AN: Okay, so we're moving into Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles territory here. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to play this game all the way through yet, so I'm going to have to do a little research and I will, of course, be changing a lot of stuff too. Just in case you wonder why it's all going wrong heh heh.

Chapter 8

And Execute the Plan

"Nervous?" Krauser asked, head down, eyes glued to the manual in his hands as I paced back and forth along the length of the room.
"That's one stupid question," I said tightly, continuing my track.
"No need to be," he flicked his eyes up and watched me for a moment, before sighing and putting the book down, "what's the matter?"
"Nothing," I lied.
"Yeah, right. You know you're one bullshit liar Kennedy," he said shaking his head.

I shot him a glare but didn't stop walking. We were leaving in an hour, on this mission, on this exam mission, and he was telling me not to be nervous. Right.

"Yeah well, maybe I just never got the hang of it like you obviously did," I said back, stopping to check my watch.
"Ah, so that's what this is about," he said, sighing, "still holding that grudge are we?"
"I don't know what you mean," I said airily, sitting down to eliminate the temptation to pace.
"I already told you that I can tell every time you lie, haven't I?" he asked, "Why you keep trying to is beyond me."

Yes I was still angry at him, confused by him, torn, conflicted, nervous. Wasn't a good time to interrogate me because I felt like I was about to snap in half I was so tense. I let him know so with a glare.

"Alright, fine," he sighed in irritation, "why don't we go over the details again. Might calm you down."

I opened my mouth to retort, realised how childish I was being and shut it. He seemed to appreciate that and I nodded my consent.

"Okay," he said, "so, even though this is a training mission for you and, yes, you are being evaluated, don't forget that we're going out into the field here. You can't screw up and everything'll be fixed by the Sergeant. You screw up here, you get people killed."
"You vote of confidence is awe inspiring," I said, looking at him significantly, "you don't trust me? Then don't take me."

He snorted out a laugh.

"Hell, trying to be serious with you is like trying to be mean to a tiger cub," he said, noticing my frown, "it's so adorable that you can't keep it up, then you take your eyes off it for a second and it claws your face off."
"...Adorable?" was all I could say, blinking at him.
"It's a metaphor Kennedy," he said, picking the mission stats back up and coughing as he avoided my stare, "deal with it."

I tried to deal with it, found I wasn't sure what to do with it and ignored it instead. Krauser continued.

"We're headed to Amparo, a South American village deep in the Brazilian jungle , looking for Javier Hidalgo. He's a drug lord, major player in the Latin American drug syndicate, showed up unexpectedly about four years ago. Likes to live it up, doesn't care who knows it, extravagant, you know the kind. As far as we can tell he isn't related in any way with the Mexican Contras, who run business over the borders, but information on his business partners is limited at best. A month ago, he goes missing, not a trace. But we have intel that he was trying to contact the Umbrella Corporation."
"And the date of his disappearance coincides with the reports of people in the area going insane," I said, knowing in my gut that as soon as the name Umbrella Corp. was mentioned, things could only be bad.
"Right. Insane as in attacking others on sight, loss of moral inhibition, sense of self, everything. We had an inside source that managed to get us a limited report saying that he thought it might be some new drug that Hidalgo had put out on the market, but he didn't give any details other than he knew Hidalgo was headed to Amparo, and now we can't get in touch with him."

Silence. I looked at Krauser, watching as he flipped through the pages, not looking up.

"Do you think he's..?"
"Dead?" he finished harshly, taking a breath and looking up, calming himself, "Probably."
"I'm sorry," I said, feeling it was arbitrary but necessary none the less.
"Yeah," Krauser said, chucking the report onto the table, looking grave, "me too. You're ready for this, right?"
"As I'll ever be," I replied, glad we were moving away from awkward conversation topics.
"Then let's get going," he said with a barely discernable smile, "the plane won't wait for us."


I managed to get in a quick call to Claire before we left, using the secure line on base. The fact that I couldn't give her any information only made her worry, and the fact that I'd be out of contact made her worry more.

