prologue
CARLOS WAS JUST GETTING OUT OF THEshower when the phone rang. He wrapped a towelaround his waist and stumbled out into the cramped liv-ing room, nearly tripping over a still unopened box ofbooks in his haste to get to the bleating phone; he hadn'thad time to get an answering machine since moving tothe city, and only the new field office had his number. Itwouldn't pay to miss any calls, particularly since Um-brella was footing his bills.
He snatched up the receiver with one dripping handand tried not to sound too out of breath.
"Hello?"
"Carlos, it's Mitch Hirami."
Unconsciously, Carlos stood up a little straighter,still clutching the damp towel. "Yes, sir."
Hirami was his squad leader. Carlos had only met
him twice, not enough time to get a solid read on him,but he seemed competent enough—as did the otherguys in the squad.
Competent, if not exactly up-front... Like Carlos,no one talked much about their past, although he knewfor a fact that Hirami had been involved in gunrunningthrough South America a few years back before he'dstarted to work for Umbrella. It seemed that everyonehe'd met on the U.B.C.S. had a secret or two—most ofthem involving activities not strictly legal.
"Orders just came down on a developing situation.We're calling everyone in on this, ASAP. You got anhour to report, and we leave in two, that's 1500 hours,comprende?"
"Si—uh, yes, sir." Carlos had been fluent in Englishfor years, but he was still getting used to speaking itfull-time. "Is there any info on what kind of situation?"
"Negative. You'll be briefed along with the rest of uswhen you come in."
Hirami's tone of voice suggested that he had more tosay. Carlos waited, starting to feel chilled by the waterdrying on his body.
"Word is, it's a chemical spill," Hirami said, andCarlos thought he could hear a thread of unease in thesquad leader's voice. "Something that's making peo-ple... making them act differently."
Carlos frowned. "Differently how?"
Hirami sighed. "They don't pay us to ask questions,Oliveira, do they? Now you know as much as I do. Justget here."
"Yes, sir," Carlos said, but Hirami had alreadyhung up.
Carlos dropped the receiver into its cradle, not sure ifhe should feel excited or nervous about his firstU.B.C.S. operation. Umbrella Bio-Hazard Countermea-sure Service: an impressive title for a group of hiredex-mercenaries and ex-military, most with combat ex-perience and shady backgrounds. The recruiter in Hon-duras had said that they'd be called upon to "deal" withsituations that Umbrella needed handled quickly andaggressively—and legally. After three years of fightingin private little wars between rival gangs and revolu-tionaries, of living in mud shacks and eating out ofcans, the promise of real employment—and at an as-tonishingly good wage—was like an answered prayer.
Too good to be true, that's what I thought... andwhat if it turns out that I was right?
Carlos shook his head. He wasn't going to find outstanding around in a towel. In any case, it couldn't pos-sibly be worse man shooting it out with a bunch ofcoked-up pendejos in some anonymous jungle, wonder-ing if he'd hear the bullet that finally took him out
He had an hour, and it was a twenty-minute walk tothe office. He turned toward the bedroom, suddenly de-termined to show up early, to see if he could get anymore out of Hirami about what was going on. Already,he could feel the warm build of nervous adrenaline inhis gut, a feeling he'd grown up with and knew betterthan any other—part anticipation, part excitement, anda healthy dose of fear...
Carlos grinned as he finished toweling off, amused athimself. He'd spent too much time in the jungle. He wasin the United States now, working for a legitimate phar-maceutical company—what was there to be afraid of?
"Nada," he said, and, still smiling, he went to findhis fatigues.
Late September in the outskirts of the big city; it wasa sunny day, but Carlos could feel the first whisper ofautumn as he hurried toward the field office, a kind ofthinning of the air, leaves beginning to wilt on thebranches overhead. Not that there were very manytrees; his apartment was at the edge of a sprawling in-dustrial area—a few dingy fabrication plants, fencedlots overgrown with weeds, seeming acres of run-downstorage facilities. The U.B.C.S. office was actually arenovated warehouse on an Umbrella-owned lot, sur-rounded by a fairly modern shipping complex completewith helipad and loading docks—a nice setup, althoughCarlos wondered again why they'd decided to build insuch a crummy area. They could obviously affordmuch better.
Carlos checked his watch as he headed up EverettStreet and started to walk a little faster. He wasn'tgoing to be late, but he still wanted to get there beforethe briefing, see what the other guys were saying. Hi-rami had said they were calling in everyone—four pla-toons, three squads of ten in each platoon, 120 peopleall total. Carlos was a corporal in squad A of platoon D;ridiculous, how these things were set up, but he sup-posed it was necessary to keep track of everyone.Somebody had to know something ...
He took a right where Everett met 374th, histhoughts wandering, vaguely curious about where theywere being sent—
—when a man stepped out of an alley only a few
meters in front of him, a well-dressed stranger wearinga wide smile. He stood there, hands jammed into thepockets of an expensive trench coat, apparently waitingfor Carlos to reach him.
Carlos kept his expression carefully neutral, studyingthe man warily. Tall, thin, dark hair and eyes but defi-nitely Caucasian, early to mid-40s—and grinning asthough he meant to share an exceptionally funny joke.
