The gunfire inside the main building had stopped. Ryan walked back into the lobby and gave Jill and Carlos a short nod. "Flankers are down. The ward's clear."
Outside the hospital entrance, two heavy armored vehicles sat at the doors, matte black, no markings, no unit numbers. Then the commander's voice came through on their frequency, flat and clipped, broadcast over the vehicle intercom:
"All units, mission parameters updated. Effective immediately: hold all hospital entry points. No uncontrolled BOW is to approach Subject 092 under any circumstances. Ensure target safety at all costs."
Both vehicles rolled out from the entrance at once, engines loud, and swung across the main gate in a hard block, building a final line.
From somewhere down the street came a roar that rattled the walls.
Nemesis.
It came through the smoke at a dead run, body completely wrong now, skin split and rolled back, thick tentacles whipping behind it, each footfall sending a tremor up through the pavement. It was heading straight for the hospital.
The surveillance helicopter overhead climbed fast, trying to get clear.
Not fast enough. A tentacle launched off Nemesis's shoulder like a missile and punched straight through the cockpit.
The explosion lit up the sky. The fireball came down in the middle of the street and kept burning.
The armored vehicles opened up with everything, heavy machine guns and mounted cannons firing simultaneously, a wall of rounds and shells slamming into Nemesis. The hits tore flesh, blew chunks loose, sprayed the street dark green. Nemesis walked through it without slowing down.
"Rockets, full salvo!"
Three rockets hit at once. The explosion swallowed it whole. When the smoke shifted, it was back on its feet, wounds closing in real time, the body growing bigger and more wrong with every passing second.
"It's adapting! Standard fire isn't working!"
"Move the vehicle up, block the gate!"
The first APC surged forward to use its hull as a barrier. Nemesis swung a tentacle and caved in the roof. The APC crumpled, tracks snapping, and the ammunition cooked off a second later in a column of fire.
The second vehicle moved into the gap, pouring grenades into it. Nemesis came through the smoke, drove a tentacle through the armor, lifted the entire vehicle off the ground, and brought it down on the pavement.
The remaining soldiers threw everything they had left at it. Explosives, grenades, small arms, all of it at once. They knew what the outcome was. They held anyway.
"Hold the line! Keep it away from 092!"
The tentacles swept through them. Men went airborne, hit walls, didn't get up. Screaming and detonations and the crack of bone all ran together.
The commander was soaked in blood, half his armor gone, dragging himself toward a black case beside the wrecked vehicle. His hands were shaking when he got the latches open.
Inside was a glass container, sealed, filled with a red liquid that sat wrong, too still, too dense, like it was waiting.
This was the last option. Something the coalition had issued for contact with an enemy beyond conventional stopping. He knew what it would do. He picked it up anyway, blood running into his eyes, and fixed his gaze on Nemesis closing the distance.
He threw it with everything he had left.
The container traced an arc and shattered at Nemesis's feet.
Then the light took everything.
The blast wave went out in all directions at once. Steel, concrete, and armor plate vaporized in the heat. Within a hundred meters of the center, the pressure flattened everything to nothing. Nemesis, the street, the vehicles, the soldiers who had held their ground to the end.
All of it, gone.
Hot wind pushed through the hospital entrance carrying smoke and grit and the sharp smell of burning metal and corrosive fluid. From deeper in the city, the infected were already moving toward the sound, slow shuffling shapes coming through the haze from every direction.
The ground was still trembling faintly. Spent casings and broken glass shifted in the aftershock.
Ryan and the others came up from the basement and stopped.
Where the street outside the hospital entrance had been, there was now a crater. A hundred meters across, dropping into darkness, the scorched walls bone-dry, still shedding dust and fragments from the edges. The air above it shimmered with heat.
Ryan stared at it. His throat moved.
If this were the game, credits would be rolling right now.
He'd seen it happen. A few minutes ago, in the seconds before the blast, he'd watched the commander crawling toward that case with blood sheeting down his face. He'd seen the container inside the moment the latches came open, the red liquid behind the glass, and something in his gut had screamed before his brain caught up. He'd shouted at everyone to get underground and ran them into the deepest part of the basement.
Now he was looking at a hole in the city.
"Roof," he said. "The helicopter, now."
They moved.
The helicopter was on the back side of the building, far enough from the blast center and shielded by the structure itself. It had survived. Barely. One landing strut was bent out of true, the main rotor blades showed hairline scoring from debris, and the balance system had taken damage.
Everyone got on board.
Tyrell powered the engine up through his teeth, and the rotors spun up loud and hard, the frame shaking badly, and the helicopter went nowhere. It sat and vibrated and the metal made sounds it shouldn't make, a high strained groaning, like something about to let go.
"It won't lift! It won't lift!"
Tyrell cut the power and turned around, face drained. "We're over the weight limit. Already at the ceiling. If we force it up, the whole airframe comes apart in the air."
"I'm staying." Ryan said it quietly.
Jill went white. Her right side was still bleeding, and her hand locked around his arm. "No. We go together or we don't go."
"I know another way out, and I've got something I need to do here first. Don't wait for me. Fly to Stoneville, stay out of sight, and don't contact anyone." He looked at her steadily. "I'm not going to die. Whatever happens out there, I will find you. I promise."
She started to argue, and then the blood loss and everything else caught up with her at once. Her eyes went dark and she went down, and he caught her before she hit the deck.
He passed her carefully to Kendo. "Take care of her. Get everyone to Stoneville. I'll be right behind you."
Dr. Bard reached into his coat and held out two vials of the t-Virus vaccine. "Take these. In case something comes up."
Ryan took them and nodded, then turned to face the rotors and the smoke beyond. "Go. Now."
He jumped down from the helicopter, raised the pistol, and started pushing back the zombies drifting in from the street.
Kendo got Jill settled and looked down at Ryan from the open door, something working in his expression. "I'll keep her safe. We'll be waiting for you. Watch yourself out there."
The rotors screamed and the helicopter lifted and shrank and was gone.
Ryan stood alone in the smoke and the firelight.
He wasn't going to die.
He was going to walk out of Raccoon City and get to Stoneville and find Jill. He was certain of it the way he was certain of very few things.
He just had one stop to make first.