Resident Evil - Genesis Part 26

Suicide was for quitters. Kaplan was many things, but he was not not a quitter. Yeah, he f.u.c.ked up, but dammit, he was doing his job. He followed orders, he did what he was told. Sometimes, mistakes were made, but he was a quitter. Yeah, he f.u.c.ked up, but dammit, he was doing his job. He followed orders, he did what he was told. Sometimes, mistakes were made, but he was not not gonna let himself take the fall. gonna let himself take the fall.

Kaplan didn't release the T-virus into the Hive. Whoever did that that was responsible. was responsible.

Not Kaplan.

Pain slicing through his leg where it had been bitten, Kaplan clambered into the crawl s.p.a.ce behind him. It led to a vent. If he was lucky, even with his wound, he could keep ahead of the zombie hordes-especially since they seemed to be temporarily fixated on the corpse of the doctor.

He didn't think, didn't obsess, didn't panic, didn't do anything except focus on putting one hand in front of the other as he crawled through the vent.

That worked right up until he reached the dead end.

f.u.c.k.

He turned around. His leg was bleeding profusely, and he could hear the march of the zombies as they came after him.

Looking up, he saw a grate.

It took about a minute for him to climb up into the hallway. The agony in his leg was white hot, but he did everything he could to ignore it and not to scream.

At that last, he wasn't entirely successful, but there wasn't anyone else around to see or hear him.

Favoring his injured leg, he limped down the corridor. Opening his wrist-top, he tapped into the Red Queen, trying to get a heat-signature scan. It wouldn't pick up any of the zombies, but he could at least find the others.

Some of the others, anyhow. Three heat signatures were in one of the labs. The lowest of the three body temperatures was probably Rain. Kaplan couldn't tell who the other two were.

He wondered which of them died.

Was it uncharitable to hope that it was Spence?

Probably. But right then, Kaplan didn't care.

When he got to the door of the lab, Kaplan collapsed against it. He was beyond exhausted, the pain in his leg was now an inferno, and he couldn't move another step.

Then he saw that the locking mechanism had been shot out.

Great.

Drawing on reserves that J.D. and Rain would never have given him credit for having, Kaplan dragged himself to the other door and entered the code to get it open.

He could see inside the window. Alice, Rain, and Matt were inside.

Looked like Spence was the dead one. Good.

Then he looked up and saw the monitor.

How did Spence get to the train station? And what the h.e.l.l could've done that that to him? to him?

Shaking his head, he entered the code again.

Nothing happened.

He looked it up on his wrist-top. The code he entered was the right one.

Unless...

"You changed the code, didn't you?"

"It needed to be done."

Kaplan blinked. He hadn't expected the Red Queen to reply.

"I need to get the door open."

"I'm sorry, but I can't."

Reaching into one of the pouches in his chest, Kaplan pulled out the remote control.

"Yeah? Well, I'm not at all sorry about this."

He pushed a b.u.t.ton.

For the second time that day, he powered down the Red Queen. Only this time, she was permanently fried.

The door, obligingly, opened.

Alice was holding an axe, looking like she was ready to take someone's head off. Matt was just standing there looking stupid.

Rain was kneeling in the center of the floor, hip-deep in water, looking like hammered s.h.i.+t. But she was the one who spoke.

"Kaplan?"

He managed a smile. "b.i.t.c.h wouldn't open the door. Had to fry her."

That was when something smashed against the PlastiGlas window. Alice raised her axe instinctively, just as the thing smashed through through the window. the window.

They all ran past Kaplan into the hallway. Just as Kaplan shut and bolted the door, the whatever-the-h.e.l.l-it-was crashed into the door, denting it.

That should not have been possible.

"What the f.u.c.k the f.u.c.k was that?" was that?"

"It's a long story," Alice said as she ran off.

Matt, who was now carrying Rain, filled Kaplan in on what had happened, telling him about the T-virus, the anti-virus, the strange monster that killed Spence-and the fact that all of this was Spence's doing.

Grateful to have someone to fob his guilt off on, Kaplan hobbled behind Alice and the Rain-carrying Matt to the train station. Alice was armed only with the fire axe. Kaplan was out of ammo for his Beretta and his revolver, and he'd thrown the latter away in any case. Matt and Rain were unarmed-h.e.l.l, Rain was three-quarters dead.

Kaplan tried not to think about how pathetic they were. If that thing caught up to them, they were the deadest of dead meat.

Then again, they made it this far. Over five hundred people had died, but not them.

Alice pointed at the train. "Start it up-I'll get the virus."

Kaplan nodded and limped into the train. The pain at this point had gone down to just a dull throb-or maybe he just had gotten used to it.

Whatever. Right now, he was just grateful to be one of the living and not one of the dead.

