Belize

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Chapter Sixteen

Billy stood up and looked down at himself. He didn’t know if he’d been cut or scratched, and he couldn’t stop from frantically checking his hands and arms for any trace of blood. He had to make sure that he didn’t have any of Antonio’s blood on him. In the chaotic madness of the firefight, he might have been clipped by a stray bullet and not even noticed. His heart was racing and had to fight down the surge of adrenaline and stay calm.

He and Rebecca looked at each other but there was nothing to say. Antonio was dead. They barely knew him, and Billy didn’t even like the man, but still they mourned the loss of another innocent life, just another victim of Umbrella’s crimes against nature.

“Sir!” one of the UBCF soldiers said in a panic. “Sergeant!”

“Get back!” came a gargled voice.

Crowded in a doorway on the other side of the hall, three of the UBCF soldiers knelt down by their commander, who lay on his back with his hands covering his stomach. His face was twisted in a grimace of pain, as blood seeped through his fingers and soaked the side of his uniform. One of his arms was also badly slashed up and bloody, the sleeve of his uniform soaked with blood from his elbow to his wrist.

The fact that there were only four soldiers left now barely registered in Billy’s mind. The UBCF squad had lost more than half its men in the space of a few seconds.

“What can we do?” one of them asked helplessly. He was a black man with a shaved head, and he spoke with a South African accent.

“Nothing,” Heinrich hissed through his teeth. He turned his head sideways and spat blood on the floor. “You can’t … you can’t do anything.”

One of the other soldiers pointed at Rebecca. “Hey! She’s a nurse! Hey, get over here and do something!”

Rebecca remained where she was, cradling Antonio’s head in her lap. She looked at the UBCF soldiers evenly. “What do you want me to do? Your captain’s infected now and he knows it. Go ahead and put pressure on the wound, but don’t get any of his blood on your hands, if you know what’s good for you.”

“He didn’t get bitten!” the soldier snapped. “One of those things stabbed him!”

“She’s right,” Heinrich said grimly. He groaned and rested his head back on the floor, taking a few short breaths. “Those … those things are experimental hosts. They carry the virus. There’s a tiny chance that they won’t pass on infection … but it’s not … worth the risk.”

The South African soldier shook his head and placed his hand on Heinrich’s shoulder. “There’s got to be something we can do ...”

“Help me … get my jacket off,” Heinrich groaned.

Carefully, the soldiers unzipped the front of his combat uniform and pulled it open. Underneath, he wore a black shirt. When they tried to lift it up to get a better look at his injury, two of the soldiers turned their heads in dismay. Heinrich let out a strangled cry when the cloth was pulled away from the wound.

He’d been impaled right through the stomach. The insect creature’s claw had shredded him. Billy was no doctor, but he knew a fatal wound when he saw it. Without immediate medical attention, Heinrich was going to die. It was like being gut shot. He might not die right away, but he was going to die and be in terrible pain the entire time.

Rebecca laid Antonio down and stepped over to them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But at least you men were able to defend yourselves. That man over there was completely helpless, and he died because you brought us down here.”

Heinrich looked up at Rebecca without blinking. “I had my orders.”

“Lots of terrible things have happened because people followed orders.”

“Just back off, lady!” the other soldier shouted, jumping to his feet. “You think you’re some kind of expert on this? Well, you don’t know a God damn thing!”

“I know exactly what’s going on here,” Rebecca said coldly staring him down. “This lab is just like the one in Raccoon City, and now the exact same thing has happened here. One of Umbrella’s viruses got loose and started another outbreak.”

Heinrich coughed painfully and spat out blood again. “How … can you know that?”

“Because I’m from Raccoon City. I was there when the outbreak happened. I know all about Umbrella’s experiments and the things they were doing.”

“We were both there,” Billy said, backing her up.

“That’s bullshit,” the angry soldier said, shaking his head and walking away.

Heinrich, however, gave a short nod and laid his head back down. He didn’t have the strength left to hold his head up anymore. He stared at the ceiling and said, “Then … then I am sorry you have to be here. But this outbreak … will not be like the one … in America. The infection will not leave this facility. I promise you that.”

The third soldier in the group was an Asian man. Billy guessed he was Chinese. He was older than the others, probably in his early 40s at least. Still kneeling beside Heinrich, he said, “Sir, we can’t just leave you here like this. What do you want us to do?”

The South African man suggested, “We can bandage you up. We’ll carry you if we have to.”

“It’s too late,” Heinrich said weakly. “You have to hurry.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

Heinrich licked his lips and took another breath. “The system link. My sleeve ...”

They very gingerly pulled up the sleeve of Heinrich’s wounded arm and saw that the computer console strapped to his arm was destroyed, torn in half by the creature’s deadly claws. Only half of the computer remained velcroed to his arm, the other half was probably lying on the floor in the lab room.

“We cannot communicate … with the outside,” Heinrich said. “If contact is lost … then they must initiate … a decontamination protocol ...”

Billy stepped closer. “What are you saying?”

Heinrich’s voice was barely more than a whisper. He lay perfectly still, staring blankly at the ceiling above him. “The team has … one hour. If contact is not … reestablished, then decontamination … will incinerate the entire … lab.”