"Sounds kind of risky for a training mission," she said seriously.
"Yeah," I said, "it is, but that's what I'm good at right?"
"Oh Leon," she sighed, "don't say that. It'll be fine right? Come on I was looking for reassurance, not for you to agree with me!"

That made me laugh, which in turn thankfully calmed Claire down. She said that Chris was at work but she'd let him know what was going on when he got back.

"Be careful," she said, sounding like she really, really meant it.
"I will," I said, "I'll call you when I get back."

No need to mention Umbrella.


The plane turned out to be a Lear jet, and it took us down south in a matter of hours. We arrived early in the morning, having left very late at night, and set out immediately to try and find Krauser's contact. Krauser himself wasn't holding up any luck of finding him, but he wasn't not going to go to their meeting place, just in case. Long story short, he didn't turn up, which didn't put Krauser in the best mood.

The town where we landed was small, hot and dusty. The others had set out on touchdown, as was the plan, and were to go on ahead of us to do some recon while we gathered further intel, if possible. With the contact MIA however, the likelihood of that was pretty slim.

"So where do we meet our guide to Amparo?" I asked, pulling on my cap as we left the cafe where the contact was supposed to be.
"Another village," Krauser said, "five miles south of here."
"And the others? They got another guide?" I asked.
"Yeah, from a separate village though, so as not to arouse suspicion," Krauser replied, pulling at the straps on his backpack, "well, no point in wasting time here."

We found the trail that headed into the dense jungle that surrounded the town, set our compasses just in case the trail took us anywhere interesting or decided to split into two (or three, or four) and set off. The insects were the worst, and the denser it got the worse the clouds of mosquito's and flies got. Also the snakes weren't too friendly either. All I'd heard was the thunk of steel hitting wood, spinning round to see Krauser behind me with a diamond back Bushmaster snake hanging limply from his Mark V blade. He looked at it dispassionately before taking a swig from his canteen, throwing the snake into the underbrush and tossing the canteen to me.

"Ought to be more careful," he said, putting his foot up onto a rock and surveying the road ahead, "this place is crawling."
"Tell me about it," I muttered, taking a swig of warm water and grimacing; I capped it and chucked the canteen back to Krauser, "it shouldn't be much further to the town, a couple of miles or so by my estimation."
"Good," Krauser said, turning to me and swatting at his arm with a stark slap, "fucking insects are getting on my nerves."
"I wouldn't count on there being any less insects in the town," I said, pulling my cap back on and hating the stifling heat that it brought, "and I doubt they're gonna have air conditioning."

Krauser grinned at that one.

"What's the matter Kennedy?" he said smacking the front of my cap juvenilely so that it fell down over my face, "Can't take the heat?"
"Oh shut up," I said, pulling my cap back up and walking on ahead.
"Nice comeback," he said, smirking before falling into step behind me.


I had been right about the distance and we reached the town in about forty five minutes or so. It was nothing to speak of, just a collection of ramshackle huts, tight knit along the banks of the river, creating a winding maze of corrugated iron and rough plaster. There were some more substantial houses, but they were in bad repair. This wasn't the strange thing though.

"Where is everyone?" I asked quietly, feeling like raising my voice would just be a bad idea.
"I don't know," Krauser shook his head, walking slowly through the town, looking from right to left in a vain attempt to catch some movement.

Yet there was nothing. Just the buzzing of flies and the muffled sound of a radio report about missing teenage girls. I felt jumpy already but didn't pull my gun. It would only scare anyone we saw and, right now, we needed to find at least one person to tell us what the hell was going on.

"Our guide was supposed to meet us here?" I asked as we walked towards a small well, around which there was a sort of small town square of sorts.
"Yeah," he said looking at his watch, "right around now. What the hell is going on? It doesn't...smell right."
"What do you mean?" I asked, instinctually keeping close to him in case of any sort of ambush or attack.
"It's like a battlefield," he said as if he were talking to himself, "like death."
"Death?" I breathed in, detecting heat and dust and a faint familiar tang.

