Chapter Six
The emergency lights painted her path red as she ran along the cold, industrial steel corridors, hunting for any place she hadn't already been. The locked shutter near the entrance had opened at some point. She followed the newly unlocked hall out into the control room of a radio tower, its walls covered in windows and banked by consoles. The equipment all seemed to be in working order. She could call for help, if she had anyone to call, if anyone cared about this desolate city and its few survivors.
As she stood there, punching buttons and flicking dials, a distant sound muscled its way over the blare of the alarms. Louder and closer it came, until she could not fail to recognize it: the whirling of helicopter blades.
The chopper rose into the view of the windows and held there, hovering outside. For a moment, Jill allowed herself to hope—until she spotted the flash of blond hair on the chopper's pilot.
Wesker. Damn everything.
Static erupted from the speaker, indicating an incoming transmission.
"A little slow, are we?" Wesker asked.
"Goddammit Wesker!" She growled into the mic.
"There is room for one more, Jill," he said.
The words made her seize up inside, clenched around her gut like cold iron fingers. His tone had been neutral, even a little warm, but the offer had a mocking edge nevertheless. What she wouldn't give for a rocket launcher right now so she could blow that jerk out of the sky.
"What about Carlos?" she asked.
"He'll have to find his own way out. I'm afraid I don't have any use for him. You, however, have just demonstrated once again how impressive your own skills are. You'll be needing a new job once this is all over. I would be happy to take you under my wing again." He paused. "We could take on Umbrella together."
She started laughing, bitter and cold, a sound so dark and angry she was almost surprised it could come from her own throat. Now he wanted to team up against Umbrella, huh? He should have made that offer before he sacrificed his own men for the company's sake, before he'd betrayed and abandoned her.
"I am never. EVER. Working for you again," she hissed.
"Have it your way, then."
The helicopter pulled away, and flew off into the brightening sky. She didn't know if she had made the right decision, or the smart one. But, it was one that she could live with, even if she was only going to live for five more minutes.
The chopper was a speck on the horizon when the door behind her creaked opened, and footsteps approached her.
"Jill!" Carlos said. His grin dropped the moment he saw the look on her face. "What happened?"
"The escape helicopter is gone." She hesitated. "Someone beat us to it."
"Aw, dammit! I'll bet it was that creep Nikolai."
Jill said nothing. It wasn't that she had any reason to protect Wesker from Carlos. Mentioning his name would just lead to a lot of questions, and a history she didn't want to spend her last moments reliving. Let Carlos think it was Nikolai. It was easier that way.
Carlos joined her by the windows, looking out at the first fingers of dawn rising over the horizon.
"I guess this is it then." He took a deep, shaky breath. "But I don't want to die in a place like this."
Jill didn't, either. It felt too much like Umbrella winning. It wouldn't matter that she'd busted up another of their sick toys if the missile blast killed her in the end. Yet, it seemed they were out of options. Wesker had been right, they'd never make it out on foot.
Carlos ran past her, clipping her shoulder in his haste to reach the radio.
"What are you doing?" Jill asked.
"I'm not giving up. There has to be a way. As long as we're alive, we still have a chance!"
That was one way of looking at things. She didn't have the heart to point out that any help he might call wouldn't be able to reach them in time. Instead, she looked to the hatch in the middle of the room, and the ladder leading down. According to Wesker's map, it would lead out of the factory.
"I'll go ahead," she said. "Whatever happens, I'm not going to sit quietly and wait to die."
Carlos nodded. She left him fiddling with the equipment, and put her foot on the first rung of the ladder. Before she could shift her weight over, the radio crackled to life.
"This is..." the message cut out into static. "...over. I've..." more static. "to retr...Jill. ...can see there's no time left...This is the S.T.A.R.S...come in, Jill. Come in..."
She pulled herself away from the ladder so fast that the tip of her shoe caught on the bars, and she nearly slammed face-first into the floor. Carlos backed away so she could get to the equipment.
"This is Jill. You're breaking up, we can barely hear you. There's two of us in the abandoned factory on the edge of town. We need pickup, over."
"...factory. Got it...'m coming, Jill. Over."
The voice was so garbled with static she couldn't identify it. It couldn't have been Wesker. He wouldn't have come back for her, and his own radio call had been much clearer in quality. She had no idea who else would be here, looking for her.
"Come on, we have to get out of here so he can pick us up!" Carlos said.
"You're right. Let's go."
Back she went to the ladder, and this time her limbs were nimble with both desperation and hope. They were serenaded the whole way down by the repetitive drone of the computer.
"Warning: missile attack confirmed. Emergency level: D. All personnel, evacuate."
