September 29th 1998, Raccoon City Police Department, Raccoon City...
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
His voice echoed back to him off the marble floor and the grand walls of the Raccoon City Police Department main hall, a structure more suited to an art gallery than a police station, at first glance. At the far end of the ground floor, a white marble statue of a robed goddess holding up a billowing flag towered over proceedings and holding up a shield in her other hand, while the second floor was circled by a balcony that flanked the hall, with twin staircases leading up to it, right at the back of the room.
But there were indications of its current role too. There was a front desk a few yards away from the short flight of steps just in front of the main doors, and the entire hall was littered with heavy supply crates, medical cots for refugees and some areas were cordoned off with medical curtains on thin steel rails, to offer some semblance of privacy for those taking refuge here. But it was still abandoned, despite the obvious traces of recent human activity: discarded food and beverage packaging, soiled and bloodied bandages and gauze piled high beside some cots, and the bloody boot prints which moved to and fro.
All in all, it wasn't exactly the best start to Leon Scott Kennedy's career in the R.P.D.
He was meant to start last week, of course. He'd passed the academy with flying colours, and he was young and eager to get out there and start doing some good for the world. Perhaps a little too eager, some of his instructors warned. But then he got a frantic phone call from an R.P.D sergeant warning him to 'stay the hell away', and he stayed put. But after a week of nothing else heard, his impatience and eagerness finally got the best of him, and he loaded up his jeep and set out for the midwestern industrial metropolis of Raccoon City. But after what he'd seen in that gas station outside of town, and the situation on the streets outside…
I should have stayed at home.
But he was here now. No use crying over spilt milk. And if he'd managed to make it this far, he could at least try and do his job and search for any survivors he could find. With a low breath, he took his H&K VP70 handgun in both hands and descended the short flight of steps, heading for the front desk. He had ten rounds left in his current magazine and one spare at his side along with an empty one, and that was all his life extended to right now.
Those…things outside: nothing short of a bullet or two right between the eyes seemed to stop them for good. He still remembered how one had continued to drag itself after him even as he obliterated both of its kneecaps with a single bullet each. They didn't seem to feel pain, they didn't seem to feel anything: they just ignored everything in their search for fresh meat. One look at those empty eyes told Leon all he needed to know.
He rounded the edge of the desk, scooping up the box of 9mm rounds he found lying there, coming face-to-face with a heavy storage chest, an old typewriter, and an opened reinforced laptop computer showing the R.P.D crest against a red background. Leon looked at it for a moment, then leaned in and tapped a few keys, and the screensaver promptly vanished, showing him a list of commands. One of them was 'camera', and he clicked on it to be shown a series of security camera feeds from around the building o grid. They showed little but empty hallways and rooms.
"There has to be someone here," he muttered to himself, scrolling through the feeds. Suddenly, he saw a figure moving on the bottom right screen, and his eyes locked on in time to see the bright flash of a pistol discharging. He clicked onto the feed and it expanded to fill the entire grid in time to see the flash of a second shot, and then the figure ran towards the camera, vanishing from view as another figure shambled after them, their clothes soaked through with blood.
"Not good."
The figure appeared on the next feed along, and now Leon could see it was a fair-haired man in a light blue shirt and an R.P.D kevlar vest. So there were other cops still alive. The man kept watching down the corridor as he carefully holstered his pistol then reached around into his back pocket and took something out. Then he was suddenly talking, to the camera itself.
"David, Marvin, you there?!" he was calling out, glancing up at the camera as he spoke, then back down the passage. Then he was holding up an object – a small notebook – to the camera so his unseen comrades could see it. "I found a way out, it's in here!"
But then he had to slip it back into his rear pocket and draw his pistol again as his pursuer staggered onto screen, their arms held out before them. The cop fired a single shot into the man's chest and he paused briefly, a red bloom spreading on his jacket, before he resumed his march. Then he was within range and lunging, and the cop raised his left arm, jamming it underneath the man's chin, holding his bloody teeth back, though he was still forced back a few steps. Then he pushed back himself, and his attacker stumbled and staggered back a few feet down the hallway, far enough for the cop to make his escape.
