huge warehouse -
– there's some kind of a power generator in there, you'll have to run around some equipment. The back door will be at about… eleven o'clock from the front, got it? I'll be on the other side. And you better bust ass to get here, no dicking around.'
There was the slightest pause, and Carlos could hear the tight smile in her voice when she responded. 'Dick-ing around you wish. On my way, over and out.'
Grinning, Carlos powered up the 'copter as the deep, navy blue sky began to lighten, preparing for dawn.
TWENTY-SEVEN
JILL SLID DOWN THE LADDER AND STARTED running, her mind reeling with the news about Rac- coon. She couldn't imagine what had been going on outside of the city in past days that the conclusion had been reached to blast a quarantine site out of existence.
Of course it has to be blown up, they would have wanted that once they'd collected their data, to make sure all the evidence is destroyed…
Jill leaped over a sprawled body, then another, and was at the doors with the exit sign overhead, just as Carlos had said. She barreled through and was greeted by wonderfully fresh, cool air, heavy with dew. Dawn, he said they were launching at dawn. Half an hour was a generous estimate. Jill ran faster, through a winding corridor of stacked cars and junk metal, and there was the warehouse, straight ahead. It was big, low, and wide, and she was already thinking in hours when she hit the heavy, steel-reinforced front doors. Eleven o'clock… She couldn't see the back door for the giant wall of unidentifiable machinery in the way, all thick pipes and metal shielding, but Carlos had said she'd have to run around some equipment. She veered right…… and stopped in her tracks, staring at the mon- strous apparatus that Carlos had mistaken for a genera-tor. It was some kind of a laser cannon, huge, cylindrical, she'd seen them before but not even half the size – it was at least ten feet high and twenty long, and as big around as a table for six. Dozens of cables led from various outlets to the wall of machinery she stood next to, and it was aimed approximately at the front door, making her wonder what the hell they'd tested it on… The back door slammed open. Jill reflexively pointed the Beretta and saw Carlos standing there, the whining sound of a revving helicopter outside.
'Jill, come on!'
He was obviously glad to see her, but she could read the urgency in his face, a reminder of what was coming as the door closed behind him. She jogged toward him in the sudden silence, shak-ing her head. 'Sorry, I was surprised is all, that's a laser cannon, biggest I ever…'
Ka-rash! Near the ceiling by the front door, a giant mass ex-ploded out of the wall, disappearing from their sight as it fell to the floor behind the wall of machinery. Jill had just an impression of a swollen, bulbous body sur- rounded by claws and tentacles, and she knew that she'd been right about the Nemesis. It was evolving. A beat later there was another crash. Sparks crackled and flew from a tall panel next to the entrance, and a gurgling, warped howl erupted into the room, the cry of the Nemesis, but horribly mutated, deeper, rougher… 'Come on!' Carlos shouted, and Jill ran to him as he jerked at the handle on the back door…… and it didn't open, and Jill noticed the small blink-ing lights on the panel next to it and understood that the Nemesis had shorted out the locking mechanisms. They were locked in the warehouse with the thing that had been the S.T.A.R.S. killer, and it was scream-ing for blood.
TWENTY-EIGHT
CARLOS HEARD THE THING HOWL AND KNEW what it was. He'd only caught a glimpse of the monster on its way down, but it was big and badass, and he sus-pected that they were screwed. Jill raised her voice to a shout, and Carlos could only barely hear her over the Nemesis's seemingly endless scream.
'Where's the.357?'
Carlos shook his head. He had the M16, but he'dstowed the heavy revolver and the rest of the rifle'smagazines on the helicopter.'Grenade gun?' he shouted back, and it was Jill'sturn to shake her head.A 9mm and maybe twenty rounds left for the rifle.
We'll have to blow open the door, it's our only chance…
Carlos knew better even as he thought it. The frontand back doors were heavy-duty, they'd have betterluck blowing a hole in the wall… and the answer hit him, and he saw that Jill al-ready had it from the way she was staring at him, eyeswide and blinking.The Nemesis-monster's howl was winding down, buta horrible, wet slurping noise had begun, the sound ofsomething vast and sticky moving slowly and steadilyacross concrete.
