Karen jumped back as bullets cracked into the door. Chunks of rotten flesh spattered up from Ammon's body; the corpse danced and waved in a shuddering, jerking rhythm of macabre motion. David snatched at the coat of the dead man and yanked, but the door was pinned open by the clatter- ing fire and whoever was shooting was coming closer, the explosive shots louder, the splinters of flesh and wood pelting them with greater force. They were trapped, both exits blocked. Rebecca clutched her Beretta in one shaking hand, watching for a signal from David. He pointed roughly northwest, into the compound, shouting to be heard over the whining, spitting clatter of the automatic fire.
"Rebecca, other door! John, Karen, next building, secure! Steve, we cover! Go!"
As one, Steve and David leaped out and started to fire, the booming rounds punctuating the lighter hail of deadly ammo. John and Karen charged out at a full run, were instantly swallowed up by the shadows. Rebecca spun and trained her weapon on the back door, her heart pounding in her throat. The walls trembled and shook. "Die, Jesus, why won't they die?" Steve screamed behind her, a strain of disbelief and terror in his voice that made her blood run cold.
... zombies?
Without looking away from the rectangle of dark wood, Rebecca shouted as loud as she could, her voice cracking over the relentless spray of the automatics.
"Head shots! Aim for the head!"
There was no way to know if they'd heard her, the rifle or rifles kept pounding, approaching. Her thoughts raced to understand, images of the T-Virus victims flitting through her mind. They'd been mind- less, slow, inhuman and accidental, not on purpose -not with purpose.
"Rebecca, let's go!"
There was still the sound of an automatic rifle firing, but the boathouse no longer shook from the impact of its force. She shot a glance back, saw Steve still shooting at something, saw David motioning at her to move. She sidled for the open door, catching a sickening, up-close look at the bullet-riddled corpse still hanging there. The head had caved in like a rotting pumpkin, teeth shattered, gummy flecks of tissue radiating out from behind the skull. The waving hand was no longer connected to the rotting arm, the radius and ulna blown away. It dangled there like some obscene decoration, beckoning... Steve fired once more and the auto's clatter ceased. He raised the weapon, his eyes wide and shocked as he opened his mouth to say something...... and the back door crashed open, bullets flying through the dark in a blaze of orange fire. David pushed her roughly through the front and she ran, the responding crack of nine-millimeter rounds resonat- ing behind her.
- get to the building, get to cover -
She sprinted through the shadows, her wet shoes thumping across packed, rocky dirt, her searching gaze finding the outline of a massive, concrete block and the spindly trees that surrounded it in the dark- ness ahead.
"Here."
She veered toward the call, saw John's muscular form silhouetted by pale starlight at the corner of the building. As she neared him, she saw the open door, Karen standing in the entry with her weapon trained back toward the boathouse. Bullets still sang through the shadows. "Get in!" Karen shouted, stepping out of the way, and Rebecca ran past her, not slowing until she was inside. She fell into a table in the pitch black, cracking one hip painfully against the edge. Turning, she saw Karen firing, heard John yelling,
"Come on, come on..."
... and Steve pounded through the door, gasping. He pulled to a stop before crashing into her, one hand clutching his chest. Rebecca moved to the door and grasped the cool thickness, her mind absently registering that the ma- terial was steel as David hurtled through, shouting.
"Karen, John!"
Karen backed into the darkness, weapon still raised. There were three more sharp reports from a Beretta and then John slipped inside, his jaw clenched, his nostrils flaring. Rebecca slammed the door, her fingers finding a deadbolt switch. The soft snick of the lock was barelyaudible against the ringing in her ears. Outside, the bullets stopped. There were no shouts between the attackers, no alarms, no barking of dogs or screaming of wounded. The sudden silence was total, broken only by the deep, shuddering breathing in the warmand muggy darkness. A halogen beam flickered on, revealing the shocked faces of the team as David shone it around their retreat. A midsize room, crowded with desks and computer equipment. There were no windows. "Did you see that?" Steve gasped, addressing no one in particular. "God, they wouldn't go down, did you see that?"
