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Chapter 122 – ResidentAlex winced as she stared down from where she was plastered against the ceiling. It was a great big mutated shark! Who on earth thought making a mutated shark was a good idea? Who on earth thought flooding the basement and letting the mutated shark loose in it was a good idea? What was wrong with these people?
Hanna had already put a three-shot grouping into the thing’s head before it ducked under the water and darted around a corner. She calmly said, “If there are sharks loose in the water, there are probably not any vines that would attack them.”
“Hanna!” Alex snapped. “Giant mutated sharks aren’t okay, either!”
Hanna just looked at the water wistfully. “I have never gotten to fight a shark.”
“No! Absolutely not! And if you even try, I’ll tell Jack, and then I’ll tell Janet!”
Hanna sighed. “Fine. I will wait right here. But if you yell for help, I will come.”
Alex flew over the water and opened the doors with her TK. One door was a room chock full of creepy roots for the plant monster. She hit the roots with a couple of major blasts of lightning. One door was a control room where someone had turned off the giant lever to run the sump pumps. When she flipped the big lever, the water quickly got pumped out of the level.
When she got back to Hanna, she was totally not surprised to see Hanna staring at two mutated sharks that were flopping helplessly on the floor. Alex said, “No way. A shark’s jaws can bite down with something like a ton of pressure. Even you wouldn’t survive that.”
Hanna stared at the sharks and insisted, “I would not get bitten.”
“No. We’re done down here, and we’re going back upstairs.”
Hanna looked like she wanted to pout, but she followed Alex back to the ladder and up. Riley climbed up after them and said, “I heard the fuss. What was the matter?”
Alex frowned at Hanna. “Someone wanted to go in water up to her armpits and fight mutated sharks.”
“Did they have ‘frickin’ laser beams’ on their heads?” Jack smirked.
Hanna looked over at Jack. “It looked like it would be challenging.”
Jill looked at Hanna and wondered out loud, “Is she … umm … not quite normal?”
Jack gave her a smile. “Yep. There’s a reason she’s called Action Girl. Don’t ever dare her to try something wacky. Like shark-wrestling. If she’d been in the movie ‘Jaws’ it would have been a half-hour short, because she would’ve just leapt into the water and beaten the shark to a pulp.”
They moved back to the elevator and went back up to the gardens. It only took Riley about a minute to find another elevator, this one without power. Alex grinned. “No problemo” and ran a spark between her hands.
Jack nodded. “Okay, boys and girls, let’s try the Tera-express.” Alex gave him a look.
Alex grabbed the battery terminals and ran a current through them. She hoped she didn’t burn the whole thing out. Hanna used her bat-grapple and swung down the elevator shaft like it was a kid’s swing. Everyone else rode down crammed together.
When the elevator got to the bottom, Alex flew down after them. Hanna was standing there next to two dead snakes. And she was soaking wet. “There’s a secret ladder behind the waterfall!”
Jack just grinned at her and slowly shook his head. He said, “Okay, Tera, can you give us a little umbrella?”
Alex used her TK to make an arch that everyone could walk through without getting soaked like Hanna. Jack had Riley and Hanna go on point, while Jill stayed with Alex to cover their six.
At the bottom of the ladder it looked like the place was badly carved out of the rock itself. Actually, a lot of it looked like sort-of-flat rocks had been stuck all over everything to make it look more rugged. There was a door by the ladder, and around the ‘U’ of the room there was a huge hole in the floor that Hanna or Riley or Jill could leap over easily.
Jack said, “Scott and Walters. Take up positions. Klar, watch that far door for any surprises. We’ll take this door first, and then move back to re-group.”
They went through the door, and a frog-thing went for them. Hanna put a three-shot grouping in its face, and it keeled over before it could jump at them. A second one came around the left corner, and Alex zapped it as soon as she saw it.
Jack walked over to one of the frog-things and studied it. He muttered, “Maggie, what on earth were you thinking?”