Before doing so, he looked up at the camera once again. "East hallway, send reinforcements!" Then he was gone off camera, and the other man staggered after him, arms raised.
Leon bought up the map of the ground floor with a few more button presses, and the East Hallway was marked in blinking red, at the far eastern edge of the building, a backwards C-shaped corridor encircling the Break Room and terminating with a set of descending stairs at the northern edge and the Watchman's Room at the southern edge. And all a short walk (in theory) from the main hall.
"I gotta find that guy," Leon said to himself, with great conviction. He hadn't managed to help anyone yet, but that would change. Taking up his pistol again, he turned and headed for the east wing entrance, just beside the front doors.
He found his path almost immediately blocked by a steel security shutter that was blocking the entrance. And then a sheet of paper had been haphazardly taped to the front of said shutter, with an ominous warning written on, in large, black letters: KEEP OUT! Leon stared at it for several seconds with an uneasy feeling building in his gut, before he finally approached the control lever to the left of the shutter and pulled it down. There was a bleep and the red light turned green, and the shutter began to grind up a few inches…before it suddenly stopped with the crackle of electrics shorting out in the control panel.
"Great," Leon sighed, staring at the dark gap beneath the shutter, just about high enough for him to slither under on his belly. But with the realisation that there was a fellow officer in danger, he finally relented and went down on his front, shining his flashlight into the pitch black corridor beyond. His torchlight showed little save for a floor and wall liberally splattered in blood and a few overturned planters.
Forcing down the apprehension in his gut, Leon shone his light to his left, down the passage, and he saw little save for more blood-splattered walls and overturned furniture. But there were no bodies, no more of those things. It was all quiet. Too quiet. But Leon pulled himself through entirely anyways, rising to his feet.
"Okay," he said to himself quietly, as he started to walk down the corridor, his flashlight raised, pistol in his other hand, down at his side, ready to be raised and aimed at a moment's notice. He played the light back and forth, exposing little save for abandoned furniture, notice boards covered in missing and wanted posters, and more bloodstains. Something violent had gone down here, but when? There were no bodies, no remains, nothing.
Then his foot suddenly splashed into something and Leon nearly jumped out of his skin, before he shone his light down and saw his was standing in a puddle of foetid water. There must have been a broken water pipe somewhere as well. There was also a fusebox on the wall, missing a fuse, which probably explained why the lights were off. He moved on, past a door locked tightly with chains wrapped around its handles.
He reached the end of the corridor where it took a sharp turn to the right, and he slowly stepped around it with his gun up. There was nobody there though, save for the loud creaking of wood settling. Or perhaps it was something moving around on the floor above him. He took a slow, deep breath.
"You got this."
He carried on, past the abandoned snack machines and a lone door boarded up with planks of wood, turning into another stretch of corridor which was much narrower than he expected. The walls and shelves on either side closed in on him, constricting the space he had to move around in, and potentially, his escape route too. He passed by a pair of white wooden doors, a small placard beside them announcing 'Press Room'. He pushed through inside, finding a moderately-sized room with a large desk and a row of microphones at the far end, flanked by camera equipment. Behind said desk was a blue flag draped across the back wall showing the R.P.D crest. There was also the decaying corpse of a civilian, his jugular torn out. Turning him over carefully, Leon found another box of 9mm rounds, and stepped back out into the hallway.
After moving a locker which had fallen into his path – or perhaps someone had purposefully tipped it over to block the passage – he turned another corner to find himself standing beside the protruding desk from the small Watchman's Room, right beside the East Hallway where the mystery officer was last seen. Through the opening Leon could see the small office back, which looked relatively untouched compared to the rest of the building he had seen so far. Then he looked to the right, towards the bend of the corridor where a few windows were placed.
