Chapter Text
somehow this is worse
i.
Leon figured he should be used to this deal by now, especially just coming off of the catastrophe that was Lanshiang and Tall Oaks.
But somehow, this was worse.
It was starting to slide into October weather, evident as the night breeze was just cool enough to stir goosebumps, just bordering on being chilly. And on top of the weather, the little town he’d found himself in was just that, a tiny town that had somehow come to be completely and utterly empty.
Wasn’t that how these things tended to play out, though? Of course it fucking was.
It didn’t bode well for his being there, and it certainly spelled no good for the police that had been here before him. Yes, there was supposed to be a small police force that had been deployed into the city to get ahold of things before it got too out of hand – not BSAA or DSO, just the regular city police, which, if Leon was being honest, was their first mistake. The DSO had only heard about it when someone from the police department had sent out an SOS with a very vague description of what was happening down there.
It sounded tentatively like a bioweapon outbreak, and despite the obvious voice in the back of his head telling him that it was his duty to protect the innocent from the sick fucks who created these viruses, Leon really couldn’t help but grimace a little.
One: why the hell didn’t they call either the BSAA or DSO for assistance before sending in a team that had no experience working with bioterrorism?
And two, much to his chagrin (and it had taken some serious soul-searching to come to this conclusion), it was starting to get to him.
‘It’ being the constant threat of bioterrorism and the ever-looming promise of losing people. Leon had learned from day one that you couldn’t save everyone – it was just a part of the job. Hell, part of life, even. But it was getting harder and harder to find reasons to keep going these days. ‘Saving the innocent’ was looking less and less realistic as the tragedies went on, and Leon had been in this game for twenty some-odd years. It felt like it would never end; how was anyone supposed to keep their sanity?
Quips and sarcasm only got you so far.
But it was that return to form, the naïve hope that maybe one day Leon would be able to save everyone, maybe the world would finally be safe, that made him keep going on this job, at least for now. Tomorrow…he wasn’t so sure.
Ironically, the infected area had been a town called New Hope, a little spot in between Columbia City and Seattle that was next to nonexistent to the rest of the state, let alone the country. Such a small town shouldn’t have been a problem, but the fact that it was located so close to such a heavily populated city was…concerning, to say the least.
Best to clean this up before it reached near impossible levels.
But even more concerning, more than the close vicinity, was the fact that the entire town seemed to have been wiped out. About 20,000 people just…gone.
Never mind the police force, it seemed like New Hope had simply disappeared.
Usually there were always a few hostiles crawling around within view, and Leon was prepared to have to combat the initial fifty or so members of the ‘welcoming committee’, but now, standing here in the middle of an empty, flaming town, he found he’d almost welcome a host of hostiles waiting for him.
Usually it was loud, chaotic.
Somehow, the quiet was worse.
ii.
He’d been here an hour, and still no sign of anyone, survivors or otherwise.
Empty cars were still lined up on the side of the road, some had been abandoned in the middle of the street, others overturned, others wedged into the walls and windows of buildings. Sporadic fires had broken out on roofs and along telephone poles. The usual, save for the absence of bodies, which was still weirding Leon out.
Hopefully that meant there were survivors holed up somewhere. On the other hand, that meant that there was also the grim possibility that the hostiles had wandered off into the woods, able to spread the infection to whatever place they ended up in.
“Shit.”
Sticking close to the edges of the street, Leon opened up the comm link, eyes scanning the surrounding area for any signs of movement.
“Hunnigan, you there?”
A burst of static, and then, “I’m here. Did you find anything?”
“Nothing. No hostiles, no survivors. Not yet anyway.”
He could hear the pure confusion in Hunnigan’s voice. “No hostiles? Not even the police force? Then…where…”
Leon walked by the storefront window of what used to be nail salon and squinted inside. It was almost completely dark save for the meager light of the fires outside. Still, there was no sign of movement from within. He moves on.
“Maybe there are hostiles, they’ve just found their way out of town. Can you call in a team to comb the surrounding area? Just to be safe,” said Leon. “I’ll look for survivors and meet up with the others when I’m done.”
The sound of Hunnigan clacking away at her keyboard keys filled the link. “Right. Keep me posted, okay?”
“Ditto. Let me know when that team is on the ground.”
The next shop down the line is a shoe shop. There’s no one there either. After that is secondhand bookstore, a dry cleaners and a pharmacy.
No one.
