backwards with a clattering sound - and then the face
of the clock itself fell from the picture, pushed out by
some machinery that Jill couldn't see. In the revealed
hollow was the glittering gold cog that had been miss-
ing from the tower's bell mechanism.
Sneaky, you pricks, but not sneaky enough.
Carlos was frowning, his expression openly con-
fused. "What the hell is all this, anyway? Who would hide the gear at all, and why in such a complicated
way?"
Jill plucked the shining gear from its hiding place,
remembering her own thoughts on that exact subject
only six weeks before, standing in the dark halls of
Spencer's mansion. Why, why such elaborate secrecy?
The files Trent had given her just before the estate mis-
sion had been full of clues to the mansion's puzzles,
lucky for her; without those, she might never have got-
ten out. Most of the bizarre little mechanisms had been
much too intricate to be practical, time-wise or func-
tionally. What was the point?
After giving it a lot of thought, Jill had finally con-
cluded that Umbrella's real board of directors, the ones no one knew about, were paranoid fanatics. They were
self-involved children, playing secret agent games and
betting with other people's lives, because they could.
Because no one had ever explained to them that hiding
toys and making treasure maps was something people
outgrew.
Because no one has stopped them. Yet.
Suddenly eager to wrap it all up, to place the gear
and ring the bell and just leave, Jill phrased it much
more simply to Carlos. "They're wacko, that's why. One-hundred-percent grade-A jacked-up batshit. You
ready to get out of here, or what?"
Carlos nodded somberly, and after a final look
around the room, they headed back out the way they'd
come.
EIGHTEEN
CARLOS WATCHED JELL CLIMB THE LADDER
once more, trying not to get his hopes up again. If this
didn't work, he was going to be deeply - no, majesti-
cally pissed.
Hell with it. If this doesn't work, we should just walk
out, or see if we can get to that factory and steal our-
selves a ride. She's right, these people are andar lurias,
lost in space; the sooner we get out of their territory,
the better.
He stared blankly out at the dark yard for a few mo-
ments, so bone-weary that he wondered how he would
do one more thing, take one more step; it seemed im-
possible. All that kept him going was his desire to
leave, to get away from this holocaust and try to re-
cover.
When the first massive peal of sound rang out, its
deep and hollow tone rolling out from the top of the
tower, Carlos realized he couldn't keep a lid on his
hope. He tried, telling himself that there was going to
be a glitch in the program, telling himself that Um-
brella would send assassins, that the pilot would be a
zombie; nothing worked. A helicopter was coming for
them, he knew it, he believed it; he just hoped the res-
cue team wouldn't have any trouble finding a place to
land...
... spotlights! There were four of them on the ledge and a crusty-looking control box near the door that led
back inside; the light would guide the transport in
faster. Carlos hurried toward it, glancing up to see if Jill
had started down yet. She hadn't...
... and when he looked ahead again, he saw that he
wasn't alone. As if by magic, the giant, mutilated freak
that had been chasing Jill was simply there, close enough for Carlos to smell a burnt meat smell, snarling,
its piggy, distorted gaze turned to the top of the ladder.
"Carlos, look out!" Jill screamed down, but the Nemesis-monster ignored him completely, taking a
mammoth step toward the ladder, the eyeless snakes
that were its tentacles whipping around its colossal
head. One more step and it would be at the base of the
ladder and Jill would be trapped.
- she said bullets don't hurt it -
Desperate to do something, Carlos saw the large
green power switch on the spotlights' control panel and
lunged for it, not sure what he expected. To distract it,
if they were lucky...
... and all four lights snapped on at once, blinding,
instantly heating the air around them and illuminating
the tower, probably for miles to see. One of the beams
was full-on blocked by the freak's hideous face. The
light actually forced the thing to stumble backwards,
giant hands covering its mutant eyes, and Carlos acted.
He ran at the blinded Nemesis, M16 held high, and
slammed the rifle against its chest, pushing as hard as
he could. Off balance, it stumbled backwards, its legs
slapping the ancient railing...
... and with a brittle snap, a wide section of the rail-
ing gave way, falling into the darkness, the Nemesis
plummeting after it. Carlos heard a sickly thump from
the ground below at the same instant that the over-
heated spotlights shut down, making glowing dark
shapes float in Carlos's eyes for a moment.
The huge, mellow sound of the bells continued to
fill the air as Jill scrambled down the ladder and un-
slung the grenade launcher, joining Carlos at the bro-
ken railing.
"I ... thanks," Jill said, looking into his eyes, her own gaze sincere and unwavering. "If you hadn't hit the lights, I would have been dead. Thank you."
