The town was little more than the emaciated remnants of a society that may have once flourished, scraps from the rest of society laid bare by the sun.
"Welcome to Huraja," Jin-ho raised one hand to the sky. "A desolate place left hollow by Umbrella, like so many places in the world." He pulled over to the side of the road, accumulating a puff of dust that clung to the wind shield. The town was sparse, mostly built of tin walls and roofs, plywood and rusted nails. The poverty soaked mess seemed to go on for an eternity, despite how small Huraja truly was. To the left of the jeep sat a rickety stand, perhaps for selling fruit or vegetables, though Sheva had seen no farms outlying the area. She got out of her seat, looking around. The road was dirt, often trampled flat, but by whom?
"The place looks deserted," she commented. "Where is everybody?"
"I couldn't say," Jin-ho cocked his head, scratched the back of his neck. "The town is small, but not so small that a town just disappears overnight. Let's go." He motioned for her, started walking down the road, which eventually split in a fork, both as empty as the others.
"So….now what?" Sheva looked around. There was nothing at all. No signs of life. A ghost town. Jin-ho looked confused.
"This isn't right," he muttered. "Impossible. No signs of any activity. How is that possible? I don't like this."
"We need to know what's going on," Sheva said. "And report to HQ."
"Obviously," Jin-ho cocked an eye and looked at her. "Perhaps we should split up, radio each other if we find anything?" When Sheva didn't immediately answer, he went on. "Of course, if you'd rather stay together…"
"No." Sheva shook her head. "We can split up. Like you said, we can radio each other if we find anything. Anything."
"Fine. Meet me back here in ten minutes, whether you find anything or not," Jin-ho's voice was no less brisk, almost bossy, and he tapped a finger to his eyebrow in a weak salute before heading down the left road, not saying anything or allowing a discussion on their directions. Sheva forced herself to swallow a moment of distaste for the man.
Definitely too much military in his background.
Continuing on her path, Sheva kept a tight hold on her Beretta. It was select, being ambidextrous in design to allow her left handed grip, and she had recently added a light fixture to the bottom of the barrel. Besides minor modifications to the grip, it was otherwise a standard military grade handgun.
Alone now, the town seemed even more poverty ridden than it had while coming in. On her right, the houses suddenly stopped beside the road, replaced by a rusted fence made of chicken wire. The township crawled on behind it, but only after fifteen meters or so, and the fence kept up for twice that long beside the road, strung up to cheap metal posts, half so defeated by rust that they didn't even hold themselves up, merely leaned against the wire, hanging as though by a net.
The breeze was light, and yet as enough for the buildings to creak, for the fencing to hand while rust puffed up from the metal. Jin-ho had said that the call had come in yesterday, and yet it seemed like this place had been abandoned for weeks. Flexing her fingers on her handgun, Sheva took in a breath and kept going. The air smelled… foul, somehow. Wrong.
The road ended quickly, the dirt path cut off and gave way to a line of barrels, wedged up next to one another like a stopping point, though one barrel had fallen over. They were black and smelled of oil, charred from use. A heat and light source at night, maybe? She peered over, looked inside one of the barrels, noticed broken wood and ash. And something else. She leaned closer, reached one hand it to push around at the old debris with a finger, jumped back at what she saw.
"What the hell?" She came close again. Yes, it was a femur. A human femur. And around it, teeth, broken, charred, cracked. Even more soot sat beneath that, and she kicked over the can, watched its contents spill out onto the ground. Several small bones, phalanges, scattered into the dirt, bits of vertebrae, and most shockingly, a skull. The skull landed on the back of its base, black, hollow eye sockets staring back at her. Part of the nasal bone was broken off, giving another blaring hole in the midst of ash smeared bone.
Sheva was quick to tap her ear piece. The radio turned to static for a second. "Kin Jin-ho!" She kept her voice firm. "This is Sheva. I've found human remains in a barrel. They've been burned. It's nothing but bone." She did a quick look over at the other barrels. "It seems several of these barrels have the same thing."
Crackling. "All right, keep looking, I haven't found…" Static blasted. "Shit. Back to the jeep, now!"
"What is it?" Sheva turned back to the road.
"Just run!" Two loud blasts rose into the air, from a higher caliber handgun. Sheva ran, arms moving with her momentum, Beretta tight in her left hand, boots slamming into the ground, producing clouds of dust. Movement in the corner of her eye almost stopped her, but she refused to look, heading straight for her target. There was the fork in the road, and beyond that was the jeep. Passing the fork, she heard footsteps matching hers, maybe a bit farther in their spacing. Turning, she saw Jin-ho running, firearm in hand. "Go Alomar!" He shouted.
Both reached the jeep at around the same time, hands slamming into its hood. Sheva turned to look back, and raised her gun as she saw what was coming for them. "Oh, shit!" Her mouth dropped, and she fired twice. The rain finally started, and hell escaped its chains.