“Seriously, where the hell is everyone?”
iii.
Leon veers off of the main street and heads towards the five points neighborhood.
It’s just as silent there as it was on the main street leading into town. The damage is a little less prominent in the neighborhood, which ignites a small spark of hope in Leon’s chest that the outbreak hadn’t quite ravaged this area just yet. There are some empty cars with their doors open and garbage cans littering the streets and sidewalks, but the fires aren’t present at least. He doesn’t have to worry about any of the houses burning down while he picks through them.
The first house he gets to is a yellow two story bungalow. Maybe it would’ve been a nice place to live if the town wasn’t on fire and going to hell.
The front door is unlocked, and when Leon tentatively swings it open, he finds the lights on waiting for him. The long rug in front of the door leading down the hall is skewed, as though someone had slipped on it trying to run out. On the left is a small living room boasting a bay window and seat, a couch and loveseat, a coffee table and a tv. It’s just as lived in and pristine as usual.
Further down, the hall opened up into the kitchen with a small sitting area. It’s almost just as untouched by the peril outside as the living room, but just as Leon is leaving to go explore the upstairs, he catches the glimmer of something on the floor by the sink.
Glass. A water glass?
One of the chairs by the table has been knocked over, previously hidden from view from the doorway by the counter. There are tiny flecks of blood on the tile, smudging the bits of broken glass too; not enough to show signs of a struggle or violence, more like someone cut themselves trying to clean the glass perhaps.
The stairs are on the other side of the entry hall, just outside the kitchen. The third one squeaks loudly into the silence of the empty house, and Leon is sure he’s never rolled his eyes harder in his life.
Fuck’s sake.
Thankfully, nothing responds to the noise; Leon continues up the stairs, careful to watch his step from now on. At the top, the short banister is flanked by three rooms: a small bathroom closest to the stairs, and what Leon assumes are two bedrooms. Water is running softly in the bathroom when Leon looks inside. A few drops of blood stain the porcelain of the sink. Maybe whoever dropped the glass in the kitchen had come up to the bathroom to clean up?
Both of the bedroom doors are open. The first one next to the bathroom looks like an apparent master bedroom, with one large bed and the usual furnishings. The bed looked like it had been slept in, but someone had gotten out of it in a hurry. Odder still, there’s no blood here, none that Leon can make out. Did they leave? There wasn’t enough blood for the wound to be serious, so there was no reason to leave to find a clinic.
The other is what Leon guesses is supposed to be a guest bedroom and is completely untouched. As to be expected, he guessed. Leon made his way out of the house, out the back door this time, and wandered into the driveway. The garage was still occupied by the previous tenant’s vehicles. Unless Uber had still been a thing when the outbreak hit, the residents had walked to wherever they’d wandered off to.
The next house isn’t much different: a little bigger with more rooms (there’s a child’s bedroom in that one, and despite there being no signs of a struggle, Leon feels a little piece of his being crumble at the thought of a kid being in distress. He quickly moves on from the room) but the same general sense of casual abandon.
Four houses into Leon’s search, he gives up on finding anyone inside. He could be here all night and never find any of the residents because they simply weren’t here.
Leon ran a hand through his hair, leaning against one of the abandoned cars along the sidewalk. There was really no helping the growing feeling of despair in the pit of his chest; this was…different. At least if there were visible hostiles, it was a given what Leon was working with. There was no one here, not even as much as a stray cat. He shook his head – may as well check in.
“Hunnigan.”
“I hear you, Leon,” chirped his support. “The ground team has been deployed and are patrolling the surrounding area. Have you found anything?”
“Still nothing.” Leon heaves a frustrated sigh. “Looks like there wasn’t a struggle; all the houses are empty, but there’s hardly any damage.”
“I’ve got your location,” Hunnigan hummed, the sound of keyboard keys clacking away in the background. “You’re in the five points area; it should have been pretty populated. It’s the largest neighborhood in town…”
“Right.” Leon dropped his head back against the car, glaring up at the night sky. “What about the ground team? Have they found anything yet?”
“Nothing to report.” Hunnigan suddenly went quiet. Leon could practically see her nibbling her lip in thought. She hummed thoughtfully into the link. “This is really odd.”
Leon snorted. “You’re preaching to the choir there, Hunnigan.”
“Well…keep an eye out, okay? I’m not picking up any scans of hostiles, but…better safe than sorry, right?”
