Gone by Dawn
Part One:
-Downfall-
Chapter 6: End of Watch
Raccoon City
The long buzzing sound indicated it was time to fight for your life.
He groaned, eyes flickering, as the swirling red drew him from the dark to a state of awareness he wasn't craving. He wanted to stay in the dark. In the dark, a girl with Jill Valentine's face was trying to put her hand in his pants. In the red, he was lying on his side on the floor in the cold.
Groaning again, Leon forced his tired body up from the ground to a sitting position. The room was some semblance of a lab. It was tossed in the corners with papers and beakers over turned and spilling ooze onto the steel floor. A camera made a zooming noise and drew his gaze to it as a voice invited, "Good morning...you're late to the party it seems. Do try to wake up a little faster next time, would you? Your friends are already playing."
Leon grunted, his chest aching. He realized someone had bound his chest in a bandage and the swath of it was red with blood. Great. He'd forgotten his heroic dive to cover Jill. It had gotten him shot.
The voice informed him, "Mr. Kennedy...it would be in your best interest to work through the pain of it. You have two hours to stay alive and catch up to your friends. I suggest you get moving."
The doors buzzed. The doors opened...and a monster emerged through the narrow frame like Goliath come to defeat David. Leon braced, glancing around desperately for a weapon.
The thing that paced forward had never been a man. It was all swirling tentacles and stinking pus filled boils. It had rows and rows and rows of sharpened teeth that screamed with a high pitched sound so loud he cowered for a moment.
And then?
Then it just came for him like a bat outta hell.
Leon grabbed the steel cot beside him and shoved it, hearing it rattle and whine as the rusty wheels propelled it forward. It struck the monster broad side, he dove left and slid over the floor as tentacles whipped above his head, and his boot struck twice into the fat bloated body. It squealed, retreating, and Leon rolled to his feet to dart for the door.
He hit the hallway at full speed and the sound of pursuit became further and further away. The good news? He'd been running track since grade school. He was fast as fuck and pushed with gusts of adrenaline.
He swung around a corner at full tilt, racing against the blare of alarms and the squeal of a hungry plant that wanted to eat him. He rounded another corner and barreled right into a horde of zombies.
The horror nearly cost him his life.
He stumbled, teeth grazed his throat, hands grabbed for his arms. He shouted, spinning a roundhouse kick that was more desperation than any kind of skill. Bodies scattered as he tackled the one in front of him, sent it to the floor with a pitiful moan, and Leon smacked into the wall as he leaped over the fallen. They shambled, he scrambled to hold his feet, and he rolled against the wall into another doorway.
A room with a row of lockers and a desk with a computer. He raced for the other side, found the door locked, and moaned in fear. As he spun back, the tumbling horde was trying to get through the door for him. Terrified, Leon grabbed for the computer.
He ripped it from the wall, launched it like a dodgeball at the first through the door, and sent it stumbling backward into its friends. The next one through got the desk shoved at it like a battering ram. It hit, the horde was blocked at the door by the process of it, and Leon turned back to the locked door. He kicked it, roaring, "HELP! FOR FUCK'S SAKE! HELP!"
There was a buzz as the door whooshed up. He was face to face with the barrel of a gun in his. His hands flew up, "Don't shoot! I'm a human!"
And Jill gasped, "GET DOWN!"
He dropped, she fired over his head with great booms from the shotgun in her grip and he cowered on the floor like a child. Embarrassed, he finally responded as she shouted, "Get the fucking pistol on my back!"
Right.
Leon grabbed for it, jerking it from her pants, and rolled around to fire into the mess chasing them.
She grabbed his shirt to tug him backward through the door with her and someone shouted, "NOW!"
There was a beeping sound as the door slid shut to seal off the horde.
Leon didn't get the chance to feel the shame at cowering on the floor. He was jerked to his feet and Jill demanded, "Did you find a card key!?"
He shook his head, trying to fight off the shock of survival, "N-no..no? What?"
Jill shook her head too, turning back to announce, "Nothing. He didn't find it."
"Damnit." A pretty little asian girl shook her head, hoisting a backpack up on her shoulders, "Ok. So we just do what we can. You get anything useful?"
Leon held up his empty hands.
Sighing, a voice announced, "Goddamn...he's pretty, right? Or have I just been staring at ugly freaks for too long?"
He flushed. Jill told him quietly, "...I'm fucking glad you're alive. You ok?"
Softly, he smiled with apology, "...just my pride aching over here. Sorry I froze back there."
Jill furrowed her brow, "You didn't freeze. This place is a fucking nightmare." Her gaze traveled down to his soaked white shirt. It was pink in places with blood. Her hand touched the bright spot below his armpit, "Shit...I'm sorry. Is it bad?"
He denied that, "Nope. I can handle it. What's the plan here?"
The voice behind him informed them, "I got it!"
There was a beep and the doors beside them hummed as they slowly opened. The hangar they were in opened to a very welcome sight. It was outside. It was raining and flickering with lightning. It was the same horrible night they'd left behind, but it was freedom. Somehow, that was somehow encouraging.
They moved together in a small group of four into the open air.
Leon discovered the asian girl was named Yoko Suzuki. She was a college student studying virology at the university. The other voice was Alyssa Ashcroft, a reporter for the Metro News.
