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Chapter 123 – Under My UmbrellaWhen Jack yelled “Grenade” he didn’t mean he was going to lob a pineapple at one of these things and hope it landed somewhere useful. No, he had something more directed in mind.
He shot one Tyrant in the knee again, and when it roared at him, Action Girl fired her M203. Hanna’s aim was somewhere between awe-inspiring and terrifying, so he was trusting this would work.
She put a 40mm HE round right through the thing’s teeth. The explosion took off its entire head.
The second Tyrant didn’t like that, and it moved faster. Terawatt dropped to the floor behind it, which probably meant she was going to do something using as much telekinesis as she could wield. He stopped to watch, because he figured it would be impressive.
The Tyrant took another step toward him, and its leg suddenly veered off to the side. It looked like Tera was yanking its foot as far off to the side as it would go. The thing’s foot hit the floor but kept skidding off to the side.
The thing landed in a split right on top of its own claw-hand. Ouch. Jack had to make an effort not to clench his thighs together. It opened its mouth in a silent scream.
The sudden snap of Action Girl’s grenade launcher being reloaded told him to move. He yelled “Nade!” as he dived behind the block of cylinders. But Action Girl moved a lot faster than he did, and Tera was already jetting behind something protective.
The Tyrant’s head went the way of its brother. Monster goop and shrapnel went everywhere.
Jack looked at the half dozen cylinders that were now leaking fluid. There were some very nasty-looking things in those tubes that might or might not come to life once the liquid seeped out. “Okay, kiddies, let’s get out of here before we get more party guests.”
Action Girl calmly asked, “And how will we get out of here?”
Tera flew over to the electronic panel beside the security door. She just stood there and stared at it. Tiny bolts flew off from the sides. The case popped off and went flying. Electronics leapt out. Wires disconnected and jumped out of the way. Bolts and screws backed out of their little holes and flew off to the sides. In less than ten seconds, there was a big opening into the workings of the door.
Something clanked, and the door shivered. Terawatt asked, “A.G., could you see if it’ll go up now?”
Action Girl rushed over, squatted down, and grabbed the bottom of the door. Jack guessed the thing weighed maybe an eighth of a ton, even with the counterweights that had to be on something that massive.
She straightened up and threw the door upward.
As soon as Jack saw it sliding so quickly, he guessed what might happen, so he ran for the opening. “Move it, move it, move it!”
The door slid on its rails until it was all the way open, at which point it hit something and bounced back down. An alloy door thick enough to stop a Tyrant plummeted back into position with a crash.
He looked at Action Girl and Terawatt. Neither seemed the least bit concerned that they might have had an enormous mass of indestructible alloy crashing down on them. Maybe he was getting too old for this.
No, they were both looking at Finn.
Jack winced inwardly. Wesker was very dead on his back in the middle of the floor. His throat was cut until his head was half-off his body. One arm was twisted and broken the way arms weren’t supposed to go. A combat knife was buried in his chest where his heart was supposed to be.
But Wesker was even less human than Jack had expected. The open, staring cat eyes were bad enough. The fang-like things jutting out from his mouth were a lot worse. He looked like that one vampire in every horror flick who needed serious orthodontia.
And it was pretty obvious what the fangs had done. There was a nasty rip in the side of Finn’s neck just where the collarbone was, and Jack was pretty sure the white of the bone would be showing if it wasn’t for all the blood.
Finn stood up. “Sorry, sir. I wasn’t expecting him to grow fangs.”
Jack noted that Finn also had bleeding cuts on both palms, a bloody knife slice on his left forearm, a couple of knife slices through his shirt, a nasty bruise on his face, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and blood seeping through his pants from some sort of injury on his right shin.
Terawatt flew over to Wesker’s body. The shirt ripped into strips, which sailed up toward Finn’s neck. The first strip wiped up a discouraging amount of blood. The second strip pressed down on the injuries, and the third strip tied itself over the second one and through Finn’s opposite armpit to try and hold it in place.
