(Trickery)
"Hush, hush, it's alright," soothed K-Mart as she managed to get to her feet, her arms laden with her brother and sister. The pair were finally expressing their displeasure at being awakened in the middle of the night as well as snatched from their cribs and tucked in a corner with a much larger person on top of them.
While their older daughter soothed her siblings Alice and Carlos, keeping one eye each on their surroundings, searched the fallen body. Alice petted Sparkles and told him what a good dag he was; convincing him to let go. Carlos grunted when they rolled the black clad body over.
"Nice shooting sweetheart."
Alice agreed. The hard-bitten face revealed seemed extremely surprised by the pair of small bullet holes placed nearly side by side right between his eyes.
"I thought we taught you to aim for the center of mass," teased K-Mart's dad.
"It looked like he was wearing body armor," the teen replied calmly. Then what she had done struck her. She started to shake.
The world was a hard place to grow up in. In the years since the onslaught of the T-Virus it had become so hard that it was a wonder that anyone made it at all. K-Mart had shown that she was tough, smart and capable beyond her years from the time she had been left alone by a zombie attack on her original family up till the present. She had scavenged, hid, ran and then learned to kill zombies when she was rescued by Claire Redfield from the store that gave her a new name. She had polished that skill from the first time when, terrified by the Crimson Head tearing the protective screen from the vehicle she had taken refuge in, she snatched the sawed-off shotgun from its rack and fired.
Since then she had killed many of the undead, both former humans and others. One afternoon had been spent on top of an old car dealership with her best friend Angie and Claire as the former convoy leader taught both the teen girls the rudiments of the fine art of sniping. But one thing K-Mart had never done, in battles with modern day pirates or pursuing Umbrella troopers, was kill another living human being.
Although she could not even remember the first time she had to take another life Alice immediately recognized what was happening to her adopted daughter. The adrenaline and shock had worn off and K-Mart was realizing what had happened.
Angie Redfield and her mom and dad had appeared as well as Sam and Claire Treadwell. Making low soothing noises Alice took the babies from K-mart, passing them to their God-parents before enfolding her in her arms. Then both were wrapped up by Carlos and the family stood together for the time it took for K-Mart to recover at least for now. Alice knew there would need to be talking later on but for right now she merely kissed her daughter.
"Well done baby,' she said softly. You saved your brother and sister. You saved all of us. Would you and Angie take the babies, feed them, check their diapers and put them back to bed?"
"Take them to our house," suggested Jill. "This place is a little drafty. Use their car seats for the rest of the night. In the morning we'll start fixing this place."
"Yes ma'am," the two teens chorused. Shortly the adults were alone with the body.
Chris and Jill, both former STARS police officers immediately began to search the other bodies. Friends and neighbors who had responded to the attack helped. In short order all of the attackers were accounted for. Once the discovery was made that the commandoes were Umbrella troops Sam joined in the examinations. Documents were recovered and cross checked until the entire mission of the raiders became clear.
"The son-of-a-bitch," Carlos stated; his face likes an approaching thunderstorm.
"I assume you are talking about the esteemed Chairman Albert Wesker of the well-known and always highly respected Umbrella Corporation," Chris dryly prompted his friend.
"We always knew," Jill said thoughtfully, "that Umbrella is never going to adopt a live and let live philosophy towards us, well, towards anyone in fact. But this last year has been completely quiet, at least as far as anything to do with them has been concerned. So what changed?"
Sam had been intently studying the papers carried by the raiders. In particular he was carefully reading a pocket notebook, of the old fashioned paper kind rather than an electronic one.
"Because while things have been getting better for us, as in all of us here in Alaska and the various groups of survivors we've made contact with around the world, Umbrella is going downhill. And the pace of that slide seems to be accelerating."
The ex-Umbrella pilot waved the notebook in his hand and used it to point to a small stack of papers he had separated from the rest.
"When Umbrella retreated into their underground facilities they figured they would simply wait out the infection and then it would be business as usual. Although I continue to be baffled by just what business they think they'll be conducting with ninety-nine percent of the world's population gone."
"I think," interjected Alice, "based on what we saw of Major Cain and Doctor Isaacs that Umbrella, all the way up to Wesker, sees the world as nothing more than a giant laboratory to experiment in. People aren't important even as customers anymore. They're just subjects. I've read the reports from Raccoon City; Cain was practically beside himself at the idea that he had an entire city where he could watch the effects of the T-Virus."
"Well there's no doubt that Wesker ordered this operation personally," Sam continued. "The raiding party was to take the children if possible and eliminate them if they couldn't get away. But Wesker really wants little Alice and Carlos alive," his face turned grim, "As test subjects."