"Jesus…!"
He saw the bodies now. Most of them were civilians, but there were a couple of uniformed corpses in the pile, leaning up against the wall or splayed across the floor, long dead. They were covered in bite wounds, indicating the cause of death, and their clothes soaked through with blood. The stench of copper was strong in the air. Leon felt it on his tongue, against his teeth, in his nose. It was invasive, repulsive. But he had to deal with it, even a she was starting to realise that this building was less a police station and more of a charnel house at this point.
He was moving towards the Watchman's Room when he heard some muffled grunting and gasping, and then something thumped against the security shutter on the opposite side. He paused, thinking for a moment that it was another one of those creatures, but then he heard the voice.
"Open up!" it demanded, before hammering against the shutter again. "Open up! Open this goddamn door!" The terror and desperation was plain to hear, even through a metal shutter. Springing into action, Leon practically slammed through the door into the Watchman's Room and approached the shutter, seeing no lever to control it. But he did see the rim at the bottom of the shutter, to help with lifting it by hand.
"I'll get you out!" he called out to the unseen officer, crouching down and getting both hands underneath the rim, and lifting as hard a she could manage. But much like the shutter back in the main hall, it only raised about eight inches before it stopped dead. But it was enough, as there was suddenly an arm shooting through the gap created, clutching a small notebook. Then Leon saw the desperate, sweaty face behind the arm, and heard the moans and rabid growling of the things closing in.
"Give me your hand!" Leon cried, catching hold of the man by the wrist and pulling him through a couple of feet, but then he stopped dead. They had a hold of him, and Leon could hear the unsteady footfalls of several of the creatures lingering on the other side of the shutter. The whole time the officer's terrified gaze remained locked on him.
"Give me your other hand!" Leon then called, and the man reached his left arm out as he rolled onto his back suddenly, and Leon pulled again. But this time, he heard a strangled growl, and then suddenly blood flew. Then the officer started screaming.
"Hold on, hold on!" Leon was saying over and over, almost like a mantra, but the officer didn't hear him over the sounds of his own screams, his head shaking side to side viciously. More blood sprayed, and Leon could hear mastication now, sounds of flesh being torn from the bone. All the while the officer just kept screaming and screaming. Leon didn't even know a man could make noise like that.
Finally, the officer came free and Leon pulled him onto the floor of the tiny office…minus everything below the waist. Strips of tattered flesh and skin and loops of intestine trailed from the officer's midsection, leaving a sticky trail of deep red blood behind him. Bloody, scabbed hands reached under the shutter after him.
"Oh my god…Jesus Christ!" Leon cursed as he stared down at the horrific scene before him, his palms rested on the officer's shoulders. The man had finally stopped screaming, at least, as his head rolled to the side and his eyes glazed over as he made a pained grimace, and then he was gone, mercifully. Leon continued to stare down at the corpse, wide-eyed, taking deep, heaving breaths.
The first officer he had seen alive and well, and now he was dead, in seconds.
He looked up at the shutter, suddenly aware that the things on the opposite side were still beating against it and growling, now they knew there was prey behind it. Leon was sure that the shutter would hold for a long while yet, but he still didn't fancy testing his chances, especially in such a constricted space.
He moved to leave, when he realised that the officer's notebook was still on the floor beside its previous owner, speckled with blood. Whatever was inside it must have been important, as the man seemed more concerned about the little book than his own life at the end of the day. Leon curiously picked it up and flipped it open, finding that it was largely blank, but the last few used pages were of interest.
One spread showed a side-on sketch of what was presumably a passage beneath the police station – its entrance beneath the marble goddess statue – leading to the parking lot and then to a way out, though 'way out' was written on with a large question mark. Overleaf, there were three sketches of what looked like a lion, a unicorn and a woman carrying a large water vessel, with diagrams of other symbols below each one. He had no clue what any of it meant, but he figured he could work that out later.
