ResidentEvil-Nemesis [Chapter: 13]

THIRTEEN

JILL HAD FINALLY DECIDED TO OPEN THE

metal shutter and make a break for it when she heard

shots outside, the high-pitched chatter of an assault

rifle. To say she was relieved was an understatement;

the relentless thumping of the mostly dead outside had

been eating at her nerves, almost tempting her to shoot

herself, just so she wouldn't have to hear it anymore -

- and now, in a matter of seconds, it was quiet once

again.

She moved quickly to the side door in the garage,

ducking beneath a disemboweled red compact on a lift

and pressing her ear to the cold metal. All was silent,

the virus carriers surely dead...

Bam-bam-bam!

Jill jerked back as someone hammered on the door,

her heart keeping time.

"Hey, is somebody in there? The zombies are dead,

you can open up now!"

No mistaking the accent; it was Carlos Oliveira. Relieved,

Jill turned the lock, announcing herself as she

threw the door open.

"Carlos, it's Jill Valentine."

She was happy to see him, but the look on his face

was so sincerely elated that she felt almost shy suddenly.

She moved back from the door so he could step

inside.

"I'm so glad you're okay, when you weren't at the

trolley, I thought..." Carlos trailed off, his "thought"

obvious enough. "Anyway, it's really good to see you

again."

His apparently serious concern for her was a surprise,

and she was uncertain how to respond - irritation,

that she was being patronized? She didn't feel

irritated. Having someone interested in her well-being,

particularly considering the kind of chaos they were in,

was - well, kind of nice.

The fact that that someone is tall, dark, and handsome

isn't such a terrible thing, either, hmm? Jill instantly

clamped down on the thought, cutting it short.

True or not, they were in a survival situation; they

could make eyes at each other later, if they made it out

alive.

Carlos didn't seem to notice her slight discomfort.

"So, what are you doing here?"

Jill gave him a half smile. "I got sidetracked. Don't

suppose you saw Frankenstein's monster wandering

around out there?"

Carlos frowned. "You saw him again?"

"Not him, it. It's called a Tyrant, if it's what I think it

is - or some variation, anyway. Bio-synthetic, extremely

strong, and very hard to kill. And it appears

Umbrella figured out how to program it for a specific

task - in this case, killing me."

Carlos gazed at her skeptically. "Why you?"

"Long story. The short answer is, I know too much.

Anyway, I was hiding here, but..."

Carlos finished for her. "But a gang of zombies

showed up, making it hard for you to leave. Gotcha."

Jill nodded. "What about you? You said you made it

to the trolley, what you doing here?"

"I ran into two other U.B.C.S. guys. One of mem got

shot, he's still alive but not doing so great Mikhail.

Nicholai - that's the other one - thought he knew

where to get some explosives, so Mikhail and I went to

the trolley to wait for him. It turns out that there's an

evac on standby, if we can get to the clock tower and

ring the bells. We ring, helicopters come."

He noticed Jill's expression and shrugged, grinning.

"Yeah, I know. It's some kind of computer signal, I

don't know how it works. Great news, except to get the

trolley running we're going to need a couple of

things - a power cable and one of those old-fashioned

electrical fuses, to start with. Mikhail told me there

was a repair shop over here; he's one of the platoon

leaders, he got a good look at a map before we

landed..."

Carlos frowned, then nodded to himself as if he'd

solved some puzzle. "Nicholai must have seen a map,

too, that would explain why he didn't need directions."

"Carlos, Mikhail, Nicholai - Umbrella doesn't discriminate

based on nationality, does it?" Jill made the

joke offhandedly, mostly to cover a deepening sense of

unease. She thought Carlos was decent at heart, but two

more Umbrella soldiers, one of them a platoon

leader - what were the odds that all three were stand-up

guys who had been misled by their employer? Umbrella

was the enemy, she couldn't lose focus of that.

Carlos was already walking away, his attention fixed

on the raised red car. "If they were doing any electrical

checks, there should be ... there, that's what I'm looking

for!"

It seemed that Carlos had seen the cable he wanted

in the tangle of cords and wires spilling out from

under the hood, some of them hooked to machines Jill

didn't recognize, some just trailing on the oily cement.

"Careful," Jill said, moving to join him as he reached

up and grabbed one of the cables, dark green. She had

an instinctive mistrust of electrical equipment and

vaguely believed that people who messed around with

wires were just asking to be electrocuted.

"No problem," Carlos said easily. "Only a real baboso

would leave any of these hooked up to the..."

Crack!

An orange-white spark spat out from one of the trailing

wires, loud and bright and as explosive as a gunshot.

Before Jill could draw breath, the cement floor

was on fire - no gradual build, no sense of expansion, it

was just suddenly and completely ablaze, the flames

two, three feet high and rising.

