Some warnings in advance: contains profane language, adult situations, violence and drugs. A RE fanfiction.

Resident Evil: Forgotten Dreams

Wow, it sure has been a while.

Leon stands next to me, a pistol at his side, holding a shotgun, identical to the one I'm holding, across his back. He's staring out at the vast plain of ash, gray skies above us. No sunlight shines down upon the wreckage of what had once been Las Vegas, Nevada. Nothing is left here, or really anywhere else on earth aside from rubble and ash.

"I tell you, foraging is one of the fuckin' stupidest jobs that we've ever been assigned to," he informs me, sifting his hand through several layers of dust. "Hell, there could be anything out there. And what's the point! Nothing's left, all the bastards either destroyed it or burned it all."

I don't reply, he's right. All that lays before us are bits of loose, charred timber. The dry air around us whips in a frenzy over the parched land.

"You know, this seems pretty damn dangerous, you're right," I reply, "we might need more ammo. Think we should get back to the entrance and tell Yevin - "

"No, Calvin," Leon cuts me off sharply, but with a slight smirk, "we don't want to spend more time on the surface than we need to. Lets just look for whatever we can find - which I know won't be much - and then get our asses back down there, okay?"

I nod.

Reality composed.

Leon starts forward, pushing pieces of charred metal aside. As he forges a path, I look up at the dark, polluted sky. The clouds move fast - once or twice I see a flash of lightning.

"Come on, Calvin!" says Leon. His voice is strained from the exertion of a large pipe he's lifting. I hurry over and help him move it aside. We dig further into the wreckage, but still find nothing but rats and rubble.

I shift a heavy two - by - four aside, and a dead human face is revealed. Fuck.

"Leon, I got a corpse here!"

He jogs over and looks down at the pale face, crusted with blood.

"Son of a bitch!" Leon says, surprise in his voice. "That's Cecil, the forager from last week, remember?"

I do remember. My eyes are locked with Cecil's face.

"Whatever killed him might still be out here."

"Yes, and it can eat our fuckin' bullets. Probably just a minor scavenger that killed him. Cecil only had a pistol, and they're sneaky little shits, if you recall."

I tear my gaze away. "Come on, we gotta get his body outta there."

We begin to move all the piles of timber and beams off of Cecil's corpse, straining hard against the massive weight. It takes ten minutes to get his body out. Once he's laying down on the ashen earth beside us, we sit down, breathing deeply.

"You know, the council's really gotta fucking learn how to send foragers out here WITHOUT dying," I growl.

"I know," replies Leon. "This whole damn concept is screwed over. And with the other bastards wandering around here, I don't think they get the fact that we're living right under a Hot Zone."

"Yeah, thank god for the antidote - " I say, drawing out a small vile with green liquid in it. In that one second, a zombie dives out of the rubble around us and tackles me ferociously.

The attack is so fast that Leon doesn't go for the shotgun right away. I fall into a pile of ash, my hands up, the only thing warding the fucker off from biting me and sending the virus into my system. The gaunt, bloody corpse flails around, nails clicking inches from my face.

I draw a fist back and punch the zombie off me. On contact, my fist is bitten by the zombie, but I don't notice, my adrenaline is supercharged.

The zombie leaps on top of Leon and bites him in the shoulder. Leon screams in pain.

The zombie screeches in victory.

I drop the vile and seize my shotgun. Boom.

The zombie explodes in a flash of bloody meat. It flies off of Leon, who is shaking in pain. I grab the vile and load a syringe, my hands trembling.

"It's too late, Calvin," gasps Leon tremulously.

"The hell it is," I answer. I crawl forward, stab the needle into Leon's neck and shoot him full of the antidote. Then I quickly load a different syringe and shoot some into my arm because of my bitten fist.

Leon's shaking abruptly stops, and he relaxes, his breathing evens out. I take time to wrap a bandage around his bleeding shoulder and my fist.

"Fuck, that was close," I whisper to him. Leon nods wordlessly. I get the feeling he's afraid to speak. "Talk, it'll make you feel better."

Leon brushes his hair out of his eyes, and says carefully, "we gotta retake the surface."

I shoot him a look. "Do you realize how hard that will be? It's not just the US, it's the entire earth that's been taken."

"Exactly," he says in response. "Umbrealla has survived far too long."

"Any time is too long. Ten fuckin' years is just bullshit, you're right. But what can we do? We've gotta put our faith in the council."

"Face it, Calvin, they're a crackerjack group of fuckers," he seethes. "They don't know sh-t about the virus, the outbreak, Umbrella, NOTHING! We do."

I sigh, sitting back with a twinge in my bloody hand. He's right, but there's nothing I could think of doing.

"Umbrealla is too damn big," I say resignedly. "We gotta bide our time, wait for the right moment to make our move. Let the group of fuckers handle it, and we'll step in when it's time. Can you wait for that time, Leon?"

He nods, but I can sense anger toward both Umbrella and the council boiling inside of him with the nod.

"They're on our side, Leon. We can't fight with each other, we need a common enemy - or Umbrella may have already won."