Genesis (24 page)

The T-virus.

The motherlode.

The means through which Matt and Aaron and the rest of them were
finally
going to expose Umbrella.

Matt ground his teeth. He had to get out of here somehow and get that fucking case!

Spence wrapped a strap around his biceps, tapped his arms to bring up a vein, then prepared the hypo-gun for an injection.

Before he finished, though, he stopped and looked up. It appeared as if he'd heard something.

Then some—
thing
fell from the ceiling and ate Spence alive.

Matt had a vivid imagination, fueled by reading too many comic books when he was a kid, not to mention some of the vile and depraved acts he saw while working the Federal Marshal's office.

But this—this was so far beyond the pale as to be in another hemisphere. In his wildest dreams, he couldn't imagine anything as revolting as this.

Whatever the thing was, it looked like a cross between a rhino and a human. The skin was corded and plated, with horns sticking out of various spots. It had opposable thumbs, but huge claws sticking out of its fingers and toes.

It had a tongue as long as a snake, and it had more teeth than a piranha.

Those teeth were chowing down on Spence right now.

Then it turned its head up toward the camera.

Whatever that thing was, it didn't have any eyes.

Matt's determination to bring down Umbrella prior to today was a votive candle compared to the inferno it was now. There was no way in
hell
he was letting this company stay in business.

Eventually, he found his voice. “What—the
fuck
—is that?”

“One of the Hive's early experiments, produced by injecting the T-virus directly into living tissue. The
results were unstable. It was being held in stasis until you cut the power to its storage unit. Now that it has fed on fresh DNA, it will mutate, becoming a stronger, faster hunter.”

As the Red Queen spoke, Matt watched as the eyeless thing's flesh—if you could call it flesh—rippled and expanded. The head altered, becoming more angular. The claws expanded, and the torso lengthened.

“Great,” Rain muttered.

“If you knew it was loose, why didn't you warn us?” Matt asked the computer.

Alice, however, was the one who provided the answer. “Because she was saving it for us—isn't that right?”

The computer spoke matter-of-factly.
“I didn't think any of you would make it this far—not without infection.”

Rain turned her sweat-drenched head and looked at the monitor. “Why didn't you tell us about the anti-virus?”

“This long after infection, there's no guarantee it would work.”

“But there's a chance, right?”

“I don't deal in chance.”

Matt looked around the room. He saw the other door, the one with the number pad.

What the hell.

He went over to the door and started entering numbers at random. At this point, they didn't have a damn thing to lose.

Rain had gotten up, grabbed the fire axe, and looked at the large window.

“Fuck it.”

Then she collapsed onto a chair.

“No pressure, guys.”

“You require the four-digit access code.”

Matt resisted the urge to shout, “No shit!” Instead, he just tried more numbers at random. Maybe he'd get lucky.

Right, lucky. Hey, there was a first time for everything, and after thirty years of life, he was due to have good luck with
something.

“I can give you the code, but first you must do something for me.”

Matt stopped entering numbers and looked up. The computer was dealing?

“What do you want?” Alice asked.

“One of your group is infected. I require her life for the code.”

Matt recalled Rain's earlier characterization of the Red Queen as a “homicidal bitch.” That seemed a lot less hyperbolic now.

Alice was livid. She pointed at the monitor, which still showed what was left of Spence's body next to the metal case he'd stolen from this very room. “The anti-virus is
right there
on the platform—it's
right there!”

“I'm sorry, but it's a risk I cannot take.”

Before Alice could yell again, Rain spoke.

“She's right.”

She tossed the axe she was holding at Alice, who caught it unerringly.

“It's the only way. You're gonna have to kill me.”

Matt shook his head. First Kaplan, now Rain. Did Umbrella train these idiots to all be suicidal?

“No.” Alice spoke with finality.

“Otherwise we all die down here.”

No, not suicidal, pragmatic. To a fault.

A sudden noise grabbed Matt's attention. He looked up to see the thing that killed Spence throwing itself against the window.

Matt had no idea what the window was made of—it obviously was some kind of Plexiglas or some other extra-tough substance—but it may not have been tough enough. The monster's first attack left a hairline crack.

It was only a matter of time before it got through.

“The PlastiGlas won't hold forever.”

Rain got down on her knees and leaned forward, like she was a French Revolutionary waiting for King Louis to take her head.

Or maybe a samurai warrior about to commit
seppuku.

“Do it,” she said.

Alice looked as aghast as Matt felt. “Don't. Get up.”

“Do it.”

“Rain, please, get up.”

“You don't have long to decide.”

“Do it.”

“Kill her.”

“No.”

“Do it now!”

The creature smashed into the window.

“Kill her.”

“Do it!”

“Rain—”

“
Do
it!”

“Kill her.”

“No!”

Alice screamed, hefted the axe—

—and smashed the Red Queen's monitor.

A second later, all the lights went out, and what few systems were working powered down.

Emergency lights came on a moment later.

“That's some axe you got there,” Matt said.

Alice shook her head. “The axe didn't do this.”

A clicking sound came from the door.

Matt whirled around to see the door start to open . . .

BART KAPLAN WATCHED ALICE, RAIN, AND the others go off into the vent even as he stuck the barrel of the revolver into his mouth.

This was it.

He'd fucked up enough. His stupidity got One, Warner, Drew, and Olga killed. His panic indirectly got J.D. killed. Hell, his shutting down the Red Queen was what let these zombies loose.

He should pay for what he did.

Even as a zombie that used to be one of the doctors clambered up the pipe toward him, he prepared himself to pull the trigger.

At the last second he pulled the gun out of his mouth and shot Dr. Zombie in the head instead.

Then he threw the gun at the one behind the doctor. “You're gonna have to work for your meal!”

