He seemed angry and a little sad, and he abruptly changed the topic, suddenly remembering how close they were to escaping Raccoon City. "Do you want to carry the grenade gun?"
"I thought you'd never ask," Jill said, smiling. She could use a weapon that would, as Carlos so colorfully put it, blast the living shit out of the Nemesis freak. "Now all we have to do is find a button somewhere, push it, and wait for our taxi to arrive."
Carlos smiled faintly in turn, tucking M16 mags into his vest pockets. "And try not to end up dead, like everyone else in this goddamn place."
Jill had no response to that. "Upstairs?"
Carlos nodded. Armed and ready, they started up.
The clock tower's second floor was really only a balcony that overlooked the front room. It ran along three sides of the building, and there was a single door where it ended, which had to lead to another set of staks—to the belfry, if Carlos remembered the term correctly. Where the bells were.
Almost over, this is almost over, almost over... He let the repeating thought drive away almost everything else, too fatigued to consider his feelings of anger and sorrow and fear, aware that his breaking point wasn't all that far off. He could sort through his emotions once they left Raccoon behind.
The balcony itself was as richly adorned as the lobby, blue tiles that matched the blue of the stained-glass windows, an arched overhang supported by white columns. They could see almost all of the fine balcony from the top of the stairs, and it appeared to be clear, not a zombie or monster in sight. Carlos breathed easier and saw that Jill also seemed more at ease. She carried the Colt Python and wore the grenade gun on her back, using Carlos's belt as a sling.
How did Trent know there would be weapons here? Did he know I'd be taking them from dead men?
Carlos realized suddenly that he was overestimating Trent's reach. There had to be another cache of weapons somewhere in the building, that was all, he and Jill had just happened across the duffel bag. The al-ternative—that Trent had somehow known about the dead soldiers—was too bizarre to consider.
They started down the first leg of the balcony side by side, Carlos wondering what Jill would say if he told her about Trent. She'd probably think he was kidding, the whole thing was so spy-novel mysterious—
Something moved. Ahead of them and around the first corner, something on the ceiling, a flash of dark movement. Carlos stepped to the railing and leaned out to look, but, whatever it was, it was either hidden behind one of the hanging arches or something that his exhausted brain had come up with to keep him awake.
"What?" Jill whispered at his shoulder, holding her revolver ready.
Carlos searched a few seconds longer and then shook his head, turning away. "Nothing, I guess, thought I saw something on the ceiling, but—"
"Shit!"
Carlos swung around as Jill jerked her weapon up, pointing at the ceiling just in front of them as a creature the size of a large dog skittered in their direction, a thing with a humped body and multiple legs, its thickly furred feet thumping stickily across the ceiling faster than seemed possible.
Jill unloaded three rounds into it before Carlos could blink, but not before he registered what he was looking at. It was a spider, big enough for Carlos to see his own reflection in its shining eyes as it crashed to the floor. Dark fluids spouted from its back as it thrashed its multicolored legs in the air, ichorous blood pooling beneath it. The wild, silent dance lasted only a second or two before it curled into itself, dead.
"I hate spiders," Jill said, a look of revulsion on her face as she started forward again, scanning the ceiling. "All those legs, that bloated stomach ..yuck. "
"You've seen these before?" Carlos asked, unable to look away from the closed fist of its body.
"Yeah, at the Umbrella lab in the woods. Not alive, though, the ones I saw were dead."
Jill's apparent calm as they skirted the dead spider and continued on reminded Carlos how lucky he was to have hooked up with her. He'd come across a lot of
tough men in his experiences, but he doubted very much that any one of them, put in her position, would be handling themselves as capably as Jill Valentine.
The rest of the balcony was clear, although Carlos uncomfortably noted a shitload of webbing on the ceiling, mounds of the thick white stuff accumulated in every corner; he didn't care much for spiders, either. When they reached the door and swept their way through, Jill going in low, Carlos was relieved to be outside again.
They'd come out on a wide ledge in front of the tower itself, a barren space surrounded by an ancient railing, a couple of defunct spotlights, and a few dead plants. There was a doorlike opening set a story higher up in the tower but no way to get to it. It seemed like a dead end, nowhere to go but back the way they'd come. Carlos sighed; at least the crows,
if that's what they were, had migrated somewhere else.
"So what now?" Carlos asked, looking out over the dark courtyard, at the still smoking wrecked trolley car. When Jill didn't answer, Carlos turned and saw her standing by a copper plaque he hadn't noticed, set into the stone face of the tower. She reached into her bag and produced a wrapped set of lockpicks.
"You give up way too easy," Jill said, selecting a few pieces from the bundle. "Watch for crows, and I'll see what I can do about getting us a ladder."
Carlos covered her, vaguely wondering if there was anything she couldn't do, smelling rain on the cold wind that blew across the ledge. A moment later there was a series of clicks followed by a low hum of hidden
machinery, and a narrow metal ladder descended from just beneath the opening above.
"How do you feel about standing guard for another few minutes?" Jill asked, smiling.
Carlos grinned, feeling her excitement; it really was almost over. "You got it."
Jill quickly scaled the ladder and disappeared through the open door above. She called down an all-clear a second later, and for the next several minutes, Carlos paced the ledge, thinking about what he was going to do after they were rescued. He wanted to talk to Trent again, about what needed to be done to stop Umbrella; whatever it took, he was there.
/bet he'd be interested in talking to Jill, too. When the 'copters come, we play stupid until they let us go, then plan out our next step —after a good meal and a shower and about twenty-four hours of sleep, of course...
He was so fixated on their deliverance from Raccoon that he didn't notice Jill's expression at first as she descended the ladder, didn't really think about the fact that there weren't any bells tolling. He smiled at her... and then felt his heart sink, understanding that their trial wasn't over yet.
"There's a gear missing from the bell mechanism," she said, "and we have to have it to make them ring.
The good news is, I'm willing to bet that it's somewhere in the building."
Carlos arched an eyebrow. "How do you figure?"
"I found this next to one of the other gears," Jill said and handed him a tattered postcard.
The picture on the front was of three paintings hung
in a row, each piece incorporating a clock. Carlos flipped the card over and saw "St. Michael Clock Tower, Raccoon City" in fine print on the upper left corner. Below that was a printed line of verse, which Jill said out loud.
" 'Give your soul to the goddess. Put your hands together to pray before her.' "
Carlos stared at her. "Are you suggesting that we prayfor the missing gear?"
"Ha ha. I'm suggesting that the gear is wherever these clocks are."
Carlos handed the card back. "You said that was the good news—what's the bad?"