Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [14]
Now these scavengers had themselves a pair. Alice wondered if they belonged to one of them or if they’d taken them off a previous “fish.”
Either way, she was looking forward to adding them to her arsenal once she killed these people.
Because she fully intended to kill every one of them. While she had walked into the KLKB station fully intending to rescue whoever was trapped inside from the undead, now that she knew she’d been set up, Alice had marked every single one of them. Not just for fooling her but for distracting her from her real work.
Alice was responsible for what had happened to the world.
True, technically, it wasn’t her fault. Technically, it was Spence who let the T-virus loose in the Hive in order to cover his tracks while he stole the virus to sell to the highest bidder on the international market.
But Alice had been partnered with Spence. They’d been assigned to run security at the mansion, which served as the primary access point to the Hive. Not only had they been working together, they’d been sleeping together. Alice originally had trained with the Treasury Department, intending to be part of the Secret Service, before the institutionalized sexism of Treasury drove her to Umbrella, and part of that training was to be able to observe people and events. She had worked out that Lisa Broward, who ran security for Umbrella’s computer system, was working to bring Umbrella down and had worked to recruit her to join Alice’s own efforts to bring Umbrella down.
However, she missed Spence completely.
And that nagged at her. If she had just figured out what Spence was up to and stopped him, most of the world’s population still might be alive today.
So she was determined to do what she could to help the few people who were left.
Or, at least, those who deserved it. These fuckers didn’t qualify, as far as Alice was concerned.
The big man held up one of the Kukris. “Let’s see what else she’s packing.”
He put the tip of the blade under Alice’s duster.
Looking the big man straight in the eye, Alice said, “I wouldn’t do that.”
That got her a slap across the face. “Shut your mouth!”
It barely stung, and Alice hardly moved from the pathetic impact. If she weren’t manacled, she could’ve taken these fuckers down back when she was just a Treasury agent, much less now.
She was definitely going to enjoy killing these people. Bad enough that there were so few people left, but they had to lure others for—what? Their sport?
The others seemed to think that the slap meant something, though. “That’s it, Eddie!” one of them cried. “You show her!”
“You show the bitch,” the woman with the baby added.
Eddie smiled and once again positioned the Kukri to slice open Alice’s duster.
Before he could start to do so, Alice reared one foot back and brought it up with a powerful kick right to Eddie’s nose.
The woman ran toward him as he fell to the ground. “Eddie! Eddie!”
She knelt down next to Eddie, felt his neck, then looked up, giving Alice a murderous expression. “Jesus Christ, he’s dead.”
Alice shrugged as best she could while handcuffed. “I warned him.”
At that, the woman raised her own shotgun. “You fucking bitch!”
“Hey!” Murph said. “None’a that, Margie. We do this same way we always do.” Murph smiled then. “And this time it’ll be fun.”
Margie nodded, lowering the shotgun. “You’re right, Murph. Bitch probably did that so we’d shoot her. Put her outta her misery quick-like. But she ain’t that lucky.”
That got a snort from Alice. She did it because she wanted Eddie dead. Period.
Murph grabbed her arm and started leading her to another room. “Let’s go, pretty fish. We gonna have us a show, boys ’n’ girls!”
Chris Murphy was gonna enjoy this.
The world had gone into the toilet, yeah, but hell with that, he was having fun. Lot more fun than he’d been having since before it all ended, that was for damn sure.
Murph’s daddy had been a state trooper, and his granddaddy before him, and his great-granddaddy before him. Where Murph grew up, it was like that Springsteen song, they