Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [61]
The doberman was covered in blood. Large chunks of flesh were missing, and Alice could see its rib cage, not to mention several internal organs, none of which seemed to be doing much of anything. The dog's eyes were watery and white.
Dead dog walking.
Despite its deceased state, the dog was somewhat more agile than its human counterparts, and started running down the hall toward Alice.
Somehow intuiting that offering to pet it and saying, "Good dog," wouldn't really cut it, Alice turned and ran to the door on the far end of the corridor. Miraculously, she remembered that it was one of the chemistry labs, and it had a door that latched shut.
Running as fast as she could go in the maddeningly impractical boots she'd been stupid enough to put on back at the mansion, Alice barely made it into the lab ahead of the dog.
Staring through the round window in the door, she watched in horror as the doberman leapt up and scratched at the door, trying to gain ingress, blood dripping from its teeth.
Letting out a long breath, Alice turned around—
—and found herself face to face with the blood-covered, very dead face of Clarence White.
At once, Alice finally remembered that Clarence was the person assigned to care for the fleet of dobermans, though Alice still couldn't for the life of her recall why they had a fleet of dobermans down here. Animal experimentation, maybe? Certainly not beyond the realm of possibility for Umbrella.
That went through her head in one millisecond.
In the next, she hit Clarence with a series of well-placed punches to the chest, then executed a perfect spin-kick that sent the guard flying into a glass shelf full of beakers and chemicals.
Alice blinked.
Holy shit.
One's words came back to her: "You and I have the same employer—we all work for the Umbrella Corporation. The mansion is an entrance to the Hive. You are security operatives placed there to protect that entrance."
Until now, she hadn't given much thought to what that really meant. One had asked her for a report, as if she was his subordinate—and apparently she was more than that. She was, if not part of his actual team, part of the same division of the company.
And that meant she knew how to kick some serious ass.
Amid the sound of shattering glass, Alice heard the sound of bone snapping. She hoped that meant that Clarence would stay dead.
She looked down at the corpse. It didn't move, which made it unusual for corpses around here.
It also had a nine-millimeter pistol sitting in a holster.
If she knew how to spin-kick, maybe she knew how to shoot a gun, too. After all, she wouldn't have had a full armory in her dresser drawer if she didn't know how to use its contents, right? She certainly had nothing to lose by taking the pistol—Clarence sure as hell didn't need it anymore.
Gingerly, she undid the buckle on the holster, slowly pulling the pistol out, hoping Clarence wouldn't choose this moment to come back to unlife.
Then the dog crashed through a window Alice hadn't even realized was there and came at her.
Fingers tightening around the grip of the nine-millimeter, she ran for the door, and again ran through it and closed it on the dog in the nick of time.
This was getting tiresome.
She clicked off the safety of the nine-millimeter. It was only a matter of time before the pooch from hell jumped back out through the same window.
Turning around, she found herself confronted by seven more dobermans.
One was missing an ear.
Another was missing its throat.
Two had broken limbs.
One had a massive gash in its side.
All seven of them leapt for her at once.
Gripping the nine-millimeter with both hands, she aimed straight for the lead doberman's head and fired.
Seconds later, she'd emptied all sixteen rounds in the clip. Seven of the sixteen were perfect head shots that took the dogs down.
That took her out of immediate danger, but the only potential source of fresh ammo was Clarence's body in the lab, and Alice was not going back in