They were in a hall that branched. Alex took one path and Hanna took the other, and they opened their doors together. Alex was sort of surprised to see they ended up at opposite ends of a narrow generator room. There were a couple more frog-things that either got fried or shot in the head.
Alex and Hanna moved through the last door, and … nothing. They moved down the hall and around the corner to find …
Another Team Bravo guy, lying on the hard rock and not doing so well. Hanna yelled back, “Colonel! We have a survivor!”
Alex jetted over as the guy feebly tried to lift a gun. She used a little TK to take it out of his hand, and she knelt down beside him. “You’re okay. Do you know who I am?”
He breathed raggedly. “You’re … Terawatt. I’m Enrico Marini … Bravo Team leader … Sabotaged … Chopper blown out of air … These monster dogs … Lost most of the team … Umbrella Corporation … behind all of it …”
She nodded. “We know. I’m with Jill Valentine and a team from the Department of Homeland Security. We’ve got a field medic. And we’re pretty sure Albert Wesker’s working for Umbrella, too.”
He breathed, “Medic? Won’t do … much good … with this shit.”
Riley came rushing over and pulled a small canvas pack out of the back part of his Tactical Load Bearing Vest. “Let me take a look at you.”
Jill rushed over, too. “Oh, Enrico! Oh, no!”
Enrico groaned. “That pack … won’t help me.”
Riley checked him over and frowned. “He’s been bitten on the leg, arm, and abdomen. I’d say two bites from those dog-things and one from a zombie. He’s probably infected.”
Enrico breathed, “Rather be dead than … turn into one of those … things.”
Alex asked, “You looked in that drug room. Anything useful in there?”
Riley looked at Enrico and reluctantly shook his head no.
Enrico gasped, “Doesn’t matter about me … just get out of here … and tell everyone … Umbrella Corp is behind all of it …” He stuffed a handful of papers into Jill’s hands.
Jill shoved the papers into a large pocket and said, “We’re not leaving you.”
Riley said, “I’ll carry him back to the ladder. Terawatt can get him up the ladder when we’re ready to evac.” Alex would have guessed that Enrico was as heavy as Riley, but Riley easily lifted him off the floor and carried him.
Enrico groaned. “Maybe you can … carry me … but the ladder …”
Riley just gave him a grin. “That’s what we have superheroines for.”
They moved slowly back to the ladder room, and Riley gave Jack a quick report. Jack knelt down in front of Enrico and said, “Okay, tell me everything you’ve got.” He looked over at Alex and said, “Go up high enough to beat the signal jammer and alert Miller they need to hunt for an antiviral while they’re in there.”
Alex flew up the ladder, through the waterfall, and then straight up about half a mile. “Terawatt to Miller, come in please. Terawatt to Miller. Can you read me?”
“Tera, this is Miller. Am I glad to hear you. We’re having trouble here. Umbrella has security forces that are trying to keep us out of the basement levels, and there are things down there, too. Fortunately, we have Lupo and Carlson.”
“Tera to Miller. We have a Team Bravo witness, but we need antiviral or he’s probably going to turn into one of these zombies. And be sure not to get bitten or scratched by these things, because we think it’s a really nasty virus. We’ve got to try and find the rest of Alpha Team before the forest fires get here.”
“Roger that. Good luck, and we’d appreciate any assistance you can manage. Over and out.”
She flew back down to the room under the waterfall and gave Jack a heads-up. He nodded and quietly briefed her, “Good ol’ Enrico here still thinks it couldn’t be his buddy Albert, and he’s pretty obsessed about not losing his spot as Bravo Team leader to Redfield or Burton. He doesn’t seem to want to face the fact that there is no more Bravo Team, just little pieces of them scattered around the estate.”
“Eww.”
He raised his voice. “Okay, let’s see if we can check out the rest of this snakepit and then get Officer Marini somewhere safe. A.G. and Finn, go with Tera. Everyone else take up positions around me and Enrico.”
