BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM


Episode 9: The Girl in the Dress


Raccoon City, 1998


"Please..." The woman was curled over the body of her dying son. She was sobbing uncontrollably. Her bloody hands kept lifting toward him, "Officer...help me. Please."

But the boy was missing half of his throat. What could he do?

Leon, hands shaking, offered her his left one, "He's gone, ma'am. Come with me. Ok? I'll protect you."

The woman gave him a look of lost hope, "From what? I've already lost everything. Please...just leave me alone with him now. Ok? Please."

The sound of pursuit was coming. He hesitated, hating to leave her, "Ma'am, if you come with me...I know it seems so hopeless. I know it's awful...but you're still alive. Right? There's a reason. Let me protect you. I'll get you to safety."

She gave him a sad shake of her head, "Officer...there's no safety anywhere anymore. Don't you realize? We're already dead."

The zombies spilled over the big dumpster, moaning, and coming for them. He tried once more, "Please! Ma'am...please!"

And she finished, "Go. Run. Hurry. But it won't matter. You can't outrun death."

So he left her. He left her and ran. He left her behind to hold off the hoard that paused in their pursuit of him to eat her. He was too afraid to stay, too afraid to die, so he left her behind to save his own life.

And damned himself.


Outside Amparo - 2002


The long run took them through streets lined with bodies and flecked in blood. They leaped over a fence and kept going. The small village opened to a waterway with shabbily assembled docks in a cheap, rotting wood. The little houses lining the walkways were open air with thatched rooves and mud sealed stone. The smell of stagnant water filled the nostrils in a nearly cloying way, burning with each breath as they ran.

The sounds of pursuit chased them across the boards with the rapid stomp and slap of boots on wood. They could run all they wanted, Leon thought desperately, but you couldn't outrun death. It filled the fetid summer sunshine with the scent of long bloated corpses on a humid day. As they ran, Leon noted that Jill was sporting a slash over her upper arm.

At the edge of the dock, a broken walkway waited to forestall their escape.

Krauser called, "Who the fuck broke the damn walk?"

Leon and Jill didn't bother to bitch about it, they just turned right and ran for the house at the side. The water beneath them was brown and muddy, showing lumpy clumps of old clay that had been kicked up from the countless bodies dumped in its depths. Hands grabbed for Jill as she leaped through the narrow window and Leon spun a back kick to send their aggressors scrambling and falling.

Krauser hit the door and slammed it shut as Leon rolled through the window where Jill had gone.

There was a single way out - the back wall of the house had collapsed and a makeshift concoction of boards haphazardly tossed together offered the only escape. They ran for it, slapping along as the zombies failed to get in after them - faster, sure, but still stupid. No higher cognitive function to tell them to open the door.

As they burst out onto the walkway, Krauser was the first man down the shabby boards. His heavy muscled form shook them like an Earthquake and Jill stumbled, nearly went into the water, before Leon grabbed her arm to throw her forward again. Grateful, she returned the favor by picking off a zombie trying to grab his ankles from the water.

They hung left at the only turn and moved toward another collapsing house. Krauser paused as they rushed past and kicked hard at the boards there. It collapsed the walkway they'd come from and spilled countless pursuers into the water to sink. Impressed, Jill gave him a narrow look.

He arched his brows and commented, "What? Not just a pretty face, sweetheart."

With an eye roll, Jill hurried into the house. Leon was already on his knees beside the man leaning against the shattered wall. He was bleeding profusely from his stomach as he gasped, "The girl...the girl...she brought the monsters to this town...I helped her escape...I tried to hel-" He groaned in pain and Jill hurried over to stab him in the outer thigh with morphine. The pain killer worked as he refocused on Leon and added, "I helped her escape, amigo. I tried. But she...she was...she damned us all."

Leon pressed on the gushing stomach above the other man's hands and urged, "From where?"

And the man gasped, blood pouring from his mouth, "Javier's mansion..."

He went still.

He stopped breathing.

Leon rose and Krauser remarked, "So Javier is keeping those missing girls there. Why?"

