The nights seemed to get getting longer. All the alerts, news articles about attacks, missing persons, a death cult! This once peaceful city, Raccoon City, had turned into a place of dreary paranoia with a substantially higher crime rate. Suburban people were split between the "Oh nothing will happen to us" denial stage of a crisis. The other half were in the "Doomsday Nay-Sayers" buying up all they could for storage purposes. Realistically, though you had a bunch of silently concerned folks believing in their government and local police, with their S.T.A.R.S unit, to keep at bay whatever was going on. They weren't ready for this. No one was.
Me? I happened to be caught some where between it all. I was an out of shape, slightly paranoid security guard working in the outskirts an older industrial park. It was the industrial boom, modernization that had started a lot of the crime and thus the need for crime awareness. I had taken the job as a security guard with the idea that it would be good, honest, easy work with its ups and downs? I mean that's what a normal job is right? Yea normal, you want to "throw-a-wrench" into patrolling at night? Let the NEWS tell you there has been a rash of missing persons in the forest area not two hundred yards from where most of your night, or some crazy death cult idea! I know right? A paranoid mind doesn't need extra stories to let you believe something is there to get you in the dark, not when the flashlight doesn't always relieve this either, whatever was there could have moved. Oh and the walls, open sky, and just quietness of an abandoned, after hours industrial park? The sounds, they echo and echo. Screams, animals, you name it, I've heard it. After a few months or so you began to place the animal calls, if they are fighting, you do research. You just know or at least you think you do. The only thing you know for sure is when you hear something out of place. Ever hear a rabbit cry? Sounds like a terrified child, a horrifying sound to some, nightmare inducing even.
One night around the end of July was my first encounter, the same week I had seen and heard the Police helicopters heading into the mountains. I was roaming the dark concrete jungle of construction and industrial rigging. Only two colors existed in my peripheral vision black and grey, varies shades there of. The flashlight's beam only revealed a wider range of those two colors. Well a bit of the brown rust color from all the metal wasting away around these parts. Out of habit I walked in a fashion to reduce the sound of my boots echoing down the concrete walls. It got eerie the echo made it sound as if someone was following you perfectly. Again I was avoiding letting my paranoid mind have extra things to use against me. Then there it was the first "out-of-place" echo. I actually believed it to be my mind and its paranoid state until I stopped, trying to focus my ears over my mind, I would prove it wrong. Sadly my heart rate quickened when not only did I hear the echo of a heavy foot fall but another sound all together. Something caught between a groan and a gurgle. I spent the next several minutes lassoing my mind, focusing and gaining a shred of composure. No big deal, yet, find the source, observe and report. Security guard's personal mantra, observe and report.
I swept the path before me with the flashlight. I was currently between two tall warehouses, each step close and cautious. Left over right, not taking another step until first foot was firmly placed. The noise came again this time was very similar to a warning hiss made but with human vocals. Not a fast passing of air but a slow one. As if someone was to simply open their mouth and force an exhale. My mind decided to remind me that it tagged the sound to that airy hiss that happens in the old horror films when a tomb was opened or a black and white film when the vampire first appears. Another heavy step echoed this time however a faint sliding or dragging sound followed. I was coming to an intersection well more like a small loading area that was created behind, rather at the corners of four different warehouses. I knew the area by heart and that it was roughly one hundred by one hundred feet square with alley like the one I was in at the corners. It was currently rather empty, few stacks of random barrels and pallets of things stored here. Was a security light on the far end, was above one of the warehouse dock bay doors. The light itself was blocked by a pallet with four barrels, atop a pallet of four barrels, most likely used oil from the machines around here. At first I used the light available to me, keeping my flashlight pointed down, I could hear smaller sounds now. Shuffling, shifting of pebbles and rocks by someone obviously not trying to be quiet, though I could not get a direct line of sight of the source of the sounds. My mind rattled with all the possibilities: bunch of kids mucking about, a druggy on a horrid trip, a homeless man or two? Perhaps a resurrected ancient god! No, mind was going into the deep end of options, time to reel it back. These things I had dealt with, minus the ancient god but with the NEWS as it was and just everything being too late in the night, early morning. I couldn't fathom why someone would be out here doing anything to alter their state of mind. Crazy will be crazy I suppose.
I stepped out into the open light, moving toward the double stack of barrel-pallets. Was still trying to gather and keep a bit of composure, my heart rate was still louder than the sounds I was trying to track down. Another heavy foot fall, this time it echoed but the sound was closer than the echo. I stopped a moment taking a deep breath cursing the wind for picking this perfect moment to bring some rotting kill scent from the woods through this area. I choked back a gag cresting around the corner of the barrels. The light was bright on this side, displaying clearly the small puddle from the previous mid day rain. Opposite side of the puddle heading the opposite way around as myself was a clear and plain as day wet foot print, the partnered step was just a wet smear.