City Of The Dead

PROLOGUE

Raccoon Times, August 26,1998

MAYOR ANNOUNCES ‘KEEP CITY SAFE’ PLAN

RACCOON CITY—On the front steps of City Hall, Mayor Harris announced in a press conference yesterday afternoon that the City Council will be hiring at least ten new police officers to join the Raccoon police, in response to the continued suspension of the Special Tactics and Rescue Squad (S.T.A.R.S.), in effect since the brutal murders that plagued Raccoon earlier this summer. Joined by Police Chief Brian Irons and all of Raccoon’s Council members, Harris assured the gathered citizens and reporters that Raccoon City will once again be a safe community in which to live and work, and that the investigation into the eleven “cannibal” murders and three fatal wild-animal attacks is far from closed. “Just because no one else has been attacked in the last month doesn’t mean that the elected officials of this city can relax,” Harris stated. “The good people of Raccoon deserve to have confidence in their police force and to be secure in the knowledge that their political representatives are doing everything possible to ensure each citizen’s safety. As many of you know, the S.T.A.R.S.’s suspension is likely to become permanent. That unit’s gross mishandling of the murder investigations and its subsequent disappearance from Raccoon City suggests that they don’t care about this community—but I want to assure you that we care, that myself, Chief Irons, and the men and women you see here today want nothing more than to make Raccoon a place in which our children can grow up without fear.”

Harris went on to detail a three-point plan designed to bolster public confidence and keep Raccoon citizens from falling victim to violence. Besides hiring between ten and twelve new police officers, the citywide curfew will remain in place through at least September, and Chief Irons will personally head a task force of several officers and detectives to continue searching for the killers who took the lives of eleven people between May and July of this year------

Cityside, September 4,1998

RENOVATION OP UMBRELLA COMPLEX PLANNED

RACCOON CITY— The Umbrella chemical plant just south of downtown Raccoon is due for major construction efforts, slated to begin next Monday. This will be the third such structural renovation in the last year for the thriving pharmaceutical company. According to Umbrella spokesperson Amanda Whitney, two of the laboratories inside the main plant will be fitted with several million dollars’ worth of new equipment designed for vaccine synthesis, and the building itself will receive a state-of-the-art security system. In addition, all of the connected office buildings will be upgrading computers over the next several weeks. But will this be a problem for downtown traffic? Said Whitney, “With the Raccoon police building just finishing up yet another one of their renovations, we know that local commuters are getting pretty tired of blocked streets. We’re going to do our best not to get in the way of downtown traffic; most of the construction is internal, and the rest we’ll be doing after business hours.” The courtyard in front of the RPD building, our readers may remember, was recently repaved and landscaped after several mysterious cracks appeared in the cement and topsoil; traffic had to be diverted around two blocks of Oak Street for six days. When asked why so many “overhauls” as of late, Whitney replied, “Umbrella has stayed ahead of the competition for as long as it has by keeping up with current technology. It’s going to be a busy couple of months, but I think it will be well worth the effort when we’re finally through. . . .”

.Raccoon Weekly Editorial, September 17, 1998 IRONS TO RUN?

RACCOON CITY— Mayor Harris may be in for a rough race next spring. Weekly sources inside the RPD are saying that Brian Irons, chief of police for the last four-and-a-half years, may be running for the city’s top office in the next election, facing off against the popular and as yet unopposed Devlin Harris, already in office for three consecutive terms. Although Irons would not confirm his possible entry into the political arena, the onetime S.T.A.R.S. member also refused to deny the rumor.

With his approval rating at an all-time high ever since the cessation of this summer’s savage murders (as yet unsolved) and the planned expansion of the RPD, Chief Irons may indeed be the man to knock Harris out of City Hall; the question is, will voters be able to forget Irons’s alleged involvement in the 1994 Cider District land scam? Or his rather expensive tastes In art and interior design, which have turned parts of the RPD building into something more like a museum than a working office? Assuming he means to throw his hat into the ring, this reporter—for one—will be looking forward to examining Irons’s financial records. . ..

Baocoan Times, September 22,1998

TEENAGER ATTACKED IN CITY PARK

RACCOON CITY—At, approximately 6:30 P.M. last night, fourteen-year-old Shanna Williamson was accosted by a mysterious stranger in downtown’s Birch Street Park on the way home from softball practice. The man came out from behind a row of hedges at the south end of the park and knocked Ms. Williamson off of her bicycle before attempting to grab her. The teen managed to get away with onty a few scratches, running to the nearby residence of Tom and Clara Atkins; Mrs. Atkins alerted the authorities, who conducted a thorough search of the park but found no sign of the attacker. According to the girl (through a police statement issued earlier this morning), the man appeared to be a transient; his clothes and hair were dirty, and she described a bad odor coming from him, a “smell like rotten fruit.”

She also said that he seemed drunk, staggering and falling after her as she ran. With the plague of cannibalistic murders from May to July still unsolved, the RPD is taking Ms. Williamson’s encounter very seriously; the assailant bears a striking resemblance to eyewitness reports of the “gang” members spotted in Victory Park last June. Mayor Harris has called a press conference for later today, and Mice Chief Brian Irons has stated already that with the first of the newly hired police officers expected next week, regular patrols will extend their routes to include the downtown park blocks. . . .

ORE

SEPfEfflBER.26, 1998

WITH THE GUYS WAITING OUTSIDE IN BARry’s truck, Jill did her best to hurry. It wasn’t easy; the house had been tossed since the last time she’d been there, the floors were strewn with books and papers, and it was too dark to navigate around the debris easily. That her small home had been violated was upsetting, though not much of a surprise. She figured she should just be thankful that she wasn’t really the sentimental type—and that the intruders hadn’t managed to find her passport.

She grabbed random handfuls of clean socks and underwear in the cramped darkness of the bedroom and stuffed them deep into her weathered backpack, wishing she could turn on the lights. Packing a bag in the dark was harder than it sounded, would be even if one’s house hadn’t been trashed; but she knew they couldn’t afford to take any chances. It was unlikely that Umbrella still had all of their houses staked out, but if there was anyone watching, a light in the window could draw fire.

At least you’re getting out. No more hiding. There was that much. They were headed for foreign soil, to storm enemy headquarters and very likely get killed in the process, but at least she wouldn’t have to hang out in Raccoon anymore. And from what she’d read in the papers lately, maybe that was for the best. Two attacks in the last week ... Chris and Barry were skeptical about the danger, even knowing what the T-Virus did to people—Barry thought it was some kind of a PR stunt, that Umbrella would “rescue” Raccoon before anyone got hurt. Chris agreed, insisting that Umbrella wouldn’t crap in their own back yard, so to speak, what with the Spencer estate disaster so recent. But Jill wasn’t prepared to assume anything; Umbrel-la had already proven that they couldn’t contain their research. And with what Rebecca and David Trapp’s team had faced in Maine ...

Now wasn’t the time to think about that—they had a plane to catch. Jill scooped the flashlight off the dresser and was about to head for the living room when she remembered that she only had one bra with her. Scowling, she turned back to the open drawers and started to dig. She had enough clothing already, chosen from what Brad had left behind when he’d fled Raccoon; she and the guys had been holed up in his vacant house for several weeks, ever since Umbrella had hit Barry’s house, and although none of Brad’s stuff fit Chris’s tall frame or Barry’s massive one, she’d been able to make do. Lingerie, however, wasn’t something the S.T.A.R.S. pilot had stocked up on. She didn’t particularly want to hop off the plane in Austria and have to go bra shopping.

“Vanity, thy name is underwire,” she muttered softly, pawing through the rumpled heap. She found the elusive article only after she’d gone through the drawer twice, and crammed it into the bag as she jogged toward the small front room of the rented house. It was only the second time she’d been there since they’d gone into hiding; she had the feeling she might not be coming back for a while. There was a picture of her father on one of the bookshelves that she wanted to take.

Stepping nimbly through the dark clutter, she hooded the flashlight with one hand and trained the narrow beam at the corner where the shelf had been. The Umbrella team had knocked the whole thing over but apparently hadn’t bothered to go through the books themselves. God only knew what they’d been looking for in the first place. Clues as to where the renegade S.T.A.R.S. were hiding, probably; after the attack at Barry’s house and the disastrous mission at Caliban Cove, she no longer had any illusions about Umbrella simply ignoring them.

Jill spotted the book she wanted, a rather lurid-looking paperback entitled Prison Life; her father would have laughed. She picked it up and rifled through the pages, stopping when the light fell across Dick Valentine’s crooked grin. He’d sent the picture along with one of his more recent letters, and she’d tucked it into the book so that she wouldn’t lose it. Hiding important things was a habit she’d gotten into young, one that had just paid off yet again. She let the book drop, the need to hurry suddenly forgotten as she gazed down at the photo. A faint smile played across her lips. He was probably the only man she knew of who looked good in the bright orange jumpsuit of a maximum security pen. For just a moment, she wondered what he’d think of her current predicament; in a roundabout way, he was responsible, at least for her getting involved with the S.T.A.R.S. in the first place. After he’d been sent up, he’d urged

her to get out of the business, even saying that he’d been wrong to train her as a thief......so I take a

legit job, actually working for society instead of against it—and people in Raccoon start dying. The S.T.A.R.S. uncover a conspiracy to create bioweapons with a virus that turns living things into monsters. Obviously nobody believes us, the S. T.A.R.S. that can’t be bought by Umbrella are either discredited or eliminated. So we go underground, try to dig up proof and come up empty-handed as Umbrella contin-ues to screw around with their dangerous research and more good people are killed. Now we’re off on what will probably be a suicide mission to Europe to see if we can infiltrate the headquarters of a multibillion-dollar cor-poration and stop them from destroying the goddamn planet. What would you think, I wonder? Assuming you’d even believe such a fantastic tale, what would you think?

“You’d be proud of me, Dick,” she whispered, scarcely aware that she’d spoken aloud—and not at all sure if it was the truth. Her father wanted to see her in a less perilous line of work, and compared to what she and the other ex-S.T.A.R.S. were currently up against, burglary was about as dangerous as ac-counting.

After a long moment, she carefully placed the photo into a pocket of the backpack and looked around at the broken remnants of her small home, still thinking about her father and what he’d say about the strange path her life had taken; if things went well, maybe she’d be able to ask him in person. Rebecca Chambers and the other survivors of the Maine mission were still in hiding, quietly networking through the S.T.A.R.S. organization for support and waiting to hear what she and Chris and Barry could tell them about Umbrella’s headquarters. The official HQ was in Austria, although they all suspected that the minds behind the T-Virus had their own secret complex elsewhere—

• which you won’t find out if you don’t get your ass in gear; the guys are gonna think you stopped to take a nap.

Jill shouldered the bag and took a final look around the room before moving toward the back door, through the kitchen. There was a lingering scent of rotten fruit in the dark air, coming from a bowl of apples and pears on top of the refrigerator that had long since disintegrated into mush. Even though she knew better, the smell caused a chill to run up her spine; she hurried for the closed door, trying to block out the sudden vivid flashes of memory of what they’d found at the Spencer estate .. .

... rotting as they walked, reaching out with wet and withered fingers, faces melting with pus and de-cay—

“Jill?”

She barely contained a cry of surprise at the sound of Chris’s soft voice just outside. The door opened, Chris silhouetted against the darkness by a distant streetlight.

“Yeah, right here,” she said, stepping forward. “Sorry it took me so long. Umbrella’s been through here with a bulldozer.”

Even in the bare light she could see the half grin on his boyish face. “We were starting to think the zom-bies got ya,” he said, and although his tone was light, she could hear real concern beneath it.

Jill knew that he was trying to ease the tension but couldn’t find it in herself to smile back. Too many people had died because of what Umbrella had un-leashed in the woods outside of town; if the spill had happened closer to Raccoon ...

“Not funny,” she said softly.

Chris’s grin faded. “I know. You ready?”

Jill nodded, although she didn’t feel particularly ready for what lay ahead. Then again, she hadn’t felt ready for what they were leaving behind, either. In a matter of weeks, her concept of reality had undergone a massive shift, turning nightmares into the common-place.

Evil corporations, mad scientists, killer viruses. And the walking dead. ..

“Yeah,” she said finally. “I’m ready.”

Together, they stepped outside. As Jill closed the door behind them, she was suddenly struck by a strange and ominous certainty—that she would never set foot in the house again, that the three of them

wouldn’t be coming back to Raccoon City at all......but not because anything happens to us.

Some-thing will happen, but not to us.

Frowning, hand on the doorknob, she hesitated for a moment and tried to make sense of the bizarre thought. If they survived the recon, if they were successful in their fight against Umbrella, why wouldn’t they come back to their homes? She didn’t know, but the feeling was uncomfortably strong. Something bad was going to happen, something—

“Hey, you okay?”

Jill looked up at Chris, saw the same concern on his youthful face that she’d noticed earlier. They’d gotten pretty close in the last few weeks, although she suspected that Chris might like to get a bit closer. Oh, and you don’t?

The sense of impending unpleasantness was already fading, other confusions and uncertainties stepping in to take its place. Jill shook herself mentally and nodded at Chris, letting the feelings go. The flight to New York wasn’t going to wait for her to indulge in self-analysis—or to worry about things that she couldn’t control, imagined or otherwise.

Still, that feeling . . .

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said, and meant it.

They moved out into the night, leaving the house dark behind them, as lonely and silent as a tomb.

Two

OcfoBER.3, 1998

TWILIGHT HAD SETTLED ACROSS THE MOUNtains, painting the jagged horizon in shades of purple dusk. The winding blacktop snaked through the gath-ering darkness, surrounded by shadowed hills that towered into the cloudless sky, stretching toward the first faint glimmerings of starlight.

Leon might have appreciated the majestic view a bit more if he wasn’t so goddamn late. He’d make it to his shift on time, sure, but he’d been hoping to get settled into the new apartment first, take a shower, get something to eat; as it was, he might have time to hit a drive-through on his way to the station. Changing into his uniform back at the last rest stop had saved him a couple of minutes, but basically he was screwed. Way to go, Officer Kennedy. First day on the job and you’ll be picking cheeseburger out of your teeth during roll call. Very professional.

His shift started at nine and it was already just after eight; Leon let his boot ride a little heavier on the gas, even as his Jeep whipped past a sign that told him he was half an hour away from Raccoon City. At least the road was clear; except for a couple of semis, he hadn’t seen anyone for what felt like hours. A nice change, considering the traffic tie-up just outside of New York that had cost him most of the afternoon. He’d actu-ally tried to call the night before to leave a message with the desk sergeant that he

might be late, but there’d been something wrong with the connection. Nothing but a busy signal.

What little furniture he had was already moved into a studio apartment in the working-class but basically decent Trask district of Raccoon City, there was a nice park not two blocks away, and it was only a five-minute drive to the station. No more gridlock, no more overcrowded slums or random acts of brutality. Assuming he could survive the embarrassment of showing up to his first shift as a full-blown officer of the law without having unpacked his bags, he was looking forward to living in the peaceful community. Raccoon is about as far removed from the Big Apple as you can get, thank you very much—well, except for the last few months. Those murders . . .

In spite of himself, he felt a tiny thrill at the thought. What had happened in Raccoon was horri-ble, of course, sickening—but the perps had never been caught and the investigation was really just getting started. And if Irons liked him, liked him as much as the heads of the academy had liked him, maybe Leon would get a chance to work on the case. Word had it that Chief Irons was kind of a prick, but Leon knew his training had been top-notch—even a prick would have to be a little impressed. He’d graduated in the top tenth, after all. And it wasn’t like he was a stranger to Raccoon City, since he’d spent most of his summers there as a kid, when his grand-parents were still alive. Back then, the RPD building had been a library and Umbrella was still several years away from turning the town into an actual city, but in most ways it was still the same quiet place he remembered from his childhood. Once the cannibal killers were finally put away, Raccoon would be ideal again—beautiful, clean, a white-collar community nestled in the mountains like a secret paradise. So I get settled in and a week or two passes, and Irons notices how well written my reports are, or sees how good I am on the target range. He asks me to take a look at the case files, just to familiarize myself with the details so I can do some footwork—and I see something that no one else has seen. A pattern, maybe, or a motive on more than one of the victims ... maybe I run across a witness report that reads wrong. No one else has caught it because they’ve lived with it for too long, and this rookie cop just comes along and cracks the case, not a month out of the academy and I—

Something ran in front of the Jeep.

“Jesus!”

Leon hit the brake and swerved, shocked out of his daydream as he struggled for control of the vehicle. The brakes locked and there was a screech of rubber that sounded like a scream. The Jeep half-turned to face the darkening trees that lined the road—and came to a stop on the shoulder, dying after a final lurching jolt.

Heart pounding and stomach in knots, Leon opened the window and craned his neck, scanning the shadows for the animal that had darted across the highway. He hadn’t hit it, but it had been close. Some kind of a dog, he didn’t get a clear look—a big one, anyway, a shepherd or maybe an oversized Dober-man, but it had looked wrong somehow. He’d only seen it for a split-second, a flash of glowing red eyes and lean, wolfish body. And there was something else, it had seemed kind of...

... slimy? No, trick of the light, or you were just so shit-scared that you saw it wrong. You’re okay and you didn’t hit it, that’s the important thing. “Jesus,” he said again, softer this time, feeling both relieved and suddenly quite angry as the adrenaline leaked out of his system. People who let their dogs run loose were idiots—claiming they wanted their pets to be free and then acting surprised when Fido got squashed by a car.

The Jeep had come to a stop just a few feet away from a road sign that read RACCOON CITY 10; he could just make out the lettering in the growing shadows. Leon glanced at his watch; he still had almost

half an hour to get to the station, plenty of time—but for some reason, he simply sat for a moment, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. Cool pine-scented air breezed across his face; the deserted stretch of road seeming almost unnaturally quiet—as if the landscape was holding its breath, waiting. Now that his heart had resumed a more normal pace, he was surprised to find that he still felt unsettled, even anxious.

The murders in Raccoon. Weren’t a few of those people killed by animal attack? Wild dogs, or some-thing? Maybe that wasn’t someone’s pet dog at all. A disturbing thought—and even more disturbing was the sudden feeling he had that the dog was still close by, maybe watching him from the darkness in the trees.

Welcome to Raccoon City, Officer Kennedy. Watch out for things that may be watching you. . . .

“Don’t be an asshole,” Leon mumbled to himself, and felt a little better at the sound of his no-nonsense adult tone of voice. He often wondered if he would ever outgrow his imagination.

Daydreaming like a kid about catching bad guys, then inventing killer dog-monsters lurking in the woods—let’s try to act our age, eh, Leon? You’re a cop, for God’s sake, a grownup....

He started the engine and backed onto the road, ignoring the strange sense of unease that had some-how managed to take hold of him in spite of his mind’s chiding voice. He had a new job and a nice apartment in a nice little up-and-coming city; he was competent, bright, and decent-looking; as long as he kept his creativity glands in check, everything would be fine.

“And I’m on my way,” he said to himself, forcing a grin that felt out of place but suddenly necessary to his peace of mind. He was on his way to Raccoon City, to a promising new life—there was nothing to be uneasy about, nothing at all.. ..

Claire was exhausted, both physically and emotion-ally, and the fact that her butt had been aching for the last couple of hours wasn’t helping matters much. The thrum of the Harley’s engine seemed to have settled deep into her bones, a physical counterpoint to the butterflies in her stomach—and of course, the worst of it seemed to emanate from her extremely sore and overheated ass. Plus, it was getting dark and like an idiot she wasn’t wearing her leathers; Chris would be totally pissed.

He’s going to yell his head off, and I won’t even care. God, Chris, please be there to scream at me for being such an idiot. . . .

