Leon nodded and turned to inspect the hallway, letting the conversation drop—much to Ada’s relief.
She wasn’t sure what she thought of him, but was uncomfortably aware that her respect for him was growing; not a good thing, considering the circum-stances.
There wasn’t much to see in the damp, poorly lit hall; two doorways and a dead end. The boiler room, where she’d tossed the keys—or plugs, rather—was directly in front of them, the sewer disposal entrance in a back comer; according to the sign on the wall, the other door opened into a storage closet.
Ada followed as Leon walked to the closest of the two doors, the storage room, hanging back as he pushed it open with his Magnum and stepped inside. Boxes, a table, a trunk; nothing important, but at least no creepy-crawlies. After a quick search, he stepped back into the hall and they moved toward the boiler room.
“How’d you learn to shoot like that, anyway?” Leon asked as they stopped in front of the door. His tone was casual, but she thought she detected more than casual curiosity. “You’re pretty good. Were you in the military or something . . . ?”
Nice try, Officer.
Ada smiled, falling into her carefully rehearsed character. “Paintball, believe it or not. I mean, I went target-shooting some when I was a teenager, with my uncle, but never got into it much. And then a few years ago, a friend at work—we’re both buyers at an art gallery in New York—dragged me to one of those weekend survival retreats, and we had a blast. You know, hiking, rock-climbing, stuff like that—and paintball. It’s great, we go up every couple of months . . . although I never thought I’d have to use it for real.”
She could actually see him buy it, see that he wanted to buy it. It probably answered a few ques-tions that he’d been hesitant to ask.
“Well, you’re better than a lot of the guys I gradu-ated the academy with. Really. So, you ready to get on with this?”
Ada nodded. Leon pushed the door to the boiler room open, scanning the ancient, rusting machinery in the wide empty space before ushering her inside. She made a point of not looking down, wanting Leon to find the small wrapped package that she’d tossed in a few moments earlier.
She hadn’t gotten a good look before. The room, shaped like a sideways “H,” was fitted with corroded railings and two massive old boilers, one on either side. Fluorescent lights sputtered overhead, the few that still worked casting strange shadows across the metal pipes that ran down the water-marked walls.
The door that led into the sewer system was in the far left corner, a heavy-looking hatch next to an inset panel.
“Hey—“ Leon crouched down, picking up the bundle of plugs that would open the hatch. “Looks like somebody dropped something. . . ”
Before Ada could go through the charade of asking him what he’d found, she heard a noise. A soft, slithery noise, coming from the area in the right back corner, neatly blocked from view by one of the boilers.
Leon heard it, too. He stood up quickly, dropping the bundle and raising the shotgun. Ada pointed her Beretta toward the sound, remembering how the door had been slightly ajar when she’d come up from the subbasement.
Oh, hell. The implant.
She knew it even before it crawled into sight—and was shocked anyway. The little bugger had grown, and it had grovmfast, easily twenty times its former size in half as many minutes—and it was still growing, apparently at an exponential rate. In the few seconds it took for the creature to move into the middle of the room, it went from the size of a small dog to the size—and bulk—of a ten-year-old child.
The shape had changed, was changing, too. It was no longer the alien tadpole that had chewed its way out of Bertolucci. The tail was gone, and the creature that inched its way across the rusting floor had developed limbs, stretching arms folding out of its rubbery flesh. Claws popped out of the tan and swimming skin that swirled over its body, accompa-nied by a sound like gristle being punctured. Muscu-lar legs unfurled, liquid that snapped into sinewy shape as its stuttering crawl became smoother, almost feline—
The shotgun and Beretta sounded at the same time, a string of massive blasts peppered with the higher whine of the nine-millimeter. The creature was still shifting, standing, mutating into a humanoid shape—and its response to the booming shots that smacked into its twisting flesh was to open its mouth and vomit, a grunting projectile scream of rotten green bile—
• that hit the floor and started moving. The stream that gushed from its wide, flat face was alive—and the dozen or so crab-like creatures that tumbled out of the monster’s gaping mouth like liquid seemed to know exactly where the threat was to their fetid, mutant womb. The skittering, multi-legged animals swarmed toward Ada and Leon in a silent wave as the implant monster took one massive step forward, pulsing cords standing out on its impossibly long, thick neck. Leon had the heavier firepower. “Got ‘em!” Ada shouted, already targeting and shooting at the closest of the tiny, bilious green crabs. They were fast, but she was faster; she pointed and squeezed, pointed and squeezed, and the baby monsters exploded into small fountains of dark, ichorous fluid, dying as silently as they’d come.
Leon blasted again and again with the shotgun, but Ada couldn’t spare a glance to see how he was faring with the mother beast. Five of the crawling babies left, three more rounds and she’d be dry—
• and she heard the shotgun clatter to the floor, heard the deeper but less powerful fire of the .50 AE rounds resounding through the metal room as she picked off’ two more of the spidering creatures, and her weapon clicked empty.
Without stopping to think, Ada let go of the Beretta and dropped to the floor. She grabbed the shotgun by the barrel, rolling up into a crouch beneath Leon’s line of fire, and swung the weapon down, hard.
