tidal wave of mud as the fifth shot blew out the light. It
was going to crush her if she didn't move, close, gonna be close...
Bam! Bam!
It was the seventh shot that did it, and the results
were spectacular. There was a giant, buzzing pop as Jill
threw herself backwards and to the side, the lamp im-
mersed in the rapidly draining pool. The semi-gelati-
nous flesh of the screaming worm shivered and shook
as it raised itself up, twisting in agony. Its pallid skin
began to blacken and crisp as an oily, noxious smoke
poured out of its throat, the hidden length of its body
thrashing up giant sprays of dirt and rock. It bellowed
once more, the unearthly sound becoming choked, gur-
gling -
- and then it collapsed, dead before it hit the
ground, before its outer layer of skin began to curl
away, revealing the cooking meat of its innards.
Jill staggered to her feet, left hand pressed to her throbbing shoulder as she backed away from the frying
worm, the smell of it making her gag repeatedly. She'd
actually done it, she'd killed the goddamn thing!
A warm swell of triumphant victory surged through her as
she breathed in another wave of roasting worm smell,
I did it, and then she bent over and vomited her guts out. When there was nothing left to purge, Jill shakily
stood up and started walking east again, thinking about
her confrontation with Nicholai. He wasn't as good a
liar as he thought, and if she'd had only suspicions be-
fore, she was now certain that he was extremely bad
news.
Her plans hadn't changed, but she was going to have
to be very careful when she got to the water treatment
plant. Nicholai was going to be there, she had no
doubt ... and if he saw her first, she'd be dead before
she knew what hit her.
The roadblock was a massive pileup of cars that had
actually been stacked three and four high, stretched be-
tween several buildings at the end of a block in a rough
semicircle. Carlos could still see the crisscross of greasy
treadmarks from whatever piece of heavy machinery had
managed the feat, just as he'd spotted them on the last
three streets he'd tried. Umbrella and the RPD hadn't
been screwing around when they'd sealed the city.
He stood in front of the stacked, partly crushed metal
wall, experiencing an almost desperate indecision. Go
back, try heading north first, then east - or try climbing
over one of the precarious barricades, which seemed to
have been specifically set up to deter him from finding
Jill.
That's what it feels like, anyway. All that was north of the clock tower was a big park, but maybe that was
the only way to get to the Umbrella facility; he couldn't
imagine Jill scaling a wall of cars with a bad shoulder,
and crawling through them was too dangerous...
... but you're assuming she even made it this far, a nagging little voice whispered. Maybe she's already dead, maybe the Nemesis came for her, orNicholai, or...
Carlos cocked his head to one side, frowning, his
thoughts disturbed by a distant sound. Shots? Possibly,
but the light mist that was falling was having a dampen-
ing effect, distorting and muffling noises. He couldn't
even be sure from which direction the sound had
come ... but he was suddenly even more frantic to find
Jill than before.
"After all I went through to get that vaccine, you bet-
ter not get yourself killed," he murmured lightly, but it was too close to the truth to be funny. He had to do
something, now.
Carlos stared at the wall of cars for another moment,
picking what appeared to be the most stable route, over
a minivan and two compact cars. He took as deep a
breath as he was able to manage, mentally crossed his
fingers, and started to climb.
TWENTY-FIVE
"NO, LISTEN, YOU GOTTA LISTEN - I DON'T
know anything, you don't want to do this. They've had
me doing reports on water and soil samples, that's it,
I'm no threat to you! I swear!"
Foster was working himself into a froth, and Nicholai
decided that making a man wait for his death, particularly
such a sad little man, was cruel. The researcher was al-
ready cowering in the corner, pressed against the door in
the northeast corner of his office, his pinched, ratty fea-
tures flushed and sweaty. It had taken Nicholai less than
five minutes to find him once he'd reached the facility.
"... and I'll just leave, okay?" Foster was still bab-bling. "I'll be gone and you'll never hear from me again, swear to God, why do you want to kill me, I'm
nobody. Tell me what you want and I'll do it, whatever
it is, talk to me, man, okay? Let's just talk, okay?"
Nicholai suddenly realized that he was just staring at
Foster, as if he'd been lulled into a trance by the rise
and fall of the man's hysteria. It had been an endless
day in a series of them ... but as much as he wanted to
get out, to be done with the entire operation, Nicholai
felt oddly compelled to say something.
"There's nothing personal in this, I'm sure you un-
derstand," Nicholai said. "It's about money ... or it was at the beginning, but things are different now."
Foster nodded quickly, eyes wide. "Yeah, sure they are, different."
Now that he'd started, Nicholai found he couldn't
stop. It suddenly seemed important for someone else to
understand what he'd gone through, what he was still
up against - even if it was only someone like Foster.
"The money is still most of it, of course. But after I
got here, after Wersbowski, I started to feel like I had
come to a very special place. I felt ... I felt that things
were finally becoming the way they were supposed to
be. The way my life should have been all along. Ex-
treme circumstances, you see?"