The Harley buzzed along the dark road, the sound of the engine echoing back at her from the sloping hills and shadow-laden trees. She took the corners carefully, very aware of how deserted the winding highway was; if she took a spill, it could be a long time before anyone happened by.

Like it would matter. Take a spill without your gear on, they’ll be scraping pieces of you off the asphalt with a squeegee.

It was stupid, she knew it was stupid to have left in such a godawful hurry that she couldn’t be bothered to suit up—but something had happened to Chris. Hell, something may have happened to the entire city. Over the past couple of weeks, the growing suspicion that her brother was in trouble had become a cer-tainty—and the calls she’d made that morning had cinched it for her.

Nobody home. Nobody home anywhere. Like Rac-coon moved and forgot to leave a forwarding address. It was definitely creepy, although she could give a shit about Raccoon. What mattered was that Chris was there, and if something bad had happened to him—

She couldn’t, wouldn’t think that way. Chris was all she had left. Their father had been killed on his construction job when they were both still kids, and when their mother had died in a car crash three years ago, Chris had done his best to take on a parental role. Even though he was only a few years older, he’d helped her pick a college, find a decent therapist—he even sent her a little money each month beyond what the insurance policies paid out, what he called “walk-ing around cash.” And on top of all that, he called her every couple of weeks like clockwork.

Except he hadn’t called at all in the last month and a half, and hadn’t returned any of her calls. She’d tried to convince herself that she was silly to worry—maybe he’d finally met a girl, or something had turned up on the S.T.A.R. S. suspension thing, whatever that was all about. But after three unanswered letters and days of waiting for the phone to ring, she’d finally put in a call to the RPD that very afternoon, hoping against hope that someone there might know what was going on. She’d gotten a busy signal. Sitting in her dorm room, listening to that soulless mechanical bleat, she’d started to worry for real. Even a small city like Raccoon had a voice-mail answering system set up to field calls. The rational part of her mind told her not to panic, that a downed line was nothing to get freaky about—but already, her emo-tional self was screaming foul. She’d gone through her address book with trembling hands, dialing the few numbers she had for friends of his, people or places he’d told her to call if there was ever an emergency and he wasn’t at home—Barry Burton, Emmy’s Din-er, some cop she’d never met named David Ford. She even tried Billy Rabbitson’s number, although Chris had told her that he’d disappeared a few months earlier. And with the exception of an overloaded answering machine at David Ford’s house, she’d gotten nothing but busy signals.

By the time she’d hung up, the worry had trans-formed into something close to panic. The trip to Raccoon City was only about six-and-a-half hours from the university. Claire’s roommate had borrowed her riding gear to go out with her new biker boyfriend, but Claire had an extra helmet—and with that feeling that was not quite panic spinning through her fright-ened thoughts, she had simply grabbed the helmet and gone.

Stupid, maybe. Impulsive, definitely. And if Chris is okay, we can laugh about how ridiculously paranoid I am ‘til the cows come home. But until I find out what’s going on, I won’t know a moment’s peace.

The last of the day’s light was draining from the strip of cloudless sky above, although a waxing, nearly full moon and the Softail’s headlight gave her enough light to see by—more than enough to see the small sign ahead on her left: RACCOON CITY 10.

Telling herself that Chris was fine, that if anything weird had happened in Raccoon, somebody would have checked it out by now, Claire forced her concen-tration back to handling the heavy bike. It would be full dark soon, but she’d be in Raccoon before it was too dark to ride safely.

Whether or not Raccoon City would be safe, she’d find out soon enough.

THREE

LEON REACHED THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN with twenty minutes to spare, but decided that a hot dinner was going to have to wait. From his previous visits to the station, he knew that there were a couple of vending machines he could hit up for something to tide him over. The thought of stale candy and peanuts didn’t sit well on his growling stomach, but it was his own damned fault for not taking New York traffic into account.

The drive into the city proper did a lot to soothe his still rattled nerves; he passed the few small farms

that lay east of town, the fairgrounds and storage sheds, and finally the truck stop that marked the separation of rural Raccoon from urban. Something about know-ing that he was going to be patrolling those back roads before long, keeping them safe, gave him a surprising sense of well-being and not a little pride. The early autumn air from the open window was pleasantly brisk, and the rising moon bathed everything he saw in a silvery glow. He wasn’t going to be late after all; within the hour, he’d officially become one of Rac-coon’s finest.

As Leon turned the Jeep down Bybee, heading for one of the main north-south streets that would take him to the RPD building, he got his first hint that something was very wrong. In the first few blocks, he was mildly surprised; by the fifth, he found himself slipping toward a state of shock. It wasn’t just strange, it was ... well, it was impossible.

Bybee was the first real city street, coming from the east, where buildings outnumbered empty lots.

There were several espresso bars and cheap diners, as well as a bargain movie theater that never seemed to run anything but horror movies and sexy comedies—and was therefore the most popular hangout for the youth of Raccoon. There were even a few genetically hip taverns that served microbrew and hot rum drinks for the winter college-student ski crowd. At quarter to nine on a Saturday night, Bybee should have been teeming with life.

But of the mostly single or two-story brick shops and restaurants that lined the street, Leon saw that almost all were dark—and in the few that still boasted some light, it didn’t look like there was anyone inside. There were plenty of cars parked along the narrow street, and yet not one person that he could see; Bybee, the hangout for cruising teens and college students, was totally deserted.

Where the hell is everybody?

His mind grasped for answers as he crept down the silent street, searching desperately for a reason—and for some way to alleviate the sweaty anxiety that had once again settled over him. Maybe there was some kind of an event going on, a church function, like a spaghetti feed. Or perhaps Raccoon had decided to take up Oktoberfest and tonight was the big kickoff. Yeah, but everybody at the same time? It’d have to be one hell of a party.

It was then that Leon realized he also hadn’t seen a single car on the road since he’d had the scare with the dog ten miles out of town. Not one. And with that thoroughly unsettling realization came the next—less dramatic, but distinctly more immediate.

Something smelled bad. In fact, something smelled like shit.

Jeez, dead skunk. And apparently it threw up on itself before dying.

He’d already slowed the Jeep to a crawl and had planned to take a left on Powell, just a block ahead—but that horrible smell and the total absence of life were giving him a serious case of the creeps. Maybe he should stop and check things out, look around for some sign of—

“Oh, hey_”

Leon grinned, relief flooding through his confusion. There were a couple of people standing at the corner, practically right in front of him; the streetlight was out on their side, but he could see them in silhouette clear enough—a couple, a woman in a skirt and a big man wearing work boots. As he got closer he could see by the way they moved, heading south on Powell, that they had to be monumentally drunk. Both of them staggered into the shadows cast by an office supply store and out of sight; but he

was going in that direction anyway—no harm in stopping to ask what was going on, was there?

Must’ve come out of O’Kelly’s. A pint or two too many, but as long as they’re not driving anywhere, fine by me. Am I going to feel stupid when they tell me that tonight’s the big free concert or the all-you-can-eat town barbecue. . . .

Almost giddy with relief, Leon turned the corner and squinted into the heavy shadows, looking for the pair. He didn’t see them, but there was an alley tucked between the supply store and a jewelry shop. Maybe his two drunk friends had ducked in for a bathroom break or something even less legal—

“Shit!”

Leon slammed on the brake as a half-dozen dark shapes fluttered up from the street, caught in the Jeep’s headlights like giant whirling leaves. Startled, it took him a second to realize he was seeing birds; they didn’t cry out, although he was close enough to hear the brushing of dry wings as they took to the air. Crows, enjoying a late night feast of roadkill, what looked like—

Oh, my God.

There was a human body in the middle of the road, twenty feet in front of the Jeep. Face down, but it looked like a woman—and judging from the liquid red stains that covered most of the once-white blouse, it wasn’t some beer-happy college student who’d decided to take a nap in the wrong place. Hit-and-run. Some bastard hit her and then drove away, Jesus what a mess—

Leon killed the engine and was half out the door before his racing thoughts caught him up. He hesi-tated, one foot on the asphalt, the stench of death heavy in the cool still air. His mind had latched on to an idea that he didn’t want to consider, but knew he had better; this wasn’t some training exercise, this was his life.

What if it’s not a hit-and-run? What if there’s no one around because some psycho gunman decided on a little target practice? Everyone could be inside, laying low—maybe the RPD’s on the way, and maybe those drunks weren ‘t drunk, they could’ve been shot and were trying to get help. . . .

He leaned back into the Jeep and fumbled under the passenger seat for his graduation gift, a Desert Eagle .50AE Magnum with a custom ten-inch barrel, Israeli export. His father and uncle—both cops—had gone in together on it. Not standard issue for the RPD, in fact much more powerful; as Leon grabbed a clip from the glovebox and slapped it in, feeling the solid weight of the weapon in his slightly unsteady hands, he decided it was the best present he’d ever received. He stuffed two more clips into a belt pouch on general principle; each only held six rounds. Pointing the loaded Magnum at the ground, he stepped out of the Jeep and took a quick look at his surroundings. He wasn’t all that familiar with Rac-coon at night, but he knew that it shouldn’t be as dark as it was. Several of the streetlights farther along Powell were either shot out or simply not on, and the shadows past the blood-soaked body were thick; if not for the Jeep’s headlights, he wouldn’t have even been able to see that.

He edged forward, feeling horribly exposed as he left the relative cover of the Jeep, but aware that she could still be alive; it didn’t seem likely, but he had to at least check.

A few steps closer, and he could see that it was definitely a young woman. Lank red hair obscured the face, but the clothes were right, denim pedal-pushers and flats. The wounds were mostly hidden by the bloody shirt, but there seemed to be dozens—ragged holes in the wet cloth exposed torn, glistening flesh and the crimson of muscle beneath.

Swallowing heavily, Leon quickly switched the gun to his left hand and crouched down next to her. The cool, clammy skin yielded easily beneath his finger-tips as he touched her throat, pressing his first two fingers against the carotid. A few seconds passed, seconds that made him feel horribly young and afraid as he tried to remember the procedure for CPR and prayed, at the same time, that he would feel a pulse. Five compressions, two short breaths, keep my el-bows locked and come on please don’t be dead—

He couldn’t find it, and didn’t want to wait one more second. He tucked the Magnum into his belt and grabbed her shoulders to turn her over, to check for breathing—but as he started to lift, he saw some-thing that made him lay her down again, his heart a twisting knot in his chest.

The victim’s shirt had pulled out of her pants enough for him to see that her spine and part of her ribcage were exposed, the still-fleshy knobs of verte-brae shining and red, the narrow, curving ribs disap-pearing into masses of shredded tissue. It was like she’d been knocked down and . . . chewed on. Infor-mation that Leon had disregarded as unimportant suddenly registered, and even as the few facts he had clicked into place, he felt the first inky tendrils of real fear slither into his mind.

The crows couldn’t have done this, would’ve taken them hours, and who the hell ever heard of crows flocking after dark to eat? And that shit-smell, it’s not coming from her, she died recently, and—

Cannibal. Murders.

No. No way. For that to happen, for a person to have been killed and then partially—devoured on a city street with no one to stop it—

• and with enough time to pass for scavengers to come—for that to happen, the killers would have had to slaughter most if not all of the population. Doesn’t seem likely? Fine. Then what’s that smell? And where is everyone?

Behind Leon, there was a low, soft groan. A shuf-fling footstep, and another sound. A wet sound. It took him barely a second to stand and turn, hand instinctively snatching for the Magnum. It was the couple, the drunks, staggering toward him, and they’d been joined by a third, a beefy-looking guy with—

• with blood all over his shirt. And his hands. And dripping out of his mouth, a rubbery red mouth set into his pasty, rotting face like an open sore. The other man, the big man with the work boots and suspenders, looked much the same—and the vee of the blond woman’s pink blouse revealed cleavage that was spotted with darkness, with what appeared to be mold.

The trio stumbled toward him, past his Jeep, rais-ing pale hands as they emitted moaning, hungry wails. Some dark fluid gurgled out of the beefy man’s nose and ran across his moving lips, and Leon was over-whelmed by the understanding that the terrible, shitty smell was decayed flesh, and it was coming from them—

• and there was another one, stepping out from a door stoop across the street, a young woman in a stained T-shirt, hair tied back from a slack and mindless face.

A groan from behind him. Leon shot a look over his shoulder and saw a youth with dark hair and rotting arms shamble out from the sidewalk darkness of an awning’s shadow.

Leon raised the Magnum and aimed at the closest, the man with suspenders, while his instincts screamed at him to run. He was terrified, but his trained logic continued to insist that there was an explanation for

what he was seeing, that he was not looking at the walking dead.

Control, procedure, you’re a cop—

“All right! That’s far enough! Don’t move!” His voice was strong, commanding and authorita-tive, and he was wearing his uniform, and God, why wouldn’t they stop? The man in suspenders moaned again, blind to the weapon pointed at his chest and still flanked by the others, now less than ten feet away. “Don’t move!” Leon said again, and the sound of his own panic made him back up a step, darting his gaze left and right, seeing that there were still more of the wailing, lurching people coming out of the shadows.

Something grabbed his ankle.

“No!” he shouted, whipped the gun around—

• and saw that the corpse of the hit-and-run victim was scrabbling at his boot with one blood-crusted hand, working to drag her crippled body closer. Her gasping cry of frantic hunger rose to join those of the others as she tried to bite into his foot, bloody smears of saliva drooling off her abraded chin, dripping onto the leather.

Leon fired into her upper back, the sharp, explosive crack of the massive weapon loosening her grip—and at such close range, probably obliterating her heart. Spasming, she dropped back to the pavement—

• and he turned and saw that the others were less than five feet away, and he fired twice more, the rounds splattering red flowers into the chest of the closest. The entry wounds spouted scarlet. The man in suspenders was hardly fazed by the twin gaping holes in his torso, his stagger faltering for only a second. He opened his bloody mouth and gasped out a hissing mewl of hunger, hands raised again as if to direct him to the source of relief. Must be on something, firepower like that could drop an elephant—

Backing away, Leon fired again. And again. And again. And then the empty clattered to the pavement, another was slammed in, more rounds fired. And still they kept coming, oblivious to the shots that ripped at their stinking flesh. It was a bad dream, a bad movie, it wasn’t real—and Leon knew that if he didn’t start believing, he was going to die. Eaten alive by these—

Go ahead, Kennedy, say it. These zombies. Blocked from his Jeep, Leon stumbled away, still firing.

SO MUCH FOR THE NIGHTLIFE; THIS PLACE IS deadsville.

Claire had seen a couple of people wandering around as she’d pulled into Raccoon, though not nearly as many as there should have been. In fact, the place seemed spectacularly deserted; the helmet blocked out a lot of visual evidence, but there was definitely a lack of business going on at the east end of town. A lack of traffic, as well. It struck her as weird, but considering the disasters she’d been imagining all afternoon, not all that ominous. Raccoon still existed, at least, and as she headed for the twenty-four-hour diner off Powell, she saw a fairly large group of partyers walking down the middle of a side street. Drunken frat boys, if she remembered her last visit clearly. Obnoxious, but hardly the horsemen of the apocalypse.

FOVP^A

No bombed-out ruins, no dying fires, no air-raid sirens; so far, so good.

She’d planned to head straight for Chris’s apart-ment before she realized that she’d be passing Em-my’s on the way. Chris couldn’t cook worth a damn; consequently, he lived on cereal, cold sandwiches, and dinner at Emmy’s about six nights a week; even if he wasn’t there, it might be worth it to stop in and ask one of the waitresses if they’d seen him lately. As Claire pulled the Softail to a gentle stop in front of Emmy’s, she noticed a couple of rats scurrying for cover from atop a garbage can on the sidewalk. She put down the stand and unstraddled the bike, taking off her helmet and setting it on the warm seat. Shaking out her ponytail, she wrinkled her nose in disgust; from the smell of things, the trash had been sitting out for quite a while. Whatever they were throwing away gave off a seriously toxic stink. Before going in, she chafed her bare legs and arms lightly, as much to warm them as to wipe off the top layer of road grime. Shorts and a vest were no match for the October night, and it reminded her once again of how dumb she’d been to ride bare. Chris would give her one hell of a lecture ...

... but not here.

The building’s glass front gave her a clear look at the well-lit, homey restaurant, from the bolted red stools at the lunch counter to the padded booths lining the walls—and there wasn’t a soul in sight. Claire frowned, her initial disappointment giving way to confusion. Having visited Chris pretty regularly over the last few years, she’d been to the diner at all hours of the day and night; they were both night owls, often deciding to go out for cheeseburgers at three in the morning—which meant Emmy’s every time. And there was always someone at Emmy’s, chatting with one of the pink polyester-clad waitresses or hunched over a cup of coffee with a newspaper, no matter what time it was.

So where are they? It’s not even nine o’clock. . . . The sign said Open, and she wasn’t going to find out standing in the street. With a last glance at her bike, she opened the door and stepped inside. Taking a deep breath, she called out hopefully.

“Hello? Anyone here?”

Her voice seemed somehow flat in the muted silence of the empty restaurant; except for the soft hum of the ceiling fans overhead, there wasn’t a sound. There was the familiar smell of stale grease in the air, but something else, too—a scent that was bitter and yet soft, like rotting flowers. The restaurant was L-shaped, booths stretching off in front of her and to the left. Walking slowly, Claire headed straight; at the end of the lunch counter was the wait station, and past that the kitchen; if Emmy’s was open, the staff would probably be hanging out there, maybe as surprised as she was that there were no customers—

• except that wouldn’t explain the mess, would it?

It wasn’t a mess, exactly; the disorder was subtle enough that she hadn’t even noticed it from outside. A few menus on the floor, an overturned water glass on the counter, and a couple of randomly strewn pieces of silverware were the only signs of something amiss—but they were enough.

To hell with checking out the kitchen, this is too weird, something is seriously fucked up in this city—or maybe they got robbed, or maybe they’re setting up for a surprise party. Who cares? Time for you to be elsewhere.

From the hidden space at the end of the counter, she heard a gentle sound of movement, a sliding whisper of cloth followed by a muffled grunt. Some-body was there, ducked down.

Heart thumping loudly, Claire called out again.

“Hello?”

For a beat, there was nothing—and then another grunt, a muted moan that raised the hair on the back of her neck.

In spite of her misgivings, Claire hurried toward the back, suddenly feeling childish for her desire to leave; maybe there had been a robbery, maybe the custom-ers had been tied up and gagged—or even worse, so badly injured that they couldn’t cry out. Like it or not, she was involved.

Claire reached the end of the counter, pivoted left—

• and froze, eyes wide, feeling as though she’d been physically slapped. Next to a cart loaded with trays was a balding man dressed in cook’s whites, his back to her. He was crouched over the body of a waitress; but there was something very wrong about her, so wrong that Claire’s mind couldn’t quite accept it at first. Her shocked gaze took in the pink uniform, the walking shoes, even the plastic name tag still pinned to the woman’s chest, what looked like “Julie” or “Julia.” .. .

... her head. Her head is missing.

Once Claire realized what was wrong, she couldn’t force herself to un-realize it, as much as she wanted to. There was only a pool of drying blood where the waitress’s head should have been, a sticky puddle surrounded by fragments of skull and dark mashed hair and chunks of miscellaneous gore. The cook had his hands over his face, and as Claire stared in horror at the headless corpse, he let out a low, pitiful wail. Claire opened her mouth, not sure what would come out. To scream, to ask him why, how, to offer to call for help—she honestly didn’t know, and as the man turned to look up at her, hands dropping away, she was stunned to hear that nothing came out at aU. He was eating the waitress. His thick fingers were clotted with dark bits of tissue; the strange and alien face he raised into view was smeared with blood. Zombie.