"Level D?" she muttered to herself, hopping the last two rungs to reach solid ground. "What emergencies do they have that's worse than a missile attack?"
"I don't think I want to know," Carlos said. He looked around, taking in the hallway before them. "Looks like there's only one way to go."
"I think this is an emergency exit," Jill said.
It wasn't pretty down here. Flaming heaps of rubble, blood stains, and corpses littered the ground, and there were holes in the flooring. A furrow creased her brow as Jill looked over the corpses. There was something odd about them. Alongside the ordinary dead humans lay giants, each seven feet tall at the shortest. Their skin was ghoulishly pale, their skulls were bald, and each one was dressed in the same green trench coat. The Umbrella logo glittered on the pockets of their coats.
"I don't think these were human," Jill said, frowning at one body that was half-embedded in the wall. A glint of silver caught her eye. One of the dead humans was holding a grenade launcher. She snatched it up and was delighted to find it was loaded with a full compliment of shells. If they were lucky, she wouldn't need such heavy weaponry, but she took it with her anyway.
"It looks like we missed a hell of a fight," Carlos said. He pointed out a corpse at his feet that was wearing US army gear. The body was holding a packet of papers.
With the timer counting down on them and a mysterious benefactor waiting to lift them out of hell, it really wasn't the time for her police instincts to flare up. Yet Jill couldn't resist snatching up the papers and skimming through them as she walked. It was a set of operating instructions for something called "Paraclesus' Sword."
"The military was here," she said, baffled and awed. "And they brought a rail canon."
"Wow. Well where the hell were they in the rest of the city? I didn't see them."
Jill reached the end of the file, and her teeth clenched.
"They weren't here to help Raccoon. They came to steal Umbrella's secrets, and they knew Umbrella was going to fight back. These other things must be Umbrella's guard dogs."
They passed through a door into a large warehouse. There was the rail canon, a massive machine about as tall as a semi-truck and half as long as one. It had been used a lot, if the devastation to the room was any indication. More dead Umbrella freaks lay in holes punched into the walls, their trench coats reduced to ash.
"Tyrants," Jill hissed, recognizing the exposed hearts and boney claws.
"What?"
"It's a special type of Umbrella monster. They're almost as hard to kill as the Nemesis. No wonder the military brought in the big guns."
They made their way through the maze of giant packing crates to the behemoth of a weapon that lay sleeping at the far end. Jill looked it over with a critical eye, noting there was no visible damage to it. Maybe it could still work.
"Now that's the kind of firepower I'm talking about," Carlos said. "Think I could fit it in my inventory?"
Jill shook her head. "You're going to need a bigger pouch."
They went to the door, the very last door, according to the map. It wouldn't open.
"Oh, what the hell." She banged it with her fist. "Not now!"
"The panel here says something about lock down," Carlos offered.
Jill growled some very unflattering things about Umbrella. "That does it," she growled. "If we can't unlock it, then we're blasting our way out."
She ran back to the rail canon's control panel and started hitting buttons, referring back to the manual she had picked up.
"Uhhh, Jill? You don't think that's a little excessive?" Carlos asked nervously, backing away from the locked door.
"It's here, and it'll work. I'm using it," Jill told him. "Besides, that door is metal. You're not going to be able to kick it down."
"Well no, but..."
"Checking. System." More computer voices, this one male, more stilted than Umbrella's system. She heard a motor whirr to life, followed by some clicks and beeps. The lights on the canon turned on. "Checking. Battery. Warning, there is not enough power to. Activate. The system."
"Seriously?" Carlos asked.
"Nothing works during an outbreak," Jill said. She looked around. "I think those are battery packs," she said, pointing to a massive metal object sticking out from some kind of equally massive socket. "Let's try pushing them in."
"So I don't want to ruin your moment, but. If you hadn't noticed, this thing isn't pointing at the door. And I don't think this platform rotates."
"That's fine. We'll just punch through the wall," Jill told him. Carlos took one look at her face and did not object further.
The battery was every bit as heavy as it looked, even with Carlos helping her push. It ground into place with a click, and the indicator light turned green.
"Battery. Connected."
"Alright. One down. There should be two more somewhere around here."
"I think I saw one by the entrance," Carlos said.
"You take that one. I'll go look for the third one."
Something about that locked door bothered her, though, as she scoured the room for another of the giant batteries. The whole factory had been put under biohazard lock down because of the outbreak, and then she and Wesker had disabled that by tricking the sensors. So why was this door still locked? Before, they'd had another door lock on them only because an "active B.O.W." was nearby...
The thought had barely materialized in her head before she heard a crash behind her.
"Shit!" Carlos yelped.
