Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [42]
Jill frowned. “Why?”
“The governor has called in the National Guard, but we’re completely at a loss. You’ve actually dealt with this, and the Umbrella Corporation thinks enough of you to engage in a smear campaign.”
“That has nothing to do with me,” Jill said. “They needed a cover story after they nuked the island.”
For the first time, the old man was nonplussed. “Excuse me?”
She couldn’t believe that they hadn’t connected these particular dots. “The meltdown was a cover story.”
“We received telemetry from the power plant for hours before the meltdown. We were warned that it would—”
“That was to cover their tracks. It’s why they waited most of the night to hit with the nuke. They needed to lay the groundwork for the cover story. There was no meltdown!” Jill almost stood up but decided to stay at the same level as this man and look him straight in the eyes.
He was the first to look away, which Jill considered a rather pointless moral victory.
“I’ll be back,” he said after taking a few more notes. He rose from his chair and moved to the door.
After he opened it, he said, “My name, by the way, is Deputy Director Kirby Johnson.”
With that, he left.
As soon as the door closed, Jill tried to contain a whoop of delight. The video camera was still on, after all, and it wouldn’t do to show her enthusiasm.
But she had just been vindicated in her choice of action once she saw the schmuck in the ball cap in the fast-food joint. From the look of things, the feds weren’t just going to roll over for Umbrella—not with what was happening in San Francisco right now.
For the first time since her hiking trip, Jill Valentine allowed herself a glimmer of hope.
TEN
AFTER
As Jill Valentine drove her Prius through the remains of Baltimore, she found herself without a glimmer of hope.
She had been lucky to salvage the Prius—a hybrid gas/electric car—as it got her much farther on less gas than the SUV she’d been in before. True, the SUV had a stronger cage, which made for better protection against scavengers—whether human, undead, or animal; the world was awash in all three—but with more and more gas stations coming up empty, the Prius made it easier for her to keep moving.
Sooner or later, she supposed she would have to settle somewhere, try to wait this whole thing out, but she’d yet to find anywhere worth staying.
She’d done what she could—helping out the occasional enclave of humanity—but eventually they were overcome by the zombies, and Jill quickly got out while the gettin’ was good. Those instincts had enabled her to be one of Raccoon City’s few surviving citizens, and they’d kept her alive since Raccoon’s legacy had all but destroyed the world.
As time went on, she’d worked her way east. She’d hoped to find Alice or Carlos or even, God help her, L.J. She’d heard that Angie had been killed, though that was secondhand.
As if there was any information that wasn’t secondhand anymore.
The last time she’d seen Carlos was when she bumped into that convoy he and L.J. and some woman named Claire Redfield had put together back in Atlanta. Jill had collected a bunch of refugees of her own, like ducklings. She had gratefully left them with Carlos and his people, L.J. relishing the notion of more people to take care of.
Even as the death toll increased, even as the government collapsed under the weight of the zombies, Jill kept surviving, kept moving. She could have stayed with Carlos and Claire and L.J., but after so many betrayals, she could not bring herself to trust anyone.
She’d lead, but she would never follow again.
Jill navigated the Prius down a road that she knew would lead to the Inner Harbor. Once a thriving shopping district, according to more of that secondhand information, it was the headquarters of a group of humans who’d managed to tough it out against the zombies. If nothing else, it might have been a good place to share intel and trade supplies. The backseat, passenger seat, and trunk were full of assorted items Jill had scavenged or traded for.
As she went down the road,