Resident Evil. Retribution Read Online Free PDF Page A

moment.
    Then, picking up the baseball bat again, she began to descend the ladder, moving with exquisite care. She went as quietly as she could, but every step made the ladder squeak. If the Undead heard it…
    She peered down the hall. There was nothing there but the painting, knocked askew on the wall, and the little side table with a flower vase on it just to the left of the ladder. There were no Undead in sight, but she could hear their frustrated scrabbling and growling in the laundry room.
    Hefting the bat, Alice heard a noise up above and looked up through the trap door. Becky was crouching up there, in the attic, shaking visibly, eyes wide, staring down at her.
    “I don’t see them,” Alice signed to her. “Come down. We’ll find a safer spot…”
    Becky shook her head, the motion almost a convulsive twitch of terror, and signed a reply.
    “No! No!”
    “They might come up there,” Alice signaled. “We have to get to somewhere safer. Come on.”
    Becky’s mouth quivered, but after a long hesitation she began to descend the ladder, Alice wincing at the squeaking of her daughter’s feet on the rungs.
    When the girl got to the bottom Alice took Becky’s clammy-cold hand in hers. If they could move quietly enough, they just might get away.
    Down in the laundry room, one of the Undead snarled at another, causing Alice to turn sharply that way. Her bat tapped a vase that sat on a small side table. The vase rocked, then fell toward the floor.
    No! If that vase smashed on the floor, the Undead would be upon them in moments. They might outrun the creatures, but there was no telling how many more might be nearby.
    Alice let go of Becky and grabbed at the vase, surprised at the speed of her own reflexes as she caught it an inch from the impact. Water slopped out, a few flowers falling, but she’d kept it from hitting the floor. Gingerly she placed the vase carefully on the side table—
    And an Undead burst from the laundry room door at the other end of the hall. It spotted them immediately, began shambling toward them. It was the same one who’d attacked Todd.
    The only blessing is that it didn’t alert the others— not yet.
    But Becky shrieked in wordless fear—unable to hear her own scream—and Alice scooped the girl up in her arms, still carrying the baseball bat as well. Toting the child, she raced down the corridor to her bedroom.
    The bedroom—where she and Todd had awakened just a short time ago. Her husband smiling at her. A nightmare fading…
    Somehow, she was trapped in yet another nightmare. But this one was horribly real.
    And where was Todd?
    Alice let Becky slip to the bedroom floor, turned, slammed the door in the Undead’s face, and instantly locked it. That gave them a moment to—
    A splintering crash and the Undead’s bloody fist smashed through the flimsy wood. It clutched at her.
    “The window!” Alice signed to Becky, and pointed. “Quick!”
    The girl ran to the window and struggled with the latch, fingers fumbling at it. Alice hurried after her, hearing the crunch of the lock beginning to give way as the Undead thumped itself against the only barrier that stood between the creature and its meal.
    Baseball bat in her right hand, Alice unlocked the latch with her left, forced the window open, and glanced out. Seeing no Undead in the backyard, she helped Becky climb out.
    Hearing the crack of the door breaking open, the rapacious snarl of the zombie, Alice turned, gripping the bat with both hands, completing the turn by swinging the bat hard into the charging creature’s forehead. The bat shuddered with the impact and she felt bone give way. The Undead was knocked off its feet, all the energy of a mother defending her child knocking it back through the air. It fell flat on its back on the bedroom floor and lay there, twitching, blood pooling in the crater she’d made on its forehead, purple tongue flapping in its mouth.
    Hit them in the head, that takes them down.
    She dropped the