Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [78]
Matt put a hand on his shoulder when he was done. Kaplan gave him a nod in return. He had no idea who this guy really was, and right now he didn't give a shit. The four of them had been through all nine circles of hell today, and lived to tell the tale. Right now, that was all Kaplan cared about.
"I don't want to be one of those things."
Kaplan turned to look at Rain when she said those words. Alice was treating her, same as Matt had been doing for Kaplan.
"Walking around without a soul," Rain continued. "When the time comes, you'll take care of it."
It wasn't a question.
Alice just said, "Hey—no one else is gonna die."
Rain removed the watch from her wrist and handed it to Alice.
Then her head slumped forward.
Any other time, Kaplan might have figured she was just lapsing into a coma or something. But he'd seen way too much death today.
Rain Melendez was dead.
Shit.
"Rain?" Alice spoke in a soft voice.
Nothing.
Kaplan shook his head. He never even liked Rain all that much—she and J.D. spent way too much time giving Kaplan a hard time—but they were still comrades, still teammates, and when it mattered, they looked out for each other, depended on each other.
Now Kaplan was the only one left.
The hilarious thing was that J.D. had always said that if they ever took on casualties, that Kaplan would probably be the first one to go.
Instead, he was the last survivor.
Alice reached for Rain's Colt.
Her entire face quivering in a way Kaplan never would've expected from Ass-Kicking Alice, she held the gun to Rain's head.
Clicked off the safety.
Then Rain reached up and grabbed Alice's wrist.
"I'm not dead yet," Rain said.
Kaplan couldn't help but grin to go with his sigh of relief. Suddenly, he found himself looking forward to getting more shit from Rain in the future.
Rain, meanwhile, took the Colt from Alice's hands. "Maybe I'd better have that back."
Alice laughed. "I could kiss you, you bitch."
Kaplan was then startled by the wrenching of metal, which echoed through the train, piercing through the noise of the train's engine. He turned to see a massive claw slice through the train's wall and leave three scratches on Matt's left shoulder.
"Get us the fuck outta here!" Matt cried to Kaplan.
"Any faster and we're gonna come off the rails."
He turned back to face the front, right when the wall to his left was ripped away.
An elongated face with no eyes, and teeth that were now the size of Pennsylvania looked back at Kaplan.
After the day he'd had, Kaplan had thought he'd seen everything.
He was wrong.
His last thought as the creature ripped into him with its claws and teeth was anger that he'd never get to write that fucking report…
Twenty-Seven
IT TOOK MATT A SECOND TO RECOVER FROM the shock of seeing Kaplan torn to pieces by the monster.
Then he shut the engineer's cabin door.
He'd already mourned Kaplan once. Hell, he had mourned all of them. The black guy and the others who died in the Red Queen's chamber. Kaplan. J.D. The employees of the Hive. Even Spence, the fuckhead.
And Lisa.
Umbrella had done this. They created the virus, they let Spence into the top of their Security Division, and they created this thing, which was now running along the top of the train. It killed Spence, it killed Kaplan, it wounded Matt, and now it was well on its way to killing the remaining three of them.
Then Matt noticed that the door on the opposite end of the train was unlatched.
Alice had recovered Rain's Colt and was in a crouch in the center of the train, ready for anything. As time had gone by, Matt was seeing more and more of the formidable presence that Alice was, and was really grateful she was on his side—in more ways than one. Lisa had picked her contact well.
Running across the cab, Matt latched the other door, just as the monster tried to smash through it.
This held it back only temporarily. On its second punch, it knocked the door inward, hitting Matt full