So Alex flew over the big hole, and Hanna and Riley jumped it. She opened the door and moved into a passage that ran sideways to the first passageway. At one end was a huge boulder. Wow, that looked totally safe and non-suspicious. Not.
She flew up to the boulder, and nothing happened.
“A.G., get back here on the double!” Riley barked.
But Hanna was almost at the boulder, and it suddenly started rolling right at her. Alex was going to swoop down, grab her, pull her into Alex’s morph, and puddle into a corner to let the boulder roll past. But Hanna was fast. She was already back at the alcove for the doorway before the boulder got near her. The boulder rolled past and smashed into the wall. So Alex just went silvery and ducked into a corner of the ceiling to let the boulder rumble past her.
And two of the frog-things were coming right after the boulder. Alex zapped one, but Riley blasted the other one with a perfect headshot before Alex had a chance to zap the thing.
Riley scowled. “Action Girl, I need you to take fewer risks. Got it?”
Hanna grinned. “Yes, sir!” She looked over at Alex and mouthed, That was fun!
There was some more bazooka ammo for Jill at the far end behind where the boulder had been, so Alex grabbed it and flew it back to the group. She couldn’t figure out what all the bazooka ammo was for, unless Wesker knew she had that guy’s bazooka and was playing some sort of creepy game with her, or leading her into a trap.
Jack casually asked, “Any problems?” Like he hadn’t heard Riley yelling and a rumbling boulder crashing down a hallway.
Alex told him, “No, just a giant boulder designed to squish anyone walking in the hall.”
She darted back and led the way for Hanna and Riley. There was a short hall they could get to now, and it led to a door. Alex opened the door and gasped, “Holy crud!”
It was a spider. It was a giant tarantula-type spider the size of an elephant. She hit it right in the eyes with a massive jolt of electricity, and it frantically backed away. It also spit poison, which went all over the wall instead of where Alex was. Alex blasted it in the face.
Suddenly, Hanna and Riley were on either side of her. Riley was firing three-shot bursts into the thing, while Hanna was picking off poodle-sized spiders that were crawling across the walls toward them. The spider opened its pedipalps to spit more poison, and Alex gave it a mammoth blast right in between. And Riley threw a grenade right into its tiny mouth. “Grenade!”
Then Riley yelled, “Hallway!” They all ducked out of the room as the grenade went off and blew the spider’s head apart.
Alex flew back in and winced. There was exploded spider all over the room.
Suddenly Jack yelled from behind them, “Support is incoming! Sitrep!”
Riley calmly said, “Just a little bit of trouble, sir. But we have it under control.”
Jack looked in the room and went into an Inspector Gadget voice. Or whatever it was supposed to be. “That’s the second biggest spider I’ve ever seen!” Riley tried not to laugh out loud.
Hanna asked, “Is that Maxwell Smart or Inspector Gadget?”
Jack gave her a smile. “Maxwell Smart. Not that you can tell, because Don Adams did the same voice for both characters. The key difference is Maxwell Smart has more catchphrases you can sneak into a conversation.”
Boy, the stuff you learned from hanging around Jack.
Alex searched the rest of the underground area, only this time she deliberately tripped the other boulder trap without Hanna being in the path of the thing. That was way easier. All she had to do was go silvery and duck into a corner of the hallway so the boulder could roll past and crash all on its own. She found another magneto-optical disk and a book, both of which she turned over to Jack. She was pleased to see from the stuff Jack was carrying that Jill had turned over the stuff Alex and Enrico had handed her instead of doing something sneaky like ditching them to conceal evidence.
Jack had Alex use her TK on two crank spots on the walls. Both rotated a chunk of corridor so the big hole in the floor became a hole on one wall, and everyone could walk past the problem. Then everyone moved to the new elevator, with Riley carrying Enrico.
