Resident Evil: Retribution - The Official Movie Novelization E-Book

John Shirley

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

EVIL GOES GLOBAL Just as she finds a safe haven, free from the Undead, Alice is kidnapped by her former employers—the Umbrella Corporation. Regaining consciousness, she finds herself trapped in the most terrifying scenario imaginable. RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION The T-virus continues to ravage the Earth, transforming the world's population into legions of flesh-eating monsters. Reunited with friends and foes alike—Rain Ocampo, Carlos Olivera, Jill Valentine, Ada Wong, Leon Kennedy, and even Albert Wesker—she must fight her way back to reality in order to survive. The countdown has begun, and the fate of the human race rests on her shoulders. My name is Alice. And this is my story... the story of how I died.

Leseprobe

THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION

SCREENPLAY BY PAUL W. S. ANDERSON BASED ON CAPCOM’S VIDEOGAME RESIDENT EVIL NOVELIZATION BY JOHN SHIRLEY

TITAN BOOKS

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION

Print edition ISBN: 9781781163153

E-book edition ISBN: 9781781163160

Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition September 2012

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Resident Evil: Retribution © 2012 Constantin Film International GmbH and Davis Films/Impact Pictures (RE5) Inc.

Motion Picture Artwork © 2012 Columbia TriStar Marketing Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States.

Did you enjoy this book? We love to hear from our readers. Please email us at [email protected] or write to us at Reader Feedback at the above address.

To receive advance information, news, competitions, and exclusive offers online, please sign up for the Titan newsletter on our website: www.titanbooks.com

DEDICATED TO FANS OF RESIDENT EVIL, IN ALL ITS MANIFESTATIONS

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION

Contents

Author’s Note

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

Acknowledgments

About the Author

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This novel is based on Mr. Paul W.S. Anderson’s script for Resident Evil: Retribution, which I had a lot of fun reading and adapting. Everything in the screenplay is dramatized in the novelization. All the dialogue in the script is found in the novel, too. Other dialogue, of course, has been invented for the novel. A novel requires legroom, and stretching out, and there are scenes and characters and even a subplot not found in the film—but they are all inspired by the screenplay; by settings, ideas, events and character-types found in the screenplay. And the film’s continuity is very much the overriding structure of this novelization.

So far as I’m aware, nothing in the novel contradicts the film.

And now… we have a dark journey to undertake together…

PROLOGUE

THE LONG, DARK JOURNEY

1

What has gone before.

The mansion, in the Arklay Mountains…

She wakes in the void—in a psychological void, with her memory a blank. She only knows she is naked, lying on the floor of a shower.

And she is alone.

She finds clothing, puts it on, and explores the dimly lit mansion—where no one seems to live. She feels as if she should know this place… but remembers nothing. It is as if she sees everything from outside of herself. Even her name is remote.

She sees a picture of herself and a man, framed on a table. Is this my husband?

Continuing to search, suddenly, she finds someone. Or he finds her. He’s investigating the Umbrella Corporation, she learns, while pretending to work for it.…

Then the soldiers burst in, faces seeming inhuman in gas masks. They’re with the Corporation, they announce—the world’s most powerful and advanced pharmaceutical multinational. They take her at gunpoint, and she begins to learn the truth. She had been an important security operative for Umbrella, but something strange and ugly has gone down—a mass murder in the Hive.

Something to which Alice may be relevant.

Whoever she may be.

The Hive is some distance away; a vast, underground facility located far below the nearest large town, Raccoon City. Almost an insectoid creation, in its design, it’s like a giant wasp nest in the ground but made of steel and plastic and fiberglass and watched over with security cameras. The monarch of this hive is the Red Queen: a computer with total control.

A high-tech underground rail links the mansion to the Hive, and it’s on this train that Alice meets Spence. As dazed as she is, he’s at once familiar and unfamiliar to her.

They reach the Hive, where an automatic laser defense system activates, operated by the Hive’s artificial intelligence, its central computer. Without warning it slices and dices most of the commandos— one of them ends up cubed. It occurs too quickly for them even to scream. Death, easy and instantaneous.

