So far, it had been one hell of a shitty day.
Stuck in a tiny, cramped police car with no AC and two gossipy Spanish officers, Leona S. Kennedy was not enjoying herself. Still thought, it was better than her last mission. Acting as eye-candy for some Saudi diplomat was not her idea of a fun time, and she could have done without the extensive knowledge of the fishing industry. And, despite her numerous requests for some downtime, she'd been jettisoned off on a new assignment.
This one, at least, was urgent.
Ash Graham, the 20-something son of President Angela Graham, had managed to slip away from his detail while attending a campus party. This was, unfortunately, normal for the young man, so nothing was thought of it.
Until the ransom note was delivered.
So now, she was stuck listening to the two men up front mock her as they approached the area Ash had been known to be last before falling off the radar. Thank god for paranoid people and tracking chips.
Rolling her eyes as the driver stopped at the side of the road to take a piss, Leona started to review the facts in her mind. It took 4 days for the random demand to be receive, and another 4 for the tracking device to be disable or destroyed. The area they were in had little to no industry, and very little contact with the modern world. According to her papers, the most common form of transport was a horse drawn cart, and the people made a living as farmers.
So why was the President's son taken there?
As the car resumed it's journey, Leona sighed. It was 2004, and still her mind wandered back, to Raccoon.
'Maybe I'll call up Clark, see what he's been doing lately...' she mused as the car finally came to a stop.
Jumping at a chance to hop out of the car and stretch her legs, Leona ignored the officers as they watched from inside of the car.
"Well, chica, this is your stop," the driver said as she approached the car, and she crossed her arms.
"Really. Let me guess, this thing isn't a 4x4?" she asked, sarcastically, as she walked to the back of the car to knock on the trunk. It unlatched with a clang, and she quickly grabbed out her gear.
One standard handgun, one lucky knife, and she slammed the trunk shut.
"We figured that we'd get in the way of your...Americanisms," the officer in the passengers seat said with a smirk, and Leona rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, sure. Just make sure no one steals the car, huh? I'm sure there's a ton of street crime in this part of the country," she shot, before turning on her heel and walking down the pathway.
There was a decrepit house behind the trees, and Leona would have been prepared to ignore it in favor of continuing down the pathway. However...
"...Who parks their truck here like this? I can't squeeze through at all...damn. Well, maybe someone's home..." With a sigh, she turned to the house, wincing as she stepped onto the rotten porch.
The house lacked a door, and Leona frowned. Maybe it was the norm here, but back home that meant trouble. Quietly drawing her gun, Leona crept into the house. Even with her..."backup" outside, the gun relaxed some of her jitters. Moving past a short hall, Leona turned into the main room, before lowering her weapon.
There was a man there, tending to a fire, and Leona rustled in her pockets for the picture she'd been provided.
"Excuse me, Sir?" she asked, English first, then Spanish. "Sir, I'm sorry for intruding, but...have you seen this man anywhere?" When he didn't reply, Leona lightly tapped him on the shoulder, before jumping back as he scowled at her.
"Uh...his name is Ash Graham..." she asked, weakly, and the man grunted, before shouting something in Spanish.
"Pardon? Uh...sorry for bothering you, Sir. I'll be leaving." his accent was so thick, that Leona gave up attempting to figure out what he'd told her.
'He probably doesn't know anything,' she thought to herself as she glanced away, slipping the photo away. 'Maybe if I send one of those Policia in, he'll-?!'
A slight movement caught Leona's eye, and she looked up just in time to see the man swing a heavy splitting axe at her. Rolling out of the way, Leona quickly drew her weapon, aiming it at his head.
"Freeze!" She shouted at him, twice, before she clenched her teeth and shot as he moved to swing at her again. He fell with a heavy thump, and Leona rushed towards the exit. It was then though, that she heard the sound of an ill-used engine sputtering to life.
"...that truck? Oh god no..." Peering through the slatted window shades, she couldn't see where the truck had driven to, but she did see several other men making their way towards the house. "Great..."
beep-!
Jumping a little at the unexpected noise, Leona reached for her communicator. "Yeah?"
"Is this a bad time?" There was an African-American man on the other end, and Leona sighed.
"A bit. Haven't even made it into town and people are already after me. Are you my support?"
"Correct. My name is Ike Hunnigan. I'll go ahead and assume you're Leona?" he said, adjusting his glasses. "And...you've already managed to make contact with hostiles?"
