Zero Hour

Seven

They walked back down to the lobby floor, Billy glad that she'd agreed to keep cooperating. This place, whatever it was, was definitely bad news. She was inexperienced, but at least she wasn't nuts.

“We should split up,” Rebecca said.

Billy barked a laugh, one entirely devoid of humor. “Are you nuts? Haven't you ever seen a horror movie? Besides, look what happened last time.”

“We found the key to that briefcase, if I remember correctly. And what we need now is a way out of here.”

“Yeah, but alive,” Billy said. “This place has hostile territory written all over it. I suggested a truce in the first place because I don. 't want to die, get it?”

“You've taken care of yourself pretty good so far,” she said. “I'm not saying we go get in trouble. Just open a few doors, is all. And we've got radios now.”

Billy sighed. “Didn't the S.T.A.R.S. teach you about teamwork?”

“Actually, this was my first mission,” Rebecca said. “Look, we take a look around, call if we find anything. I'll head upstairs, you check down here. If the radios fritz out, we meet back here in twenty minutes.”

“I don't like it.”

“You don't have to. Just do it.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Billy snapped. She wasn't lacking leadership tendencies, he'd give her that—although maybe it wasn't so hard to order a convicted felon around when you worked for the law. “How old are you, anyway? I'd like to know I'm taking orders from someone more mature than your average Girl Scout.”

Rebecca shot him a scowl, then turned and went back up the stairs. A few seconds later, he heard a door close.

Well. Billy looked around the lobby. Eeny, meeny, miney.. .

“Mo,” Billy said, turning to the left wall. He'd didn't want to go it alone, he'd rather have backup, but it was probably better this way; if he found an exit, he could take his walk, after all, call her to say good-bye on his way out. Leaving her behind wouldn't make him feel so hot, but she could hole up and wait for rescue; she'd be all right. He had to keep his continued health in mind; if any other S.T.A.R.S. showed up, or the RCPD, or the MPs, he'd be on his way back to Ragithon in a heartbeat.

He pushed the thought away as he stepped up to the door. He'd been pretty screwed up since the sentencing, filled with rage and anguish in equal parts. Since the jeep wreck he'd been able to put his date

with death out of mind, a necessity if he wanted to be able to think clearly. He had to keep it up.

“Let's see what's behind door number one,” he mumbled, pushing the nondescript door open—and tensed, raising the handgun, taking aim. It was a dining room, one that had once been quite elegant. Now there were two, three infected men wandering around the trashed dinner table in the center of the room, and all three were turning toward him. They all looked like zombies, their skin gray and torn, their eyes blank. One of them had a fork sticking out of one shoulder.

Billy quickly closed the door and stepped back, waiting to see if any of the creatures could manage a doorknob, the emptiness of the lobby weighing on his back like a cold stare. After a few beats he heard a shuffling against the wood and then a low, frustrated cry, the sound as mindless as the zombies seemed to be.

Well. The house, training facility, whatever it was, had been infected just like the train; that answered that question. He grabbed the radio, hit the transmit button.

“Rebecca, come in. We got zombies here. Over.” He thought about the giant scorpion-thing and shuddered, hoping that zombies was all they had.

There was a pause, then her youthful voice crackled out. “Copy that. Do you need help? Over.”

“No,” Billy said, annoyed. “But don't you think we should reconsider our plans? Over?”

“This doesn't change anything,” she said. “We still have to find a way out. Keep looking, and let me know what else you find. Over and out.”

Great. Wondergirl was sticking to the plan. So, door number two, unless he wanted to take his chances with three of the things. He turned and walked across the room, telling himself it would be a waste of ammo, which was true. It was also true that he didn't want to shoot sick people, no matter how deranged . . . And that the zombies were seriously freaky, and if he could avoid them, he would.

He pushed the second door open, held it, his senses on high. It opened into a plush hallway that led along to his right, turning not far ahead. There was no sound, no movement, and it smelled likedust, nothing more ominous. He waited a moment, then stepped inside, letting the door settle closed behind him.

He crept down the hall, his steps muffled by thick carpet, leading around the turn with his weapon, letting out a breath when he saw that it, too, was clear. So far, so good. The hall continued on, turning again, but there was a door on the left he could try.

Billy pushed the door open—and smiled at the empty bathroom, at the row of sinks that he could see from the door.

“That reminds me,” he said, stepping inside. He checked the room quickly; sinks lined two walls of the u-shaped room, four toilet stalls lining a third, discreetly out of sight from the door. As nice as the house was, it did seem to be abandoned, perhaps recently; one of the stall doors was hanging off its hinges, the toilet seat fractured, and there were a few odds and ends scattered across the floor, empty bottles, potted plants, unlikely debris for a bathroom. There was even a plastic gas tank in one of the stalls. On the other hand, there was relatively clean water in the bowl . . . Which, considering the urgency of his visit, was good enough for him.

