The rain grew heavier, cold drops striking broken stained glass and washing thick dark-red blood down the stone steps.
Leon led the way with half of the mutant bat’s torn wing held overhead in his left hand like a grotesque black leather umbrella.
The Doorstop, smeared with fluids from several unidentified species, still rested on his right shoulder.
Heavy boots stepped through scattered meat with wet squelches.
Rebecca walked beneath the shadow of the wing, holding the Remington tightly in both hands.
She glanced at the bloody membrane dripping above her and went pale.
“Could you not find something normal to block the rain?” Rebecca wiped water from her face and shouted over the storm.
“This thing smells worse than a sewer!” “Make do, medic,” Leon answered through the helmet.
“There isn’t a convenience store selling umbrellas in the middle of the mountains, and this ‘shield’ has surprisingly good waterproofing.” Beyond a stone path battered by wind and rain, the view suddenly opened.
They had reached an exposed industrial cable-car station built against the cliff.
A rust-covered metal gondola waited at the platform, thick steel cable vanishing into bottomless darkness below.
The roar of water thundered upward from Umbrella’s underground factory drainage channel.
Wind tore between the cliffs and lifted clouds of spray.
Rebecca immediately ran toward the battered control console beside the gondola.
She wiped muddy water from the gauges with one sleeve, grasped the huge rusted lever in both hands, and pulled with her whole body.
Click.
Gears shrieked beneath the storm and several red lights flickered awake on the panel.
“Backup power works!” Rebecca shouted toward Leon a few steps away.
“The cable system is repressurizing.
About thirty seconds before it can move!” Leon did not answer immediately.
He had stopped less than two meters from the cliff, heavy armor splashing water from the stone beneath him.
Beside his iron boot lay a basin-sized pool of thick dark-green mucus.
Leon planted the greatsword on the ground and dropped to one knee.
He dipped two steel-gauntleted fingers into the slime.
When he rubbed them together, the dark-green fluid stretched into a long, resilient strand.
His brow lowered beneath the helmet.
A powerful carrion stink filled the air, far too strong to have come from the bats.
Leon stood, his huge frame blocking the cold flash of lightning.
He searched the storm-lashed cliff and fixed on the drainage pipe running through the lower rock face.
“Thirty seconds?” He flicked mucus from his fingertips, voice suddenly cold.
“Thirty seconds is enough for a mutant amphibian to finish a midnight snack.
Get in the car, rookie.
Something’s watching us.” The instant he finished, the platform erupted.
BOOM!
Thick concrete at the cliff edge burst upward without warning.
Stone and muddy water blasted into the air and hammered the gondola’s metal shell.
A creature the size of an off-road pickup forced its way up through a drainage outlet beneath the cliff and climbed onto the platform.
It was a Giant Toad covered in dark-green pustules.
It had no eyes; its entire face was a single enormous mouth crowded with interlocking fangs.
Foul mucus streamed from its jaws with every heavy breath and smoked where it touched the stone.
The instant its head cleared the ledge, its mouth opened.
Its target was Rebecca, exposed beside the controls.
WHOOSH—!
A tongue as thick as a barrel, covered in barbs and corrosive slime, shot through the rain like a dark-red python fired from a cannon.
“Down!” Leon roared.
He was still four or five meters from the controls, and the heavy armor made it impossible to reach her in time.
Without hesitation, Leon abandoned the attempt to run in front of the strike.
He spread his stance, core locking beneath the steel, and reverse-gripped the hilt of the hundred-plus-kilogram greatsword in one hand.
His broad shoulder and back muscles drew tight like a winch.
He treated the massive solid-steel slab like a throwing spear.
“Catch!” Leon’s right arm snapped forward.
The giant black sword spun through the rain and struck precisely at the incoming crimson tongue.
BANG—SPLAT!
The blunt-on-flesh impact detonated through the night.
The heavy spine smashed the tongue at midlength and knocked it violently off course.
Carrying the tongue’s remaining momentum, the greatsword buried itself in the concrete beside the controls.