Death is the new master of the Hive.

It was the Red Queen who released the gas that suppressed Alice’s memories, to eliminate a potential threat without killing her. Never destroy a valuable asset—one that might be used again. But confined with a precious few survivors—Matt, Spence, and Rain—Alice slowly begins to know her past… her own part in bringing about the horror.

Someone has deliberately released the Umbrella Corporation’s experimental T-virus into the air vents. The Red Queen sealed off the Hive, and used its control over the underground facility’s systems to kill those who would become infected. But it couldn’t stop the virus from spreading amongst the survivors…

The T-virus kills—and then it resurrects. The dead have risen in the Hive; the dead walk again.

Zombies? But old-school zombies are low-grade horrors compared to these Undead. These creatures are unspeakably vicious, at times capable of moving quickly, of forming deadly mandibles, of configuring into overgrown living-dead variants. The lab-developed T-virus has created the new Undead, hungry for human flesh—and capable of being genetically modified into something even worse.

The Red Queen reveals this, and more.

With her few surviving companions, Alice escapes and shuts down the Red Queen. In doing so, they unknowingly release the Undead into the Hive’s echoing corridors. A sickly young woman has become a rapacious monster, and one of the team, Rain, is bitten by her—and infected with the T-virus. Alice admired Rain for her courage, her individuality. But the virus eats its way into her brain, and all that’s left is for that brain to be destroyed.

A bullet to the brain, a hatchet, a knife: destroy the brain, cut the brainstem, it’s the only way to stop the Undead. Shooting them in the heart doesn’t work. It’s not easy to kill what has already died.

There is a cure for the virus, they learn, if it can be administered soon enough. Alice and Matt find it… And Spence, the man who’d once been Alice’s lover, steals the cure. It’s worth billions, and Spence was the one who released the virus in the Hive—to create panic, cover his tracks, and destroy those who would stop him.

But there are other black experiments in the Hive, including a virus-borne variant—a crawling, powerful monster with swollen brain tissue where its eyes should be, and a tongue that is a weapon in itself. Released by the Red Queen to finish her dirty work, the Licker lurks, stalks, and strikes.

And that’s what takes revenge on Spence. After he leaves the rest to die, the Licker corners him, “tears him a new one”… and then it comes after Alice and her friends.

They escape, tricking the creature into destruction, only to run headlong into Umbrella operatives. Matt is taken away for something called the Nemesis Project. And Alice? Her they strap to a table, in another facility. For another experiment entirely.

But there is still the Hive, swarming with the Undead. Another Umbrella biohazard is sent into these stumbling, ravenous creatures, only to be overwhelmed—trampled and ripped, recruited… to become more of the Undead. And the team left the door open.

The Undead are released into Raccoon City, where with tooth and claw, they reproduce through an orgy of sheer violence.

Somehow Alice wakes in the lab, emerging from her sedative-laden sleep. Someone has awakened her, given her a chance. She finds a way out of the locked laboratory, makes her way to the street…

Where she finds a world ravaged by the apocalypse.

2

Raccoon City seems empty but for the Undead. Alice sees nothing but wreckage and fire everywhere. But she knows there must be other survivors out there.

She finds a shotgun in a police car, loads it and strikes off, determined to locate them.

Alice never once falters, for she knows what she is capable of doing. A lab experiment has given her incredible physical powers, agility, to enhance her already impressive skills.

Yet she is captured by Umbrella, and faced with a monster called Nemesis, a hideous super soldier both repellent, and pitiful. To her horror she recognizes what was once her fellow survivor and closest companion. This monster is Matt. He lives just long enough to help her escape.

Horror follows upon horror: cities disfigured, a demented world roamed by the ceaselessly hungry Undead; ruins where flocks of crows feed upon the carcasses and mutate into flying horrors, where only a few survivors huddle in endless terror, behind locked doors. All seems hopeless.