He was just zipping up a minute later when he heard someone step into the bathroom. A single step, then a long pause ... Then a second step.

Had he closed the door? He couldn't remember, and silently cursed himself for the slip. He pulled his weapon and pivoted on the balls of his feet, moving silently, easing the stall door open. He couldn't see the door from where he was, but he could see part of the room reflected in a long mirror above the sinks. He kept the handgun level and waited.

A third step, and again silence. Whoever it was had wet feet, he could hear the soles of his or her shoes coming off the floor with a squelching sound—and on the fourth step, he saw a profile in the mirror, and stepped out of the stall, feeling a strange mix of horror and relief as he readied himself to fire. It was a zombie, a male, its face slick and blank, its eyes trained on nothing as it swayed slightly, balancing to stay upright. They were awful—but at least they were relatively slow. And much as he didn't like the job, killing them was surely a mercy.

The zombie took another step, moving into Billy's line of fire. Billy took careful aim, sighting just above the thing's right ear, he didn't want to waste a shot—

—and the zombie turned suddenly, quickly, faster than it had any right to move. It crouched slightly, stared at Billy through one blood-burst eye, the other looking at the wall, and reached for him, still two meters away—

—but its arm was stretching, thinning out as it snapped toward him like a rubber band, the fabric of its wet, colorless shirt stretching with it.

Billy ducked. The thing's hand sailed over his head and slapped against the stall door with a wet smack, then retreated, pulled back to the inhuman body that somehow looked like a zombie.

On the train, like Marcus—

It was close enough that he could see the movement of the creature's clothes, the strange rippling effect as its arm snapped back into place. Leeches, the goddamn thing was made out of leeches, and as it took a step closer, Billy stumbled backward into the stall, firing into its wet and meaty face.

It hesitated, black ooze sliding from the wound that appeared just below its left eye—and then the wound disappeared, the faux skin gliding over it, the leeches resituating themselves. Healing themselves.

It took another step forward and Billy kicked the stall door closed, slamming it and holding it with one boot, running through ideas and discarding them just as fast.

Call for Rebecca, no time, keep shooting, not enough bullets, run, it's blocking the way—

Billy hissed in frustration—and his frenzied gaze fell on the red plastic gas can on the floor. He threw himself forward, blocking the stall door with one shoulder as he dug through his right front pocket. There, under one of the rifle shells—He pulled out the lighter he'd taken from the train, thanking God for it, and bent down, scooped up the gas can, the loose handcuff banging against the plastic. It wasn't quite half full. Jesus, I hope that's gas—

The stall door was struck as though by a battering ram. Billy bounced off, then threw himself forward again, unscrewing the lid of the container with one shaking hand, his shoulder aching. The creature was strangely, horribly silent as it again charged the door, slamming into it hard enough to dent the metal.

The dizzying scent of gasoline filled the tiny stall. Billy snatched at the toilet paper roll on the wall, jerked it free—and the door smashed open, blown off its hinges by another powerful, inhuman blow. The creature stood there, swaying, its one strange eye finding Billy, targeting him.

Billy upended the can as he pushed himself to his feet, sloshing gas on himself. He thrust the can forward, pouring it onto the thing's chest.

The reaction was immediate and repulsive. The body began to writhe, to tremble, and a high-pitched squeal erupted into the room, not one voice but a thousand tiny creatures screeching as one. Thick, dark fluid began to run from seemingly every pore of its face and body.

Billy gave it a solid kick, and it staggered backward, still cohesive, still squealing, the sound piercing in the small room. He didn't know if the gas alone was enough, and wasn't going to wait and see. He flipped the lighter open and spun the wheel, holding the roll of toilet paper over the flame that sputtered to life. A second later, it was aflame.

Billy jumped out of the stall and dodged around the shrieking monster. As soon as he was past, he pivoted and threw the flaming roll of paper. It hit the leech-man just below its breastbone—and the squealing cry intensified for one horrible, deafening second as flames roared over him, enveloping him, before he collapsed into a thousand burning pieces. A black, burning puddle took shape on the tile floor, the tiny cries dying out in a matter of seconds.

A few straggling leeches crawled away from the fire, but they were disorganized, randomly sliding up the walls, slithering past his feet. Billy backed away from them, from the bubbling, dying fire, shoving the lighter back in his pocket as he neared the door.

Back in the hall, he took a deep breath, blew it out, and reached for the radio. He no longer cared what Rebecca's plans were; they were going to regroup, ASAP, and get the hell out of this place if they had to dig through the walls with their bare goddamn hands.

December 4th

When we first started, I had my doubts—but tonight, we celebrate. We finally did it, after all this time. Were calling the new construct virus Progenitor, Ashford's idea, but I like it. We'll begin testing immediately.