Finn looked at Terawatt and said, “Thanks. But I’ve got a medic kit somewhere around here wherever —”
A loud, computerized voice announced, “Wesker Omega Four protocol in place. After all consultants and researchers have been conclusively dead for at least ten seconds, self-destruct sequence is initiated. Three minutes and counting.”
“Damn it!” Jack swore. “Why do these dorks have to be such stereotypical badguys? Let’s move it. If we run into anything, we may need more than three minutes. Unless we’re Tera.” They headed for the elevator. Jack noticed that Riley was limping slightly. That probably meant he was in a hell of a lot of pain.
Finn held the cloth tightly against his neck and said, “Sir, you have to consider that I’m infected now.”
Jack said, “I’ll bear that in mind, major. Right now I’m more concerned about getting out of here and you not bleeding out from a torn carotid.”
The elevator wouldn’t budge.
“Two minutes, forty seconds and counting.”
Tera put her hands across the battery terminals and gave it a big spark. Still nothing.
Finn said, “It’s locked down. Probably part of the protocol.”
Tera said, “Okay, I can take everyone up the elevator shaft one at a —”
Action Girl stepped onto the open platform and fired her bat-grapple up the shaft. Then she shot upward.
Tera corrected herself: “Okay, I can take both of you at the same time. Hang on …”
Jack had been through this before, and he didn’t enjoy it. But he didn’t complain. Getting sucked into a silvery glob and dragged along with no control over his own movements? Not his favorite amusement park ride. On top of that, he’d spent the entire time feeling like he needed to breathe, and he’d been unable to inhale until Tera dropped him out of her morph.
He took a deep breath and tried to relax his muscles. This kind of thing made him a lot more sympathetic toward Victor Cready, aka Captain Worst-Power-Set-In-The-World.
Finn rigidly insisted, “No, ma’am. I am not risking contaminating either of you. Action Girl can drop her grapple gun back down, and I’ll take that up.”
Tera shrugged and went silver. Jack let Tera drag him into her morph, and he could see as they scooted up the side of the elevator shaft. The bat-grapple dropped past them, presumably because someone with too-good hearing heard Finn. They were nearly at the top of the shaft when a grapple came shooting up, wrapped around a steel pipe, and Finn came shooting up on the end of the line.
“Two minutes, twenty seconds and counting.”
Jack waited another second until Tera dropped him out of the morph, and he instinctively took another breath. “Okay, team, let’s get a move on.”
They moved quickly through the halls to the base of the stairs. He muttered, “Oh, crap.”
There was a small army of those fly-headed things already up there, and they started coming down the stairs after him and his team. And Finn was no longer armed.
Tera leapt into the air and flew straight up the stairwell. She began hurling lightning bolts like an angry Zeus. Jack was sort of surprised badguys didn’t just piss themselves when they saw her coming. Action Girl had already opened fire, carefully putting one shot into each forehead of every fly-thing that even moved her way.
“Two minutes and counting.”
Tera came back. “They’re blocking the whole level, but they can’t climb up the ladder. I can puddle you and A.G. up to the next level and come back for Riley.”
Finn disagreed. “No. You take Action Girl’s grapple with you and secure it. I’ll hang onto the ‘gun’ part. I’ll see if I can go straight up the stairwell and through the doorway and up the ladder opening in one shot.”
Jack said, “That’s gonna be a pretty bumpy shot, and you’re gonna expose yourself to a lot of damage.”
Finn insisted, “Sir, there’s also a chance they’ll ignore me since I’m infected, too.”
“One minute, forty seconds and counting.”
Jack didn’t like his choices, but he had no time left. And if this stuff was a virus this infectious, maybe Tera could get infected just from having Finn in her morph for a few seconds. “Fine, we’ll play it your way, major. Tera, do it.”
Once again, he got pulled into that silver morph, along with Hanna. Terawatt zoomed up the stairwell wall, over to the next level’s wall, around a corner, through the doorway, along the wall near the ceiling, and up past the ladder to the next level. Hanna threw the grapple around a ceiling pipe and gave the line a merciless tug.