"This way!" Jill shouted, running toward the open

door that led into the office, the oil-fed fire blasting

heat against her bare skin, when it hits the car's gas

tank it's going to blow, we gotta get out of here...

Carlos was right behind her, and as they ran into the

office, Jill felt her blood run cold. Screw the car, the car

was nothing compared to what was going to happen

when the fire got to the underground tanks in front of

the station.

A chain pulley hung next to the steel shutter that

blocked the front door. Jill ran for it, but Carlos was

one step ahead. He snatched the chain and pulled, hand

over hand, the shutter inching slowly upward in spite of

the frantic rattle of metal links.

"Drop and crawl," Carlos said, raising his voice to be

heard over the clanking, over the oceanlike rumble of

spreading fire in the shop.

"Carlos, the tanks outside..."

"I know, now move!"

The bottom of the shutter was a foot and a half from

the ground. Jill dropped, flattening herself against the

cold floor, shouting up to Carlos before she bellycrawled

outside.

"Leave it, it's good enough!"

Then she was through, stumbling to her feet,

reaching around to grab Carlos's hand and pulling

him up after her. Inside the shop, something exploded,

a dull whoomp of sound, maybe a gas can or

that cabinet full of machine oil, Jesus I must be

cursed doomed something things keep blowing up

around me...

Carlos grabbed her arm, snapping her out of her

wild-eyed freeze. "Come on!"

She didn't need to be told twice. With the rising light

pouring from the machine shop's windows, illuminating

in manic orange the heaped corpses of at least eight

virus carriers, she ran, Carlos beside her.

The gridlock was bad, the street jammed, no clear

path for them to make time. Jill could feel the seconds

fly as they struggled through the maze of dead metal

and blank, staring glass. The first real explosion and the

sound of shattering windows behind them was too

close, we're not far enough yet, but all they could do

was what they were doing - that and pray that the fire

would somehow miss the main tanks.

Maybe we should take cover, maybe we're out of the

blast radius and...

Somehow, she didn't hear it - or rather, she heard a

sudden, total absence of sound. Too focused on wending

through the silent traffic in the dark, the rush of

blood in her ears, the passing time, perhaps. All she

knew was that she was running, and then there was a

mammoth wave of pressure that boosted her from behind,

lifting her up and forward at once, the side of a

beaten panel truck rushing at her and Carlos screaming

something - and then there was nothing but blackness,

nothing but a distant sun that lapped at the edges of her

dark, sending her dreams of angry light.

Mikhail was sinking, descending into the fevered

delirium that would undoubtedly kill him. All Nicholai

had been able to get out of the dying man was that Carlos

had gone to get equipment to repair the trolley, and

that he would be back soon. If there was any more,

Nicholai would have to wait until Mikhail's fever

broke or Carlos returned, neither of which seemed

likely. Mikhail was only going to get worse, and the

deep, rumbling explosion that had quaked the ground

beneath the trolley, that had preceded a lightening of

the night sky to the north, suggested that there had been

a fire at the gas station - not necessarily Carlos's fault,

but Nicholai suspected that it probably was, and that

Carlos Oliveira had burned to a crisp.

Which means I'll have to find a power cable myself if

I want a ride to the hospital.

Irritating, but it couldn't be helped. Nicholai had

found a box of spare fuses inside the station, as well as

a five-gallon container of properly mixed machine oil,

more than enough to get the cable car to the hospital -

- but no power cable, no wiring at all with which to bypass

the shorted circuits. Nicholai wondered why

Carlos hadn't thought to break into the station's maintenance

room, and decided it was probably due to an

absence of imagination.

"No ... no, it can't ... fire! Fire at will, I think ... I

think..."

Nicholai looked up from his inspection of the trolley's

control panel, curious, but whatever Mikhail thought was

lost as he dropped back into a troubled slumber, the ancient

bench creaking beneath his restless movements. Pathetic.

He could at least babble out something interesting.

Nicholai stood and stretched, turning toward the

door. He'd already added the oil to the engine's rudimentary

tank system, but he'd taken the wrong land of

fuse. He'd get another one on his way back into town,

probably all the way back to that same damned parking

garage where he'd tracked Mikhail; he'd noticed some

shelves of equipment there. All of the running back and

forth was becoming tiresome, but at least most of the

cannibals in the area had already been killed, so it

wouldn't take too long - and when he returned, he

could reward himself for his efforts by telling Mikhail

who was responsible for his impending death.