Or undead.

Or whatever the h.e.l.l they were.

While he started the train up, he looked out the window to see Alice going for the metal case. She closed it- -just as Spence lunged at her.

Alice dodged out of the way with little difficulty. The damage to Spence's corpse was such that his legs were completely shot to s.h.i.+t, so he was reduced to pulling himself along the floor with his arms. He made Kaplan's own struggles through the vent shaft look positively elegant Alice gave her "husband" a look. Kaplan swore that, if looks could kill, Spence would be a pile of ashes.

a.s.s-Kicking Alice, it seemed, was really and truly back.

"I'm missing you already," she said as she hefted the axe.

Then she cut his head off.

Kaplan tried not to think about the fact that that was the second decapitation he'd witnessed today. Instead, he focused on starting up the train.

"Okay," he said when the telltales all indicated that the train was ready to head back up to the mansion, "we're in business. Full power." He turned to the cab. "We're leaving!"

Alice, he noticed, paused only long enough to remove her wedding ring and drop it next to Spence's blood-soaked body, then retrieve both the case and Rain's Colt before boarding.

Matt came into the engineer's cubbyhole a minute later with a hypo-gun and some improvised bandages. He was also only wearing a white T-s.h.i.+rt. After staring at the blue bandages for a second, Kaplan figured it out-he'd cannibalized his s.h.i.+rt for the bandages.

Silently, the cop-or whoever the h.e.l.l he was-injected Kaplan with the anti-virus, then started binding his wounds.

Kaplan tried not to think about the blood that felt like it covered as much of his body as Spence had on his. Instead, he focused on the report he planned to write when this was all over.

And was it going to be quite a report. Knowing that Spence was responsible for all of this emboldened him. It had freed him of the guilt in many ways. Kaplan knew that Umbrella did things their own way, but Jesus Christ. A computer that slices people who try to get at it to ribbons? A big scaly thing with no eyes and teeth the size of Rhode Island running around loose? One of your top security guys turning your supposedly secure underground facility into a horror movie? And then the kicker, a virus that kills you and and animates your corpse? animates your corpse?

In the past, Bart Kaplan had been willing to turn a blind eye to the less ethical areas of Umbrella, mostly because that eye was focused instead on the high number of zeros on his paycheck stub.

But this-this was too much.

He had no idea what he, a mere grunt in Security Division, could do, but whatever it was, he intended to find out what it was, and do it.

Matt put a hand on his shoulder when he was done. Kaplan gave him a nod in return. He had no idea who this guy really was, and right now he didn't give a s.h.i.+t. The four of them had been through all nine circles of h.e.l.l today, and lived to tell the tale. Right now, that was all Kaplan cared about.

"I don't want to be one of those things."

Kaplan turned to look at Rain when she said those words. Alice was treating her, same as Matt had been doing for Kaplan.

"Walking around without a soul," Rain continued. "When the time comes, you'll take care of it."

It wasn't a question.

Alice just said, "Hey-no one else is gonna die."

Rain removed the watch from her wrist and handed it to Alice.

Then her head slumped forward.

Any other time, Kaplan might have figured she was just lapsing into a coma or something. But he'd seen way too much death today.

Rain Melendez was dead.

s.h.i.+t.

"Rain?" Alice spoke in a soft voice.

Nothing.

Kaplan shook his head. He never even liked Rain all that much-she and J.D. spent way too much time giving Kaplan a hard time-but they were still comrades, still teammates, and when it mattered, they looked out for each other, depended on each other.

Now Kaplan was the only one left.

The hilarious thing was that J.D. had always said that if they ever took on casualties, that Kaplan would probably be the first one to go.

Instead, he was the last survivor.

Alice reached for Rain's Colt.

Her entire face quivering in a way Kaplan never would've expected from a.s.s-Kicking Alice, she held the gun to Rain's head.

Clicked off the safety.

Then Rain reached up and grabbed Alice's wrist.

"I'm not dead yet," Rain said.

Kaplan couldn't help but grin to go with his sigh of relief. Suddenly, he found himself looking forward to getting more s.h.i.+t from Rain in the future.

Rain, meanwhile, took the Colt from Alice's hands. "Maybe I'd better have that back."

Alice laughed. "I could kiss you, you b.i.t.c.h."

Kaplan was then startled by the wrenching of metal, which echoed through the train, piercing through the noise of the train's engine. He turned to see a ma.s.sive claw slice through through the train's wall and leave three scratches on Matt's left shoulder. the train's wall and leave three scratches on Matt's left shoulder.

"Get us the f.u.c.k outta here!" Matt cried to Kaplan.

"Any faster and we're gonna come off the rails."

He turned back to face the front, right when the wall to his left was ripped away.