Resident Evil 5:

The Wilds of What We Were

Part One:

-Lost in Nightmares-

One:

Scarabs and Scars

Faraji, Africa - 2009

His back struck the wall and took the whole thing with him as he went right on through it. It collapsed around him, raining in putrid stagnant moss and water as he hit the ground, rolled, and managed to throw himself into a run without stopping. It was sheer adrenaline and training that was keeping him moving.

Jill and Leon were out numbered, they were out gunned, they were over run. The public assembly they'd come across had ended with Reynard Fisher losing his head in a very macabre execution, and the rest of the infected Faraji trying to kill them. What had Jill said? Let's see how you survive the whole town.

He'd done it before, but by god he'd been hoping to avoid a rerun. Instead, he was on the run for his life. He simply didn't have the resources to kill every last fucker in this joint. Jill had radioed for back up, but it was still a ways off.

They done OK, they were holding their own, and then? Then something the size of a mutated Bane from Batman came out of a building carrying a scythe as as long as a man. It was the thing that had executed Fisher, clearly, and it was out for more blood. Jill's quick shot to the face had saved Leon his head, but it had cost him his footing. The creature had swung his arm and tossed him, like a swatted bug, straight up and out.

Leon hit, went down and rolled, and came up running.

Jill was trying to survive a horde. He caught sight of her in the town square, over run and fighting for her life. She shouted in rage and fear, kicking and punching, swinging and flailing. Leon, desperate, caught sight of a barrel to her far right. So, he shouted, "VALENTINE! GET DOWN!"

She ducked into the mess, he fired, and the heavy canister erupted in a burp of blown gasoline. The explosion was monstrous, lighting up the crowd who screamed and scrambled. Jill shoved her way free and raced toward the stairs leading up to the parapets where Leon waited. They ran for the far fence and had to stop their escape when another horde of men converged on the one exit.

Great.

Boxed in.

Leon backed up and told her, "Over the carcasses of the cars, OK? Head toward that big gate."

Jill turned and fled. She leaped, rather gracefully, and Leon took up the rear to follow. It was fast and furious, there was no time to fight about it or question it. They hit the ground, rolled, and went running.

At the heavy gate, Leon shouted, "Go up and over! You hear me?! Get help!"

"I won't leave you!"

"JUST DO IT!"

He ducked, hands cradled, and she just went with it. Her boot hit the cradle of his palms and he launched her up and over the gate. He heard her come down and cut left toward another stairway to the top of the parapets again. If he could keep them chasing him, he had a chance.

He ran for it, keeping a steady stream of them in his rear view. The fat bastard with the scythe took a swing at the edge of the platform he was on, and down came his only safety. It spilled Leon to the ground in a herd of hands and teeth. They roared for his blood, he swung around to scatter them with a nice round house kick, and Jill started picking them off from the top of the gate.

She shouted, "GET COVER!"

So, he pummeled, pushed, and tackled his way out of the herd and rolled free. They grabbed, he grunted, and one got a mouthful of his shirt at the shoulder. Alarmed, he punched them clean in the face, kicked twice from the hip, and threw himself behind a sturdy stone wall. There was a WHOOSH of sound, a second of silence, and an explosion so loud it rocked the ground where he crouched. In the absence of that cacophonous noise, the sound of gunfire started picking off the few straggles left that tried to run.

Leon stood there with his back to the stone breathing. Just that- just that one thing - breathing. It was so underrated.

The stench of smoke and the constant whomp of helicopter blades through sky was almost like a quiet lullaby. He leaned, filthy, bloody, bruised and breathing hard, until a hand on his arm had him nearly blowing the face off his partner with the gun that came up without warning. She grabbed the barrel, jerked it to the side, and slapped him in the face with her free hand. Admittedly, he needed it.

The jolt made him grunt as Jill advised, "...you should be better than this, Kennedy. Jesus. Get it together."

He'd nearly lost his nerve back there. He'd felt teeth and panicked. It was, without a doubt, the first moment of mortality he'd felt since Spain. Amused with himself, he remarked, "...human, I guess. Apologies."