A child of late-night creature features and campfire stories, her mind accepted it in the split-second it took for her to think it; she wasn’t an idiot. He was deathly pale and ripe with that sickly-sweet scent of decay she’d noticed earlier, his eyes cataracted and gleaming white.

Zombies, in Raccoon. I never expected that. With that calm, logical realization came a sudden rush of absolute terror. Claire stumbled backwards, feverish panic turning her guts into liquid as the cook continued to turn, rising from his crouch. He was huge, easily a foot over her 5’3”, and broad as a barn—

• and dead! He’s dead and he was EATING her, don’t let him get any closer!

The cook took a step toward her, his stained hands clenching into fists. Claire backed up faster, almost slipping on a menu. A fork clattered away from beneath one boot.

GET OUT NOW.

“I’ll be on my way now,” she babbled. “Really, don’t bother to show me out—“ The cook staggered forward, his blind eyes glowing with dumb hunger. Another step back and Claire reached behind her, felt air, felt nothing—

• and then the cool metal of the door’s handle. A shot of adrenaline triumph bolted through her as she spun, snatched at the handle—

• and screamed, a short, sharp cry of horror. There were two, three more of them outside, their disinte-grating flesh pressed to the glass front of the diner. One of them had only one eye, a suppurating hole where the other should have been; another had no upper lip, a ragged, permanent grin scrawled across its lower jaw. They clawed mindlessly at the windows, their ashy, ravaged faces awash with blood—and from the shadows across the street, dark shapes shambled out into the open.

Can’t get out, trapped—

• Jesus, the back door!

From the edge of her vision, the glowing green exit sign shone like a beacon. Claire spun again and barely saw the cook reaching out to her from a few feet away, her full attention fixating on the only hope of escape. She ran, the booths whipping by in a flash of unseen color, her arms pumping for speed. The door opened out into the alley, she was going to hit it running and if it was locked, she was screwed.

Claire slammed into the door and it flew open, crashing into the brick wall of the alley—

• and there was a gun pointed at her face, the only thing that could possibly have stopped her at that second, a man with a gun—

She froze, raising her arms instinctively as if to ward oflF a blow.

“Wait! Don’t shoot!”

The gunman didn’t move, the deadly-looking weap-on still aimed at her head—

• gonna kill me—

“Get down!” the gunman shouted, and Claire dropped, her knees buckling as much from the com-mand as from the cold fingertips suddenly groping at her shoulder—

Boom! Boom!

The gunman fired and Claire snapped her head around, saw the dead cook falling backwards from directly behind her, at least one massive hole now in its forehead. Sluggish spurts of blood jetted from the wound, the white eyes filming over with red. The fallen corpse twitched, once, twice—and stopped moving.

Claire turned back to the man who’d saved her life, and his uniform registered for the first time. Cop. He was young, tall—and almost as terrified-looking as she felt, his upper lip beaded with sweat, his blue eyes wide and unblinking. His voice, at least, was strong and sure as he reached down to help her up. “We can’t stay out here. Come with me, we’ll be a lot safer at the police station.”

As he spoke, she could hear a closing chorus of gasping moans from the street, the wails of hunger growing louder. Claire let herself be pulled up, grip-ping his hand tightly, taking small comfort in the fact that his fingers were as feverish and shaky as hers. They ran, dodging dumpsters and heaps of flat-tened boxes, chased by echoing, haunted cries as the zombies found the dark alley and started after them.

FIVE

LEON RAN ALONGSIDE THE GIRL, DESPER-ately racking his memory for the city’s downtown layout. The alley should let out on Ash, not far from Oak, the RPD’s street—but the station was at least another fifteen blocks west; unless they could find transportation, they weren’t going to make it. He was on his last clip, four rounds left, and from the sounds reverberating through the alley, there were dozens, maybe hundreds of the creatures at either end. As they reached the mouth of the alley, Leon held up his hand and slowed to a jog, scanning the dimly lit street. He couldn’t see much, but from where they stood to the next streetlight, there were eleven or twelve of the creatures to the right, staggering and reeling their way through the stinking darkness. There were only three of them to the left, not far from—

• hallelujah!

“There!”

Leon pointed at the squad car parked across the street, feeling a flush of wild hope. There were no officers in sight, that was too much to ask for—but the front doors were standing open, and the three moaning things that roamed nearby wouldn’t reach it before he and the girl could. Even if there were no keys, there was a radio and the windshield was bulletproof. They could probably hold out against the walking corpses until help came—

• and it’s the only chance you’ve got. Go!

He hesitated just long enough to see the girl nod, her brown ponytail bobbing, and then they were sprinting for the black-and-white, the pavement a blur beneath their feet. Leon kept the handgun half-pointed toward the creatures closest to them, fifty feet away; he wanted to shoot, to keep them from getting one step closer, but he couldn’t afford to waste the ammo.

God, let there be keys—

They reached the car at the same time and split, the girl running around to the passenger’s side, and Leon realized with a new kind of horror that she probably thought the car was his. He waited for her to slam the door before jumping behind the wheel, a small, deeply frightened part of him screaming that this was his first day as he yanked his own door shut. A prayer answered; the keys were in the ignition. Leon dropped the Magnum into his lap and grabbed them, feeling that wild hope once again, like there were options besides dying.

“Buckle up,” he said, barely hearing her assent as he turned the keys and the flashers came on. Ash Street and the creatures that stalked it were bathed in blue and red swirls of pallid color, shadows changing form and thickness. It was a vision of hell and he hit the gas, desperate to get away from it as fast as he could.

The car spun away from the curb with a squeal. Leon pulled the wheel right and then left, narrowly missing a lurching woman whose scalp had been torn half off. Even through the closed windows, he could hear her frustrated howl as they sped away, joined by the cries of many more.

Backup, call for backup—

Leon fumbled for the radio, not taking his gaze off of the road. The creatures were scattered but persis-tent, dark and shambling monsters that staggered out into the street as if drawn to the sound of the speeding car. As the black-and-white rocketed across Powell and continued on, he had to dodge several

The girl was talking, staring out at the desolate landscape as Leon hit the com button on the radio, his sense of helplessness rising. No static, no nothing. “What the hell’s going on, I arrive in Raccoon and the whole place is insane—“ “Great, the radio’s out,” Leon interrupted, drop-ping the radio and focusing on the road. The entire city seemed like an alien world, the streets strangely shadowed. There was a dreamlike quality to it, but the smell kept him from believing that he was asleep. The stench of diseased flesh had permeated even the interior of the squad car, making it hard to concen-trate on driving. At least there was no traffic and no people. No real people . ..

,.. except me and the girl. I’ve got to do my job here, keep her from getting hurt. Poor kid, she can’t be older than nineteen or twenty, she’s probably terrified;

I’ve got to keep it together and shield her from further danger here, get to the station and—

“You’re a cop, right?”

The girl’s lilting but somehow sarcastic tone snapped him out of his panicked musings. He shot a look in her direction, noting that while she looked pale, she didn’t seem to be quivering on the edge of a break-down. There was even a trace of humor in her clear gray eyes, and Leon got a sudden strong impression that she wasn’t the breakdown type. A very good thing, considering the circumstances.

“Yeah. First day on the job; great, huh? I’m Leon Kennedy.”

“Claire,” she said. “Claire Redfield. I came to find my brother, Chris... ”

She trailed off, staring back out at the passing street. Two of the creatures were staggering into the path of the car from either side, but Leon hit the gas and managed to drive between them. The steel mesh screen separating the back compartment was down, giving him a clear look from the rearview mirror, the two shuffling ghouls were now plodding mindlessly after them.

Hungry. Just like in the movies.

For a moment, neither spoke, the obvious question remaining unspoken. Whatever had happened to turn Raccoon into a horror show didn’t matter as much as how they were going to survive it. They’d be at the station in a couple of minutes, assuming the roads stayed clear. There was an underground parking lot, he’d try that first—but if the gates were closed, they’d have to cover a short distance on foot. There was a small courtyard in front of the building, a park area—

Four rounds left—and maybe a city full of those things. We need another weapon.. . .

“Hey, open the glovebox,” he said. If it was locked, there was a key on the ring that should open it. Claire tapped the button and reached inside, reveal-ing the back of her pink sleeveless vest; the legend “Made in Heaven” was appliqued above a voluptuous posing angel holding a bomb. The outfit suited her. “There’s a gun inside,” she said, and pulled out a sleek semiautomatic. She raised it carefully and checked to see if it was loaded before digging out a couple of clips. It was one of the RPD’s old issues, a nine-millimeter Browning HP. Since the slew of re-cent murders, the Raccoon force had been carrying H & K VP70s, another nine-millimeter—the difference was that the Browning could only hold thirteen, while the newer issues held eighteen rounds, nineteen if you kept one chambered. From the way she handled it, Leon could tell that she knew what she was doing. “Better take it with you,” he said. The RPD kept a decent arsenal; assuming that there were still cops around, he could pick up his assigned

• and why are you assuming anything?

As Leon took the corner of Ash and Third a little too quickly, the realization finally hit him that the station itself might be crawling with corpses. Every-thing was happening so fast, he just hadn’t considered the possibility. He straightened out the car and let up on the gas, trying to come up with an alternate plan as calmly and rationally as he could. Maybe there was an organized defense at the station—but it wasn’t easy to feel hopeful with the stink of decay so heavy in the air.

We have three-quarters of a tank, more than enough to make it over the mountains; we could be in Latham in less than an hour.

They could drive by the station and if it looked—unfriendly, just get the hell out of town; sounded good to him. He started to tell Claire, see what she thought—

• when the horrible smell of slaughter washed over him and something lunged out of the back seat. Claire screamed and the monster that had been in the squad car all along grasped Leon’s shoulder with icy hands, its flyblown breath gusting into his face. It snatched at his right arm, pulling it toward its drool-slick teeth with inhuman strength.

“No!” Leon shouted as the car veered wildly to the right, jumping the curb and sliding toward a brick building. The creature was unbalanced, losing some of its grip; Leon jerked the wheel but too late to avoid the wall completely. Metal shrieked and a brilliant flash of sparks illuminated the groping hands and leering, ghoulish grin of their passenger as the speed-ing car shot back out into the street.

The dead thing swung its eager arms at Claire, and without thinking, Leon slammed on the gas and pulled a hard right. The car fishtailed, the back end crunching against a parked pickup truck in another burst of fiery sparks. The drooling corpse fell back into the padded seat but immediately pulled itself forward again, gnashing its teeth and clawing for the girl-The squad car sped down Third, Leon trying to control the wheel as he grabbed his weapon and half-turned, holding the Magnum by the barrel. He didn’t think to take his foot off the gas, couldn’t think of anything except that the zombie was about to sink its teeth into Claire’s struggling shoulder. He brought the heavy weapon down and across its face, the butt sliding across flesh that peeled away in a thick flap. Blood gushed from the wound as the grips crushed into its nose, cartilage separating from bone with a wet crunch. Gurgling, the creature clutched at its bleeding head and Leon just had time to feel a second’s triumph—

• when Claire screamed, “Look out!”

• and Leon looked up to see that they were about to crash.

Leon hit the zombie with his gun and Claire in-stinctively flinched from the splatter of blood, her horrified gaze finding that the street they were on was about to end.

“Look out!”

She caught just a glimpse of his white knuckles on the wheel, his clenched jaw—

• and the car was spinning, screeching, buildings and streetlights flashing by so fast that all she saw was a blur, and then—

BAM!

There was an explosion of sound, of glass shattering and metal compressing as the cop car slammed into something solid, throwing Claire against her safety belt. The impact hurled the zombie forward at the same time, and Claire reflexively threw her arms up as the dead thing crashed through the windshield—

• and then everything was still. There was only the ticking of hot metal and the sound of her own heart thundering in her ears. Claire brought her arms down and saw that Leon had already recovered, was already staring at the bloody, broken mess sprawled across the hood, its head hanging mercifully out of sight. It wasn’t moving.

“You okay?”

Claire turned and looked at Leon, suddenly having to fight off a semi-hysterical laughing fit. Raccoon had been taken over by the living dead and they’d just been in a serious car wreck because a corpse had been trying to eat them. All things considered, “okay” was not the first word to come to mind.

At the sight of Leon’s sincere and stricken expres-sion, the urge to freak out passed. He looked on the edge of a fit himself; allowing her devastated nerves free reign wouldn’t help anything.

“Still in one piece,” she managed, and the young cop nodded, seeming relieved.

Claire took a deep breath, feeling like it was the first she’d taken in hours, and looked around at where they’d ended up. Leon had managed a complete 180 at the very end of the street where it T-ed, the obviously totaled squad car facing back the way they’d come. There were no zombies in the immedi-ate vicinity, but Claire had the feeling that they wouldn’t have long to find cover; from what she’d seen so far, most if not all of Raccoon had been affected by—by whatever it was that had happened. She held the handgun tightly, trying to get her tangled emotions under control.

“We—“ Leon started to say something and then stopped, his eyes widening as he stared at the rear-view mirror. Claire looked behind her—and for a second, could only think that at some point since she’d left the university, she’d been cursed. Cursed. Somebody wants me dead, that’s all there is to it.

A semi was barreling down the street, still several blocks away but close enough for them to see that it was out of control. The truck veered back and forth, smashing against a blue pickup parked on one side of the street and then plowing under a mailbox on the other. Claire realized with numb horror that it was a tanker—and from the way the haul was sliding dan-gerously at each frantic swerve, the driver had a full load. In the split-second that it took to digest that information, to pray that it wasn’t gas or oil, the tanker had halved the distance between them. She could actually see the flames painted across the dark green cab, but even then it wasn’t real until Leon broke their stunned silence.

“—maniac’s gonna ram us,” he breathed, and then they were both stabbing at the seat-belt releases, Claire praying that the crash hadn’t locked them somehow—

The sound of the belts letting go were inaudible beneath the rising monolithic growl of the oncoming tanker and the echoing crunch of cars being side-swiped left and right. It would be on them in a heartbeat.

“Run!” Leon shouted, and then she was pushing her way out of the squad car, cool air against her sweaty skin and the scream of the truck’s engine blocking out everything else.

She took three giant running leaps and then felt as much as heard the impact, the asphalt shaking be-neath her feet even as the crash of rending metal thundered behind her.

One more flying step, and—

KABOOM!

• she was being pushed, shoved roughly off her feet by an incredible pressure wave of heat and sound. She managed to kick off against the ground as the tanker’s explosion turned night to day in one brilliant instant. An awkward shoulder roll, grit biting into her heat-blasted skin, and she landed behind a parked car in a gasping heap.

There was a brief, clattering rain of smoking debris, and Claire was on her feet, stumbling back into the street to search the towering flames for some sign of Leon. Her heart sank. The tanker, squad car, and what had once been a hardware store were all envel-oped in an inferno of chemical fire, the street com-pletely blocked by the mass of twisted, burning destruction.

“Claire—“

Leon’s voice, muffled but audible through the wall of curling flame.

“Leon?”

“I’m okay!” he shouted. “Head to the station, I’ll meet you there!”

Claire hesitated for a second, staring down at the handgun she still held tightly in one shaky hand. She was afraid, scared of being alone in a city that had turned into a living graveyard—but it wasn’t like there was much of a choice. Wishing that circum-stances were different was a waste of time. “Okay!”

She turned, trying to get her bearings by the smok-ing, flickering light of the wreck. The station was close, a couple of blocks away—

• and there were creatures lurching out of the shadows, from behind cars and inside darkened buildings. With single-minded purpose, they sham-bled into the strange light of the blazing accident, making small sounds of hunger as they came—two, three, four of them. She saw tattered skin and rotting limbs, gaping blackness where eyes should be—and still they came, moving slowly toward her as if homing in on living flesh.

Beyond the fiery wreck, she heard gunfire—two shots from perhaps a block away, then nothing—nothing but the crackle of consuming flame and the soft, helpless cries of the shuffling dead. Leon’s on his own now MOVE!

Claire took a deep breath, spotted an opening with-in the lethal crowd closing in on her, and ran.

Six

ADA WONG FIT THE SHIMMERING DISC OF

metal into the slot on the statue, patting it into the opening until it was flush with the marble. As soon as it was in place, she heard the shift of hidden levers and stepped back to see what would happen. Her footfalls echoed through the massive lobby of the RPD building, the sounds reverberating back to her

Another key? One of the subbasement medals? Or perhaps the sample itself, hidden in plain sight. . . wouldn’t that be a happy surprise.

If wishes were horses. The water-bearing nymph made of stone slid forward at a slight angle, the pitcher at her shoulder dropping a slender piece of metal atop the lip of the defunct fountain. The spade key.

She sighed, picking it up. She already had the keys; in fact, she had everything she needed to search the sta-tion, and most of what she needed to get into the lab. If it wasn’t for someone at Umbrella dropping the bomb, the job would have been a walk. Easy money. Instead, I get a three-day vacation sans comfort, I get night of the living standoff, I get to play Put the Bullet in the Brain and Let’s Find the Reporter at the same time. The samples could be anywhere by now, depending on who survived. Assuming I make it out of here with the goods, I’m asking for a big goddamn bonus; no one should have to work in these conditions. Ada slipped the key into her hip pack, then gazed unseeing at the upper balustrade of the impressive hall, mentally checking off the rooms she’d been through and the ones she’d searched more thor-oughly. Bertolucci didn’t seem to be anywhere on the east side of the building, upstairs or down; she’d spent what felt like hours staring into dead faces, searching the reeking piles of corpses for his square jaw and anachronistic ponytail. Of course, he could be mov-ing—but from the information she had on him, it was improbable; the reporter was very much a rabbit, a hider in the face of danger.

Speaking of danger...

Ada shook herself and got moving, heading back to the door that led into the lower east wing. The lobby was safe enough from the virus carriers, they didn’t seem to understand the concept of doorknobs—but there were threats besides the infected. God only knew what Umbrella might send in to clean up ... or what had been freed from the laboratory when the leak occurred. Less frightening but just as bothersome were the live cops that might still be trooping around, looking for someone to save. She’d heard gunfire, some distant, some not, every hour or three since she’d gone to ground; there were still at least a few uninfected left in the expansive old building. Trying to convince a panicky he-man with a gun that she was alive and didn’t want an escort made facing the undead seem almost appealing.

Walking on the balls of her feet to avoid additional noise, Ada slipped through the door and then leaned against it at the end of a long hall, safe to decide on her next move; although she hadn’t checked out the basement yet and there were still several carriers wandering around in the detectives’ room, the hall’s doors were all closed; if someone or something wanted to get at her, she’d be able to see it coming and get out in time.

Ah, the exciting life of the freelance agent. Travel the world! Earn money by stealing important things! Fight off the living dead when you haven’t showered or eaten a decent meal in three days—impress your friends! She reminded herself again to insist on that bonus. When she’d arrived in Raccoon less than a week before, she thought she’d been prepared; the maps had been studied, the reporter’s files memorized, her cover story set—a young woman looking for her boyfriend, an Umbrella scientist. That part was al-most true; in fact, it had been her brief relationship with John Howe ten months before that had landed her the job. More of a one-night stand, actually, and not a very good one at that—but John had thought otherwise, and his connection to Umbrella, though it had probably killed him, had turned out to be a lucky break for her.

So, she’d been ready. But within twenty-four hours of her self-assured check-in at Raccoon City’s nicest hotel, her luck had changed; while eating dinner in the vinyl-encased and mostly empty lounge of

the Arklay Inn, she’d heard the first screams outside. The first, but by no means the last.

