• Jesus why won’t it die—
Jill trained the Beretta on the back of its skull and emptied the clip. Even as the green flesh splattered away and bone splintered, she continued to fire, the hot slugs ripping into the pulpy, pinkish mass of its brain.
Click. Click. Click.
No more bullets. She lowered the weapon, her entire body shaking. It was over, the creature was dead—but it had taken almost an entire clip, fifteen nine-millimeter rounds, the last seven or eight at close range. . . .
Still staring at the fallen monster, she ejected the empty magazine and loaded a fresh clip before hol-stering the Beretta. She reached back and unstrapped the Remington, taking comfort in the solid, balanced weight of the shotgun.
What the hell were you people working on out here? It seemed that the Umbrella researchers had invented more than just a virus—something just as deadly, but with claws. . . .
And there could be more of them.
She’d never had a more horrifying thought. Hold-ing the Remington close, Jill turned and ran. Chris and Rebecca walked down a long, wooden hallway, warily glancing up with every other step. There was what looked like dried, dead ivy poking out of every crack and crevice where the walls met the ceiling, a bone-colored growth that scaled across the planks like a fungus. It looked harmless—but after what Rebecca had read to him about Plant 42, Chris kept himself ready to move quickly.
After going through the rest of the papers in the trunk, Rebecca had come up with a report on some kind of an herbicide that could apparently be mixed in Point 42, called V-Jolt. She’d brought it along, though Chris doubted it would be useful. All he wanted was to find the exit, and if they could avoid the killer plant, so much the better.
The front hall had been clear of the growth, though Chris wasn’t prepared to call it secured. Besides the two bedrooms by the front door, there had been a rec room that had been distinctly creepy. Chris had looked inside and immediately felt his internal alarms going off, though he hadn’t known why; there’d been no danger that he could see, just a bar and a couple of tables. In spite of the seeming calm, he had closed the door quickly and they’d moved on. His gut feeling was enough of a reason to leave it alone. They stopped in front of the only door in the long, meandering stretch of hallway, both of them still glancing nervously at the scaling ivy near the ceiling. Chris pushed at the knob, and the door swung open. Warm, humid air flooded out of the shadowy room, thick and tropical—but with a nasty undertone, like the taint of spoiled fruit. Chris instinctively pushed Rebecca behind him as he saw the walls of the chamber. They were completely covered in the same kind of strange, straggling growth that was in the hall—but here, the scaling ivy was lush and bloated, a bilious verdant green.
There was a faint whispering coming from inside the room, a subtle sense of movement—and Chris realized that it was coming from the sickly plant matter itself, the walls quivering in a weird optical illusion as the draping tendrils crept and grew. Rebecca started to step past him and Chris pushed her back. “What, are you nuts? I thought you said this thing sucks blood!”
She shook her head, staring at the whispering walls. “That’s not Plant 42, at least not the part the report talked about. Plant 42 is gonna be a lot bigger, and a lot more mobile. I never did much with phytobiology, but according to that study, we’ll be looking for an angiosperm with motile foliage—“ She smiled a quick, nervous smile. “Sorry. Think great big plant bulb with ten to twenty foot vines waving around it.”
Chris grimaced. “Great. Thanks for putting my mind at rest.”
They edged into the large room, careful not to walk too closely to the hissing walls. There were three doors besides the one they came through: one directly across from the entrance and the other two facing each other to their left, where the room opened up. Chris led them toward the door opposite the entrance, figuring it as the most likely to lead out of the bunkhouse.
The door was unlocked, and Chris started to push it open—
BAM!
The door slammed shut, causing them both to jump back, weapons raised. A series of heavy, sliding thumps followed, like someone on the other side was kicking at the walls—except the sounds were every-where, above and below the door’s sturdy frame, beating against every corner of the sealed room. “Lots of vines, you said?” Chris asked.
Rebecca nodded. “I think we just found Plant 42.” They listened for a moment, Chris thinking about the kind of strength and weight it would take to slam the door so solidly.
No kidding, bigger and more mobile . . . and maybe blocking the only exit to this place. Terrific. They backed away, turning into the open area and looking at the other two doors. The one on their right had the number “002” above it. Chris fished out the keys he’d found and flipped through them, finding one with a matching number.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside, Rebecca behind him. There was a smaller door to the left that opened to a bathroom, quiet and dusty. The room itself was another bedroom, a bunk, a desk, a couple of shelves. Nothing of interest.
There was another series of dull thumps from behind the far wall and they quickly moved back into the humid, whispering room, Chris fighting a growing certainty that they were going to have to deal with the plant if they wanted to get out.
Not necessarily, there could still be another way—
The way things had been going so far, he didn’t think so. From the shuffling zombies lurking in the main house to the run through the courtyard, snakes dropping from the trees, every part of the Spencer estate seemed to be designed to keep them from leaving.
Chris shook the negative thoughts aside as they approached the shadowy chamber’s final door—but they came rushing back at the sight of the small green keypad set next to the frame. He rattled the knob but there was no give. It was another dead end. “Security lock,” he said, sighing. “No way to get in without the code.”
Rebecca frowned down at the pattern of tiny red lights set above the numbered buttons. “We could just
try numbers until we run across the right combina-tion_” Chris shook his head. “You know what our
chances are of just stumbling across the right—“ He stopped, staring at her, then fumbled the key ring out of his pocket.
“Try three-four-five,” he said, watching eagerly as Rebecca dutifully punched in the number. Come on, Mr. Alias, don’t fail us now. . . . The pattern of red lights flashed, then blinked out, one by one. As the last tiny light faded, there was a click from inside the door.
