The night wind drove into everyone's lungs, heavy with the salt tang and smoke that came with The Island.
Luis staggered out through the last iron door of the underground passage with Ashley propped against him. She was shaking with cold sweat after the surgery. He dropped straight onto the open ground of the cargo yard and sat there.
"Good god... I don't think these legs belong to me anymore..." Luis panted in great heaving breaths, his clothes soaked through with muddy water and sweat. Ashley leaned weakly against a rusted shipping container, pale, but the awful black-green veins at her neck had finally faded.
Leon slumped against another container, one hand pressed hard to his chest, and coughed up a mouthful of bloody spit. He'd taken a full hit from Saddler head-on, and every breath pulled against his broken ribs.
A little way off, Sherry smoothly ejected an empty magazine and reached for the tactical pouch on her thigh. Her hand paused. There was only one mag left.
She glanced over at Becky. Becky was wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, looking at the red indicator on her electromagnetic rifle blinking out its low-power warning. She shook her head helplessly.
Almost out of everything. Everyone was bleeding somewhere.
But at least they were breathing air that didn't reek of blood anymore.
The reprieve didn't last thirty seconds.
"Rumble!"
A muffled blast rolled up from the underground passage behind them, and the whole cargo yard shook. Through the crash of collapsing rubble, Saddler's twisted, mutated bulk forced its way up out of the debris like a hellhound that had just chewed through the gates of the underworld.
"Damn it! Is this thing really impossible to kill?!" Leon ground out through his teeth and pushed himself to his feet, putting Ashley behind him.
Just as they were bracing for one last stand...
"Crackle... crackle crackle..."
The radio on Leon's shoulder suddenly came to life with a clear transmission.
"This is Flying Eagle One, courtesy of Hunnigan. Your ace pilot Mike calling Agent Kennedy. Traffic in the air was hell, but I'm over the target coordinates. Need support? You know who to call!"
Every head snapped up.
Through the pitch-black sky, a heavy gunship tore through the fog with deafening rotor thunder. Two blindingly bright spotlight beams cut down from above, slicing the darkness like swords, and locked dead on Saddler as he roared at the sky.
Hope lit up every face. Leon's radio crackled with the pilot's booming laugh. After a stunned second, a weary, relieved smile pulled at the corner of Leon's mouth. "Perfect timing, Mike! The big one is unkillable. Hit it with the heaviest thing you've got!"
"Copy that! Watch this!"
The helicopter carved a perfect arc through the air, and the Gatling gun slung under its belly began to spin up to speed.
"Brrrrrrrrt!"
A storm of molten metal swept over the ground where Saddler stood. The heavy rounds fell like the reaper's scythe, throwing up dust and debris. Those horrifying growths of flesh were shredded off in sheets, green pus and dark blood spraying across the containers.
"Not done yet! Have a taste of rocket fire!"
Light flared under both stub wings. Two rockets streaked out trailing long plumes of flame and slammed straight into the center of Saddler's chest.
"BOOM! BOOM!"
The twin explosions blew Saddler's body dozens of meters through the air and buried him deep in a pile of wreckage. Flames roared over the mangled flesh, and the stench of burning protein filled the air.
"Did it work?" Ashley's voice was trembling with excitement.
Luis pumped his fist. "I knew it! Hail modern science! Even G-Virus can't tank a carpet bombing like that!"
Leon looked at the unmoving creature in the ruins, and the tension in his nerves finally loosened a fraction. He pressed the headset and, for once, cracked a joke. "Mike, nice work. Just hold steady up there, don't fall out of the sky. I'm buying you a drink when we get home."
"Relax, buddy! I know this bar... no... damn it! Where are all these bugs coming from?! I can't see a thing!" The pilot's voice came through the radio, suddenly shot through with panic.
"Pull up! Get out of that area!" Leon's face went white, and he shouted into the radio.
Too late. Countless swarm flies flung themselves into the engine intakes without a thought for their own bodies, and the helicopter's smooth engine note turned instantly into a shrill metal grinding. Worse, masses of the bugs clung to the cockpit glass, corroding the frame with acid, and forced their way in droves into the rotor bearings.
"Bang!"
The helicopter's engine blew apart in a burst of flame in midair.
The whole steel beast trailed a long plume of black smoke, spun, and crashed into the gantry crane at the edge of the cargo yard. The shockwave from the explosion rolled across half the battlefield.
"BOOM!"
A huge orange fireball rose into the sky, dyeing half the night red. The hope that had just arrived was reduced, in less than a minute, to fragments raining down through the air.
Dead silence.
Sherry and Becky turned their heads, expressionless, and stared at Leon, who was still standing there frozen with the radio pressed to his face.