In some ways, the disaster was an asset; there’d be no guards posted around the lab, no endless covert trial runs. The prep work she’d done on the T-Virus had assured her that the airborne was short-lived and dissipated quickly; the only chance of catching it at this point would be through contact with a carrier, so that wasn’t a problem—and once she and a couple dozen others had made it to the police station, she’d seen that Bertolucci was among them. Even with the undead factor, it initially looked like things were going in her favor.

Mission objectives: question the hack, find out how much he knows and kill him or ignore him, depending; retrieve a sample of the new virus, Dr. Birkin’s latest wonder. No problem, right?

Three days before, with the knowledge of how the Umbrella lab connected into the sewer system and Bertolucci standing right in front of her, the job had looked pretty wrapped. And of course, that’s when things had started to go wrong.

The rearranged station, with the rooms shifted around after the S.T.A.R.S. fiasco, making half my preparations obsolete. People disappearing. The barri-cades that kept coming down. Police Chief Irons, throwing off commands like some cut-rate dictator, still trying to impress Mayor Harris and his whiny daughter even as the dead piled up....

She’d watched Bertolucci closely enough to see that he was going to duck and run, but had missed the exit; she hadn’t even had time to make contact before he had disappeared somewhere into the maze of the station, losing himself in the commotion of the first wave of attacks. Ada had decided to fly solo herself when three-fourths of the civilians were wiped out in a single mass assault not an hour later, all because no one had bothered to lower the garage gates. She wasn’t willing to die to keep up her cover as a frightened tourist looking for her boyfriend.

And so came the wait. Almost fifty hours of waiting for things to settle, tucked in the clock tower on the third floor, slipping downstairs to find food or to use a bathroom in the lengthening stretches of time be-tween gunplay. Between the echoing clatter of shots and the screams . . .

Terrific. So now you’re out and what do you do? Stand around and reflect. Get on with it; the sooner you finish, the sooner you can collect your wages and retire to some nice island somewhere.

Still, for a moment Ada didn’t move, tapping the muzzle of her Beretta absently against one long, stockinged leg. There were three bodies sprawled in the hallway; she couldn’t stop staring at one of them, crumpled beneath a window counter halfway down the corridor. A woman in cutoff shorts and a halter, her legs crudely splayed, one arm cocked above her blood-soaked head. The other two were cops, no one she recognized—but the woman had been one of the people she’d talked to when she’d first made it to the station. Her name had been Stacy something-or-other, a nervous but strong-willed girl just out of her teens.

Stacy Kelso, that was it. She’d run into town to pick up some ice cream and had ended up caught in the takeover—yet in spite of her own predicament, she was more concerned about her parents and little brother, still at home. A conscientious girl. A good girl. Why was she thinking about it? Stacy was dead, a ragged hole at her left temple, and Ada hadn’t capped her; it wasn’t like she had anything to feel personally responsible about. She’d come in on a job, and it wasn’t her fault that Raccoon had gone nova. .. . Maybe it’s not guilt, some part of her whispered. Maybe you’re just sorry she didn’t make it. She was a person, after all, and now she’s as dead as her parents and kid brother probably are. .. .

“Snap out of it,” she said, softly but with an edge of irritation. She tore her gaze from the woman’s pathet-ic form, fixing it instead on a broken ashtray at the end of the hall. Feeling bad about things she couldn’t control wasn’t her style, it wasn’t how she’d gotten to the top of her trade—and considering how much Mr. Trent was putting up to retain her services, now wasn’t the best time to be analyzing her empathy skills. People died, it was the way of the world, and if she’d learned anything in the course of her life it was that agonizing over that particular truth was point-less.

Mission objectives: talk to Bertolucci and get the G-Virus sample. That was all she needed to worry about. There was a mechanism that Ada still had to check a few twisted passages away from where she stood, in the press conference room. Trent’s notes on the archi-tect’s latest additions to the station had been sketchy, but she knew it had to do with the ornate, sculpted gas lamps and an oil painting. Whoever had commis-sioned all of the work had one serious secret life going on; there were actual hidden passages upstairs, behind the wall of what had once been a storage room. She hadn’t gone through them yet, although a quick glance had told her that the room itself had been remodeled as an office. Judging from the overstuffed and neuroti-cally macho decor, it was probably Irons’s. Even from the short time she’d been in his company, she’d ascertained that he wasn’t the most stable man who had ever walked; there was no question that he was on Umbrella’s payroll, but there was also something about him that just screamed dysfunctional. Ada started down the hall, her dress flats clicking loudly on the scuffed blue tiles; she was already dreading yet another time-consuming mechanical puzzle. Not that there was any help for it; she had assumed from the beginning that the virus was still in the lab, but she couldn’t afford to take any chances on passing up an earlier retrieval. The files indicated that there were between eight and twelve one-ounce vials of the stuff, information from a two-week-old video feed—and Birkin’s lab was far from impenetrable. With the underground lab connected to the station through the sewer mains, she had to entertain the possibility that the samples had been moved. Besides, Bertolucci could be tucked away in the research library or in the S.T.A.R.S. office on the west side, maybe the darkroom; dead or not, he had to be found. And it would also give her a chance to collect a few more nine-millimeter clips from the fallen RPD. She followed the passage as it led her past a small waiting area, complete with vending machines that had already been pried open and ransacked. As with the rest of the station, the corridor was cold and badly in need of air freshener; she’d grown used to the smell, but the chill was murder. For the hundredth time since abandoning her table at the Arklay, Ada wished that she’d dressed more casually for dinner. The sleeveless tight red tunic dress and clattery shoes were fine for cover, as mission gear, however, the outfit was somewhat less than practical.

She reached the end of the hall and carefully opened the door to her left, weapon half-raised. As before, the corridor was clear, yet another testament to the faded elegance of the building—dusky sand-colored walls and symmetrically patterned tiles in this one. The station must have been magnificent once, but years of serving as an institutional facility had leeched away its grandeur; the tattered grand movie-house look and the cold, hopeless atmosphere created a distinctly sinister feel—as if at any moment a cold hand could fall across your shoulder, a soft gust of diseased breath whisper across the back of your neck....

Ada frowned again; after this job, she was going to take a very long vacation. Either that, or it was time to find a new career. Her concentration—her ability to focus—wasn’t what it used to be. And in her business a slip at the wrong time could literally mean death. Big bonus. Trent smells like money. I’ll ask seven digits, high six minimum.

In her attempts to let her thoughts go, to let animal awareness take over, she found that she couldn’t keep out the persistent image that crept into her mind. A memory of young Stacy Kelso, anxiously pushing her hair behind her ears as she talked about her baby brother. . . .

After what felt like a very long time, Ada shook the troublesome vision and continued down the hall, promising herself that there would be no more lapses of concentration—and wondering why she couldn’t

make herself believe it.

SEVER

LEON’S BOOTS SCUFFED SHARDS OF BROKEN glass across the floor of the Kendo gun shop as he snapped open drawers, ash-stained sweat trickling down his face. If he couldn’t find .50s pretty quick, he was screwed; the few weapons still remaining in the ravaged shop were inaccessible, strung with steel cable, and the front picture window was completely smashed. It wouldn’t take long for the creatures to find him, he was down to his last round, and he still had a couple of blocks to go.

Come on, fifty cal action express, somebody in Raccoon must’ve ordered ‘em—

“Yes!”

Fourth drawer, under the deer-rifle case; a half-dozen empty clips and as many boxes of ammo. Leon grabbed a box and turned, slapping it on the counter as he glanced hurriedly at the front of the small shop. Still clear, if you didn’t include the dead guy on the floor. He wasn’t moving, but from the freshness of the wounds that oozed from his considerable gut, staining his strappy white T, Leon wouldn’t have long to linger; he didn’t know how long it took for the freshly dead to stand up—and didn’t really want to find out. Gotta do it fast anyway, it’s like I’m a beacon for those things and this place is easy access.... Gaze darting between the crashed front wall and his skittering hands, Leon started to load up. He’d lucked across the gun dealer’s, having forgot-ten entirely about it in the dizzying, nightmarish run from the wreck. When the fastest route to the station had turned out to be blocked by a pile-up, the best detour was through Kendo’s. It was a coincidence that had undoubtedly saved his life. Even killing two of the ex-living on his way, he’d nearly been over-whelmed by the sheer number of them.

“Uuunh ”

A ghastly, skeletal form staggered out of the street’s shadows, drunkenly aimed at the front of the shop. “Hell,” Leon muttered, his fingers somehow man-aging to go faster. One clip down, one more and he could take the rest. If he bolted now, he’d be dead before he could make it to the station.

Another leprous figure was suddenly standing at the mostly empty frame of the shop’s glass entrance, the decay so bad on its legs that Leon could see maggots squirming through the fibrous muscle.

• four.. . five. . . done!

He snatched up the Magnum and ejected the clip, reloading even as the mostly-empty hit the floor. The maggoty creature was shouldering its way through the jagged corners of glass still attached to the frame, something liquid in its throat gurgling softly. Bag, he needed a bag. Leon’s fevered gaze swept the space behind the counter, stopping on a grease-stained gym bag propped against a stool in the back corner. Two running steps and he had it, dumping the contents as he ran back to the pile of clips and loose bullets on the counter. Cleaning equipment rattled across the linoleum as Leon swept the clips into the bag, ignoring the scattered rounds in favor of the ammo drawer.

The decayed monster was shuffling toward him, stumbling on the body of the pot-bellied dead man, and Leon could smell how rotten it was. He jerked the Magnum up and leveled it at the creature’s face. The head, just like the two outside—

With a tremendous, thundering kick, the gurgling, pulpy skull blew apart, thick fluids splattering the shop’s walls and display cases in a wet slap. Before the decapitated mess could crumple, Leon spun and

dropped into a crouch by the ammo drawer. He shoveled the heavy boxes into the nylon sack, his stomach knotted and shaking from the fear that, even now, the back alley could be filling up with more of them, cutting him off from where he needed to go. Five clips per box, jive boxes, get out already—

Pushing off from his crouch, Leon shouldered the bag and ran for the back door. From the corner of his vision, he saw that another creature had made it inside Kendo’s; from the crunch of powdering glass, there were more of them filing in just behind it. He opened the exit door and slid through, glancing left and right as the door settled closed, the automatic lock catching with a soft metallic snick. Nothing but garbage cans and recycling bins, overflowing with mildewed waste. From where he stood, the alley stretched off to his left and then hooked left again; if his internal compass was still working, the narrow, cluttered passage would take him straight to Oak, letting out less than a block away from the station. So far, he’d been lucky; all he could do was hope that his fortune would hold out, would let him get to the RPD building alive and in one piece—and, God willing, find a heavily armed contingent of people who knew what the hell was going on.

And Claire. Be safe, Claire Redfield, and if you get there before me, don’t lock the door.

Leon repositioned the leaden weight of the ammo across his back and started down the dimly lit alley, ready to blow apart anything that got in his way. Claire almost made it without having to shoot; the zombies that trickled out into the streets of Raccoon were relentless but slow, and the adrenaline pumping through her system made it easy enough to dodge them. She figured that they were drawn out by the sound of the wreck, then just followed their noses, or what was left of them; of the ten or so that had made it close enough for her to get a good look, at least half were in an advanced stage of decay, flesh falling from the bone.

She was so busy watching the street and trying to sort through all that had happened, she almost ran right past the police station. She’d been to the RPD building twice before to visit Chris, but had never entered from the back—or in the cold and stinking dark, pursued by malignant cannibals. A crashed cop car and a handful of zombified officers had clued her in, sending her through a small parking lot and some kind of an equipment shed that opened into a tiny paved courtyard—a courtyard where she and Chris had eaten lunch once, sitting on the steps that led up to the station’s second-floor helipad. As simply as that, she’d made it.

Weaving past the two stumbling, uniformed corpses that wandered aimlessly across the L-shaped yard was easy, and it was such a relief to be somewhere she recognized, to know she was about to be safe, that she didn’t see the woman until it was almost too late. A wailing dead woman with one limply hanging arm and a gore-streaked, shredded tank top, who reached out from the shadows at the base of the stairs and brushed at Claire’s arm with cold and scabby fingers. Claire let out a strangled yelp of surprise, stumbling back from the creature’s outstretched hand—and nearly fell into the arms of another one, a tall, broad-shouldered rotting man who had emerged from be-neath the metal stairs, graceless yet silent. She dodged sideways and pointed the nine-millimeter at the man, backed up a step—

• and felt her calf hit the unyielding railing of the back steps to the roof. The woman was five feet to her right, the torn, bloody shirt exposing one gouged breast, the hand of her working arm grasping toward Claire. The man was one step from reaching distance, and she couldn’t back up any further.

Claire pulled the trigger and there was a mammoth boom, the gun jerking almost out of her hand. The right half of the tall man’s slack and withered face disappeared in a burst of dark, liquid streams gushing from his shattered skull.

She whipped the gun around, tightening her grip as she aimed for the woman’s pallid, moaning face.

Another blast of deafening sound and the rising moan was cut off, the waxen forehead imploding in a spray of blood and bone chips. The woman went over backwards, crashing to the pavement like—

• like a corpse, which she already was. They won’t be walking away from this one.

It was as if everything finally caught up to her at once, the reality of her situation driven home when she’d pulled the trigger. For a moment, Claire couldn’t move. She stared down at the two crumpled sacks of ruined flesh, at the two people she’d just shot, and felt like she was only an inch or two from losing it. She’d grown up around guns, been to shooting ranges dozens of times—but with a .22 target pistol, firing at pieces of paper. Targets that didn’t bleed, or spew brain matter like the two human beings she’d just—

No, a cool voice inside of her interrupted. Not human, not anymore. Don’t kid yourself and don’t waste time on remorse. Leon could be inside by now, looking for you. And if the S.T.A.R.S. got called in,

Chris could be here, too.

If that weren’t motivation enough, the two zombie cops that Claire had passed when she first hit the courtyard were on their way, boots shuffling and dragging across the flagstones. It was time to go. She jogged up the stairs, barely able to hear the clang of her steps over the high-pitched ringing in her ears. The nine-millimeter blasts had done a tempo-rary number on her hearing—which explained why she didn’t know about the helicopter until she was almost to the roof.

Claire hit the second-to-top riser and stopped dead, a whipping wind pounding rhythmically at her bare shoulders as the giant black vehicle hovered into view, half lost in shadow. It was near the ancient water tower that bordered the helipad at the south-west corner, though she couldn’t tell if it had just taken off or was coming in to land.

Couldn’t tell and didn’t care. “Hey!” she shouted, raising her left hand into the air. “Hey, over here!” Her words were lost in the blowing dust that swirled across the rooftop, drowned out by the steady chop of the ‘copter’s blades. Claire waved wildly, feeling like she’d just hit the lottery.

Somebody came! Thank God, thank you!

A blaring searchlight snapped on from the midsec-tion of the hovering bird, scrawled across the roof—and was going in the wrong direction, away from her. Claire waved more frantically, drawing in breath to call out again—

• and saw what the spotlight saw, even as she heard the desperate, mostly unintelligible shout beneath the ‘copter’s roar. A man, a cop, standing at the helipad’s corner opposite the stairs, backed against an elevated section of the roof. He held what looked like a machine gun and appeared to be very much alive.

“—get over here—“

The officer shouted at the helicopter, his voice tinged with panic; Claire saw why and felt her relief evaporate. There were two zombies lurching through the darkness of the helipad, headed for the well-lit target that was the shouting cop. She raised the nine-millimeter and then lowered it helplessly, afraid of hitting the cornered man.

The spotlight didn’t waver, illuminating the horror with brilliant clarity. The cop didn’t seem to realize how close the zombies were until they were grabbing for him, their stringy arms extending into the beam

of fixed white light.

“Stay back! Don’t come any closer!” he cried, and with the pure terror in his voice, Claire heard him perfectly. Just like she heard his howling scream as the two decaying figures obscured her view, reaching him at the same time.

The sound of his automatic weapon ripped across the helipad, and even over the helicopter’s clamor Claire could hear the whining ting of bullets flying wild. She dropped, knees cracking against the top step as the weapon’s clattering fire went on and on—

• and there was a change in the sound of the ‘copter, a strange hum that rose quickly into a me-chanical scream. Claire looked up and saw the giant craft dip down, the back end swinging around in an erratic, jerking arc.

Jesus, he hit them!

The ‘copter’s spotlight was going all directions at once, flashing across metal pipes and concrete and the dying struggles of the cop, somehow still firing as the two monsters tore at him—

• and then the helicopter was coming down, tee-tering sideways, its blades slamming into the brick of the elevated roof with a tremendous crash. Before Claire could blink, the nose of the craft hit—plowing across the helipad in a curtain of screeching sparks and flying glass.

The explosion happened just as the mammoth machine slid to a stop against the southwest corner—directly on top of the fallen cop and his killers. The rattle of the machine gun was finally cut off in the whoosh of flame that sprang up after the initial sputtering boom, lighting the rooftop in a burning red glow. At the same instant, something in the roof gave with a rending crunch, as the nose of the ‘copter plunged through a brick wall and out of sight. Claire stood up on legs she barely felt, staring in disbelief at the leaping fire that dominated almost half of the helipad. It had all happened too fast for her to feel like it had happened at all, and the smoking, burning evidence in front of her only made the sense of unreality greater. An acrid, sickly-sweet odor of burning meat wafted over her on a wave of heated air, and in the sudden silence, she could hear the soft groans of the zombies down in the courtyard. She shot a look down the stairs and saw that both of the dead cops were at the foot, blindly and uselessly falling against the bottom step. At least they couldn’t climb ...

. .. can’t. Climb. Stairs.

Claire turned her frightened glance toward the door that led into the RPD building, maybe thirty feet from the curling, popping flames that were slowly eating the body of the ‘copter. Except for the stairs, it was the only way onto the roof. And if zombies couldn’t climb—

• then I’m in some deep shit. The station isn’t safe.

She stared thoughtfully at the burning wreck, weighing her options. The nine-millimeter held a lot of ammo and she still had two full clips; she could head back into the street, look for a car with keys in it and go for help.

Except what about Leon? And that cop was still alive—what if there are more people inside, planning an escape?

She thought she’d held up pretty well on her own so far, but she also knew she’d feel safer if somebody else were in charge—a riot squad would be okay, though she’d settle for some battle-scarred veteran cop with a shitload of guns. Or Chris; Claire didn’t know if she’d find him at the station, but she firmly believed that he was still alive. If anyone was equipped to handle himself in a crisis like this one, it was her brother. Whether or not she found anybody, she shouldn’t take off without telling Leon; if she didn’t, blowing town instead, and he got killed looking for her. .. . Decision made. Claire walked for the entrance, carefully skirting the blaze and scanning the flickering shadows for movement. When she reached the door, she closed her eyes for a second, one sweating hand on the latch.

“I can do this,” she said quietly, and although she didn’t sound as confident as she would’ve liked, at least her voice didn’t tremble or break. She opened her eyes, then the door; when nothing jumped out at her from the softly lit hall, she slipped inside.

ElGHf

CHIEF OF POLICE BRIAN IRONS WAS STANDing in one of his private corridors, trying to catch his breath, when he felt the shuddering impact rumble through the building. He heard it, too—heard some-thing. A distant splintering sound, heavy and abrupt. The roof, he thought distantly, something on the roof. . .

He didn’t bother following the thought to any kind of conclusion. Whatever had happened, it couldn’t make things any worse.

Irons pushed away from the stone wall with one well-padded hip, hefting Beverly as gently as he could. They’d be at the elevator in a moment, then there was just the short walk to his office; he could rest there, and then—

“And then,” he mumbled, “that’s the question, isn’t it? And then what?”