March 23rd

Spencer says he's going to start a company specializing in pharmaceutical research, maybe branch into drug manufacture. As always, he's the businessman of our group. His interest in Progenitor is primarily financial, it seems, but I'm not going to complain. He wants to see us succeed, which means he ll keep us well funded; as long as he's writing checks, he can do what he likes.

August 19 th

Progenitor is a marvel, but its applications are still so unsure. Just when we think we have the amplification rate documented, when we have a half dozen tests all showing the same results, everything falls apart. Ashford is still banking on working the cytokine numbers, coming at it backward, but he's dreaming. We need to keep looking.

Spencer keeps asking me to be the director of his new training facility Maybe ifs because of the business, but he's becoming intolerably pushy. In any case, I'm considering it. I need a place to

November 30th

Damn him. “let's have lunch, James,” he says, old comrades and fond memories. It's bullshit. He wants Progenitor ready, now. His “friends” in their White Umbrella clubhouse, with their ridiculous spy games for the rich and jaded— they want something exciting to play with, to auction off, and they don't want to wait for it. Fools. Spencer thinks that this will all come down to money but he's wrong. That's not what any of this is about, not anymore; I don. 't know that it ever was. I have to strengthen my own position, guard my queen, so to speak, or I could be steamrolled.

September 19th

At last, at last! I engineered a plasmid with leech DNA and then recombined it with Progenitor— and it's stable! It was the breakthrough I've been counting on. Spencer will be happy damn him, though I'll only let on that some progress has been made, not how much, not how I've named it after him, my own private joke. I'm calling it T, for Tyrant.

October 23rd

I can't think ofthem as human beings. They're test subjects, that's all, that's all. I knew the research would have to come to this someday, I knew it and—and I didn. 't know it would be this way.

I must keep my focus. The T-virus is magnificent; they, these subjects should be honored to experience such perfection. Their lives pave a road to a higher awareness.

Test subjects. That's all Pawns. Sometimes, pawns must be sacrificed for the greater good.

January 13th

My pets have been progressing. With their own DNA in the recombinant virus, I thought I could predict how infection would change them, but I was wrong. They've begun to colonize, like ants or bees. No individual is better than any other; they work together, a hive mind, coming together for a higher purpose. My purpose. I didn't see it at first, I was blind, but this is vastly more rewarding than the work on humans. I must continue those tests, however—I can't let on that I've discovered the true meaning, the value of T and what it represents. Spencer would try and take it, I know he would. My king is in the open.

February 11th

They've been watching me. I go into the lab, I see that things have been moved. They try and hide it, make everything look as it did, but I see. It's Spencer, damn his soul, he knows about my leeches, my beautiful hive, and this— this persecution won. 't end until one of us is dead. I can't trust anyone . . . Albert and William, perhaps, my castles, they believe in the work., but I may have to eliminate some ofthe others. The game draws to a close. He'll try for my queen, but the win will be mine. Checkmate, Oswell.

It was the last entry. Rebecca closed the journal and set it aside, next to the chess set that was centered on the desk. When she'd found the hidden cache, she'd thought the rudimentary maps had been the prize. There were two, one that showed what appeared to be three floors of the building's basement, including a few unmarked areas that perhaps led outside. The other seemed to be upstairs, a room labeled observatory next to a wide, open area marked breeding pool. But the small, leatherbound journal, dusty and crinkled with age—she didn't know how old, exactly, but one of the entries about working with the leeches had “1988” marked in an upper corner—had been the real discovery. Written by James Marcus, presumably, apparently the creator of the T-virus, the same virus that turned men into zombies, that had infected the train and probably half of Raccoon forest, if the recent murders were any clue.

Rebecca gazed blankly at the room's strange decor, the giant chessboard that dominated the floor, her mind working. He'd obviously been crazy by the end, his ramblings about chess, about the “true meaning” of the virus. Maybe running experiments on people had driven him over the edge.

Her radio signaled. She'd no sooner pushed receive before Billy's breathless voice blared in her

ear.

“Where are you? We need to regroup, now. Hello? Ah, over.”

“What happened? Over.”

“What happened is that I ran into another one of those leech-people in the can, and it very nearly whacked the crap out of me. Zombies we can handle, but these things—they eat bullets, Rebecca. We don't have enough ammo to hold more of them off. Over.”

“They've begun to colonize, like ants or bees.” Who was controlling them? Marcus? Or had they developed their own leader, a queen?

“Okay,” Rebecca said. She picked up the basement and observatory sketches she'd found, stuffed them into her vest as she stood up. After a second, she grabbed the journal, too, slipping it into a hip pocket. “Uh, meet me on the landing, where that picture of Marcus was. I may have found a way out, over.”

“On my way. Watch your back, over and out.”