Nobody answered, and though they were out of immediate danger, Rebecca didn't feel her adrenaline slowing, didn't feel her heart settling back to anything approaching normal; it seemed that Umbrella had found a new application for the T-Virus. And like it or not, we're going to have to deal with the consequences. They were trapped in Caliban Cove. And in this facility, the creatures had guns. David took a final deep breath and exhaled it heavily, flashing the torch's light toward the door. "I'd say we've been spotted," he said, hoping that he didn't sound as despairing as he felt. "Might as well see what we've gotten into. Rebecca, would you turn on the lights?"
She flipped the wall switch and the room snapped into blinding brilliance, overhead fluorescents pulsing to life. Blinking against the sudden glare, David surveyed the team, saw that Steve had one hand pressed to his chest.
"Are you hit?" "Vest stopped it," he said, but he seemed more out of breath than the others, his face paler than it should have been. Rebecca glanced at David with a questioning gaze. He nodded at her.
Doesn 't appear that we have anywhere else to go... "Check him out. Anyone else?"
Nobody answered as Rebecca stepped up to Steve, motioning for him to take off the vest. David turned and looked around the room, measuring it against the memory of Trent's map and what little he'd seen from outside. There were a half dozen cheap metal desks, each with a computer and bits of clutter on top. The cement walls were undecorated and plain. There was another door on the west wall that had to lead deeper into the building. "Karen, secure that," he said. They could check out the rest of the site once they'd decided what to do.
Once you've decided, Captain; perhaps you'd like to send them out for a swim? It can't be any worse than what you've already managed...
David ignored the inner voice, perfectly aware of how badly he'd underestimated the situation. The team didn't need to see him wallow in self-doubt, it wouldn't help anything. The question was, what now? "Let's talk," he said. "It doesn't look like we're facing an accident after all. What did the note say? The food was drugged, and something about a 'he' killing the others... is it possible that we're not looking at a T-Virus spill?"
Rebecca looked up from her examination of Steve's chest, the computer expert sitting on one of the desks in front of her. Steve winced as Rebecca's fingers circled the darkening bruise on his right pectoral. She smiled guiltily at him, shaking her head.
"You're okay. Nothing's broken."
She turned back to David, the smile falling away.
"Yeah. If there'd been a release, that guy on the door, Ammon, would've been affected. But the Trisquads - if they're the result of experiments with the T-Virus, they'd have rotted away by now. It's been over three weeks since he wrote that note, we should be looking at piles of mush. Either it's a different virus, or someone's been taking care of them. Enzyme upkeep, maybe some kind of refrigeration..."
David nodded slowly, following her reasoning.
"And if that 'someone' had gone mad and killed everyone, why bother?" "That corpse, waving at us," Karen said thought-fully. "And the creature or creatures in the cove. It'slike he expected people to come..."...but didn't mean for us to get very far," John finished. The line from the note ran through David's mind, the words following the plea to stop "him."
'God knows what he means to do.'...
Steve had slipped his shirt back on, shivering from the damp cloth. "So what do we do now?" David didn't answer him, not sure what to say. He felt so drained, so exhausted and uncertain... "I... our options are to get out or go deeper," he said softly. "Considering what's happened so far, I don't feel comfortable making that call. What do you want to do?"
David looked warily from face to face, expecting to see anger and disdain; he'd let them down, led them into a perilous situation without a contingency plan, all because he couldn't stand to see the S.T.A.R.S. tarnished. And now that they were trapped, he didn't know what to do. The expressions they wore, as a group, were thought- ful and intent. He was surprised to see Karen actually smile, and when she spoke, her tone was brightly eager.
"Since you're asking, I want to figure this out. I want to know what happened here." Rebecca was nodding. "Yeah, me, too. And I still want to get a look at the T-Virus."I wanna pick off a few more of those Tri-boys," John said, grinning. "Man, zombies with M-16s, night of the living death squad."
Steve sighed, pushing his wet bangs off his fore-head. "Might as well keep looking; going back out isn't exactly safe. It's not the way I would've liked, but getting dirt on Umbrella was the original plan... yeah, I want to nail these bastards."
