Resident Evil. Retribution Read Free

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