Once they got up to the garden level, they were at a big circular fountain. Alex flew up forty feet and took a look. The heliport was right on the other side of a solid wall, so she flew back down and stood on top of the wall. Then she used her TK to lift Enrico off the ground, over the wall, and across the heliport to the SRI chopper. She put Enrico on the floor in the passenger area, and she lifted into the air again.
When she flew back, Jack said, “Nice work, but we need someone monitoring him so he doesn’t zombie out and eat our pilot’s brains. Take Scott and Walters and have them guard him and the helo.”
Alex pulled both of them into her morph and had to push with her TK to get both of them up the wall. Then she dropped them off next to the chopper and flew back.
Jill blinked a few times and murmured, “Pretty useful power set.”
Alex admitted, “It has its pluses and its minuses.”
Jack waved her over to the fountain. “See this crack along here? Can you squeeze through there?”
Alex looked at it. The thing looked like the big fountain full of water was actually two pieces that would pull apart. She looked for the widest part of the crack, up above where the water level was. “Umm, I think so.”
She flew up over the crack and went silvery again. Then she squeezed into the thing. It was pretty tight. She wasn’t exactly a drop of water. She had to push pretty hard with her TK, too. But then she oozed into a dark area that was huge. She made a few lightning arcs so she had some light, and she looked around.
Ooh, a big switch. Perfect. She flipped the switch with her TK, and the two halves of the fountain retracted into the walls. That left a huge spiral staircase for her team to walk down. She noticed that Jack had Hanna and Jill on point, and Riley and Klar on everyone’s six. Or maybe Alex was really on point, since she was going first.
At the bottom of the staircase, there was another open elevator with an up/down lever on the one side that was a wall instead of just a railing. The front side of the elevator was totally open, without even a railing. It took them down to a small room. The room had a side door, and also a doorway which was just a ladder going down to the next level. Alex quickly checked the side door, and it was an empty corridor to an emergency elevator. Based on where the thing was, Alex was guessing it would come up in the helipad.
The next level had a staircase. And another three zombies. Only these zombies spit acid or something at Hanna and Jill, but Alex blocked the spit with a fast TK shield while Hanna made one perfect headshot and Jill dived off to the side. Riley and Jack both opened fire and blew the other zombies’ brains out. Jill found a carousel of slides right about where she ended up after rolling across the floor. Jack pulled them out and peeked at them with a little flashlight as backlighting.
“Here, take a look at this one.” He showed it to Jill.
Jill studied the picture for a second before she cursed colorfully.
Jack grimaced. “It’s a shot of some long-time consultants on this project. Wesker’s in the pic.”
Jill fumed, “So he’s been in this from the beginning! That bastard!”
Alex checked the side room while Jack went through the images and shoved the slides in his pack. The side room had a slide viewer that held carousels, and a bunch of other stuff, including another M-O disk and more papers, both of which she gathered up and tucked into her fanny-pack.
Alex flew down the staircase with Hanna and Jill moving behind her. There was another zombie. And a thing that looked like the scientist guy in the old black-and-white movie ‘The Fly’ after the teleporter accident, only even grosser. Alex hit both of them with lightning bolts, and when the fly-man started to get back up, Jill finished it off.
Once everyone was downstairs and in position, they moved through the door on her right. She was in a small hallway with a door on each side and one in front of her. She unlocked all three doors and then went one by one into the rooms with Hanna. The rooms on her right and left had more zombies and more papers. After Hanna blasted the zombies, they let Jack and Riley check out the papers.
Alex moved through the final door and found a row of prison cells. She called out, “Is someone there?”
“Get us out! And look out for Wesker!”
Uh-oh, Alex recognized that voice. It was Rebecca Chambers.
Alex waved Jill in, and used her TK to unlock each of the cells. One cell had Chris Redfield. Jill threw herself into his arms and hugged him, even though he was bleeding a bunch from what looked like a bullet in the shoulder. The next cell had Rebecca Chambers, who was bleeding from what looked like a bullet in the leg. Jill hugged her, too, only not as enthusiastically. The third cell had the corpse of Barry Burton.
