Resident Evil: Extinction

Resident Evil: Extinction

Pocket Star

One

Before

Dr. Jim Knable stood on the Ravens'Gate Bridge, with a seething tide of humanity heading straight for him. Knable was grateful for the presence of the Umbrella Corporation security guards and members of the Raccoon City Police Department who were stemming that particular tide, keeping him from being overrun.

Knable and a small medical station had been placed at the wall that had been hastily constructed around Raccoon City. The island metropolis had been completely enclosed by that wall, with the only opening at this bridge, the major artery in and out of Raccoon.

The outbreak of a virus that didn't just kill you but animated your corpse and gave it an instinctive need to feed on human flesh -- thus transmitting the disease to more and more people -- brought a fierce desire on the part of the surviving citizens to leave the city as fast as they could. But the risk of infection was quite high, so the Umbrella Corporation -- the pharmaceuticals and electronics firm that paid Knable's obscenely high salary -- physically quarantined the city and would allow only those who were uncontaminated to leave.

That morning, when the outbreak was first announced, Knable had been given the specifics of the virus and told to develop a quick-test that would determine if the virus was in a sample of human blood. Knablehad pioneered many streamlinings of standard blood tests, the patents for which would guarantee him a comfortable retirement. But Knable was only in his late twenties, and he still wanted to practice. Umbrella, having purchased the rights to use his procedure for their Medical Division, which provided services to hospitals around the world, hired him to do just that.

The rumor around the lab was that Umbrella had actually developed this virus, though Knable didn't really credit rumors. It wasn't as if samples of tainted blood were hard to come by right now. Some of those rumors were that the virus had wiped out the Hive, killing all five hundred people who worked in that underground complex. Knable had a few friends down in the Hive, and he hadn't actually heard from any of them since yesterday -- but then, he often went days without hearing from them.

However, that wasn't Knable's primary concern. He'd spent the better part of the day taking blood from people and running the quick-test, with only one food break, and then only because he was on the verge of collapse. Major Cain had been willing to let him take more breaks, but with somany people piling onto the bridge wanting to leave and unable to do so without Knable's express okay, the doctor couldn't bring himself to keep them waiting.

By the time darkness fell, he could barely stay upright. Sleep was building up in his eyes, and he tried to rub them, only to wince from the oily feel of the rubber glove on his eyelids.

The crowds had just grown larger with the onset of night. Knable had long since lost track of how many quick-tests he'd done. Whenever he was in danger of running out of anything -- test tubes, gas for the Bunsen burner, rubber gloves, or the solvent he had developed -- some black-suited person from Security Division showed up with a fresh supply before Knable even had the chance to ask.

At some point, he'd cut his finger. He'd barely acknowledged the trickle of blood that had been smeared as he removed the rubber glove, when a security goon handed him a Band-Aid. "Thanks," he said with a ragged smile as he applied the Band-Aid. He wasn't too worried about any infection -- that was why he worethe gloves, after all. It would've been nice if he remembered how he actually got the cut, but that was a concern for another time when he wasn't in an emergency situation and exhausted beyond all reason.

Shaking the third of three test tubes over the burner, one each from a mother, father, and child who had come together, and seeing that they all came up green, Knable said, "They're clean. Let them pass."

So far, none of the blood had turned blue. The error margin for the test was that it often gave false positives but never false negatives. It might be inaccurate insofar as it would say someone clean had the virus, but it wouldn't say that someone who was infected didn't have it. As long as the blood turned green in the test tube when heated with Knable's solvent, the person was definitely free of the virus.

Knable would stake his reputation on it. And his reputation was considerable.

An old man and a young woman came up next. Even as Knable was drawing blood from the woman, the old man suddenly collapsed.

Panic shot through Knable. He stood up straight for the first time in about four hours. If this old guy was infected...

"Oh, my God, Daddy!" The teenager fell to her knees and started unbuttoning the old man's shirt. "He's not breathing! It's his heart -- he has a weak heart!"

Aheart attack wasn't what Knable was worried about. People who were infected with this virus could easily just collapse out of nowhere. The old man didn't have any visible bites, but Knable couldn't see his entire body, either.

The girl started to give her father mouth-to-mouth, which wasn't quite the stupidest thing she could've done but was right up there. "Get away from him!" Knable cried.

