Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [51]
Just like they had Peyton.
Both automatics clicked empty as she landed behind the skip. The staccato report of the rail gun matched time with the bullets hitting the skip a millisecond later, but none of the bullets penetrated.
Yet.
Jill reloaded and wondered how they were going to get out of this. Every single one of her shots had hit—Jill had never missed before, and she hadn’t missed now.
But this Nemesis thing was apparently bulletproof.
Just fucking great.
Then the firing stopped.
Jill risked looking up over the skip.
She saw Nemesis staring at Alice.
And Alice staring at Nemesis.
Behind them, Morales was filming the whole thing. More fodder for her goddamn Emmy.
What the fuck was going on now?
“You have to leave,” Alice said to Jill without looking at her. She and Nemesis were in a classic stare-down. “Now!”
Involuntarily, Jill looked down at Peyton’s body.
Even though she never stopped staring at Nemesis, somehow Alice knew Jill was looking at her friend. “He’s dead. You can join him—or you can do as I say.”
Jill was still looking at Peyton’s body.
Whatever else one could say, he was definitely dead. He had more holes in him than Julius Caesar.
For whatever insane reason, she trusted Alice. For whatever insane reason, Alice was taking on Nemesis alone.
They were fucking welcome to each other.
Jill ran out of the alley. The first thing she saw was a pickup truck that was sitting in the middle of Swann Road at a right angle to the double yellow line. The driver’s-side door was wide open. Jill clambered under the dash and started prying open the ignition panel so she could hot-wire it.
To Jill’s surprise, Morales climbed in on the passenger side.
“What,” Jill asked without looking at the reporter, “you’re not gonna film the big fight?”
“The hell with that—I want out of here. That Ashford guy wants us to find his daughter so we can leave, I’ll take that deal. I’m not winding up like your friend Wells.”
Jill ground her teeth but said nothing as she continued her efforts.
“Besides—she’s insane. She can’t take that thing.”
The engine roared to life. Jill mentally thanked her father for all the skills he’d taught her during a mis-spent youth, and started to extricate herself from the truck—
—only to find herself face to face with the bloody, bullet-ridden form of Peyton Wells.
“Peyton!”
The parts of his face that weren’t covered in blood were even paler, and his eyes were watery.
Jill unholstered one of her automatics, even as Peyton tried to bite her on the neck.
She kicked him away and aimed the gun at his head.
But she couldn’t pull the trigger.
Then Peyton lunged again.
Morales screamed.
Jill’s own words to Alice in the graveyard came back to her: “If it comes to that—I’ll take care of it myself.”
She squeezed the trigger.
Peyton’s head snapped back upon the bullet’s impact. Then his now-completely-dead form fell forward into Jill’s arms.
Revulsed, Jill jumped back into the cab of the pickup, letting Peyton’s body fall to the ground.
“Jesus goddamn shit-sucking Christ.”
“Amen,” Morales muttered.
“C’mon,” Jill said, “we’ve got a little kid to rescue.”
She closed the door, put on her seat belt, threw the truck into gear, and started straight down Swann.
Then a figure leapt in front of the truck.
Twenty-Two
Alice stared at Nemesis.
She knew about the Nemesis Program, of course—as head of security for the Hive, she had to know about it.
But, as far as she was aware, the project hadn’t been going well. All the previous attempts to create a super-weapon had failed miserably.
Yet here she was, face to face with a success.
A fucking tall one, too.
Alice cursed herself for taking things too slowly. She had gotten the idea to use Lisa Broward to help expose Umbrella for the bastards they were weeks ago, but she had proceeded cautiously. First she’d had to make sure that Lisa was the right person for the job. Then she had to recruit her, which she did over lunch at Che Buono.
So what happened? The very day that she pulled the trigger on the plan was the same day that Spence