David smiled, feeling properly embarrassed at him- self. He hadn't just underestimated the situation, he'dsorely underestimated his team. "What do you want?" Rebecca asked suddenly."Really?"
The question surprised him anew - not because she'd asked, but because suddenly, he didn't have an answer. He thought about the S.T.A.R.S., about his obsession with his career and what it had already cost them. All he'd wanted for days was to feel as though his life's work had been meaningful, that it hadn't been wasted and he'd convinced himself that un- covering the treachery within the job would lay his mind at rest, as if rooting out the corruption would somehow prove that he wasn't worthless.
I've worshipped at the altar of the organization for so long... but isn't this the reason why, the real purpose? Here, in this room, on these faces?
He studied her curious, sharp gaze, felt the rest of them watching him, waiting. "I want for us to survive," he said finally, truth- fully. "I want for us to make it out of here." "Amen to that," John muttered. David remembered what he'd told the Raccoon team, about each of them doing what they did best if they meant to succeed against Umbrella. He'd said it to get Chris's approval of his operation, but it was a truth that applied to all of them.
Get to it, Captain... "John, you and Karen take a look around the building, check the doors, be back in ten. Steve, boot up one of those computers, see if you can find a detailed layout of the grounds. Rebecca, we'll go through the desks. We want maps, data on Trisquads, T-Virus, anything personal about the researchers that might tell us who's behind all this."
David nodded at them, realizing that he felt clearer and more balanced than he had in a long, long time. "Let's do it," he said. To hell with the S.T.A.R.S. They were going to take Umbrella down.
Dr. Griffith might not have even noticed the securi- ty breach if it hadn't been for the Ma7s; it seemed that they were useful after all, though not in the way they'd been intended. He'd spent most of the day in the lab, dreamily pondering the pressurized canisters standing by the entrance, the shining steel glittering seductively in the soft light. Once he'd made the decision to let the virus go, he'd realized that there was really nothing else he needed to do. The hours had flown by; each glance at the clock had been a surprise, though not an unpleas-ant one. He'd be the first, after all, the first convert to the new way of the world. With that in front of him, the only task with which he needed to concern himself was getting the canisters up to the lighthouse and with the doctors waiting silently, patiently by, even that was taken care of. Just before dawn, he'd give them their final instructions and then proudly lead the human species into the light, into the miracle of peace. It had been the thought of the Ma7s that had finally drawn him out into the caves, the only concern he hadn't already dismissed as trivial. He'd already made a mistake with the Leviathans; once he'd taken over the facility, he'd lowered the cove gates on impulse, wanting them to be as free as he'd felt. It wasn't until the next day that he'd realized Umbrella might find out and come looking, effectively putting an end to his plans. He'd continued to send in weekly reports to keep up appearances, but there was no good explanation for the "escape" of the four creatures. It had been sheer luck that the Leviathans had returned on their own. The Ma7s were a different matter entirely, of course. They were too violent, too unpredictable to be let out. But letting them starve to death in their cage didn't seem right, particularly not when they, too, would enjoy the effects of his gift; it wasn't their choice to exist as creatures of destruction, even to exist at all. And since he'd played a small role in their creation, he felt a responsibility to do something for them... He'd stood in front of the outer gate for quite some time, considering the problem as all five of the ani- mals hurled themselves repeatedly at the heavy steel mesh, their strange, mournful howls echoing through the damp and winding caves. There was a manual lock release near the enclosure, another in the lab, but there was no way to loose them from the light- house, and he certainly couldn't let them out before he got to safety. He could send one of the doctors to do it, but the 7s had a much slower metabolism than a human's, and there was a risk that they would get to him before they made the change. A month before his takeover of the compound, Dr. Chin and two of her vet techs had made the mistake of trying to tend to one of the sick ones; it was a bad way to die, and although he'd be oblivious to the pain once he'd made the transition, he meant to stay with the new world for as long as possible. Griffith had finally decided that euthanasia was the only reasonable choice. It was a reluctant decision, but he could see no alternative. Although the lab was well stocked, poisons weren't his forte, so he'd de- cided to look up the information on the mainframe and there, in the cold comfort of the sealed laborato- ry, he'd discovered that his sanctuary had been in- vaded. He sat in front of the computer in a kind of shock, staring at the blinking cursor that indicated system use in one of the bunkers. There was no chance that it was a mistake. Except for the lab terminals, the rest of the compound had been powered down weeks ago.
