Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [33]
Then Umbrella thugs shooting innocent people after cutting off their only means of escape.
And now she and Peyton were stuck in a church with a zombie, a nutty priest, a lunatic with a .357, a pain-in-the-ass reporter, and something out of a bad horror movie.
Water collected around her boots. She looked down to see that it had pooled next to a basin that had been knocked over—for baptisms, maybe?
She realized that it was probably holy water. That might prove handy if they came across vampires, an idea that seemed a lot less far-fetched than it had been twenty-four hours ago.
Whatever. That water had all spilled out. It wasn’t the source of the dripping she was hearing.
Then she noticed that one of the small pews had been smashed. She caught sight of something under the wreckage.
Moving closer, she saw red mixed in with the wood, dripping off the splinters of the shattered pew.
Blood.
Peering over, she saw what was left of the idiot with the gun. Whatever that thing was Peyton had flashed the light on, it had the ability to rip a human body into remarkably small chunks.
Jill Valentine had been a police officer for all her adult life. She’d seen plenty of dead bodies in her time. The first couple had made her mildly ill, but she grew accustomed to the look, the smell, the feel of death. She had to if she was to do her job properly.
But this—nothing she’d seen in all her years on the RCPD had prepared her for this level of insult to the human form.
She supposed she could have searched the remains for identification so she could at least find out what this guy’s name was, but Jill didn’t have the stomach for it.
Especially once she did the one thing she had to force herself to have the stomach for.
Gingerly reaching down into the remains, she liberated the .357, which was still gripped by a hand that had been severed sloppily at the wrist. The weapon was covered in blood.
She turned and hurried back into the main part of the church. They definitely needed to stick together if there was something that could do that roaming around.
Questions poured into her mind. Where had that thing come from? It wasn’t like any animal Jill was familiar with—didn’t even bear a passing resemblance.
Could Umbrella have done this? Was it even possible?
Hell, zombies weren’t something she’d have considered possible until Arklay. If the Corporation could make one horror-movie staple real, why not another?
Only when she got to the front of the church did she realize it was quiet—and empty.
Where the hell were Peyton and Morales?
A hand clamped on her mouth, with another grabbing her around the waist and pulling her into a niche behind the altar.
Jill broke the grip and whirled, holding up the blood-soaked .357—
—until she realized that it was Peyton who had grabbed her. Morales was standing next to him. Peyton looked pissed; the reporter was obviously scared out of her gourd.
“Peyton,” Jill started angrily, but the sergeant silenced her with a look.
He pointed at the pulpit. Jill turned and saw the creature perched on it, looking like a vulture about to pounce, its tongue waving in the air.
Just as Jill was about to ask why they were hiding here if the creature was so close, Peyton pointed at the church door.
Another of the creatures was hanging from the wall over the entrance like some kind of gecko.
Christ. Two of them.
“They got us boxed in,” Peyton whispered.
Morales looked up. “What is that?”
Following her gaze, Jill saw that the Lucifer-goes-
to-hell stained glass over the door was starting to glow.
Just at the moment, she really didn’t appreciate the symbolism.
Then Jill almost jumped out of her skin when a third creature passed right in front of her.
The number of times she had been startled this day was really starting to get on Jill’s nerves.
For whatever reason, the creature hadn’t noticed them yet. Perhaps a result of its having no eyes. Whatever, Jill wasn’t counting on that lasting very long. Their best bet was to stay still and quiet.
Which she and