City Of The Dead
Chapter Twenty-Four

Leon finally started to feel like himself again, sitting in the control room where Ada had left him. She'd found a medkit in one of the dust- covered cabinets, along with a bottle of water; she'd only been gone for about ten minutes, but the aspirin was starting to kick in, and the water had worked wonders. He sat in front of a switch-covered console, trying to piece together what had happened after the explo-sion in the sewers; the last thing he really remembered clearly was seeing the headless crocodile collapse, and then being overwhelmed by a light-headed weakness. Ada had bandaged him up and then led him through tunnels...
... and a subway, we were on a subway for a minute or two...
... and finally to this room, where she'd told him to rest while she went to check on something. Leon had protested, reminding her that it wasn't safe, but had still been too fuzzy to do much more than sit where she'd put him. He'd never felt so helpless, or so totally dependent on another person. Once he'd gulped about half of the gallon jug of water, though, he'd started to snap out of it. Apparently, blood loss tended to dehydrate...
... so she gave me the water and then went to check on what, exactly? And how did she know to come this way?
He'd barely been able to walk, let alone ask any questions, but even in his delirium, he'd noticed how certain she was, how she'd chosen their path with unwavering precision. How could she know? She was an art buyer from New York, how could she know anything about the sewer system of Raccoon City? And where is she? Why hasn't she come back? She'd helped him, she'd most probably saved his Life, but he just couldn't keep believing that she was who she said she was. He wanted to know what she was doing, and he wanted to know now, and not just because she'd been keeping secrets; Claire was still somewhere in the sewers, and if Ada knew the way out of the city, Leon owed it to her to try and find out. Leon stood up slowly, holding onto the back of the chair, and took a deep breath. Still weak, but no dizziness, and his arm didn't hurt as badly, either -
- the aspirin, perhaps. He drew his Magnum and walked to the door of the small, dusty room, promis- ing himself that he wasn't going to accept any more vague answers or smiling brush-offs. He opened the door and stepped out into an open- ended warehouse almost big enough to be an aircraft hangar, it was empty, decrepit, and heavily shadowed, but the brisk night air that breezed through made it almost pleasant...... and there was Ada, stepping onto a raised plat-form just outside of the hangar, disappearing behind what looked like a section of a train. It was an industrial transport lift - and from the well-oiled look of the rails that ran through the warehouse, it was one part of the abandoned factory that hadn't been completely abandoned.
"Ada!"
Keeping his wounded arm tightly pressed to his body, Leon ran toward the lift and felt dull anger as he heard the rising thrum of the transport's engines, the heavy mechanical sound spilling out into the clear night sky. Ada was leaving, she hadn't gone to "check" on anything...... but she's not going anywhere until she tells me why. Leon ran out into the moonlit open, hearing the door to the transport slam shut as he skirted a control console and stepped up to the vibrating metal plat- form, nearly tripping on the brightly painted steps. Before he could catch his balance, the transport started its descent; three-foot-high panels of corru-gated metal rose all the way around the train, contain- ing the large platform as it slid smoothly down into the ground. Leon grabbed for the door handle as the darkness swept up around the humming transport, the sky dwindling into a smaller and smaller starry patch overhead. The cool, pale light of the moon and stars was quickly replaced by the electric orange of the transport's mercury lamps. He stumbled inside, and saw the startled look on Ada's face as she stood up from a bench bolted to one side, as she half-raised her Beretta and then lowered it again - and a flash of guilt, there and gone in the time it took for him to close the door. For a moment, neither of them spoke, staring at each other as the room continued its smooth descent. Leon could almost see her working to come up with an explanation and as tired as he was, he decided that he just wasn't in the mood. "Where are we going?" he asked, making no effort to keep the anger out of his voice. Ada sighed and sat down again, her shoulders sagging. "I think it's the way out," she said quietly. She looked up at him, her dark gaze searching his.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have tried to leave without you, but I was afraid..."
