Chapter One: Arrival
Somewhere over South America, 2002
"So where were they last seen?" asked Barry, checking the clip on his handgun before slapping it into place.
"They were last seen about a week ago, leaving a village near Javier Hidalgo's compound. They were going to investigate his connection with a potential biohazard outbreak in the small village, and when they got there, that potential was realized." Rebecca Chambers, who was sitting across from Barry on the helicopter over the rainforest, shifted her belt pouches nervously as she explained this. "They started off into the jungle, presumably looking for Hidalgo's compound, but they dropped off of the GPS not too long after. They had one comm device with them, and we presume that it has been broken."
"And they would have contacted us if they had actually taken Hidalgo down," said Barry, holstering his weapon.
"Well, yeah," said Rebecca, "but the weird part was, they don't think that the two of them even ever got to Hidalgo's compound. They were headed in the opposite direction when we lost their signal."
"So we've got to find them?"
"Exactly," said Rebecca. "I hope you brought your bug spray."
"Oh, don't worry about that," said Barry. "The wife wouldn't let me leave the house without it, when I told her I was going down here."
"How is she, by the way?" asked Rebecca. She hadn't been to see Barry's family in much too long, especially after they relocated from Raccoon to the suburbs in Massachusetts. Between her operations with the government, and the awkward reliving of the mansion incident that would inevitably play through Mrs. Burton's head every time she saw Rebecca, the young woman didn't make it a point to make house calls there.
"She's not too happy I haven't gotten a desk job," said Barry. "But what are you going to do? I'm good at this. And somebody's got to look out for my family. I just do it on a larger scale."
"Hey, we're going to be taking you down now," said the pilot through his headset. "We'll be touching down in that village down below us. Call me with the comm when you're ready for me to pick you up—I'll only be landing long enough for you to get out."
"We always have the most reliable copter pilots," said Barry, giving a sarcastic laugh and shouldering his small but full pack. Rebecca did the same as they descended, adjusting the straps on it and on her bulletproof vest. It was standard issue in her S.T.A.R.S. days, and she still felt just a bit safer in it. The helicopter pushed down through tree level as she tied her worn bandana around her neck and soon found herself hustling out of the copter after Barry. They jogged over to the edge of the trees and the pilot, seeing they were clear, gave them a thumbs up and rose into the sky again. Rebecca and Barry watched him go, shielding their eyes.
"Alright," said Barry. "Let's go." Rebecca pulled the GPS out of a belt pouch and checked the screen.
"There," she said, pointing into the brush. "We'll go that way to the village, just a few hundred yards, and then northeast to the last point Leon and Jack were found on the system."
Barry didn't need to be urged on. He blazed the trail, pushing his way through the jungle. It wasn't too dense here, so close to the village. It was obvious that they were on a path of some sort, but that the path had not been used in a while, long enough for the jungle to begin to reclaim it.
They arrived in the village in no time, and they found it left completely empty. Some tattered flyers were pinned to a ramshackle fence along the entrance to the village. They crept their way through it, staying quiet themselves, partly out of reverence and partly out of anticipation for whatever might be waiting for them there. Rebecca's foot kicked something round and metal, sending a series of little clangs through the air as it bounced across a rock on the ground. She bent down and picked one of the bullet casings. She held it up for Barry to see. "Nine millimeter," she said. "Standard issue for U.S. Special Agents, just like Leon and Jack."
"And judging by that," said Barry, pointing to a splash of dried blood across the wall and the heap of what was once a person below it, "they dealt with the biohazard in turn."
"I'd love to get a sample of that," said Rebecca, taking a few steps closer. "I mean, I wonder what sort of virus is being traded on the black market, what Hidalgo got his hands on…"
"I don't think you're going to get much of anything from that pile," said Barry. He wrinkled his nose. "Based on the advanced decay of those poor suckers back in the Arklay Mountains, I don't think it's worth your hastle to even try with this. Maybe on your way back through."
"Yeah," said Rebecca, drawing her eyes away from the gore and her thoughts away from her memories about the summer four years earlier. "Let's focus on the living."
She pushed past the pile of what could be multiple bodies but could have also been only one and, glancing at the GPS once again, and tried to block out the horrifying, week-old images that she passed by, inadvertently following the path left behind by Special Agents Kennedy and Krauser. When she reached the other end of the village, she stopped.
