Nemesis - By S. D. Perry Page 0,2

from its agile crouch... and started toward them. It was an abomination, at least eight feet tall, once human, perhaps, but no more. Its right hand, normal. Its left, a massive, chitinous grasp of claws. Its face had been horribly altered, its lips cut away so that it seemed to grin at them through sliced red tissue. Its naked body was sexless, the thick, bloody tumor that was its heart shuddering wetly outside of its chest. Chris targeted the pulsing muscle with his Beretta and fired, five 9mm rounds tearing into its ghastly flesh; the Tyrant didn't even slow down. Barry screamed for them to scatter, and then they were run-ning, Jill pulling Rebecca away, the thunder of Barry's.357 crashing behind them. Overhead, the 'copter cir-cled and Jill could feel the seconds ticking away, al-most believed she could feel the explosion building beneath their feet. She and Rebecca pulled their weapons and started firing. Jill continued to pull the trigger even as she watched the creature knock Barry to the ground, slam-ming in a new clip as it went after Chris, firing and screaming, enveloped by a rising terror, "why won't it go down?"

From above, a shout, and something thrown out of the 'copter. Chris ran for it, and Jill saw nothing else nothing but the Tyrant as it turned its attention to her and Rebecca, indifferent to the firepower that contin-ued plugging bloody holes through its strange body. Jill turned and ran, saw the girl do the same, and knew -knew that the monster was after her, the face of Jill Valentine embedded in its lizard brain. Jill ran, ran, and suddenly there was no heliport, no crumbling mansion, only a million trees and the sounds: her boots slapping the earth, the pulse of blood in her ears, her ragged breath. The monster was silent behind her, a mute and terrible force, relentless and as inevitable as death. They were dead, Chris and Barry, Rebecca, even Brad, she knew it, everyone but her - and as she ran, she saw the Tyrant's shadow stretch out in front of her, burying her own, and the hiss of its monstrous talons slicing down, melting through her body, killing her, no... No...

"No!"

Jill opened her eyes, the word still on her lips, the only sound in the stillness of her room. It wasn't the scream she imagined, but the weak, strangled cry of a woman doomed, caught in a nightmare from which there was no escape.

Which I am. None of us were fast enough, after all.

She lay still for a moment, breathing deeply, moving her hand away from the loaded Beretta under her pil-low; it had become a reflex, and one she wasn't sorry to have developed. "Useless against nightmares, though," she muttered and sat up. She'd been talking to herself for days now; sometimes, she thought it was the only thing that kept her sane. Gray light crept in through the blinds, casting the small bedroom in shadow. The digital clock on the nightstand was still working; she supposed she should be glad that the power was still on, but it was later than she'd hoped - nearly three in the afternoon. She'd slept for almost six hours, the most she'd managed to get in the last three days. Considering what was going on out-side, she couldn't help a flush of guilt. She should be out there, she should be doing more to save those who could still be saved...

Knock it off, you know better. You can't help anyone if you collapse. And those people you helped...

She wouldn't think about that, not yet. When she'd finally made it back to the suburbs this morning, after nearly forty-eight sleepless hours of "helping," she'd been on the verge of a breakdown, forced to face the re-ality of what had happened to Raccoon: The city was irretrievably lost to the T-virus, or some variant of it.

Like the researchers at the mansion. Like the Tyrant.

Jill closed her eyes, thinking about the recurring dream, about what it meant. It matched the real chain of events perfectly, except for the end -Brad Vickers, the S.T.A.R.S. Alpha pilot, had thrown something out of the 'copter, a grenade launcher, and Chris had blown up the Tyrant as it was going after her. They'd all got-ten away in time... but in a way, that didn't matter. For all the good they'd been able to accomplish since then, they might as well have died. It's not our fault, Jill thought