He could hear real sorrow in her voice, see it in her eyes, and felt his anger give a little. "Afraid of what?" "That you wouldn't make it. That you wouldn't make it, trying to keep both of us safe." "Ada, what are you talking about?" Leon moved to the bench, sitting down beside her. She looked down at her hands, speaking softly.
"When I was looking for you, back in the sewers, I found a map," she said. "It showed what looked like some kind of an underground laboratory or factory and if the map was right, there's a tunnel that runs from there to somewhere outside of the city." She met his gaze again, honestly distressed. "Leon, I didn't think you were in any condition to make a trip like that, like this - and I was scared that if I brought you with me, if it was a dead end or some-thing attacked us..."
Leon nodded slowly. She'd been trying to protect herself - and him."I'm sorry," she repeated. "I should have told you, I shouldn't have just left you there like that. After all
you've done for me, I... I at least owed you the truth."
The guilt and shame in her eyes wasn't something that could be faked. Leon reached for her hand, ready to tell her that he understood and that he didn't blame her...... when there was a resounding thump outside. The entire transport shook, just a slight tremble, but enough to make both of them tense. "Probably a rough spot in the track..." Leon said, and Ada nodded, gazing at him with an intensity that made him pleasantly uncomfortable, a warmth spreading through his entire body... BAM!... and Ada flew off the bench, thrown to the floor as a massive, curled thing slammed through the wall, crashing through the sheet metal of the vehicle's side as though it were made of paper. It was a fist, a fist with bone claws, each of them nearly a foot long, the claws dripping with...
"Ada!"
The giant hand withdrew, its bloody talons ripping new holes in the metal wall as Leon dropped to the floor, grabbing Ada's limp body, pulling her into the center of the transport. A terrible shriek pealed through the moving darkness outside and it was the same furious cry that they'd heard in the station, but louder, more violent and even less human than before. Leon held on to Ada with his one good arm, feeling the warm trickle of blood seeping out from her right side, feeling her dead weight against his heaving chest.
"Ada, wake up! Ada!"
Nothing. He lowered her gently to the floor, then pulled at the bloody hole in her dress, just above her hip. Blood was welling up from two deep punctures; there was no way to tell how bad, and he ripped at the fabric, tearing off" the bottom few inches of her short dress and pressing the wadded material against the wound...... and again the monster screamed, and the rage in its throaty howl was nothing to what Leon was feeling, staring down at Ada's still and closed face. He stretched her tight dress over the makeshift bandage, fixing it in place as best he could, then stood up and unstrapped the Remington.
Ada had taken care of him, had protected him when he couldn't protect himself. Leon loaded the shotgun grimly, feeling no pain at all as he prepared to return the favor.
When they reached what looked like the end of the line, it was Sherry who figured out where her mother must have gone. They'd walked into yet another open, shadowy room, but it only had the one door; there seemed to be no other way out of the cavernous chamber, unless Annette had jumped off the raised floor and trekked off through the unlit emptiness that surrounded them. They stood at the edge of the darkness, trying to see down into the shadows and having no luck. The room was set up almost like a loading dock: a railed platform ran from the door along the back wall, then ended abruptly, giving way to a seemingly endless void. Either Annette had climbed down and navi- gated some secret path through the dark, or Claire had been mistaken about which way she'd gone.
So what now? Go back, or try to follow?
She didn't want to do either one - although going back pretty much beat the crap out of the idea of walking into a pitch-black abyss. And Leon was probably still back there somewhere...
"Could it be a train? Is this like a train station?"
Sherry asked, and as soon as she said "train," Claire gave herself a solid mental kick in the ass. Platform, railings, about a thousand overhead "pipes."... Claire grinned at Sherry, shaking her head at her own stupidity; she was getting flaky, no doubt about it. "Yeah, I think it is," she said, "though you guessed it, not me. My brain must be on strike..."
The small computer console on one side of the platform, the one she'd dismissed as unimportant, was probably the control board. Claire headed for it, Sherry following along and clutching absently at her gold locket as she described the noises she'd heard, down in the drainage well.