Foster bobbed his head again but wisely said nothing
But then Carlos tricked me; he couldn't have died
in the explosion, because Jill received the antidote. And
I'm starting to think that she's the cause, that things
changed because of her." As he spoke, he sensed the truth of it, as though a light was dawning in his mind's eye. It was true, talking helped.
"Even at the beginning, she ruined the setup I had
with Carlos and Mikhail. Manipulative, controlling
woman, there are a lot of them like that. She probably
slept with both of them, too. Seduced them."
"Bitches, all of 'em," Foster sincerely agreed. "Then she got sick and sent Carlos to steal the vac-
cine. I'm not excusing his part in all of this, not at all,
but there's something about her ... it's like her pres-
ence alters things, makes everything wrong somehow. I
don't even think she's dead now. If a seeker can't kill
her, a mutant certainly can't."
Nicholai stood silently, lost in thought for a moment.
He'd never been a superstitious man, but things really
were different. Jill Valentine was...
... a woman, she's just a woman and you 're not think-
ing clearly, haven't been for days.
Nicholai blinked, and the thought was gone, and
Foster was still in the corner, watching him with an ex-
pression of cautious terror. As though he thought
Nicholai was crazy. Nicholai felt a rush of hatred for
the little man, for trying to trick him, telling him to talk
and then judging him for it. He deserved to die, as
much as any of them.
"I'm not crazy," Nicholai shouted angrily, "and I'm done talking about this! You're the last one, after you
it's over and that's just the way things are, so be a man
and accept it! "
Three rounds, a burst of tat tat tat through one of Ter-
ence Foster's pleading green eyes, and the researcher's
head snapped back, blood splashing the door he leaned
against, his body collapsing lifeless to the cold floor.
Nicholai felt nothing. The last Watchdog, dead, and
there was no sense of accomplishment, no feeling of
conquest. Just another corpse on the floor in front of
him and a deeply felt desire to get out of Raccoon,
where things had gone so sour.
Nicholai shook his head, his heart heavy, and started
to search the office for Foster's data.
Jill stood in front of the narrow bridge that con-
nected Memorial Park's back gate to the second floor
of the Umbrella facility, suspended over what had to be
a marsh or swamp, from the gassy-mud smell. It was
too dark to tell by looking, but the odor was unmistak-
able - and so were the fresh bootprints that led from
where she stood to the door on the opposite side. As
she'd expected, Nicholai was here.
Wonderful. What a treat.
Nicholai aside, she was glad to have found the
bridge; she'd been concerned that the park would turn
out to be a dead end and that she'd have to backtrack.
The bridge also conveniently led to the second floor; it
made sense that the offices and control rooms - hope-
fully at least one of them would have a transmitter sys-
tem - would be on the second floor of the two-story
building, the first floor being where the water treatment
took place. Assuming Umbrella had bothered with a
sensible layout, she should be able to get in and out
easily enough. If there was no radio, she'd circle
around to the front of the building's first floor and see
about the roads.
She carefully edged out onto the wood-and-metal
span, breathing deeply, focusing herself as she reached
for the low wood railing to steady herself. Dealing with
Umbrella's creatures, bred or created, took skill and
concentration, but facing a human adversary took more
than that; people were much less predictable than ani-
mals, and if she meant to keep away from Nicholai, she
had to be as fully alert as possible, her intuition and
awareness jacked up to feel an oncoming attack -
- like now.
Jill froze halfway across the bridge, feeling for the
Beretta's safety with her thumb, something was very
wrong but she couldn't tell...
Ka thud! Behind her.
Jill spun, heart racing, and saw the Nemesis stand-
ing twenty feet away, its freakish body hideously
transformed by fire and buckshot. Its chest and arms
were bare, giving her a clear look at how the waving
tentacles were attached, sprouting from its upper back
and shoulders. Much of its skin had burned off, re-
vealing fibrous red muscle tissue in patches of ashy
black.
"Starsss," it rumbled, limping forward a step, and she saw that much of its lower right side was mangled
from where she'd hit it with the grenade gun. The flesh
from the bottom of its rib cage to about midthigh
looked like burned spaghetti, smashed and shredded,
but she doubted very much that it felt pain, and she had
few illusions about its strength being overly affected.
In an instant, her adrenaline-pumped mind flashed
through a hundred options and latched on to her best
bet. The ledge at the clock tower. Carlos had pushed it
right off, but it had been blinded, distracted...
... distract this, freak!
She opened fire, aiming at the most obvious part of
its deformed face, its improbably white teeth - and saw
at least two shots shatter through the eerie grin, pale
splinters exploding out in a spray.
The S.T.A.R.S. killer howled, its flesh tentacles
spreading like a cape behind it, framing the beast in a
coiling, quivering sunburst.
- not in pain, maybe, but it feels something -
- GO NOW!
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