City of the Dead

Chapter Fifteen

Raccoon City was falling apart right in front of his eyes. He knew it was going to happen, of course. In fact, he had planned on it, but watching it in real time somehow felt different than he had expected. Many things felt different these days.

Wesker lowered his binoculars and let them hang by their strap around his neck. He stood on the corner of the roof of his warehouse, looking out across the slowly deteriorating city. He could smell the smoke drifting from the numerous fires, and he could hear scattered pops of gunfire here and there. From his vantage point, he could only see a small section of the city, but he knew that the scene was the same everywhere else. Zombies running wild. Pandemonium in the streets. Utter chaos tearing the city apart.

Hearing a familiar noise, Wesker looked down toward the next warehouse and saw a zombie appear from around the corner. He almost smiled. As the wayward zombie wandered across the empty parking area beside the other warehouse, Wesker pulled a gun from his belt. He didn’t really bother to aim, he just swung his arm up and pulled the trigger. More than thirty yards away, the zombie’s head jerked back as the bullet struck it right in the temple, and it slumped to the ground.

Wesker sighed, somehow disappointed at how easy it was. A few days ago, he would have had to aim carefully to make such a shot, and been pleased with himself for making it. Now he barely had to try at all. It took all the fun out of shooting things.

He glanced back up and lifted the binoculars to his eyes. He heard the helicopter coming long before he saw it, and he needed to make sure it was Nicholai and not another Umbrella chopper just passing through. They were all over the sky, transporting troops to all the hot spots and trying to rescue survivors. But there were surely few of those at this point.

Wesker stepped off the roof and landed in a balanced crouch on the ground twenty feet below. His feet stung a bit with the landing, but otherwise he was fine.

As the helicopter swung over the warehouse and lowered down to the parking area, Wesker went over to the large shipping container sitting just outside the dock doors. He had already double- and triple-checked to make sure it everything was secure inside. The interior of the container was packed with dozens of cases of samples and boxes of supplies. Wesker had previously packed these absolute essentials into the container for transport out of the city. Everything he saved from the Arklay lab was here, all his samples and various strains of the virus, along with all his other projects and lab work. His entire professional life was packed into the metal crate.

Everything else here at the warehouse would be left behind, having served its temporary purpose. The growth tanks and other equipment would all be abandoned, along with any equipment that Wesker knew he could replace.

Three other shipping containers were sitting outside as well. Each contained one of his three recently-grown experiments. The two Tyrants were average specimens, certainly not as perfect as the one he set free to kill the S.T.A.R.S. members back at the lab, but they would work well enough.

The Nemesis was another story. Its unchecked growth of muscle tissue in the growth tank forced Wesker to some rather extreme measures. He used a butcher knife to slice away mounds of excess tissue and muscle from the Nemesis’s body, and then dressed the creature in a huge black trenchcoat, leather pants, and a massive pair of boots. It was either that bizarre option, or simply kill the Nemesis off. Wesker didn’t want to waste the experiment, so he did what he could to keep it from growing so unpredictably. With the clothing to give its body some kind of form, Wesker hoped it would not continue to grow like it had in the tank.

He didn’t know if the Nemesis would work out at all, but kept his hopes up. It was a more interesting creation than the Tyrants in many ways, and he planned on doing more research with the N-strain once he was set up again. If the makeshift leather outfit kept its muscle tissue from growing out of control, Wesker had a feeling that the Nemesis would be faster, stronger, and perhaps even more durable than the Tyrants. It was a shame he wouldn’t be here to study it in the wild.

The helicopter settled to the ground and Wesker walked over to give Nicholai his instructions. He was there to take Wesker, and the container with all his work, to a safe place outside Raccoon City. Then he would come back and transport each container to a specific location in the city. After that was done, Nicholai could go back to being the Commander of the UBCF forces and do as he pleased. At that point, Wesker couldn’t care less.

Nicholai lifted the helicopter slowly back into the air as Wesker walked back over to the shipping container. He grabbed the top edge of the container and prepared to lift himself up on top of it, and then thought otherwise. Instead, he just jumped ten feet straight into the air and landed on top.

Nicholai hovered overhead and lowered a cable from the helicopter’s cargo winch. Wesker attached the cable’s metal hook onto the huge bracket welded to the container’s roof and then waved up at Nicholai. The helicopter rose up into the air and the container went up with it. Wesker stood on top, just holding the cable with his hand. Even though the container swayed back and forth at the end of the cable like a yo-yo at the end of its string, Wesker felt confident that he would not fall.

Up this high, he could really take in the view. He saw cars packed in the streets and mobs of zombies walking around. There were probably hundreds of car accidents, and he saw a few smoldering piles of wreckage blocking a few streets. He took off his sunglasses with his free hand and squinted to see what appeared to be a crowd of people on the roof of a building nearby, waving a large white sheet. He knew that Nicholai wasn’t going to pick them up, but he wondered if one of the other pilots would. Rescuing survivors was part of the UBCF’s mission, after all, although a secondary part.

The shipping container swayed in the wind, but Wesker’s hand gripped the cable like a vise. He returned the sunglasses to his face and casually continued to observe the city as Nicholai took him away.

A few minutes later, the helicopter slowed down as it passed over a low mountain ridge on the far edge of the Arklay Mountains. Wesker looked down to see a small building surrounded by trees on the opposite side of the ridge. They were far beyond the city limits now, and beyond the roadblocks Umbrella had set up on the main highways.