Leon answered, "There's talk that Javier was trafficking human organs as well. My guess? He harvests them there."

"Jesus," Jill gestured, "Either way...we can't stay here. There are usually boats kept at the church. Let's get there and get away from this village."

They fell into step again beside her as the water rippled beside the body of the man. It tossed and something snaked free in a swirling ugly silver tongue to grip his leg and jerk him into the water. Jill shouted. Krauser fired blindly into the water.

And a hunter leaped free of the swirling depths.

But not the kind she'd faced in the Spencer Mansion. It was amphibian. It had padded fingers for climbing walls. It looped a tongue around Krauser's leg and jerked. The big man went down, yelling. Leon fired into the frog as it leaped, and it whipped Krauser upward toward the ceiling.

Jill unloaded the machine gun on it as it tried to run. Blood splattered. Krauser roared in rage, arched his body, and drove his big knife into its ugly face. It dropped him. The walkway nearly collapsed, and Leon grabbed his big arm to jerk him to his feet.

They didn't wait to watch the hunter drop off the ceiling, they just ran.

A pack of zombies ended up splitting them apart at a rotten collapsed house. Jill and Krauser went left down a long walkway; Leon right over a saturated roof. He raced across the sagging hay, hurrying toward the narrow tunnel in the distance that would lead them to the church. He could hear Jill and Krauser fighting as they moved.

He heard her shout and the grunt of Krauser fighting back.

He had to hope that Jack wouldn't do anything stupid while they were fighting for their lives. He might be a lecherous shit, but he wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't risk his life for a piece of ass.

Leon kicked from the hip as a hunter leaped up onto the walkway he was running across. He shoulder shoved it into the water, fired once from the hip into its face, and watched it fall back into the ugly water. The long race brought them together again as they hit the tunnel.

The immediate relief at the sun leaving them was startling. It was almost cold in the cave where they found themselves.

The church was in relatively decent shape compared to its predecessors. Light hip the outcropping of rock above it and offered a speckled view of heavy sandstone and lime. As they hit the white doors and emerged inside, a surreal fog spilled around them.

And a girl in a soft white dress sat on a stone near a shattered floor to sing.

There was nothing you could do but freeze and stare. It made no sense. Her pretty dulcet tones filled the room in a song that soothed even as it caressed the ears. They all just kept standing there with guns raised.

The girl was gorgeous. She limpid seafoam eyes and long dark hair gathered in small braids beside her copper skin. Slim, tall, she was young enough that Jill wanted to guess she was a teenager but not an adult. She glanced at them and smiled as she sang.

You were so busy watching her in the dappled sunlight, that you, at first, failed to notice the thing in the water beside her listening. It was a monster. It was a pair of glowing eyes in a transparent head. It looked small as sit floated, rapturously watching her. It was slimy and happy, gazing at her with abject adoration.

The girl paused in her singing, shaking where she sat, and finally fell to her side on the floor.

The thing in the water turned toward them. They all got their guns up.

And it came out of the water in a burst of rage.

It wasn't small. It was enormous. It rose out of the water with jagged hooks beneath a wide open mouth filled with a thousand teeth. It had tentacles in shimmering silver that whipped and slapped and smacked the walls as it ran toward them over the rotting floor.

They fired and scattered and shouted. They ducked and rolled and reversed. It had squat little legs holding up a big fat belly and toes like the hooves of a goat. Cloven feet chose a target and pursued.

Jill caught the first tentacle in the side. It knocked her over the floor and sent her toward the water. She went under, Krauser caught a tentacle to start hacking away at it, and Leon used the momentum to mount the damn thing at a run. He clamored up it, Jill popped distracted it with gunfire, and Leon thrust his heavy knife into the weird transparent head, digging toward those glowing eyes.

It roared. It tossed its head to free itself, but Leon used his knife as a handle and just hung on. Krauser headed toward the fat belly to stab it while he yelled. Jill kept on firing into the meat of it. Blood sprayed everywhere.