“Right. Keep me updated.”
“Will do.”
iv.
Leon peels himself away from the car and heads down the street. He’ll head for the center of five points; it was closest to the residential area, which meant there was more of a possibility for survivors to have congregated there.
The streetlamps are still humming in the night air, illuminating patches of the sidewalk with spots of orange and yellow light. Some of the lights in the houses are still on. A breeze blows down the street, rustling the trees along the sides of the street. If Leon hadn’t been so aware of the fact that no one was there, it might’ve felt as though he were just strolling down the street on a late-night walk. Instead, it’s like something out of a horror movie, but Leon’s not worried about seeing tall shapes standing silently behind tree trunks, watching him from the shadows, or axe-murderers waiting to jump out from behind the empty cars. That was charming compared to this. This…this is too eerie to even be called a comfortable cliché.
It’s a twenty-minute walk from the residential zone to the plaza of five points. Along the way, Leon keeps his ears perked for sounds of movement. Of course, there are none, and it’s still unnerving as hell to technically be the only person walking around town.
Coming up on the plaza, Leon sees a fountain looming ahead in the distance. The water is still burbling out of it, filling the silence with welcome noise. Standing next to it, Leon turned in a full circle, taking in all of the buildings in the vicinity. Like the houses in the residential area, the lights are still on in some of them, the tenants apparently having up and left in the middle of the night. Similarly to the main street, there are cars that have been overturned, and oddly enough, there’s a garbage can that’s innards have been set on fire. On Leon’s two o’clock, there is a building housing a neighborhood market on its first floor and a pharmacy on the second floor. The lights are out, and the storefront looks untouched – looters or otherwise - meaning there was likely no one inside.
On each corner of the plaza lies a restaurant: a barbeque place on the northwestern side, a late-night pizza place adjacent to that, an upscale looking Mediterranean kitchen on the southwestern corner, and a mom and pop diner sitting diagonally across the plaza. The pizza place had an outdoor seating area, and the chairs and tables had all been haphazardly knocked over as though the guests couldn’t be bothered to simply walk around them to get onto the street.
Leon weighed his options. Walking straight north would take him back towards the beginning of the main street and would lead him out of New Hope, and he’d cut across to the residential area from the northeastern direction; that left the southwestern and southeastern roads to take –
Leon had gotten so used to there being no one around that it genuinely startled him to see something moving down the southwestern street.
They were too far away to discern whether or not they were infected, and they didn’t seem to be making any noise either. Usually, infected people made noise: low, guttural growls or high-pitched animalistic screeching. And upon further inspection, the figure seemed to be walking normally, if with a bit of hesitation in each step, but it could hardly be called a limp, much less the telltale zombie shuffle.
Still, if this night had proven anything to Leon, it was that the world could still surprise him. Just because there wasn’t a growl and a limp to rival drunken three-legged dog didn’t mean that he could lower his guard.
Keeping his finger on the trigger of his Wing, Leon crept down the street after the figure, staying close to the sidewalk and the darting through the light of the streetlamps. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of his own reflection in the glass of the storefront windows, heartbeat pounding in his ears as he tailed the figure.
He hadn’t quite caught up to it yet, but he could tell from where he was that it was a male. Maybe a little shorter than Leon himself with a skinnier frame. He couldn’t make out any blood or viscera coating the man’s form when he passed under a streetlamp, and his clothes still seemed intact. But there was something…off about him.
He passed under another streetlamp, making like he was going to keep wandering aimlessly down the street, until he abruptly stopped mid-step.
Following his lead, Leon paused as well, thankfully hidden in the shadow of an empty store. The man settled into an idle stance, as if listening or watching or waiting for something. Leon narrows his eyes.
No…he couldn’t have…
The man turned his head, slowly at first, swiveling to the right. Then the rest of his body follows until he’s facing Leon entirely.
No, not just facing him, looking at him. Even with his milky white eyes – iris and sclera and all – Leon can feel the weight of the man’s gaze in the core of his being. His mouth is slightly agape, breath coming out in puffs in the cool air.
Leon doesn’t quite raise his gun. The man hasn’t made a move besides turning to face him. He keeps his finger on the trigger and straightens slowly. No sudden movements.
He feel the man tracking him with his empty eyes and fights a shiver.