Chris grinned, pushing the door open—and felt his hope dwindle as he glanced around the tiny room. Dusty shelves filled with tiny glass bottles and a rust stained sink; not the exit he’d expected. No, that would have been too easy, God knows we can’t have that. . . .
Rebecca walked quickly to one of the shelves and looked over the glass bottles, mumbling to herself. “Hyoscyamine, anhydride, dieldrin . . ” She turned back to him, grinning widely. “Chris, we can kill the plant! That V-Jolt, the phytotoxin—I can make it here. If we can get to the basement, find the plant’s root—“ Chris smiled back. “—then we can destroy it without having to fight the damned thing! Rebecca, you’re brilliant. How long do you need?” “Ten, fifteen minutes.”
“You got it. Stay here, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Rebecca was already pulling down bottles as Chris closed the door and jogged back toward the corridor, past the whispering walls of shadowy green. They were going to beat this place, and once they got out, Umbrella was going down hard.
Barry was standing over Enrico’s cold body, Wesker’s map crumpled in one hand. Jill had been gone when he’d returned—and rather than look for her, he’d found himself unable to move, to even tear his gaze away from the corpse of his murdered friend. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t helped Wesker get out of the house, you’d still be alive. . . .
Barry stared miserably at Enrico’s face, so filled with guilt and shame that he didn’t know what to do anymore. He knew he had to find Jill, keep her from getting to Wesker, keep his family from being hurt—but still, he couldn’t seem to force himself to walk away. What he wanted more than anything was to be able to explain himself to Enrico, make him under-stand how things had come to be the way they were. He’s got Kathy and the babies, Rico . . . what else could I have done? What can I do but follow his orders? The Bravo stared back at him with glazed, unseeing eyes. No accusation, no acceptance, no nothing. For-ever. Even if Barry continued to help the captain and everything else turned out the way it was supposed to, Rico Marini would still be dead—and Barry didn’t know how he was going to live with the knowledge that he was responsible. . . .
Shots echoed through the tunnels. A lot of them.
Jill!
Barry’s head snapped around. He reached for his weapon automatically, the sounds spurring him to action as anger flushed through his system. There could only be one explanation; Wesker had found Jill. Barry turned and ran, sick at the thought of another S.T.A.R.S. member dead by Wesker’s treacherous hand, furious with himself for believing the captain’s lies—
The door in front of him slammed open and Barry stopped dead in his tracks, all thoughts of Wesker and Jill and Enrico wiped away by the sight of the crouch-ing thing in front of him. His mind couldn’t grasp what he saw, his stunned gaze feeding him bits of information that didn’t make sense. Green skin. Piercing, orange-white eyes. Talons.
It screamed, a horrible, squealing cry and Barry didn’t think anymore. He squeezed the trigger and the shriek turned into a bubbling, choking gasp as the heavy round tore into its throat and knocked it down. The thing flailed its limbs wildly as blood spurted from the smoking hole. Barry heard several sharp cracks like breaking bones, saw more blood pour from its fists as long, thick claws snapped off against rock. Barry stared in mute astonishment as the creature continued to spasm violently, burbling through the ragged hole in its throat as if still trying to scream. The shot should have blown its head off its neck—but it was another full minute before it died, its frenzied thrashings gradually weakening as blood continued to pump out at a tremendous rate. Finally, it stopped moving—and from the dark, noxious lake it had created, Barry realized that it had bled to death, conscious until the end.
What did I just kill? What the fu—
From the tunnel outside, another shrieking howl resounded through the clammy air—and was joined by a second, then third. The animal cries rose up, furious and unnatural, the screams of creatures that shouldn’t exist.
Barry dug into his hip pack with shaking hands and pulled out more rounds for the Colt, praying to God that he had enough—and that those shots he’d heard before hadn’t been Jill’s last stand.
SlXtEEFI
IT COULD HAVE ONCE BEEN A SPIDER, IF
spiders ever got to be the size of cattle. From the thick layer of white web that covered the room, floor to ceiling, it couldn’t have been anything else. Jill stared down at the curled, bristling legs of the abomination, her skin crawling. The creature that had attacked her by the courtyard entrance had been terrifying, but so alien that she hadn’t been able to relate it to anything. Spiders, on the other hand . . .she already hated them, hated their dark, bustling bodies and skittering legs. This one had been the mother of all of them—and even dead, it frightened her.
Hasn’t been dead long, though. . . .
She forced herself to look at it, at the slick puddles of greenish ichor that dripped from the holes in its rounded, hairy body. It had been shot several times—and from the noxious ooze that seeped from the wounds, she guessed that it had still been alive and crawling not twenty minutes ago, maybe less. She shuddered and stepped away toward the double metal doors that led out of the webbed chamber. Whispering streams of the sticky stuff clung to her boots, making it a struggle to move. She took careful, deliberate steps, determined not to fall. The thought of being covered in spider web, having it clinging to her entire body . . . she shuddered again, swallowing thickly.
Think about something else, anything—
At least she knew she was on the right track, and close behind whoever had triggered the tunnel mecha-nism. Neat trick, that. When she’d reached the area where the pit had been, she’d thought that maybe she’d gotten lost after all. The gaping hole had been gone, smooth stone in its place. Looking up, she’d seen the ragged edges of the pit suspended overhead; the entire center section of the tunnel had been flipped over, turned like a giant wheel by some miracle of engineering.
The doors had led to another straight, empty tun-nel. A giant boulder stood at one end, and past that, the room she was about to leave—