Stone fragments flew.
Half the blade disappeared into the platform.
The Giant Toad screamed in a distorted pitch.
Pain drove the simple creature completely berserk.
Rather than retract the injured tongue, it kicked both thick hind legs against the cliff edge.
Its mountain of flesh launched into the air, cleared the broken platform, and descended toward the gondola and prone Rebecca like a pustule-covered meteor.
The instant the toad jumped, Leon moved.
His steel boots exploded water beneath them.
Two strides brought him to full speed.
The plate suit thundered as metal struck metal with every motion.
Leon charged beneath the falling mass and jumped, leg muscles detonating beneath the armor.
His tall broad body traced an oppressive black arc through the air.
As he passed the control console, Leon reached with his high-carbon-steel right gauntlet and seized the hilt jutting from the concrete.
“Come out!” He roared in midair and combined his upward momentum with explosive arm strength to tear the greatsword out of the ground.
Concrete burst in every direction.
Carried by the sword’s release, with nothing beneath his feet, Leon performed an outrageous movement that should not have been possible.
He threw the heavy helmet and his upper body backward.
Black plates groaned as his spine arched to its limit.
Both hands locked on the greatsword and drew the enormous slab high behind him.
For an instant Leon became a fully drawn black bow in midair, rain streaming over the backward-tilted faceplate.
“Die!” At the apex of his jump, the bow snapped straight.
Spinal extension, abdominal torque, explosive arm force, and the greatsword’s dead weight all converged into one descending strike.
The huge black blade howled through the rain and crashed down toward the Giant Toad’s head with unstoppable violence.
The immensely thick point struck the broad tumor-covered skull.
CRACK—BOOM!
Bone shattered instantly.
The toad’s hardened skin meant nothing.
Its massive skull collapsed inward and dark-green brain matter mixed with black blood exploded through the air in a radial spray.
The enormous body stopped in midair.
The impact changed its trajectory and drove it downward.
Unfortunately, disaster has a habit of arriving immediately after a perfect finishing blow.
The half-headless corpse struck a steel support platform extending from the cable station with all its remaining momentum.
Years of corrosion had already weakened it.
Under the toad’s weight, the securing rivets snapped one after another.
SKREE—BANG!
Most of the platform collapsed with the corpse and dropped into the bottomless abyss.
Leon was still airborne, his previous force spent and no new point of leverage available.
The high-carbon-steel armor and equally massive greatsword had suddenly become lethal ballast.
Their combined weight eliminated any chance of correcting his balance.
Leon passed beyond the cliff edge and, before he could catch anything, fell straight toward the underground drainage channel roaring below.
Wind screamed past his ears.
Rain struck the iron helmet like gravel.
“LEON—!!!” Rebecca scrambled upright and threw herself toward the collapsed edge.
Half her body leaned beyond the platform, right hand reaching desperately into empty air.
Her fingers clawed through rain and touched nothing but cold wind.
Below, there was only darkness and deafening water.
Even in free fall, Leon kept both hands locked around the heavy sword grip.
Wind snapped the cloak on his armor.
He made no attempt to discard his equipment and slow the fall.
Instead he forced his head back, looking through the heavy helmet toward the faint green figure at the cliff top.
The voice that came from beneath the helmet held no fear and no panic—only Leon’s usual shout, barely competing with the water.
“Quit yelling!
The cable car’s ready—meet me downstairs!” His voice punched upward through the storm.
“And remember to make Captain Wesker reimburse my dry-cleaning!” BOOOOM—!!!
A second later, a tremendous impact sounded from the abyss.
The huge armored black shape struck the violent underground drainage water with unstoppable force.
A column of spray exploded upward, and then the current swallowed him completely.
Rebecca dropped to her knees at the broken edge, rain pouring down her pale face.
She stared wide-eyed at the black water churning below.
The console gave one final click, and the rusted cable-car doors slowly opened in the storm.
Deeper underground, the self-destruct countdown continued to run in silence.