Chapter Fourteen.
Wesker and Krauser walked out of a wooden shack that stood adjacent to a sand-covered concrete helipad. They were headed towards a chain link fence that surrounded the little wooden facility.
At the edge of the fence was a scaffold outfitted with hydraulic boom lift tipped with a wire snare. Standing atop the scaffold were two men. One was in a white lab coat operating the controls on the boom. The other was dressed in a black paramilitary uniform topped with a black helmet and a facemask. Wesker wondered why the man hadn't boiled to death in the heat.
"Dr. Isaacs," Wesker said. "What are you doing?"
The man in the white lab coat turned around, leaving the boom with the snare to hang idly over the fifty or so wailing corpses that stood outside the gate waving their hands in the air. "Collecting specimens, sir," Isaacs said. "There is still some research to be done using the Alice clones. I feel that the more we know before she is captured, the more we will be able to use her."
Wesker looked down at the rectangular container Isaacs intended to drop a zombie into once he fished it up from the outside using the boom snare. There was a set of large wheels on the bottom and a handle on the side. Wesker frowned
Wesker looked to Krauser, thinking he might be the one to find some fault in what Isaacs was doing. Wesker thought it a waste of time, but at the moment could find no logical flaw. "Exactly how many clones are there left?" Wesker said.
"Twenty," Isaacs said. "We tested one yesterday. She got a little farther, but the results still are not promising."
Isaacs turned from Wesker and resumed running the boom, trying to fit it over a zombie he had selected and snare it.
Wesker and Krauser walked along the fence away from Isaacs, drawing off some of the zombies that had collected near the scaffold. The fence would hold better if the force on it were spread out instead of focused on one spot. "I think I might have some target practice later," Krauser said, looking into the rotten dried faces as they gnashed their teeth in frustration. "It'd be a pain if this fence went down."
Wesker agreed. While the facility beneath their feet was as secure as it was expansive, its supplies were low. It was also the one place on the continent that the Alice Vaccine could be developed and produced.
They stopped at a shallow trench that smelled of fresh rot. It was filled with more than a dozen or so corpses in various states of decay. The ones nearest the fence were the worst, with the freshest being directly in front of Wesker. All the bodies were that of the same petite woman wearing a red dress and black boots. Each corpse bore a different kill wound, the latest a bullet hole in its stomach.
Wesker looked into the open glass eyes of the freshest body and took off his sunglasses. As he watched a fly walk over the green iris he thought he could smell gasoline. He put his glasses back on and stood.
"Anything?" Krauser asked.
"Enough to know this isn't good enough." Wesker was only able to explain what he was doing with extremely nebulous scientific postulations. Psyionic ability was one thing, but how it applied to dead clones was another. "Get a security detachment and meet me in the recovery room. Prepare for the worst."
***
In a white room with one glass wall sat a table surrounded by men in black all holding rifles. On the table was a thin naked woman with short straw colored hair, made darker by the fluid her body was covered in. She was unconscious and Wesker, who stood near her head looking down into her face was waiting for her to wake up.
Outside of the room stood Dr. Isaacs, his face flushed red with anger. Behind him, only a foot or so away, was Krauser. "This is a waste. An utter waste," Isaacs said.
"No one asked your opinion," Krauser said, bumping Isaacs.
Wesker's sunglasses rested in his pocket and his hands were bare as they sat gently on the table next to the sleeping woman's head. Her eyes began to flutter and they opened, along with her mouth in a quiet gasp. She tried to sit up and cover her bare chest, but Wesker's hands on her temples held her gently down as he soothed her. "There, there," he said tenderly. "It's okay, you're safe."
Everyone in the room fidgeted slightly. Hearing such words from Wesker was akin to hearing a wall speak. Even Krauser's brown furrowed.
Touching the woman's temples and stroking them, Wesker looked into her bright greenish eyes. He didn't know what he was looking for or how to even look for it, but he knew that if he dig around he might find something, somehow. Suddenly, his breath stopped. He felt like he had stuck his hand into a live fuse box and was now being connected to every house on the street.
There were the sleepers down bellow. Shut off. The barest flicker in a dead brain above. Out beyond that was something like a pulsing sun of electricity. He reached for it, heedless of the burn it might cause. Northwest. A building. The word hotel.
He felt like he had been kicked and snapped his head up as if waking from a doze. He blinked. His eyes were stiff and everyone was looking at him and the naked woman on the table, who was trying to cover herself and sit up.
As his senses came back, he grabbed the woman by the chin and the back of the head. With a sharp twist, he snapped her neck and let her head fall dead onto the table. "Dispose of this," he said, putting his sunglasses back on and walking out of the room.
"We could've used…" Isaacs said before being shoved into the glass wall hard by Krauser. Wesker came around the corner as he was putting his gloves back on.
"I have some maps to look over and then a phone call to make," Wesker said. "Be ready to move out within a five minute window."
"Yes sir," Krauser said, looking down at Isaacs who was getting to his feet. Wesker ignored him and left through a door. "Research purposes," Krauser, looking at Isaacs who was walking slowly away. "Right."
To be continued…