Well, you can't have everything; his death will have to be enough.
Nicholai smiled and raised the M16, savoring the mo-ment. A cool night breeze ruffled his hair as he studied his quarry, noting with no small satisfaction the fear on Mikhail's lined, unknowing face. A head shot? No; on the off chance that Mikhail had been infected, Nicholai wouldn't want to miss the resurrection. He had plenty of time to watch, too. He lowered the barrel a hair, sighting one of Mikhail's kneecaps. Very painful… but he would still have use of his arms and would probably fire blindly into the dark; Nicholai didn't want to risk get-ting hit. Mikhail had finished his rifle inspection and was looking around as if to plot his next step. Nicholai took aim and fired, a single shot, extremely happy with his decision as the platoon leader doubled over, grabbing his gut and suddenly, Mikhail was gone, around the cor-ner of the building and into the night. Nicholai could hear the crunch of gravel fading away. He cursed softly, clenching his jaw in frustration. He'd wanted to see the man squirm, see him suffer from the painful and probably lethal wound. It seemed that Mikhail's reflexes weren't as poor as he'd thought.
So, he dies in the dark somewhere instead of where I can see him. What is it to me? It's not as though I have nothing else to occupy my time…
It didn't work. Mikhail was badly injured, and Nicholai wanted to see him die. It would only take a few minutes to find the trail of blood and track him down – a child could do it. Nicholai grinned. And when I find him, I can offer my assistance, play the concerned comrade – who did this to you, Mikhail? Here, let me help you…
He turned and hurried to the stairs, imagining the look on Mikhail's face when he realized who was re-sponsible for his plight, when he understood his own failure as a leader and as a man. Nicholai wondered what he'd done to deserve such happiness; so far, this had been the best night of his life.
When their conversation was over, the line went dead and Carlos walked to one of the booths and sat down, thinking hard about the things Trent had told him. If all he'd said was true – and Carlos believed that it probably was – then Umbrella had a lot to answer for. "Why are you telling me all this?" Carlos had asked near the end, his head spinning. "Why me?" "Because I've seen your records," Trent answered. "Carlos Oliveira, mercenary for hire – except you only ever fought the good fight, always on the side of the oppressed and abused. Twice you risked your life in as-sassinations, both successful – one a tyrannical drug lord and the other a child pornographer, if memory serves. And you never harmed a civilian, not once. Um-brella is involved in some extremely immoral practices, Mr. Oliveira, and you're exactly the kind of person who should be working to stop them."
According to Trent, Umbrella's T-virus or G-virus, there were apparently two strains – was created and used on homemade monsters to turn them into living, breathing weapons. When humans were exposed to it, they got the cannibal disease. And Trent said that the
U.B.C.S. administrators knew what they were sending their people into, and probably did it on purpose – all in the name of research.
"The eyes and ears of Umbrella are everywhere," Trent had said. "As I said before, be careful who you trust. Truly, no one is safe."
Carlos abruptly stood up from the table and walked toward the kitchen, lost in thought. Trent had refused to talk about his own reasons for undermining Umbrella, though Carlos had gotten the impression that Trent also worked for them in some capacity; it would explain why he was so secretive.
He's being careful, covering his ass, but how could he know so much? The things he told me…
A jumble of facts, some that seemed totally arbi-trary – there was a fake green jewel in a cold storage locker underneath the restaurant; Trent had said that it was one of a pair, but had refused to say where the other one was or why either of them was important. "Just make sure they end up together," Trent had said – as if Carlos was going to just happen to come across the other one. "When you find out where the blue one is, you'll get your explanation."
For as cryptically useless as that seemed to be, Trent had also told him that Umbrella kept two helicopters at the abandoned water treatment plant west and north of the city. Perhaps most useful of all, Trent had said that there was a vaccine being worked on at the city hospi-tal, and while it hadn't been synthesized yet, there was at least one sample there.