"... and it was moving away, like a train would. It scared me pretty bad, too. It was loud."
Sure enough, just beneath the small monitor screen on the standing console was a recall command code and a ten-key. Claire tapped in the code and hit "enter" - and the chamber was filled with the smooth hum of working machinery: the sound of a train. "You're one smart cookie, you know that?" Claire said, and Sherry practically beamed, her entire face crinkling with her sweet smile. Claire wrapped an arm around her shoulders and they walked back to the edge of the platform to wait. The tram's light appeared after a few seconds, the tiny circle of brightness getting bigger as they watched. After the trials they'd been through, Claire decided to be as fantastically optimistic about this new development as she could - primarily to keep from worrying about what horrible thing would prob- ably happen next. The train would lead out of the city, of course, and it would be well-stocked with food and water; it'd have showers and fresh, warm clothes -
-nah, scratch that. A hot tub, and a couple of those thick terry robes, for after. And slippers.
Nice, but she'd settle for anything that didn't in- clude monsters or crazy people. She glanced at Sher- ry, and noticed that she was still rubbing her locket. "So what's in there?" she asked, wanting to make Sherry smile again. "You got a picture of your boy-friend, or what?" "Inside? Oh, it's not a locket," Sherry said, and Claire was pleased to see a faint blush rise in her cheeks. "My mom gave it to me, it's a good-luck charm and I don't have a boyfriend. Boys my age are totally immature." Claire grinned. "Get used to it, sweetie. As far as I can tell, some of them never grow out of it."
The train was close enough now for them to see its shape, a single car about twenty or twenty-five feet long riding smoothly along its overhead track. "Where do you think it goes?" Sherry asked, and before Claire could answer, the door to the platform exploded. The hatch blew inward, torn off its hinges in a squeal of metal and clanging to the floor and Claire grabbed Sherry, pulling her close as the towering Mr. X stepped into the room, bending low and sideways to squeeze through the opening, his soulless gaze turning toward them at once. "Get behind me!" Claire shouted, pulling Irons's handgun, risking a glance back at the approaching train. Ten seconds, they needed ten seconds, but X took a giant step toward them, and she knew they didn't have them. His bland, terrible face, expressionless, his giant hands already rising, still twenty feet away but only four steps in his massive stride... "Get on the train when it stops!" Claire screamed, and pulled the trigger. Four, five, six shots, beating into his chest. The seventh hit one dead-white cheek, but Mr. X didn't blink, didn't bleed - and didn't stop. Another mighty step, the black, smoking pit in his face a testament to his inhumanity. Claire lowered her aim, legs, knees... Bam-bam-bam!... and he paused as the rounds smashed into him, at least one a direct hit to his left knee, the black eyes fixed on her, marking her...
"... here, come on!"
Sherry was pulling at her vest, screaming, and Claire backed away, squeezing the trigger again. Two more rounds hit him in the gut...... and then she was on the train, and Sherry had found the control for the door. It whooshed shut, Mr. X framed in the tiny window, not coming forward anymore but still not falling. Not dying. "Follow me!" Claire shouted, spotting the board of blinking lights to her right, knowing that the door wouldn't hold for a second if the giant, terrible creature started walking again. She ran for the control board with Sherry at her side, thanking God that the designer had been user-friendly as the red "go" button snapped down be- neath her shaking hand...... and the train was moving, sliding away from the platform, away from the indestructible un-man and into the black.
Annette sat in the staff bunk room on level four, waiting for the mainframe to respond to the power-up and debating whether or not to initiate the P-Epsilon sequence. Once the fail-safe system was triggered, all of the connecting corridor doors would unlock, and those doors that were electronically powered would open. The creatures that had been trapped these last days would be free to roam, and most of them would be hungry...
... hungry and hot, bleeding pure virus from their clotted flesh...
