Chapter Two
Perfect Victory!
After the arrival of Cardoza's aircraft, the marines and soldiers stationed around the White House grounds had held their fire. But now that the monsters were wildly mutating—and showed no signs of stopping—fear prompted them to resume attacking. Gunfire erupted, flamethrowers disgorged streams of fire, and grenades were launched. Jill, Ada, and Leon followed suit and began firing their weapons once more. Alice restrained herself. Bullets weren't going to win this fight. She knew it. The new mutations sustained damage from the weapons fire, but they didn't fall, and as Alice watched in horrified fascination, the tentacled aberrations turned toward one another and began to merge. She first saw it happening with the giant Lickers, or rather the giant mounds of tentacles the Lickers had become. Their tentacles stretched outward in all directions, connecting with the tentacles of other, smaller creatures that reached toward them. When the tentacles touched, they fused, flowing together as if they were made of liquid.
The mutations continued merging, becoming a mass of discolored, pustule-covered, slimy flesh. Within moments, Alice and her companions were surrounded by a single gigantic organism that could be an amoeba that had been enlarged to billions of times its original size.
"You have to admit, the Melange has a certain primal elegance to it," I said. "Pity it doesn't last long. Fifteen minutes from now it will liquefy, becoming lifeless sludge. Of course, by then we'll be long dead." I looked at Alice. "Unless you act quickly." The Infectors had continued flying over the mutating creatures as they transformed, but now that they had finished merging, the Infectors dove down into the mass of flesh and were absorbed. The Melange, as I had called it, was complete. A prototype of the real plan with a different name when it reaches perfection.
The military personnel continued their efforts to destroy the monstrosity that now filled the battlefield, but every piece of ammunition was absorbed, every swath of flesh blackened by a flamethrower or ravaged by a grenade blast or artillery shell rapidly healed. Helicopters moved in to attack the Melange, guns blazing. Bullets stitched a series of wounds into the conglomeration's mottled hide, but they too healed almost as swiftly as they were made. In response to the aerial assault, tentacles emerged from the Melange's surface and shot skyward. They grabbed hold of the helicopters' landing skids and pulled. Some of the copters were dashed to the ground while others were hurled against the walls protecting the White House. Metal crumpled, fuel tanks exploded, and fireballs filled the air.
The Melange did damage to itself bringing down the copters, but if the creature felt any pain from those injuries, it gave no sign. Perhaps it was strong enough to heal that much damage, too. The humans hoped the tanks would fare better, but while they managed to blast significant chunks out of the Melange, its tentacles were able to grab hold of the tanks and bend their barrels, tear apart their road wheels, and breach the turrets to get at the men and women inside. They were pulled out and swiftly absorbed into the Melange. One of the tentacles extruded from the mass and whipped toward Leon.
He saw it coming and he tried to blast it with his submachine gun, but the bullets had no effect. The tentacle wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides, and before any of his friends could react, the tentacle retracted, yanking him off his feet and pulling him in. He still had hold of his gun in his right hand, but the way his arms were pinned, there was no way he could fire it. "Fuck you!" he yelled. It was unclear who he was addressing: Melange, Cardona, or myself. Likely all three of us. A gap opened in the Melange's discolored flesh, and Leon was pulled into it. The gap filled in, and Leon was gone.
"One down," I said.
All around the battlefield, military personnel were being snatched up by the Melange's tentacles and pulled into its semi-viscous substance. Like Leon, some of the men and women shouted curses before disappearing into the disgusting flesh-blob. Some cried out in rage or fear, while others remained silent, taken so swiftly they had no time for speech. With each person lost, Alice must have felt anger building inside her by now, growing stronger and hotter with each passing second. Yes, she needed to take Cardona out. Alice bent down, placed her Vectors on the ground, then stood once more. She must be wondering what happened to people who were pulled into the Melange? Did they slowly suffocate while frantically attempting to claw their way free? Or did the Melange's substance work like acid, swiftly breaking their bodies down into their chemical components and absorbing them? A horrible death either way. It was too late. She couldn't save them. We all heard Ada cry out then, followed by a burst of machine gun fire. She was vaguely aware of a tentacle wrapping around the former Umbrella operative, but she was unable to do anything about it. Something was happening inside her. A process had begun, and now that it had started, she couldn't stop it if she wanted to.