Rebecca raised her hands to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

“Must get … back to … the elevator. One hour …”

Heinrich gasped in pain and shuddered briefly, and then went limp. His head gently lolled to the side. The South African soldier gently closed his commander’s eyes and then stood up, lowering his head and mumbling a few words in prayer. The Chinese soldier just shook his head and remained crouched on the floor by the body.

No one spoke for a minute. Rebecca just shook her head miserably and leaned into Billy, and he put his arm around her. Seven people had managed to make it out of the other lab room where the creatures attacked them, and now two of those people had already died from their injuries. There were only five of them left.

Rebecca straightened up and looked at the UBCF soldiers. “Is it true? What he said?”

The soldier who had yelled at Rebecca earlier turned back to face them, his hands on his hips with a disgusted expression on his face. “What do you think, Shen?”

The Chinese soldier looked up at him. He thought for a moment and nodded casually, looking back down at Heinrich’s body. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

Billy stepped forward, in between them. “Hold on for a second. He said we have an hour to get out of here. What was he talking about?”

The Chinese soldier shrugged. “Every Umbrella facility is different. They all have unique security features and things like that. Depends on when they were built and who was the Research Director at the time. Some labs have decontamination systems that are programmed to just burn the entire place down in the event of a Level Two outbreak like this.”

“You knew about this and you brought us down here anyway?” Rebecca said incredulously.

“We didn’t know about it,” the soldier named Marco said defensively. “You think they tell us everything?”

The Chinese soldier sighed and finally stood up. He pulled out the empty magazine for his rifle and snapped a new one into place. He seemed incredibly calm, given the circumstances, but Billy understood the mindset. Panicking or freaking out wasn’t going to help them. Being able to remain calm and collected in a moment of crisis was the mark of a good soldier.

“Heinrich mentioned it when we were in the elevator,” he said. “You came down with the civilians afterward, Marco, so you didn’t hear about it. That little computer was his link to the security system control. As long as he was connected, the decontamination system was on standby. If things went south, he could activate it from here.”

“Great, that’s just great,” Marco said. He pointed back out into the hallway and the wreckage blocking their path. “How in the hell are we going to make it back to the elevator? Even if we dug our way through all that, those things are on the other side. We must have shot them a million times and they didn’t go down.”

“There’s got to be another way around. Heinrich had a map on that computer.”

“Well, the computer is trashed, in case you haven’t noticed.”

The Chinese soldier said to Billy and Rebecca, “All right. My name’s Shen, that’s Marco, and that’s Njabulo. I know you’re pissed off about being down here, and to be honest, I don’t blame you. But we’ve got to work together now. We’re going to have to make our way through the lab until we can find a way back to the elevator.”

“How are we going to do that?” Rebecca asked. “How do we know that the only way is to go back the way we came?”

“We do what we came here to do. We find some survivors.” Shen paused and looked over at Antonio’s body. “Shame about him. He could have told us where to go.”

The South African soldier, Njabulo, walked over to Antonio’s body and began to pray, as he had done for Heinrich. After a moment, he asked, “I’m sorry. What was this man’s name again?”

“Antonio,” Billy answered.

Njabulo nodded and returned to his prayer. When he was finished, he reloaded his weapon, as Shen had done. Marco went over to Heinrich’s body and carefully took the extra magazines that were strapped to his belt. He also drew out Heinrich’s sidearm from its holster and jammed it into a jacket pocket. He handed one of the magazines to Shen and kept the other for himself.

“Can I have that pistol?” Billy asked.

Marco eyed him with something like suspicion. “Why? You know how to use it?”

“I was a soldier. Rebecca used to be a police officer. We both know how to use firearms.”

Shen shrugged. “Sure, it can’t hurt to have another shooter. Give it to him.” He then pulled out his own pistol and handed it to Rebecca. “You might as well have one too, then. Used to be a cop, huh? Me too.”

When everyone was armed and ready to go, Shen and Njabulo went first, with Marco right behind them. “Same as before,” Marco said. “Stay behind us. And if we run into another one of those mutant things … start running.”

“Do you have any more of those grenades?” Billy asked.

Shen nodded. “Yeah, just one. Let’s hope we don’t need it.”

Billy looked back at the two dead men they were leaving behind. The UBCF soldiers had not mentioned or even acknowledged the deaths of their other teammates, who lie butchered in the other room. Although Billy understood the mind of a soldier, that was one thing that bothered him about the UBCF. In the United States military, it was nearly unthinkable to just leave behind the body of a fallen comrade. They would have done everything in their power to take the bodies with them.

But the UBCF weren’t soldiers, not really. They were mercenaries, paid to go where Umbrella told them. They didn’t fight for their country or their culture or the man beside them. They fought because they were being paid. Their teammates weren’t their brothers in arms, they were just coworkers. Shen and Njabulo had respectfully mourned the death of Heinrich the same way that Billy might have mourned the death of his boss Santiago. But now that it was time to move on, they did so without another thought of their deceased commander.

At least they didn’t have to worry about Heinrich or Antonio coming back to life, Billy thought. In less than an hour, the entire lab was going to be destroyed.

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