Her every instinct was telling her to run, to get away—but there was nowhere to go. With that door coming down, the room was barely bigger than her studio apartment. She had to get inside that elevator. It was her only chance.
She broke for it, grabbed the handle to the door, started to slide it open—and heard the monster coming, heard the pound of its heavy feet, the crack of cement as it thundered toward her.
Shit! She didn't even turn, instinctively knowing that there wasn't time. She dropped instead, fell to her knees and scrambled to one side—just as those claws came crashing down, hacking into the elevator door, piercing the wall where she'd been standing only a second before.
She stumbled backward as the monster turned, fixed its gaze on her again, took a step. It was as focused, as relentless as some kind of machine. It drew one overlong arm back, like it was going to toss a ball, perhaps, and took a second rumbling step.
Think, think! She couldn't outfight it, probably couldn't kill it with what she had left: her only hope was to trick it somehow ...
The plan was still forming even as she put it into action. The creature was too big, it couldn't easily stop once it started to run; if she got it moving, ducked out at the last second, she might have time to get the elevator door open. She stopped moving, as far from the elevator as she could get in the small space.
Another step. The talons snicked. It took all of her will not to break and run. She kept the shotgun pointed at the creature, readied herself to dive for the elevator as soon as it picked up speed.
The monster's grin widened as its knees bent slightly, as it readied to spring—
—and then it was moving, only a few running steps and it would be on her. Rebecca flew, ducked and ran, slamming into the elevator door, grabbing at it with trembling, hurried hands. She jerked the door open, blundered inside, turned to close the door—
—and the thing was already fixed on her again, already moving fast, much too fast. The door wouldn't hold, she knew it. She brought the shotgun up, no time to aim, fired.
The blast caught its right shoulder. It staggered back, screaming, blood flying from its shredded wound, and then Rebecca saw nothing more. She slammed the door closed, hit the lowest button on the board, squeezed her eyes shut and started to pray.
Seconds passed. The elevator continued down, down—and finally came to a stop. She stopped praying long enough to hear the rushing water outside— must be the sewer—but she was too freaked to
After what seemed a long time, the shaking subsided. She was okay ... or alive, at least, and that was something. With a final prayer that she might never see that thing again, Rebecca pushed the door open and stepped out.
* * *
William Birkin was finally—finally!—leaving when he heard the inhuman scream echo through the otherwise silent facility, a scream of pure rage. He stopped at the entrance to the small, underground tunnel that led to the outside, looking back toward the executive control room. He'd spent the last two hours in the tiny, hidden area, first struggling to make the decision, then struggling to make the computer obey his override commands. The destruct sequence was set for just over an hour; as Wesker had suggested, the obliteration of the facility and its surrounding complex would coincide with the beginning of a new day.
That scream . . . He'd never heard anything like it, but knew immediately what it was, having seen the project in its final stages. Nothing else could make such a sound. The Tyrant prototype was loose.
The shadows that bordered the narrow tunnel suddenly seemed too deep, too lonely. Too capable of secrecy. Birkin turned and hurried away, sure now that he'd made the right decision.
It was all going to burn.
Billy heard something. He lifted his heavy head, managed to turn it slightly. There, to his left, a door opened onto the walkway, and out stepped a human figure.
“Hey,” he called, but he couldn't manage any volume, the sound of his voice lost to the rushing water. He closed his eyes.
“Billy!”
He looked again, felt warmth welling up deep inside. Rebecca, it was Rebecca leaning over the railing, calling his name, and the sight and sound of her brought him around some, pushed the bone-weary exhaustion away, just a little.
“Rebecca,” he said, raising his voice, not sure if she could hear. He tried to think of something to tell her, some action she should take, but could only say her name again; the situation was self-explanatory, and he was in a bad way. If she wanted to help him, she'd have to come up with something on her own.
“Billy, look out!” Rebecca was gesturing wildly with one hand, fumbling for her handgun with the
other.
The terror in her voice woke him up. He clutched the support pillar tighter, tried to pull himself up, to see what she was pointing at—and caught just a glimpse of something moving fast, something long and dark slipping through the water like a giant serpent, rushing at him.
He tried to move, to edge around the pillar, but the water was too fast, he couldn't let go. He'd be lost in less than a second.
Rebecca fired, once, twice—and the unseen creature slammed into the support pillar hard enough
to shake him free.
He yelled, paddling furiously to stay above the frothing water, to resist the pull of the emptying pipe, but it was no good. In seconds, he was swept into the dark, pushed and pummeled, the sound of the water filling his ears as it carried him away.
Fourteen
In the midst of Rebecca's brief battle with the proto-Tyrant, William Birkin sneaked out of the facility, his head low, his proverbial tail tucked between his legs. The young man had lost track of him a few hours earlier, had assumed that the scientist had followed Wesker up and out—those people from Rebecca's little adventure team had, only moments before—but there he was, half running through one of the hidden exit tunnels, his pallid, twitching face a mask of fear. Terrified by the sounds of the battle, certainly, entirely unaware that he was alive only because his life was so very unimportant.
Although he'd wished to deal with him personally, the young man let the scientist go now, prey for another day. He was too enraptured by the fight, too eager to see Rebecca torn limb from limb. Instead, he saw her duck her fate yet again, a combination of deftness and stupid luck that was quite a marvel to behold. He watched as she left the Tyrant behind and came across Billy only a moment later, somehow still alive, clinging like a barnacle to a rock as a sea of sewer water churned around him. A single blow by one of the water creatures sent him spiraling away to one of the plant's many filter rooms, left Rebecca screaming after him, surely half mad with frustration, with loss and crushed hope.
The young man smiled, a cold and nasty smile, calmer than he'd felt for some time as he watched Rebecca cross the walkway, find another elevator in the plant's operations room, wend her way toward the depths of the plant—where he and his hive waited, curling together in their cocoon of glittering liquid excretions. With luck, she'd come across Billy soon, possibly even alive. Probably, in fact. He understood now, that he'd simply tried too hard to rush matters, to hurry their fate. A confrontation was inevitable . . . And hadn't he truly wanted an audience all along, someone to appreciate his magnificent undertaking? Besides, the dawn would be soon, a dangerous time for the children, their delicate bodies easily burned by even the weakest sunlight; better that he let the two interlopers come to him. They would know his glory before he crushed them himself.
He watched and waited, excited for the final chapter of his triumph to begin.
Rebecca wasn't sure where she was, the descending levels and rooms of the new building impossibly tangled, but she kept going, kept moving down. The hallways were clear, but two of the rooms she moved through—yet another small control room of unknown purpose, and a wrecked employee lounge—were infested with zombies. She only had to shoot two of seven that she saw, the rest too decrepit, too slow-moving to constitute a