He was about to move to yank her off and found that he couldn't. She was trying to save her father's life, after all. Knable took his Hippocratic Oath very seriously -- even if he couldn't really remember all of it most of the time -- and he couldn't just stop someone from engaging in a lifesaving procedure.

But he could get someone else to do it. Looking up, he saw that Sergeant Wells of the RCPD was nearby, along with an armed woman wearing a tube top and a miniskirt. Knable presumed she was an off-duty cop pressed into service.

To Wells, Knable spoke in his best order-nursesaround voice. "Get her away from him."

With a grunt, the sergeant did as he was told, though the girl didn't make it easy on him. "No, let me go!" she cried.

"He's saving your life," Knable muttered as he removed the test tube from the needle. He had a very bad feeling about what the quick-test was going to show.

Before he even had a chance to add the solvent, the old man's eyes opened.

They were a milky white.

Knable didn't need to run the test to know that the blood he had in the test tube was going to turn up blue.

The old man was infected.

As if to prove it, he immediately bit Sergeant Wells's leg, which meant the cop was going to turn into an animated corpse before too long as well.

Before anybody else could react, the woman in the tube top shot the old man right in the head.

While the girl was screaming that the woman had killed her daddy, Knable felt a hand grab his arm. It was Anderson, the head of the security detail down here. "We're outta here, Doc," he said, guiding Knable rather forcibly toward the gate.

"Wait a minute, you can't -- " Knable started, even as he was all but dragged toward the gate. He couldn't just leavethese people; he'd been there all day, and --

"Giddings," Anderson said to the Bluetooth in his ear, "we've got an infected man here. I'm evac'ing the doc." He then nodded in response to whatever Giddings might have said.

Anderson all but threw Knable through the gate, forcing the doctor to stumble to the ground.

Only then did he realize he was still holding the test tube with the old man's blood, which he mostly noticed when it shattered on the pavement of the bridge.

Clambering to his feet, Knable looked down at the shards of test tube and infected blood, the latter spreading in rivulets through the asphalt. "Perfect ending to a perfect day," he muttered.

Another security goon, a woman whose name patch read ZOLL, led him toward a helicopter that was waiting on the far side of the bridge. Halfway there, he heard a thunderous bang that made him almost jump out of his shoes. Whirling around, he saw that the gate had been closed. "They can't just trap those people there."

"Not my call, sir," Zoll said. "We have to go."

As they approached the helicopter, Knable heard Cain's voice over a loudspeaker: "This is a biohazard quarantine area."

Knable shuddered. He supposed that Cain was right. If one infected person had made it to the bridge, dozens more could have, and in that crowd, it would spread like a brushfire.

Cain repeated: "This is a biohazard quarantine area. Due to risk of infection, you cannot be allowed to leave the city. All appropriate measures are being taken. The situation is under control. Please return to your homes."

With a snort, Knable said, "Fat chance of that. He's never gonna get those people to move off the bridge."

As Zoll offered him a hand up into the helicopter, she smiled and said, "I think the major'll convince them, Doctor."

Knable sighed as he entered the helicopter. The main section had benches along both side walls -- or bulkheads, or whatever they called them -- which were mostly filled with fellow Umbrella employees and black-clad, well-armed Security Division folks. Glancing around, Knable finally found a spare space between someone he didn't recognize, who, like him, wore a lab coat, and someone from security.

As soon as he squeezed in between them, Zoll closed the hatch, and Knable felt a pull on his stomach as the helicopter took off. He shook his head, wishing he could have done more, but he wasn't about to resist someone with a gun telling him to get into a helicopter, especially since that gun wielder was carrying out the wishes of the people who signed his paycheck.

He just hoped that some of the people on this helicopter, or the others that had been used to evacuate people in the Science and Medical Divisions, were working on a cure.

Lifting his arm to scratch an itch on his nose, Knable was surprised to see that the Band-Aid he'd hastily put on his right index finger had fallen off at some point. The cut was red with blood, but it didn't seem to be actually bleeding anymore.

Looking around, he asked, "Anyone have a Band-Aid?"

Copyright (c); 2007 by Constantin Film International GmbH

Continues...

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Excerpted from Resident Evil: Extinction by Keith R. A. DeCandido Copyright © 2007 by Keith R. A. DeCandido. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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