Jill ran around the cargo container, towards his voice. Something had just dropped down from a hole in the ceiling, landing in the corner right next to one of the dead tyrants. Her first thought was that one of the worms from Raccoon park had followed her all the way here. But no, this sack of flesh had a few limbs. It reared up, balancing on one misshapen leg and two humanoid arms. Whole sections of its skin had eaten away, revealing cords of purple flesh and the white disks of its spine. A mouth gnawed its way out of a stump which might have been a neck at one point.
The creature huddled over the tyrant corpse and tore into it with its pointed teeth, stripping huge chunks of flesh off and swallowing them in gulps. Partially-congealed blood sprayed out over the walls and floor. The more it ate, the bigger it grew, muscles swelling, the purple cords lengthening out into another leg to replace the lost one.
She recognized it by the texture of its skin, and the extensive acid burns only confirmed her suspicion.
"Nemesis! I can't believe this thing is still alive," she said.
"Not if I can help it!" Carlos bellowed. A pepper of machine gun fire hammered the monster's side, splashing more blood on the floor. Nemesis didn't seem very impressed. It reared back and roared, bony horns growing out of the new holes in its shoulder.
"Carlos, keep pushing that battery! I'll handle this freak."
It didn't hiss "S.T.A.R.S." as it came at her. She wasn't sure if it even had a voice box anymore. It was like some other being inside of Nemesis was forcing a way out through its skin, filling up the holes burned by the chemical bath.
It didn't try to move like a man anymore, either, leaping about on four legs like some kind of giant, malformed wolf. She held up her newly acquired grenade launcher and unloaded in its pointed face until it jumped up on top of one of the crates.
"Battery. Connected," the computer said.
"Two down, one to go! Keep it busy, Jill!" Carlos called as he ran by her.
Nemesis growled, its head following the U.C.B.S. operative's movement.
"No you don't. Here! Over here!" She called, firing another grenade launcher at its trunk. She might not have been as great a marksman as Chris, but her scores weren't shabby. You didn't have to be William Tell to nail something with a grenade launcher.
In a reversal that some asshole somewhere would probably call poetic, Nemesis opened its mouth and spewed a stream of acid in her direction. She knew it was acid when she rolled out of the way, and the liquid melted the foot of a nearby Tyrant corpse.
"Jill, watch out!" Carlos yelled several seconds too late. "That stuff'll melt right through you!"
"Thank, I noticed. Just keep pushing!"
She kept up a steady stream of fire on its face, not trying to kill it, just keeping it distracted. If rockets and acid and fire hadn't killed this monster, she didn't have much hope for any conventional weaponry. They needed that rail canon.
The frustrated monstrosity roared again and jumped at her. Nemesis moved a whole lot faster on four legs, and keeping ahead of it took her full concentration. She twisted on her heel and ran, sprinting down the corridor between crates to put some distance between them.
"Battery. Connected. Rail canon has been. Activated. Activating quick charge program. Preparing to. Fire."
The damn computer voice took forever to deliver its message, while the massive weapon beside it charged with a loud, growing whine. Bolts of electricity crackled along the weapon's exterior, scattering blue light over the surroundings. Jill glanced over her shoulder, noting the layout of the room behind her. She and Nemesis were near the wall, the canon on her right. She ran straight across, her hair standing on end as she had to cross the path of the charging canon. Nemesis stomped after her, its tentacles flailing in displeasure.
"5. 4. 3."
"Come on, come on," Jill hissed. "Get over here!"
Nemesis obeyed, but much faster than she wanted. It leaped at her, crossing the distance between them in under a second. Jill had to roll out of the way to avoid getting her head smashed into the wall.
"2. 1. Firing."
In a blinding flash of blue light, the canon fired, ripping a path of destruction through no less than four of the massive metal crates, a whole lot of piping, and some machinery that had been left in the middle of the room. The blast left a sizable crack in the wall at the very end.
It had missed Nemesis, and now the monster was standing right beside her. The grenade launcher was no good at close range; she'd kill herself with it. The Nemesis roared in her face, its tentacles rearing back for the kill. Carlos weighed in on the argument with a spray of machine gun fire into its eye.
"Over here, Jill!" he called. He had been behind one of the rows of tanks, and only had an opening now through the smoking hole that had been cut through them all.
Jill hurried through the twisted wreckage towards him. The rail canon was charging again. She could hear the whine of its machinery approaching another crescendo.
"Come on, ugly!" she called over her shoulder. Nemesis followed her into the newly cut corridor, its pointed maw opening wide. Jill recognized that movement and tackled Carlos out of the way right before another shower of acid spit from the thing's mouth. She wondered if it hadn't somehow absorbed that shit from the chemical bath, incorporating it into its own body as a weapon. Who knew what Umbrella's freaks were capable of.