She didn't want to run into any unpleasantness upon her departure, but as the first lines of code spilled across the screen, she decided against running the sequence. The P-Epsilon gas was an experiment anyway, something a couple of the microbiologist techs had worked up to appease the Umbrella damage-control staff. If it worked, it would knock out the Re3s and all of the human carriers that had been infected by the initial airborne - the first wave - en- suring her a safer trip to the escape transport tunnel; but the spies were coming, and Annette didn't want to make things easy for them. She'd heard the lift being recalled as she'd stumbled her way to the synthesis lab - which was fine, great, they'd be just in time for the finale, and she wanted them fighting for their lives as she sped away from the facility, away from the brilliant explosion that would consume the multibillion-dollar facility...
... and it'll burn, it'll all burn and I'll be free of this nightmare. Endgame and I win. Umbrella loses, once and for all, the sneaking, murdering animal bas-tards...
She felt good, awake and aware and in very little pain; she'd meant to go straight to the nearest com-puter outlet upon her return to activate the fail-safe even before collecting the sample, but she'd barely been able to see straight as she'd stumbled off the lift; she'd been afraid of forgetting something - or worse, of falling and being unable to get up again. A trip to the meds locker in the synthesis lab had fixed all that; already, the terrible pain was a distant memory, along with the bizarre, deluded thought processes that had made it so hard to concentrate. When her little cocktail shot wore off, she'd pay for the temporary reprieve, but for the next couple of hours, at least, she was as good - she was better - than new.
Epinephrine, endorphin, amphetamine, oh my!
Annette knew she was high, that she shouldn't overestimate her abilities, but why shouldn't she feel happy? She grinned at the small computer in front of her and started to tap in the codes, her fingers flying over the keys, feeling like her teeth would crack as the synthetic adrenaline pounded through her dilated veins. She'd made it back to the lab, William had come back, and the sample, the very last viable G- Virus sample in the facility, was tucked into her pocket. She'd hidden it in one of the fuse cases before she'd gone looking for William, and picked it up on the way to the staff room...
... 76E, 43L, 17A, fail-safe time... 20, vocal warning/power cut, 10, personal authorization,...Birkin...
... and that was it. Annette couldn't stop grinning, didn't want to stop as she lightly stroked the "enter" key, the triumph a hot and liquid joy spinning through her numb and tattered flesh. One touch, and there was nothing on earth that could stop it. In ten minutes, the taped warnings would start to run, and the transport lift would shut down, cutting the facility off from the surface; in fifteen, the audio would begin the countdown - five minutes to reach the minimum safe distance by train, another five and... Boom. Twenty minutes before the explosion. More than enough time to get to the tunnel and power up the train, no matter what is loosed; enough time to speed away from the ticking dock, beneath the city streets, through the isolated foothills at the outskirts of Rac-coon. Enough time to get to the end of the track, walk out into the private plot of land, turn around and see Umbrella lose it all. As the clock ticked to zero, the plastique fail-safe charges in the laboratory's central power core would be activated. Even if all but one of the twelve explo-sive packets failed, that one blast would be enough to set off the secondary charges that were built into the walls themselves; Umbrella's fail-safe system had been designed to take it all down. The lab would become an inferno, blasting up into the dead city, visible for miles and she'd be there to see it, to know that she'd done what she could to make things right.
This is for you, William...
The thought was bittersweet... for some time, they hadn't enjoyed their relationship as husband and wife. William was so brilliant, so devoted to the work, that the pleasures of synthesis and development had taken the place of the perks of married life. She had come to recognize his genius, to learn the joy of supporting him without the nuisance of relationship struggles, but now, her finger resting on the end to it all, she found herself suddenly wishing very much that there had been more between them in the last few years, more than her adoration for his incredible gifts, his appreciation of her assistance...
This is our last kiss, my love. This is my contribution to the work, my final loving act for what we shared.
Yes, that was right, that was the feeling. Annette pressed the key, her heart singing, and saw the locked code flash across the monitor in glowing green. "I respectfully tender my resignation," she said softly, and started to laugh.