Carlos was impressed and a little flustered by her
candor. "De nada," he said, suddenly very aware of how attractive she was - not just physically - and how
little experience he actually had with women. He was a
self-educated twenty-one-year-old mere, and he hadn't
exactly had a whole lot of time or opportunity to date.
She can't be much older, twenty-five at the outside,
and maybe she...
Jill snapped her fingers in front of him, bringing him
back to reality and reminding him of how tired he re-
ally was. He'd totally spaced out.
"You still with me?"
Carlos nodded, clearing his throat. "Yeah, sorry. Did you say something?"
"I said we need to move. If it's still that feisty after a grenade in the face, I doubt a two-story drop will kill it."
"Right," Carlos said. "We should circle around front, anyway. They'll probably drop a harness if they can't
set down."
Jill nodded. "Let's do it."
Ushered inside by the deep voice of hollowed metal,
Carlos suddenly wondered if Nicholai was still alive -
- and if he was, what he would do when he heard the
tolling bells.
Nicholai heard the bells on his walk back into town
and scoffed irritably, refusing to be baited. He hadn't
expected the barely skilled trio to make it, but so what
if they had? Davis Chan had filed another report, from
a woman's boutique of all places, and Nicholai meant
to track him down.
And why should I care if they limp away with their
miserable lives, with what I've got?
Nicholai pulled the slender metal case out of his
pocket for the third time since leaving the hospital, un-
able to resist. Inside was a glass vial of purplish fluid
that he'd synthesized himself, with a little help from an
instruction sheet that Aquino's assistant had thought-
fully left behind.
Nicholai knew it would be safest to store the sample
someplace, but the small container represented his au-
thority over the other Watchdogs and a newly elevated
status with Umbrella; he was a leader, a supervisor of
lesser men, and he found that carrying the vaccine with
him and occasionally holding it made him feel power-
ful. Grounded, in a way.
Smiling, Nicholai slipped the container back into his
pocket, within easy reach, and started walking again,
deliberately ignoring the bells. Things were going very
well - he had the vaccine; he knew where Chan was
and where Franklin was going to be in just under forty-
eight hours; he'd already rigged the hospital to blow;
and he would push the button as soon as his meeting
with Franklin was over. Nicholai thought he might
duck over to the factory and get rid of Terence Foster
while he waited on Franklin, there was plenty of
time -
- just like there was plenty of time to track Mikhail,
to play at being a noble team member, to decide who
would die first among them. . .
The clamorous bells pounded at him, seeking to re-
mind him of his failure, but he refused to be distracted
by the escape of three incompetents. He was getting
closer to town, he could see the combined glow of hun-
dreds of small and not so small fires encasing the dark
city; even if he wanted to, he wouldn't make it back to
the clock tower before the first helicopter came. And he didn't want to, he'd had the opportunity after killing
Aquino and had decided that it wasn't worth his time. It
was the right decision ... and the strange doubts that
curled up inside of him at the sound of the bells were to
be disregarded; it meant nothing, that they had sur-
vived, it didn't mean that they were as good as him.
Besides, he still had a few dogs to put down to en-
sure his monopoly on information. He thought that
Chan might choose to bunk down at the store he'd re-
ported from, as late as it was. Nicholai would kill him,
take his data, and retire for the evening somewhere in
the city. At the Watchdog briefing he'd heard that food
was scarce, but he was certain that he could manage
raid a few pantries for canned goods, perhaps. In the
morning he would file his own report, to keep up his
cover, and spend the day hunting up information of his
own before heading west again.
Everything was fine, and as he gradually crossed
over from the suburbs into the city, the sound of the ap-
proaching helicopter didn't bother him a bit. Let those
spineless, shit-eating bastards run, he felt great, in con-
trol, better than great. He only had a headache because
of those damned bells.
They retraced much of their winding path through
the clock tower, Jill wanting to make sure the Neme-
sis either got confused or had plenty of time to wan-
der away before they went out to meet the 'copter. As
they walked, they hammered out a story to tell who-
ever was running the evac - Jill was Kimberly
Sampsel (the name of Jill's best friend from fifth
grade), she'd worked at a local art gallery, no family,
and she'd only moved to Raccoon recently. Carlos had
found her just after his platoon leader, the only other
U.B.C.S. member to have survived, had been killed by
zombies. Together, they'd made it to the clock tower,
end of story.
They decided not to mention Nicholai, the Nemesis,
or any unidentifiable creatures they'd seen running
around; the idea was to appear as ignorant of the facts
as possible. Neither of them wanted to take any
chances on the allegiance of the rescue team, and Jill
had no doubt that there would be someone on the trans-
port waiting to debrief them, so the simpler the story,
the better. They'd just have to pray that no one had her
pic on hand. They could worry about how to slip away
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