It's coming for her.'Can you operate it?' Carlos asked, already steelinghimself for a confrontation with whatever the Nemesishad become.'Maybe, but…'Carlos cut her off. 'I'm going to distract it -get thatthing running and let me know when to duck.'
Before Jill could protest, Carlos hurried past her, de-termined to do whatever he could to keep it from get-
ting to her, at least it's slower than it was, if I can just slow it down a little more… He reached the end of the wall of equipment, took a deep breath, stepped around the corner – and cried out in involuntary disgust at the oozing, undulating mass that crept and crawled toward him, pulling it-self along with clawed, shapeless appendages the color of blisters. Fleshy lumps rose and fell like bub-bles in a pot of stew along its twisted back, thin, black fluid trickling from dozens of tiny slits on its body, wetting the floor, lubricating its meaty pas-sage. Carlos picked a slightly raised lump on top of the giant, pulsing creature and opened fire, the rounds splashing into the fleshy surface like pebbles into a stream, tat tat tat -
– and lightning fast, one of the tentacles at the front of the body lashed out, slapping Carlos's legs hard enough to knock him down. Carlos scrambled backwards through the pain in his side, awed by its incredible speed and not a little afraid. The bulk of it moved slowly, but its reflexes were in-sanely fast, and it had reached across three meters of open space to knock him down, seemingly without strain. 'Puta madre,' he breathed, the worst curse he could think of as he rolled to his feet and backed away. It was already to the corner of the metal wall, ten meters or less from the cannon where Jill was wildly slapping at switches. He'd distracted it about as effectively as a fly distracted an airplane. How much time do we have left before daybreak?
Suddenly, it howled again, a chorus of sound, each small, leaking slit on its body gaping open, a thousand mouths screaming, creating a trumpeting, deafening roar. It wasn't going to stop. Carlos backed further away and opened fire again, a waste of bullets, but there was nothing else he could do…… and then he heard the powerful, rising hum of a mighty turbine spinning fast and faster, and Jill was screaming for him to move, and Carlos moved. She hadn't been able to find the power main, no but-tons or cords to connect, and she didn't know enough about machines to figure it out. She'd seen Carlos fall and her heart had stopped, but she'd forced herself to keep trying, knowing it was all they had. After a second frantic, desperate search she'd found the power switches on its base, and the machine had thrummed to beautiful, wonderful life. 'Move!' Jill shouted, pushing the levers that slowly and precisely raised the cannon, its movements spelled out digitally on a small screen next to the base. She could feel the energy building, the air around her heat-ing up, and as Carlos got out of the way and the Neme-sis-entity slithered out into the open, she found herself positively thrilled, almost overcome with an intense and violent sense of self-satisfaction. It had killed Brad Vickers and tracked her merci-lessly through the city. It had murdered the rescue team and stranded them in Raccoon, it had infected her with disease, it had terrorized her and wounded Carlos – and that it had been programmed to do these things didn't matter; she hated it with everything inside of her, de-spised it more than anything she'd ever despised. The mutated, aberrant thing inched forward on a wave of slime as the cannon's hum reached an explo-sive crescendo, the sound drowning out everything. Jill's words went unheard, even by her.
'You want S.T.A.R.S., I'll give you S.T.A.R.S., you piece of shit,' she said, and slammed her hand down on the activation switch.
TWENTY-NINE
A BRILLIANT LIGHT, WHITE BUT SHADED with electrically searing orange and blue, burst from the end of the laser cannon in a beam of concentrated fury. Arcs of heat and light stormed over the body of the cannon like miniature bolts of lightning, and the laser found the once-Nemesis's writhing, pulsating body and began to eat. The creature that had once been the pride of Um-brella's development section whined and thrashed, flailing its multiple limbs in a frenzy of agonized confusion. The tight beam of light bored into its flesh, as-relentless as it had proved, melting layers of tissue and soldering harder materials – bone and car-tilage and pliable metal – into fused and useless lumps. The creature began to smolder, then smoke, and as the brain stem inside of it withered and cooked, the Nemesis ceased to exist, its program wiped, its improbable heart finally bursting silently, deep in-side. A few seconds later, the cannon overheated and shut itself down.