Tucking the book into his back pocket, he began to turn back towards the door into the corridor-
-just as the door slammed in off its hinges and another one of them staggered inside.
"Shit!" Leon cursed, swinging up his handgun and then hesitating when he saw a man in an R.P.D uniform and peaked cap standing before him. But then he saw the dead, marbled eyes and the pale, sickly flesh and he realised that it wasn't a friendly. He aimed again and fired just as the man made a lunge for him.
"Back off!" Leon cried as the 9mm sliced into the man's chest. Blood flew and the officer flinched, but otherwise remained on his feet. The second round went through the left cheek and sliced off a fair chunk of flesh, exposing gleaming white teeth. The third round punched through the officer's left eye and there was a small, tired groan as he went down in a heap on the spot, the edge of the doorway behind him splattered in blood and chunks of flesh. Leon was already moving past the dead weight, pulling out his flashlight and stepping back into the corridor, heading for the relative safety of the main hall.
Crash!
Leon nearly jumped out of his skin as a man crashed head-first through one of the windows, landing on his shoulders in an awkward, rubbery heap before starting to rise up again, his dirty yellowed teeth visible beneath the peak of the cap he wore. Leon jogged on past him, keeping his pistol close as he heard the sounds of wood breaking and a door being slammed open, somewhere close by. The haunting moans and feral growls followed him all the way, roused by the sudden noise.
He'd reached the blind corner just before the snack machines when he heard a high-pitched, strangled scream, and a young blonde woman suddenly stepped out from around the corner, closely followed by a brown-haired man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans. They noticed him and raised their arms.
"Jesus! They're everywhere!" Leon cursed, already raising his pistol and firing a hasty shot which tore off the woman's right arm just below the elbow. She paid it no heed as it slapped onto the floor, so he put a rapid double-tap into her head instead, and she keeled over backwards with a wet thud as she went down hard. The man took the opportunity to draw near and lunged, arms raised.
With a wordless cry, Leon got his left hand and the flashlight up beneath the man's chin, holding it back even as a cold, clammy grip caught his right arm, just above his wrist. It was unbearably strong. Cursing through gritted teeth, Leon turned sharply, and the man fell past him, his teeth snapping at thin air as he landed on the floor. Then Leon was stepping over the tangled legs and moved on, even as another moan sounded in his right ear.
"Aw, shit!" he cursed, as he reeled back from another police officer who had succumbed to this madness, a portly African-American with his stomach ruptured open and his left arm badly chewed up. Leon didn't fire on this one, as it wasn't blocking his way. Instead, he backed away slowly, his handgun trained on its head as it lethargically pursued him.
He was halfway up the corridor when he saw the brown-haired man and the one who had crashed through the window around the corner come into view, but the moans and growls indicated there were far more coming, out of sight. The R.P.D building had been a resting ground for hundreds of unfortunate souls, who were only now rousing from their deathly existence. It wasn't safe in here: it wasn't safe at all.
Run!
Leon turned and ran for the shutter back into the main hall, but as he started to get down on his front – his heart hammering away inside his chest – he realised that it must have rolled down a little since he had first come through. It wasn't high enough to allow him through he realised, even as he stuck his head under. "Come on!" he urged, letting out a groan of exertion as he jammed his right elbow beneath the shutter and forced it up as hard as he could manage, giving him the crucial few inches necessary to make his escape. Then he threw his arms forward, one after the other, practically clawing his way to safety.
Then a cold deathly grip took hold of his right leg.
"Goddammit!" he screamed as he looked back over his shoulder in time to see a bald, deathly visage with most of the flesh around its lips and the corners of its mouth torn away emerge from the darkness, its teeth yawning wide open in anticipation of a fresh kill. Leon threw his right arm out and tried to haul himself forwards again, but his pursuer clung on, keeping him anchored. The creature then reached forwards and clamped onto Leon's right arm just inside the armpit and dragged its teeth closer to him.