She hurried out of the room and down the hall, moving quickly. She hadn't gotten far in her exploration, just an empty meeting room and then the office with the chess sets; thankfully, she hadn't run into anything hostile. Billy was right about the leech-men, there was no way they could handle more of those. In fact, it seemed likely that the only reason the collection of leeches on the train had stopped attacking them was because they were called off. She'd had vague hopes of staying in the nice, safe house until help arrived, but after reading Marcus's journal, hearing that the training facility was infected—they needed to get out.

After all she'd already been through tonight—the forced helicopter landing, the train, Billy, the crash, now this—she kept expecting the cavalry to ride in, for someone else to take over, to send her home to a warm dinner and bed so that she could wake up tomorrow and start her normal life again. But it seemed instead that she was being drawn even deeper into the mystery of Marcus and his creations, of Umbrella and its evil experiments.

The young man had moved to a place where the hive could comfortably gather, a large space,

warm and moist and far from the possibility of daylight. The many surrounded him now, singing their tuneless song of water and darkness, but he was not soothed. He'd watched with cold fury as the girl—Rebecca, the killer had called her, and his cursed name was Billy—stole Marcus's journal, slipping it into a pocket before leaving the office. This wasn't why he'd had the desk opened for her, not at all.

The map of the observatory, she was supposed to take only the map.

The two met now in front of the portrait doorway, both speaking at once, surely relating their findings, their murderous exploits. He could see the thief and the killer on a video screen at one side of his new environment—a lower level of the treatment plant—but he could see them better through the dozen pairs of rudimentary eyes watching them, the children peering out at them from the shadows. The minds of the many were powerful, able to send images to one another, to him; it was how they could work together so effectively. Rebecca and Billy had no understanding of how vulnerable they were, of how easily he could reach out and take their lives from them. They survived still only by his grace.

A thief and her murdering friend; Billy had killed a collective. He'd burned it. The few survivors were still straggling home to their master, their poor bodies scorched, showing him the death of the whole by their lack of cohesion. How had he dared, this unimportant man, this insect?

Rebecca held out the maps and they both studied them, too stupid, surely, to know what was expected of them. The observatory was the key to their escape, but they would undoubtedly try the basement first. It was just as well. He was no longer so sure he wanted them to go free.

They started down the stairs, disappearing from the screen, from the many's sight, but only for a second. As the couple came back into view through another camera, they stopped, staring down at the litter of arachnid bodies, dead and curled on the floor. There were four of the giant spiders, all killed mere moments before, eliminated so that Rebecca and her friend might avoid their poisonous bite. The spiders were another experiment, one doomed to fail, too slow, too difficult to handle, but lethal enough for the young man to have been concerned. He was sorry, now; watching the thief and murderer die would be his pleasure, in spite of what it did to his plans for Umbrella. The couple moved on, unaware that they were being watched by the creatures that had killed the spiders, who nested in the swollen, segmented bodies even now.

What to do? Killing them would fulfill a need in him, the need to avenge the lives of the children, the need to assert his control. But exposing Umbrella was the priority, bringing the company to ruin by laying open its stinking heart . . . which Billy and Rebecca would surely do, if they survived.

The pair followed the corridor to its end, then through the door of a long-abandoned office. After a brief consultation with their map, they continued on into a dead-end room where live specimens had once been kept. The cages were long gone, the room empty now. The young man wasn't sure why they had chosen a dead end—until he saw them move to the northeast corner, both of them looking up at the dark rectangle near the ceiling.

The ventilator shaft. It wouldn't have been labeled on the map; perhaps they believed it to be a way out. In fact, it led to—

The young man shook his head. Dr. Marcus's private chamber, the room where he'd once “entertained” certain attractive young test subjects. Why couldn't they simply leave? They'd find nothing in the private room, nothing—

—unless.

The ventilator shaft was connected to another live specimen area, one that wasn't empty. And the creatures there hadn't been fed in days. They would very, very hungry by now. All he'd need to do would

be to have the many unlatch a gate or two ...

Rather then consider them an integral part of his plan, maybe he should think of Billy and Rebecca as test subjects. They might die—which, in truth, would probably only delay Umbrella's exposure for a short while; he was impatient, but he had to consider the entertainment value. Or, they might survive. In which case, they'd have an even greater story to tell.

The young man smiled his blade of a smile as Billy gave Rebecca a boost, lifting her up to the ventilator shaft. She crawled inside, disappearing from view. Wouldn't they be surprised, if a few of the leftovers from the primate series showed up to play?

Around him, the children cooed, the walls, the ceiling dripping with their slippery fluids. Surrounded by the many, the fate of Umbrella in his hands—and now two little soldiers for him to test, to enjoy watching as they pitted their abilities against the remnants of Umbrella's bio-organic weaponry— he was happy. Would they live or die? Either way, he would be satisfied.

“Open the cages, my darlings,” he murmured, and began to sing.