“Hey,” he calls out, keeping his voice deliberately low enough for just the man to hear, “Are you…”
The atmosphere shifts sickeningly, as if suddenly someone else had invited themselves into Leon’s space, and he immediately tenses. He hadn’t noticed it until now – god, that was such a stupid mistake, stupid, stupid– but there in the store window next to him…that wasn’t his reflection.
Leon forced himself to stay put; if he backed up, put some distance between the man under the streetlight and the woman watching them through the store window, he might set them off. He hadn’t even known she was there until he caught sight of her white eyes watching them through the window.
But it became immediately apparent that it didn’t matter how quickly he moved, as suddenly the woman was pressing her hands against the glass, bowing it with what looks like little effort, and sending huge shards blasting out onto the sidewalk. In that split second between the window being smashed to pieces and Leon lifting a hand to avoid getting an eyeful of the stuff, he loses sight of the man, only to have him reappear underneath him, tackling him into the gaping maw of the darkened store.
Leon grunts, wincing at the bite of broken glass against his back, and drives his boot up and into the man’s gut, knocking him away. The woman chooses that moment to come diving at him then, hands outstretched to grab him. Leon snags her wrists, jams a foot against her chest and rolls with her momentum, flipping her over his body and sending her flying into the man, who had been getting to his feet.
Leon rolls the opposite way onto his feet, putting some distance between himself and the pair and lifts his gun. Something barrels out of the recesses of the store towards him, and he sidesteps, allowing the third figure to slam into the actual front door of the building. They crash through the glass and roll out onto the street, distracting Leon for long enough for the woman to come running at him.
Catching her by the throat and running with her momentum, he slams her into the floor, only taking a moment to watch her scrabble and snarl at him before aiming a bullet straight into her skull.
The man shrieks at the report of the gunshot, something that mysteriously sounds like actual English save for the fact that it also sounds as though the man had gargled gravel beforehand, and rips the shelf from the wall behind him, lobbing it overhead towards Leon.
Leon ducks and rolls, the shelf missing entirely, and comes up again a mere few inches away from the man, and puts a bullet in his forehead, the force of it snapping his head back sharply and splattering his brains across the wall.
In the same instance, there’s a sickening crunch behind him suddenly, followed by the wet, slopping sound of what can only be grey matter smattering across the floor. Leon whirls around, Wing shooter trained on whatever might be lurking behind him – fully expecting the third infected to be standing there growling at him.
But he’s pleasantly surprised. It’s definitely not a zombie.
Standing – well, more like staggering – in Leon’s line of fire, only slightly illuminated by the light of the streetlamp outside, is a man. He’s about Leon’s height, maybe an inch or two shorter, with longish hair and wide blue eyes. He’s covered in a spray of blood, flecks of it splashed across his face and shirt, down his arms and over the impressive metric fuck-ton of bracelets covering his wrist. In his hands, he’s holding an aluminum bat, both soaked in blood and dented in the middle; it’s no doubt the weapon he’d used to brain the third infected lying at his feet.
He looks like shit.
Still, he hasn’t tried to attack Leon yet. He killed the last infected. And yes, his eyes were indeed blue. He hadn’t turned yet. Leon doesn’t lower his guard yet, but he does lower his gun a bit.
“Hey” says Leon, casually enough that he doesn’t spook the guy, but with enough caution to wordlessly warn him not to try anything. “You okay?”
The guy’s eyes drop to the bat in his hands for a long moment before he looks back at Leon, shaken. “My friends got eaten and I’m covered in brain juice, but y’know,” he shrugs, still looking shell-shocked and a touch dazed. “I’m managing.”
Some weird part of Leon almost wants to laugh at that; as in poor taste of a quip as it was, this guy reminded him of himself: endlessly snarking to cope with the world falling to shit around you.
“You’re right,” he settles for instead, a slight upturn of his mouth. “That was a dumb question.”
He lowers his gun completely and gets to his feet. “Is it just you here?”
The guy nods slowly. “Yeah. Used to be six of us.”
He gazes into the dark bowels of the shop. “Guess it could have been a lot worse. At least the shop was closed. Would’ve been way worse if there were customers. But…”
The guy grimaces at the bloody bat in his hands. “I guess it didn’t matter anyway. Everyone’s gone.”
Leon glances back at the two other bodies in the shop. “I’m guessing they were three of the six?”
“They went up to check to see if the coast was clear. I…I didn’t want them to. Begged them not to. They never came back.”
“What happened to the other two?”