She came back out from cover, lining herself up with the glowing tip of the rail canon. Here she held her ground, pounding Nemesis' gaping maw with grenade round after grenade round.
"5. 4."
"Jill, what are you doing? Get out of the way!"
"He's not dodging it again," she hissed back through grit teeth, keeping up a steady fire until the very last possible second.
"3. 2. 1."
She jumped out of the way. The second blast was just as deafening and blinding as the first.
"Oh, no..." Carlos moaned beside her. "But that one had to have hit!"
Jill dared to stand up and look.
Nemesis was pushing itself up from the ground, a good chunk of flesh missing from its trunk and shoulder. Yet even as they watched, the flesh grew back, even more twisted and misshapen than it had been before. Spines of bone burst out from its back, like its rib cage had cracked in half and been turned outward.
No matter what they did to it, it just kept growing bigger and uglier. What was it that Wesker had said? Something about outpacing its regeneration?
"I'm not giving up," she told Carlos. "We just need to land a better shot."
The head, she thought. Somehow, they had to hit the head.
A tentacle came screaming at her face, hit her in the jaw and tossed her off her feet. She hit the nearby wall hard enough to shake stars into her eyes. Carlos called her name, but the cry cut off in a yelp. Jill forced herself away from the wall, gritting her teeth when the motion made the whole room spin. Carlos—where was Carlos?
Movement out of the corner of her eye—there he was, dangling seven feet up in the air from a tentacle that had wrapped around his waist. Nemesis was shaking him around like a toddler with a ragdoll. One of the swings knocked the soldier into some wreckage with an ominous crack, and Carlos screamed.
She remembered what Nemesis had done to Wesker and felt a cold chill slither down her spine. She couldn't let it toss him. In the background, the rail canon whirred towards its third strike. Nemesis was still standing in front of the canon, but now so was Carlos.
Jill switched to her pistol and took careful aim, firing shot after shot at the tentacle holding her last partner. The flesh broke under her shots, and Carlos fell to the ground. He hit hard and lay dazed, clutching at his leg.
He wasn't safe yet. Nemesis stood over him, not more than a foot behind him. Its beady eyes were fixed on Jill.
"5. 4," the computer said.
"Shiiiiiit." Jill bolted forward, firing into Nemesis' face as she approached. It shook the shots off, snarling. She kept firing until she was close enough to sweep low and haul Carlos on to her shoulder. He groaned, weakly climbing to his feet with her help.
"My leg-"
"3."
"Walk it off, soldier!"
A tentacle slammed into a broken pipe right behind Jill's head. She grit her teeth and fired blindly behind her. Carlos could barely put weight on his leg-the knee was bending wrong, and the whole side of his leg was covered in blood. They limp-ran through the wrecked containers, towards the bubble of safety in the corner of the room beside the canon.
"2. 1."
She threw herself and Carlos the last few feet, hitting the ground a moment before the canon fired.
The payload hit Nemesis with an awful noise, and Nemesis let out one final scream before its entire upper half blasted into shreds. The remains of its body flipped several times through the air, set on fire by the impact, before falling to the ground with a splat. Jill gasped for breath, watching the hunk of flesh that used to be her tormentor, waiting for it to get up and grow even bigger.
"Alright, take that!" Carlos crowed hoarsely, then immediately crumpled and grabbed his leg. "Oww, fuck. Just. Just need one more shot for the wall."
"Warning. System, overheating. Initiating cool down mode."
"Are you joking me?" Carlos asked.
Jill sighed. The room filled with the beeping and clicking of the system ejecting its battery packs, undoing all their hard work, and a hiss emitted from the canon itself. But, there was one more beep that caught her attention, one that had nothing to do with the canon. She looked up.
"The door unlocked."
"What? Alright! I don't know why, but, I'm not questioning it."
"Vaporizing that monster must have deactivated the lock down," she said. "Come on, let's get out of here. Lean on me."
They limped their way to the door, stomping through the flesh and gore that Nemesis had left behind. It had splattered all the way over here, painting trails of blood over half the room. Jill had her hand on the door when she heard the slithering behind her. She turned her head.
She thought the rail canon had hit Nemesis in the head for sure, but she was wrong. It oozed towards her now, nothing but a single thrashing leg and a new mouth, spitting acid over its teeth.
If they just ran for it now, before the sensors tripped and locked the door again, they would be home free. Nemesis was in no state to follow them. It was the smart choice, the pragmatic choice. The call Wesker would have made, if he were there.