>Eight

Rebecca pushed herself through the air shaft, ignoring the layers of dust and cobwebs that were collecting on her hair and clothes, ignoring the suffocatingly close walls of thin metal. The map only showed the connecting shaft running between two rooms on the basement's first floor, but there were spaces on the second, sub-basement floor that seemed to be part of the system, too. It seemed likely that one of the shafts vented outside. Billy hadn't been overly enthusiastic—likely wasn't the same as probably, he'd said— but they both agreed that it was worth a shot.

At least it's not very long, she thought, edging toward the square of light not far ahead. There was a thin metal grille covering the exit, but it popped off with a few taps, clattering to the floor below.

She got a quick look at a big stone room, dank and empty in the flicker of a dying light fixture, then pushed herself out, grabbing the edge of the vent and somersaulting to a crouch. She stood up, brushing herself off, taking in the new room.

Oh, jeez- It was like some medieval dungeon, large, gloomy, a cavern made of stone. The rock walls were fixed with chains, the chains fixed with manacles. There were a number of devices sitting around that she didn't recognize, but that could only have been made to inflict pain. There were boards with rusty nails in them, knotted ropes in bunches, and next to a scum-thick broken wall fountain was a large standing case that looked like an iron maiden. She had no doubt that the dark, faded stains in the crevices of the rough-hewn wall were blood.

“Everything okay? Over?”

She picked up her radio. “I don't think 'okay' is the right word,” she said. “But I'm all right, over.”

“Is there another air shaft, over?”

She turned, searching the walls for a vent—and saw one, twenty feet overhead.

“Yeah, but it's in the ceiling,” she said, and sighed. Even if they had a ladder to reach the vent, they couldn't climb straight up. She spotted the room's one door, in the southwest corner. “Where does the door from here lead, over?”

A pause. “Looks like it opens into a small room that leads back into the corridor we came through,” he said. “Should I meet you back in the corridor, over?”

Rebecca started for the door. “That makes the most sense. Maybe we can try—“

Before she could complete the sentence, a terrible sound filled the room, like nothing she'd ever heard before but also strangely familiar. It was a high, monkeylike shriek—

—that's it. The primate house, at the zoo.

—that was echoing, howling through the cavernous space, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. Rebecca looked up just as a pale, long-limbed creature peered out at her from the ceiling vent.

It bared its teeth, thick and sharp, clutching the air in front of its muscular chest with limber fingers, screeching horribly.

Before she could take a step, the creature leaped from the vent, jumping off against one rock wall before landing on the floor in a squat, on a tumble of thin boards in the middle of the room. It stared up at her, its lips drawn back over its yellowed teeth. It looked almost like a baboon with short white fur, except that there were great tears in the fur, glistening patches of dense red muscle showing through. It didn't look as though it had been attacked, but rather as though its muscles had grown too large for its skin and were splitting through. Its hands were too big, its nails overly long, and they dragged and ticked across the stone floor as it edged toward her from the pile of boards, grinning maliciously.

Slow... Rebecca eased her weapon off her hip, as frightened as she'd been all night. Normal baboons were capable of ripping a person apart, and this one looked like it had been infected.

The baboon edged closer—and from overhead she heard another, at least two other voices begin to shriek, the noise getting louder, more of the sick animals approaching. It was close enough now for her to smell, the hot and musky scent of urine and feces and wildness, of overpowering infection.

“Rebecca! What's going on?”

She still held the radio in her left hand. She depressed the button, afraid to speak but more afraid that Billy's shouting would incite the creature, make it attack.

“Sshhh,” she said, her voice soft, as much to calm the animal as to shut Billy up. She took a step back, clipping the radio to the collar of her shirt, raising the nine-millimeter. The baboon squatted lower, tensing its legs—

—and sprang, just as she fired, just as two more lithe and screaming forms hopped and capered into the room from the air shaft, one of them striking her head as it fell past, its ragged nails tearing at her hair. The strike pushed her out of the attacker's way, but it also knocked her off balance, her shot hitting nothing but wall, all of them landing on the pile of boards—

—and then the floor collapsed.

There had been no new developments. The strange young man, whoever he was—and Wesker had his suspicions, which he kept to himself—had not appeared again, nor had the image of James

Marcus. The cameras didn't seem to be working correctly, either, making surveillance something of a moot point. Many had simply gone black, leaving them nothing to see, to consider.

After several long, boring moments of listening to Birkin talk about his new virus, Wesker pushed back from the video console and stood up, stretching. It was funny—a few years ago, he might have been interested in his old friend's work. Now, with his own departure from Umbrella's folds looming, he found himself unable even to pretend.

“Well, it's been quite a day,” Wesker said, breaking through William's obsessive monologue when he took a breath. “I'll be off.”

Birkin stared at him, his pinched, pallid face looming ghostly by the white light of the screens. “What? Where are you going?”

“Home. There's nothing more we can do here.”

“But—you said—what about the cleanup?”