"I know, impressive. But no, I approached a local, and he proved to be hostile. I was forced to neutralize him, and it looks like there's more headed this way..." she trailed off, finally moving from the window. Standing there and waiting for them wasn't really the safest of plans.
"Right. Well, obviously I'd get out of there, Leona. I'll contact you when the feed shows you getting closer to the village, okay?" Hunnigan said, before cutting the feed.
"Sure thing, Ike...uh, maybe I'll just call him Hunnigan." she said, clipping the communicator back onto her belt. A cursory look around the room as she headed to the stairs showed nothing in particular, but Leona did notice that the man hadn't been burning wood, but rather bones.
"Yikes...and it doesn't look like he was a zombie either...that's good, at least." she mused and she quickly climbed the stairs to the second floor. At the top there wasn't much, a door, a cabinet, and a window. While the door proved to be locked, the cabinet held some ammunition, which Leona pocketed.
"Sounds like the guests have arrived..." she muttered, before debating her options. "I can go fight them, or..."
A second of quick contemplation, before she ran, full tilt, at the window, crashing through it and rolling as she hit the ground. It was then that she realized the few people in the house weren't all who were there.
"Where's you guys come from?" she asked with a frown, taking aim and shooting. Two shots took down the first man, while the second fell victiem to a well aimed headshot.
Backing away from the house, Leona turned and jogged back to where the car had been parked.
'They better have not run...' she thought to herself, her mind conjuring images of her being stuck with no backup, all because some cops got spooked. But, unfortunately, it was worse than that.
"Shit..." There were tire tracks alright, but also bits and pieces of broken car. A shattered headlight and pieces of a bumper lead her to the small cliff, and she looked over into the river. Crashed onto the rock was the police car, as well as the old truck.
The car was a wreck, and Leona had a hard time imagining that the two police officers were still alive.
"Shit...I...damnit!" With the bridge out too, Leona didn't have high hopes for hitchhiking back for reinforcements.
With nowhere to go but the now unblocked pathway, Leona checked her gun. "2 left... but it looks like..." pulling out the ammo she'd taken from the house, Leona smiled. That was lucky at least, managing to find compatible ammo. Gun reloaded, she started her trek down the overgrown pathway, only stopping when she heard something whining.
"Is someone there?" she asked as she carefully walked past several large bushes, and was rewarded with some barking. "A dog?"
A white dog was pawing at the ground with one front paw, the other caught in a bear trap, and Leona holstered her gun and dropped to her knees by the bear trap.
"Dammit...who'd put a bear trap out like this...Shh, boy, here. Calm down..." she tried to calm the dog as she peeled back the teeth of the trap, but despite her words, it lept free and bolted as soon as she had the trap open far enough. "Wait! Oh, never mind."
Shaking her head, she continued down the path, not noticing the three men standing on a bluff run ahead of her...
As she continued walking, Leona spotted several small shacks, and poked her head inside of them. The first few were empty, but the last one...
"Good god!" Leona staggered back, the sight of a woman's body, impaled and pinned to the wall, enough to make her lose her regained composure "Jesus...who are there people?" For a moment, she debated removing the pitchfork and laying down the woman's body, before deciding not to. When she was done this mission, she was going to get someone in to the area to clean things up.
Continuing up the pathway, she slowed as she heard people walking up the path towards her. Peering from behind some small trees, she could see two men, weapons in hand. Quickly, she took aim and shot before they could charge at her. Checking her ammo again, she ducked into another shack, and into the arms of a hostile.
With a shout, she slammed her hand into his face, before reaching for her knife and slamming it into his throat. Pushing him back, off of her knife and away from her, the man fell into a table, breaking several boxes and revealing a sealed box of handgun ammunition.
"...right," Leona picked up the box quickly, before checking to see if any other hostiles had heard her shout. It didn't seem like it, and she quickly rushed towards a large iron gate.
beep-!
Leona reached for her communicator once she was through the gate, and opened it.
"Am I going through okay, Leona? We're fighting with the uplink right now, so the picture might be a bit spotty," Hunningan said, and Leona nodded in reply.
"Looks like you're going through fine to me, but I'm here. What do you have for me?"
"Not a lot, unfortunately. The village ahead of you don't have much info, so I'm afraid you're going to be on your own for most of this. Most I can do is let you know the lay of the land," the man apologized, tapping out something on his keyboard.