The line shivered and went taut. Jack heard some banging and smacking, and Finn came flying along as the grapple-gun reeled in the line.
Finn scrambled to his feet. “A little rougher than I expected, sir, but could’ve been worse.”
Jack chose not to say anything about the outside of Finn’s left leg where the fabric had just been ripped off and there was now a road rash the size of a ham. “Let’s move it, troops.” They ran into the emergency tunnel.
“One minute, twenty seconds and counting.”
He muttered, “I am really getting tired of that … Oh, crap.”
The rest of the group was still standing in front of the emergency elevator.
Klar called out, “Sorry sir, but it’s not just the battery. The entire gearbox is locked down. Even with Terawatt, we wouldn’t be able to move it.”
Jack snapped, “Action Girl, take Valentine. Tera, take Redfield and Chambers, get the grapple, then come back for me and Klar. Finn, you’ll use the grapple-gun and have our six. First person to the chopper makes sure it’s starting up as fast as it can and already moving off the ground. Let’s go!”
Hanna wrapped an arm around Jill’s waist, pointed the bat-grapple upward, fired it, and a second later just sailed out of sight. Terawatt went silvery, grabbed the two other S.T.A.R.S., and puddled upward.
“One minute and counting.”
He stood there, looking up the elevator shaft. He wondered if he should start humming the ‘Jeopardy’ music.
Finn stiffly said, “Sir, if we don’t survive this, it’s been an honor and a privilege serving under you.”
Jack replied, “If we don’t both survive this, I am definitely telling your mother on you.”
Finn gave him a weak smile.
Terawatt came zooming down the shaft. She tossed the bat-grapple to Finn and said, “The chopper’s running and already lifting a few inches off the ground.” She grabbed Jack and Klar, and pulled them both into her morph.
“Forty seconds and counting.”
One thing he didn’t complain about was Tera’s sheer speed. She must have flown down the elevator shaft at a hundred miles an hour, and she probably puddled back up at forty miles an hour. She was out of the elevator shaft before the bat-grapple shot up and latched onto a pipe overhead. She puddled all the way across the helipad to the chopper in just a few seconds. She had them climbing into the chopper before Finn was on the tarmac. Fortunately, Eddings was the best chopper pilot Jack had ever run into, and the guy already had the chopper four inches off the ground and ready to move out.
And Finn was fast. Even with his injuries, the guy still ran like a track star. Maybe a track star on amphetamines. Jack slipped into the co-pilot’s seat and said to Eddings, “Let’s move it. This blast is probably going to be big.”
Finn leapt into the back of the chopper, and it took off. Eddings knew his business. He was moving up, but he was also tilting the whole chopper and moving forward as fast as he could, just to get as much separation as possible from the blast. The forest fire was closing in all around them, too. This was not going to be a fun place to get left behind.
The chopper was a good quarter mile from the helipad when Jack heard the explosion behind him. The shockwave wasn’t too bad, because the blast was pretty much straight up from that underground lab. He peeked back and watched as a good-sized fireball erupted upward, turning the garden and mansion and everything else into fiery fragments.
Unfortunately, people were going to have to come back and excavate that disaster area, just to make sure they got everything. He was going to recommend remote-controlled backhoes and Caterpillars. With Abrams tanks arranged around the excavation to blast anything that tried to get out.
“Miller to team. Miller to Terawatt. Can anyone hear me?”
Jack grimaced at the tone of voice. Good news? The signal jammer had been blown to shreds. Bad news? That meant he could hear Team Two was in trouble.
“O’Neill to Miller. We are clear of mansion and heading your way. What’s your situation?”