Two of the mutant animals were smashed into goo by the heavy stock—but the third, the last of them, sprang forward in an unexpected burst of speed—
• and landed on her thigh, catching hold with needle-sharp claws. Ada dropped the shotgun, crying out as the animal scuttled up her leg, the warm, damp weight of it making her frantic with disgust. Off get it OFF—
She fell backwards, slapping at the creature that had already reached her shoulder and was skittering toward her face, toward her mouth—
• and then Leon was grabbing her, roughly pulling her up with one hand as he snatched at the animal with the other. Ada stumbled against him, clutching at his waist to keep from falling. The bug clung tenaciously to the tight fabric of her dress, but Leon had a good grip. He tore it away, shouting as he flung the flailing thing across the room.
“The Magnum!”
The weapon was stuck in Leon’s belt. Ada jerked it free, saw the creature land near the giant, motionless heap that had birthed it, blasted to death by Leon—
• and fired, managing to get a clean shot despite how off-balance she was, how deeply unnerved she was by how close she’d come to being implanted. The heavy round clanged against the floor, rust chips spattering up—and the creature was blown into an ugly stain against the back wall. Obliterated. Nothing moved, and the two of them just stood for a moment, leaning against each other like survivors of some sudden, terrible accident—which, in a way, they were. The entire firefight had taken place in less than a minute, and they had come out unscathed—but Ada wasn’t going to kid herself about how close it had been, or what they had just managed to destroy. G-Virus.
She was sure of it; the T-Virus couldn’t have created such a complicated creature, not without a team of surgeons—and they’d seen it growing; how big, how powerful would the creature have become if they hadn’t walked in when they had? The beast might have been some early G-strain experiment, but what if it had been the result of a leak? What if there were more of them?
The sewers, the factory, the underground levels—dark, shadowy places, secret places, where anything could be growing. . . .
Whatever the situation, the trip to the labs wasn’t looking like a walk anymore—and Ada was suddenly very glad that Leon had decided to come along. Since he was so goddamn insistent on going first, if some-thing attacked, she’d have a better chance of surviv-ing—
“Are you okay? Did it hurt you?”
Leon, one arm still supporting her, looking into her eyes with a heartfelt concern. Ada realized that she could smell him, a clean, soapy smell, and pushed herself away. She handed the Magnum back to him and straightened her dress, studiously inspecting it for rips to avoid looking at him.
“Thanks, I’m fine. Don’t sweat it.”
It came out harsher than she meant it to, but she was rattled, and not just by the implant’s vicious attack. She glanced at him, and wasn’t sure how to feel when she saw that her response had caught him off guard. He blinked slowly, and a kind of coolness settled into his gaze, indicating a strength of character that she hadn’t bothered to give him credit for. “Paintball, huh?” he said mildly, and without an-other word, he turned to pick up the package she’d planted.
Ada stared after him, telling herself how absolutely ridiculous it was to care what he thought of her. They were about to embark on a journey in which she might have to desert him, or watch him sacrifice his life in order to save her own . . .
. . . or kill him myself. Let’s not forget that, friends and neighbors. So who gives a shit if he thinks I’m an ungrateful bitch?
Straight up. She should thank him, for reminding her.
Ada stooped down to retrieve the shotgun, feeling like she needed to do a better job of keeping her priorities straight—and feeling an emptiness inside that she hadn’t noticed in a long, long time.
TwEnfY
MR. IRONS HAD BEEN A VERY BAD MAN. A
sick man. Sherry supposed she’d known it all along on some level, but seeing his secret torture chamber, like some mad doctor’s workshop, made it a lot more real. The room was just gross, bones and bottles and a smell even worse than the zombies. Perhaps that was why seeing the shape on the floor, the incomplete body shape beneath the bloodstained tarp, didn’t bother her half as much as Claire seemed to think it would. Sherry stared at it, wondering what had hap-pened exactly.
“Come on, sweetie, let’s get going,” Claire said, and the forced note of brightness in her voice told Sherry that Mr. Irons had been severely messed up. All Claire had told her was that Mr. Irons had attacked her, and then something had attacked him, and that there was a chance they could get somewhere safe if they went down into the basement. Sherry had been so relieved to see Claire at all that she hadn’t bothered to ask questions.
Not big enough to be a whole person under there . . .did he get eaten? Or chopped into pieces? “Sherry? Let’s go, okay?”
Claire laid a hand on her shoulder, gently pulling her away from what was left of the police chief. Sherry let herself be led toward the dark hole in the corner, deciding that it was best to keep her questions to herself. She thought about saying that she didn’t care that Mr. Irons was dead, but she didn’t want to appear rude or disrespectful. Besides which, Claire was trying to take care of her, and Sherry didn’t mind that at all.
Claire went down the ladder first, and after a second, called up to her that it was safe to come down. Sherry stepped carefully on the metal rungs, feeling really happy for the first time in days. They were doing something, they were getting out of the RPD station and headed for escape; whatever else hap-pened, it was a good way to feel.
Claire helped her down the last couple of rungs, lifting her and setting her on the metal floor. Sherry turned and looked around, her eyes widening. “Wow,” she said, and the word whispered away into the dim shadows and came whispering back, reflected off” the strange walls.