"...I knew it." Leon closed his eyes in despair. He wanted to slap himself for jinxing it.
"No point in mourning, Uncle Leon. He's coming." Becky's cool voice cut in.
Saddler rose slowly out of the sea of flames. The swarm flies had given him the cover he needed to catch his breath. The G-Virus was running at full throttle, and the pulverized flesh was knitting back together at a rate visible to the naked eye. In places where the shots had landed, heavier, barbed black chitin was now growing in.
What he looked like now was completely beyond any biological category. A demon cast in meat and blood.
"All of you, open fire together! Help me crack his defense!" A cool voice rang out.
Ada had appeared at some point on top of a container up and to their side, a bright red painted rocket launcher balanced on her shoulder.
The sisters and Leon caught on at once. They wrung every last drop of reserve energy and every last round out of their electromagnetic rifles without hesitation, hammering the thick jointed limbs Saddler had crossed over his chest.
"For Flying Eagle One!"
"Die, you thing!"
With a series of sharp cracks, a hole was blown through the heavy chitin plating, exposing the massive central eyeball beating madly inside.
"Now! Go to hell!"
"BOOM!"
Ada squeezed the trigger without hesitation. The rocket streaked out on a long tail of flame and smashed straight into Saddler's enormous eyeball.
"Hit!" Ashley couldn't help cheering.
This blast was a world-ender. The entire upper half of Saddler's body above the chest, along with that giant eye, was torn into airborne chunks of meat and green fluid by the high-explosive warhead.
"We did it?" Luis pumped his fist, then caught sight of the others staring grimly at the ruins.
"Hiss... hiss!"
Before the smoke could clear, that mass of ruined flesh started making a sound. A crawling, gnawing sound, like a swarm of insects feeding.
The near-unstoppable regeneration of the G-Virus kicked in.
Pink growths surged out of the torn edges like boiling foam, coiled around each other, stitched themselves shut. In a matter of seconds the tumorous masses converged again into a body even larger, even more deformed, and bloodshot scarlet eyes pushed their way out of the new flesh in no particular pattern, locking onto everyone.
He wasn't just standing again. His presence was more violent, more desperate than before.
"Click, click."
Sherry pulled the trigger twice. Slide locked back on empty.
Up above, Ada spread her hands in resignation, tossing the rocket launcher aside. She was dry too.
Nowhere to run. Cliff at their backs, a nameless final horror in front of them.
"Get behind me."
Leon drew in a deep breath, and his eyes went still as dead water. He stepped forward, reached back to his hip, and drew the tactical combat knife that had snapped in half during his fight with Krauser. He held it crossways in front of his chest.
Sherry didn't say anything. She just quietly drew the two Desert Eagles at her waist. Over in the rubble, Becky pulled her tactical recurve knife out with no change of expression.
Facing a monster they couldn't beat, none of them backed down. The moment pushed to the grimmest, most heroic point it could reach.
"Heretics..." Saddler let out a chaotic roar, lifting his right claw, now mutated into a massive scythe, high overhead. The shadow of death came with it, and he was about to smash this clutch of bugs flat.
At the critical instant...
"Whoosh!"
An ear-splitting scream of sound, sharp enough to tear through eardrums, exploded out of the darkness behind them without warning.
It was a brick. Its surface glowed red-hot, trailing sparks, and it moved at an initial velocity that violated every principle of aerodynamics. It crossed dozens of meters with pinpoint accuracy.
"BOOM!"
Saddler got slammed back like a busted cannon shell, hammered deep into the wall of containers behind him. The heavy steel boxes caved and buckled under the impact, and three full stacks of containers skidded five or six meters sideways from the shockwave of that one brick.
Dead silence swept the yard.
Leon, still holding his half-broken knife up and ready to die, just stood there.
Even Ada, who thought she'd seen it all, stiffened on top of her container, the corner of her mouth twitching.
"Tap. Tap. Tap."
Unhurried footsteps, faint splashes as boots came down in shallow puddles, drifted out of the shadows behind them.
A tall figure in a black trench coat strolled into the edge of the spotlight's glow. Both hands were tucked casually in his coat pockets, as if he couldn't possibly be the one who had just hurled a "God's Brick" across the battlefield.
Ryan stopped. His eyes drifted over the bloodied, battered group, and the corner of his mouth curved up in that familiar, reassuring line.
"Not bad. Everyone's still breathing. Looks like I wasn't too late."
...
He turned his head. His deep-set gaze settled on the raging, deformed monster ahead, and his voice stayed flat, like he was picking out a late-night snack.
"Girls, you've already done great. This ugly thing here... leave it to me."