Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [8]
“Where the fuck did they come from?” Paul suddenly asked.
Andy turned to look at him, which was a relief, since even his Hazmat-suit-obscured features were an improvement on the hordes of corpses. “What do you mean?”
“We’re in the middle of the fucking desert. What, these people wandered over from Vegas?”
“Tell you what, Paul, I’ll see if Isaacs wants to run a study of zombie migratory patterns, okay?”
That got a laugh, and Paul said, “C’mon, let’s get back downstairs.”
“No problem,” Andy said emphatically, turning back toward the weather station. “God, I just wish we could get the original back. Dumping clones is starting to get a little tiresome.”
“Fat chance,” Paul said. “You don’t know Ass-Kicking Alice. Isaacs couldn’t keep her if he tried. In fact, he didn’t try.”
“I thought he had her in Detroit.”
Paul smiled. “Not for long. Shit, he didn’t even try to keep her in San Francisco.”
Andy shook his head as they reentered the weather station and walked onto the platform. Paul stepped on the red button again. “I just don’t see what we’re accomplishing at this point. The results are always the same. Sure, she doesn’t always die in the same spot in the Labyrinth, but she always dies eventually, and the blood work’s all within expected norms.”
Paul shrugged. “Long as it keeps us safe down here instead of out there, I don’t give a shit what you guys do.”
At that, Andy sighed. “Amen.”
THREE
BEFORE
Dr. Sam Isaacs stood in awe.
It had been three weeks since the Umbrella Corporation had destroyed Raccoon City with a tactical nuclear missile. The news media had been awash with reports, initially of some kind of virus that had spread through the city prior to its destruction, then of a catastrophic nuclear power-plant meltdown.
As ever, Isaacs was impressed with his employer’s ability to manipulate the truth.
That, however, was not why Isaacs stood in awe.
Only a small handful of people got out of Raccoon alive. To Isaacs’s great glee, his supervisor, Major Timothy Cain, was not one of them, but Alice Abernathy was.
She almost wasn’t. When they found her in the wreckage of a C89 helicopter, she appeared to be one of two corpses, the other being Ian Montgomery, the copter’s pilot. Montgomery had reported four other passengers—three adults and one little girl—but of them there was no sign.
Alice herself had been impaled by a large slice of metal. She should have been dead.
Now, three weeks later, she sat suspended in a tube filled with a nutrient bath, a breathing apparatus covering her nose and mouth.
And according to Dr. Kayanan, she was about to wake up.
“She’s taking almost no nutrients from the system,” Kayanan was saying, amazement in her brown eyes. “The regen seems almost spontaneous. It’s like she’s sucking energy out of thin air.”
Isaacs turned to look at the monitors in front of Kayanan’s workstation. Not only was her EEG almost normal, but her metabolism was actually hypernormal. Considering that she was little more than a corpse three weeks ago…
He walked over to the tube. Alice’s blue eyes sprang open just as he approached.
“Can you hear me?” Isaacs asked.
After a moment, the blond head nodded yes.
“Good.”
Now was the moment of truth. If past history was any indication, Alice would not take well to being studied, especially if she actually retained any memory of what had happened. But if she didn’t recall what had happened, the possibilities were simply endless.
However, there was really only one way to find out. Turning toward Cole, Isaacs said, “Begin the purging process.”
Nodding, Cole started the sequence that drained the nutrient bath from the tank. Alice looked around as it happened, confused, not sure what was going on.
Once the liquid was purged, the front of the tank opened like a flap, bringing Alice into a prone position on the floor. Lang, one of the security people, handed Isaacs a lab coat, and he offered it to her. She wrapped