The front door was his best bet. Nicholai probably didn't think Carlos had the nerve to charge straight out of the most obvious exit, or so Carlos hoped. He'd reached the landing between the first and sec-ond floors when he heard a door crash open somewhere far below, echoing up the stairwell, making him freeze. The sound that followed – the furious, piglike battle cry of some distinctly mutant creature -got him moving again. His feet hardly touched the steps, but he still wasn't fast enough; just as he was bounding down the last flight, a monstrous figure leaped in front of the exit to the ground floor. It was giant, humanoid, tall and wide and dripping slime. Its body was a dark blue-green, almost black in the dim red light. With its webbed oversized hands and feet and its huge rounded head and mouth, it resembled nothing so much as a mammoth, hideously squashed frog. Its powerful lower jaw dropped open, and another piercing, squealing screech filled the stairwell, re-bounding throughout. Carlos heard at least three more answer the first, a fierce and freakish chorus erupting from somewhere down below. Carlos opened fire, the first round hitting the metal door and creating a deafening tornado of sound. Before he could squeeze the trigger again, the amphibious creature was springing, squealing as it leaped toward Carlos, stretching its muscular arms wide. Carlos reflexively dropped, firing as he slid down several steps, rolling to his uninjured side so he could follow the creature's descent. Three, four rounds plugged into the shrieking frog-thing's slimy body as it flew overhead…… and it was dead by the time it landed, dark gouts of watery, brackish fluid spuming from its spasming body. Carlos was on his feet running and halfway through the door even as the creature's siblings began their feral, earsplitting lament. Not too hard to kill, maybe, but he didn't want to consider his chances if there were three or more of them all leaping at once. Into the lobby and he slammed the door, saw that it required a key to lock, and he turned to look for some-thing he could use to block it…… and instead he saw a tiny, blinking white light from across the room, its brightness drawing his gaze from the midst of a shady red ocean of trashed furniture and dead bodies. A blinking white light on a small box, the box af-fixed to a pillar. A timer light for a detonating com-pound. Carlos tried to think of something else it might be and came up blank, knowing only that it hadn't been there when he'd arrived; it was a bomb, Nicholai had put it there, and suddenly the frog monsters were a much smaller deal. His mind was curiously blank as he pounded through the lobby, a thoughtless, wordless panic overtaking him, pushing him to run fast and far, to not waste time thinking. He tripped over a shredded couch and didn't notice whether or not he fell or felt pain, he was mov-ing too fast, the glass doors at the front of the building all he could see. Bam, through the doors, shining black asphalt splashing under his feet, rain misting on his sweaty face. Rows of smashed and abandoned cars, shining like wet jewels beneath a streetlight. The drum of his shuddering heart…… and the explosion was so massive that his hearing couldn't encompass it all, a kind of ka-WHAMM that was as much motion as it was sound. His body was thrown, a leaf in a hot and violent hurricane, the ground and sky becoming connected, interchangeable. He was skidding across wet pavement, tumbling to a gritty stop against a fire hydrant, feeling the enor-mity of pain in his side and tasting salt from a nose-bleed. Barely a block away, the hospital had been reduced to a smoking ruin, smaller pieces of it still coming down, cracking against the ground like deadly hail. Parts were on fire, but a lot of it had just disintegrated, matter blown to dust, the dust settling and turning to mud as the skies continued to dump water on every-thing.
Jill.
Carlos pulled himself up and started to limp back tothe clock tower.Nicholai realized he'd lost the vaccine sample as hewas running away from the hospital, when there wasone minute left before all of it went sky high. When itwas already too late.There was no choice but to keep running, and he did,and when the hospital exploded, Nicholai paced backand forth in the street three blocks away, lost in anger.So lost that he didn't realize that the agonized moaning,whining noise he heard was coming from him, or thathe'd clenched his jaw hard enough to crack two teeth.After a long time, he remembered that he still had tokill two more people, and he started to calm down.Being able to express his anger would be constructive;
it wasn't healthy to keep feelings bottled up. The Watchdog operation was his interest. The vac-cine had been an extra, a gift – so in a way, he hadn't really lost anything. Nicholai told himself that several times on his way to get Davis Chan; it made him feel better, though not as good as when he remembered that he'd had his hunting knife sharpened just before he'd come to Raccoon. He was sure Chan would appreciate it.
TWENTY-THREE
WHEN JILL WOKE UP, IT WAS STILL RAINING outside, and she felt like herself again. Weak, thirsty, and hungry, definitely in pain from her shoulder wound and about a thousand lesser aches, but herself. The sickness was gone. Disoriented and a little confused, she sat up slowly and looked around, trying to piece together what had happened. She was still in the clock tower chapel, and Carlos was crashed out on one of the front pews. She remembered telling him that she had the virus, and him saying that he was going to get something…… but I was sick, I had the disease… and I don't just feel better now, I absolutely don't have it anymore. How could… "Oh my God," she whispered, seeing the syringe and empty vial on the organ bench next to the altar, sud-denly understanding what had happened, if not how. Carlos had found an antidote. Jill sat for a moment, slightly overwhelmed by the mix of emotions that hit her – shock, gratitude, a reluc-tance to believe she was actually okay. Her happiness at being alive and reasonably well was tempered by guilt, that she should have been cured when so many others had died. She wondered whether or not there was more of the antidote but found she couldn't consider that too carefully; the thought that there might be gallons of it lying around somewhere when tens of thousands had died was simply obscene. Finally, she eased herself off her sickbed and stood, carefully stretching, checking herself over. Considering all that had happened, she was surprised at how well-off she was. Except for her right shoulder, she had no serious injuries, and after drinking some water, she ac-tually felt awake and able to move around without any trouble. Over the next couple of hours, Jill ate three cans of fruit cocktail, drank a half gallon of water, and reloaded and wiped down all of the weapons. She also cleaned herself up, as much as she could, with bottled water and a dirty sweatshirt. Carlos didn't stir once, deeply asleep – and from the way he was curled up and hold-ing his left side, she thought that his trip to the hospital had probably been rough. Jill also gave a great deal of thought to what they would do next. They couldn't stay. They didn't have the supplies or ammo to keep themselves alive indefinitely, and they had no way of knowing when – or even if, she didn't want to take it for granted anymore – rescue was coming. As hard as it was to believe, it seemed that Umbrella had managed to keep a lid on what had hap-pened, and if they could do it for this long, it might be several more days before the story broke. To add to the pressure, she also couldn't convince herself that the Nemesis was dead; once it had recuperated, it would be coming back. They were incredibly lucky that it hadn't attacked already. Before she'd hooked up with Carlos, she had tenta-tively planned to head for the abandoned Umbrella-owned plant north of the city. She'd come to believe that there was no such thing as a deserted Umbrella fa-cility – they loved their secret operations too much and thought that they might have kept the roads clear around the plant so their employees could get out. It was still worth a shot, and it was also the best she could come up with. Besides, the fastest way out of town from their current position was straight past the facility. Carlos continued to sleep, perfectly still except for the rise and fall of his chest, his face slack from exhaus-tion… and once Jill had decided on a course of action, she watched him for a little while and realized that she had to leave him behind. It was a much harder decision to make, but only because she didn't want to be alone, a selfish reason at best. The truth of it was, he was hurting because he'd gotten in between her and the Nemesis, and she couldn't put him in that position again.