Until one day, a radio transmission calls out to survivors, telling them that something called Arcadia is free from infection. Arcadia offers food and water. Make your way to Arcadia…

Alice discovers some of these survivors, led by the heroic Claire Redfield, and tells them about Arcadia. But the Umbrella Corporation is watching, like a malignant sky god, from its own spy satellite. Umbrella’s researchers try to modify the Undead, to make them controllable slaves, and it tests them as controlled violence sent against Alice and her new friends.

Only a handful survive—including the inspiring Claire, the woman who leads this small cadre of humans across the American Southwest, in search of a haven.

But they’re running out of food, and supplies.

Alice helps them steal an Umbrella chopper so they can fly to Alaska, and Arcadia. But she stays behind—to get at the full truth about the Umbrella Corporation.

With the Earth in the throes of apocalypse, there is no cash except as trash—or as ammunition, since Alice uses coins instead of conventional shot in her shotgun shells. The Umbrella Corporation now deals in another kind of acquisition, the kind that Genghis Khan coveted: goods, property, and people. Umbrella’s troopers simply take whatever the corporate overlords need. It acquires goods, and instead of employees, it has mind-controlled slaves.

Not so different from the old days of corporate culture, at that.

Alice’s journey lays open more dark revelations— including an army of herself, for hundreds of adult-sized copies of Alice have been created. She liberates the clones and—with them—makes her way to Tokyo, where the worldwide plague has spiraled madly out of control. There Alice penetrates a huge Umbrella facility run by the man named Wesker. Scores of “Alices,” each of them fast, powerful, and heavily armed, slaughter Umbrella’s henchmen, showing no mercy.

But Wesker himself is transformed into something more than human. He’s fast, too fast… and he injects her with a serum that suppresses her powers.

Suddenly… she is just a human being again. And the facility is destroyed, along with the clones.

3

Alice finds Claire in Alaska, and then locates a few others, including Claire’s brother Chris, sequestered in a besieged Los Angeles prison. They fight their way to Arcadia—which turns out to be a ship.

Arcadia is something else, as well—it’s a trap. The Umbrella Corporation needs healthy specimens for its experiments. So a friendly radio transmission lures them from around the world, to the gigantic cargo ship.

ARCADIA…

There, Alice and friends free the human cargo from suspended animation, take control of the ship, and manage to destroy Wesker. The world is still thronged with the living dead, but for the moment, the Arcadia is free.

Until the black ops commandos of the Umbrella Corporation approach, flying in a flock of black choppers, descending like rapacious, unliving crows…

MY NAME IS ALICE…

I worked for the Umbrella Corporation, in a secret high-tech facility called the Hive. It was a laboratory, developing experimental viral weaponry. There was an incident, a virus escaped, and everybody died. Trouble was… they didn’t stay dead.

This was the start of an apocalypse that would sweep the entire world.

A last handful of survivors sought safety on a ship called Arcadia. We thought it was a safe haven.

We thought it was free from infection. But we were wrong.

Once again, the Umbrella Corporation had deceived us. And once again, my friends and I found ourselves fighting for our lives.

My name is Alice. And this is my story…

…the story of how I died.

1

It was a sunny, tranquil day at sea on the tanker Arcadia, off the coast of California. A lovely day, really. Occasionally a bit of fog caressed the white caps of the blue waves, and then drifted away. Could have been quite restful, a day like this, if the Arcadia were a yacht, in the days before the world started dying; before humanity started eating itself alive.

Alice was standing near the aft on the steady metal deck of the Arcadia, reveling in the cool breeze. She watched as a group of figures—freed experimental subjects, all dressed in white—milled about on the deck of the enormous, retrofitted tanker ship, trying to reorient themselves to this new reality.

She could imagine what they were thinking—all but hear their voices in her head.

“I heard the radio transmission—that there was safety in Arcadia—no infection, no Undead to attack me—that there was food and shelter. Finally I found the ship.

“The men in black commando togs grabbed me, slapped the mechanical scarab onto me, and then… nothing. Nothing else till I woke in the high-tech hold of the ship, in a tube… like an insect on display in a bottle.