Chris scowled. “Wesker made him do it. The bastard’s got Barry’s family. And then, when Barry did what Wesker wanted, he shot Barry anyway.”
Jill frowned. “Wesker’s been in this from the start. And it’s worse than you know.”
Rebecca limped slowly out of her cell and said, “We’ve got to get Chris to a doctor.”
Jack stepped into the room and said, “We’ve got some intel I think we can use to make Mister Wesker’s life a little more miserable. Jill, go with Klar and take them up to that emergency elevator, then get ’em onto the chopper. Wait there for us.”
Alex asked Jack, “What do we have?”
Jack smiled wickedly and showed her the papers. Oh. Someone was spilling top-secret login names and passwords for the computer system. They hunted in a couple more rooms to find a computer they could use, and then Hanna and Riley stood guard while Alex checked more rooms and Jack wreaked havoc with the computer system.
“There. That ought to do it.” Jack smirked. “Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave.”
They moved through the level to a down elevator which had no power. Jack unlocked a panel with a set of lockpicks she didn’t even know he had, and she powered the elevator so it would go down one more level.
Hanna asked, “How many levels are there?”
Jack shrugged. “No idea. But the official movie rule for evil lairs is the really good stuff has to be in the bottom level, along with the obvious deathtrap.”
They stepped off the elevator and found themselves in an empty room. Alex flew forward with Hanna right behind her, and they turned a corner to find a massive garage-door-style security door that was wide open.
Alex flew into what looked like a huge laboratory. Well, a huge laboratory if you were Maggie Walsh. Because there was a row of big cylinders full of liquid along one wall, and there were people in each one. Well, people-like things, or maybe things that might have been people once upon a time. And there was a big section of more cylinders in the center of the room, too, and they had equally gross stuff in them.
Well, maybe the things in the cylinders were people once upon a time, but now they were something really different. Jack cursed under his breath.
The security door slammed shut behind them, leaving Riley on the other side of the door. Alex flew up to about twenty feet and hastily looked around.
Albert Wesker’s irritating voice echoed into the room. “Terawatt. What a pleasant surprise.”
“Not!” Alex retorted
But the voice just kept going, like it hadn’t heard her. “I’ve heard such interesting things about you. It’s a surprise to find someone who lives up to their PR.”
Jack said, “It’s recorded. Wesker’s doing something else right now.”
Alex worried that it was something to do with Riley, who was now on his own. Or worse, it might be something to do with Grover, who was with three people who didn’t trust him.
“Now I think we should find out just how tough you are. And how selfless you are. Because I doubt even you can protect two unenhanced norms from our finest work here. We call this model … the Tyrant.”
Alex gulped as two of the cylinders began emptying. Inside both of the tubes were immense humanoid things that looked like they were eight or nine feet tall. They were horribly misshapen monstrosities with a giant claw on one hand that would make Wolverine wince. Both looked like they hadn’t grown any skin over their enormous muscles, and both had a thing like a heart pulsing on the outside of the chest for that extra creep factor.
The cylinders opened, and the things stepped out toward Jack and Hanna.
* * *
Klar wasn’t happy getting stuck with escort duty. Escort missions were the suckiest videogame missions ever. And he had the two worst escortees ever. An unarmed woman with a bad leg who was barely hobbling along, and an unarmed guy with a bullet in the shoulder, and they needed to get up a freaking ladder. How were they supposed to do that? Chambers’ leg had pretty much given out on her, and Redfield couldn’t even move his arm anymore. The guy could hardly breathe now.
At least Valentine had an automatic and that bazooka. Even if he didn’t trust her. She was too damn pretty not to be another Orphan, and Jack had said she might just be pretending to be a good guy. Jack thought it was even possible that Wesker and Valentine were both working for the Collective, just on rival teams.
He went up the ladder first as a scout.
Shit. That elevator was coming down from up top, and he could hear there were maybe three or four of those zombie-dogs snarling away in it.