"Damn. Well, nothing you can do about it, I guess." Still, Leona frowned. She hated going in blind. "Anything else for me?"
"Good luck?" Hunnigan said with a laugh, before the connection was cut.
"...yeah, thanks. Hopefully I won't need luck on this mission..." Leona muttered, before sliding the communicator away and pulling out her binoculars. She could see the village up ahead, and wanted to get a good look at the place before she barged in.
Taking a moment to fiddle with the lenses, Leona started to scan the village. At first, it didn't seem to threatening...at least, until she realized what was hanging up over the bonfire.
"Shit...it's the one officer..." she muttered, lowering the binoculars. He was obviously dead, and all she could hope for was that he'd died before being impaled... "Where's the other then? Some other disgusting display, I'd guess..."
With a sigh, she considered her options. She could run in there, full tilt, but who knows what there was waiting in the houses? She could turn back and look for a way around the area, but that would take time...time she didn't particularly have.
"...or I can squeeze through that hole in the fence and go around the back way..." she said to herself with a smile, pocketing the binoculars and standing.
Slipping through the fence, Leona took her time creeping past the first house, only for her attempts at stealth to be broken when a door opened in front of her. A woman in a soiled blue dress looked at her, and they both stared at each other in silence, until...
"Shit! So much for keeping out of view!" Leona cursed as she dove to the side, the woman having tried to stab her. The woman stumbled, and Leona kicked her, before running into the house. There wasn't much to see inside, a table and the smell of rotting food, so Leona moved to the opposite door, shoving it open and barreling over a man with an axe.
'where are all these people coming from?! There's no way this many people live in this dinky village...Shit!' Distracted as she pushed through the sudden throng of people, Leona dove to the side again to get away from a man with a sickle. He'd been aiming somewhere a lot more deadly, but missed...still, Leona could feel blood running down her neck.
'I need to get in somewhere and see if I can treat this before it gets really bad,' she though, dashing into the nearest house, closing the door with a slam. Quickly, she shoved a chest in front of the door, and took a step towards the small window. Surprisingly, the villagers weren't making any effort to follow after her, but were rather...
"...why are they backing away."
Leona too started to back away, her intentions to dress her wound derailed by the odd behaviour. Of course, when she heard the sound of a revving chainsaw, she understood.
"Oh FUCK," Turning, Leona dashed up the stairs, trying to figure out how she was going to stop someone with a chainsaw. normally, the answer would just be to shoot them, but...
"...knowing my luck, this guy's going to be on steroids, or have a third eye or something..." she muttered as she heard the door, and the chest downstairs, splinter under the chainsaw. Turning, she watched as a large man with a bag tied over his head rushed into the house, waving the chainsaw around as if confused. Leona didn't give him a chance though, and opened fire.
After four shots to the upper torso, she turned and dove through a window, out onto the roof. She didn't want to be trapped inside the house if she could help it, and she needed the room to dodge the swinging chainsaw.
Waiting for him to reach the top of the stairs and chase her out onto the roof, Leona was disappointed to see him...walk right past the window in total confusion.
"Oi! Ugly, over here! Come on, moron. Didcha trade your brains in for that chainsaw?" she finally yelled, taking a quick shot as he walked past the busted window again. "Come on, come and get me, you ugly fucker!"
Her stray shot hit, or maybe he'd finally heard her, and he barreled through the rest of the busted window at Leona as she shot. It was easier to keep moving on the tin roof, and after two full clips, the man finally stumbled and dropped to his knees. Reloading with the last 4 bullets she had, Leona waited with bated breath to see if he was going to struggle back to life or if he was truly dead.
After several seconds, the only noises she could hear was the angry chatter of the villagers that surrounded the house, and she let herself believe that the man with the chainsaw was dead.
'Which IS good, but there's still all these people here trying to kill me...' Leona backed away from the edge as an axe was thrown in her direction, and frowned. She didn't have enough ammo to kill all of them, and she wasn't sure she'd even want too...
As she contemplated jumping down and fighting her way through with her knife, there was a loud noise.
"Church bells? Who's ringing those?" she asked herself, frowning. Obviously there were still more people in the area...
However, her need to fight the villagers dropped to zero as they began to walk away, dropping their weapons behind them as they moved, single file, to a small building. Bewildered, Leona watched as they all abandoned the fight and she was soon left alone on a roof, the body of the hooded man and the discarded farming tools the only trace that she'd been swarmed earlier.
"...what the fuck is going on here?"