rest of it. For a few minutes, he'd been loco, unable to understand what had happened, what was still hap-
pening...
"Aw, Jesus, man..."
Carlos looked down at the sound of Randy's voice,
noticing with some alarm that his words were a little
slurred, and saw the ragged edges of a deep bite maybe
two inches above the top of his foot. Thick blood
oozed steadily out, the inside of Randy's boot drenched
with it.
"Bit me, goddamn thing bit right in. But it was dead,
Carlos. They were all dead ... weren't they?" Randy looked up at him, his eyes dazed with pain and some-
thing more, something that neither of them could af-
ford - confusion, bad enough that Randy could barely
focus.
Concussion, maybe. Whatever it was, Randy needed
a hospital. Carlos crouched next to him, his heart sick
as he tore off a piece of Randy's shirt and quickly
folded it into a compress.
We're screwed, there were no cops out there, no
paramedics, this city is dying or already dead. If we
want help, we're going to have to find it ourselves, and he's in no shape to fight.
"This may hurt a little, 'mono, but we gotta stop you
from getting your boot all wet," Carlos said, trying to sound relaxed as he pressed the folded material against
Randy's bleeding ankle. There was no point in scaring
him, especially if he was as whacked out as Carlos
thought. "Hold it down tight, okay?"
Randy clenched his jaw, a violent tremor running
through him, but he did as Carlos asked and held the
makeshift bandage in place. As Randy leaned forward,
Carlos studied the back of his head, wincing inwardly
at the bloody, slightly misshapen spot beneath his tan-
gled black curls. It didn't seem to be bleeding anymore,
at least.
"We gotta get outta here, Carlos," Randy said. "Let's go home, okay? I want to go home."
"Soon," Carlos said softly. "Let's just sit here and rest for another minute, and then we'll go."
He thought about all of the wrecked cars they'd run
past, the piles of broken furniture and wood and brick
in the streets, hastily assembled blockades. Assuming
they could even find a car with keys in it, just about
every street was impassable. Carlos didn't have a
pilot's license, but he had flown a helicopter a few
times - fine, if they happened to stumble across an air-
port.
We'll never make it on foot, though. Even if Randy
wasn't hurt, the entire U.B.C.S. was taken out, or damn
near close. There's gotta be hundreds, maybe thou-
sands of those things out there.
If they could find other survivors, group to-
gether ... but tracking anyone down in this nightmare
would be a nightmare all its own. The thought of
Trent's restaurant occurred to him briefly, but he ig-
nored it; to hell with that crazy shit, they needed to get
out of town, and they needed help to do it. The squad
leaders were the only ones who'd known the plan for
pickup, or had radios, and there was no way Carlos was
going to go back -
- but I don't have to, do I?
He closed his eyes for a minute, realizing that he'd
missed the obvious; maybe he was more freaked than
he thought. There was more than one radio in the
world; all he had to do was find one. Send out a call to
the transports - hell, to anyone listening - and wait for
somebody to show up.
"I don't feel so good," Randy said, so quietly that Carlos almost didn't hear him, the slur of his words
more pronounced than before. "Itches, it itches." Carlos squeezed his shoulder lightly, the heat from
Randy's feverish skin radiating out from beneath his T-shirt. "You're going to be okay, bro, just hang on, I'm going to get us out of here."
He sounded confident enough. Carlos only wished
that he could convince himself.
SIX
TED MARTIN, A THIN MAN IN HIS LATE 30s,
had been shot several times in the head. Nicholai
couldn't tell if he'd been murdered or if he'd been put
down after contracting the virus, and he didn't care;
what mattered was that Martin, whose official title was
Personal and Political Liaison to the Chief of Police,
had saved Nicholai the time it would have taken to
track him down.
"Most kind of you," Nicholai said, smiling down at the very dead Watchdog. He'd also had the courtesy to
die near where he was supposed to be, in the detective
squadroom's office of the RPD's east wing.
An excellent start to my adventure; if they're all this
easy, it will be a very short night.
Nicholai stepped over the body and crouched down
next to the floor safe in the corner, quickly dialing in
the simple four-digit combination given to him by his
Umbrella contact: 2236. The steel door swung open, re-
vealing a few papers - one looked like a map for the
police station - a box of shotgun shells, and what
would surely become Nicholai's best friend until he left
Raccoon: a state-of-the-art cellular modem, designed to
look like a piece of shit but more advanced than any-
thing on the market. Grinning, he lifted out the PC lap-
top and carried it to the desk, the safe door closing
itself behind him.
His trip to the station had been reasonably uneventful,
except for the seven undead he'd dispatched point-blank
to avoid too much noise; they were embarrassingly easy
to kill, as long as one paid attention to one's surround-
ings. He hadn't yet come across any of Umbrella's pets,
the only real challenge he expected to face; there was
one nicknamed "brain sucker" that he was very much
looking forward to meeting, a multi-legged crawler with
killing claws...