Valentine called out from below, “Klar! We got problems! There are more than a dozen of those fly-headed things coming up the stairs at us!”
Christ, did he hate escort missions.
* * *
Riley looked at the security door that had just slammed shut in his face. He rushed over to the keypad by the door. He had looked at all the papers the colonel had found, and he had a memory that was just short of photographic. He tried the three different number combinations he had seen on any of the papers.
Nothing. The door didn’t open. The security seals didn’t release. The thing was airtight, so even Alex couldn’t get out. And he couldn’t even use his comms to contact the colonel. He tried typing in the numbers in reverse. That didn’t work either.
“Major Riley Jerome Finn. The highest-ranked member of The Collective in the entire U.S. Armed Forces … so far.”
Riley dived off to the side and rolled, bringing up his ‘203 in prone position. The room was still empty. The sound was coming from a speaker hidden in the wall.
“Let me introduce myself.”
Riley interrupted, “I’m a man of wealth and taste.”
The voice laughed. “Why, Major Finn, I wouldn’t have taken you for a Rolling Stones kind of guy.”
Riley slowly rose to his feet, keeping his weapon aimed at the far wall. He had no idea where the threat would come from, but he was fairly sure it wouldn’t come from the security door behind him. “I’m really more of a Christian Rock man myself, but when you hear the musical preferences of a thousand other soldiers, you pick stuff up.”
The voice said, “A number of us have been wondering. Are you building your own personal bloc, like ours only smaller, or are you really the naïve do-gooder you appear to be? Either way, you’ve been an immense pain in our Collective ass.”
Riley tried, “Why don’t you come on out and ask me in person?”
The voice said, “I have a better idea. Why don’t I put your people in mortal danger and see whether you treat them as minions or as partners? That would answer my question so much more … honestly.”
A section of wall flickered into life as a wide-angle view into the lab on the other side of the security door. He could see two immense monstrosities lumbering forward at the colonel and Hanna.
Another section of wall flickered, and Riley saw what was happening there. He cursed under his breath. Chambers and Redfield were slumped against the base of that ladder, while Valentine tried to stop a wall of those fly-headed humanoids, and dogs barked ferociously overhead. And there was no sign of Grover.
Something like a Taser hit Riley on the top of his head.
* * *
Jack looked up at the ‘Tyrants’ and said, “Ya know, putting the vital organs on the outside is never a good idea.” He put two rounds into each of the beating ‘hearts’.
Blood — or something blood-like — squirted nastily, but the things didn’t stop.
“The least they could do is have the courtesy to slow down.”
Terawatt complained from way above him, “Not funny.”
Action Girl asked excitedly, “Can I engage directly?”
“No.” He corrected himself. “Make that ‘hell no’. Even if you could take one of these things, you might get exposed to the virus. And we have no idea what the stuff might do to you.” He had a momentary image of Hanna turning into a monstrous thing that was part human and part snake and part spider and part something even worse. They still didn’t know exactly what some of her DNA was really from, thanks to Wacky Maggie being the ‘psychotic bitch’ version of a mad scientist.
* * *
Riley blinked and opened his eyes. Damn, that thing really hurt. He felt like every muscle in his body had been stomped by guys in track shoes.
He was face down on the floor in the room, only he wasn’t the only person in the room anymore.
A tall blond guy with overly-styled hair and dark glasses was watching him with a smug expression. The guy hadn’t even bothered to change out of the S.T.A.R.S. uniform that Valentine and her people were wearing.
The guy said, “Sorry about that. I couldn’t let you keep that M203, or your sidearm, or your tac vest, or your combat knife. Or your cute little holdout strapped to your ankle. Not if I wanted to find out how effective you really are. Granted, you’re at a disadvantage. Several disadvantages, in fact.” He smiled and smoothed the sides of his hair upward.
