Resident Evil - Genesis Part 18

Pausing to take a breath, he saw that three more zombies had decided to take a shot at him.

Then another arm grabbed his shoulder and pulled him out.

Alice.

"Come on."

Nodding, he let her lead the way away from the zombies. He couldn't see any of the rest of the Goon Squad.

"Where is everybody?"

"I lost track of Rain, J.D., Kaplan, and Spence."

Matt nodded. "What about the rest of them?" The team leader, the medic, and the other two goons were still unaccounted for.

"They're dead."

That got Matt's attention. All they were doing was shutting down the d.a.m.n computer! Did the zombies get them, too?

No, that wasn't possible-the zombie attack was a surprise to everyone.

So how the f.u.c.k had those four gotten themselves killed?

Matt's urgency increased a hundredfold. Umbrella hadn't just built an underground headquarters in order to hide their research, they'd built a f.u.c.king deathtrap. Five hundred employees, and now four of their security people.

With six of them left and in serious danger of joining them.

He and Alice made their way out into a corridor. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, he slipped away. Alice didn't follow him, so he definitely gave her the slip.

Right now, his priority was Lisa's desk.

She had described her office s.p.a.ce to him in her encrypted e-mail, including the route there from the elevator bay. Finding that was only the work of a few minutes-it came complete with another fake window and fake cityscape-then he traced the route she had provided.

He found himself in an area full of boring metal desks, with papers, file folders, staplers, phones, cords, inboxes, disks, and various other items strewn haphazardly about the floor. With no idea which one was Lisa's, he investigated the desks themselves. Most of them had some kind of personal object to indicate the personality of the user, and Matt knew that Lisa's own desk had a picture of her, Matt, Mom, and Dad from a cruise they'd taken when she and Matt were teenagers.

Matt tried not to think about what he was doing as he looked at pictures of a man with his dog, a woman with her children, Beanie Babies, a pennant from the minor-league baseball team that played in Racc.o.o.n City, and all the other personal items of people who were not only dead, but still up and walking around, biting people or getting shot at by the likes of Rain and J.D.

He got to one desk, which had a computer with a broken monitor on it. No sign of a picture, but he found the next best thing: Lisa's ID badge.

Squatting down at the file cabinet next to her desk, he started going through her files, hoping to be able to salvage something something from this nightmare. from this nightmare.

A thud scared him out of what few years of life he still had left. One of Lisa's "zuvembie" coworkers was banging on the window next to her desk.

However, the zombie was cut off from Matt by the window, and seemed content to simply bang on it rather than try to find an alternate route.

So Matt let him. He had more important things to deal with.

Or so he thought. Lisa's files were all meaningless to him. They probably related to her actual job. Nothing about a T-virus or anything like that.

Of course, she wouldn't keep anything like that at her desk. She wasn't that stupid.

Unfortunately, that meant he had nothing that he could take back to Aaron.

This was not shaping up to be a good day at all.

Hearing movement behind him, he whirled around, ready to face another zombie, hoping he could fend it off with a stapler or a keyboard or something, since J.D. had disarmed him back at the mansion.

Then he saw who it was.

"Lisa?"

She stood in the middle of the s.p.a.ce amidst the office supplies festooned about the floor, looking completely normal. A little distressed, but that was to be expected.

Had she actually survived this? Had one f.u.c.king thing actually gone right today?

Matt got up.

Then Lisa jumped him and tried to bite him with decaying teeth...

Nineteen.

BEFORE TODAY, BART KAPLAN'S WORLD made sense.

Before today, computers didn't go on homicidal rampages, killing five hundred people for no good reason. Before today, he and his team were top pros, always achieving their mission objectives. Before today, the team always came home alive.

Before today, dead people didn't get up and walk around.

He wasn't sure how it got so bad so fast. One second he was standing with J.D., Rain, Alice, Spence, and that Addison guy, the next they were surrounded. After the tank exploded, he was knocked to the floor, but he got up quickly and started unloading his Beretta into the walking corpses that simply would not stop for anything. His ears were ringing.

Somehow he and J.D. wound up back to back. They were just around the corner from the door that would take them back to the hallway where the offices and labs were. "We lost the others."

"Keep moving!" J.D. said as he fired his rifle into the crowd.

They inched closer, finally reaching the door. Kaplan thought his head was going to explode from the noise of the gunfire, the explosion, and the screaming.

Not to mention the image of his four comrades being killed while he was helpless to do anything about it.