"Although there's a good chance the hospital may not be there for much longer," he'd said, leaving Carlos to wonder again how Trent came by his information.
What was supposed to happen to it? And how would Trent know that?
Trent seemed to think that Carlos's survival was im-portant; he seemed convinced that Carlos was going to be a significant part of the fight against Umbrella, but Carlos still wasn't sure why, or if he even wanted to join up. At the moment, all he wanted was to get out of the city… but for whatever reason Trent had decided to offer up information, Carlos was glad for the help.
Although a little more would've been nice – keys to an armored getaway car, maybe, or some kind of anti-monster spray.
Carlos stood in the kitchen, gazing down at the heavy-looking cover to what was, presumably, the basement ladder. Trent had told him that there were probably more weapons at a clock tower, not far from the hospital; that and the bit about the Umbrella heli-copters, due north from the tower and hospital, defi-nitely useful…
But why let me come here at all if I'm so goddamn important? He could've stopped me on the way to the field office.
A lot of it didn't make sense, and Carlos was willing to bet money that Trent hadn't told him everything. He had no choice but to trust him a little, but he was going to be very careful when it came to depending on Trent's information. Carlos crouched next to the basement entrance, grabbed the handle to the cover, and pulled. It was heavy, but he could just manage it, leaning back and using his leg muscles for leverage. Unless the cooks were body builders, there was probably a crowbar around somewhere. The front door to the restaurant opened and closed. Carlos gently, quietly put the cover aside and turned, still in a crouch, M16 aimed at the dining room en-trance. He didn't think the zombies were coordinated enough to open doors, but he had no idea what the monsters were capable of, or who else might be wan-dering the city streets. Slow, stealthy footsteps moved toward the kitchen. Carlos held his breath, thinking about Trent, wondering suddenly if he'd been set up…… and about the last thing he expected to see was a.357 revolver come around the corner, held by an at-tractive and extremely serious-looking young woman who moved in fast and low and aimed at Carlos before
he could blink.For a beat they stared at each other, neither moving,and Carlos could see in the woman's eyes that shewouldn't hesitate to shoot him if she thought it neces-sary. Since he felt pretty much the same way, he de-cided it might be best to introduce himself."My name is Carlos," he said evenly. "I'm no zom-bie. Take it easy, huh?"
The girl studied him another moment, then noddedslowly, lowering the revolver. Carlos took his finger offthe rifle's trigger and did the same as they bothstraightened up, moving carefully."Jill Valentine," she said, and seemed about to saysomething else when the back door to the restaurantcrashed open, the thundering sound matched by a gut-tural, barely human scream that raised the hairs on theback of Carlos's neck."Sstaarrsss!" whatever it was howled, the cry echo-ing through the restaurant, giant footsteps pounding to-ward them, relentless and certain.
TEN
THERE WAS NO TIME FOR QUESTIONS, NO time to wonder how it had found her so quickly. Jill motioned for the young guy to get behind her and backed into the dining room as he hurried past; she des-perately looked around for something she could use to distract it long enough for them to escape. They ducked behind the service bar, Carlos moving as though he had some experience; he at least had the good sense to keep quiet as the S.T.A.R.S. killer charged into the kitchen, still screaming. Fire! A guttering oil lamp sat on a cart next to the counter. Jill didn't hesitate; it would reach them in sec-onds if she didn't act immediately, and maybe a little burning oil would slow it down. She motioned for Carlos to stay put, scooped up the lamp and stood, leaning over the counter and cocking her arm back. The hulking Nemesis had just started across the expansive kitchen when she threw the lamp at it, grunting with the effort it took to make the dis-tance. The lamp flew, and then everything slowed to a near stop, so much happening at once that her mind fed it to her one event at a time. The lamp shattered at the mon-ster's feet, glass and oil splashing and puddling, a tiny lake of spreading fire; the creature raised its massive fists, screaming in anger; Carlos yelled something and grabbed her waist, pulling her down, the clumsy move-ment toppling them both to the floor