Riley forced himself to his feet and used one of the colonel’s most dangerous weapons. The mouth. He gave Wesker a nasty smile and said, “At least I don’t have the disadvantage of having my mommy naming me ‘Albert’.”
Wesker whipped his dark glasses off and flicked them across the room at Riley’s face. Then he moved like greased lightning.
But Riley wasn’t some under-trained bozo who would fall for that kind of distraction. He ignored the sunglasses and focused on Wesker.
Wesker moved quickly in a practiced aikido glide-step and launched a kick at Riley’s throat. Riley used an aikido block to knock the flashing foot off to one side, and he followed up with a muay thai strike to Wesker’s still-extended knee.
The sunglasses hit the wall behind Riley and shattered.
Wesker spun away from the strike and turned it into a backspin kick coming the other way that launched a combat boot at Riley’s face. Riley blocked it with a hard-knuckle punch to the calf and went for the leg-trap, but Wesker was too fast and got his leg back before Riley grabbed it.
Riley went with his best Jack O’Neill. “Does that glasses trick really work on anyone?”
What he really wanted to ask was about Wesker’s eyes. Without the dark glasses, it was obvious Wesker was a monster himself. He had cat-eyes that glowed a dull, sickening red. Was that what the virus was doing to him, or was it what the anti-virus did?
“You’d be surprised,” Wesker smirked. He smoothed his hair back into place.
Wesker’s hands came down in a flash, and his fists came tearing forward. Riley blocked the first two, took the second one in the face, and slipped a right cross past Wesker’s guard to smash him in the nose. He kicked upward, aiming for Wesker’s crotch, but Wesker was making the same move, and their shins cracked viciously. The impact felt like maybe his tibia broke.
* * *
Grover scrambled up the ladder and took up position opposite the elevator. The last thing he wanted was four or five killer zombie dogs coming down an elevator after him.
No, the last thing he wanted was people dying because he screwed up again. He had already screwed up too many times in his life. His best friend was dead because Grover thought an invisibility formula would be awesome. He’d nearly got Riley and himself eaten by a giant blob monster by not following orders. He wasn’t doing that crap anymore.
The booms from Valentine’s gun were almost deafening, but she was keeping the fly-things back. For the moment, until she needed to reload. That left a pile of zombie dogs for him.
As soon as the elevator was low enough that he could see the legs of the things, he moved. Those were some scary dogs, but at this distance he could hardly miss.
He pulled his dad’s old New Model Super Blackhawk out of his pouch and he shot the front two in the chest. He knew that wouldn’t kill the things, but their heads were still above the ceiling. Still, .44 Magnum ammo had enough kick to deal with things like this.
The front two squealed and fell over, giving him clean shots at the back two. And he could now see their heads. His big advantage was they couldn’t see him. They stood still, and he shot both of them in the head. Then he finished off the front two as they tried to get up. That was the real advantage of using his dad’s gun: he knew how to fire it, and he knew where the bullets would go. He was way more accurate with it than the automatic Jack was teaching him to use.
And he had an elevator that might or might not work. All he needed was to get trapped between floors with Christ only knew what coming down the elevator shaft after him.
But he didn’t need to get on the elevator, he just needed to move it up and down. He reached into his pouch and pulled out a ball of string and a short length of quarter-inch rope.
He tried to ignore the bloody mostly-canine corpses as he stepped onto the platform. There was an elevator control that was just a lever you swung up or down. He tied a length of string to the end of the lever and dropped it on the floor. Then he tied another length of string to the end of the lever, ran it up over a stanchion, and tossed it back to the floor, too. After that, he tied one end of the rope to one of the guardrails of the elevator, and he threw the other end of the rope down the ladder.
He yelled, “Chambers! Grab that rope!”
* * *
Alex zapped one of the ‘Tyrants’ in the face with a big burst of lightning, and it pretty much ignored the jolt. That was so not good. It took a swipe at her with that massive claw hand that was like something off a mechanical harvester. A really disturbing, creepy mechanical harvester. Those claws were longer than Hanna’s legs, and the Tyrants were fast with them.
