, scanning the ceiling.
"All those legs, that bloated stomach ... yuck."
"You've seen these before?" Carlos asked, unable to look away from the closed fist of its body.
"Yeah, at the Umbrella lab in the woods. Not alive,
though, the ones I saw were dead."
Jill's apparent calm as they skirted the dead spider
and continued on reminded Carlos how lucky he was to
have hooked up with her. He'd come across a lot of
tough men in his experiences, but he doubted very
much that any one of them, put in her position, would
be handling themselves as capably as Jill Valentine.
The rest of the balcony was clear, although Carlos
uncomfortably noted a shitload of webbing on the ceil-
ing, mounds of the thick white stuff accumulated in
every corner; he didn't care much for spiders, either.
When they reached the door and swept their way
through, Jill going in low, Carlos was relieved to be
outside again.
They'd come out on a wide ledge in front of the
tower itself, a barren space surrounded by an ancient
railing, a couple of defunct spotlights, and a few dead plants. There was a doorlike opening set a story
higher up in the tower but no way to get to it. It
seemed like a dead end, nowhere to go but back the
way they'd come. Carlos sighed; at least the crows,
if that's what they were, had migrated somewhere
else.
"So what now?" Carlos asked, looking out over the dark courtyard, at the still smoking wrecked trolley car.
When Jill didn't answer, Carlos turned and saw her
standing by a copper plaque he hadn't noticed, set into
the stone face of the tower. She reached into her bag
and produced a wrapped set of lockpicks.
"You give up way too easy," Jill said, selecting a few pieces from the bundle. "Watch for crows, and I'll see what I can do about getting us a ladder."
Carlos covered her, vaguely wondering if there was
anything she couldn't do, smelling rain on the cold
wind that blew across the ledge. A moment later there
was a series of clicks followed by a low hum of hidden
machinery, and a narrow metal ladder descended from
just beneath the opening above.
"How do you feel about standing guard for another
few minutes?" Jill asked, smiling.
Carlos grinned, feeling her excitement; it really was
almost over. "You got it."
Jill quickly scaled the ladder and disappeared
through the open door above. She called down an all-
clear a second later, and for the next several minutes,
Carlos paced the ledge, thinking about what he was
going to do after they were rescued. He wanted to talk
to Trent again, about what needed to be done to stop
Umbrella; whatever it took, he was there.
I bet he'd be interested in talking to Jill, too. When
the 'copters come, we play stupid until they let us go,
then plan out our next step - after a good meal and a
shower and about twenty-four hours of sleep, ofcourse...
He was so fixated on their deliverance from Raccoon
that he didn't notice Jill's expression at first as she de-
scended the ladder, didn't really think about the fact
that there weren't any bells tolling. He smiled at
her ... and then felt his heart sink, understanding that
their trial wasn't over yet.
"There's a gear missing from the bell mechanism,"
she said, "and we have to have it to make them ring. The good news is, I'm willing to bet that it's some-
where in the building."
Carlos arched an eyebrow. "How do you figure?"
"I found this next to one of the other gears," Jill said and handed him a tattered postcard.
The picture on the front was of three paintings hung in a row, each piece incorporating a clock. Carlos
flipped the card over and saw "St. Michael Clock
Tower, Raccoon City" in fine print on the upper left
corner. Below that was a printed line of verse, which
Jill said out loud.
" 'Give your soul to the goddess. Put your hands to-
gether to pray before her.' "
Carlos stared at her. "Are you suggesting that we pray for the missing gear?"
"Ha ha. I'm suggesting that the gear is wherever
these clocks are."
Carlos handed the card back. "You said that was the good news - what's the bad?"
Jill smiled sourly, an entirely humorless expression.
"I doubt that the gear is going to be laying out in plain
sight. It's some kind of puzzle, like the ones I ran
across at the Spencer estate - and a few of those almost
got me killed."
Carlos didn't ask. For the moment, at least, he didn't
want to know.
SEVENTEEN
AFTER TRACKING HIM FOR NEARLY HALF AN
hour, Nicholai found Dr. Richard Aquino on the fourth
floor of Raccoon City's largest hospital. Seeing the
Watchdog made Nicholai happy in a way he couldn't ex-
plain, not even to himself. A sense that all was right with
the world, that things were unfolding as they should...
... with me on top, making the decisions. In a mo-ment there will only be three left, three little doggies for
me to hunt in the land of the walking dead, he thought dreamily. Does it get any better than this?
Aquino was just locking a door behind him, a look
of sweaty fear on his pallid face as his gaze darted
around nervously. He pocketed his keys and turned to-
ward the hallway that led back to the elevator, pushing
his smudged glasses to the bridge of his nose. Nicholai
was amused to note that he wasn't even armed.
Nicholai stepped half out of the shadows, planning
to enjoy himself. After Nicholai had spent over an hour
getting to the hospital, jogging most of the way, the
0 Comments