“The woman—Alice—led me out into the open air… But what now? The Undead are still out there.

“What happens now?”

What now, indeed.

They had taken this ship—for the time being. She and Chris and Claire had killed Albert Wesker—and Wesker had been the most powerful individual in Umbrella, as far as she knew, now that Lord Spencer was gone. Maybe Wesker’s death would keep them safe for a while, throw the enemy into disarray.

If Wesker is really dead…

How could she doubt it? She’d riddled his body with bullet holes. She’d left his corpse limp, bleeding out on the deck of a hold, far below. No, he was dead.

He had to be.

The breeze sighed in the superstructure of the converted tanker. Test subjects murmured to one another, milling and talking, gazing at the horizon. The waves whispered against the hull of the big ship. In the distance, on the shore, she could make out some of the Los Angeles skyline—or what remained of it. Downtown Santa Monica was charred, smoking, many of the buildings just skeletons of girders. But it wasn’t deserted. There were still throngs of Undead plague victims, crowding the streets, savaging anything that moved—except, oddly, one another. They craved fresher meat than that.

First thing to do, Alice figured, would be to get up to the Arcadia’s bridge and work out how to safely pilot the ship. Maybe it was so computerized it could almost pilot itself. If it was fueled up, it could take them anywhere in the world.

Like—where?

An island, she was thinking. Catalina, maybe, an island twenty-two miles off the coast of Los Angeles. Catalina itself was less than twenty-three miles long, eight wide. There would be Undead there, sure, but not that many. She could take a team out, methodically sweep the Undead from the island. Exterminate them… like they were insects.

Except that the Undead used to be people. Men, women, grandmothers and grandfathers, children— even children were Undead. Alice often wondered, could there be a spark of humanity left in the Undead who roamed the streets, moaning and growling, dripping bloody saliva?

She’d never seen the slightest hint of it. The Undead seemed more mindless than rabid wolves. Probably all vestiges of human feeling—perhaps even the soul— departed the victim’s body when they died. And once reanimated, they were soulless things, caricatures of human beings.

Still, that spark had glimmered in what was left of Matt, though he’d been transformed into a different kind of monster. Turned into a hideous super soldier by Umbrella researchers using a variant of the T-virus.

If there was anything human left in the Undead, it was helpless, she supposed. That tiny speck of inward humanity had been hijacked by the virus; at best, it was forever along for the ride. And it must suffer terribly in there, trapped inside a monster.

So if she exterminated them, she was doing them a favor.

Keep telling yourself that, Alice.

Catalina. Once she cleaned up the island, they might be safe from the Undead for a long time. The zombies weren’t known to swim…

It was some kind of plan, anyway. So she decided to find Chris Redfield, ask him if he knew how to pilot this ship.

Alice glanced over her shoulder at the people she’d set free… and sighed. She felt responsible for them, now. Somehow, she kept falling into that role. She’d tried to avoid it, wandering in the deserts of the Southwest—and then she’d got drawn in again.

Life had been so much easier when all she had to worry about was security at one of the world’s most powerful corporations. She was exquisitely trained in martial arts, in the use of every weapon. She’d been a person of confidence and strength.

And then she’d seen what the Umbrella Corporation was doing, in the Hive. Her conscience had forced her to turn against Umbrella; against all that she had been. Maybe this new burden of responsibility was the karma, biting her on the ass for her time with Umbrella.

Still, she was still young and strong. Men found her beautiful. If she got everyone on the ship to safety, maybe she could settle down, even find a mate among the survivors. Chris seemed attracted to her. And he was a ruggedly good-looking guy. Impressive, if a bit grim. But… could she live like a normal human being, ever again? With a lover, a child—a family?

She had to believe there was a chance. Somewhere, someday, the dark journey had to come to an end.

“What’s that?” Claire said, as she walked up to Alice. She pointed at the sky.

With a stab of dread, Alice looked up.

“It’s trouble,” Alice said, dully. A fleet of flying vehicles was blotting the sky, bearing down on the Arcadia.