He stepped out into the train's yard, thinking

vaguely about where he might sleep for the night,

when he saw two figures stumbling toward the trolley,

their forms half hidden in the sparse light from a

dying fire in the northwest corner of the yard. They

drew closer, and he saw that Carlos had managed to

escape death after all and had brought a woman with

him, undoubtedly the same woman who'd told him

about the trolley. Both were singed, their exposed skin

reddened and grimy with ash; perhaps he hadn't been

that far off the mark about who had started that

fire...

... and once again, let the games begin!

"Carlos! Are you injured? Either of you?" He

stepped forward so they could see him clearly, could

see the deep concern on his face.

Carlos was obviously glad to see him. "No, I'm...

... we're both fine, just a little banged up. The gas station

caught fire and blew. Jill blacked out for a minute or

two, but she's..."

Carlos abruptly cleared his throat, nodding toward

the woman. "Uh, Jill Valentine, this is Sergeant

Nicholai Ginovaef, U.B.C.S."

"Nicholai, please," he offered, and she stared at him,

her expression unreadable. It seemed that Ms. Valentine

wasn't interested in making friends. That pleased him,

though he wasn't sure why. She carried a .357 revolver

and had what looked like a 9mm tucked into the waistband

of an extremely snug skirt.

"We are indebted to you for telling Carlos about the

trolley. You're with the police?" Nicholai asked.

Jill's gaze was fixed on his, and there was no mistaking

the tone of challenge in her response. "The police

are dead. I'm with the S.T.A.R.S., Special Tactics and

Rescue Squad."

Well, well, how ironic. I wonder if she's encountered

Umbrella's little surprise yet... If she had, she

probably wouldn't be standing in front of him; unless

it was malfunctioning, a Tyrant could break a fullgrown

man in half without exerting even a quarter of

its strength. Someone like Jill Valentine didn't stand

a chance against something even more advanced,

Umbrella's new toy that had been scheduled to appear.

Nicholai was pleased with the strange coincidence of

meeting a S.T.A.R.S. member; it made him feel like

everything was in order, that connections in his mind

were reflected in the world around him...

"How's Mikhail?"

Nicholai looked away from Jill's unwavering stare to

answer Carlos, not wanting to seem combative. "Not

very well, I'm afraid. We should leave as soon as possible.

Did you find anything useful? Mikhail said you

were going to get repair equipment."

"It's all gone, burned up," Carlos said. "I guess we'll

have to keep..."

"Did you get your explosives?" Jill interrupted, still

watching him carefully. "Where were they?"

Not openly hostile, but very close; not surprising,

considering. The inside line on the S.T.A.R.S. was that

they had uncovered information about Umbrella's real

research at the Spencer estate lab. They'd been discredited

later, of course, but Umbrella had been trying to

get rid of them ever since.

If they're all as suspicious as this one, it's no wonder

Umbrella hasn 't succeeded.

"There weren't any explosives," he said slowly,

abruptly deciding to push her a little, see how forthright

she was. "All I found were empty boxes. Ms.

Valentine, is something bothering you? You seem ... tense."

He deliberately shot a sharp glance at Carlos, as if

angry that he'd brought the mistrustful woman along.

Carlos flushed and quickly spoke up, trying to redirect

the conversation.

"I think we're all on edge, but the important thing

right now is Mikhail. We've got to get him out of

here."

Nicholai held Jill's gaze a beat longer, then nodded

and turned his attention to Carlos. "Agreed. If you can

come up with a cable, I'll see what I can do about a

fuse - there's a power station not too far from here, I'll

look there. Back at the garage where we found Mikhail,

I'm sure I saw battery cables, you should try there. Regardless

of our success, we meet back here in a half

hour."

Carlos nodded. Nicholai made a point of ignoring

Jill's response, addressing Carlos instead. "Good. I'll

check on Mikhail before I go. Move out."

He turned back toward the cable car as though everything

was settled, silently congratulating himself as he

climbed aboard. They would fetch the cable for him,

while all he had to do was walk a dozen steps into the

trolley station and reach into a box.

Which means I'll have plenty of time left over. I wonder

what they'll talk about when I'm not around...

Perhaps he'd arrange to meet them on their way back,

watch them for a moment or two before revealing his

presence.

Nicholai walked to where Mikhail was sleeping and

grinned at him, well pleased. Things were getting interesting,

finally. Carlos was working for him, Mikhail

was at death's door, and the addition of the S.T.A.R.S.

woman had thickened the plot, so to speak. He glanced

out the trolley window and saw that the two of them

had already gone, disappearing back into the dark. Jill

Valentine was suspicious of him, but only because of

what she knew about Umbrella; he was sure that she

would warm to him, given a little time.

"And if she doesn't, I'll kill her along with the rest of

you," he said softly.

Mikhail let out a soft sound of distress but slept on,

and after a moment, Nicholai quietly left.