A tentacle looped around Leon's throat and jerked. His knife came with him as he was ripped free and thrown away. He flew, he curled his body around himself for protection, he hit the rotting wall of the church and went right on through. It collapsed around him in a clatter of tumbling dry stone. He rolled across the walkway and skidded out on his side.

A pair of soft hands touched his face and he was looking up into the face of the girl who'd passed out on the floor after singing.

There was a rumble as the heavy tower of the church collapsed outward. It narrowly missed the monster that leaped back into the water and was gone. In the quiet, the girl told him, "Te protegeré. Soy Manuela."

Touched, Leon returned, "Gracias. Me llamo Leon."

She smiled and answered, "You are American. Come with me, Leon. There are things you should see."

She offered him a hand up as they rose together. She was so calm. A beautiful girl with such an angelic feel to her. How old was she? Fifteen? Sixteen? Something like that. He was sure she wasn't an adult. Other than that, it was a guess.

Jill and Krauser emerged into the church. The girl greeted them with a soft smile. Jill was bleeding badly from her arm as she walked. Krauser was picking his teeth with the blade of his knife. He tilted his head at Manuela, "Well...the day is looking up after all. How you doin, sweetheart?"

Something about him made her step a little closer to Leon. Krauser, Leon thought, scaring girls since the dawn of time. Jill said, "Ease off, Jack. She's a child."

Leon told them, "This is Manuela. We're just getting acquainted."

Manuela told them, softly, " I had my quinceañera a year ago. I am sixteen."

Her English was stilted, showing a short grasp of it. Jill nodded and gestured with her head, "I know this is a lot to ask. But did you come from the mansion?"

The girl nodded, glancing between them, "I don't know what is happening. Please. Will you take me to safety?"

Krauser laughed, dryly, "You kidding? We need you to take us to Javier."

Manuela shook her head. She denied them, backing up. "I can't. No. I can't. The villagers? What has become of them?"

Jill put a hand out to her, attempting to soothe her, "They're dead. I'm sorry. We can stop it. Manuela? If you take us to Javier, we can stop it from spreading."

Manuela glanced at Leon. He put his gloved hand out to her, palm up, "I'll protect you. I swear. Just like you did for me. But Amparo is lost."

Manuela narrowed her eyes and shook her head, "This not Amparo. This is just a fishing village outside. I-" She took a long breath. She finally put her hand in Leon's and added, "I will take you to Amparo. It is all I can do now...for what was lost here."

Jill glanced at Leon as he led the girl toward the boats on the edge of the dock. He helped her in and Krauser took the controls of the motor. Jill took a seat at bow beside Manuela. As the boat hit the open water, the jungle stretched wide and glowing before them. A beautiful place, if you didn't know what waited inside.

As Jill reached one handed for her pack to treat her arm, Leon asked, "Do you want me to help? It might be easier."

She nodded and he accepted the pack she handed him to bring out supplies to treat her arm. Manuela watched them as he worked, cleaning the wound and dressing it. She finally asked, over the roar of the engine of the little boat, "Why do you fight? You are young, yes? Barely a man. You should return to your family and marry."

Jill felt her eyes sparkle with amusement above his head where he was binding her arm. He glanced at the girl and smiled, shaking his head, "I'm not that young."

Manuela glanced at Jill and back at him, looking confused, "You are not old." She gestured at Krauser where he steered behind them, "He is old. You are not so old."

Krauser scoffed, "He looks like a twelve-year-old, right? You the same age as this girl, Kennedy? You have the same face."

"Don't be jealous because you look like the back end of a baboon Krauser. It's just genetics."

"Blow me. I wouldn't want to be a skinny pretty girl for anything on Earth. You probably fuck as pretty as you look too. You cry when you fuck a girl, Kennedy? I bet you hold them and weep into their tits."

Leon rolled his eyes. Manuela tried to figure out what he was saying but the slang was clearly hard for her. So she said, "Yes. He is pretty. Like an angel. A guardian." She smiled and told Leon, "You are a handsome guardian angel. I am glad you are here."