Chris put a hand out to steady his wife. Jill had blanched and even swayed for a moment, remembering how the Umbrella LA facility had planned to use Angie. Only the greatest of good fortune or the hand of God had allowed the pair of them to penetrate the facility in time to stop what would have nearly been a vivisection of the girl that was now daughter to both of them.
"It gets worse."
"It usually does," said Carlos.
"There's mention of secondary targets. Plural. If possible they were also to take Angie and K-Mart as well"
"Why K-Mart I wonder?" Alice said thoughtfully
"I'm not sure," Sam confessed as he sorted through the papers. "Possibly as leverage against you. Umbrella still thinks they own you after all. Possibly because they think that somehow her being your daughter means she also has some connection to the T-Virus."
"That's ridiculous," observed Carlos.
Chris shrugged. "It's not like we weren't just discussing that Umbrella isn't exactly a rational corporation anymore, assuming it ever was."
The discussion was not interrupted but was broadened rather as other citizens of the village joined the group of friends.
Loosely organized as were most of the survivor settlements in Alaska major decisions were generally reached by town hall meetings of all the citizens. However because sometimes immediate action might be required several elected and generally unpaid officials functioned as mayor, police and fire chiefs, town recorder and the senior local member of the Alaskan National Guard. All of them were friends and had been conducting their own investigation of the incident side-by-side with Jill, Chris and Sam.
"Umbrella without any doubt at all," agreed Bill Henderson, the town's mayor when Sam presented his findings. "I'll notify Juneau first thing in the morning. Turning to the man in uniform he added "Stan I suggest you contact the duty officer at National Guard HQ and advise him of the situation. These people got here somehow and I doubt they walked in so the state needs to find out just how and when it happened."
"And how they planned to get back out," added Lieutenant Stan Grafton of the Alaskan Army National Guard. He turned towards Sam. "Anything in there on their escape route Sam? It would have to be quick and it would most likely be by air. I wouldn't doubt that they believed they could take the whole town but at the same time they would have to allow for resistance and even the possibility someone might get off a call for help."
"Nothing I can find," Sam admitted. "But I would imagine there's a VTOL or two hidden away a short distance at full throttle. Umbrella loves them. They can carry a lot more troops than a helo and cover a great deal of ground. If they could refuel somewhere on the coast of say, Washington or Oregon they could reach Japan."
I response Alice and Jill looked at each other. Immediately they began searching the body of the fallen leader again. After a moment or two of silence Chris cleared his throat. His wife made no acknowledgement of it. Neither did Alice when her husband employed the same thing in an attempt to get her attention. In fact there was nothing until with near simultaneous grunts of triumph Alice extracted a plastic folder and opened it to display a piece of notepaper while Jill produced a small electronic device.
"And we have what here?" asked Claire.
"This is a signal device," Jill replied. "Automated. Hit this button and it will flash a coded signal over a radio channel most likely to the helos or VTOL's we suspect are standing by. Do that and they'll come running."
"But to where?" demanded Carlos. "Surely they have an agreed upon landing zone."
"Right here on this piece of paper," Alice waved it triumphantly. "AND the radio codes for both 'abort' and 'come in the water's fine'. I also see ones for different levels of success."
"Let me see that please," requested Sam. Alice nodded and passed him the paper, still in its protective folder. Carefully Sam slid the paper out, lifted it to the light and studied it. Now it was his turn to grunt.
"And that translates as...?" Claire prompted.
Sam moved so the others could see the paper as he continued to hold it up. "Standard Umbrella trick. See the faint lines that cross each other? They're a reminder that the codes are actually backwards."
"So if we gave the one for 'mission accomplished pick us up' Umbrella would know it was a fake message."
"Uh-huh. And would either avoid the area or even possibly come in guns blazing. You can bet their heavily armed."
"Wonder why this was marked," mused Jill thoughtfully. "This guy didn't strike me as the type who would need reminders like that."
Probably not but if he was down, dead or incapacitated one of his men might need the memory jog."
"So we know everything then?" Alice asked, looking round at her friends.
"Wait a minute," Bill held up his hand. "You're going to flash that code and try to lure one or two possibly heavily armed aircraft in here, no doubt to capture them?"
"Uh-huh. Is there a problem?"
"Nope. Just wanted to make sure I knew what was going on."
"Okay then. Here's my plan." Everyone tightened around Alice, with the sole exception of Jill who went to check on her daughter, K-Mart and the babies. In a very brief amount of time the details were hammered out among all of them and the participants were scattering to carry out their assigned roles. Alice and Carlos looked at each other and nodded.
"They are going to regret they didn't leave us alone."
(To be continued)