Wesker shrugged. “Umbrella will send another team, I'm sure.”

“I thought keeping the spills quiet was the most important thing. Didn't you say it was vital?”

“Did I?”

“Yes!” Birkin was actually angry. “I don't want anyone else from Umbrella coming in. They might start asking questions about my work. I need more time.”

Wesker shrugged again. “So, set off the auto-destruct yourself, and tell our contact that it's all taken care of.”

Birkin nodded, though Wesker could see the uneasiness that flashed through his gaze. Wesker dodged a smile. Birkin was afraid of their newest contact to the big boys at HQ, avoiding interaction when he could. Wesker couldn't blame him. There was something about Trent, his oddly self-possessed nature—

“What about—him?” Birkin nodded toward the screens. Wesker felt a trace of unease himself, but kept his expression unperturbed.

“A fanatic with a grudge. He's great with video tricks, but I imagine he'll burn as well as anyone else.” Wesker didn't quite believe that himself, but wasn't interested in unraveling the mystery. He wasn't a detective in some cheap conspiracy novel, driven by a need to get to the bottom of things. In his experience, anomalies tended to resolve themselves, one way or another.

“If word about what really happened to Dr. Marcus were to get out—“

“It won't,” Wesker said.

Birkin refused to be placated. “But what about Spencer's estate, the facilities there?”

Wesker started for the door, his boots clanging across the metal mesh. Birkin followed like a wayward pup.

“Leave that to me,” he said. “Umbrella wants combat data, I'm going to give it to them. I'll take the S.T.A.R.S. in, see how real training holds up against the B.O.W.s.” He smiled, thinking of the talent on the Alpha team. Strongman Barry, Chris's sharpshooting, Jill and her eclectic upbringing, the daughter of

an unparalleled thief ... It would be a most interesting fight. After seeing little Rebecca Chambers in the facility, it was obvious that something untimely had happened to Enrico's team; Wesker could use that, take the Alphas in to “find” the remaining men.

Even ifthe Bravos manage to get themselves back to civilization, there will be the missing Rebecca to go in search of. The girl was brilliant, but brains didn't equal combat experience. In fact, she was probably dead already.

They left the control room, Wesker striding down the hall, Birkin jogging to keep up. They reached the elevator, still open from Wesker's arrival, and Wesker stepped inside. Birkin stood facing him, and in the brighter light of the corridor, Wesker could see the taint of insanity in the scientist's face. His eyes were rimmed in darkness, and he'd developed a facial tic at one corner of his mouth. Wesker wondered vaguely if Annette had noticed her husband's descent into the deeper wells of paranoia, then decided that she probably hadn't. That woman was blind to everything but the “greatness” of her husband's work. Unfortunate for their daughter, to have such parents.

“I'll set the destruct sequence,” Birkin said.

“Time it for morning,” Wesker said, flashing a grin. “The dawn of a new day.”

The doors closed on Birkin's determined expression, a look of resolve on the face of a sheep, and Wesker's grin widened, his heart light with thoughts of what was to come. Everything was about to change, for all of them.

“Billy, help!”

Billy was running as soon as he heard the animal shrieks, the crash, and was in the corridor when Rebecca's frightened shout crackled from the radio. He ran faster, stuffing the maps in his back pocket, his weapon in hand, cursing himself for letting her go through the air shaft.

There, straight ahead, was the door, not far from one of the giant spider bodies. He barreled into it, slamming against it with one shoulder as he grabbed the latch and lifted. The door crashed open and he was through. The overhead fluorescents strobed, damaged, giving the room an unreal air, some kind of lab, maybe, though there was a mildewed cot in one corner. Doesn't matter, go!

He flew across the room to the next door, Rebecca shouting again, calling for him to watch out, to hurry. As he pushed at the latch, he caught a movement off to one side, turned and saw a decrepit-looking zombie standing in a corner. The lights buzzed on and off, the dying man watching him silently, his ravaged form disappearing into darkness with each flicker. It began to shuffle toward him.

Later, buddy. Billy flung the second door open, ran inside.

Almost immediately, something flew at him, screaming. He ducked, caught a confused blur of red and white, of animal stink, and then the creature—it was a monkey, some kind of monkey—was past him, still screaming. It was joined by two others, the three of them quickly forming a loose circle around Billy, their lanky, muscular arms and legs in constant motion, swiping at him, their diseased-looking bodies dancing closer to him, then away. He backed up, wedged himself into the corner where the door met a rock wall, not wanting to be cornered but more afraid of having his back exposed. The monkeys continued to dance in and out, shrieking.

“Rebecca!” he shouted.

“Down here!”

She sounded far away. He saw the hole then, a few meters away. Pieces of splintered board littered the floor around it. He couldn't see her at all.

“Hang on,” he called, and turned his full attention to the monkeys just as one of them got in close enough to make contact.