He couldn't break free. He was going to die here. He was going to be dragged back into that hallway of death and eaten alive-
A shadow fell over Leon, and for a few horrifying seconds he was sure it was another one of those damned things, come to finish him off. But then a strong grip caught hold of him and pulled him free of the monster hanging onto him. Bloody hands clawed after him as it was denied its meal at the last minute.
"Watch out!" Leon called as his saviour walked up to the shutter, just inches away from the growling, thrashing monster.
"Got it," the man growled, and then with one foot on the lip of the shutter's bottom edge, he promptly dropped it right onto the thing's skull. There was a disgusting spulch sound – almost like someone putting their foot through a rotten watermelon – as the skull erupted into pieces and the rest of the body finally fell still, its arms slapping against the marble floor.
Leon stared at the corpse – coagulated blood pooling beneath the shattered remnants of its skull – for a few seconds as he huffed and puffed on the spot, letting the adrenaline leech out of him, before he glanced up at his saviour finally, leaning up against the shutter with one hand clutched to a bloody wound on his right side. It was another police officer – a Lieutenant if the bars pinned to his shoulder were any indication – a tall African-American with short dark hair and a beard.
"You're safe…for now," he told Leon, before he let out a grunt of pain and fell back against the shutter, sliding down a few inches. "Marvin Branagh," he then said, by way of introduction.
"Leon Kennedy," Leon replied, in between gulps of air. "There was another officer, but I couldn't…I couldn't…" he trailed off, screwing his eyes shut as he recalled the man's ungodly screams and his messy death.
"I'm sure you did what you could, Leon," Marvin answered, pushing himself off of the shutter and offering Leon a hand, hauling him upright with surprising strength. But the words just sounded hollow to Leon.
A short while later, Marvin had been helped up to one of the black couches at the rear end of the hall, and Leon started to learn a little about what had happened in this town. It had started about a week ago: first there had been a trickle of cases involving supposed 'cannibal murders' which had started all the way back in May, which had supposedly trailed off after the intervention of the special forces S.T.A.R.S team. But then the cases had returned a couple months later, exploding to unimaginable levels this week. Next thing the R.P.D knew, most of the city's emergency shelters had fallen, and the R.P.D building was the last safe bastion in the city. And by the sounds of it, Marvin was the highest ranking officer left in the building, looking over a bare handful of officers from an original strength of over two hundred members, showing just how bad it had gotten over the space of just a week.
"Any idea how all of this started?" Leon asked as he stood near to Marvin, slotting fresh 9mm rounds into his depleted magazines. His once-pristine uniform was now marked with a few new-bloodstains, including one of a half-palm and some fingers on his right arm where he'd been grabbed just beforehand.
"No clue," Marvin replied, as he clicked away on the laptop computer that had been set up beside his seat on the couch, before adding, "all I know is this place will eat you alive if you let it."
You can say that again, thought Leon. Instead he said "well I got a call to stay away last week," as he checked over his VP70 one last time, before holstering the pistol. "I wish I'd come sooner…"
"You're hear now, Leon," Marvin insisted, as he then picked up the blood-stained notebook Leon had 'acquired' shortly beforehand. "That's all that matters."
And it still wasn't enough.
But instead of voicing those thoughts, Leon took a breath and stepped up beside Marvin. "OK lieutenant, I'm ready."
"Hopefully you'll be able to find a way out of this station," the lieutenant said as he looked up at Leon. "That officer you met earlier – Elliot – he thought this secret passageway might do the trick," he continued, as he passed the notebook to Leon, his bloody fingers tapping at the small drawings Leon had glanced at earlier on.