“Miller. As far as we can tell, we’re in the middle of a hostile takeover. One set of security forces tried to take over William Birkin’s lab and staff, while another set tried to support Birkin. The staff’s been slaughtered, most of the security teams are dead or turned into zombies, Birkin’s been infected, and we’ve stopped him. Twice. Maybe three times. He just keeps mutating and coming back as something even worse. Lupo and Marshall are isolated in an underground lab, with Lupo providing security while Marshall tries to analyze the research and find an antidote for your witness. Carlson and Bailey are on the twenty-eighth floor in the IT level, trying to protect the computers so Acid Burn can do her stuff remotely. I’m in the ground floor lobby, trying to keep the rest of this bullshit from escaping out the front doors into the streets of Davenport, because the cops here have no idea what Umbrella is doing, except the guys I have with me who are trying to keep everything in the building. We’ve got fucking zombies, and zombie-things with ten-foot poison tongues, and mobile mutant plants, and some things I’m pretty sure used to be guard dogs for the building security. And I have no idea where the Birkin-monster is now.”
“O’Neill. We’ll be there ASAP. We’ve got Terawatt, Action Girl, and Klar, plus Officer Valentine. But not Finn. He’s been bitten, so we really need that antidote.”
“Damn it! I mean, yes, sir.”
“Over and out.” Jack disconnected and called George Hammond on the sat phone. He switched the comms so no one else in the chopper would hear him.
“Colonel O’Neill? What in Sam Hill is going on up there? I’ve got complaints from a U.S. Congressman, a state Senator, the mayor of Davenport, lawyers for the Spencer estate, the Davenport police chief, and three different executives from the Umbrella Corporation.”
Jack scowled but stuck to his guns. “Just the usual from our Plan A friends, sir. Only it looks like Umbrella Corp is Plan B. They’re responsible for all the deaths out here, and they’ve been brewing mutagenics and mutagenic viruses, and from the look of some of the bio-weapons, they’ve been in contact with Wacky Maggie. Find every single person who calls you to complain, and mark them as Red Team.”
“What?” Hammond fumed. “U.S. Representative Alan Kort? Iowa state Senator Noah Prescott? Cortland J. Spencer? Mayor William Harmon? Police Chief Brian Irons?”
“Yes, sir,” Jack insisted. “Harmon and Irons may just be getting pressure from Umbrella, but Kort and Prescott are on our little list. As is C.J. Spencer’s son the venture capitalist. They need to be apprehended, and the arresting officers need to be prepared for unusual strength and speed. As for Umbrella, we have evidence that they’re dirty from the top down, starting with their board of directors and their funding sources. And we need support personnel to find Officer Barry Burton’s family, who are being held against their will to force Officer Burton to cooperate with Umbrella operations.”
“Colonel, if you’re wrong about this …”
Jack frowned. “Sir, I’d give anything to be wrong about this. But it’s not just me. It’s Acid Burn, and my IT people, and everything else. Plus we just fought our way down to an evil laboratory out of a James Bond movie and saw what these whackos have been doing. They had prison cells so they could keep people locked up for experimentation! I’ve got witnesses, one of whom is either dying or about to turn into something monstrous. And now they’ve got a building full of badness that my Team Two is trying to stop. We need more National Guard units all around their HQ building, and we need the FBI and the DOJ pulling in everyone connected with Umbrella, and we need the CDC and a possible city-wide quarantine, and we may need to Option Failsafe the entire Quad Cities!”
Hammond said, “You’ll get the CDC. I talked to them after your first report, and they already have a work area going up on the west side of the city. And I will personally call the director of the FBI about this, as well as the DHS contacts in the Department of Justice.”
Jack sighed inwardly. “Thank you, sir. I’ve got Team Two trapped in that building right now, and it looks like they’re in the middle of a Plan A civil war, complete with monsters on both fronts.”
Hammond groaned. “I’ll get you those Guard troops as fast as I can, but we’re over-extended thanks to your forest fire right now. I may have to get creative.”
Jack said, “Creativity can be an awesome thing. Sir. But whoever you get, warn ’em that this stuff is viral and highly infectious. Finn’s been bitten, and we’re worried that there may not be a cure.”