Of course. There was no end to the nightmare. Every time there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel, it turned out to be a guttering, forgotten candle… a tiny flame that sputtered, and went out in a wisp of smoke.

Alice recognized the silhouettes against the northern sky.

“V-22s,” she said, her voice hoarse. Why couldn’t she have time to breathe, to think—just one real chance to help these people? “Umbrella’s version of V-22s, anyway,” she added, almost casually. “Based on the Marine Corps’ Ospreys—they’re helicopters and planes in one.”

“Oh, no…” Claire breathed. As she did, Alice checked to make certain her shotguns were secure in the holsters on her back, then began to move.

Umbrella’s V-22s were more advanced than the Corps’ Ospreys. The black choppers could tilt their rotors forward to fly like planes, or tilt them upward to hover, and were even more armored than Ospreys. There were auto-cannons mounted in the snouts.

And there was a whole aerial fleet of them coming her way, so many that they quickly darkened the sky. They were probably packed with Umbrella troopers, too.

Alice reached the survivors and started to shout.

“Move!” she said. “Head for cover!”

Had Wesker sent for those troopers, before he’d died?

Good chance he had, and the Corporation had responded instantly. Like any multinational, they wouldn’t want to surrender all the tech, the test data, and the experimental subjects on this ship.

She had to get them to safety.

But V-22s were fast. Seeing them head-on was deceptive, and before she knew it, the big black choppers came hurtling in, rotors roaring, gunners firing as they came. Shells burst on the decks, instantaneous blossoms of fire and shrapnel. Alice ran, shouting at the others to get back, get under cover, but the vast deck was like a football field, open and flat and broad, and there was no cover.

They’d tumbled from tranquility into chaos, in the space of a few heartbeats.

She scanned the area, looked for Chris, and Claire—and saw several of the white-garbed people they’d rescued, caught in a detonation and tossed into the air by shell blasts that made the deck ring like a sledgehammer on a giant bell.

She groaned at that, cursed in frustration, her stomach churning—then heard the drumming of the choppers steadying, felt the wind of their rotors as they hovered over the deck, and she skidded to a stop, near the rail.

Turning, she saw Umbrella troopers rappelling down from the V-22s. They were all in black, armored, faces covered in gas masks, weapons strapped to their backs—black to the white of the survivors she’d freed.

Not freed for long.

The first three troopers to hit the deck quickly unstrapped capture guns, non-lethal weapons looking like small bazookas, that fired compressed nets at their targets. The net capsules opened and engulfed a number of the survivors, as if in gigantic spider webs.

Alice looked up again, and saw a familiar face. Jill Valentine rappelled down, her face unmasked, her dark blond hair fluttering in the wind. She fired with a submachine gun as she came. Bullets strafed up the deck in Alice’s direction, whining off the metal, and she threw herself aside, the rounds narrowly missing her.

She came to her feet tugging the automatic pistol from her waistband, and returned fire. But she missed Jill—was it intentional? This was the woman who’d once fought beside her.

Alice thought she caught a glimpse of one of the mechanical scarabs, on Jill’s bosom.

Then she emptied the clip, tossed the pistol aside, and lost sight of Jill behind a cloud of smoke, She smelled engine exhaust, felt the rotor wind, and a shadow fell over her. Craning her neck, she realized she was being targeted by a V-22 that was tilting down to fire at her. She drew her sawed-off shotguns from the holsters. Pulling the triggers, she felt the weapons buck, and the silver quarters she’d packed into the shotgun rounds smashed through the windshield of the V-22. They blew the pilot’s head off.

But the V-22 was a little too close. Alice turned to run as, pilotless, the big chopper nosed down and crashed into the deck.

Cannon shells were packed into the front end of the V-22, and there was a fuel line not that far behind the shells. The impact of the chopper on the deck detonated a half-ton of explosives, ripping the V-22 apart from within, so that fifty-pound chunks of jagged metal, like fragments from a giant hand grenade, ricocheted across the deck. Flame gouted, consuming the remainder of the chopper, the blast tearing the rotors off so they spun through the air and sliced through another V-22.

