Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [65]
Pointing the recorder at her own face, she hit the RECORD button and started talking.
“My name is Alice Abernathy. I worked for the Umbrella Corporation.” She hesitated, then added, “The largest and most powerful commercial entity in the world.” Let everyone know that she was well aware of who, precisely, it was she was fucking with, and didn’t care.
This was too big.
“I was head of security at the high-tech Umbrella facility named the Hive—a giant underground laboratory that was developing, among other things, experimental viral weaponry.”
Alice hesitated. Did she want to get into Spence’s malfeasance here?
No, there was little point. Spence was dead, and the identity of his potential buyer or buyers had died with him. There was nothing to be gained by blaming him when he’d already paid the ultimate price—and that would distract from the important part.
“But there was an accident. The virus escaped and everyone in the laboratory—five hundred people, all employees of the Umbrella Corporation—died.”
She hesitated again. Regardless of the number of times she’d witnessed it since she first saw the reanimated corpses shuffling toward her in the Hive’s “dining hall,” she still had trouble believing the truth of their situation.
“But they didn’t stay dead. The T-virus reanimated their bodies—brought the dead back to life, and left them with a terrible hunger for the flesh of the living.”
God, that sounded like the copy on the DVD case of a shitty 1950s B-movie.
Yet, it was the truth. And the truth was what she needed to tell, and she could not afford to soft-pedal it.
“I glimpsed hell, saw things I cannot describe.”
Unbidden, images from her sojourn through the Hive came back to her, from the lasers cutting One, Drew, Warner, and Danilova to pieces to the endless swarms of undead creatures chasing them through the Hive’s halls and ductwork to the licker grabbing poor Kaplan and ripping him to shreds to Matt being forced to shoot Rain in the head—
—to the streets of Raccoon City being turned into one huge graveyard.
“But I survived. Myself and one other—a man named Matt Addison. When we emerged from the lab, we were seized by Umbrella scientists. Matt and I were separated.”
Alice took a deep breath.
“We thought that it was over. We thought that we had survived the horror. But we were wrong. The nightmare had only just begun.”
Another hesitation, and this time she looked up to see the expressions on the faces of Carlos and Angie.
Until now, they hadn’t known the true extent of what had gone on in the Hive. Alice wondered if it would have been better if they had not found out—especially poor Angie, who had been through more than any nine-year-old girl should.
But they needed that confession.
“Recorded here is footage taken by Terri Morales of Raccoon 7 before she, too, was killed. The Umbrella Corporation may try to cover this up. All I can say is, don’t listen to them. They are responsible for this. Millions of people have already died because of their carelessness. They have to be stopped.”
Alice hit the STOP button.
From the front of the truck, Wayne said, “A-fuckin’men to that.”
Carlos snorted. “Yeah, what he said.”
Again, silence descended upon the truck.
Then Angie leaned over and gave Alice a hug.
Closing her eyes and letting out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding, Alice gratefully returned the hug.
“We’re almost at City Hall,” Valentine said. “Let’s get ready to roll.”
Valentine parked the truck a block away from City Hall, which was a smoking ruin.
Carlos had a pair of binoculars. He climbed to the roof of the truck and peered through them.
“There it is. A C89 in the square, right next to the fountain. It’s surrounded by three guards, and they’re surrounded by a bunch of glass sheets that are probably supposed to keep the riffraff out. Hell, that’s gotta be that PlastiGlas stuff Umbrella developed—bulletproof, and probably zombieproof, too.” He lowered the binoculars. “Lightly guarded. Right.”
Wayne held