“Understood. Anything else, colonel?”
“That’s it, sir. Over and out.”
“Good luck, colonel.”
He flipped comms back. “Everyone okay? I asked for lots of help and told a nice general that Umbrella Corp is full of naughty, naughty children.” He pretended he didn’t see the looks on Valentine’s and Chambers’ faces that plainly said ‘is this guy serious?’
Eddings responded, “According to your IT team, there’s a helipad on the roof of the Umbrella building, sir.”
Jack warned him, “Do not land on that rooftop, marine. We may have to quarantine that entire building, and there may be threats on the roof which we do not want getting at our transport. Some of us will rappel down from forty feet onto the roof, and some of us you’ll take to forty feet from street level. Then you’ll take the remaining people onboard, including Major Finn, to wherever the CDC has established quarantine protocols. Should be west of downtown. Once you’ve done that, come back to the skyscraper, find the closest helipad, and take up station there until we call you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jack looked back behind him. “Tera, you will take Klar across the helipad and down the side of the building to assist Captain Miller. Your primary mission is keeping this crap from spreading into the streets. Once that is accomplished, you may move to the underground levels and assist Lupo and Marshall. Scott and Action Girl, you will rappel with me onto the roof helipad and we’ll move to support Bailey and Carlson. Walters and Valentine, you will rappel down into the street and move into the ground floor behind Terawatt to support Miller. Remember that Klar is see-through, so do not shoot him. Major Finn, you will make sure everyone else gets into CDC quarantine including yourself. You will explain in as much detail as you can the types of threats that may be involved, and if they don’t believe you, call me ASAP. Do not assume they’re going to believe this crap without some proof.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Cool. Eddings, how long until we’re over that fire zone?”
“About eighteen minutes to a rappelling position, sir. And thirty seconds to two minutes after that for street-level rappel, depending on forces in place and road width.”
* * *
Alex was worried. She was worried about Riley, and she was worried about the op, and she was worried about her friends in the building, and she was super worried about what would happen if they couldn’t stop this nightmare.
The Collective was such a bunch of jerkheads.
Klar’s shoulder pouch leaned her way and he asked, “Can you fly out with me, too?”
She admitted, “Well, it’ll be more of a parachute to the roof, and then a puddle down to street level. The first bit might be sort of a rough landing. But it’ll be okay. Trust me.”
Klar muttered, “Oh, my brain totally trusts you, it’s just the rest of me that’s doing the bawk-bawk-bawk thing.”
If she hadn’t been so worried, she would have giggled.
Jill looked over and told him, “Klar, you can partner me anytime.”
Alex said, “He’s also great on biochemistry, so if you need science help, he’s great there.”
Jill asked, “Are we going to need to get him down to that underground lab where your teammates are?”
Alex shook her head no. “Lieutenant Marshall’s an amazing biophysicist. He can do this, if anyone can.” Okay, that was an exaggeration, because she figured there was stuff Maggie Walsh could do that not even Lieutenant Marshall or Bill Lee or Grover or anyone else she’d ever heard of could do. Not even her dad or her sister. But she wasn’t going to say ‘he isn’t as good as Maggie Walsh but he’s really good’. That just sounded wrong.
So Alex spent the next chunk of time chowing down on energy bars and swilling down energy drinks. Everyone else was eating one or two energy bars and drinking maybe a cup of water. Well, everyone else was concentrating on reloading. Even Klar. He had a huge Ruger Blackhawk that looked like it could shoot through grizzlies, and he had these cool six-bullet reloaders that you could just slap in to reload the whole revolver at once, but you had to load ammo into each reloader first. And he had gone through four of the reloaders, which meant he’d had to shoot a lot of stuff. Maybe he’d impressed Jill a bunch when they were going up to the emergency elevator with Chris and Rebecca.