Blood. Krauser and I drew our guns, senses on the alert.

"Hey!" Krauser's shout scared the crap out of me and I turned to see where he was looking.

A man had just stumbled out of an alleyway behind us, his head limp against his chest, feet shuffling forwards. Krauser instinctually walked towards him.

"He looks hurt," Krauser said to me, and I felt the hairs going up on the back of my neck, "Are you alright? What happened here?"
"Wait, don't..!" I shouted as he reached out with his hand to steady the man.

I jumped without thinking, shoving Krauser out to the ground as the man lunged for his hand, teeth snapping on thin air. The guy turned his bloodshot eyes on me, hands reaching out, rotting breath pouring over my face, yellowing teeth rotting in his gaping mouth. I froze.

"Leon, look out!"

I blinked just in time to see him snarl, going for my throat. I pushed him away and brought up my gun, once, twice, three times in the chest and he went down in a fit of gurgling and groaning. I was panting, hands rigid on my gun, knuckles white, staring at him, just staring at him. God, no, this isn't happening. Not again. Not ever again. I promised I'd get rid of this virus once and for all and again, here it was again...

"What the hell did you shoot him for?" Krauser's furious tone pulled me from my stupor, his hand on my shoulder spinning me around.
"You don't understand," I said seriously, but I could hear the cold hardness to my tone, the business end of my personality taking over.
"Like hell, you just shot a civilian!" he shouted, looking at me like I was crazy, "I know he attacked us but couldn't you just have incapacitated him? He might be on that drug that my contact told us about..!"
"You don't understand!" I shouted back, hands shaking in frustration as I couldn't think, I couldn't think how to explain, how any of this was real, how...

Then the dead guy did it for me. His morose groan stopped Krauser mid sentence and we both looked around as the man who had three deep bullet wounds in his chest and had been clearly not breathing for about a minute, suddenly stumbled to his feet and set his lifeless eyes on us, baring his teeth in a preternatural hiss.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me..." Krauser mumbled out, his hand still clasped around my shoulder, his eyes wide as he stared, dumbfounded, at the monstrosity before us that was once a man.

This time I didn't hesitate at all. I raised my gun, levelled it and shot him clean through the head, destroying his brain.

"Yeah, you won't be getting up from that one," I said darkly, "will you."

Krauser let go of my shoulder and took a step back from me. His eyes were alight with confusion. I tried to calm myself down, bring myself back from that darker side, but it just wasn't happening. I needed it, it's what got me through Racoon and, if the same thing was happening here, it would get me through this too. As well as Krauser.

"Yeah, I've seen that look before. When we had the knife fight," Krauser surprised me with his statement; I was expecting him to demand answers right away, I mean, who wouldn't? "That look in your eye...you've seen this before, haven't you?"
"Yes," I said categorically, not beating around the bush; what would be the point? "I've seen it before. In Racoon city, but this it's...different somehow."
"Fuck!" Krauser exclaimed, looking down at the ruined human form sprawled before us, "fuck this can't be happening. Is it dead?"
"Should be," I said, checking my clip before looking to the surrounding area.
"What the fuck is it?" he hissed, shoving it gingerly with his boot.
"You said Umbrella were involved in this somehow right?" I said, looking back at him.
"Right, but what's that got to do with..?" Krauser asked with a frown.

He was interrupted, and not in a good way. I spun on my heel at the keening sound and raised my gun as two more shuffled out from behind a broken fence, eyes trained on me as the closest one raised its hand. I shot them both in the head and looked to my right as I heard Krauser firing his gun. There were more of them, a lot more.

"There're too many of them! Run!" I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him towards the nearest alley which wasn't oozing zombies.

This couldn't be happening, I thought like a mantra, this couldn't be happening, this couldn't be happening...

AN: Eww, zombie brains all over my new shirt. Nice. Poor Leon. Still haven't made up my mind whether to still have Krauser be a dick by the end of this story, but we'll see...anyway, please review and let me know what you think.