• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Or, more to the point, any one.

The Red Queen had freed one of the lickers as a backup plan in case she wasn’t able to contain the T-virus. The thing had killed Spence (who deserved it) and Kaplan (who really didn’t) before Alice and Matt had been able to dispatch it—barely.

But until she sensed the presence of three of the things in the church, she’d had no idea that any of the others had gotten out as well.

Nor had she any idea that she could sense their presence.

Again, she wondered just what the fuck they’d done to her after they took her and Matt.

Not to mention what had happened to Matt.

As if the undead weren’t enough.

After she’d taken care of them, she found she had more people to babysit. Still, she couldn’t just leave Valentine, Wells, and Morales to die. So she led them into the graveyard in the back. The church would be kindling before long.

“How’d you wind up in here?” Alice asked.

“Well, we tried leaving the city, but Umbrella sealed off the Ravens’ Gate,” Valentine said. “Put up a nice big wall to keep the riffraff in. Anyone approaching the wall was shot on sight. Repeatedly.”

“So you came to a church?”

Valentine shrugged. “We’re not really overburdened with alternatives. We figured we’d be safe in there. We were wrong.”

“And what the fuck are we doing here?” Morales asked while popping an indeterminate number of pills that she probably shouldn’t have been taking together. “Hello? Has anyone noticed? We’re in a graveyard, people!”

Alice supposed that those keen powers of observation were why she was a reporter. But she said nothing. Valentine and Wells, at least, would be of use, being trained. Morales was dead weight.

Then it started raining.

One month ago, Alice had been the head of security for the Hive, living a good life with a hefty paycheck, sharing a house with a fake husband with whom she had excellent sex. Yes, she worked for bastards, but she was working on ways to deal with that, and at least she knew her position was more or less secure and her life more or less made sense.

Now she was walking through a muddy graveyard in the rain, wearing only a hospital gown, a lab coat, and enough firepower to take on an army squadron, facing off against the undead citizens of Raccoon City and a pack of genetically engineered monsters.

Funny how much could change in a month.

The graveyard was fenced in on three sides by a wrought-iron fence, and on the fourth by the church itself. The fire would probably keep that fourth side safe, and two of the fence sides were clear, but more and more undead were banging up against the fence on the Lyons Street side. Sooner or later, they’d probably break through.

Morales walked up to her, the rain causing her makeup to run. Her caking mascara gave her a look that matched the animal for whom the city was named.

“What’s the plan?” the reporter asked.

“Stay alive.”

Morales blinked. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

The reporter shook her head. “Nice plan. Should I paint a bull’s-eye on my face?”

“Suit yourself.”

“We have to stop for a moment,” said Valentine from behind them.

Alice turned to see that Wells was barely able to walk from the wound in his leg. It had been bound expertly, but it still didn’t look good.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Morales said. “There may be more of those things.”

Shaking her head, Alice said, “They hunt in packs. If there were more, we’d have seen them by now.”

Morales whirled back to look at Alice with her raccoon eyes. Her demeanor was now that of an inquisitive reporter. “So you do know what they are?”

There was no reason to conceal it. “Bioweapons, from the Umbrella labs beneath the city.”

“How come you know so much about Umbrella?” Valentine asked, sounding understandably suspicious.

“I used to work for them—before I learned the error of my ways.”

Before Valentine could say anything else, Wells cried out in pain. “Dammit!”

The wound was starting to bleed again.

Alice let out a long breath.

“You’re infected.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

It wasn’t Wells that Alice was worried about. She unholstered her Colt.