One thing at a time; right now, you need informa-
tion.
He'd already committed the names and faces of his
victims to memory and had a general idea of where
each one was supposed to make contact, if not neces-
sarily when; all of the Watchdogs were on different
schedules, subject to change but mostly accurate. Mar-
tin, for instance, was due to report to Umbrella from a
computer terminal at the RPD building's front desk at 1750 hours, about twenty minutes from now; his last
report should have been just after noon.
"Let's see if you succeeded, Officer Martin,"
Nicholai said, quickly punching in the codes he'd ac-
quired to access Umbrella's updated progress reports.
"Martin, Martin ... ah, there you are!"
The policeman had missed his last two assigned win-
dows, suggesting that he'd been dead or incapacitated
for at least nine hours now. No information to collect
there. Nicholai carefully read the numbers on the other
Watchdogs, pleased with what he saw. Of the eight
Watchdogs left after Martin, three others had failed to
make their last assigned reports - one of the scientists,
one Umbrella worker, and the woman who worked for
the city's water department. Assuming they were
dead - and Nicholai was willing to bet that they were -
- that left only five.
Two soldiers, two scientists, and the other Umbrella
man...
Nicholai frowned, looking at the designated contact
points for each of them. One scientist, Janice Thomlm-
son, would be in the underground laboratory facility,
the other at the hospital near the city park; the Um-
brella worker was to report in from an allegedly aban-
doned water treatment facility on the outskirts of town,
a cover for its use as an Umbrella chemical testing site.
Nicholai didn't foresee any problems finding them,
but both of the soldier Watchdogs had been taken off
the map.
"Where are you going to be, men ...," Nicholai said absently, tapping at the keys, his frustration growing.
At his last check only the night before, they had both
been assigned to call in from the St. Michael Clock
Tower...
Shit!
There they were, their names listed next to his; both
men had been moved to portable status, just like him.
They'd report in from Umbrella laptops or wherever
was most convenient, and were only required to file
once a day - which meant that they could be anywhere
in Raccoon City, anywhere at all.
A seething haze of red enveloped him, tearing at
him. Without thinking, Nicholai charged across the of-
fice and kicked Martin's body as hard as he could,
once, twice, venting his rage, feeling a deep satisfac-
tion at the wet sounds his boot made, the jerking move-
ment of the body and the crunch of ribs giving way -
- and then it was over, and he was himself once
again, still frustrated but in control. He exhaled sharply
and moved back to the desk, ready to revise his plans.
It was simply going to take longer to find them, that was all; it wasn't the end of the world. And perhaps
they would fail to report in, conveniently dying just like
Martin and the other three.
He could hope but wouldn't count on it. What he
could count on was his own perseverance and skill.
Umbrella wouldn't send in their pickup for nearly a
week - the longest, they believed, that they could keep
the disaster quiet - unless the Watchdogs called in with
complete results, unlikely at best. With six days to find
only five people, Nicholai was certain that he would be
the only one left to pick up.
"I won't even need all six," Nicholai said, nodding firmly at Martin's sprawled, lumpy corpse. "Three days, I'm sure I can do it in three."
With that, Nicholai leaned forward and started to call
up the maps he would need, happy again.
Jill hadn't been able to find any shells for the 12-gauge,
but she took it anyway, aware that her ammo
wouldn't last forever; it would make a good club, and
she might find shells for it later. She'd just about de-
cided to try climbing over one of the western blockades
when she saw something that changed her mind, some-
thing she had fervently hoped never to see again.
A Hunter. Like the ones at the estate, in the tunnels.
She'd stood on the fire escape outside of an uptown
boutique, seen it in the street just past one of the vans
that blocked the fire escape's alley. It didn't see her;
she watched it lope by and out of sight, a little different
than the ones from before, but close enough - the same
strangely graceful, malignant carriage, the heavy,
curved talons, the dark mud green color. She held her
breath, her stomach in knots, remembering...
... hunched over so that its impossibly long arms al-most touched the stone floor of the tunnel, both its
hands and feet tipped with thick, brutal claws. Tiny,
light-colored eyes peering out at her from aflat reptil-
ian skull, its tremendous, high-pitched screech echoing
through the dark underground just before it sprang...
She'd killed it, but it had taken her fifteen 9mm
rounds to do it, an entire magazine. Later, Barry had
told her that he'd heard them referred to as Hunters,
one of Umbrella's bio-organic weapons. There had
been other kinds on the estate - feral, skinned-looking
dogs; a kind of giant, flesh-eating plant that Chris and
Rebecca had destroyed; spiders the size of small cattle;
and the dark, mutant things with bladed hooks for
hands, the ones that hung from the ceiling of the es-
tate's boiler room, skittering overhead like spined mon-
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