Suicide was for quitters. Kaplan was many things, but he was
not
a quitter. Yeah, he fucked up, but dammit, he was doing his job. He followed orders, he did what he was told. Sometimes, mistakes were made, but he was
not
gonna let himself take the fall.

Kaplan didn't release the T-virus into the Hive. Whoever did
that
was responsible.

Not Kaplan.

Pain slicing through his leg where it had been bitten, Kaplan clambered into the crawl space behind him. It led to a vent. If he was lucky, even with his wound, he could keep ahead of the zombie hordes—especially since they seemed to be temporarily fixated on the corpse of the doctor.

He didn't think, didn't obsess, didn't panic, didn't do anything except focus on putting one hand in front of the other as he crawled through the vent.

That worked right up until he reached the dead end.

Fuck.

He turned around. His leg was bleeding profusely, and he could hear the march of the zombies as they came after him.

Looking up, he saw a grate.

It took about a minute for him to climb up into the hallway. The agony in his leg was white hot, but he did everything he could to ignore it and not to scream.

At that last, he wasn't entirely successful, but there wasn't anyone else around to see or hear him.

Favoring his injured leg, he limped down the corridor. Opening his wrist-top, he tapped into the Red Queen, trying to get a heat-signature scan. It wouldn't pick up any of the zombies, but he could at least find the others.

Some of the others, anyhow. Three heat signatures were in one of the labs. The lowest of the three body temperatures was probably Rain. Kaplan couldn't tell who the other two were.

He wondered which of them died.

Was it uncharitable to hope that it was Spence?

Probably. But right then, Kaplan didn't care.

When he got to the door of the lab, Kaplan collapsed against it. He was beyond exhausted, the pain in his leg was now an inferno, and he couldn't move another step.

Then he saw that the locking mechanism had been shot out.

Great.

Drawing on reserves that J.D. and Rain would never have given him credit for having, Kaplan dragged himself to the other door and entered the code to get it open.

He could see inside the window. Alice, Rain, and Matt were inside.

Looked like Spence was the dead one. Good.

Then he looked up and saw the monitor.

How did Spence get to the train station? And what the hell could've done
that
to him?

Shaking his head, he entered the code again.

Nothing happened.

He looked it up on his wrist-top. The code he entered was the right one.

Unless . . .

“You changed the code, didn't you?”

“It needed to be done.”

Kaplan blinked. He hadn't expected the Red Queen to reply.

“I need to get the door open.”

“I'm sorry, but I can't.”

Reaching into one of the pouches in his chest, Kaplan pulled out the remote control.

“Yeah? Well, I'm not at all sorry about this.”

He pushed a button.

For the second time that day, he powered down the Red Queen. Only this time, she was permanently fried.

The door, obligingly, opened.

Alice was holding an axe, looking like she was ready to take someone's head off. Matt was just standing there looking stupid.

Rain was kneeling in the center of the floor, hip-deep in water, looking like hammered shit. But she was the one who spoke.

“Kaplan?”

He managed a smile. “Bitch wouldn't open the door. Had to fry her.”

That was when something smashed against the PlastiGlas window. Alice raised her axe instinctively, just as the thing smashed
through
the window.

They all ran past Kaplan into the hallway. Just as
Kaplan shut and bolted the door, the whatever-the-hell-it-was crashed into the door, denting it.

That should not have been possible.

“What the
fuck
was that?”

“It's a long story,” Alice said as she ran off.

Matt, who was now carrying Rain, filled Kaplan in on what had happened, telling him about the T-virus, the anti-virus, the strange monster that killed Spence—and the fact that all of this was Spence's doing.

Grateful to have someone to fob his guilt off on, Kaplan hobbled behind Alice and the Rain-carrying Matt to the train station. Alice was armed only with the fire axe. Kaplan was out of ammo for his Beretta and his revolver, and he'd thrown the latter away in any case. Matt and Rain were unarmed—hell, Rain was three-quarters dead.

Kaplan tried not to think about how pathetic they were. If that thing caught up to them, they were the deadest of dead meat.

Then again, they made it this far. Over five hundred people had died, but not them.

Alice pointed at the train. “Start it up—I'll get the virus.”

Kaplan nodded and limped into the train. The pain at this point had gone down to just a dull throb—or maybe he just had gotten used to it.

Whatever. Right now, he was just grateful to be one of the living and not one of the dead.

Or undead.

Or whatever the hell they were.

While he started the train up, he looked out the
window to see Alice going for the metal case. She closed it—

—just as Spence lunged at her.

Alice dodged out of the way with little difficulty. The damage to Spence's corpse was such that his legs were completely shot to shit, so he was reduced to pulling himself along the floor with his arms. He made Kaplan's own struggles through the vent shaft look positively elegant.

Alice gave her “husband” a look. Kaplan swore that, if looks could kill, Spence would be a pile of ashes.

Ass-Kicking Alice, it seemed, was really and truly back.

“I'm missing you already,” she said as she hefted the axe.

Then she cut his head off.

Kaplan tried not to think about the fact that that was the second decapitation he'd witnessed today. Instead, he focused on starting up the train.

“Okay,” he said when the telltales all indicated that the train was ready to head back up to the mansion, “we're in business. Full power.” He turned to the cab. “We're leaving!”

Alice, he noticed, paused only long enough to remove her wedding ring and drop it next to Spence's blood-soaked body, then retrieve both the case and Rain's Colt before boarding.

Matt came into the engineer's cubbyhole a minute later with a hypo-gun and some improvised bandages. He was also only wearing a white T-shirt. After staring at the blue bandages for a second, Kaplan figured it out—he'd cannibalized his shirt for the bandages.