Jill watched Leon's profile as she taped her arm. He was young. The face was young. There was no getting around that. But there was something in it that was old. Some knowledge that came from what he'd done and seen and lived. He glanced up to find her watching him. Sweat slid down his forehead. Jill lifted her other hand without thinking to whisk it away before it got in his eye.

Quietly, he told her, "Thanks."

He rose and moved to the bow of the boat with his binoculars to scan the terrain.

Manuela glanced at Jill and back at Leon and speculated, "You are together, yes? What is the word? Novio?"

Jill shook her head as Krauser laughed, "No. Just partners. Not lovers."

Manuela looked confused again. "...when you look at him. It is like being hungry and seeing food...yes?"

Jill had to laugh. She had to. Was that how she looked at him? In fairness, Manuela was probably right. He was something to look at. She enjoyed watching his ass even now as the boat skimmed the water and took them toward danger. If she had to be in the boiling jungle, there were uglier things she could be looking at. The thing about it? You didn't cover The Executioner. He wasn't the type of guy you got a crush on.

He was the type of guy who crushed you for looking.

She had to remember that while he was standing in the sunshine looking like a model on a breezy beach. He was a killer. If she threatened him, he'd take her down and destroy her.

Manuela called, softly, "There is a sewer up ahead. It is where I was led through to escape. It will take us toward the mansion."

The boat slid through the water. Above them, a huge dam sported the vision of the mansion in question waiting as a mythological castle atop a harrowing rise. Leon scanned it with the binoculars. Krauser mused, "We could scale it, right? Just go right up?"

Leon shook his head, "None of our gear can get us up that. And there's no useable climbing surface. We have to try the tunnel. If we follow the water channel, it should lead us right to the surface."

Jill glanced up at the sky above them. "We're losing daylight. Do we want to head in or make camp first?"

Leon considered and looked at Manuela who told them, "There are fewer patrols during the day time. They change shifts around dawn."

Krauser gave her a cool glance and wondered, "How do you know that?"

She told him, quietly, "No one notices a captive I think. I watched. I learned."

Krauser nodded, looking somewhat impressed. Jill told her, "Good. Let's make camp. Can you tell us what you know?"

"...yes." Manuela glanced at Leon nervously, "My English..." She lifted her hands in distress.

He told her, "No te preocupes, yo soy fluido."

Manuela nodded in relief. Jill smiled briefly at her and patted her leg. Krauser turned the boat ashore and they shifted out of it. A short walk found them able to lay claim to an abandoned cabin that had likely once housed one of the townspeople that had fished the river. It had a narrow cot and a big comfy chair. The thing was clean but spartan. Jill set her pack on the table inside and pulled out supplies.

A small cast iron skillet had Leon arching his brows as she told him, "You have to eat sometimes. You think I want to live entirely off of canned meat?"

Manuela poked around the cabin and made a face at the toilet behind a vinyl shower curtain. She muttered, in Spanish, about peeing in front of "El extraño gran hombre". Both he and Jill smirked. Clearly, she meant Krauser.

As if he heard them thinking, Jack poked his head in the cabin. "You women can have the four walls. I'm gonna stand guard outside. Unless..." He considered and added, "You want this girl to stay with you? What do you think, Kennedy? You got enough hair to join in on the braiding. You wanna paint toenails and giggle with these girls all night?"

Leon glanced at Jill who rolled her eyes. Manuela, frowning, answered, "Are you angry that you have no hair? It happens when you get old, yes?"

Krauser gave her a droll expression. Jill coughed to clear her throat. Leon didn't even bother. He just grinned until Krauser snapped the door shut. His grin turned down a notch as he told Jill, quietly, "I don't like how he looks at her."

Jill gave him a cold expression where Manuela couldn't see her, "Me either. He won't touch her. I promise you."

To both of their surprise, his hand shifted and gripped her arm, lightly, above the elbow. He squeezed once, "He'd have to get through me first. We'll sleep in shifts. You and Manuela sleep for as long as you can."