And Alice just wasn’t fast enough. The shockwave from the explosion slapped her with punishing force, so that she thought her back might break. She was lifted off her feet and flipped bodily over the railing. Suddenly she was spinning end over end, down toward the sea, gasping—the shockwave had knocked the wind out of her.

Sky and sea changed places; sea and sky spun round again, and then, before she could take a breath, she was flung headlong into the face of a big, pretty, blue wave, while blazing debris hissed into the water all around her. The water closed over her as chunks of the V-22 rained down close by, helicopter parts plunging into the sea trailing streamers of bubbles.

The fuel sprayed by the spinning, falling fuel tank coated the waves, blazing up as it was struck by fiery debris.

Instantly Alice was sinking, seawater burning her lungs. She was in shock, stunned, maybe paralyzed— she didn’t know. She just knew that the thudding pulse she heard, her own pulse sounding in her ears, was slowing… slowing….

Above she could see the wrinkled, translucent surface burning, water seething as fuel burned off it. Darkness from below rose up to swallow her, as blue and orange flames consumed the rest of the world, overhead…

She was detached, fascinated by the sight, that ceiling of flames, even as her pulse became irregular, skipping a beat. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she might have blurrily glimpsed a sling, dipping toward her, lowered from a hovering V-22

Were those arms, grabbing for her, to pull her to the sling?

She hoped not.

She’d rather die than be their prisoner. Their slave…

Delirium swept over her, and she seemed to see the mechanical scarab—the one that she’d taken off of Claire. Something between jewelry and insect, the scarab was as big as her hand, climbing up her like a living thing, looking to sink its needle fangs into her; to numb her with the drug that had taken control of so many others…

No. It wasn’t really there. Just the cold wet darkness.

Her thoughts sank away, too. There was just one thought left.

I’ve failed.

She had failed to protect all those people who counted on her; all those dazed people she’d brought to the upper deck of the Arcadia, where they were shot or captured. She’d failed them.

It was too much to bear, that final, aching thought. Much easier to let her pulse slow, slow…

So much easier to just drift downward, downward…

My name is Alice. And this is my story…

…the story of how I died.

Alice woke. In a bedroom.

She was lying in a comfortable, rumpled double bed, in an ordinary middle-class American bedroom.

Someone was looking at her. She turned her head, and saw a handsome man smiling down at her—dark, Semitic, his hair as rumpled as the bedclothes—as he pulled on his boxer shorts. He gazed at her at her with a kind of wry familiarity, an intimacy. Like a husband.

He couldn’t be her husband… she had no husband.

But he had a wedding ring on—she looked at her own finger—one that matched hers.

Then it came to her—his name was… Todd. That was it.

Todd.

Looking at him, thinking that she’d known him by a different name, once, long ago… But that name fled from her. He was simply her husband, Todd. Nice that her husband was such a sexy guy.

Hadn’t she been on a ship, shooting at someone? She remembered an explosion. She’d been picked up by a shockwave, tossed like a discarded doll.

She’d drowned, hadn’t she?

No. That hadn’t been real. It couldn’t have been. She could still smell her husband’s sweat, his aftershave on her, other smells from last night, when they’d made love. She felt a little sore, between her legs. He was a vigorous guy…

This was what was real. This was… much better.

The other was just a dream. A bad dream.

Forget it, Alice.

“Come on,” Todd said, chuckling, pulling on his pants. “We’re late. Alarm didn’t go off. Becky isn’t up yet. Mrs. Henderson’s going to be pissed. You know how they get at school when we drop her off late.”

But the sea. The Arcadia. Those people needed her. They all needed her…

“Baby!” Todd stopped dressing, staring at her, a concerned look on his face.

Alice felt tired and disoriented. She should get up, she knew that, but…

“Baby?” He looked at her, lips pursed.

She cleared her throat, and sat up, still a bit dizzy.