It swiped at him with one overly large paw, its talons raking across the tops of his thighs. It didn't break skin but the next hit surely would. Billy didn't aim, just pointed and fired—

—and the monkey spun back, howling, a gout of dark blood erupting from its chest, but it wasn't dead, it shook its head, stepped forward again, and Billy thought that he was probably screwed, they were too powerful, too organized. He couldn't get any one of them without opening himself to attack—

—except both of the others leaped on the wounded third, tearing into it with greedy hands. The injured animal screamed, struggling, but its blood had inspired a feeding frenzy, the other two ripping it apart in seconds, stuffing great wet chunks of its flesh into their mouths.

Billy had time to aim, and took it. One, two, three shots, and the monkeys were down, dead or dying.

He ran to the hole, dropped to his knees and scurried to the ragged edge, his heart pounding—then sinking, as he saw how far down she was. She was hanging onto a piece of metal piping with both hands, a full floor beneath where he was standing. Beyond that, darkness gaped. It was impossible to know how far she might fall.

“Billy,” she gasped, looking up at him with frightened eyes.

“Don't let go,” he said, and snatched the maps from his pocket, scanning for her position, for the fastest way to get to her. There was no quick access to the basement's second floor, not from the first. He'd have to go back through the lobby, probably through that dining room door where he'd seen the zombies. The stairs to the sub-basement were on the east side of the house.

“I don't know how long I can hold on,” she breathed. Her whisper was magnified through her radio, through his. She'd activated an open channel at some point.

“Don't you dare let go,” he said. “That's a goddamn order, little girl, you got it?”

She didn't reply, but he saw her jaw tighten. Good, maybe pissing her off would keep her strong. He was already on his feet again.

“I'm coming,” he said, and turned and ran, back through the door to the strobe-light lab. The zombie there had moved, was standing in between him and the room's exit back to the corridor, but Billy didn't bother with the weapon, too afraid for Rebecca to take the time. He put out one arm like a quarterback in the big game and hurtled into the creature, shoving as hard as he could, still running as the zombie reeled back, fell to the floor. Billy was out and gone before its frustrated, hungry cry could reach him.

Down the hall, past the impossible spiders, up the stairs. He ejected the clip in the nine-millimeter, pocketed it, fumbled the spare out and jammed it home as he tore through the lobby. Hang on, hang on.

He didn't hesitate at the dining room door, slamming it open, rushing inside. He spotted two of the

zombies safely out of his way, blocked by the dining room table. The third was standing near the door he thought would lead him to Rebecca, it was the soldier with the fork in his shoulder, and Billy stopped just long enough to take aim, to fire two rounds into its already oozing head. The first went wide, but the second shot blew a substantial piece of bone out the back of its skull, painting the wall behind it with rotten gray matter. It hung there a moment, the body, and Billy was already past it by the time it hit the floor. Through the door, which opened into a short hall. Left or right? Without a map of the first floor he couldn't know, but the placement of the stairs on the basement map suggested left. With no time to reason it out he hurried on, leading with his weapon, down a few steps and around a giant, hissing boiler. Steam clouded the maintenance room, but he found his way, found another set of stairs, metal and rusted.

At the bottom was a door. He pushed through, remembering from the map that he would enter a large room with some kind of fountain in the middle, something big and round, anyway. There were two smaller rooms to the west, branched off from another short hall, and one of them should be where Rebecca was, the one all the way at the end, maybe—

The big room was cold and damp, the walls and floor made of stone. He ran through, glancing at a large monument to his left, what he'd thought was a fountain on the map. It was some kind of statuary. Blind eyes stared at him from the faces of carved animals, watching him sprint by—

—and there was a shriek from the hall just ahead, a blind corner, but he knew the sound from only a minute before: There was another monkey there. Shit! He'd have to take it out, couldn't risk turning his back on it—

“Billy—please—“

The voice over the radio was desperate, and Billy put on speed, ignoring the part of him that commanded him to stop, to wait for the animal to show itself so that he could dispatch it from a safe distance. He dashed ahead, around the corner, and there was the monkey, terrible, shredded-looking, howling—

—and Billy, who'd run track in high school, leaped. He hurdled over it and came down only two steps from a door, the door, the monkey shrieking in anger behind him. If the door was locked, he was in trouble, but it wasn't. He bolted through, slamming it behind him, dropping and skidding on his knees to the great hole in the floor.

She was there, still there, hanging on with only one hand now, and he could see that she was slipping. He dropped his handgun and shot out his arm, grasping her wrist even as her whitened fingertips let go.

“Got you,” he panted. “I got you.”

Rebecca started to cry as he rocked back on his heels, lifting her out of the hole, feeling a satisfaction that he'd almost forgotten had existed after all those months in jail—the sure, easy knowledge that he'd done the right thing, and done it well.