Jill nodded. After a moment, they both realized he hadn't let go of her arm. He did, swiftly, and muttered, "...sorry."

Before he could turn, Jill caught his forearm and stopped him. She told him, with feeling, "Don't be. I'm not scared of you. You're not an animal. Not like him."

Leon's eyes volleyed over her face. He glanced at the girl in the corner poking around in the one dresser that waited there. And he answered, gruffly, "You should be. We're both animals. He just doesn't pretend he isn't."

"And you do?"

"I'm the Executioner. I can be whatever they tell me to be."

They held gazes until she asked, "Do you really believe that?"

"They made damn sure I did. I'm just as much a monster as the man outside, I promise you."

Jill shook her head. She leaned a little closer until their noses brushed and whispered, "You keep telling yourself that. But he tried to put his hands on me while I slept. You didn't. You're not like him."

Leon swept his eyes back and forth across her face again before he answered. She liked how he looked at her, direct, no bullshit, even as he returned, "Maybe I didn't touch you...but I looked."

Jill, without missing a beat, replied softly, "So did I. While you were half naked? I looked too."

His brow winged up as Manuela made a sound of excitement to have located some clean clothes in one of the drawers. He glanced down at Jill's bosom in her tank top. And she liked that too as he queried, "Yeah? Why? There's not much to look at anymore."

Jill tilted her head to see if he was serious. He was. So she simply said, "Chics dig scars. Haven't you heard? Let me know if you want to compare some time."

She let go of his arm to move across the room to help Manuela. Leon rolled his neck to pop it. He left them to their privacy and went to join Jack outside.

Krauser was watching the treeline as he cleaned his guns. Leon took up a spot on the ground across from him. They cleaned weapons and sat in comfortable silence. After a handful of moments, Krauser finally spoke, "Maybe you should tell me what you know about B.O.W.S."

Leon glanced up from cleaning his knife. "Alright."

Whatever else was true, Krauser was here to do a job. To do that, he had to know what he was fighting. Leon tugged a small notebook out of his back pocket and tossed it to him, "Those are my notes from the last few years on anything and everything I saw. You want the cliff notes version or you wanna read it yourself?"

Krauser settled down and put his back against a tree. He opened the little notebook and answered, "Watch the trees, princess, and let me do some studying."

Leon smirked a little and kept on cleaning his knife. Good, bad, or otherwise Krauser was on their side here. That meant playing nice with each other until that was no longer an option.

He glanced toward the window of the little cabin. He could hear the sound of a pipe groaning as they turned on the little shower inside. The soft tinkle of Manuela's laughter trickled on the breeze as the trees rustled gently.

Somehow, Jill had gotten her to laugh.

Somehow, Jill had gotten him to as well.

He shook his head, glancing off toward the mansion in the distance and he wondered how long it had been since he'd really felt anything real. Hope. Affection. Desire. Humor. His gaze shifted back to the window as Jill passed in front of it to pull a small brown towel from her pack.

She paused. She arrowed her gaze at him as if she'd felt him looking. A bead of sweat slid down her chest into her cleavage. His eyes tracked it and went back to her face. And she didn't look away. She held his heavy gaze with her own. Like a man, she didn't even flinch. And she hadn't flinched looking at him the night before either. He'd never met anyone else like her.

What was it he felt when he looked at her?

They stared at each other until she turned away to move out of view.

Need.

He hadn't felt that in a long time.

He wanted to touch her to see she'd burn him with it. He wanted to see if it hurt to feel her. Not painful, no, good. Sometimes hurt was good, when it came with knowing you'd won. Did he want to win her?

It wasn't that simple.

He glanced back at the window to find her leaning at the edge once more. Why? Apparently, to look at him again. His head tilted. Her mouth twitched. His brows arched in question. And hers?

They bobbled.

And he couldn't stop the smile.

She'd gotten him to laugh. She'd gotten him to smile. She'd gotten him to talk.

It wasn't as simple as wanting to win her. For now? He'd settle for just knowing she was there, beyond that door, and waiting.