Beverly didn’t answer. Her perfect features re-mained still and silent, her eyes closed—but she seemed to nestle closer to him, her long, slender body curling against his chest. It was his imagination, surely.

Beverly Harris, the mayor’s daughter. Youthful, stunning Beverly, who had so often haunted his guilty dreams with her blond beauty. Irons hugged her closer and continued toward the elevator, trying not to let his exhaustion show in case she woke up. By the time he reached the lift, his back and arms were aching. He probably should have left her in his private hobby room, the room he’d always thought of as the Sanctuary—it was quiet there, and probably one of the safest areas in the station. But when he’d decided to go to the office, to collect his journal and a few personal items, he found that he simply couldn’t stand to leave her behind. She’d looked so vulnerable, so innocent; he’d promised Harris that he would watch out for her, and what if she was attacked in his absence? What if he came back from the office and she was just—gone? Gone like everything else .. .A decade of work. Networking, making the connec-tions, careful positioning... all of it, just like that. Irons lowered her to the cold floor and opened the elevator gate, trying desperately not to think about all that he’d lost. Beverly was the important thing now. “Going to keep you safe,” he murmured, and did one corner of that perfect mouth rise slightly? Did she know she was safe, that Uncle Brian was taking care of her? When she was a child, when he used to frequent the Harrises’ for dinner, she’d called him that. “Uncle Brian.”

She knows. Of course she knows.

He half-dragged her into the lift and leaned her in the corner, gazing tenderly at her angelic face. He was suddenly overwhelmed by a rush of almost paternal love for her, and wasn’t surprised to feel tears well up in his eyes, tears of pride and affection. For days now he’d been subject to such emotional outbursts—rage, terror, even joy. He’d never been a particularly emo-tional man, but had grown to accept the powerful feelings, even to enjoy them after a fashion; at least they weren’t confusing. He’d also had moments when he’d been overcome by a kind of strange, creeping haze, a formless anxiety that left him feeling deeply unsettled . . . and as bewildered as a lost child. No more of those. There’s nothing else that can go wrong now; Beverly’s with me, and once I collect my things, we can hide away in the Sanctuary and get some rest. She’ll need time to recover, and I can, can sort things through. Yes, that’s it; things need to be sorted through.

He blinked the already forgotten tears away as the metal cage started to rise, unholstering his sidearm and ejecting the clip to count how many rounds were left. His private rooms were safe, but the office was another story; he wanted to be prepared.

The elevator came to a stop and Irons propped open the gate with one leg before lifting the girl, grunting with the exertion. He carried her as he would have carried a sleeping child, her cool, smooth body limp in his arms, her head rolled back and wobbling as he walked. He’d picked her up awkwardly, and her white gown had hiked up, exposing the tight, creamy skin of her thighs; Irons forced his gaze away, concen-trating on the panel controls that opened the wall into his office. Whatever harmless fantasies he’d had be-fore, she was his responsibility now, he was her protector, her white knight...

He was able to hit the protruding button with one knee. The wall slid open, revealing his plushly deco-rated and thankfully empty office; only the blank, glassy stares of bis animal trophies greeted them. The massive walnut desk that he’d had imported from Italy was right in front of him and his stamina was going fast; Beverly was a petite woman, but he wasn’t in shape the way he used to be. He quickly laid her on the desk, pushing a cup of pencils to the floor with his elbow.

“There!” he exhaled deeply, smiling down at her. She didn’t smile back, but he sensed that she would be awake soon, like before. He reached under the desk and tapped the wall controls; the panel slid closed behind them.

He’d been concerned when he’d first found her, asleep next to Officer Scott in the back hall; George Scott was dead, covered with wounds, and when Irons had seen the red splash on Beverly’s stomach, he’d been afraid that she was dead, too. But when he’d taken her to the Sanctuary, to his safe place, she’d whispered to him—that she didn’t feel well, that she was hurt, that she wanted to go home ...

... did she? Did she really?

Irons frowned, snapped out of the uncertain memo-ry by something, something he’d felt when he’d laid her on his hobby table and straightened her blood-stained gown, something he couldn’t quite recall. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, but now, away from the hidden comforts of the Sanctuary, it was nagging at him. Reminding him that he had suffered one of those confused moments when he’d, when he’d—

• felt the cold, rubbery j elly of intestine beneath my fingers—

• touched her.

“Beverly?” he whispered, sitting down behind his desk when his legs went suddenly weak. Beverly kept her silence—and a turbulent flood of emotions hit Irons like a tidal wave, crashing over him, crowding his mind with images and memories and truths that he didn’t want to accept. Cutting the outside lines after the first attacks. Umbrella and Birkin and the walking dead. The slaughter in the garage, when the bright

coppery scent of blood had filled the air and Mayor Harris had been eaten alive, screaming until the very end. The dwindling numbers of the living through the first long and terrible night—and the cold, brutal realization that had hit him again and again, that the city—his city—was no more. After that, the confusion. The strange and hysteri-cal joy that had come when he’d understood that there would be no consequences for his actions. Irons remembered the game he’d played on the second night, after some of Birkin’s pets had found their way to the station and taken out all but a few of the remaining cops. He’d found Neil Carson cowering in the library and had. . . tracked him, hunting the sergeant down like an animal.

What did it matter? What matters, now that my life in Raccoon is over?

All that was left, the only thing that he had to hold on to, was the Sanctuary—and the part of him that had created it, the dark and glorious heart inside of his own that he’d always had to keep hidden away. That part was free now....

Irons looked at the corpse of Beverly Harris, laid out across his desk like some delicate and fragile dream, and felt that he might be torn apart by the feelings of fear and doubt that warred inside of him.

Had he killed her? He couldn’t remember.

Uncle Brian. Ten years ago, I was her Uncle Brian.

What have I become?

It was too much. Without taking his gaze from her lifeless face, he pulled the loaded VP70 from its holster and began to rub the barrel with numb fingers, gentle strokes that reassured him somehow as the weapon turned toward him. When the bore was pressed firmly against his soft belly, he felt that some kind of peace might be within reach. His finger settled across the trigger, and it was then that Beverly whis-pered to him again, her lips still, her sweet, musical voice coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. ... don’t leave me, Uncle Brian. You said you’d keep me safe, that you’d take care of me. Think of what you could do now that everyone is gone and there’s nothing to stop you. .. .

“You’re dead,” he whispered, but she kept talking, soft and insistent.

. .. nothing to stop you from being fulfilled, truly fulfilled for the first time in your life . . . Tortured and aching, Irons slowly, slowly pulled the nine-millimeter away from his stomach. After a mo-ment, he rested his forehead against Beverly’s shoul-der and closed his tired eyes.

She was right, he couldn’t leave her. He’d prom-ised—and there was something to what she’d said, about all of the things he could do. His hobby table was big enough to accommodate all kinds of animals

Irons sighed, not sure what to do next—and won-dering why he was in such a hurry to decide, anyway. They would rest for a while, perhaps even take a nap together. And when they awoke, things would be clear again.

Yes, that was it. They would rest, and then he could sort things through, take care of business; he was the chief of police, after all.

Feeling in control of himself again, Brian Irons slipped into a light and uneasy doze, Beverly’s cool flesh like a balm against his feverish brow.

IlinE

THANKS TO A VAN PARKED IN THE ALLEY

behind Kendo’s, Leon’s straight shot to the station had taken a few detours—through an infested basket-ball court, another alley, and a parked bus that had reeked from the sprawled corpses inside. It was a nightmare, punctuated with whispering howls, the stink of decay, and once, a distant explosion that made his limbs feel weak. And though he had to shoot three more of the walking dead and was wired to the teeth with adrenaline and horror, he somehow man-aged to hold on to his hope that the RPD building would be a safe haven, that there would be some kind of crisis center set up, manned by police and paramedics—people in authority making decisions and marshaling forces. It wasn’t just a hope, it was a need; the possibility that there might be no one left in Raccoon to take charge was unthinkable.

When he finally stumbled out into the street in front of the station and saw the burning squad cars, he felt like he’d been hit in the gut. But it was the sight of the decaying, moaning police officers staggering around the dancing flames that truly wiped out his hope. There were only about fifty or sixty cops on the RPD force, and a full third of them were lurching through the wreckage or dead and bloody on the pavement not a hundred feet from the front door of the station.

Leon forced the despair away, fixing his sight on the gate that led to the RPD building’s courtyard. Wheth-er or not anyone had survived, he had to stick with his plan, put out a call for help—and there was Claire to think about. Concentrating on his fears would only make it harder to do whatever needed to be done. He ran for the gate, nimbly dodging a horribly burned uniformed cop with blackened bones for fingers. As he clutched the cold metal handle and pushed, he realized that some part of him was grow-ing numb to the tragedy, to the understanding that these things had once been the citizens of Raccoon. The creatures that roamed the streets were no less horrible, but the shock of it all just couldn’t be sustained; there were too many of them.

Not too many here, thank God...

Leon slammed the gate shut behind him and pushed his sweaty hair off his brow, taking a deep breath of the almost fresh air as he scanned the courtyard. The small, grassy park to his right was well lit enough for him to see there were only a few of the once human creatures, and none close enough to be a threat. He could see the two flags that adorned the front of the station house, hanging limp in the still shadows, and the sight resparked the hope that he thought he’d lost; whatever else happened, he’d at least made it to someplace he knew. And it had to be safer than the streets.

He hurried past a blindly reeling trio of the dead, easily avoiding them—two men and a woman; all three could have passed for normal if not for their mournful, hungry cries and uncoordinated staggers. They must have died recently—

• but they’re not dead, dead people don’t gush blood when you shoot them. Not to mention the walking-around-and-trying-to-eat-people thing. . . . Dead people didn’t walk . . . and living people tended to fall down after they’d been shot a few times with .50 caliber slugs, and didn’t put up with their flesh rotting on their bones. Questions he hadn’t yet had time to ask himself flooded through his mind as he jogged up the front steps to the station, questions he didn’t have the answers for—but he would soon, he was sure of it.

The door wasn’t locked, but Leon didn’t allow himself to feel surprise; with all he’d been through since he hit town, he figured that it would be best to keep his expectations to a minimum. He pushed it open and stepped inside, Magnum raised and his finger on the trigger.

Empty. There was no sign of life in the grand old lobby of the RPD building—and no sign of the disaster that had overtaken Raccoon. Leon gave up on not feeling surprised, closing the door behind him and stepping down into the sunken lobby.

“Hello?” Leon kept his voice low, but it carried, echoing back to him in a whisper. Everything looked just as he remembered it; three floors of classically styled architecture in oak and marble. There was a stone statue of a woman carrying a water pitcher in the lower part of the large room, a ramp on either side leading up to the receptionist’s station. The RPD seal set into the floor in front of the statue gleamed softly in the diffuse light from the wall lamps, as if it had just been polished.

No bodies, no blood... not even a shell casing. If there was an attack here, where the hell’s the evidence? Uneasy at the profound silence of the huge cham-ber, Leon walked up the ramp to his left, stopping at the counter of the reception desk and leaning over it; except for the fact that it was unmanned, nothing seemed to be out of place. There was a phone on the desk below the counter. Leon picked up the receiver and cradled it between his head and shoulder, tapping at the buttons with fingers that felt cold and distant. Not even a dial tone; all he heard was the sound of his own heavily thumping heart.

He put the phone down and turned to face the empty room, trying to decide on where to go first. As much as he wanted to find Claire, he also desperately wanted to hook up with some other cops. He’d received a copy of an RPD memo just a couple of weeks before, stating that several of the departments were going to be relocated, but that didn’t really matter; if there were cops hiding in the building, they probably weren’t concerned with sticking close to their desks.

There were three doors leading away from the lobby to different parts of the sprawling station, two on the west side and the other on the east. Of the two on the west, one led through a series of halls toward the back of the building, past a couple of filing offices and a briefing room; the second opened into the uniformed-officer squad room and lockers, which then connected into one of the corridors near the stairs to the second floor. The east door, in fact the whole east side of the first floor, was primarily for the detectives—offices, interrogation, and a press room; there was also access to the basement and another set of stairs on the outside of the building.

Claire probably came in through the garage ... or through the back lot to the roof.. .

Or, she could’ve circled around and come through the same door he had—assuming she even made it to the station; she could be anywhere. And considering that the building took up almost an entire city block, that was a lot of ground to cover.

Finally deciding that he had to start somewhere, he walked toward the squad room for the beat cops, where his own locker would be. A random choice, but he’d spent more time there than anywhere else in the station, interviewing and working through schedul-ing. Besides, it was closest, and the tomb-like silence of the oversized lobby was giving him the creeps. The door wasn’t locked, and Leon pushed it open slowly, holding his breath and hoping that the room would be as undisturbed and orderly as the lobby. What he saw instead was the confirmation of his earlier fears: the creatures had been there—with a vengeance.

The long room had been trashed, tables and chairs splintered and overturned everywhere he looked. Smears of dried blood decorated the walls, splashes of it in tacky, trailing puddles on the floor, leading toward—

The cop was sitting against the lockers to his left, his legs splayed, half-hidden by a smashed table. At the sound of Leon’s voice, he weakly raised one shaking arm, pointed a weapon vaguely in Leon’s direction—then lowered it again, seemingly ex-hausted by the effort. His midsection was awash with oozing blood, his dark features contorted with pain. Leon was crouching at his side in two steps, gently touching his shoulder. He couldn’t see the wound, but there was so much blood that he knew it was bad—

“Who are you?” the cop whispered.

The soft, almost dreamy tone of his voice scared Leon as much as the still oozing wound and the glassy look in his dark eyes; the man was slipping, fast. They’d never formally met, but Leon had seen him before. The young African-American beat cop had been pointed out to him as sharp, on the fast track to detective, Marvin, Marvin Branagh. ...

“I’m Kennedy. What happened here?” Leon asked, his hand still on Branagh’s shoulder. A sickly heat radiated through the officer’s ragged shirt. “About two months ago,” Branagh rasped, “the cannibal murders .. . the S.T.A.R.S. found zombies out at this mansion in the woods. . . .”

He coughed weakly, and Leon saw a small bubble of blood form at the corner of his mouth. Leon started to tell him to be still, to rest, but Branagh’s faraway gaze had fixed on his own; the cop seemed determined to tell the story, whatever it was costing him. “Chris and the others discovered that Umbrella was behind the whole thing . . . risked their lives, and no one believed them . . . then this.”

Chris . . . Chris Redfield, Claire’s brother. Leon hadn’t made the connection before, although he’d known something about the trouble with the S.T.A.R.S. He’d only heard bits and pieces of the story—the suspension of the Special Tactics and Rescue Squad after their alleged mishandling of the murder cases had been the reason the RPD’d been hiring new cops. He’d even read the names of the infamous S.T.A.R.S. members in some local paper, listed along with some fairly impressive career records—

• and Umbrella runs this town. Some kind of a chemical leak, something that they tried to cover up by getting rid of the S.T.A.R.S.—

All of this went through his mind in a split-second; then Branagh coughed again, the sound even weaker than before.

“Hang in there,” Leon said, and quickly looked around them for something to use to stop the bleed-ing, inwardly kicking himself for not having done it already. A locker next to Branagh was partly open; a crumpled T-shirt lay at the bottom. Leon scooped it up and folded it haphazardly, pressing it against Branagh’s stomach. The cop placed his own bloody hand over the makeshift bandage, closing his eyes as he spoke again in a wheezing gasp.

“Don’t. . . worry about me. There are ... you have to try and rescue the survivors.. .” The resignation in Branagh’s voice was horribly plain. Leon shook his head, wanting to deny the truth, wanting to do something to ease Branagh’s pain—but the wounded cop was dying, and there was no one to call for help.

Not fair, it’s not fair— “Go,” Branagh breathed, his eyes still closed. Branagh was right, there was nothing else Leon could do—but he didn’t, couldn’t move for a mo-ment—until Branagh raised his weapon again, point-ing it at him with a sudden burst of energy that strengthened his voice to a rough shout.

“Just go!” Branagh commanded, and Leon stood up, wondering if he would be as selfless in the same situation, working to convince himself that Branagh would make it somehow.

“I’ll be back,” Leon said firmly, but Branagh’s arm was already drooping, his head settling against his heaving chest.

Rescue the survivors.

Leon backed toward the door, swallowing heavily and struggling to accept the change in plan that could very well kill him—but that he couldn’t walk away from. Official or no, he was a cop. If there were other survivors, it was his moral and civic duty to try and help them.

There was a weapons store in the basement, near the parking garage. Leon opened the door and stepped back into the lobby, praying that the lockers would be well stocked—and that there would be somebody left for him to help.

TEII

FROM THE BURNING ROOFTOP, CLAIRE moved through a snaking hallway littered with bro-ken glass—and past a very dead cop, a bloody testament to her fears about the station’s safety. She quickly stepped over the body and moved on, her nervous tension growing. A cool breeze ruffled through the shattered windows that lined the hall, making the darkness alive; there were shiny black feathers stuck in the streaks of blood that painted the floorboards, and their soft, wavering dance had her jerking the semiautomatic toward every shadow. She passed a door that she thought led back outside to a set of external stairs, but she kept going, taking a right toward the center of the building. The way the helicopter had buried itself in the rooftop was gnaw-ing at her, inspiring visions of the old station going up in flames.

From the look of things, maybe that’s not such a bad idea....

Dead bodies and bloody handprints on the walls;

Claire wasn’t happy about the idea of touring the station. Still, death by fire didn’t carry much appeal either, she needed to see how bad it was before she went looking for Leon.

The corridor dead-ended at a door that felt cool to the touch. Mentally crossing her fingers, Claire opened it—and stumbled back as a wave of acrid smoke washed over her, the smell of burnt metal and wood thick in the heated air. She dropped to a crouch and edged forward again, peering down the hall that stretched off to her right. The hall turned right again maybe thirty feet down, and although she couldn’t see the fire proper, bright, fiery light was reflected off the gray paneled walls at the comer. The popping crackle of the unseen flames was magnified in the tight corridor, the sound as mindlessly hungry as the moans of the zombies down in the courtyard. Well, shit. What now?

There was another door diagonally across from where she crouched, only a few steps away; Claire took a deep breath and moved, walking low to stay beneath the thickening blanket of smoke, hoping she could find a fire extinguisher—and that a fire extin-guisher would be enough to put out whatever blaze the crashed ‘copter had created.

The door opened into an empty waiting room—a couple of green vinyl couches and a rounded counter-desk, with another door across from the one she’d entered by. The small room seemed untouched, as sterile and quietly unassuming as she might have expected—and unlike just about everywhere else she’d been tonight, there was no lurking disaster in the mild shadows thrown by the overhead fluores-cents, no stench of rot or shuffling zombie. And no fire extinguisher. . . .

Not in plain sight, anyway. She closed the door on the smoky corridor and stepped toward the desk, lifting the entrance flap with the barrel of the gun. There was an old manual typewriter on the counter—and next to that, a telephone. Claire grabbed for it, hoping against hope, but heard only dead air through the receiver. Sighing, she dropped it and ducked down to check out the shelves beneath the counter. A phone book, a few stacks of papers—and then, half-hidden by a woman’s purse on the bottom shelf, was the familiar red shape she’d been hoping to find, coated with a thin layer of dust.

“There you are,” she murmured, and paused just long enough to stick the nine-millimeter into her vest before hefting the heavy cylinder. She’d never used one before, but it looked simple enough—a metal handle with a locking pin, a black rubber nozzle hooked to the side. It was only a couple of feet long, but it weighed a good forty or fifty pounds; she figured that meant it was full.