And she had to consider that she was reloading, too. Just in a different way. She even put a few more energy bars in her fanny pack and made sure all the intel she had stuffed into the pack was in Jack’s hands. Okay, so she had already watched to make sure Jill really did turn over everything Alex had given her, and wasn’t trying to hide anything. It was a relief to know she could trust Jill at least this far.
* * *
The pilot crisply announced, “Moving into position over helipad, sir.” The chopper dived downward while Jack and his group checked their rappelling gear.
Alex asked Klar, “Ready?”
There was a pause, and then Klar said, “Damn, I gotta stop nodding. You’d think I could remember not to.”
She smiled. “I bet Cindy doesn’t mind.”
Klar snorted with amusement, then said, “Let’s do this thing.”
She grabbed him and went silvery, pulling him into her morph. The chopper dived down to forty feet above the helipad and pulled up just right so the chopper just abruptly stopped in mid-air. Man, that pilot was amazing.
She dived out the side, while Jack’s people jumped and rappelled. She spread herself out like a flapjack, which it had turned out was exactly the same as a pancake, just with a different name, which had totally made her feel stupid when she looked it up.
With her weight and Klar’s weight and his gear together, there was no way she could fly. But she could lift maybe 220 pounds with her TK, and she tried to parachute down with the rest of the weight.
They hit with a flump that wasn’t too bad. Well, it wasn’t too bad for her. She hoped Klar was okay with it. Jack and Hanna and Sergeant Scott all hit the helipad about the same time as she did. She puddled off the helipad and over the edge, which was a little tricky because the helipad jutted out about ten feet past the edge of the building, with big metal braces angling from the helipad edge down to the steel structure. She puddled down one of the angled steel pieces, and then straight down the glass and steel wall of the front side.
She knew that Sergeant Walters in the chopper had to pull up the rappelling lines so they didn’t get tangled in anything when the chopper moved over the street and dropped down. So the chopper needed maybe an extra few seconds before it could even start moving. She was already nearly down to the ground floor by then.
The front doors were a row of six fancy glass doors that opened into a little airlock kind of thing before you went through matching glass doors into a huge atrium with plants and low trees and steps and fountains and stuff. The atrium looked like it was big enough for a full-court basketball game if the floor had been leveled out, only it was a huge open area that went up maybe twenty stories with several big, fancy five-story-high chandeliers lighting up the whole place.
Graham was in the airlock area, shooting at stuff in the atrium. There were two dead policemen on the floor of the atrium, near the airlock. There was one police officer near Graham and shooting at stuff through another doorway. Down the steps from the front doors, there were twenty or thirty police officers behind a big barricade in the street, and they were all armed with rifles and big handguns and riot shotguns as they nervously awaited a rush of hideous monstrosities that might try to overrun their town.
And there was stuff in the atrium. A lot of stuff. Maybe thirty zombies, most of which had creepy-long tongues slobbering all over the place, and half of which were still wearing the remains of their security uniforms. Half a dozen zombie dogs that were running around trying not to get shot by Graham’s M203 and the police officer’s shotgun. Several things the size of a lion that looked like walking four-legged plants with massive writhing flower-like things for heads. A couple of the fly-headed zombie-person things. Three horrible-looking flying things like twenty-foot-long houseflies only with skin like a person who had been flayed alive. A massive, writhing mess of seaweed-like vines that had taken over the biggest fountain. And a Tyrant that was just lumbering up the far stairwell from the basement levels. Alex knew that thing wasn’t going to be stopped by heavy security glass. Or much of anything.
And she’d heard Graham’s report to Jack, so she knew there was something even worse loose in the building. What was wrong with these jerkheads? Because it sure looked like their genius plan for destroying the continent while staying safe wasn’t working at all if this virus was mutating Orphans even worse than it was affecting regular people.
This was not going to be fun.
