– and then it was over, and he was himself once again, still frustrated but in control. He exhaled sharply and moved back to the desk, ready to revise his plans. It was simply going to take longer to find them, that was all; it wasn't the end of the world. And perhaps they would fail to report in, conveniently dying just like Martin and the other three. He could hope but wouldn't count on it. What he could count on was his own perseverance and skill. Umbrella wouldn't send in their pickup for nearly a week – the longest, they believed, that they could keep the disaster quiet – unless the Watchdogs called in with complete results, unlikely at best. With six days to find only five people, Nicholai was certain that he would be the only one left to pick up. "I won't even need all six," Nicholai said, nodding firmly at Martin's sprawled, lumpy corpse. "Three days, I'm sure I can do it in three."
With that, Nicholai leaned forward and started to call up the maps he would need, happy again. Jill hadn't been able to find any shells for the 12-gauge, but she took it anyway, aware that her ammo wouldn't last forever; it would make a good club, and she might find shells for it later. She'd just about de-cided to try climbing over one of the western blockades when she saw something that changed her mind, some-thing she had fervently hoped never to see again.
A Hunter. Like the ones at the estate, in the tunnels.
She'd stood on the fire escape outside of an uptown boutique, seen it in the street just past one of the vans that blocked the fire escape's alley. It didn't see her; she watched it lope by and out of sight, a little different than the ones from before, but close enough – the same strangely graceful, malignant carriage, the heavy, curved talons, the dark mud green color. She held her breath, her stomach in knots, remembering…… hunched over so that its impossibly long arms al-most touched the stone floor of the tunnel, both its hands and feet tipped with thick, brutal claws. Tiny, light-colored eyes peering out at her from aflat reptil-ian skull, its tremendous, high-pitched screech echoing through the dark underground just before it sprang…
She'd killed it, but it had taken her fifteen 9mm rounds to do it, an entire magazine. Later, Barry had told her that he'd heard them referred to as Hunters, one of Umbrella's bio-organic weapons. There had been other kinds on the estate – feral, skinned-looking dogs; a kind of giant, flesh-eating plant that Chris and Rebecca had destroyed; spiders the size of small cattle; and the dark, mutant things with bladed hooks for hands, the ones that hung from the ceiling of the es-tate's boiler room, skittering overhead like spined mon-keys.
And the Tyrant, somehow the worst because you could see that it had been human once; before the surgeries, before the genetic tampering and the T-virus.
So it wasn't just the T-virus loose in Raccoon. As awful as the realization was, it wasn't exactly shocking; Umbrella had been messing around with some very dangerous stuff, breeding slaughtering, nightmare chil-dren like some aberrant God without preparing for the inevitable consequences; sometimes, nightmares didn't just go away.
Unless… unless they did this on purpose.No. If they'd meant to destroy Raccoon City, theywould have evacuated their own people… wouldn'tthey?
It was a question that haunted her on her journey to the police station. Seeing the Hunter had made up her mind for her about what to do next; she simply had to have more ammo, and she knew there'd be some in the
S.T.A.R.S. office, in the gun safe – 9mm, probably shotgun shells, maybe even one of Barry's old re-volvers. The station wasn't too far away, at least. She stuck to the growing shadows, easily dodging the few zom-bies she passed; many of them had decayed too much to move any faster than a slow walk. One of the gates she had to pass through to get to the station had been heavily roped and knotted, the knots soaked with oil. She gave herself a mental kick for forget-ting to bring a knife; lucky for her she'd picked up a lighter at the Bar Jack, although she worried some about the smoke drawing attention to her position until she got through the gate and saw the heap of burning debris farther ahead, just in front of Um-brella's medical sales offices. Damage left over from the riots, she guessed. She thought about stopping to put out the flames, but there didn't seem to be any danger of their spreading in the cement and brick al-leyway. So, here she was, standing at the gates to the RPD courtyard. The rioting had been bad here. Trashed cars, broken barricades, and orange emergency cones littered the street, though there were no bodies amidst the rubble. To her right, a fire hydrant spewed a foun-tain of hissing water into the air. The gentle sound of splashing water might even have been pleasant in an-other circumstance – a hot summer day, children laughing and playing. Knowing that no fireman or city worker would be coming to fix the gushing hydrant made her ache inside, and the thought of chil-dren… it was too much; she blocked it out, deter-mined not to let herself start thinking about things she couldn't fix. She had enough to worry about.
