“Hey—“ she started, but David was already hitting the brakes, slowing down as they neared the three-some of ragged strangers. A cop with a bandaged arm and a young woman in shorts, both of them holding weapons, and a little girl in a pink vest that was much too big for her. They weren’t infected, or at least not showing signs that Rebecca could see—but they looked like hell nonetheless. With their ripped clothes and their faces pale and shocked beneath masks of dirt, they certainly could have passed for walking death.
“I’ll talk,” David said, his crisp British accent mild but firm, and then they were pulling up beside the Raccoon survivors.
David opened his window and killed the engine, the young cop stepping forward as the woman slipped one grimy arm around the little girl’s shoulders. “There’s been an accident, in Raccoon,” he said, and although they were obviously tired and wounded and badly in need of help, there was a wariness in the cop’s tone, a guarded, careful note that suggested just how bad things had been. “A terrible accident. You don’t want to go there, it’s not safe.”
David frowned. “What sort of accident, Officer?” The young woman spoke up, her mouth a set and bitter line. “An Umbrella accident,” she said, and the cop nodded, and the little blond girl buried her face against the woman’s hip.
John and Rebecca exchanged a look, and David hit the switch to unlock the doors.
“Really? Those tend to be the worst kind,” he said gently. “We’d be happy to help you, if you’d like, or we could call for help. . ..”
It was a question. The cop glanced back at the woman, then met David’s gaze for several long beats.
He must have seen something in David’s face that he felt he could trust; he nodded slowly, then motioned for the woman and girl to come forward.
“Thanks,” he said, the exhaustion finally coming through. “If you could give us a ride, that’d be great.”
David smiled. “Please, get in. John, Rebecca—would you assist.. . ?”
John grabbed a couple of blankets out of the back as Rebecca reached for her medical kit, careful not to uncover the rifles tucked next to the wheel well. An Umbrella accident. . .
Rebecca wondered if they knew how lucky they were to have survived it—but another look into those three exhausted, shell-shocked faces told her that they probably did.
They started talking even before David turned the vehicle around—and in a very short time, they dis-covered that they had a lot in common, as the child fell asleep and they drove back the way they’d come, leaving the burning city behind.
and a shot rang out from the shadows behind her. Ada’s eyes went wide, her mouth falling open as
and he jammed the barrel of the weapon against its drooling chin and pulled the trigger, screaming, emptying the heavy rounds into its thrashing head. The beast shrieked, flailing, falling sideways off Leon.In a flash, he was up and running, straight for the open elevator. The enormous, freakish animal was still howling as Leon sprinted into the lift and turned, hitting the control marked down—
and the door opened into one wall of a passage, a sterile concrete corridor lit by flickering overhead bars. And there were no signs telling him which way to go.Left or right?The few seconds that he hesitated could cost him his life—//he still had any chance at all. He’d heard once that when faced with a choice, most people instinctively turned in the direction of their dominant hand. With the crappy luck he’d had throughout his long, long night in Raccoon, he de-cided to go the other way.