Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [6]
But that was the old days. These days, you couldn’t afford not to get along with the people you worked with. Because those were the people you lived with every day, probably for the rest of your life.
Generally, Andy tried not to think about it.
Brendan held up the test tube. “I’m gonna go run this through the machines and see what wisdom it provides.”
“Probably the same thing the last eighty-four tests said.”
“Yeah. You wanna tell Isaacs that? You can do it right after you call him a wuss to his face.”
Before Andy could respond to Brendan’s dig, Paul said, “C’mon, Timson, let’s haul ass. I don’t wanna spend any more time outside than I have to.”
Sobering, Andy said, “Yeah. You want the feet this time?”
“Nah, I’ll take the shoulders. Wouldn’t want you to get blood on your precious Hazmat suit.”
“Hey, at least this one got past the lasers.” Andy shuddered, remembering the early clone who got sliced and diced by the laser grid. Andy couldn’t eat steak for a week after that.
Not that there was a whole helluva lot of steak to be had these days. Umbrella had an impressive stockpile of food to keep its few remaining employees nourished, but guys like Andy and Paul usually didn’t get the good stuff. Spam on rye was a typical lunch at the technician and security grunt level.
But at least they were getting food. That was all the payment they received, but it beat the shit out of the alternative. Andy bent over and grabbed Alice-85’s ankles, then waited for Paul to get a grip on her shoulders before straightening. He said, “Besides, I know the real reason—you get queasy walking backward.”
“Hardy har har.” Paul lifted her by the shoulders. “This one feels lighter.”
Andy started backpedaling down the corridor toward the glass doors. “Half her chest was blown off. It’s a great dieting program.”
“Got her tits, too.” Paul’s leer wasn’t visible, but Andy could practically hear it. “Probably lose a lotta weight there.”
“Not with her tits,” Andy said with a chuckle. “Dolly Parton she ain’t.”
“Yeah, I know—I trained with the real one, remember? Still, there’s fat there, right?”
“Yah.”
The two of them made it to the doors, which opened at their approach. The city view remained visible on the glass even as they parted—behind them was the the metal platform in the tube that led to the surface.
As Andy backed onto the platform, he shuddered, the same way he always did when they went topside.
Once they were in, Paul stepped on a big red button on the floor, resulting in the pneumatic hiss of the hydraulics that lifted the platform up out of the underground complex that had become home and work and refuge for Andy, Paul, Brendan, Dr. Isaacs, and a few dozen other employees of the Umbrella Corporation who had survived the apocalypse.
When he was a kid, Andy’s mother had told him about what life was like in the 1950s during the early days of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, how they’d have drills to practice what to do in case of a nuclear attack. Those drills supposedly involved curling up under one’s school desk, which left his mother with the impression until she was eighteen that wood was proof against nuclear fallout.
For so long, people assumed that when the world ended, it would be because somebody dropped the Bomb. Half the science-fiction stories that Andy had read or watched on television as a kid predicted a postapocalyptic future where some superpower or other dropped a bomb on their enemies, leaving only a few humans to keep the planet going.
As the hydraulic lift brought Andy, Paul, and the corpse of Alice-85 to the surface of Death Valley, Andy wondered if they would’ve been better off with bombs instead of this.
And didn’t it just figure that Umbrella’s super-secret underground base was located in Death Valley?
With a creaking sound, hidden