Such as stocking up on supplies… so what are you waiting for, anyway? A written invitation?
Jill took a deep breath and pushed the gates open, wincing at the squeal of rusty metal. A quick scan told her the small, fenced yard was empty; she lowered her weapon, relieved, and carefully closed the gates before moving toward the heavy wooden doors of the RPD building. A lot of cops had died out in the streets, which would make this easier for her, as terrible as that was; not as many carriers to deal with once she got in-side… Sqreeak! Behind her, the gates swung open. Jill spun, almost firing at the figure that crashed into the yard, until she realized who it was.
"Brad!"
He stumbled toward the sound of her voice, and she saw that he was badly wounded. He clutched his right side, blood dripping over his fingers, a look of com-plete terror on his face as he reached toward her with his free hand, gasping.
"juh… Jill!"
She stepped toward him, so focused on him that when he suddenly disappeared, she didn't understand what had happened. A wall of black had sprung up be-tween them, a blackness that emitted a deep, rumbling howl of fury, that started toward Brad and shook the ground with each massive step. "Sstaarrss," it clearly said, the word nearly hidden beneath a wavering growl like that of a wild animal, and Jill knew what it was without seeing its face; she knew it like she knew her own dreams.
Tyrant.
Brad fell backwards, shaking his head as if to deny the approaching creature, staggering in a half circle and stopping when his back hit brick. In the split second before it reached him, Jill could see it in profile; time seemed to stop for that instant, allowing her to really see it, to see that it wasn't her nightmare Tyrant, but no less horrible for that; in fact, it was worse. Between seven and eight feet tall, humanoid, its shoulders impossibly broad, its arms longer than they should have been. Only its hands and head were visi-ble, the rest of its strangely proportioned body clothed in black, except for what appeared to be tentacles, slightly pulsing ropes of flesh that were only half tucked under its collar, their points of origin unseen. Its hairless skin was the color and texture of badly healed scar tissue, and its face looked as though whoever had designed the creature had decided not to bother, instead pulling a too-tight sack of torn leather over its rudimen-tary skull. Misshapen white slits for eyes were set too low and separated by an irregular line of thick surgical staples. Its nose was barely formed, but the dominant feature by far was its mouth, or lack thereof; the lower half of its face was teeth, giant and square, lipless, set against dark red gums. Time started again when the creature reached out and covered Brad's entire face with one hand, still growling as Brad tried to say something, panting in high, wheezing gasps beneath its palm…… and there was an awful, wet squishing sound, heavy but slick, like someone punching a hole in meat. Jill saw a flesh tentacle sticking out from the back of Brad's neck and understood that he was dead, that he would bleed out in seconds. Numbly, she saw that the ropelike appendage was moving, swaying like a blind snake, droplets of blood falling from its muscular length. The Tyrant-thing grasped Brad's skull, and in a single, fluid motion, it lifted the dead pilot and tossed him aside, retracting the killing tentacle back into its sleeve before Brad hit the ground. "Sstaarrss," it said again, turning to face her, and as it focused its attention to her, Jill felt a fear greater than any she'd ever known. The Beretta would be useless. She turned and sprinted, barreling through the doors to the RPD, slam-ming and dead-bolting them behind her, all on instinct; she was too frightened to think about what she was doing, too frightened to do anything but back away from the double doors as the monster slammed into them, rattling them on their hinges. They held. Jill was very still, listening to the pound of blood in her ears, waiting for the next blow. Long seconds dragged by, and nothing happened, but full minutes passed before she dared to look away, and even the realization that it had stopped for the moment brought her no relief. Brad had been right, it was coming for them and now that he was dead, it would be coming for her.