Rebecca, in the middle of fitting the front and rear SAPI plates onto Ivan, paused at his words.
The corner of her mouth curved without her meaning it to, and she said softly, “Because it’s the truth, that’s all.” With that, she patted the plate against Ivan’s chest, stepped back, tilted her head to look him over, and gave a satisfied nod.
“Very dashing, Officer Ivan~” Ivan flashed his teeth in a wide grin and gave Rebecca a picture-perfect thumbs-up.
Seeing that perfect thumbs-up, Rebecca froze for a second, then her eyes crinkled into little crescents.
Instead of returning the thumbs-up as she usually did, she stretched out both index fingers and gave a light poke to Ivan’s raised thumb, as if pressing a button that wasn’t there.
“Ding~ YES, SIR!” Then Rebecca spun around and hurried off to pick out her gear, though at some point her ears had quietly taken on a faint shade of pink.
Ivan glanced at the fingertip Rebecca had poked, rubbed it, then looked at her retreating figure, and for a moment his thoughts drifted.
Before long, the three of them left the “armory,” each wearing night-vision goggles, gripping an M4A1, a Remington 870 slung across the back, and clad in bulletproof vests.
Of the three, Ivan drew the most attention.
He was the only one present with both a bulletproof vest and a full set of bulletproof plates loaded in.
Together, those two alone weighed nearly sixteen catties.
Not only that, his tactical backpack was stuffed to the brim, roughly five hundred rounds of M4A1 ammunition by a quick estimate.
Those two items alone put nearly thirty-one catties on him.
And that didn’t even count the weight of the M4A1 and the Remington themselves.
Never mind the other compartment of his tactical backpack, which held fifty rounds for the Remington 870 as well.
For a professionally trained soldier this might have been nothing, but for an ordinary man like Ivan, who had never received any such training, it was no small feat.
On top of that, his breathing stayed steady and his movements kept their usual speed.
That made it all the more incredible.
And in truth it was.
Ivan still felt light all over, and the fingers he’d burned earlier had already shed their dead skin and healed anew back when the train started and he came down from the dining car.
By now Ivan had sensed something was almost certainly wrong with his body, and it likely tied into memories he still hadn’t recovered.
But because of the “Dullness,” Ivan felt no urgent anxiety to remember.
After all, things would sort themselves out when the time came.
Beside him, Rebecca saw Ivan moving as usual and let out a breath of relief.
Her own gear wasn’t nearly as “bulky” as his.
Her tactical vest was still the standard issue from the Raccoon City Police Department.
Her tactical backpack held medicine and two boxes of M4A1 rounds, traveling light, you could say.
Billy was about the same as Ivan, also wearing a tactical vest, only without the plates, grenades hanging at his waist and plenty of ammunition packed in his bag.
Once out the door, the three quickly swiped their cards and entered the cab.
Billy walked up to the console and, through the glass, watched the scenery tearing past outside.
His face was grim.
“If this keeps up the train will derail and crash.
We have to stop this thing, and fast.” Rebecca was reading the operating manual for the cab, the book sitting right there on the metal surface of the console.
“It says braking requires the matching commands to be entered at both the front and rear of the train before it’ll stop.” Before Billy could speak, Rebecca closed the manual.
“Ivan and I will head to the rear deck and work the brake control panel.
Billy, you stay here, and once we’re ready, engage the brakes.” Billy had no objection.
“All right.
Watch yourselves.
The front end’s on me.” Rebecca nodded, grabbed the keycard, and waved to Ivan, who had pulled a notebook out from somewhere and was reading it with great interest.
Ivan first tucked the notebook he’d finished into Rebecca’s tactical backpack, and then the two set off.
Along the way, since the three of them had already cleared out nearly all the threats ahead, few had slipped through the net.
So as Rebecca strode swiftly alongside Ivan, she asked, curious, “Ivan, what did the notebook say?” Hearing this, Ivan gathered his words in his mind.
“It says the train received a command to head to a place called the Umbrella Executive Training School to carry out a restart operation.” “The school was researching a certain virus called the t-Virus.
They found that when this virus is used on living creatures, it can give them powerful abilities.” “That discovery let them see the potential of biological weapons.” After a brief pause, Ivan went on.
“But because the t-Virus severely damages intelligence, most of the biological weapons aren’t controllable…” “That’s roughly what I saw.” Rebecca’s brow furrowed.
“The zombies, the monsters, they were all triggered by the t-Virus?
Then the serial murders…” “Ivan, did the notebook say who these people were taking orders from?” Ivan shook his head.
“No.” Just as Rebecca was about to say something more, a muffled thud sounded from the roof, and the whole car began to shake with it.
Ivan and Rebecca looked up on instinct.
The once-solid roof, battered by some enormous force, was now covered in a dense field of dents.
The two realized something was off and quickly fell back to the dining car’s reception area.
Bang!
A pair of massive pincers punched through the steel plating of the roof the instant the two had found their footing.
Seeing this, Rebecca and Ivan raised their weapons and fired almost at the same moment.
Back when they’d picked up gear from the armory, Rebecca had walked Ivan through the use of the M4A1 and the Remington 870 hands-on.
So Ivan’s shooting motion was quite fluid, and the bullets poured out at once.
Still, it was his first time wielding a fine weapon like the M4A1, and his accuracy showed some problems.
A great many rounds struck the sides of the pincer-limbs, punching yet more holes into a roof that was already buckling under the load.
By contrast, as one of the Raccoon City Police Department’s elite, Rebecca’s hit rate was downright ridiculous.
Nearly every round found its mark, driving the monster on the roof into a frenzy of thrashing.
And that turned the creature’s own enormous tonnage into the final straw that crushed the roof.
With a thunderous “Bang!” it dropped hard from the roof to the floor.
Its true form was fully exposed before Ivan and Rebecca at last.
It was, of all things, a mutated giant scorpion a full four or five meters long.
Ivan and Rebecca kept their expressions unchanged, and they opened up in a fierce barrage on the behemoth that had suddenly appeared in the dining car.
The giant scorpion let out a wail of agony.
Its pincers, riddled with bullet holes, swung violently even as yellow-brown blood streamed from them.
Clearly it was thoroughly enraged, bent on smashing the two of them into paste with those massive claws.