TWENTY-EIGHT
CARLOS HEARD THE THING HOWL AND KNEW
what it was. He'd only caught a glimpse of the monster
on its way down, but it was big and badass, and he suspected
that they were screwed.
Jill raised her voice to a shout, and Carlos could only
barely hear her over the Nemesis's seemingly endless
scream.
"Where's the .357?"
Carlos shook his head. He had the M16, but he'd
stowed the heavy revolver and the rest of the rifle's
magazines on the helicopter.
"Grenade gun?" he shouted back, and it was Jill's
turn to shake her head.
A 9mm and maybe twenty rounds left for the rifle.
We'll have to blow open the door, it's our only chance...
Carlos knew better even as he thought it. The front
and back doors were heavy-duty, they'd have better
luck blowing a hole in the wall...
... and the answer hit him, and he saw that Jill already
had it from the way she was staring at him, eyes
wide and blinking.
The Nemesis-monster's howl was winding down, but
a horrible, wet slurping noise had begun, the sound of
something vast and sticky moving slowly and steadily
across concrete.
It's coming for her.
"Can you operate it?" Carlos asked, already steeling
himself for a confrontation with whatever the Nemesis
had become.
"Maybe, but..."
Carlos cut her off. "I'm going to distract it - get that
thing running and let me know when to duck."
Before Jill could protest, Carlos hurried past her, determined
to do whatever he could to keep it from getting
to her, at least it's slower than it was, if I can just
slow it down a little more...
He reached the end of the wall of equipment, took
a deep breath, stepped around the corner - and cried
out in involuntary disgust at the oozing, undulating
mass that crept and crawled toward him, pulling itself
along with clawed, shapeless appendages the
color of blisters. Fleshy lumps rose and fell like bubbles
in a pot of stew along its twisted back, thin,
black fluid trickling from dozens of tiny slits on its
body, wetting the floor, lubricating its meaty passage.
Carlos picked a slightly raised lump on top of the
giant, pulsing creature and opened fire, the rounds
splashing into the fleshy surface like pebbles into a
stream, tat tat tat -
- and lightning fast, one of the tentacles at the front
of the body lashed out, slapping Carlos's legs hard
enough to knock him down.
Carlos scrambled backwards through the pain in his
side, awed by its incredible speed and not a little afraid.
The bulk of it moved slowly, but its reflexes were insanely
fast, and it had reached across three meters of
open space to knock him down, seemingly without
strain.
"Puta madre," he breathed, the worst curse he could
think of as he rolled to his feet and backed away. It was
already to the corner of the metal wall, ten meters or
less from the cannon where Jill was wildly slapping at
switches. He'd distracted it about as effectively as a fly
distracted an airplane. How much time do we have left
before daybreak?
Suddenly, it howled again, a chorus of sound, each
small, leaking slit on its body gaping open, a thousand
mouths screaming, creating a trumpeting, deafening
roar.
It wasn't going to stop. Carlos backed further away
and opened fire again, a waste of bullets, but there was
nothing else he could do...
... and then he heard the powerful, rising hum of a
mighty turbine spinning fast and faster, and Jill was
screaming for him to move, and Carlos moved.
She hadn't been able to find the power main, no buttons
or cords to connect, and she didn't know enough
about machines to figure it out. She'd seen Carlos fall
and her heart had stopped, but she'd forced herself to
keep trying, knowing it was all they had.
After a second frantic, desperate search she'd found
the power switches on its base, and the machine had
thrummed to beautiful, wonderful life.
"Move!" Jill shouted, pushing the levers that slowly
and precisely raised the cannon, its movements spelled
out digitally on a small screen next to the base. She
could feel the energy building, the air around her heating
up, and as Carlos got out of the way and the Nemesis-
entity slithered out into the open, she found herself
positively thrilled, almost overcome with an intense
and violent sense of self-satisfaction.
It had killed Brad Vickers and tracked her mercilessly
through the city. It had murdered the rescue team
and stranded them in Raccoon, it had infected her with
disease, it had terrorized her and wounded Carlos - and
that it had been programmed to do these things didn't
matter; she hated it with everything inside of her, despised
it more than anything she'd ever despised.
The mutated, aberrant thing inched forward on a
wave of slime as the cannon's hum reached an explosive
crescendo, the sound drowning out everything.
Jill's words went unheard, even by her.
"You want S.T.A.R.S., I'll give you S.T.A.R.S., you
piece of shit," she said, and slammed her hand down on
the activation switch.
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