The helicopter lowered to the ground, setting the container down with a heavy thud. As the tow cable grew slack, Wesker knelt down and unhooked it. After a few seconds, it wound back up into the winch, like a fisherman reeling in an empty hook.

Wesker hopped down from the container and looked around. The weathered home sitting on the property was probably some family’s hunting lodge and was not currently occupied. The grass was not mown and all the windows had shutters drawn. As Nicholai promised, a plain white van was parked in the driveway, ready to be loaded with the contents of the container. The winding dirt roads that led through the mountains would take Wesker far away from Raccoon City. All he needed to do was quickly transfer everything into the van and he would be gone. How Nicholai had brought the van there was a question Wesker let simmer for the moment.

Nicholai flew the helicopter away and it disappeared from sight. Wesker stayed where he was, looking along the wild lawn and the line of trees just beyond the old house. Then, making up his mind, he walked across the tall grass to the driveway. He opened the van’s driver side door and looked inside.

No keys. He should have known.

The soldiers hiding on the other side of the house didn’t know that he could hear them. There were at least two, perhaps three. He could hear them whispering into their microphones, presumably talking to Nicholai.

Wesker sighed. And he had hoped this would be easy.

Casually, he walked around to the other side of the van. He could almost hear the soldier’s finger press gently on the trigger, and then the peaceful quiet of the wilderness was shattered with a burst of gunfire.

Knowing that the shots were coming did not mean Wesker knew where they were headed. He jumped to the side as one of the shots tore through his back right under his shoulder, and burst out through his armpit. Blood splattered across the white side of the van, and Wesker was immediately turned around, pistol in hand. He squeezed off five shots before he even hit the ground, and then emptied the rest of the clip as he bounced back up and dove behind the van.

The soldier shrieked as bullets, at least three of them, ripped into his chest right above the collar of his bulletproof vest. Then his scream turned to an abrupt gurgle and he pitched over with blood gushing from his mouth.

The other two were on the move. Wesker could hear one of them talking rapidly as they ran around to the back of the house.

Wesker covered the thirty feet to the house in two steps, bounding into the air as if he was on the moon. He moved like a blur, the wound on his shoulder already healed.

One of the soldiers peeked his head around the corner and Wesker slammed into him like a speeding train. He felt the soldier’s body crunch satisfyingly and then sail another twenty feet backward, his assault rifle flipping up into the air.

The other soldier raised his own gun just as Wesker snatched the other one out of the air. He got off a burst that blasted through Wesker’s chest before Wesker returned fire, aiming right for the head. The soldier’s head exploded and his body launched backward, a gore-covered helmet tumbling to the grass.

Wesker gasped for breath and gritted his teeth. It took a second for his breathing to return to normal. He reached into his shirt and wiped his hand across the front of his chest, feeling no wounds. There were three bloody holes in the front of the shirt.

Wesker tossed the assault rifle aside and walked over the third soldier, who was curled up on the ground in the fetal position, whispering into his microphone with an agonized look on his face.

“I’ll take that, thank you,” Wesker said, plucking the radio headset off the soldier’s helmet. He put it on and adjusted the mike, clearing his throat.

“Nicholai,” he said, “I’m very disappointed in you.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then, “What are you going to do now, Mister Wesker? Come back into the city and kill me?”

“No, I don’t think I’ll do that,” Wesker said. “Unless the van doesn’t work. In that case, I’ll have little choice.”

“It works. My men drove it there. You must have figured that out.”

“Yes, I realized it as soon as you flew away.”

“No hard feelings, then?”

Wesker chuckled at that. “Tell you what, Nicholai. You drop off those containers like you promised, and we’ll call it even.”

The soldier on the ground gathered up enough strength to pull a pistol from the holster on his hip. Wincing with the effort, he raised the gun and pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit Wesker in the stomach and passed through his abdomen, ripping out his back near his kidney. He groaned in pain and reached down to grab the gun. The soldier fired again, shooting Wesker in the arm.

Wesker grabbed the soldier’s wrist and squeezed. The bones crunched and the soldier cried out in pain, the gun slipping from his hand. Wesker took it and shot the soldier three times in the face. He should have done that in the first place.

“Mister Wesker?” Nicholai asked hopefully.

“I’m still here,” Wesker grunted. The pain in his stomach passed and he took a deep breath. The pain was always temporary, but still very intense. He barely felt the bullet hit his arm, and it was now healed as well.

“I heard shots,” Nicholai said.

“Yes, your man here shot me twice. That makes six total.”

“Six?”

“Yes,” Wesker said. “Keep that in mind. Now just drop those containers off like I told you to, and you won’t ever have to see me again.”

“I like the sound of that,” Nicholai said. “Goodbye then, Mister Wesker.”

Wesker took off the headset and tossed it on the dead soldier. He frowned and wiped his bloody arm on his shirt, which was ruined now anyway. He would have to change clothes before he left, as he didn’t want to be seen in a bloody, bullet-riddled shirt.

He found some spare clothes in the hunting lodge. A couple hours later, he finished packing everything from the shipping crate into the van. He took a few pistols and spare ammo from the dead soldiers, just in case he might need them. The keys to the van were in one of the soldier’s pockets as well.

He got in the driver’s seat and started the van up. Then he pulled out of the driveway and headed down the dirt road.

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