Alex darted up and back, moving well out of either thing’s reach. But Jack and Hanna couldn’t get away like that.
Hanna was putting bullets in the Tyrants’ faces, but they weren’t stopping. Jack was putting bullets in their knees, which was at least slowing them down. But it looked like they kept healing up again.
There was a big thing of more giant cylinders in the middle of the room, with lots more things in the tubes. More Tyrants, and more of the fly-head things, and other creepy stuff. The Tyrants were moving down either side of the section, so they were going to have Jack and Hanna trapped pretty soon.
Alex figured she’d wait until the Tyrants got all the way to the end of the row so they thought they had Jack and Hanna trapped, and then Alex would swoop in and pull her teammates into her morph. She figured that if she timed it just right, one of the Tyrants might even accidentally claw the other one with a swipe of the arm.
But Jack dragged Hanna back to the end of the section, looked up at Alex, and yelled, “Grenade!”
Alex darted out of the way as fast as she could.
* * *
Riley watched as Wesker turned the collision into a backflip. He tried to kick Riley in the face as he moved back out of range. Riley used a guide parry on Wesker’s foot to slap it away from his face and turn Wesker’s graceful backflip into an awkward tumble.
Riley tried to take advantage of the tumble, but Wesker rolled to his feet in a flash. And his hand came from behind his back in an underhand throw.
Riley recognized the move, and was already making his counter before the knife came flying through the air at his stomach. He pivoted out of the blade’s path in a smooth taekwon-do move while using a move from a wing chun kata he had never tried in a real-world situation. He slapped his hands together.
Wesker stopped and stared. “Damn, I gotta admit, that’s fucking impressive.”
Riley stood there with the knifeblade captured between his palms. He pulled his hands apart and grabbed the knife’s hilt before the knife fell to the floor. He had a wicked cut across each of his palms from the edges of the knife, but neither was serious … unless Wesker had already contaminated the knife with the virus.
Wesker reached behind his back and pulled out a matching combat knife. “Let’s dance, bitch.”
Riley gave him a ruthless smile. “The last time one of your people said that to one of my team, it didn’t go so well for you guys.”
Wesker lunged forward with the knife at his top speed, aiming for Riley’s throat.
* * *
Grover pulled the second string, and the elevator’s control lever got tugged upward. It rose smoothly, and the rope went with it. Chambers came sliding up the ladder and onto the floor.
Grover tugged the other string, and the elevator came back down.
Chambers leaned over the ladder and hollered, “Chris! Come on!”
Redfield weakly called back, “Ready!”
Grover tugged the second string. The elevator rose again, and Redfield came up the ladder. He was stepping on the rungs and just barely hanging onto the rope with his one good arm. Frankly, Grover thought the guy looked like walking up a ladder was about the max you could ask of him anymore.
Redfield stepped onto the floor and gasped out, “Thanks. That was pretty smart, Klar.” He tossed the rope back down and called out, “Come on, Jill! Move it!”
Valentine called back, “Ready!”
Grover pulled the string, and the elevator rose. He peeked over the edge. Valentine was holding onto the rope one-handed and facing away from the ladder so she could keep shooting the things that were trying to get to her. Grover grabbed his Ruger Blackhawk, slapped in a reloader, and emptied one shot each into the heads of the things that looked like they might get close enough to grab Valentine’s legs.
Valentine rolled onto the floor and said to him, “Thanks. Good work. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Grover emptied the hot shells, slapped in another reloader, and nodded. Which was stupid, since no one could see. He still hadn’t gotten rid of a lot of his old mannerisms. He said, “Right.”
They moved into the emergency corridor, Valentine on point and Grover helping Chambers limp along.
He hoped the emergency elevator wasn’t booby-trapped or anything. One of these days, he was going to be the person who gets told ‘cut the green wire’ and he’d be screwed because he couldn’t see colors anymore.