Armed with the extinguisher, Claire stepped back to the door and started to take short, sharp breaths, filling her lungs. It made her feel light-headed, but the hyperventilation would allow her to hold her breath longer. She didn’t want to keel over from smoke inhalation before she’d had a chance to put it out. A final deep breath and she opened the door, crouching her way back into the now noticeably hotter corridor. The haze of smoke had gotten thicker too, extending down from the ceiling in a dark and choking fog at least four feet deep.

Keep low, breathe shallow and watch your step—

She turned the corner and felt a bizarre mix of relief and sorrow at the sight of the burning wreckage right in front of her. She bobbed her head and took a small breath through the fabric of her vest, feeling her skin flush and tighten from the heat. The fire wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, more smoke than substance and not much taller or bigger than she was; the flames that licked up the wall in orange-yellow fingers seemed to be having trouble catching, stopped by the heavy wood of a half-smashed door. It was the nose of the helicopter that drew her attention, the blackened shell of the smoldering cockpit—and the blackened husk of the pilot still strapped to the seat, the melted mouth frozen in a yawning, silent scream. There was no way to tell if it had been a man or a woman; the features had been obliterated, running together like dark tallow.

Claire jerked the metal pin loose from the handle and aimed the hose at the burning floorboards, where the flame danced in white and blue. She squeezed the lever down and a hissing plume of snowy spray whooshed out, blasting over the debris in a powdery cloud. Barely able to see through the billowing white-ness, she directed the hose over everything, dousing the wreckage liberally with the oxygen killer. Within a minute, the fire appeared to be out, but she kept up with the extinguisher until it ran dry.

At the last spluttering cough of spray, Claire let go of the handle and took a few more shallow breaths, inspecting the smoking wreck for any spots she’d missed. Not a flicker, but the wooden door alongside the helicopter’s flocked cockpit was still leaking ten-drils of black smoke. She leaned closer and saw a tinge of glowing orange under the charred surface. The area surrounding the burning wood had already been torched, but she didn’t want to take any chances; she stepped back and gave the door a solid kick, aiming for the glowing embers.

Her boot connected squarely with the hot spot, and the door flew open with a splintering crack, the

scorched wood giving way in a sparking shower of cinders. A few landed on her bare calf, but she drew her weapon before stopping to brush them off, more afraid of what might be waiting behind the ruined door than a few blisters.

A short, empty hallway, littered with jagged pieces of splintered wood and hazy with smoke, then a door at the end on the left; Claire moved toward it, as much to get to some fresh air as to see where it led. With the immediate threat of the fire over with, she had to start looking for Leon—and thinking about what they’d need to survive. If she could check out a few of the rooms along the way, maybe she’d be able to find stuff they could use.

A phone that works, car keys . . . hell, a couple of machine guns or aflame-thrower would be nice, but III take what I can get.

The plain door at the end of the hall was unlocked. Claire pushed it open, ready to fire at anything that moved—

• and stopped, feeling mildly shocked by the bi-zarre atmosphere of the lavish room. It was like some parody of a men’s club from the fifties, a large office decorated with an extravagance that bordered on the ridiculous. The walls were lined with heavy mahogany bookshelves and matching tables, surrounding a kind of sitting area made up of padded leather chairs and a low marble table, all set atop an obviously expensive oriental rug. An elaborate chandelier hung from the ceiling, casting a rich, mellow light over it all. Framed pictures and delicate vases were situated through-out—but their classic designs were overwhelmed by the stuffed animal heads and poised, lifeless birds that dominated the room, most gathered around a massive desk at the far side—

• oh, Jesus—

Laid out across the desk, like some character from a gothic horror story, was a beautiful young woman in a flowing white gown, her guts ripped to bloody shreds. The corpse was like a centerpiece; the dried and dusty animals stared down at her with dead glass eyes—there was a falcon and what looked like an eagle, their ratty wings spread in simulated flight, as well as a couple of mounted deer heads and that of a nappy furred moose. The effect was so creepy and surreal that for a moment, Claire couldn’t breathe—

• and when the high-backed chair behind the desk swiveled around suddenly, she barely held back a shriek of superstitious terror, half expecting to see some vision of dark and grinning death. It was only a man—but a man with a gun, pointed at her. Twice in one night, what are the odds—

For a second, neither of them moved—and then the man lowered his weapon, a sickly half-smile playing across his pudgy face.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, his voice as oily and false as a bad politician’s. “I thought you were anoth-er one of those zombies.”

He smoothed his bristly mustache with one thick finger as he spoke, and although Claire had never met him before, she suddenly knew who he was; Chris had bitched about him often enough.

Fat, mustachioed, and as slick as a snake-oil sales-man—it’s the police chief. Irons.

He didn’t look good, his cheeks flushed with high color and his porcine eyes rimmed with puffed white flesh. The way his gaze darted around the room was unsettling, as if he was in the grip of some kind of heavy paranoia. In fact, he looked unbalanced, like he wasn’t all that connected to reality.

“Are you Chief Irons?” she asked, trying to sound pleasantly respectful as she stepped closer to the desk. “Yes, that’s me,” he said smoothly, “and just who are you?”

Before she could speak, Irons went on, confirming Claire’s suspicions with what he said next—and with the bitter, petulant tone in which he said it. “No, don’t bother telling me. It makes no difference. You’ll end up like all the others. ...”

He trailed off, staring down at the dead woman in front of him with some emotion that Claire couldn’t place. She felt bad for him, in spite of all that Chris had told her about his rotten personality and profes-sional incompetence; God only knew what horrors he’d witnessed, or what he’d had to do to survive. Is it any wonder that he’s having trouble with reality? Leon and I wandered into this horror show in the last reel; Irons was here for the previews, which probably included watching his friends die.

She looked down at the young woman on the desk and Irons spoke again, his voice somehow sad and pompous at the same time.

“That’s the mayor’s daughter. I was supposed to look out for her, but I failed miserably. ...” Claire searched for some words of comfort, wanting to tell him that he was lucky to have lived, that it wasn’t his fault—but as he continued his lament, the words died in her throat, along with her pity. “Just look at her. She was a true beauty, her skin nothing short of perfection. But it will soon putre-fy... and within the hour, she’ll become one of those things. Just like all the others.”

Claire didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but the wistful longing in his tone and in his shining, hungry stare made her skin crawl. The way he was looking at the dead girl—

• you’re imagining things. He’s the chief of police, not some perverted lunatic. And he’s the first person you’ve met who might be able to give you some kind of information. Don’t waste the opportunity. “There must be some way to stop it. . . ” Claire said gently.

“In a manner of speaking. A bullet in the brain—or decapitation.”

He finally looked away from the body, but not at Claire. He turned to gaze at the stuffed creatures perched on the edge of his desk, his voice taking on a resigned but somehow mirthful quality.

“And to think—taxidermy used to be my hobby.

No longer. . . ”

Claire’s internal alarms were doing some serious jangling. Taxidermy? What the hell did that have to do with the dead human being on his desk? Irons was finally looking at her, and Claire didn’t like it one bit. His dark and beady gaze was directed at her face, but he didn’t seem to actually see her at all. For the first time, it occurred to her that he hadn’t asked her one question about how she’d come to be there or commented on the smoke that had leaked into his office. And the way he’d talked about the mayor’s daughter ... no real sorrow at her passing, only self-pity and some kind of twisted admiration. Oh, boy. Oh boy oh boy, he’s not just out of touch here, he’s on a different goddamn planet—

“Please,” Irons said softly. “I’d like to be alone now.”

He sagged down into his chair, closing his eyes, his head falling back against the padded back as if in exhaustion. As simply as that, she’d been dismissed. And although she had a million questions—many of

which she thought he could provide answers for—she did think that maybe it was for the best if she just got the hell away from him, at least for now—

A soft creaking sound, behind her and to the left, so quiet that she wasn’t even sure she’d heard it at all. Claire turned, frowning, and saw that there was a second door to the office. She hadn’t noticed it before—and that soft, stealthy sound had come from behind it.

Another zombie? Or maybe somebody hiding. . . ? She looked back at Irons, and saw that he hadn’t moved. Apparently he hadn’t heard anything, and she’d ceased to exist for him, at least for the moment. He’d gone back to whatever private world he’d been in before she stumbled into his office.

So—back the way I came, or do I see what’s behind door number two?

Leon—she needed to find Leon, and she had a pretty strong feeling that Irons was a creep, whether he was crazy or not; no great loss that he wasn’t up for joining forces. But if there were other people hiding in the building, people that she and Leon could help or who might be able to help them. . . .

It would only take a moment to check. With a last glance at Irons, sagging next to the corpse of the mayor’s daughter and surrounded by his lifeless ani-mals, Claire walked to the second door, hoping she wasn’t making a mistake.

ELEVER

SHERRY HAD BEEN HIDING FOR A LONG TIME in the police station, for what must have been three or four days, and hadn’t seen her mother yet. Not once, not even when there had still been a lot of people left. She’d found Mrs. Addison right after she’d gotten there—one of the teachers from school—but Mrs. Addison had died. A zombie had eaten her. And not long after that, Sherry had found a ventilation shaft that ran over most of the whole building, and had decided that hiding was safer than staying with the grownups—because the adults kept dying, and because there was a monster in the station even worse than the zombies or the inside-out men, and she was pretty sure that the monster was looking for her. That was proba-bly stupid, she didn’t think that monsters picked out just one person to go for—but then again, she’d never thought that monsters were real, either.

So Sherry had stayed hidden, mostly in the knight room; there weren’t any dead people there, and the only way to get in—besides the ventilation shaft behind the suits of armor—was to go down a long hall guarded by a giant tiger. The tiger was stuffed, but it was still scary—and Sherry thought that maybe the tiger would scare away the monster. Part of her knew that that was dumb, but it made her feel better anyway.

Since the zombies had taken over everything in the police station, she’d spent a lot of time sleeping. When she was asleep, she didn’t have to think about what might have happened to her parents or worry about what was going to happen to her. The air shaft was pretty warm, and she had plenty to eat from the candy machine downstairs—but she was scared, and even worse than being scared was being lonely, so mostly she’d just slept.

She’d been asleep, warm and curled up behind the knights, when she’d been awakened by a tremendous crash somewhere outside. She was sure it was the monster; she’d only caught a glimpse of it once before, of the giant’s broad and terrible back, through a steel grate—but she’d heard it screaming and howling through the building many times since then. She knew that it was terrible, terrible and violent and hungry. Sometimes it disappeared for hours at a time, letting her hope that it had given up—but it always came back, and no matter where Sherry was, it always seemed to appear somewhere close by.

The loud noise that had ripped her from her dreamless sleep was like the sound a monster would make tearing the walls down, and she’d huddled in her hiding place, ready to dart back into the shaft if the sound came any closer. It didn’t. For a long time she didn’t move, waiting with her eyes squeezed shut, holding on to her good luck charm—a beautiful gold pendant that her mother had given her only last week, so big that it filled up her whole hand. As it had before, the charm worked; the loud, terrible noise hadn’t been repeated. Or maybe the big tiger had kept the monster from finding her. Either way, when she’d heard gentle thumping sounds in the office, she’d felt safe enough to creep out of the case and go out into the hall to listen. The zombies and inside-out men couldn’t use doors, and if it was the monster, it would have come for her already, clawing down doors and screaming for blood.

It has to be a person. Maybe Mom ...

Halfway down the hall, where it turned right, she’d heard people talking in the office and felt a burst of hope and loneliness mixed together. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, but it was the first time she’d heard anybody who wasn’t yelling for maybe two days. And if there were people talking, maybe it was because help had finally come to Raccoon. The army or the government or the Marines, maybe all of them . . .

Excited, she hurried down the hall and was next to the big snarling tiger, right by the door, when her excitement faltered. The voices had stopped. Sherry stood very still, suddenly anxious. If people had come to Raccoon to help, wouldn’t she have heard the planes and trucks? Wouldn’t there be shooting and bombs and men with loudspeakers telling everybody to come out?

Maybe those voices aren’t army people at all; maybe those voices are Bad People. Crazy, like that one man...

Not long after Sherry had gone into hiding, she’d seen a terrible thing through a grating that led into a locker room. A tall man with red hair had been in the room, talking to himself and rocking back and forth in a chair. At first, Sherry had thought about asking him for help, to find her parents—but something about the way he was talking and giggling and gently swaying back and forth made her wary, so she’d watched him for a while from the safe darkness of the air shaft. He’d been holding a big knife. And after a long time, still laughing and mumbling and rocking, he’d stabbed himself in the stomach. Sherry had been more scared by that man than by the zombies, be-cause it didn’t make sense. He’d been crazy, and he’d killed himself and she’d crawled away, crying because it just didn’t make any sense.

She didn’t want to meet anyone else like that. And even if the people in the office were okay, they might take her away from her safe place and try to protect her—and that would mean her death, because the monster surely wasn’t afraid of adults.

It felt awful to turn away, but there was no other choice. Sherry started back for the armor room— Creak!

• and froze as the floor shifted underfoot. The sound of the creaking board seemed incredibly loud and she held her breath, clutching her pendant and praying that the door wouldn’t come flying open behind her, that some crazy wouldn’t charge in and—and get her.

She didn’t hear anything, but felt sure that the pounding of her heart would give her away, it was so loud. After a full ten seconds, she carefully started back down the hall, stepping as lightly as she could, feeling like she was creeping out of a cave filled with sleeping snakes. The hall back to the armor room seemed

like it was a mile long, and she had to use all of her willpower not to run once she reached the turn—but if there was one thing she’d learned from the movies and TV, it was that running from danger always meant a horrible death.

When she finally reached the entrance back to the armor room, she felt like she might just collapse from relief. She was safe again, she could snuggle back into the old blanket that Mrs. Addison had found for her and just—

The door from the office opened, opened and closed. And a second later, there were footsteps. Coming for her.

Sherry flew into the armor room, no longer think-ing about anything at all in the bright and trembling crush of panic that swept through her. She sprinted past the three knights, forgetting her safe place be-cause all she knew was that she had to get away, get as far away as possible. There was a dark, tiny chamber past the glass case in the middle of the room and darkness was what she needed, a shadow to disappear into—

• and she could hear the running footsteps some-where behind her, pounding over wood as she hurtled into the dark room and into the farthest corner. Sherry crouched down between the dusty brick of the room’s fireplace and the padded chair beside it and tried to make herself as small as possible, hugging her knees and hiding her face.

Please please please don’t come in, don’t see me, I’m not here—

The running footsteps had come into the armor room and were slow now, hesitant, moving around the big glass case in the middle. Sherry thought of her safe place, the mouth of the ventilation shaft that could have taken her away, and struggled to hold back hot tears of self-condemnation. The fireplace room had no escape; she was trapped.

Each hollow, thumping step brought the stranger closer to the dark room in which Sherry hid. She scrunched herself tighter, making promises that she would do anything, anything at all if only the stranger would go away—

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Suddenly, the room flashed into blinding bright-ness, the soft click of the light switch lost beneath Sherry’s terrified cry. She pushed away from her corner and ran, screaming and unseeing, hoping to get past the stranger and back to the air shaft—

• and a warm hand grabbed her arm, tight, keeping her from going one more step. She screamed again, jerking as hard as she could, but the stranger was strong—

“Wait!” It was a lady, the voice almost as frantic as Sherry’s hammering heart.

“Let me go,” Sherry wailed, but the lady was still holding on, even pulling her closer.

“Easy, easy—I’m not a zombie, take it easy, it’s okay—“ The woman’s voice had turned soothing, the words crooned gently, the hand on Sherry’s wrist warm and strong. The sweet, musical voice repeated the gentle words again and again.

“—easy, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you, you’re safe now.”

Sherry finally looked at the lady, and saw how pretty she was, how her eyes were soft with concern and sympathy. And just like that, Sherry stopped trying to get away and felt the hot tears trickle down her face, tears that she’d been holding back ever since she’d seen the red-haired man commit suicide. She instinctively hugged the young, pretty stranger—and the lady hugged her back, her slender arms tight across Sherry’s trembling shoulders.

Sherry cried for a couple of minutes, letting the woman stroke her hair and whisper soothing words to her—and at last, she felt like the worst was over. As much as she wanted to crawl into the lady’s arms and forget all of her fears, to believe that she was safe, she knew better. And besides, she wasn’t a baby anymore; she’d turned twelve last month.

With an effort, Sherry stepped away from the woman and wiped her eyes, looking up into her pretty face. The woman wasn’t that old, maybe only twenty or so, and was dressed really cool—boots and cutoff pink denim shorts and a matching vest with no sleeves. She wore her shiny brown hair in a ponytail, and when she smiled, she looked like a movie star. The woman crouched down right in front of her, still smiling gently. “My name’s Claire. What’s yours?”

Sherry felt shy suddenly, embarrassed for running and then trying to get away from such a nice lady. Her parents had often told her that she acted like an emotional baby, that she was “too imaginative” for her own good, and here was proof; Claire wasn’t going to hurt her, she could tell.

“Sherry Birkin,” she said, and smiled at Claire, hoping that Claire wasn’t mad at her; she didn’t look mad. In fact, she looked pleased with Sherry’s answer. “Do you know where your parents are?” Claire asked, in the same sweet tone.

“They work at the Umbrella chemical plant, just outside of town,” Sherry said.

“Chemical plant... then what are you doing here?”

“My mom called, and told me to go to the police station. She said it was too dangerous to stay at home.”

Claire nodded. “From the look of things, she was probably right. But it’s dangerous here, as well. . . ” Claire frowned thoughtfully, then smiled again.

“You’d better come with me.”

Sherry felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach, and shook her head, wondering how to explain to Claire that it wasn’t a good idea, that it was a very bad idea. She wanted more than anything not to be alone anymore, but it just wasn’t safe.

If I go with her and the monster finds us. . . . Claire would be killed. And although Claire was thin, Sherry was pretty sure that she wouldn’t be able to fit in the ventilation shaft.

“There’s something out there,” she said finally. “I saw it, it’s bigger than the zombies. And it’s coming after me.”

Claire shook her head, opening her mouth to say something, probably to try and talk her into changing her mind, when a terrible, furious sound filled the room, echoing in violent waves from somewhere in the building. Somewhere close.

“Rrraaahh—“

Sherry felt her blood turn to ice. Claire’s eyes went wide, her skin paling.

“What was that?”

Sherry backed away, breathless, in her mind al-ready running for the safe place behind the three suits of armor.

“That’s what I was telling you,” she gasped out, and before Claire could stop her, she turned and ran. “Sherry!”

Sherry ignored the shouted plea, sprinting past the glass exhibit case for the safety of the air shaft. She leapt nimbly over the knight’s pedestal and dropped to her hands and knees, ducking her head and scram-bling into the ancient stone hole set into the base of the wall.

Her only chance, Claire’s only chance, was for Sherry to get as far away from her as possible. Maybe they would find each other again when the monster had gone.