She smirked a little and shrugged, "We all are...but no time for it. Come on...the way is clear."

He followed, boots on the bloody ground in a quiet thump of pursuit. They hurried up a small set of stairs through a derelict house that felt like a bad episode of Mash. As they hit the ground outside of it, the screaming started. It was high and scared. It was female. It was on the balcony above them across the blazing, broken, burning concrete.

"-please! HELP ME!"

She caught his eye, the struggling blonde in the beautiful black dress, and begged, "SIR! PLEASE!?"

He started to answer and the door opened behind her. A hand grabbed her hair, his gun went off and took the side of the face off the man who grabbed her, and the girl squealed in fear. Jill instructed, "OVER THE BALCONY! NOW!"

She went, the girl in black, she went over the side like she'd been told. Two more men came out the door and Leon took them out while they rushed for her. She shouted for help, he dropped to one knee, and she let go to tumble into his waiting arms.

Impressed, Jill mused, "...old pro?"

He set the struggling girl on her feet and answered, "...something like that."

The girl gasped, "...I-please...my head...my head? My head hurts so bad."

She stumbled. Leon gripped her to hold her up, and her hands slid over his vest. She whimpered and whispered, "...oh god..."

Soothing her, he instructed Jill, "Radio for back up. We need to get her out of he-"

She went for his throat. It was unexpected, it was immediate. He shouted and shoved. He went to his butt on the concrete keeping her at bay. Jill shot her in the head an inch from eating his face.

The girl was thrown to the side and skidded in blood and brain matter until she bumped the wall and went still. Jill offered him a hand, Leon took it, and she jerked him to his feet. Off handedly, he mused, "You ever seen anyone change that fast?"

She started to answer, and the girl's face exploded in front of them. Her whole head erupted. It was plagas, and it wasn't, and it was again. It was something like the ones who emerged only at night, only this one was out in pure sunshine. He was tired of that goddamn parasite. Why couldn't they just be done with one fucking thing in their world?

Why did it always come back bigger, faster, and stronger?

He shot it twice in the gaping hole of her bisected brains and watched her go still.

Into the silence, Jill whispered, "...fuck...I have to admit...I thought you were making yourself out to be a hero in the Kennedy Report..."

In answer, he told her, "Yeah? Don't need to play that up, kid. It was a nightmare. Making myself sound heroic was just the truth. This shouldn't exist. I made sure that goddamn cave was destroyed. Who got their hands on plagas before the fall?"

She shook her head.

Something flickered on his face and she remarked, "You've thought of something. What? Do you know someone with access to the plagas?"

He did. A certain spy who'd saved his life in Spain. He was carefully keeping her presence quiet, although he'd put her in his report as an unknown foreign agent. For now, he kept his peace and simply remarked, "...who else? Albert Wesker."

Jill inhaled and cursed, "...bastard. Is there a fucking pie in bioterror without his fingers in it?"

Leon started to answer and an alarm split the air. Surprised, they both looked up to find the buildings flooding with people. Jill cursed angrily and ran for the long alley way. He gave chase, feet pounding in a fast run for safety.

They ducked, they covered, and they prayed as molotovs rained down like fire and brimstone from the roofs above them. One glanced off his arm as he covered Jill's head and she kicked in a door to a building before them. They ducked inside, Jill slammed the door, and Leon threw the shelf beside it over the damn thing like a shield. The pounding started, Jill grabbed his vest and shoved, and he was running beside her toward the far set of stairs.

With little choice, they went up. They reached the second floor, Jill in the lead, and a rickety walkway guided them to the adjacent building. They pursuit was continuous. They ran, they picked off those they could, and they just kept going. With little choice, they ducked through the train cars of the dirty train yard that waited in the sand and headed toward the open mouth of a cave.

The cold rushed up around them, the dark closed like a fist over their vision, and they both hit the lights on their communicators in their ears. They bobbled as boots pounded through inky darkness. Water gathered, it deepened, and they waded through waist deep cold into the blistering cold.