"Jesus," said Barry. "This whole area…"
"See that dam there?' asked Rebecca, pointing ahead of them. In the distance, they could both see the edge of the top of a dam, with some buildings protruding from the top of it. "That's the cause. Look. It backed up. No doubt by the hand of Hidalgo, when he found out the biohazard had gotten out."
"That's right, he owns the dam and the hydroelectrics here, right?"
"Yeah," said Rebecca. "Maybe he thought he could drown out the zombies."
"Where do we go from here?" asked Barry. Rebecca nodded toward the dam, and Barry jumped onto the downed dock in front of them, feeling it squelch in the mud as he did. He walked it, Rebecca following him, past downed and drowned houses, a wrecked church, and through a small but very dense section of jungle. They found themselves at the dam, and crossed it carefully. Around the middle, Rebecca stopped, holding her arm across her nose at the revolting scent.
"Ugh," she said. It didn't take them very long at all to find the source of the offending smell: three monstrous bio-organic weapons, all lying dead, sprawled on the hot concrete of the top of the dam.
"I guess Krauser and Leon were here too," said Barry. "Which means we're on the right trail."
"Yeah," said Rebecca, "but by the look of these B.O.W.s, I don't think we're just dealing with the T-Virus anymore. This isn't like anything I've seen from its mutations before…"
"All the more reason to find those two before they run into any trouble they can't handle," said Barry. "Where to from here?"
"Straight ahead, and slightly northward," said Rebecca. "That should lead us right to the place where we lost track of them."
Again they started off, Rebecca casting one last suspicious glance over her shoulder at the dead B.O.W.s, hoping that she wouldn't run into any themselves, that it would be a clean rescue mission. She knew that this hope was silly, but she held it anyway as they disappeared into the dense South American forest.
They walked in silence some more, and the air became heavy and wet. Barry wiped his brow with his large gloved hand more than once, and they stopped once for a water break, sharing a bottle from Rebecca's pack. They then soldiered on, every once in a while noticing a broken branch or trampled bush that suggested the presence of the other two agents. The sun, filtering through the trees but undetectable to the two in the forest, moved its way all the way across the sky before Rebecca stopped, Barry almost running into her from behind.
"This is it," she said. "This is where the signal went out." She turned to Barry.
"Okay," he said, "let's get looking for signs of them, see where they went." He brushed past Rebecca and she walked back behind him. They were silent again for a moment, and both exclaimed in surprise nearly simultaneously.
"I found their comm device!" said Rebecca.
"Look at this mesa!" said Barry.
Both turned to each other. "Look at this," said Rebecca, holding up the broken comm device. "It's been totally destroyed. Shot through, but not by a bullet…" She handed it to Barry to look at it, and she scanned the ground once again. Pushing away some large ferns, she exclaimed again, "aha!" Rebecca turned back to Barry once again. "This is what did it, I'm sure of it." She held up the tool.
"A spear?" asked Barry. "Who would throw a spear at two armed men? Or why would they stab their own device?"
Rebecca ran her fingers along the smooth, whittled surface of the short spear, and gingerly touched the sharp tip, which wasn't made of an arrowhead. It was made of...
"Some kind of bone," she muttered. "This is bone. No, no, it's a tooth." She ran her fingers along it again. "Some kind of tooth."
"What in hell would have a tooth like that?" asked Barry, holding it up. It was much like the fossilized shark teeth he had bought for his son in a museum gift shop a month or two earlier, but easily three or four inches long. It wasn't yellowed and brittle, either; it was strong and a slightly off-white color, with a bit of a shine in the late afternoon sun that filtered through the leaves in patches. "A B.O.W.?"
"But who would make a spear with a B.O.W. tooth?" asked Rebecca. They both stared at the spear for a moment. "What was it that you had found?" she asked.
"Oh, yeah," said Barry. He pushed through some of the bushes behind him, and Rebecca followed, hearing the sound of water falling, steadily growing until—
The trees and underbrush gave way to a shimmering pool interrupted only by a skinny and tall waterfall, cascading from a tall plateau that rose above the tree line, sheer rock cliffs leading to the top. Rebecca poured her eyes over the scene, a jungle paradise out of a resort commercial, and a thought came to her.
"What if the spear was thrown from up there?"
The two of them turned their eyes upward, both wondering would could be hiding behind the trees at the top of the formation, but could see nothing beyond the cliffs, the rest shrouded in the shadows of the trees.