He took a closer look at it now, and it seemed to show that said passageway was beneath the goddess statue in the main hall, that they were just beside. It led down to the parking lot and then out of the other side, presumably to freedom, while the small trio of drawings on the next page had a trio of smaller symbols beneath each one: passwords, perhaps? It seemed like a slim chance, but at this point Leon was willing to stake his bets on anything that took him far away from the blighted metropolis.
"This is good news," the rookie said. "We can get you to a hospital."
"No," replied Marvin, shaking his head, his eyes screwed shut as he was nearly bent over double. "No, I am not the priority here."
Leon couldn't believe what he was hearing. The first relatively intact R.P.D officer he'd come across since coming to this damned city, and he didn't even want to be rescued. "Lieutenant, I'm not just going to leave you here"-
"I'm giving you an order, rookie!" barked Marvin, cutting him off sharply, and he finally looked up at Leon. "You save yourself, first. I'd come with you but I'd just slow you down."
Leon could see the logic in Marvin's words, but he still didn't like the prospect of leaving a fellow officer behind to his likely death. He looked away in annoyance, giving a small shake of his head. But Marvin didn't seem to notice as he reached behind his back and pulled something out, rising to his feet slowly and painfully.
"Now…you'll need this," he said, a tremor in his voice as he held something out for Leon. It was a serrated combat knife, still in its original leather sheath. Leon looked at it, realising that taking it meant leaving Marvin completely unarmed.
Leon sighed. "I can't take"-
"Stop." Realising that Marvin wasn't about to be convinced otherwise, Leon finally relented and reached out, taking hold of the knife's hilt. But then Marvin suddenly tightened his grip and pulled Leon closer.
"And don't make my mistake," he warned, his voice low. "You see one of those things – uniform or not – you do not hesitate. You take it out…or you run. Got it?"
That last part was delivered with the confident bark expected of a senior officer, and as Leon glanced down again at Marvin's bloody side, he knew that the lieutenant meant every syllable of his warning. He was too aware of the bloodstains on the collar of his own uniform jacket too, from teeth that had come dangerously close to his jugular.
"Yes sir," he said quietly, and Marvin finally let him take the knife, letting out a stifled gasp as he slumped badly, then slid down into the chair, his breathing coming erratically from between almost-clenched teeth. As Leon stepped back and looked at Marvin, he finally realised how pale his skin was, how it glistened with sweat, the bloodstain that was slowly blooming on Marvin's shirt.
He could understand Marvin's insistence that Leon leave him now. He'd been caught by one of those things – perhaps some time ago – and he didn't have long left. He was pretty much on his last legs, and he'd come to Leon's aid anyway. Perhaps that was why he had insisted Leon save himself first: he didn't have long left on this earth, but he was still holding true to his oath to serve and to protect others over himself.
Either way, Leon couldn't convince him otherwise, so there was little left to do save for following Elliot's hunch to get the hell out of there. With another sigh, he tucked the notebook away and worked on fixing the knife and sheath to the small of his back, within easy reach. Then he drew his pistol and set off again, heading for the blocked entrance to the west wing.
With a knife to hand, he cut through the tape sealing the control box shut and threw the switch, opening the security gate. Thankfully, this one didn't stop or jam halfway through, and he stepped through into a bright, well-lit waiting room. There were some leather seats on the left side of the room, and the actual waiting desk itself, frosted glass looking through into a sizeable office. After a quick look about, Leon moved on, deeper into the building.
This is not how I imagined my first day.
But Leon had no idea what fresh nightmares awaited him in the near future.
A/N: Come January 2019, we will once again step into the world of survival horror, alongside Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield. So with all the announcements and the trailers now out in the big, wide world, I decided I wanted to do a little one-shot based upon the Leon gameplay we have seen so far. I might be tempted to do another one if we get some more footage of Claire at the upcoming Gamescom, but we'll wait and see. Otherwise, I hoped you all enjoyed it, and read and review is possible: all feedback is appreciated, and why not check out some of my other work while you're at it?
Jammer69er