With a shaking tone, Jill cursed, "...this is what happens when you go from a hundred degrees to eighty. I'm fucking freezing."

He agreed.

They emerged into a mine shaft. The pursuit had finally gone quiet behind them. Jill gestured and they hurried toward the ladder that waited to lead them up.

For the next five minutes, he had the pleasure of watching her ass twitch as they climbed toward level ground. Admittedly, it was a nice show. It was also a nice distraction from death, disease, and imminent demise.

At the top, they were standing in a mining camp. Seemingly, an empty one by all appearances. The sheer emptiness raised every instinctual alarm in the book. He started to make a clever remark and Jill gestured, "There...office. Maybe they'll have what we need."

She hurried toward it.

Leon surveyed the grounds as she ran. Something twitched in his senses that made him nervous. He followed, slowly, scanning as he went.

He heard Jill rooting around in the office at the top of a rickety set of stairs. He almost teased her about smelling like filthy cave water when the red light bobbled on her back. He dove, Jill grunted as he tackled her, and the couch tossed fluff up into the air where the bullet struck. A second previous, and it would have taken her head.

They rolled apart to different areas of cover. Jill glanced at him and he shrugged a shoulder. She started to thank him and a voice squealed, "GO AWAY!"

Whiny, nasally, and behind the desk where he cowered, the voice belonged to the face on the file they'd seen. Ricardo Irving - a poor excuse for a man- but a helluva arms dealer, so they said. Into the tense silence, Leon beckoned, "Come on, Irving, turn yourself in and we'll take you alive."

"Youse kidding me!?" The bad Brooklyn accent made Leon wince as the other man taunted, "I gots duh best sniper in the world watching us! Show your stupid face and try and take me!"

Jill gave Leon a horrified look. Surely not the best sniper. There was only one of those, and there was was no way he'd work for the bad guys. There was simply no way. It wasn't Chris. It couldn't be.

She refused to believe it.

So, she shouted back, "Oh, yeah? Hard to believe that when I've got the best shot in the business with me in this room."

Surprised, Leon gave her a flattered look and she shrugged. It was true, she'd seen it herself. It wasn't flattery if it was true.

Leon caught a glimpse of a Dragunov in the locker across from them. If he could get it, he could give the sniper a taste of his own medicine. With little else driving them but instinct, Leon shot the desk twice where Irving hid and he yelped and leaped up.

The second he did, he blocked the window. Leon rolled out, grabbed the Dragunov as the sniper rifle took a chunk of the locker where his hand swiped, and rolled through to use the desk for cover again. As he did, Irving aimed his gun, Leon kicked him in the knee for it, and the whiny man went to the side, toppled, and got a rifle butt in the face for his screaming.

Unconscious, he went down on his back, Jill gave Leon an impressed nod and he winked at her. Eyes rolling, Jill called, "Can you get a bead on the sniper?"

He rolled his shoulder around the desk and tried, but the scope was unable to find a single whiff of movement. Leon, sighing, remarked, "I think he ran for it. There's nothing out there but bad breezes and mountain."

Jill started to remark on it and the window shattered. It exploded like someone had fired a rocket into the glass. It tinkled, throwing jagged shards everywhere as a body landed in the middle of the floor and fired. Jill rolled to avoid losing her eye and ended up skidding down the stairs. Leon rolled to his back to miss a bullet to the head himself.

He caught the foot coming for him, twisted, and kicked the big man over him twice in the groin from the floor. With a grunt, the big guy grabbed his face, lifted him clean off the floor, and threw him into the lockers. A clatter of metal and Leon slid down, rolled right, and avoided a punch to the face. He swung low and kicked out, took the legs from his attacker, and sent the big guy into the wall.

Fast for a mountain, the attacker came at him and swung, Leon ducked under his arm and pummeled twice into his exposed side and got an elbow to the face for his effort. He felt it hit, hoped he still had teeth, and answered the move with jab of his knife into the belly. The blade sank in, the man backhanded him while they struggled, and Leon felt his ear ring.