As Sherry crawled quickly through the tight and winding darkness, she hoped it wasn’t already too late. TWELVE

ADA SAT ON THE EDGE OF THE CLUTTERED desk in the office of the Chief of Detectives, resting her aching feet and staring blankly at the empty steel safe in the corner. Her patience was wearing thin. Not only was the G-Virus sample nowhere to be found, she was starting to think that Bertolucci had flown the coop. She’d gone through the break room, the S.T.A.R.S. office, the library—in fact, she was pretty sure she’d covered just about everywhere the reporter would have had easy access to, and had used two full clips to do it. It wasn’t that she was low on ammo, it was the waste of time that the bullets represented—twenty-six rounds and no results, except that there were a dozen more virus-riddled corpses lying around. And two of Umbrella’s freak hybrids. . . . Ada shuddered, remembering the warped red flesh and trumpeting shrieks of the bizarre creatures that she’d capped in the press room. She’d never been particularly bothered by greed, corporate or other-wise, but Umbrella had been up to some seriously immoral experimentation. Trent had warned her about the Tyrant retrievers—which, thankfully, hadn’t put in an appearance yet—but the long-tongued, clawed, bloody humanoids were an affront to even her sensibilities. Not to mention a lot harder to kill than the virus carriers. If they were T-Virus products, she’d have to keep her fingers crossed that Birkin hadn’t done anything with his newest creation. According to Trent, the G series hadn’t been put to use yet, but it was supposed to be twice as potent. . . . Ada let her gaze wander, taking in the plain, functional office. It wasn’t the most inspiring environ-ment to take a break in, but at least it was reasonably gore-free; with the door closed, she could hardly smell the officers in the main part of the room. They’d been pretty far gone when she’d put them down, that bonelessly wet stage that apparently preceded total collapse.

Not that it matters if I can smell them, my hair and clothes have absorbed the goddamn smell; when they start to go bad, it seems to happen with a bang... She wished she’d bothered to learn more on the science end; she knew what the T-Virus was used for, but hadn’t thought it necessary to research the physio-chemical effects. Why bother, when she had no reason to think that Umbrella had been planning to spill a shitload of it in their hometown? She was getting plenty of firsthand information about how well it worked, but it would have been nice to know exactly what happened in the infected party’s body and mind, what turned them from a person into a mindless flesh-eater. Instead, she could only file away her

observa-tions and make guesses at the truth.

From what she’d seen, it took less than an hour for someone infected to turn zombie. Sometimes the victim went into a kind of fever-coma first, which presumably burnt out parts of the brain—and only added to the impression that they were waking from the dead when they stood up and started looking for fresh meat. The symptoms of the virus were the same for everyone, but not the progression rate; she’d seen at least three cases where the victim had turned bloodthirsty within a couple of moments of being infected, the stage she’d started to think of as “going cataract.” One of the few constants was that their eyes clouded with a thin film of eggy white mucous when they turned—and although the physical deterioration always started immediately, some fell to pieces much faster than others ...

... and why are you thinking about it? Your job doesn’t include finding a cure, does it?

She sighed, bending over to rub her toes. True enough. Still, it was something to think about. Focus-ing on staying alive was tiring and all-encompassing work; she didn’t have a chance to consider the subtle-ties of the circumstances while clearing out corridors. She was on break, and she needed to let her brain run around a bit, ponder a few of the job’s more puzzling aspects.

And there are about a thousand to mull over... Trent, what Bertolucci should or shouldn’t know... and the S.T.A.R.S.—what the hell had happened to that merry crew?

From the articles that Trent had included in the info packet, she knew about the S.T.A.R.S.’s suspen-sion—and considering what they’d been investigat-ing, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that they’d been railroaded by Umbrella for uncovering part if not all of the bioweapon operations. Umbrella had probably offed them by now, if they hadn’t gone into hiding—and she had to wonder if Trent had played any part in the S.T.A.R.S.’s little misadventure, or if he’d tried to contact them before or after. Not that he would’ve told her; Trent was an enigma, to be sure. She’d only had one actual meeting with him, although he’d contacted her several times prior to her leaving for Raccoon, mostly by phone—and although she’d always prided herself on her ability to read people, she knew absolutely nothing about where his interests lay, why he wanted the G-Virus or what his gripe with Umbrella was about. It was obvious that he had some inside connection, he knew too much about the company’s workings—but if that was the case, why not just pick up his own goddamn sample and then quit? Hiring an outside agent was the act of someone trying to avoid implication—but implication of what?

Ours is not to question why. . . .

A good principle to live by; she also wasn’t getting paid to figure out Trent. She doubted she’d be able to even if she was getting paid for it; she’d never met such a supremely self-controlled man as Mr. Trent. In every interaction they’d had, she’d gotten the feeling that he had been smiling inside, as if he knew some intensely pleasurable secret that no one else was privy to—and yet somehow, he hadn’t come across as arrogant or overblown. He was a cool one, his genial-ity so natural that she’d been vaguely intimidated; she might not have been able to pick up on his motives, but she’d seen that calm humor before—it was the real face of true power, of a man with a plan and the means to implement it.

So has the spill upset his plans, whatever they are? Or was he prepared for this contingency... ?He may not have planned it, but I can’t imagine that “caught unawares” is anywhere in Trent’s vocabulary.... Ada leaned back, rolling her head tiredly before pushing herself off the desk and stepping back into her uncomfortable shoes. Enough down time, she couldn’t spare her aches and pains more than a few minutes and didn’t expect to figure out much of anything until she was well away from Raccoon. She still had a couple of areas to check for Bertolucci before heading into the sewers, and she’d noticed that some of the first-floor window barricades weren’t as solid as she might have hoped; she didn’t want to

end up blocked out of a path by a new group of carriers from outside.

There were the “secret” passages on the east side, and the holding cells downstairs past the parking garage. If she couldn’t find him in either of those places, she’d have to assume he’d left the station and concentrate her efforts on obtaining the sample. She decided to try the basement first; it seemed unlikely that he’d stumbled across the hidden corn-dors. From what she’d read of his work, he wasn’t a good enough reporter to find his own ass. And if he was hiding in or near the holding cells, she wouldn’t have to spend any more time roaming the station, facing the inevitable invasion; the entrance into the subbasement was downstairs, so barring any compli-cations, she could head straight for the lab. Ada walked out of the office, wrinkling her nose at the fresh burst of rotting smell pushed at her by the lazily spinning ceiling fans. There had to be seven or eight bodies in the desk-filled room, all of them cops, and at least the three that she’d shot had been fairly rank...

. . . and didn’t I leave five carriers still walking around in here when I came through before? Ada paused just outside the large and open room, looking back in from the narrow connecting corridor that led to the back stairs. Had there been five? She knew she’d capped a couple on her first visit; the rest had been too slow to hassle with, and she thought there’d been five of them. And yet she’d only had to knock off three when she had returned for her im-promptu break.

There were five. I may not be at peak, but I can still count.

She wasn’t in the habit of doubting her ability to keep track of such things, and the fact that she’d only just noticed was a sign of how tired she was; two days ago, she would have made the observation immedi-ately. There was no way to tell if the additional corpses had been shot or had simply disintegrated on their own without exposing herself to contact—they were too messed up; but it would be wisest to assume that there were still a few survivors wandering around.

Not for long, one way or another....

Whether or not the zombies managed to break through, Umbrella would act soon, if they hadn’t already. What had happened in Raccoon was a share-holder’s worst nightmare, and Umbrella certainly wasn’t going to ignore the problem; they’d probably already worked up a fail-safe disaster and prepared their own spin to feed to the press. And it was a foregone conclusion that they’d try to salvage Birkin’s synthesis before putting their fail-safe into effect, which meant that she’d have to be very careful. Birkin had apparently been somewhat secretive about his work, and Trent had relayed that Umbrella would eventually send in a retrieval team ... with Raccoon in ashes, that eventuality had probably been moved forward a few notches.

A team of human beings, hopefully. I can handle that. A Tyrant, though ... 7 don’t need that kind of pain.

Ada turned away from the room, walking toward the closed door that would lead her to the basement steps. Tyrant was the code name for a particular series in Umbrella’s organic weapons research, a series that embodied the most destructive applications of the T-Virus. According to Trent, the White Umbrella scien-tists—the ones working in the secret labs—had just started tests on a kind of humanoid bloodhound, designed to hunt down any assigned scent or sub-stance it had been encoded for with relentless and inhuman capabilities. A Tyrant retriever, a nearly indestructible construct of infected flesh and surgi-cally implanted wiring—just the kind of thing that they might send in to find, say, a sample of the G-Virus....

Once she collected Trent’s sample, she was history, paid and drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere. And anything she might or might not feel about it, about how many innocents had died or

what Trent wanted the G-Virus for—it was just one more thing to put on her list of things the job didn’t call for. Her defenses safely in place, Ada started for the basement to see if she could find the troublesome reporter.

Leon stood in the ransacked basement weapons locker, adjusting the holster straps and thinking about where Claire might be. From what little he’d seen so far, the station wasn’t too bad. Cold and dim and stinking of the bodies heaped in the hallways, but not as actively dangerous as the streets. It wasn’t much to be grateful for, but he’d take what he could get. He’d killed two of his fellow officers and a woman in the tatters of a traffic patrol uniform on his way to the basement—the cops upstairs and the woman just outside the morgue, a few yards from the small room that housed the RPD armament. Only three zombies since he’d reached the station, not including the few he’d been able to avoid in the detectives’ room—but he’d passed over a dozen corpses on the short journey and had been able to make out the bullet holes on about half of them, through the eyes or directly to the temple. Between the cleanly “dispatched” creatures and the number of weapons missing from the lockers, he dared to hope that Branagh had been right about there being survivors.

Marvin Branagh ... probably dead by now. Does that mean he’ll turn into a zombie?If Umbrella’s really behind all this, it has to be some kind of a plague or disease, they’re a pharmaceutical company—so how do you catch it? Is it a contact thing, or can you get it from taking a deep breath—

Leon dropped that train of thought, fast; as cool and humid as the basement was, the thought that he could be infected by the zombie sickness made him break out in a sudden feverish sweat. What if all of Raccoon was still hot, and he’d caught it just driving into town? The cluttered shelves of the storage room seemed to close in just a bit, in an anxiety flash of epic proportions.

But before real panic set in, he heard his mind’s voice remind him of the reality—and the acceptance of the reality came with it, allowing him to let go of the fear.

If you’re sick, you’re sick. You can eat a bullet before it gets bad. If you’re not sick, maybe you can survive to tell your grandkids about all this. Either way, there’s probably nothing you can do about it now—except try to be a cop.

Leon nodded to himself, sighing. A better plan than worrying about it, and he now had the equipment to boost his chances. The electronic lock for the weapons store had been shot through, saving him from having to go searching for a key card or shooting it himself; the door had obviously been pried open, the external locks and handle practically shredded. On his first dig through the room, he’d been disappointed, and not a little freaked. There had been no handguns at all and very little ammo left in the dented green lockers—but he had found a box of shotgun shells, and after a second, more desperately thorough search, he’d un-covered a twelve-gauge hidden behind a high stack of boxes. There were a couple of shoulder harnesses for the Remington model still hanging on a wall hook, as well as a bigger utility belt than the one he already wore; it even had a sidepack deep enough to hold all of the loaded Magnum clips.

With a final cinch on the harness, he decided that it would be best to start searching the most obvious places first, every connecting corridor from every possible entrance. He’d head back to the lobby first, find something to leave a note on—

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Shots fired, close, and the echoing tone said it was the garage just down the hall. Leon yanked the Magnum out and ran for the door, precious seconds wasted as he fumbled at the mangled handle. The hall was clear, except for the dead traffic cop on the floor to his right. Straight ahead was the entrance to the parking garage, and Leon hurried toward it, reminding himself that he wanted to go in easy, that he didn’t want to get shot by a panicked gunman. Take it slow, get a good look before you move, identify yourself clearly—

The door, set into the wall to his right, was standing ooen—and as Leon darted a look into wide and open space, his body shielded by the concrete-block wall, he saw something that startled him into forgetting about the shooter.

The dog. It’s the same goddamn dog.

Impossible—but the sprawled, lifeless animal in the middle of the car-lined chamber looked the same. Even with the barest glimpse he’d had before, the slimy wet demon in canine form that had nearly scared him into a crash ten miles outside the city could have come from the same litter. Beneath the sputtering fluorescent strips that lit the cold, oil-stained garage, Leon could see how truly abnormal it was.

There didn’t seem to be anything moving, and no sound except for the buzz of lights. Still holding the Magnum ready, Leon stepped into the garage, deter-mined to get a closer look at the creature—and saw a second one next to a parked squad car, apparently just as dead as the first. Both lay in sticky red pools of their own blood, their long, skinned-looking limbs splayed brokenly.

Umbrella. The wild animal attacks, the disease—how long has this shit been going on? And how did they manage to keep it quiet after all those murders? What was even more confusing was why Raccoon wasn’t crawling with support services already; Um-brella may have been able to keep their involvement with the “cannibal” murders silent, but how could they keep Raccoon’s citizens from calling for help from outside the city?

And these dogs, like carbon copies . . . something else that Umbrella made up in their labs? He took another step toward the fallen dog-things, frowning, not liking the dark conspiracy theories that were forming in his thoughts but unable to ignore them. What he liked even less was the look of the oil stains on the concrete floor; they were rust-colored—and there were too many of the dried splotches for him to count. He bent down to get a closer look, so intent on putting to rest a sudden terrible suspicion that he didn’t register the shot until he heard the high, singing whine when it blew past his head. Bam!

Leon spun left, bringing the Magnum up and shout-ing at the same time—

“Hold your fire!”

• and saw the shooter lowering her weapon, a woman in a short red dress and black leggings stand-ing by a van against the far wall. She started walking toward him, her slender hips rolling smoothly, her head high and shoulders back. As if they were at a cocktail party.

Leon felt a rush of anger, that she could seem so calm after very nearly killing him—but as she got closer, he found himself wanting to forgive her. She was beautiful, and wore an expression of genuine pleasure at seeing him; a welcome sight after so much death.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “When I saw the uniform, I thought you were another zombie.” She was Asian-American, fine-boned but tall, her short hair a thick and glossy black. Her deep, satiny voice was almost a purr, a strange contrast to the way she looked at him. The slight smile she wore didn’t seem to touch her almond-shaped eyes, which were scrutinizing him carefully.

“Who are you?” Leon asked.

“I’m Leon Kennedy,” he said reflexively, not sure what to ask or where to start. “I—what are you doing down here?”

Ada nodded toward the van behind her, an RPD transport wagon that was blocking the holding cell area. “I came to Raccoon looking for a man, a reporter named Bertolucci; I have reason to think that he’s in one of the cells, and I think he might be able to help me find my boyfriend. . . ”

Her smile faded, her sharp, almost electric gaze meeting his. . . . “And I think he knows all about what happened here. Would you help me move the van?”

If there was a reporter locked up on the other side of the garage wall who could tell them anything at all, Leon was eager to meet him. He wasn’t sure what to make of Ada’s story, but couldn’t imagine why she would lie about anything. The station wasn’t safe, and she was looking for survivors, just as he was. “Yeah, okay,” he said, feeling caught off guard by her smoothly direct manner. It felt like she had taken control of their meeting, some subtle but deliberate manipulation that had put her in charge—and from the casual way she turned and walked back to the van, as if there was no question that he would follow, he thought she knew it.

Don’t be paranoid; strong women do exist. And the more people we can find, the more help I can get to look for Claire.

Maybe it was time to stop making plans, and just try to keep up. Leon bolstered the Magnum and went after her, hoping that the reporter was where Ada thought he was—and that things would start making sense, sooner rather than later.

SHERRY BIRKIN WAS GONE, AND CLAIRE

couldn’t fit herself into the ventilation duct to go after her. Whatever or whoever had screamed and scared the little girl so badly hadn’t put in an appearance, but Sherry was history, maybe still crawling frantically through some dark and dusty tunnel. She had apparently been hiding by the duct for a while; there were empty candy-bar wrappers and a musty old blanket stuffed in the opening, the pathetic little hideaway tucked behind three standing suits of armor.

Once she’d realized that Sherry wasn’t coming back, Claire had hurried back to Irons’s office, hoping that he might be able to tell her where the duct let out, but Irons was gone—along with the body of the mayor’s daughter.

Claire stood in the office, watched over by the TnlRjEEn dumb glass eyes of the morbid decor, and felt really uncertain for the first time since she’d hit town. She’d started out to find Chris, a goal that had expanded to include worries about zombie dodging, hooking up with Leon, and avoiding creepy Chief Irons, pretty much in that order. But in the few moments between meeting the little girl and that strange, howling scream, her priorities had shifted dramatically. A child was caught up in this nightmare, a sweet, little kid who believed that there was a monster stalking her.

Maybe there is. If I can accept that Raccoon’s got zombies, why not monsters? Hell, why not vampires or killer robots?

She wanted to find Sherry, and she didn’t know how to start. She wanted her big brother, but was just as clueless as to where he might be—and she had begun to wonder if he knew anything about what had happened to Raccoon.

The last time she’d talked to him, he’d avoided her questions about why the S.T.A.R.S. had been sus-pended, insisting that it wasn’t anything to worry about—that he and the team had run into some political trouble at the office and it was all going to be sorted out. She was used to his protectiveness, but thinking back, hadn’t he seemed overly evasive? And the S.T.A.R.S. had been investigating the cannibal murders, it wasn’t much of a stretch to connect the past flesh-eating activity with the current...

. . . which means what? That Chris uncovered some

evil plot and was hiding it? .

She didn’t know. All that she knew was that she j

didn’t believe he was dead, and that for now finding Chris or Leon would have to take a back seat to finding Sherry. As bad as things were, Claire had defenses—she had a gun, she had at least a little emotional maturity, and after nearly two years of daily five-mile runs, she was in excellent shape. But Sherry Birkin couldn’t be older than eleven or twelve, and seemed frail in every sense of the word, from the dirt in her pixie blond hair to the desperate anxiety in her wide blue eyes—she had inspired all of Claire’s protective instincts—

Thump!

A heavy, hollow vibration rattled through the ceil-ing, making the intricate chandelier in Irons’s office tremble. Claire reflexively looked up, gripping her handgun. There was nothing to see but wood and plaster, and the sound didn’t repeat itself. Something on the roof.. . but what could have made a noise like that? An elephant being air-dropped? Maybe it was Sherry’s monster. The vicious scream they’d heard back in the private exhibit room had come through a duct or the fireplace, the origin of the cry impossible to pin down—but it could have been the roof. Claire wasn’t particularly keen on meeting up with whatever had screamed, but Sherry had seemed certain that the creature was following her. . .

. . . so find the screamer, find the girl? Not my idea of the perfect plan, but I don’t have much else to go on at this point; it might be the only way to find her. Or maybe it was Irons up there—and although her meeting with him had left a slimy taste in her mouth, she regretted not having tried to get more information out of him. Crazy or not, he hadn’t struck her as stupid; it might not be a bad idea to find him again, at least to ask some questions about the ventilation system.

She wouldn’t know anything until she checked it out. Claire turned and went to the office door that opened into the outer corridor, where she’d put out the helicopter fire. The smoke had thinned in the adjoining hall, and although the air was still warm, it wasn’t the heat of a fresh blaze. In that, at least, she’d been successful. . . .

Claire stepped back into the main hall, averting her eyes from what was left of the pilot—

• and craa-ack!

• She froze, and heard a massive splintering of wood followed by the thick, ponderous steps of some-one who must be huge moving through the corridor past the turn, the sounds deliberate and thundering. Guy must weigh a ton, and oh Jesus tell me that wasn’t a door being torn apart—

Claire shot a look back down the small hallway to Irons’s office, her instincts telling her to run, her brain reminding her that it was a dead end, her body paralyzed between the two—

• and the biggest man she’d ever seen stepped into view, shadowed by the thin haze of smoke drifting through the hall. He was dressed in a long army-green overcoat that only accented his size, and was as tall as an NBA star—taller, but with proportionate bulk. A thick utility belt was wrapped around his waist, and though she didn’t see any weapons, she could feel the violence radiating off him in invisible waves. She could just make out his sickly white blur of a face, the hairless, sloping skull—and quite suddenly, Claire was certain that he was a monster, a killer with black gloved fists, each as big as a human head—

Shoot! Shoot it!