Carlos prepared to walk past him, reminding himselfof how many crazies lived in any decent-sized city, anunavoidable hazard of urban life.
He probably wants to tell me about the aliens moni-toring his brain waves, maybe babble some conspiracytheory—
"Carlos Oliveira?" the man asked, but it was more ofa statement than a question.
Carlos stopped in his tracks, his whole body tensing,instinctively letting his right hand drop to where hewore a gun—except he wasn't carrying, hadn't sincecrossing the border, carajo—
As if sensing the upset he'd caused, the stranger tooka step back, holding his hands up in the air. He seemedamused, but not especially threatening.
"Who's asking?" Carlos snapped. And how the helldid you know my name?
"My name is Trent, Mr. Oliveira," he said, his darkgaze glittering with barely suppressed mirth. "And Ihave some information for you."
ONE
IN THE DREAM, JILL DIDN'T RUN FAST ENOUGH.
It was the same dream she'd suffered every few dayssince the mission that had nearly killed them all thatterrible, endless night in July. Back when only a fewRaccoon citizens had been hurt by Umbrella's secretand the S.T.A.R.S. administration wasn't completelycorrupt, back when she was still stupid enough to thinkthat people would believe their story.
In the dream, she and the other survivors—Chris,Barry, and Rebecca—waited anxiously for rescue at thehidden laboratory's helipad, all of them exhausted,wounded, and very aware that the buildings around andbeneath them were about to self-destruct. It was dawn,cool light coming in shafts through the trees that sur-rounded the Spencer estate, the stillness broken only bythe welcome sound of the approaching 'copter. Six
members of the Special Tactics and Rescue Squad weredead, lost to the human and inhuman creatures thatroamed the estate, and if Brad didn't set down quick,there wouldn't be any survivors. The lab was going toblow, destroying the proof of Umbrella's T-virus spilland killing them all.
Chris and Barry waved their arms, motioning forBrad to hurry. Jill checked her watch, dazed, her mindstill trying to grasp all that had happened, to sort it allout. Umbrella Pharmaceutical, the single biggest con-tributor to Raccoon City's prosperity and a major forcein the corporate world, had secretly created monsters inthe name of bioweapons research—and in playing withfire had managed to burn themselves very badly.
That didn't matter now, all that mattered was gettingthe hell away—
—and we 've got maybe three minutes, four max—
CRASH!
Jill whirled around, saw chunks of concrete and tarfly into the air and rain down over the northwest cor-ner of the landing pad. A giant claw stretched up fromthe hole, fell across the jagged lip—
—and the pale, hulking monster, the one she andBarry had tried to kill in the lab, the Tyrant, leaped outonto the heliport. It rose smoothly from its agilecrouch... and started toward them.
It was an abomination, at least eight feet tall, oncehuman, perhaps, but no more. Its right hand, normal.Its left, a massive, chitinous grasp of claws. Its face hadbeen horribly altered, its lips cut away so that itseemed to grin at them through sliced red tissue. Its
naked body was sexless, the thick, bloody tumor thatwas its heart shuddering wetly outside of its chest.
Chris targeted the pulsing muscle with his Berettaand fired, five 9mm rounds tearing into its ghastlyflesh; the Tyrant didn't even slow down. Barryscreamed for them to scatter, and then they were run-ning, Jill pulling Rebecca away, the thunder of Barry's.357 crashing behind them. Overhead, the 'copter cir-cled and Jill could feel the seconds ticking away, al-most believed she could feel the explosion buildingbeneath their feet.
She and Rebecca pulled their weapons and startedfiring. Jill continued to pull the trigger even as shewatched the creature knock Barry to the ground, slam-ming in a new clip as it went after Chris, firing andscreaming, enveloped by a rising terror, why won't itgo down?
From above, a shout, and something thrown out ofthe 'copter. Chris ran for it, and Jill saw nothing else—nothing but the Tyrant as it turned its attention to herand Rebecca, indifferent to the firepower that contin-ued plugging bloody holes through its strange body. Jillturned and ran, saw the girl do the same, and knew—knew—that the monster was after her, the face of JillValentine embedded in its lizard brain.
Jill ran, ran, and suddenly there was no heliport, nocrumbling mansion, only a million trees and thesounds: her boots slapping the earth, the pulse of bloodin her ears, her ragged breath. The monster was silentbehind her, a mute and terrible force, relentless and asinevitable as death.
They were dead, Chris and Barry, Rebecca, even
Brad, she knew it, everyone but her—and as she ran,she saw the Tyrant's shadow stretch out in front of her,burying her own, and the hiss of its monstrous talonsslicing down, melting through her body, killing her, no—
No—
"No!"
Jill opened her eyes, the word still on her lips, theonly sound in the stillness of her room. It wasn't thescream she imagined but the weak, strangled cry of awoman doomed, caught in a nightmare from whichthere was no escape.
Which I am. None of us were fast enough, after all.
She lay still for a moment, breathing deeply, movingher hand away from the loaded Beretta under her pil-low; it had become a reflex, and one she wasn't sorry tohave developed.
"Useless against nightmares, though," she muttered...
allforjesus2001