Genesis by Keith R. A. DeCandido Read Free Book Online

huge claws that looked like they could rend steel.
    What Lisa remembered most clearly from her brief glimpse, however, was the head.
    It had a huge, squared-off mouth, filled with jagged teeth and a tongue that looked like a snake had taken up residence in the thing’s mouth.
    Scariest of all were the creature’s eyes.
    It didn’t have any.
    At once, Lisa Broward was thrilled and scared.
    Thrilled because she had finally stumbled onto something big, something that Matt and his friends could use to expose Umbrella for the scum-sucking weasels they were. Creating fatal viruses was not part of Umbrella’s corporate mission statement as far as she knew, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t particularly legal either. Not to mention whatever that—that thing was.
    Scared because anything that could create a fatal virus and a monster out of every child’s nightmare may not have been someone she wanted to go up against.
    Then she thought of Fadwa.
    After that, everything was easy.

FIVE
    LISA BROWARD HAD KNOWN SHE WAS GOING to have to make sacrifices when she moved from New York to Raccoon City, but the one she had least expected to have an impact was the one that wound up hitting her the hardest: the lack of decent restaurants.
    For all that non–New Yorkers complained about the price of a dinner at the average Big Apple eatery, the fact of the matter was, at least as far as Lisa was concerned, you got what you paid for. In terms of sheer variety and quality, nothing beat New York City restaurants for high-caliber cuisine. The only exceptions she had ever been willing to make were for Mexican food—that was better in Southern California and Texas—and barbecue—superior in the midwest, especially Kansas—but that was it.
    So she knew that transplanting to Raccoon Citywould mean a serious downturn in the quality of food, even more so given that she’d be spending most of her time in the Hive. True, its dining facilities were infinitely superior to those of other office cafeterias where she’d choked down fare during her career, but those offices were all in midtown Manhattan. All it took was a phone call, and the nearest gourmet eatery would deliver victuals of almost any kind right to the front desk of the building. Or, time permitting, she could go out for a sit-down meal at a superior Greek, Italian, French, Indian, or Japanese restaurant. For a time, she worked close to a magnificent Sri Lankan place. Sometimes, in her dreams, she could still smell the spices . . .
    Even on those occasions when she was able to go out for food, however, Raccoon City proved to be a wasteland. The “fine Italian dining” served a tomato sauce that would be deemed unacceptable at a neighborhood pizza joint in New York, the one and only time she ventured into a sushi place she left with an upset stomach gained after eating the most doleful looking fish she’d ever seen, and the grape-leaf salad she’d had at an “authentic” Greek eatery wasn’t fit for Umbrella’s guard Dobermans. It had gotten to the point where she would gravitate toward fast food and family restaurants, if for no other reason than her expectations were considerably lower and therefore she wouldn’t be disappointed. And those places, at least, didn’t charge exorbitant amounts for their relentlessly average foodstuffs.
    It was, therefore, with a due sense of ennui that she approached her Thursday meal with Alice Abernathy. Her main reason for wanting to go along was the company, not the food. Plus a desire to get out of the hole for a day.
    Since employees who worked in the Hive had no particular reason to follow the traditions of the Monday-through-Friday workweek, they worked in staggered and rotating schedules. Everyone was scheduled for only five eight-hour workdays per week, though overtime was a near-universal constant, especially when project deadlines and the end of the