"Aw, Jesus, man…"
Carlos looked down at the sound of Randy's voice, noticing with some alarm that his words were a little slurred, and saw the ragged edges of a deep bite maybe two inches above the top of his foot. Thick blood oozed steadily out, the inside of Randy's boot drenched with it.
"Bit me, goddamn thing bit right in. But it was dead, Carlos. They were all dead… weren't they?" Randy looked up at him, his eyes dazed with pain and some-thing more, something that neither of them could af-ford – confusion, bad enough that Randy could barely focus. Concussion, maybe. Whatever it was, Randy needed a hospital. Carlos crouched next to him, his heart sick as he tore off a piece of Randy's shirt and quickly folded it into a compress.
We're screwed, there were no cops out there, no paramedics, this city is dying or already dead. If we want help, we're going to have to find it ourselves, and
he's in no shape to fight. "This may hurt a little, 'mono, but we gotta stop you from getting your boot all wet," Carlos said, trying to sound relaxed as he pressed the folded material against Randy's bleeding ankle. There was no point in scaring him, especially if he was as whacked out as Carlos thought. "Hold it down tight, okay?" Randy clenched his jaw, a violent tremor running through him, but he did as Carlos asked and held the makeshift bandage in place. As Randy leaned forward, Carlos studied the back of his head, wincing inwardly at the bloody, slightly misshapen spot beneath his tan-gled black curls. It didn't seem to be bleeding anymore, at least. "We gotta get outta here, Carlos," Randy said. "Let's go home, okay? I want to go home." "Soon," Carlos said softly. "Let's just sit here and rest for another minute, and then we'll go."
He thought about all of the wrecked cars they'd run past, the piles of broken furniture and wood and brick in the streets, hastily assembled blockades. Assuming they could even find a car with keys in it, just about every street was impassable. Carlos didn't have a pilot's license, but he had flown a helicopter a few times – fine, if they happened to stumble across an airport.
We'll never make it on foot, though. Even if Randy wasn't hurt, the entire U.B.C.S. was taken out, or damn near close. There's gotta be hundreds, maybe thou-sands of those things out there.
If they could find other survivors, group to-gether… but tracking anyone down in this nightmare would be a nightmare all its own. The thought of Trent's restaurant occurred to him briefly, but he ig-nored it; to hell with that crazy shit, they needed to get out of town, and they needed help to do it. The squad leaders were the only ones who'd known the plan for pickup, or had radios, and there was no way Carlos was going to go back -
– but I don't have to, do I?
He closed his eyes for a minute, realizing that he'd missed the obvious; maybe he was more freaked than he thought. There was more than one radio in the world; all he had to do was find one. Send out a call to the transports – hell, to anyone listening – and wait for somebody to show up. "I don't feel so good," Randy said, so quietly that Carlos almost didn't hear him, the slur of his words more pronounced than before. "Itches, it itches." Carlos squeezed his shoulder lightly, the heat from Randy's feverish skin radiating out from beneath his
T-shirt. "You're going to be okay, bro, just hang on, I'm going to get us out of here."
He sounded confident enough. Carlos only wished that he could convince himself.
SIX
TED MARTIN, A THIN MAN IN HIS LATE 30s, had been shot several times in the head. Nicholai couldn't tell if he'd been murdered or if he'd been put down after contracting the virus, and he didn't care; what mattered was that Martin, whose official title was Personal and Political Liaison to the Chief of Police, had saved Nicholai the time it would have taken to track him down. "Most kind of you," Nicholai said, smiling down at the very dead Watchdog. He'd also had the courtesy to die near where he was supposed to be, in the detective squadroom's office of the RPD's east wing.
An excellent start to my adventure; if they're all this easy, it will be a very short night.
Nicholai stepped over the body and crouched down next to the floor safe in the corner, quickly dialing in the simple four-digit combination given to him by his Umbrella contact: 2236. The steel door swung open, re-vealing a few papers – one looked like a map for the police station – a box of shotgun shells, and what would surely become Nicholai's best friend until he left Raccoon: a state-of-the-art cellular modem, designed to look like a piece of shit but more advanced than any-thing on the market. Grinning, he lifted out the PC lap-top and carried it to the desk, the safe door closing itself behind him. His trip to the station had been reasonably uneventful, except for the seven undead he'd dispatched point-blank to avoid too much noise; they were embarrassingly easy to kill, as long as one paid attention to one's surround-ings. He hadn't yet come across any of Umbrella's pets, the only real challenge he expected to face; there was one nicknamed "brain sucker" that he was very much looking forward to meeting, a multi-legged crawler with killing claws…
One thing at a time; right now, you need information.
He'd already committed the names and faces of his victims to memory and had a general idea of where each one was supposed to make contact, if not neces-sarily when; all of the Watchdogs were on different schedules, subject to change but mostly accurate. Mar-tin, for instance, was due to report to Umbrella from a computer terminal at the RPD building's front desk at 1750 hours, about twenty minutes from now; his last report should have been just after noon.
"Let's see if you succeeded, Officer Martin,"
Nicholai said, quickly punching in the codes he'd ac-quired to access Umbrella's updated progress reports.
"Martin, Martin… ah, there you are!"
The policeman had missed his last two assigned win-dows, suggesting that he'd been dead or incapacitated for at least nine hours now. No information to collect there. Nicholai carefully read the numbers on the other Watchdogs, pleased with what he saw. Of the eight Watchdogs left after Martin, three others had failed to make their last assigned reports – one of the scientists, one Umbrella worker, and the woman who worked for the city's water department. Assuming they were dead – and Nicholai was willing to bet that they were -
– that left only five.
Two soldiers, two scientists, and the other Umbrella man…
Nicholai frowned, looking at the designated contact points for each of them. One scientist, Janice Thomlm-son, would be in the underground laboratory facility, the other at the hospital near the city park; the Um-brella worker was to report in from an allegedly aban-doned water treatment facility on the outskirts of town, a cover for its use as an Umbrella chemical testing site. Nicholai didn't foresee any problems finding them, but both of the soldier Watchdogs had been taken off the map. "Where are you going to be, men…," Nicholai said absently, tapping at the keys, his frustration growing. At his last check only the night before, they had both been assigned to call in from the St. Michael Clock Tower…
Shit!
There they were, their names listed next to his; both men had been moved to portable status, just like him. They'd report in from Umbrella laptops or wherever was most convenient, and were only required to file once a day -which meant that they could be anywhere in Raccoon City, anywhere at all. A seething haze of red enveloped him, tearing at him. Without thinking, Nicholai charged across the of-fice and kicked Martin's body as hard as he could, once, twice, venting his rage, feeling a deep satisfac-tion at the wet sounds his boot made, the jerking move-ment of the body and the crunch of ribs giving way -