Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [6]
“That fresh face that you’d see every morning in the mirror?”
The woman wiped the condensation from the bathroom mirror to reveal a gorgeous face.
“Yeah, right,” Loren said, “like anybody looks that good first thing in the morning. Oh, sorry, ‘in the a.m.’ ”
For once, Randall agreed with his AD. Even super-models looked like shit first thing.
“Before the cares of the world got you down?”
Now it was the same shot, but the woman was older. Even the bedroom looked a bit more decrepit—more like a real bedroom. For that matter, the woman looked more real: crow’s-feet, a few wrinkles, baggy eyes.
“Want to turn the clock back? Well, now with Renew Cream, you can. Applied as your daily moisturizer, its unique T-cell formula rejuvenates tired and dying cells.”
Accompanying this was a simple graphic that showed the cream being absorbed into the body, with brightly colored cells replacing dead skin cells.
“Christ, that’s the best they can do?” Loren said. “I can do better animation than that on my fucking Mac.”
“Loren, shut the fuck up.” Randall spoke out of reflex.
The beautiful, not-real version of the woman came back.
“Bringing the young, fresh-faced you back to life.”
“Right, ’cause heaven for-fucking-fend that you actually, y’know, look your age.”
“Loren, what part of ‘shut the fuck up’ don’t you get?”
A sped-up voice that sounded to Randall like the Alvin and the Chipmunks album his nephews always listened to said, “Renew is a registered trademark of the Umbrella Corporation. Always consult your doctor before starting treatment. Some side effects may occur.”
Randall frowned. “Aren’t they supposed to list the side effects?”
Loren snorted. “Shyeah, right.”
“No, really, they passed a law or something, didn’t they?”
“How long you been living in Raccoon, boss?” Loren grinned. “You oughta know by now that Umbrella lives by its own rules.”
Randall couldn’t deny that. Umbrella all but owned Raccoon City. Hell, one of its subsidiaries owned a piece of Channel 7. It wasn’t a majority, but it was, Randall knew, enough to kill aborning more than one investigation into Umbrella or one of its subsidiaries.
Come to think of it, one of those investigations had been by Terri Morales, back in the day.
The last commercial began. “Back in thirty,” Loren said.
Refocusing his attention on the show, Randall cued Camera 3, and thought about the day when Scales of the Dragon would get made.
Three
“Hey, Jeremy, why’s it called the Ravens’ Gate Bridge?”
Jeremy Bottroff swore he was going to kill his parents.
No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t their fault—hell, they’d been kind enough to let him move back home after San Jose.
He really needed to kill Mike.
Of course, he’d have to find him first.
“Jeremy?”
Ignoring Greg’s importunings unfortunately wouldn’t make his teenage brother go away, so he finally answered the question. “There used to be a whole mess of ravens that lived in that little park on our side of the bridge. When Raccoon City expanded out to this side of the river, they needed a name for the neighborhood. Since it had so many damned ravens, they called it Ravens’ Gate. When they built the bridge, that’s what they decided to call it.”
As Jeremy spoke, he slowed his battered old Volkswagen Golf as he approached the tollbooth, grateful that his parents had also lent him their FreePass that let him avoid the toll lines. It would allow him to get Greg to crew practice that much faster, then turn around, head home—or, rather, to his parents’ place—and go back to bed.
Then he could try to figure out how to fix up the mess he’d made of his life.
No, that wasn’t right. The mess Mike had made of his life.
Jeremy hoped that wherever Mike wound up, he would die of an exotic disease. Since he was probably in a country that didn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States, that was at least a possibility. Besides, Mike never paid attention to what he ate.
As opposed to Jeremy, who never paid attention to the financial side of the small business he and Mike Jones had started two years