The sea. The waves burning overhead…

Todd leaned toward her a little. “Baby—are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll get…” Becky. “… I’ll get Becky up.”

“You look tired. You didn’t sleep well?”

“I’m fine.”

He didn’t seem convinced. Neither was she, for that matter.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He stared at her, the way husbands stare at their wives.

“I’m okay—really,” she insisted.

“Well, in that case…” He whipped the bedclothes off her. “Get that cute ass out of bed.”

Alice smiled wanly, and did as he asked. She felt stiff. Her lungs seemed to hurt, when she took a deep breath.

Reaction to that bad dream…

She caught sight of herself in the bedroom mirror. Wait—that wasn’t right, was it? When did she get blond hair?

She shook herself. No wonder Todd was staring at her.

Sometimes dreams linger and confuse you.

Yeah, that’s what it was…

2

Alice put on a robe, and went down the hall to wake… Becky.

The seascape in the hallway was familiar to her; the scuffed hardwood floor was familiar; the smells were familiar. This was their home, hers and Todd’s, their one-story, old, suburban, ranch-style house.

So why was she so disoriented?

She went into Becky’s room, paused, and smiled, looking at the sleeping girl, seven years old, sprawled on her small bed with its flower crested headboard.

What a sweet face she had. She looked so peaceful, so adorable, Alice was reluctant to wake her. It felt good just to watch her sleep.

But she sighed and leaned over, gently shook Becky’s shoulder. Her daughter opened her eyes, and blinked. So like her mother’s, those eyes. The child didn’t say anything—she didn’t speak much, she’d only learned to do it by feel, and when she spoke her voice lacked pitch control. She had autosomal recessive deafness, an inherited birth defect that left her missing critical structures in the inner ear.

Both Alice and Todd could hear, so the defect was assumed to be the result of a recessive gene in one of them. Someday, if they planned to have another child, there would be a test to see whose genetics were the problem. Perhaps they’d resort to donated semen or an egg, for a second child. But Becky needed their full attention right now.

Alice kissed her good morning, and laid out her clothing.

Alice took a quick shower, dressed, and went to the kitchen. She was humming to herself, feeling a little better as she made fresh orange juice in the juicer. The coffee had just finished perking, the rich smell filling the room.

Alice poured the orange juice, put the glass in front of Becky and signed.

“You want eggs?” They signed to talk, using ASL.

Becky stuck out her lower lip and signed back.

“Pancakes?”

“Cereal?” Alice asked her. The girl needed something more substantial than pancakes.

“Pancakes,” Becky signed insistently. Alice pretended to think it over, as if she were engaged in a serious diplomatic negotiation. Finally she signed back.

“Cereal—then pancakes?”

Becky smiled.

“Deal.”

Todd came in, looking shaved and combed, pulling the jacket of his dark suit on over his crisp white shirt. She looked at him appreciatively. The man cleaned up good. Handsome and kind—and sexy. She was lucky to have him.

He poured himself a cup of coffee, filling the cup a little too much.

“We’re going to be late… again.”

Alice glanced at him as he swigged the coffee—and she saw two drops of coffee fall on his crisp white shirt.

“Shit!” Todd said.

Tom laughed as Becky and Alice both said, “Watch it!” Becky had read his lips.

Alice bent to examine the stain.

“There’s another shirt in your closet. I picked up the dry cleaning yesterday.”

Todd grinned. “You’re my angel.”

“Don’t you forget it.”

He leaned toward her. Alice smiled.

“Easy, tiger… we’re running late. Remember?”

Todd walked toward the living room, headed for the bedroom and that clean shirt. He was thinking that Alice probably didn’t want a weekend away from Becky, his parents babysitting or not. His mother didn’t know much about signing and seemed exasperated, at times, with Becky’s attempts at speaking.

He stopped, looking down the front hallway. Why was the front door open? And wide open, too…

He was about to call out, ask Alice if she’d left the door open—and that’s when the guy with blood on his face leapt at him, charging from the bathroom. The man snarled, fingers bent into claws as he came. He wore a bloodied, torn suit, as if he’d been on his way to work when this madness swept over him.