Umbrella had come.
The first emotion to break through his stunned astonishment was rage, a sweeping, red-hot fury that tore away all reason, descending over him like a blinding fire. For a few moments, he was lost, his body taken over by the primal force, grasping and rending, tearing at the useless, meaningless things that fell beneath his burning fingers.
-they will NOT will NOT stop me will NOT-
When his hands touched the cool metal of the canisters, the fire turned to ash. The smooth, silver tanks were like a splash of reason, bringing him back to himself. His control returned as abruptly as it had gone, leaving him breathless and sweating.
My creation. My work.
Blinking, gasping, he found himself standing in a sea of ripped papers, broken glass, and torn circuitry. He'd managed to destroy the computer, the bearer of bad news, in pieces on the cold floor. On another day, he might have been ashamed at the hysterical tan- trum, but on this, his eve of greatness, he allowed that the rage had been justified.
Justified, perhaps, but pointless. How will you keep them from stopping you? You can't release the strain here, and you can't risk taking it outside, not now... what are their plans? How much do they know?
He could find out easily enough. There were still two other terminals in the lab and he walked quickly to one of them, glancing at the mute doctors, sitting quietly by the airlock. If they'd even noticed his rampage, they gave no sign. He felt a small rush of hatred for them, for creating the useless Trisquads; the "unstoppable" guards had failed him now that he needed them most. He sat down and turned on the monitor, impa- tiently waiting for the spinning umbrella of the com-pany logo to disappear. The security network for the compound's system was based in the lab; he'd be able to see what the intruders were seeking without alert-ing them to his presence, if he could remember how to access the information... He tapped several keys, waited, then typed in his clearance number. After the briefest of pauses, lines of glowing green data spilled across the screen. He'd done it.
Seek, find, locate...
He frowned at the information, wondering why the hell anyone from Umbrella would be searching for the laboratory and for that matter, why they'd try look- ing for that information in the mainframe at all. The system designers weren't idiots, there was nothing about the layout of the facility in the files...
... and Umbrella would know it. Which means...
Relief coursed through him, cool and pure relief so great that he laughed out loud. He suddenly felt quite silly at his childish reaction to the breach. The search- er wasn't from Umbrella, and that changed every- thing. Even if they managed to find the lab, an unlikely proposition at best, considering its location they wouldn't be able to gain entry without a key card.
And Griffith had destroyed all of them...... except for Amman's. His was never found. Griffith froze, then shook his head, a nervous smile on his face. No, he'd searched practically everywhere for the missing card, what were the chances that the interloper would stumble across it?
And what were the chances that they'd make it past the Trisquads, hmm? And what was Lyle up to during those hours when you couldn't find him? What if he did get a message out? You only checked for transmissions to Umbrella, but what if he contacted someone else?
Even as the dreadful, impossible thought occurred to him, the computer began to spit out information on the logic skills tests. The socio-psychological series tests that Ammon had designed. Griffith felt his control slipping again. He clenched his hands into fists, refusing to give in; there was too much at stake, he couldn't afford to let his emotions take over, not now, he had to think.
I'm a scientist, not a soldier, I don't even know how to shoot, to fight! I'd be useless in combat, totally... Unpredictable. Uncontrollable.
A slow grin spread across his features. Blood was seeping from his fists, from where his ragged fingernails had dug into the heels of his hands, but he felt no pain. His gaze wandered around the open, silent laboratory, resting briefly on the airlock. Then to the blank, stupid faces of his doctors. To the cylinders of compressed air and virus, his miracle. And finally, to the controls for the mesh gate that led to the animal enclosure. Dr. Griffith's smile widened. Blood pattered to the floor.
Let them come.