* * *
Jack led his team down the roof stairs, past the now-empty penthouse office level — yeah, he was completely shocked that the penthouse suite types had bailed before they started the big battle — down to the IT level. Umbrella Corp had opted to put all their computing power up near their satellite dishes and internet connectivity. Considering how close Davenport was to the Mississippi, Jack figured having all the IT hardware in a sub-basement was probably a supremely bad idea. They were probably also too busy using the basement levels for ‘subterranean evil lair’ projects. Still, that made it harder for the badguys to cut the connections from the hardware to the satellite dishes. Jack was surprised the badguys hadn’t just cut the power to the IT level. Yet.
Oh, wait, the IT floor was lightless and suspiciously lacking in normal building noises like HVAC motors. Maybe the power had been cut. He still had no trouble following the trail of mangled security men and monsters, along with the creepy horror-movie noises, to the key location. Four zombies and some kind of half-plant half-horse thing were pounding on a steel door that had seen better days.
He clicked his earjack. “O’Neill to Bailey. Come in please.”
“Bailey here, sir. It’s good to hear you.”
He just said, “Sitrep and reqs.”
“We’re not too bad off now that the creatures took out most of the security teams. It sounds like there are three or four zombies still trying to get past our checkpoint, but the door is holding. Power’s been cut, but they apparently forgot this is the IT level. We have more UPSes than most of the rest of the city. We still have connectivity with Acid Burn, who’s uploading files and ransacking boxes as fast as I can get ’em on-line and operative. We have comms with the captain and our 2IC, but we’re severed into three tiny sub-teams with no way to support each other.”
Jack explained, “I’ve brought help, so we’ll remedy that. Give us a couple, and then expect us at your checkpoint. Over and out.”
He backed his team up and said, “Okay. Zombie equals easy target. What about our topiary lion?” He didn’t actually expect Hanna would get his “The Shining” ref, but it had to be done.
Action Girl gave him a big grin. In one hand she held up a bat-grapple. In the other hand, she held a flare.
“Okay, that ought to work, if we can put the fires out afterward …”
* * *
S.T.A.R.S. Officer Jill Valentine had done rappelling before. It wasn’t like she hadn’t learned the ins and outs of it when she was a member of the Army’s Delta Force. But she didn’t usually do it when her helo was squeezing between two buildings with so little clearance that she was constantly expecting the rotor tips to shatter against steel and concrete. Whoever Colonel O’Neill had as a pilot, the guy was damn good.
Still, that meant there was no leeway, so she was rappelling down on top of a police department command vehicle, and the locals were already pissy about S.T.A.R.S. taking over on any case that might make them look really good. Not that S.T.A.R.S. wanted the cases that would make them look good. S.T.A.R.S. wanted the cases that the locals couldn’t handle without losing a shitload of hostages.
Not that her S.T.A.R.S. even existed anymore. Wesker was dead and had been a traitor. Enrico might be dead by now, or perhaps something even worse. The rest of Bravo Team was dead. Alpha Team now consisted of: one chickenshit chopper pilot who had taken off only God knew where; one guy with a bullet wound in his shoulder joint which probably meant he would never be on active duty again; Rebecca, who was injured so badly she couldn’t even limp her way up a ladder; and her.
Jill didn’t know what she would be doing in another week. But she might not even be alive by the end of the day. Not with another building full of monsters. If it hadn’t been for Terawatt, Jill doubted she would have survived her first hour or two at the Spencer Mansion. Instead, she was rappelling into another firefight alongside superheroes and a mysterious black ops agency of the DHS.
And these people were good. Terrifyingly good. She knew how tough Wesker was, and the guy was unbeatable with a knife or a pugil stick, but Finn had obviously taken Wesker in a knife fight to the death. Terawatt looked pretty much unstoppable. The invisible guy was a lot more than just a guy you couldn’t see. And then there was the girl. Jill’s whole team had gotten a briefing on Action Girl after the ‘Big Apple Battle’ that had netted Poison Ivy and Bane, but a few seconds of action footage didn’t capture Action Girl in the flesh. If anyone could take on this building full of death, it was this team.
She could hear the gunshots from the atrium, even while rappelling down underneath a helo. That wasn’t a good sign.