Billy pulled her out of the hole, using his body as leverage, pulling her practically on top of him in a rough embrace. Instead of pushing away, she let him hold her a moment, clinging to him, unable to stop the tears of gratitude, of relief. He seemed to under-stand what she needed, and held her tightly. She'd been so sure that she was going to fall, to die, lost and forgotten in some stinking basement, her corpse picked over by diseased animals ...

After a moment she rolled off him, wiping at her face with one shaking hand. They both sat on the floor, Billy looking around at the bleak rock walls of another nondescript basement chamber, Rebecca looking at Billy. When the silence stretched too long, she reached out, put a hand on his arm.

“Thank you,” she said. “You saved my life. Again.”

He glanced at her, looked away. “Yeah, well. We have that truce thing, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “And I also know you're not a killer, Billy. Why were you on your way to Ragithon? Did you—were you really involved in those murders?”

He met her gaze evenly. “You could say that,” he said. “I was there, anyway.”

/ was there. .. That wasn't the same thing as actually killing anyone. “I don't think you killed your escort earlier tonight; I think it was one of these creatures, and you just ran,” she said. “And I know I haven't known you for very long, but I don't believe that you murdered twenty-three people, either.”

“It doesn't matter,” Billy said, staring at his boots. “People believe what they want to believe.”

“It matters to me,” Rebecca said, her voice gentle. “I'm not going to judge. I just want to know. What happened?”

He was still staring at his boots, but his gaze had gone distant, as if seeing another time, another place. “Last year, my unit was sent to Africa, to intervene in a civil war,” he said. “Top secret, no U.S. involvement, you understand. We were supposed to raid a guerrilla hideout. It was summer, the hottest part of summer, and we were dropped well outside the strike zone, in the middle of a dense jungle. We had to hike in a ways ...“

He trailed off a moment, reaching for his dog tags, holding them tightly. When he spoke again, his voice was even softer. “The heat got half of us. The enemy got most of the rest, picking us off one at a time. By the time we got to where the hideout was supposed to be, there were only four of us left. We were exhausted, half crazy, sick with the heat, sick with—with heartsickness, I guess, watching our buddies die.

“So when we reached the hideout coordinates, we were ready to blow all of them away. Make someone pay, you know? For all that sickness. Only, there was no hideout. The tip-off wasn't valid. It turned out to be some dumpy little village, just a bunch of farmers. Families. Old men and women. Children.”

Rebecca nodded, encouraging him to go on, but her stomach was starting to knot. There was an inevitability to the story; she could see where it was headed, and it wasn't pretty.

“Our team leader told us to round them up, and we did,” Billy said. “And then he told us—“

His voice broke. He reached out and picked up his dropped weapon, stuffing it into his belt almost angrily as he stood up, turning away. Rebecca stood up, too.

“Did you?” she asked. “Did you kill them?”

Billy turned back to her, his lips curled. “What if I tell you that I did? Would you judge me then?”

“Did you?” she asked again, studying his face, his eyes, determined to at least try and understand. And it was as though he could see it in her, could see that she was working to be open to the truth. He stared at her a moment, then shook his head.

“I tried to stop it,” he said. “I tried, but they knocked me down. I was barely conscious, but I saw it, I saw it all . . . and I couldn't do anything.” He looked away before continuing. “When it was over, when we were picked up, it was their word against mine. There was a trial, sentencing, and—well, then this happened.”

He spread his arms, encompassing their surroundings. “So if we make it out of here, I'm dead, anyway. It's that or I run, and keep running.”

It all had the ring of truth. If he was lying, he deserved an Oscar ... And she didn't think he was.

She tried to think of something to say, something reassuring, that would make things better somehow, but nothing came. He was right about his options.

“Hey,” he said, looking at something past her shoulder. “Check it out.”

She turned as he stepped by, saw a stack of scrap metal pieces leaning against the far wall—and half-hidden among them, what looked like a shotgun.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

Billy picked up the weapon, grinning as he pumped it, checking the action. “Yes, ma'am, it certainly

is.”

“Is it loaded?”

“No, but I have a couple of shells, left from the train. It's a twelve gauge.” He smiled again. “Things are looking up. We may not make it, but there's a monkey out in the hall that's just begging for a taste of this baby.”

“Actually, I think it's a baboon,” she said, surprised to find herself smiling back. Then they were both chuckling, struck by the absolute pointlessness of her correction. They were trapped in an isolated mansion, hunted by God knew how many kinds of monster, but at least they knew that the creature in the hall was probably a baboon. Their chuckles turned to laughter.She watched him laugh, all pretense of arrogance, of tough-guy machismo set aside, and felt that she was truly seeing him for the first time, the real Billy Coen. She realized in that moment that she had thoroughly failed her first assignment. He was no more her prisoner than she was his. Assuming they survived, if he ran, she wouldn't be able to bring herself to stop him.

So much for a career in law enforcement.

The thought made her laugh even harder.