Prologue
It was a rainy day, nothing out of ordinary. Dark clouds covered the afternoon sky leaving no signs that the sun shined brightly just few hours ago. Earth, mixed with water turned into mud. Damp fallen leaves on the road sticked to the concrete. Rain could be heard pelting the windows of the car, awaking Leon Worthington. He opened his eyes slightly to see the outside world once again. He was laying in the baackseat of the car in a crooked position, covered by a small torn blanket. Rubbing his eyes, he got himself up to the sitting position and looked through the windows. Road was deserted, and woods around it were deserted too, or it seemed like it. Few strands of blonde hair blocked his view, thus he slicked them to the side with his left hand. Leon looked at the front seat where he placed his backpack, reaching for it and unzipping it, to take a small plastic bottle of water. After taking a sip, he returned it to the backpack, only to take a small a small can filled with sardines.
They proved to be pretty tasty. After all, Leon was starving, judging by the grumbling sound his stomach produced. A moment of peaceful lunch was ended when Leon heard that groan of mindless hunger he has been hearing everyday for three years now. One of the damned staggered towards the car, with his crazied eyes set upon it. Leon ignored it, eating in peace as the monstrosity approached the car and stopped. Young man leaned back and looked at it as he finished eating, placing whole sardines in his mouth. Finishing his meal, Leon placed the empty can on the backseat and took a blade that rested on the floor beneath him. Opening the doors to his back, Leon walked out, feeling the rain on his skin, and walked around the car. Hearing his footsteps, creature turned and moved towards him, but not long before Leon swung his machete in a perfect circle splitting it's head in half. Corpse fell on the back, motionless. Leon stared down at it for a moment before looking down at the bloodied blade in his right hand. Blood was slowly washed away by the rain. Realising that standing in the rain doing nothing wouldn't do any good to him, Leon walked back into the car.
What should I do? Where should I go? Is there a purpose in all of this? Is this hell ever going to end?, were all the questions that plagued Leon's mind. He's been wandering alone for nearly a year now. He didn't have much trouble with the dead until recently, when they started showing in greater numbers, and even then, he evaded them easily. It's the living that worried him. On several occasions, Leon had to run for his life. Machete and a pistol are not enough against well armed group of survivors trying to shoot him on sight. And yet, in this particular area, the living proved more vicious than ever before.
Brushing these foul thoughts off his mind, Leon reached for his backpack yet again, pulling out a comic book he scavanged a day ago from a nearby town. He read for a good few minutes when he heard something in distance, closing in to him, very fast. He raised his head just enough to be able to see through the window, and he spotted a speeding car driving right towards him, presumably chased by three men on the bikes, judging by the speed biker were closing in to the car. Leon ducked in hopes of not being seen, but a loud sound of of gunshot and something that sounded like a car crash couldn't make Leon not look up to see what's happening. What he saw was that car rolling away from the road to the brink of the woods and bikers stopping just few paces away from Leon and the car he was in. Car was turned upside down when it finished rolling, leaving traces in the grass marking the path it made as it rolled.
Two of the bikers wore helmets, but one in the middle wasn't. He had greying hair and a short untrimmed beard, and judging by his looks and the ways he moved and commanded the other two, he was a leader, motioning to his subordinates with his fingers to approach the car from both sides. They all wore a black leather jackets, reminding Leon of one of those biker gangs from when world could be called normal. A woman, in ragged and torn clothes , covered in blood, crawled outside the car. Leon lowered his head when one of the bikers looked around himself, locking his gaze upon the car for a few moments, before turning it back to the woman.
Shit, Leon cursed to himself before daring to look up. A woman brought herself to the sitting position, leaning on the wreck of the car, as the leader of bikers crouched next to her, speaking something Leon couldn't hear clearly.
''..no point in running away, huh?'' was all Leon heard before a sound of gunshot startled him. Drop of sweat rolled down his forehead as he lowered his head as quickly as possible. He could feel his heart kicking to get out of chest as his left hand slowly moved towards half zipped backpack, reaching inside. As he gripped the cold metal, Leon slowly pulled out a pistol, his trusty glock he's been carrying ever since the start of this hell. He strained all his senses, ready to fight back in a moment these men strike at him – if they strike at him at all. They might be friendly, but judging from what he saw, that wasn't the case. Their reason for killing that woman could be anything. Maybe she stole from them, killed one of their own, attacked them first. Or, maybe she was held captive and tried to escape.
Who knows, and who cares at all? These shitheads will probably kill me as well if they see me, Leon thought to himself as he gripped the pistol in his left hand tighter. Tension could be touched in the air with each passing second as for few moments, only the sound of rain could be heard.
It felt as if a burden of a whole mountain was lifted from his back when Leon heard the engines turning on and bikers driving away. Young man sighed and raised himself in a sitting position.
''This was close.'' Leon whispered and sighed again in relief.
Woman's corpse was still leaning on the wrecked car when Leon approached it. She made a grimace with her eyes staring empty at one spot and her jaw dropped, allowing some of the blood to drop down her pale face to mouth in small rills from the hole in the center of the forehead. Her damp brown hair sticked to her head, side of her head red from blood, presumably a wound she recieved as she rolled in her car. Leon was by now used to seeing things like this, yet everytime he saw it, a scene of man, woman or child murdered like this made his heart feel heavy. He crouched next to her, closing her eyes with his fingers. After few moments of silence with just a sound of slowing rain heard in the background, he stood up, turning his look away from the dead, approached the car, took his backpack after packing it with all of his things, and sheathed the machete under his belt and a pistol in it's sheath on his waist. Leon was standing on the middle of the road when rain finally stopped, small yellow rays of sunlight slowly breaking through the dark clouds. In front of him was seemingly an endless road, but Leon knew every road has it's end, good or bad, to Leon it didn't matter. But deep inside, he felt it, and he knew it, that after three years of trying to survive this hell, this was just the beggining.