Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [62]
Since then…
She shook it off and gave Carlos what she prayed was an encouraging look. “Right.”
He nodded and wheeled the quad bike over to the 8x8, where it was kept. Besides, Carlos hadn’t gotten his nightly meal yet.
Spoons were a luxury, so Claire started sipping the soup straight out of the can.
The soup was watery, the mushrooms barely even tastable, and it was the finest meal Claire had ever had.
She headed to the Hummer. Time she got some sleep.
Carlos watched Claire head over to the Hummer and wondered if she realized how important she was. She probably didn’t—that was why she was such a good leader.
For Carlos’s part, he was happy to turn it over to her. He’d been a leader of men and women before, and it ended badly. Every time someone put him in charge of something, he thought about Nicholai and Yuri and J.P. and Jack and Sam and Jessica. They had been a team, and a damned good one.
That lasted right up until Carlos made a simple decision: to save a woman’s life.
It was just supposed to be recon. They were doing a flyover of Raccoon to make sure that all of Umbrella’s essential personnel got out. Carlos saw a woman being chased by a horde of zombies, and he went down to help her. The rest of his team followed; they were loyal.
That loyalty killed them. The helicopter flew off, and they were written off by the company as expendable.
The hell of it was, they hadn’t even been able to save that woman’s life.
Then, one by one, they all died: first J.P. and then Jack, both of whom were then zombified. Carlos had to shoot J.P. in the head, and Jack killed Jessica and bit Sam before the latter was able to break his neck. Sam ate her gun after that. Yuri was infected, too, and he was lost pretty soon, and then Nicholai was mauled by those fucking dogs in the school.
Six people. His team. His responsibility. All dead because Carlos wanted to save a life.
Then, when he tried it again, with the strike team, that failed, too. From Jisun, King, Molina, and Briscoe to Lyndon, Heidi, and Alex—not to mention Alice disappearing, Jill being captured in Idaho, and poor Angie—Carlos kept losing people he was responsible for.
No more. Let someone else take the heat. He’d had enough.
He went into the news truck.
Mikey was doing his thing: “—field’s convoy, broadcasting for any survivors.” He sighed, and a tinge of frustration leavened his usual professional tone. “Anybody out there? Broadcasting for any survivors—anybody out there?”
As much to distract him as anything, Carlos asked, “Anything?”
Lowering the headset from his left ear, Mikey shook his head. “Static. Same as last week and the week before that.”
Carlos nodded, muttering, “And the week before that.”
“I’m starting to think there’s nobody left out there. That we’re the last.”
Since departing California with Betty and Emilio—and nobody else on the entire West Coast—Carlos had felt exactly the same way. Somehow, he managed to bite back an agreement, though. That wouldn’t do anyone any good. He screwed on an encouraging look that he hoped to a God he’d long since stopped believing in was convincing, patted Mikey on the back, and said, “Don’t worry. There’ll be others. There has to be.”
And Carlos’s words were true. There was simply no way that they could be the last thirty humans on Earth. It just didn’t scan. The world was a big place, and the T-virus couldn’t have gotten everywhere.
He clung to that hope. It was pretty much all he had left.
SEVENTEEN
BEFORE
The bullet ripped through Angela Ashford’s head, splattering her brains all over the SUV’s rear window.
In her mind, Alice screamed, Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
But her body refused to cooperate.
At first.
Then she whirled around and shot the two security guards closest to her.
She shot at Isaacs, too, but as soon