Unlike Leon, Ada had managed to keep her gun arm free when the tentacle coiled around her midsection, and she fired at it, trying to sever it from the Melange's main mass. Jill dropped her weapon and raced toward Ada. With her hands, she grabbed hold of the tentacle wrapped around the other woman and fought to dislodge it. But her fingers sank into the tentacle's spongy substance, making it impossible for her to get a grip on it. The tentacle retracted then, pulling Ada into the air. Jill's hands were still buried in the tentacle, and when it retracted, she was pulled off balance. Luckily her hands came free, and while she stumbled, she managed to remain on her feet.
As the tentacle drew Ada toward the Melange's main mass, the woman emptied the rest of her clip into the muck, giving forth a defiant battle cry as she fired. Then she too was swallowed by the Melange, and her voice was cut off.
"No!" Jill shouted, and then she turned toward Alice. "How could you stand there and let that happen? Why didn't you help me?" Alice didn't answer, but she couldn't make her mouth form words. She couldn't do anything except stand motionless while the fire blazing inside her continued building toward a raging inferno. I smiled. "She's a bit busy at the moment," I said. "But I believe she's just about ready."
"Ready for what?" Jill asked, but I didn't reply.
Alice tilted her head backward over her shoulder, fixed her gaze on Cardoza's hovering craft, then closed her eyes. The V-22's propellers began bending and twisting. Metal was crumpling. An invisible impact struck the ship, it was so loud it sounded as if a bomb had exploded on the aircraft's surface. But that was nothing compared to the noise the craft made when it came crashing to the ground. Alice moved around, dazed, and she might've fallen if I hadn't taken hold of her elbow to steady her. I couldn't let my best soldier go down yet.
"My God!" Jill exclaimed with equal parts wonder and horror.
Alice was bleeding from her nose. I ignored it. She gritted her teeth. After that, a spark flaring to life within the 11-22's fuel tanks and we were rewarded with the sound of an explosion, followed by a blast of hot air stinging us. Only one thing left to do now.
She began slowly moving her hands and fingers in the air, almost as if she were a musician playing an invisible instrument or a puppeteer manipulating unseen strings. Flames rose from the wreckage of Cardoza's aircraft, swiftly growing in size and intensity. When Alice felt the fire was ready, she brought her hands together, palms touching, and then flung her arms wide. As she performed this gesture, the flames spread outward from the downed V-22 and raced across the surface of the Melange. Discolored flesh burned, the diseased meat giving off a sickening stench as it cooked. Up to this point, the surface of the Melange had been featureless, but now a thousand toothless maws opened on the creature's skin, and a deafening chorus of agony filled the air.
Alice looked weak and drained. Fire and thick clouds of foul smoke rose into the air, and the shattered remains of the V-22 rested several hundred yards from where she, Jill, and I stood. The craft was engulfed in flame, and I doubted that any of its crew—Candoza included—had survived. I wasn't exactly heartbroken by the realization that I didn't get the kill. The Melange might have been dying, but it wasn't going down easily. It thrashed and bucked, burning tentacles flailing, shrieks blasting forth from its makeshift mouths. Alice turned to me.
"You son of a bitch. You used me." I gave her a reptilian smile. "Of course. It's what I do." Despite her weakness, Alice bent down, grabbed hold of her Vectors, stood, and pointed the guns at me, intending to literally blast that smug smile off my face. But before she could fire, I snatched the weapons from her hands with unimaginable speed and tossed them far away. The guns arced through the air and fell, disappearing into the flames. Alice stared at me, stunned.