Spence was standing there as Kaplan holstered his pistol and approached the keypad.

Surprised, Kaplan asked, "You waited?" Leaving aside the fact that he was unarmed, this particular iteration of Spence Parks didn't strike Kaplan as the gung-ho, take-one-for-the-team type. More like the run-away-and-save-his-own-a.s.s type.

"Didn't know the code."

Run-away-and-save-his-own-a.s.s it was, then. Luckily, Kaplan did know the code. All he had to do was summon it from the recesses of his brain. The problem was doing it through the pounding headache.

He entered 0431961.

Nothing happened.

"s.h.i.+t!"

"Come on," Spence said.

He entered the code again.

Again, nothing.

"s.h.i.+t!"

He didn't get it. That was the code, he was sure of it.

If only the noise would stop...

Spence, still being his usual useful self, said, "Hurry up."

As if it would make a difference, he entered 0431961 more slowly.

Yet again, nothing.

"s.h.i.+t!"

J.D. ran up to the door, grabbed Kaplan and shoved him out of the way. "Move! What's the code?"

Under other circ.u.mstances, Kaplan would have objected to this course of action. But maybe there was something wrong with the way he was entering it. Not that there was any trick to it, really, you just entered the eight numbers.

"Move!" J.D. said. "What's the code?"

"Hurry up!" Rain called from a few feet off. "I'm runnin' out of ammo!"

Pulling out his Beretta and shooting into the ever-nearer crowd, Kaplan yelled out, "Zero, four, three-"

Then it hit him. Eight numbers Eight numbers. He'd left out a digit. "No, f.u.c.k!"

Spence walked up to Kaplan and got right in his face. Kaplan was tempted to turn his pistol on the arrogant p.r.i.c.k. "What is the code?"

Kaplan took a breath. "Zero, four, zero, three, one, nine, six, one."

"Got it." J.D. entered the code. Then he turned to look at Kaplan as the door slid open. "See how easy that was?"

Behind the door was a sea of former Hive workers.

Kaplan didn't know what the look on his own face was, but he imagined it was very similar to the look of abject shock on J.D.'s as dozens of hands grabbed him and pulled him into the hallway. A second later, and Kaplan couldn't even see J.D. anymore.

"J.D.!".

Rain came out of nowhere and dove in after him. Was she out of her f.u.c.king mind?

Kaplan ran up to her and grabbed her arm. To his shock, Spence helped. No sense in losing both of them.

One of them bit Rain in the neck even as Kaplan and Spence yanked her out. Kaplan quickly slammed his hand on the switch that would shut the door after shooting one in the face.

Again, Rain screamed, "J.D.!"

"Forget it," Spence said. "He's gone."

Pounding her fist on the door, Rain screamed, "G.o.ddammit!"

The sweat beaded on Kaplan's brow. This wasn't supposed to be happening.

One. Warner. Drew. Olga. And now J.D.

They weren't supposed to die. s.h.i.+t, J.D. and Rain were the toughest bada.s.ses on two legs-all you had to do to know that was to watch them for five minutes.

And One, well, One was just the the best. best.

If even J.D J.D. couldn't survive this, if even One One couldn't survive this, what the f.u.c.k chance did some computer geek like Kaplan have? couldn't survive this, what the f.u.c.k chance did some computer geek like Kaplan have?

"Come on," Spence said, pointing across the hall. "There's a clear path back to that computer room."

Kaplan nodded. He turned to Rain. "C'mon, Rain."

"They f.u.c.kin' killed J.D., man. That's s.h.i.+t!"

Spence grabbed her arm. "They're gonna f.u.c.kin' kill us us if we don't move our a.s.ses!" if we don't move our a.s.ses!"

Shrugging off Spence's hand without looking at him, Rain turned and moved for the door. Kaplan followed, as did Spence.

As they ran, Rain asked, "So what the f.u.c.k did did happen to the rest of the team? They zombie food, too?" happen to the rest of the team? They zombie food, too?"

"No, the Red Queen's defenses got them."

Rain stopped and grabbed Kaplan by the shoulder. "Say the f.u.c.k what what? I thought you you were supposed to bring down-" were supposed to bring down-"

Spence pushed them both forward, one with each hand. "Can you two kill each other later?"

Throwing his head back, he indicated the hordes of people shuffling toward them.

Kaplan ran ahead. He opened the door to the Red Queen's chamber, waited for Spence and Rain to come in, then shut the door behind them.

It was his fault.

All of it.