Claire aimed but hesitated, terrified of making a horrible mistake—until it took one massive step toward her on tree-trunk legs, and she heard the crunch of denting wood beneath its booted Franken-stein feet, and saw the black eyes, black and rimmed with red. Like lava-filled pits in a misshapen white boulder, blank but not at all blind, his gaze found hers—and he raised one meaty clenched fist, the threat unmistakable.

• shootshootshoot—

She squeezed the trigger, one, two times, and saw the impact—a flap of its lapel blew into shreds just below his collarbone, the second shot slicing cleanly through one side of the neck—

• and he took another step, not a flicker of expres-sion passing over his rough-hewn features, the fist still raised, seeking a target, seeking to crush—

The black, smoking hole in its throat wasn’t bleeding.

Oh SHIT!

In a rush of adrenaline-boosted dread, Claire pointed the handgun at the creature’s heart and pulled the trigger repeatedly, the giant taking another step, striding into the stream of explosive fire without flinching—

• and she lost track of the shots, unable to believe that it could still be coming, less than ten feet away as the rounds hammered its mammoth chest—

• and the gun clicked empty, even as the monster stopped in its thundering tracks, swaying from side to side like a tall building in a high wind. Without taking her shocked gaze from the reeling giant, Claire grabbed another clip from her vest and fumbled through reloading, her brain crazily trying to name this walking abortion.

Terminator, Frankenstein’s monster, Dr. Evil, Mr.

X—

Whatever it was supposed to be, the seven-plus semi-jacketed rounds to the chest had finally taken effect. Silently, the towering creature slumped to his right, falling heavily against one smoke-blackened wall and sagging there—not crumpling, but not mov-ing, either.

Weird angle, that’s all, he’s dead, just propped up by his own weight—

Claire didn’t move any closer, keeping the handgun leveled at the motionless giant. Was this the screamer? For as powerful and inhuman as it looked, she didn’t think so; this was no primal, furious demon, howling for blood. Mr. X was more like some soulless ma-chine, bloodless flesh that could ignore pain ... or embrace it.

“Dead now, doesn’t matter,” Claire whispered, as much to reassure herself as to cut off the relentless stream of useless thought. She had to think, to figure out what this meant—this wasn’t some freak zombie mutation, so what the hell was it? Why didn’t it fall down? She’d emptied a mostly full clip—would somebody hear the shots, would Sherry or Irons or Leon or whoever else might be lurking around the station come find her? Should she stay where she was? The creature that she’d already started to think of as Mr. X wasn’t breathing, its muscular body per-fectly still, its face as closed as death. Claire bit her lower lip, staring at the still impossibly standing, leaning creature, trying to think through her confused fear—

• and saw his eyes open, his shiny black and red eyes. Without so much as a wince of pain or effort, Mr. X swayed back to a stand, blocking the hall, his giant hands raising again—

• and with a mighty swing, he crashed his fists through the air, his long arms whipping just in front of her as she stumbled back. The momentum was enough for both of his huge hands to plunge into the wall across from where he’d leaned. The impact buried his fists, his arms stuck in the wood and plaster halfway to his elbows.

Me, could’ve been ME—

Back through Irons’s office and she’d be trapped. Without giving the matter any further thought, Claire moved, sprinting toward Mr. X. She flew past him, her right arm actually brushing against his heavy coat, her heart skipping a beat as the material wisped across her skin.

She ran, hung a left and dashed down the hazy hall, trying to remember what was past the waiting room, trying not to hear the unmistakable sounds of move-ment behind her as Mr. X jerked his hands free.

Jesus, what is that THING—

Back through the waiting room, slamming the door behind her as she ran, Claire decided that she would decide later. She ran, not letting herself think any-thing at all but how to run faster.

Ben Bertolucci was in the last cell in the room farthest from the garage, crashed out on a metal cot and snoring lightly. Keeping her expression carefully neutral, Ada decided to let Leon wake him up. She didn’t want to seem overly eager, and if there was one thing she knew about men, it was that they were easier to handle when they thought they were in control. Ada looked up at Leon with a patience she didn’t feel and waited.

They’d checked out an empty kennel and a winding concrete hall before finding him, and though the cold, dank air reeked of blood and virus decay, they hadn’t come across any bodies—which was strange, consid-ering the slaughter that Ada knew had occurred in the dank garage. She thought about asking Leon if he knew what had happened, but decided that the less they spoke, the better; there was no point in letting him get used to having her around. She’d seen the manhole in the kennel, rusting and set into a dark corner, and been gratified to see a crowbar on an open shelf nearby. With Bertolucci snoozing in front of them, Ada felt like things were finally starting to pick up—

“Let me guess,” Leon said loudly, and reached out to thump on the metal bars with the butt of his gun. “You must be Bertolucci, right? Get up, now.” Bertolucci groaned and sat up slowly, rubbing at his stubbled jaw. Ada wanted to smile, watching him frown wearily in their direction; he looked like shit—his clothes rumpled, his lank ponytail frazzled. Still wearing his tie, though. The poor slob probably thinks it makes him look more like a real reporter. . . . “What do you want? I’m trying to sleep here.” He sounded grouchy, and again Ada had to suppress a smile. It served him right for being so difficult to find. Leon glanced at Ada, looking a trifle uncertain. “Is this the guy?”

She nodded, realizing that Leon probably thought Bertolucci was a prisoner. Their conversation would dispel that particular notion pretty fast, but she didn’t want Leon to know more than he had to; she’d have to choose her words carefully.

“Ben,” she said, letting her voice carry a hint of desperation. “You told the city officials that you knew something about what’s been going on, didn’t you? What did you tell them?”

Bertolucci stood up and glared at her, his lips curling. “And who the hell are you?”

Pretending that she hadn’t heard, Ada upped the desperation, but just a hair; she didn’t want to over-play the helpless female bit, it kind of clashed with the fact that she’d survived this long.

“I’m trying to find a—friend of mine, John Howe. He was working for a branch office of Umbrella based in Chicago, but he disappeared several months ago—and I heard a rumor that he’s here, in this city ...” She trailed off, watching Bertolucci’s expression. He knew something, no question—but she didn’t think he was going to give it up.

“I don’t know anything,” he said gruffly. “And even if I did, why would I want to tell you?”

Original. If the cop wasn’t here, I’d probably just shoot him. Actually, she probably wouldn’t; Ada wasn’t into killing for the fun of it, and thought that she could probably get it out of him using one of her more persuasive methods—if her feminine charms didn’t work, there was always a shot to the kneecap. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do anything with Officer Leon hanging around. She hadn’t planned on their encounter, but for the moment, she was stuck with him.

The cop obviously wasn’t happy with the reporter’s responses. “Okay, I say we leave him in there,” he growled, talking to Ada but staring at Bertolucci with undisguised irritation.

Bertolucci half-smiled, reaching into one pocket and pulling out a set of silver cell keys on a thick ring. Ada wasn’t surprised, but Leon looked even more pissed off.

“Fine by me,” Bertolucci said smugly. “I’m not about to leave this cell, anyway. It’s the safest place in the building. There are more than just zombies run-ning around here, believe you me.”

From the way he said it, Ada thought she’d proba-bly have to kill him after all. Trent’s instructions had been clear—if Bertolucci knew anything about Bir-kin’s work on the G-Virus, he was to be disposed of; why, exactly, she wasn’t sure, but that was the job. If she could just get a few moments alone with him, she’d be able to ascertain how much he actually knew. The question was, how? She didn’t want to shoot Leon; as a rule, she didn’t kill innocents—and be-sides, she liked cops. Not necessarily the brightest lot, but anyone who took a job that required putting his or her life on the line had her respect. And he had great taste in weaponry—the Desert Eagle was top of the line . . .

. . . so why rationalize? I ditch him first and then circle back, doesn’t mean I’m going soft—

“Ggrraaaa!”

A violent, inhuman shriek pierced the tense silence. Ada snapped her Beretta around, aiming at the open gate that led back through the empty cell-block area. Whatever it was, it was somewhere in the basement—

“What was that?” Leon breathed from behind her, and Ada wished she knew the answer. The still resonating echo of that furious scream was like noth-ing she’d heard before—and nothing she expected to hear, even knowing about Umbrella’s research. “Like I said, I’m not leaving this cell,” Bertolucci said, his voice breaking slightly. “Now get out of here before you lead it right to me!”

Sniveling coward—

“Look, I may be the only cop left alive in this building,” Leon said, and something about the com-bination of fear and strength in his tone made Ada shoot a look back at him. The officer’s gaze was fixed on Bertolucci, his blue eyes sharp and unyielding. “. . . so if you want to live, you’re gonna have to come with us.”

“Forget it,” Bertolucci snapped. “I’m staying here ‘til the cavalry shows up—and if you’re smart, you’ll do the same thing.”

Leon shook his head. “It could be days before anyone comes, our best chance is to find a way out of Raccoon—and you heard that scream. Do you really want to get a visit from whatever made it?” She was impressed; some Umbrella freak could be lurching its way toward them even now, and Leon was actually trying to save the reporter’s worthless hide.

“I’ll take the risk,” said Bertolucci. “And good luck getting out, you’re gonna need it. . . ” The rumpled reporter stepped up to the bars, looking back and forth between them, running a hand over his greasy hair.

“Look,” he said, his voice softening. “There’s a kennel in the back of the building, with a manhole in it. You can get to the sewers from there, it’s probably the fastest way out of the city.”

Ada sighed inwardly. Terrific; so much for her hidden route to the lab. If she dumped Leon now, it would take him about five minutes to find her. You can always kill him, if it comes to that, Or... you can get him lost in the sewers and come back for Bertolucci while he’s clearing the path for you. Unlike Bertolucci, she didn’t want to run into whatever had screamed—and now that she knew he was staying put, luring the cop away was the next logical step.

The things I do to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. . . “Alright, I’m going to check it out,” she said, and without waiting for Leon’s response, she turned and sprinted for the gate.

“Ada! Ada, wait!”

She ignored him, hurrying past the empty cells and back into the chilled hall, relieved that the passage was still clear—and feeling a little unnerved by her sudden reluctance to simplify the situation. Things would be a lot easier if she just got rid of them both, a decision she wouldn’t have hesitated to make under different circumstances. But she was sick of death, sick and tired and disgusted with Umbrella for what they’d done; she wasn’t going to take the cop out unless she had to.

And if she did have to, if it came down to some innocent’s life or completing the job?

That she could ask herself that question at all told her more about her state of mind than she wanted to admit. She’d reached the door to the kennel; Ada took a deep breath, forcing every twinge of nagging emo-tion from her thoughts, and stepped inside to wait for Leon Kennedy. fOVRjEEn SO BEAUTIFUL . . . EVEN IN DEATH, BEVERLY Harris was radiant, but Irons couldn’t risk having her wake up while he wasn’t watching; he carefully folded her into the stone cabinet beneath the sink and latched it, promising himself that he would take her out when he had more time. She would become the most exquisite animal he’d ever transformed, posed and forever perfect once he’d prepared her the proper way ... a dream come true.

If I have time. If there’s any time left. He knew he was feeling sorry for himself again, but there was no one else to commiserate with, no one to marvel at the sheer magnitude of all that he’d suf-fered. He felt terrible—sad and angry and alone—but he also felt that things had finally become clear. He knew now, knew why he was being persecuted, and that awareness had given him a focus—as de-pressing as the truth was, at least he was no longer lost.

Umbrella. An Umbrella conspiracy to destroy me, all along. . .

Irons sat on the scarred, stained table in the Sanctu-ary, his special, private place, and wondered how long it would be before the young woman came for him. The one with the athletic body, the one who’d refused to tell him her name. In a way, she was responsible for his newfound clarity, an irony that he couldn’t help but appreciate; it had been her sudden appearance that had provided him with the truth.

She would find him, of course; she was an Umbrella spy, and Umbrella had obviously been watching him for quite some time. They probably had lists of everything he owned, volumes of psychological profil-ing reports, even copies of his financial records. It all made sense, now that he’d had some time to think; he was the most powerful man in Raccoon, and Umbrel-la had designed his downfall, tailored each vicious backstab to cause him the most acute agony possible. Irons stared at his treasures, the tools and trophies that sat on the shelves in front of him, but felt none of the pride they usually inspired. The polished bones were simply something to look at as his mind worked, absorbed with Umbrella’s treachery.

Years before, when he’d started taking money to turn a blind eye to the company’s doings, things had been different; then it had been a matter of politics, of finding himself a niche in the power structure that really controlled Raccoon. And things had worked smoothly for a long time—his career had progressed on schedule, he’d earned the respect of officials and citizens alike, and for the most part, his investments had paid off. Life had been good.

And then there was Birkin. William Birkin and his neurotic wife and their brat daughter.

After the Spencer estate spill, he’d almost con-vinced himself that the S.T.A.R.S. and goddamn Captain Wesker had been responsible for all the trouble, but he could see now that it was the arrival of Birkin and his family, nearly a year before, that had started the ball rolling; the destruction of the Spencer lab had only hurried things along. Umbrella had probably started monitoring him the day he’d had the misfortune to meet Birkin—at first, just watching, planting bugs, and installing cameras. The spies would have come later . . .

The Birkins had come to Raccoon so that William could concentrate on developing a superior synthesis of the T-Virus, based on the research being done at the Spencer lab. As quirky and unpleasant as

William could sometimes be, Irons had liked him, right from the start. The male Birkin had been Umbrella’s boy genius, but like Irons, he wasn’t the type to brag about his position; William was a humble man, only inter-ested in fulfilling his own potential. They’d both been too busy to have much of a friendship, but there had been a mutual respect between them; Irons had often felt that William looked up to him . . .

. . . and my mistake was to allow it. To allow my regard for him to cloud my instincts, to keep me from noticing that I was being watched, all along. The loss of the Spencer lab sent some big ripples through Umbrella’s hierarchy, and only days after the explosion, Irons had been approached by Annette Birkin with a message from her husband—a message and a request for a favor. Birkin had been worried that Umbrella was going to demand the new synthe-sis, the G-Virus, before it was ready; apparently, he’d been most dissatisfied with the application of his previous work, something about how Umbrella hadn’t let him perfect the replication process, Irons couldn’t remember exactly—and with Umbrella looking to recover from the financial blow of the Spencer loss, Birkin had been concerned that they might compromise the integrity of the untested virus. Through Annette, Birkin had asked for assistance—and offered him a little extra incentive to keep things fair. For a hundred grand, all Irons had to do was help keep the G-Virus under wraps—in short, watch out for Umbrella spies and keep an eye on the surviving S.T.A.R.S., making sure they didn’t do any more “discovering” of Umbrella’s research.

That was it. A hundred thousand dollars, and I was already watching my city, and keeping tabs on that rebellious little pack of troublemakers. Easy, easy money, and more to be made if everything went as planned. Except it was a trap, an Umbrella trap. . . . Irons had walked right into it, and that was when Umbrella had started plotting against him, using the information they’d gathered to seal his fate. How else could things have gone wrong so quickly? The S.T.A.R.S. had disappeared, then Birkin—and before he’d even had a chance to assess the situation, the attacks had started up again. He’d barely had time to seal Raccoon off before everything had fallen to shit. And all because I was helping a friend—for the greater good of the company, no less. Tragic. Irons stood up and walked slowly around the cut-ting table, idly tracing the dents and scars in the wood with his fingertips. Behind every mark was a story, a memory of accomplishment—but again, he could take no comfort. The cool, quiet atmosphere of the Sanctuary had always soothed him before, it was where he practiced his hobbies, where he was truly able to be himself—but it wasn’t his anymore. Noth-ing was. Umbrella had taken it from him, just as they’d taken his city. Was it so far-fetched to deduce that they’d unleashed their virus to get at him, to rob him of his power—and then sent that scantily clad brown-haired girl to rub his nose in it? Why else was she so attractive? They knew his weaknesses and were exploiting them, trying to keep him from retaining even a shred of dignity . . .

. . . and soon she’ll come for me, maybe still playing dumb, still trying to seduce me with her helplessness. An Umbrella assassin, a spy and an exploiter, that’s all she is, probably laughing at me behind that pretty face. . . .

Maybe the spill had been an accident; the last time they’d met, William Birkin had seemed unsteady, paranoid, and exhausted, and accidents happened even under the best of circumstances. But the rest was fact, there was no other explanation for how com-pletely Irons had been ruined. That girl was coming to get him, she was from Umbrella and she’d been sent to murder him. And she wouldn’t stop there, oh, no; she’d find Beverly and . . . and defile her somehow, just to make certain that nothing he cared about was left.

Irons looked around the small, softly lit room that had once been his, gazing wistfully at the well-used tools and furniture, the sweet, familiar smells of disinfectant and formaldehyde emanating from the rugged stone walls.

My Sanctuary. Mine.

He picked up the handgun that lay on his special cutting table, the VP70 that was still his, and felt a bitter smile curl his lips. His life was over, he knew that now. This whole affair had started with Birkin, and would end here, by his own hand. But not yet. The girl would come for him, and he would kill her before he said his final good-byes to Beverly, before he admitted his defeat by taking a bullet. But he would see to it that she understood his suffering first. For every torture he’d endured, the girl would pay, the bill settled through flesh and bone and as much pain as he could inflict.

He was going to die, but not alone. And not without hearing the girl scream in agony, creating a voice for the death of his dreams—a voice so clear and true that the echoes would reach even the black hearts of the company executives who had betrayed him. The S.T.A.R.S. office was empty, cluttered and cold and layered with dust, but Claire was reluctant to leave. After her stumbling, frightened flight through the body-strewn halls of the second floor, finding the place where her brother had spent his working days had left her feeling weak with relief. Mr. X hadn’t followed her, and although she was still anxious to help Sherry and find Leon, she found herself linger-ing, afraid to step back into the lifeless halls—and hesitant to leave the one place that felt like Chris. Where are you, big brother? And what am I going to do? Zombies, fire, death, your weird Chief Irons and that lost little girl—and just when I thought things couldn’t get any more insane, I get to face off with The Thing That Would Not Die, the freak to end all freaks. How am I going to get through this?

She sat at Chris’s desk, gazing at the small strip of black-and-white pictures that she’d found tucked in the bottom drawer; the four shots were of the two of them, grinning and making faces, a photo-booth memento of the week they’d spent in New York last Christmas. Finding the strip had made her want to cry at first, all of the fear and confusion she’d been holding back finally surging to the front at the sight of his well-loved smile—but the longer she’d looked at him, at the two of them laughing and having a good time, the better she’d started to feel. Not happy or even okay, and no less afraid of what was to come—just better. Calmer. Stronger. She loved him, and knew that wherever he was he loved her back—and that if the two of them had been able to survive the loss of both of their parents, to build lives for them-selves and share a silly Christmas vacation in spite of having no real home to go to, then they could cope with anything. She could cope.

Can and will. I’m going to find Sherry and Leon and, God willing, my brother—and we’re going to make it out of Raccoon.

The truth was, she didn’t really have any choice—but she needed to go through the process of accepting her lack of options before she could act. She’d heard before that real bravery wasn’t an absence of fear, it was accepting the fear and doing what was necessary anyway—and once she’d sat for a moment, thinking about Chris, she thought that she could do just that. Claire took a deep breath, slipped the photos into her vest, and pushed away from the desk. She didn’t know where Mr. X had been headed, but he hadn’t seemed like the waiting-around type; she would head back to Irons’s office and see if Sherry had come back—or Irons, for that matter. If X was still there, she could always run.

Besides, I should have searched his office, tried to find something about the S.T.A.R.S. There’s nothing here that can tell me anything. . . .