Birkin.
The creature was a giant, stretching blob of dark, slimy matter, spanning the width of the car; Leon couldn’t tell how tall it was. The Birkin-thing had thick streamers extended out, tentacles of wet and elastic goo attached to every part of the space in front of it—the ceiling, walls, and floor. And as Leon watched, the alien beast pulled itself forward, the dark limbs contracting, bringing the mass of the body a few feet ahead of where it had been.
Not crazy. He was seeing it, seeing the brackish, moving colors of black and green and purple in its tentacles as it stretched out again, the viscous materi-al latching to the metal of the car somehow, dragging the blob a few more feet ahead. The body itself was nothing so much as a gaping maw, a wet cave that still had teeth—
• and that would reach him pretty soon if he didn’t snap out of his disgusted stupor.
Leon aimed into the giant hole of its mouth and pulled the trigger, pumping in another round, firing, pumping, firing—
• and then the shotgun was empty, and the giant semi-liquid thing was still moving steadily forward. He didn’t know how to kill it, didn’t know if the rounds had even damaged it. His mind raced for an answer, for a solution that would end the terrible life of the G-Virus monster. He could detach the last car, fire through the pins and chains that held it together, //he could find the locking mechanism—
• and it would still be alive. Still living and chang-ing in the blackness of the tunnel, becoming something new—
The stretching elastic of its nebulous form inched forward, and Leon reached back for the door control. He’d have to try unhooking the cars, there was no other choice—
• unless—
He hesitated, then unholstered his Magnum and pointed it at the impossible mass. At the strange tumor that peered out of a slit in its rubber flesh, the eye that had been in every form that Birkin had taken. Careful aim, and—
• BAM!
The effect was immediate and total, the heavy round piercing the rheumy sphere—and a hissing, screaming whine or whistle pouring out of the toothed maw, like nothing on Earth, like the howl of some-thing mechanical and insane. The tendrils of un-formed matter shrank inward, turning black, shriv-eling—
• and the thing imploded, pulling in on itself, withering into a steaming black mass less than a quarter its original size. Like a deflated beachball, the gelid blob wrinkled and shrank, collapsing into a flattening thickness, drooling itself into a wide puddle of bubbling slime.
“Suck on that,” Leon said softly, the last bubbles popping, the pool a dead and inanimate thing. He watched it for a few moments, thinking about nothing at all—and finally turned to join the others, to tell them it was over.
First day on the job, he thought.
“I want a raise,” Leon said, to no one at all, and couldn’t help the grin that broke across his face, a tired, sunny grin that faded quickly ... but for the few seconds he wore it, Leon felt better than he had in a very long time.
Leon was back, and had found a jumpsuit that he tore into pieces and used to bind up Claire’s leg. All he’d said was that they were safe now, although Sherry had seen him and Claire exchange a look—one of those “we-shouldn’t-talk-about-it-right-now” looks. Sherry was too tired to take offense. She snuggled into Claire’s arms, Claire stroking her hair, the three of them not talking. There was nothing to say, or at least not for a little while. They were alive, on a train thundering through the dark—and from somewhere not far ahead, a soft light came filtering in, coming through the window in the control booth, and Sherry thought it looked very much like morning.
EPILOGUE
THEY SAW THE AFTERMATH OF THE EXPLO-sion from ten miles outside the city, a black and billowing cloud that rose up into the early morning light and hung over Raccoon like a terrible storm—
• or a bad dream, Rebecca thought, a recurring one. Umbrella.
She didn’t say it aloud, because it wasn’t necessary. John and David hadn’t gone through the Spencer estate nightmare, but they’d been at the Cove facility, witnesses to what Umbrella was capable of; they
knew.
Nobody spoke as David stepped up the speed, his knuckles white on the wheel. For once, John didn’t crack any jokes about what might have happened. They all knew that it was bad; before Jill, Chris, and Barry had left for Europe, Jill had wired them with her suspicions about another accident, and asked them to keep tabs. When the phone lines had gone down, they’d loaded up the SUV and left Maine to see what could be done. The only question was how many people had died this time.
Maybe this is the end, finally. A blast like that... Umbrella can’t cover this up so easily, not if it’s as bad as it looks.
John finally broke the silence, his deep, mellow voice uncharacteristically subdued. “Fail-safe?” David sighed. “Probably. And if there was a spill, we’re not going in; we’ll circle the city and then call for help from Latham. Umbrella is surely sending in its cleanup staff already.”
Rebecca nodded along with John. They weren’t technically part of the S.T.A.R.S. anymore, but David had been a captain before, and with good reason. They fell back into a tense silence, the dawn-touched trees spinning past the utility vehicle, Rebecca won-dering what they would find—
• when she saw the people, staggering up into the road, waving their arms.
“Hey—“ she started, but David was already hitting the brakes, slowing down as they neared the three-some of ragged strangers. A cop with a bandaged arm and a young woman in shorts, both of them holding weapons, and a little girl in a pink vest that was much too big for her. They weren’t infected, or at least not showing signs that Rebecca could see—but they looked like hell nonetheless. With their ripped clothes and their faces pale and shocked beneath masks of dirt, they certainly could have passed for walking death.
“I’ll talk,” David said, his crisp British accent mild but firm, and then they were pulling up beside the Raccoon survivors.
David opened his window and killed the engine, the young cop stepping forward as the woman slipped one grimy arm around the little girl’s shoulders. “There’s been an accident, in Raccoon,” he said, and although they were obviously tired and wounded and badly in need of help, there was a wariness in the cop’s tone, a guarded, careful note that suggested just how bad things had been. “A terrible accident. You don’t want to go there, it’s not safe.”
David frowned. “What sort of accident, Officer?” The young woman spoke up, her mouth a set and bitter line. “An Umbrella accident,” she said, and the cop nodded, and the little blond girl buried her face against the woman’s hip.
John and Rebecca exchanged a look, and David hit the switch to unlock the doors.
“Really? Those tend to be the worst kind,” he said gently. “We’d be happy to help you, if you’d like, or we could call for help. . ..”
It was a question. The cop glanced back at the woman, then met David’s gaze for several long beats.
He must have seen something in David’s face that he felt he could trust; he nodded slowly, then motioned for the woman and girl to come forward.
“Thanks,” he said, the exhaustion finally coming through. “If you could give us a ride, that’d be great.”
David smiled. “Please, get in. John, Rebecca—would you assist.. . ?”
John grabbed a couple of blankets out of the back as Rebecca reached for her medical kit, careful not to uncover the rifles tucked next to the wheel well. An Umbrella accident. . .
Rebecca wondered if they knew how lucky they were to have survived it—but another look into those three exhausted, shell-shocked faces told her that they probably did.