She landed with a thump on top of the command vehicle, while Sergeant Walters landed hard on its hood. Someone was going to be upset about that dent. Someone was storming out of the vehicle to complain, even as the chopper lifted off again.
And … Oh, hell, it was Lieutenant Dan Andrews. She’d run into him before. He was one of Chief Irons’ cronies, and a first-class jerkoff who had gotten promoted over better cops.
“Valentine! I should’ve known it would be you dicks causing trouble here! Where’s your buddies Wesker and Marini?”
She icily snapped, “Wesker? Dead. Marini? Dying. They may not be able to save him in time. Rest of Bravo Team? Extremely dead, and in little teeny pieces in a couple cases.”
He blanched. “Oh, Jeez. I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.” He pulled himself together and said, “The chief’s still ordering us back. He’s gotten word that Umbrella has all this under control.”
She just stared at him for a second. “Then maybe you should go right up there to the atrium in person and tell your people it’s perfectly safe to withdraw, and the things that are eating them are not a problem.”
Andrews glanced up at toward the atrium. The raw fear on his face was all Jill needed to see. The little bastard knew what was going on. He knew his own people were dying, or being mutated into things. He knew the monsters in that building were about to escape and infect all of the Quad Cities. He knew it, and he was going to let it happen. He knew it, and that fat bastard Irons knew it.
She thought about Wesker’s betrayal, and Barry’s death, and Chris’s injury, and the Bravo Team members who had been ripped apart by monsters or turned into a zombie. And Enrico, who might die in the next few hours, or else might transform into his worst nightmare. She wanted to rip Andrews’ balls off.
She leapt off the roof of the vehicle and landed right in front of him. “You little shit, you know. How can you do this to your own men?” She pulled out her automatic and loudly commanded, “Lieutenant Daniel Andrews! You are under arrest for aiding and abetting a felony, accessory to multiple felonies, accessory to murder one, and betraying your own goddamn men!” She pressed the muzzle of her firearm against his left nostril so he could smell she’d been firing it a lot, and very recently. Then she hissed, “And if you give me any trouble, I will first shoot you in the nuts. And then I’ll get really unpleasant!”
Andrews’ knees started to give out on him, but Sergeant Walters was the kind of guy who could intimidate even your average drill instructor. He grabbed Andrews by the shirtfront in one massive hand and hauled him upright. He growled, “Now you can either confess to these men right now, or I will haul you with us through those doors and you can face the things inside there. And let me tell you, they’re not out of your worst nightmares. They’re fifty times worse.”
Andrews looked at the atrium, and up into the fiercely unyielding eyes of Sergeant Walters. He began to cry. “I had to! You don’t understand, Irons told me I had to, or they’d disappear me and use me in their experiments! I HAD to!” Walters just about threw Andrews at a couple of furious police officers.
Jill snapped, “Handcuff him, and search him for anything. Handcuff keys, thumb drives, business cards, cellphones … You’d better do a cavity search on him, too.” Walters snorted with amusement at that. She continued, “Everyone stay behind this barrier, and call for more backup to surround any other exit point they might have, which could include windows and the city storm drains. We should have the National Guard here soon, but for right now we’re all that stands between the citizens of the Quad Cities and a literal fate worse than death. The sergeant and I are going in there to provide immediate backup. These things are nasty, but they’re not indestructible. Get your best shots up front and your snipers in position on the surrounding buildings, and concentrate on headshots. There won’t be any mistaking one of us for one of those things, because there’s nothing remotely human about them anymore.”
Walters just touched his earjack and said loudly enough for everyone around to hear, “Colonel, we just got testimony that Police Chief Irons is dirty, too, and most of his inner circle are probably the same. We’ll need FBI and DOJ to round them up before they can make things worse around here.”
Jill made sure her weapons were ready, and she headed up the steps to the entry doors. Walters was right at her side.
She told him, “Thanks, but I really wanted to shoot Andrews in the nuts.”