It wouldn't be enough, not for her. This thing had been dogging her for the worst three solid days of her life, had killed too many good people, and caused her too much grief. She wanted it dead.
A glitter on the floor nearby caught her attention, sitting beside the outstretched hand of a fallen soldier.
She dumped Carlos against the door, cutting off his exclamation of disbelief mid-sentence. Then she ran forward, rolling out of the path of Nemesis' acid spray, and grabbed the magnum off the ground. From her crouch she fired two quick shots into the Nemesis, weathering the gun's harsh recoil between shots. The monster cringed and thrashed with each bullet, as it never had before.
Like a righteous angel of vengeance she stood up, closing in on the writhing worm Nemesis had become, and fired shot after shot into what was left of its body. One for Brad, one for Mikhail, one for the chopper pilot...
"You want S.T.A.R.S.? I'll give you S.T.A.R.S."
And one for her. After that final bullet, the last in the gun, Nemesis screamed and thrashed and then lay still, its singed and burned and torn flesh steaming lightly. She watched the body for a moment, waiting, just in case.
"I think," Carlos said haltingly form the door, "I think you got it, Jill."
She stowed the empty magnum in her pack, and walked away. Carlos was waiting right where she'd left him, collapsed against the door, head twisted around to watch her.
"S.T.A.R.S. are really something else," he said as she lifted his arm onto her shoulder, anchoring herself to him like a living crutch.
We used to be, she thought to herself, and couldn't quite manage a smile.
They opened the door together. By some fickle streak of fortune, the door led straight out into an elevator, so Carlos didn't have to hobble far. It was an industrial lift, the kind that had railings instead of an enclosure. A punch of a button sent them speeding upwards, towards the surface.
"Looks like I owe you," Carlos said.
"Think of it as payback for all the times you saved me," she said.
"If we're keeping score, I think I'm still ahead."
"I'll buy you a drink some time."
Carlos laughed. "I'll take that."
Time was running out, making the slow pace dictated by Carlos's injury even more excruciating. He hobbled out from the elevator at a good clip, all things considered, the pain dulled by adrenaline. At last, they were out of the dead factory.
As they stood looking around the waste dumped up around the building, Jill heard the sweetest sound she had ever heard: the hum of helicopter blades. If, after all that, the mysterious rescuer turned out to be another Umbrella goon after her head, well. She still had plenty of ammo in her pistol.
"They're here. They're really here, they came for you!" Carlos said.
"But who is it?"
The chopper, a slender blue and white model without any kind of logo, came in to land neatly in front of them. Jill helped Carlos up inside and then hopped in herself. They collapsed into their seats, both moving in a haze of disbelief. Carlos thunked his head back against the cockpit wall. Then the chopper was rising, leaving the cursed earth of Raccoon City behind them.
"Thank you. You saved our lives," Jill said, leaning forward. She still couldn't get a good look at the pilot from this angle. He was male, burly, with a black cap and an orange vest.
"Did you think I could leave you to die?" the pilot turned, giving her a good view of his bearded profile.
"Is...is it...?"
Barry.
Jill could hardly breathe through the swell of emotion clogging her throat. Someone had come back for her. Someone hadn't forgotten her, hadn't left her to fend for herself. He could have stayed safe in Canada with his family and she never would have blamed him. But somehow, he had heard about what happened to Raccoon, and he had come here, just to make sure she got out okay.
"Are you ready?" he asked. "Everything's about to be finished."
Jill plastered herself to the window, where she could watch the glowing orange projectile launching over the horizon, a miniature sun beating Sol to the dawn. The countdown hadn't been wrong. They had less than a minute left before impact.
"It's coming!" she said.
"Yeah," Barry agreed. He looked down at his watch. "It's the end."
The missile passed them, heading straight on target to the heart of Raccoon. Once again, all the evidence of Umbrella's crimes, its monstrosities, would be wiped away in a cleansing wall of fire. It would keep the plague from spreading to neighboring cities, but the obvious cover-up left a sour taste in her mouth. Would anyone believe the survivors of Raccoon, when they told their story? Or would they be ridiculed and hunted, just like the S.T.A.R.S. had?
She had to turn her face away from the impact, as the sky outside the windows flared white. The noise of it was deafening, several orders of magnitude louder than the blast that had consumed the Spencer Mansion. A massive ball of fire spread outwards from the city center, consuming every last street and building of the city. Jill cried out as the turbulence from the shock wave rattled the chopper.
"That's it," she hissed, looking back one last time at the mushroom cloud where her home city used to stand. "Umbrella is going down."
Chris had been right about one thing: it was time to take the fight to the source.