"I forgot to mention that the injection that restored your powers contained two separate substances: the T-virus and an antidote, the latter designed to activate soon after you exercised your telekinetic powers. I may have needed your powers restored so you could eliminate Cardona for me, but I wasn't about to let you keep your special abilities. I'm not stupid." I backhanded Alice then, and she fell to the ground, struggling to hold onto consciousness.
"Bastard!" Jill shouted. She raised her gun, intending to finish what Alice had started. But I pointed my index finger at her, and it extended, breaking through the black leather of my glove. As it lengthened, the finger became a mottled tentacle similar to those the Melange had formed. The finger-tentacle shot toward Jill, the tip sharpening to a point as it went. It plunged through her left eye and deep into her brain. She stiffened as blood gushed from the wound, her mouth opened as if to scream, but nothing came out. I wiggled my finger, stirring it around in her brain. Jill's remaining eye rolled white, her body spasmed several times and then fell still. She went limp, but she did not fall. My finger-tentacle was holding her up. I continued supporting her for a moment, cocking my head slightly to the side, examining my work. I was going to miss our time together during the Spence mansion incident. I wonder what Chris might say when he finds out I killed his friend. But his sister would definitely miss Leon. I retracted my finger then, and Jill fell to the ground, dead.
Alice, too weak to do anything but lie on the ground, could only gaze upon the face of her dead friend and moan in despair. Jill, Ada, and Leon had survived Umbrella Prime only to follow her to D.C. and die solely so I could eliminate a rival. A flawless plan. Only Chris, Claire and Alice remained. Worst of all, none of them had been important to my plan, only Alice. To me, the others were nothing more than collateral damage. But I couldn't waste such an opportunity to take care of old grudges. Alice frowned, and she tried to push herself to her feet so she could attack me and make me pay for what I had done to her friends. She still wore the katana on her back, and if she could stand and draw it from its sheath, she could try to slice my head off. A solid plan. But the best she could do in her current condition was push herself onto her elbows and knees, and she could only maintain that position for a few seconds before her strength gave out and she collapsed once more.
"Murdering... bastard," she managed to say, her voice a harsh whisper. I bowed from the waist. "I do my best." I straightened and regarded Alice for several moments. I licked Jill's blood from my index finger. "I should do to you what I did to your friend. After all, you did eliminate Dania for me, and that should earn you an easy death. But I don't want to make things easy for you, Alice. Not after all the trouble you've caused Umbrella—and me—over the years." I lifted my gaze from Alice and looked at the Melange. The flames consuming it still burned bright, but the conglomerate creature's exertions had lessened, and its chorus of screams had dwindled to feeble moans. Alice would have thought the thing would last much longer. Evidently, I came to the same conclusion, "I think it unlikely that the Melange will be able to get hold of you before it dies. There's too much distance between you and it, and its reach isn't what it was. Luckily, I can fix that." I, moving with speed that a short time ago Alice could've matched, bent down, took hold of her wrists, and swiftly dragged her to the Melange's closest edge until Alice was less than ten feet from it. The searing heat rolling off the mutated monstrosity was close enough, and this close the stench of burning flesh was so thick, she would find it almost impossible to breathe.
I released her wrists and her arms fell to the ground, limp and useless. I looked down at her, and this time when I smiled, I showed my teeth. "The Melange will be desperate to repair itself before the end, and it will seek out any undamaged biological material it can find and absorb it in an attempt to heal itself. It won't work, of course. The creature's injuries are too severe, and in any event—" I paused as a flaming tentacle reached for me. I deftly dodged its attempt to grab hold of me, and it fell to the ground not far from where Alice lay, twitching as the fire continued to consume it. I continued. "As I was saying, in any event, the Melange's time would soon be up even if it wasn't aflame. So I suppose there's a chance you might survive long enough for it to die first. But I doubt it."
A second flaming tentacle streaked toward me. I batted it away as if it were nothing more than an annoying insect. "Goodbye, Alice. I hope your death is excruciating." And then I was running towards the horizon, going back to base. My real plan was about to begin.
Next stop Raccoon City.