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“You can do that as long as you like, Doctor. You’re in charge.”

“I can wave the governor’s signature around all I want, but I don’t think I can push it too far before they start ignoring me. And the cops are on the side of the locals.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Not really, sir. These are the same doctors the cops see in the ER all the time. They know each other. They trust each other. And cops don’t trust private-sector divas like me.”

“We cannot risk infected blood leaving the quarantine area,” Isaacs said stating the obvious. Jaime already knew that. What she needed was instruction on how to stop that from happening.

After a moment’s thought, Isaacs said, “Obviously, we must contain this situation. Dr. Cerota, use your authority granted by the governor of California, and order all the blood samples destroyed, the patients terminated, and their bodies burned. There must be no evidence left.”

“Not even for testing?”

“There is nothing to test,” Isaacs said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “We know that this is the result of the T-virus.”

“Oh, fine—can I tell Dr. Yu-Chin and the others that?”

“Of course not.”

“Fine—when they ask why there’s nothing to be tested, what do I tell them?”

Still impatient, Isaacs said, “Tell them it’s classified by order of the governor.”

“And what happens when they call the governor’s office and ask him?”

“He’ll say exactly what we’ve instructed him to say. How do you think he got reelected?”

All of a sudden, Jaime’s nose started to itch. She tried to ignore it.

“Oh, and if you can degauss this Dr. Yu-Chin’s hard drive, that wouldn’t be untoward, either.”

Jaime shook her head. “I’ll try my best. But I don’t think this is going to work.”

“Why not?”

“Because this might not be an isolated incident. If it is, great, we incinerate the blood and the bodies, and we’re fine, but this isn’t the only place Knable was after he left Raccoon. True, he didn’t break out with symptoms”—and die, but Jaime found she couldn’t add that part for some reason—“until he got here, but we’re not even sure how he was infected, or if it really was him, or if he’s the only one. We can’t keep this to ourselves, sir. If we let the CDC in on this, then we can—”

“No.”

“Sir—”

“I said no, Dr. Cerota. If you persist in this, you will be recalled, and we’ll send someone who can do the job properly.”

Isaacs didn’t bother with the rest of the threat. She’d be fired and would never be able to work in her chosen field again, as Umbrella would blackball her.

“Yes, sir. I’ll—”

Before she could finish the sentence, a loud crashing sound came from outside the tent.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Jaime walked over to the tent flap and pulled it back—

—to reveal three infected corpses shuffling down the street where they’d set up their command post and several Hazmat-suited personnel trying and failing to restrain them.

One of the corpses was Jim Knable.

Jaime’s heart leapt into her throat. Jim was a good guy, and a brilliant one. He’d done amazing work in the streamlining of blood-testing procedures, which—in the age of high-tech crime labs, not to mention rampant disease and drug testing—had made him a very rich man at a very young age. But he’d never let it get to his head.

He deserved better than this. Especially since his last act in Raccoon City was trying to help people get out.

Dr. Yu-Chin was running down the street. “They got loose! We’ve got to restrain them!”

Two of the uniforms from the SFPD—who were also wearing Hazmat suits—came running, weapons out. “Police, freeze!”

One of the corpses grabbed a Hazmat-suited doctor—after a second, Jaime realized it was Bousquet, the one who’d called her a diva—and bit through the suit. The doctor screamed.

“I said freeze!” one of the uniforms yelled. Both had their pistols aimed at the scene.

Jaime appreciated their dedication to the letter of the law, but now was not the time. “They won’t respond. You need to shoot them in the head.”

One of the cops said, “This may not be the best time to tell you my range scores.”

The other cop just fired,