The knife came at him and Leon cross barred the move with his wrists. They struggled, the big man grunting like a fucking pig or something. Leon brought up his knee, got him in the groin again, and avoided a head butt in the process. The knife dipped low enough to skim his cheek and spill blood.

He was going to die gutted on his own blade if something didn't change. So, he shouted for his partner, after all...isn't that what they were for, "JILL!? A little help here!"

On the stairs, Jill heard the battle above her. Scared, she hurried up the stairs to find Leon and the biggest masked man she'd ever seen battling for Irving's body. Huge, muscled, the behemoth of a man swung punches and finally landed one solid kick. It hit Leon in the chest and sent him over the couch and to the floor like a buffalo had reared up.

Leon gasped on the ground, "...fucking monster strength."

Jill fired from the safety of the railing and the big man took the bullet in the vest he wore, returned fire and nearly took her eye again, and forced her back into cover. She heard him claim Irving from the ground, Leon rolled around the couch and fired from the floor, and managed to get the couch kicked over a top him for the effort. He grunted, Jill fired again and hit the big man in the back, and it didn't even stop him.

He leaped out the window with their prey.

Shouting, Jill raced after them, trying to throw the couch off Leon and finding it too heavy for her. He grunted from the floor, pushing beneath it. As it was lifted, she grabbed his face to find him bruised from ear to mouth, bleeding, and she remarked, "...fuck, he almost knocked your damn teeth down your throat."

Gasping a little, he answered, "...he almost collapsed my god damn chest. Forget the face, I'm worried he broke a rib."

Jill helped him sit up and remove the vest he wore. Wincing, he let her lift his shirt and inspect his ribs and clavicle. Tender, she noticed, but nothing looking broken. He was bruised, but it could have been so much worse.

Leon spit blood on the floor and mused, "...who the hell was that guy?"

Jill watched the wind whip noisly through the shattered window. She'd caught a glimpse of that goddamn tattoo on his neck. It was an S.T.A.R.S. badge. He hadn't had it when she'd seen him last, but she knew why it was there.

She knew why Wesker had branded him with it.

To show her exactly who she was battling.

Heart hurting, she whispered, "...I think that was my old partner."

Surprised, Leon glanced at her face, "...what the hell...?"

She nodded, "Yeah. I need to find out why. I need to stop him...I can't follow orders from now on."

She rose from the floor and offered him a hand up. He took it, rising beside her, and she invited, "You should go back. You should get help. I can handle things from here on in. I won't risk your career following my own lead."

She turned away to the stairs and started down them. Leon laughed lightly and followed her, "You kidding? I'm in this. Don't lone ranger on me and get stupid. I don't care who that was, honestly. I just know I'm about to find him and kick his ass."

She paused. She considered things and turned back. Her fingers curled around Leon's vest to hold on for a moment, "You can't kill him."

Brows arched, he laughed, "You kidding? I'm gonna bury him in a hole as deep and wide as his goddamn shoulders. Dude looks like he punches boulders for practice. Meat rocket f-"

She put a hand over his mouth and surprised him, "...you can't kill him. I can't let you. He's my partner. I have to do whatever I can to save him. I don't know why he's doing what he's doing. I can't explain it, but I'm going to save him. It's not his choice...it can't be. He would never serve the wrong side. So, trust me, help me, or turn around and go back...but you can't kill him."

They held gazes over her hand. She scanned his face. After a moment, he simply nodded.

Her hand slid away and Leon mused, "...shit. I just thought this would be a cake walk. At what point am I gonna figure out that it's never a cake walk?"

Jill sighed and patted his butt like a team mate encouraging a good game. He laughed lightly and fell into step behind her. "What did I say about the flirting?"

She rolled her eyes and returned, "Please...you're too ugly to be my type. I like men with teeth."

She went ahead of him. He couldn't stop the glitter of amusement in his eyes. She was something else. He appreciated the effort given what they'd just found out. She was going to save that stupid mountain she called a partner.

He'd give it his best shot.

Why?

Because the sister of that mountain had done the same for him a million years before in a dying city.

Apparently, they were now on a quest to save Chris Redfield. All they had to do was avoid getting killed by him first.