Todd reeled back, yelling incoherently, and then the guy—a complete stranger—bit his forearm. Hard. Tearing through fabric, through skin, sinking his teeth into Todd’s flesh. Blood splashed across his crisp white shirt. Todd wrenched his arm away, then struck the stranger, making him stagger back a step.

But he wasn’t going to run away—Todd could see it in his milky-white eyes. He was going to finish what he started.

Who or what was this guy?

Alice and Becky ran into the hall gawking, Becky started making a high-pitched noise of fright, deep in her throat, seeing her father fight with the madman.

“Todd!” Alice shouted.

Alice knew, somehow, as she scooped up Becky in her arms, what the attacker was. Not a madman—nothing so simple. Not some drug-addled housebreaker, either. No.

This strange assailant was… undead?

How did she know that? She wasn’t sure…

Todd flung the Undead off him, so that the man stumbled back, crashing through a glass table in the front hall. Broken glass flew and tinkled. But the Undead was up on its feet almost instantly.

“Get Becky away!” Todd shouted, crouching to block his family from the creature.

Unsure of what to do, how to help Todd and protect Becky both, Alice stepped back—and heard a riotous smashing of glass behind her. She turned, looked through the archway into the kitchen, and saw another one, half lunged through the broken glass of the upper half of the kitchen screen door. He was caught in the window’s remains, the jagged edges in the frame ripping at his stomach, but didn’t seem to notice or care.

He clawed toward Alice and Becky, growling hungrily, heedlessly ripping his belly more as he tried to slither into the room.

She looked for Todd—and didn’t see him.

A third Undead came roaring through the front door—and straight at Alice.

Still carrying Becky, she ran down the hall, moving full tilt, and Becky somehow felt light in her arms. Adrenaline was singing through her veins, but it was as if she was running in slow motion, the hallway sliding slowly, slowly past her as she headed for the laundry room. She glanced over her shoulder, saw the Undead, a chunky white man in a blood-splashed green golf shirt, pursuing her from the living room

He seemed to move in slow motion, too.

Time sped up to normal as she darted into the laundry room. She lowered Becky with one arm, while with the other hand she slammed the door in her pursuer’s face. There was no lock on the door.

She jammed her shoulder hard against it and immediately felt the pushback, the Undead trying to force the door open, growling, the living dead man whining in frustration on the other side like a vicious dog on a short chain.

“Mommy!” Becky screeched, waving her frantically signing fingers in front of her mother’s face. “What’s happening? Where’s Daddy?”

Alice couldn’t hold the door much longer. The creature was slowly pushing it open, its slavering, bloody, snarling face pressing into view. She gave it one more shove, with all her strength, momentarily pushing the creature back—then she let go.

Before the Undead could move, Alice pulled over a heavy shelving unit that stood beside the entrance. The cabinet fell on its side, blocking the door, spilling boxes of Tide and conditioner but jamming the way— at least for the moment.

There was a gap, still—and several Undead reached through to wildly claw the air, ravenously trying to get at Alice and Becky. And she knew what they wanted. Some half-forgotten nightmare whispered to her, from the deep recesses of her mind.

They want to eat you. They want to eat Becky— they want to strip the flesh from her body and gobble it down while she still lives…

Alice looked desperately around and saw only one tiny window. She grabbed a small stepladder leaning near the dryer, carried it past the silently sobbing Becky, to the wall under the window. She opened the ladder, climbed up, knocked the mesh screen away.

Behind her she heard a scraping sound as the door was being pushed further open, the cabinet raking the floor.

And she realized that the window was too small, even for Becky.

Alice jumped down from the stepladder—and Becky ran up to her, pointing at the door, where the Undead were pushing the heavy cabinet further out of the way, inch by inch. There was nowhere to go, nothing with which to fight with. Scanning the room, she saw only a washing machine, a dryer, and dirty clothes in a hamper. The concrete floor was solid.

So Alice looked up, because that’s all that was left—and remembered the crawlspace.