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"Brad!"
He stumbled toward the sound of her voice, and she saw that he was badly wounded. He clutched his right side, blood dripping over his fingers, a look of com-plete terror on his face as he reached toward her with his free hand, gasping.
"juh… Jill!"
She stepped toward him, so focused on him that when he suddenly disappeared, she didn't understand what had happened. A wall of black had sprung up be-tween them, a blackness that emitted a deep, rumbling howl of fury, that started toward Brad and shook the ground with each massive step. "Sstaarrss," it clearly said, the word nearly hidden beneath a wavering growl like that of a wild animal, and Jill knew what it was without seeing its face; she knew it like she knew her own dreams.
Tyrant.
Brad fell backwards, shaking his head as if to deny the approaching creature, staggering in a half circle and stopping when his back hit brick. In the split second before it reached him, Jill could see it in profile; time seemed to stop for that instant, allowing her to really see it, to see that it wasn't her nightmare Tyrant, but no less horrible for that; in fact, it was worse. Between seven and eight feet tall, humanoid, its shoulders impossibly broad, its arms longer than they should have been. Only its hands and head were visi-ble, the rest of its strangely proportioned body clothed in black, except for what appeared to be tentacles, slightly pulsing ropes of flesh that were only half tucked under its collar, their points of origin unseen. Its hairless skin was the color and texture of badly healed scar tissue, and its face looked as though whoever had designed the creature had decided not to bother, instead pulling a too-tight sack of torn leather over its rudimen-tary skull. Misshapen white slits for eyes were set too low and separated by an irregular line of thick surgical staples. Its nose was barely formed, but the dominant feature by far was its mouth, or lack thereof; the lower half of its face was teeth, giant and square, lipless, set against dark red gums. Time started again when the creature reached out and covered Brad's entire face with one hand, still growling as Brad tried to say something, panting in high, wheezing gasps beneath its palm…… and there was an awful, wet squishing sound, heavy but slick, like someone punching a hole in meat. Jill saw a flesh tentacle sticking out from the back of Brad's neck and understood that he was dead, that he would bleed out in seconds. Numbly, she saw that the ropelike appendage was moving, swaying like a blind snake, droplets of blood falling from its muscular length. The Tyrant-thing grasped Brad's skull, and in a single, fluid motion, it lifted the dead pilot and tossed him aside, retracting the killing tentacle back into its sleeve before Brad hit the ground. "Sstaarrss," it said again, turning to face her, and as it focused its attention to her, Jill felt a fear greater than any she'd ever known. The Beretta would be useless. She turned and sprinted, barreling through the doors to the RPD, slam-ming and dead-bolting them behind her, all on instinct; she was too frightened to think about what she was doing, too frightened to do anything but back away from the double doors as the monster slammed into them, rattling them on their hinges. They held. Jill was very still, listening to the pound of blood in her ears, waiting for the next blow. Long seconds dragged by, and nothing happened, but full minutes passed before she dared to look away, and even the realization that it had stopped for the moment brought her no relief. Brad had been right, it was coming for them and now that he was dead, it would be coming for her.
SEVEN
GOD HELP ME, I'VE FINALLY SEEN IT FOR MYSELF;God help us all.They lied to us. Dr. Robison and the Umbrella peopleheld a press conference at the hospital just this morning,and they damn near insisted that there's no need topanic – that the cases being called in were isolated events,that the victims were suffering from the flu; not, accord-ing to them, the so-called ca
S.T.A.R.S. were going on about in July, in spite of what a few "paranoid" citizens are now saying. Chief Irons was there, too, he backed the docs up and reiterated his views on the defunct S.T.A.R.S.'s incompetence; case closed, right? Nothing to worry about. We were on our way back to the office from the press conference, south on Cole Street, and there was a commo-tion holding up traffic, a couple of stopped cars and a gath-ering crowd. No cops on the scene. I thought it was some minor accident and started to back up, but Dave wanted to get a few shots; he still had two rolls of film left from the hospital, what the hell. We got out and suddenly people were ru