“They turned while we were hanging back in the basement.” The guy lets the bat swing to his side. “This bat didn’t used to be dented, you know.”
All things considered, he was taking the fact that he’d killed his coworkers in self-defense pretty well. Leon was used to the survivors screaming and in hysterics. Quiet melancholy was new.
“What happened here?” he asked.
The guy shook his head. “Honestly? I have no idea. I wasn’t on the schedule to work today, and I’d just gotten back from Seattle, so…” he shrugged, looking back at Leon, eyes losing focus as he recounted whatever horrors he’d seen earlier in the night. “I was here for maybe an hour when things went to shit. I got back from Seattle, came to the shop, and…all of a sudden we’re locking the basement door and hiding out because half the neighborhood is white-eyed and banging on the front door.”
“How long have you been in the basement?”
“All night. The sun was setting when I got here.”
Leon swore under his breath. It had been hours since the outbreak had begun; the task force was already long gone. At least he’d found a survivor.
Small victories.
“Okay,” he said. “Follow me. There’s a rescue team outside of town; I’ll take you to them. It’s safer than hanging out here.”
The guy stares at him, probably wondering who the hell Leon was and why he was here. He jerkily nods, glancing back into the recesses of the shop.
“Okay.” He turned back to Leon, looking a little more there in the present. “Okay.”
Leon nods back at him reassuringly, and then walks back towards the window, crunching over the bits of broken glass.
Reopening the comm link, he surveys the street for any other signs of infected residents, and upon seeing none, hails his support.
“Hunnigan, can you hear me?”
“I read you, Leon. Any news?”
Leon can hear the guy crunching over the glass behind him, the sound of his shoes slapping against the pavement as he steps free of the shop window.
“I’ve got a survivor. What’s the ground team’s position? I’m gonna need a pick up for him.”
“The closest team is about an hour away. So far they haven’t found anything, but they want to continue to the outskirts of Seattle just to be safe,” said Hunnigan. “I can send someone to pick up the remaining survivors, though.”
“Survivor,” corrects Leon begrudgingly. “So far, it’s just him.”
Hunnigan goes quiet. “Oh,” she says. The link is silent for a moment.
Then, “Have you found any signs of the other residents then?”
“Yeah,” says Leon, moving down the street. “Three hostiles. They’re not like the others; I don’t know this strain. You guys’ll have to send a forensics crew.”
“Different how?”
“They look human, save for the white eyes. They speak, they walk like normal. Nothing to tell them apart from you and me ‘cept for the eyes.”
“Sounds reminiscent of Las Plagas,” murmured Hunnigan. “Unfortunately, we lost contact with the original police force before they could find out where the source of the virus came from. We don’t know enough about it…” She trailed off.
“Hunnigan?”
“Alright. Focus on getting the survivor out of there.”
“Yeah, sure. Keep me posted.”
Leaving the link, Leon glanced at his quiet companion. He still looks really out of it, clutching the bat in his hand and watching the street carefully.
“You said the shop was closed, right?” said Leon. He’s not usually one for small talk, but this guy’s got the thousand-yard stare going on and Leon kind of needs him to not be hysterical. It was hard to be sneaky and traverse a town unnoticed if your survivor was having a bona fide mental breakdown. He needs to keep him distracted.
“What were you still doing there? Inventory night?”
“Nah. D and D night,” the guy says distractedly. He’s no longer looking at the empty buildings but watching the bat in his hand.
Leon glances back at him, eyebrow raised in confusion. “D and D?”
The guy nods. “Dungeons and Dragons. We do a podcast sometimes, me and my coworkers...”
“Oh.” Leon vaguely remembers hearing something along those lines from the IT kids running around the DSO headquarters. “Like with the dice.”
“Yeah.” The guy trails off for a moment. “You must be government, yeah? Seems like you know what you’re doing. Like you’ve seen,” he waves a hand at the abandoned plaza around them, “this before.”
“Yeah,” says Leon with a slight grimace. “You could say that.”
He tosses the guy a nod over his shoulder. “Name’s Leon.”
That gets a reaction.
The guy pauses walking for a second, watching him, as though he’s suddenly unfamiliar with the world around him, but familiar enough with Leon that his eyes brighten a little. Something akin to recognition crosses his face. Does Leon know this guy or something? No, he’s never seen this guy before in his life.
“Okay,” the guy says anyway. He nods once, offers a lopsided grin in return. “Cool. I’m Matt.”