They had nothing in common save for one little thread - Yoko had interned at Umbrella over the summer at the lab that Jill had nearly in. Alyssa was the reporter who'd tried to break the story with Ben Bertolucci and been silenced. Umbrella was what held them together. Umbrella was trying to kill them for what they knew, and learn what they could as they died.
The rain washed away the sweat and the stink of fear. Leon watched the three women move with the same caution as he did. Smart, each in their own way. Alyssa was good with the computers, able to break through the coding on the doors they needed to open. Yoko was a whiz with plants. She told them all about combining certain ones for different healing purposes. Clearly, botany was a speciality of hers.
Jill and her lock picks were invaluable. And him? What good was he?
He found out when Jill caught him creating a make shift spear from a mop handle and a shard of glass from a broken window. She gave him a cool look, assessing him, and he remarked, "I know. It's not much, but it's better than nothing."
She nodded and returned, "Make something for Yoko too."
It was the closest thing to a compliment he was going to get for his improvisation.
With a small twitch of his lips, he nodded.
Jill and Alyssa were working on the gate in the rain, Jill clicking tumblers with her locks as Alyssa stood guard with the shotgun. Yoko was collecting plants from a patch of grass near the closest building. Alyssa, eyeing Leon, wandered, "...what's his story?"
Jill glanced at him and back at the lock, shrugging, "He's a rookie. Good kid. So far, he's saved my life more than once."
Alyssa nodded, "Nice lookin. You notice the way he looks at you?"
"Not really." Jill rose as the lock released, "Not sure it matters right now."
The blonde chuckled, "It all matters. Could be dead soon. It matters."
Jill started to answer and the most horrible sound in the world echoed in the night. "STARZZZZZZ!"
Her heart seized. Leon whipped around and tossed the spear in his hand. Yoko caught it with an oomph of sound. He shouted over the rain, "Jill!"
She was already running. She wasn't sure how she knew, but she knew her time was up here. The taunting voice of the Mastermind mused, "Ohhhh...a new player has entered the game! What delicious surprises await! Should we up the fear factor? After all, the more afraid you are...the faster you turn."
What?
What was this?
Jill glanced in horror at Leon. He shook his head, indicating it was something that didn't matter. Not then. What mattered? It was coming over the rise.
The Nemesis. The thing that didn't stop. It roared and leaped. It landed in a skidding surge between her and Leon. Jill backed up, shouting, "YOU SON OF A BITCH! COME ON THEN!"
It surged to its feet and did just that. Alyssa blasted it with the shotgun and earned a swipe of its arm. It threw her out and away, swatted and slapped away to hit the fence and slide to the ground. Jill waited, waited, and rolled as it swung for it.
She grabbed the gun from the ground, blasted it again from a crouch, and dove forward to avoid losing her head to a tentacle. The Nemesis took a tentacle and wrapped her foot tightly, jerking her back toward it as she struggled. Jill rolled to her back, raised the gun, and shot it again from the ground. It's boot came up, it prepared to stomp her into a puddle of blood and bone and Leon's spear hit it in the throat instead. It struck, Nemesis staggered, and Jill blasted it until the gun clicked empty.
Stumbling, blinded or simply wounded, it released her. Jill scrambled, they all ran through the rain, and the Nemesis went to one knee to huddle in the storm. Wounded!? Wounded!? It could be wounded?!
Driven by hope, Jill shouted, "...we can stop it."
Leon nodded, jerking his head as they barreled into narrow alley. He shouted, "Alyssa!?"
Yoko shook her head, "She was down by the fence...I didn't think...I don't know...I think maybe..."
Jill felt a kick of grief. She'd wanted to be wrong. When she'd seen that swollen neck on the blonde, she wanted to be wrong. But she wasn't. The Nemesis had broken Alyssa's neck.
She made a sound of regret.
Leon shook his head, "We're getting out. We keep going."
Jill staggered and he grabbed her elbow to sling her back into a run, "Run, Jill! You hear me!? RUN!"
She ran. She wanted to stop running and just breathe, but there was no break. She ran. She ran down the stairs and across the long path. The cameras, she knew, were all over the city. No matter where they ran, the bitch in the booth was watching them. That ultra sleek voice was taunt, the eye in the sky would watch. They were alone, but never alone.
Yoko, gasping wildly, warned, "I gotta stop! I gotta stop!"
She grabbed her side and heaved, hunched over with a moan, "...I'm sorry. I'm not the running type. I don't do a lot of cardio."
They cut left barreled down some stairs into the subway. To Jill's surprise, the flickering lights guided them into a small office. Leon shut the door, barring it as best as he could with the desk in the office.
Yoko leaned on the wall, breathing hard. Jill wasn't fairing much better. She tried to catch her breath. Leon was winded but seemed good to go. He paced, questioning, "...if we're infected...if we're all infected...it doesn't matter what we do, does it? It doesn't matter if we fight or die or give up."
Yoko made a small sound like surrender.
Jill, hoarsely, wondered, "So what? I can't let that thing stay loose. I can't. What if it gets outside of the city? It wants me...let me go back and face it. You two can get to the university like Rebecca suggested. Try to hunt up that damn cure."
Surprised, Yoko leaned up, "...cure?"
Leon told her, "...a professor there was supposedly making a cure. You know anything about it?"
Yoko shook her head, "I know where the virology lab is though. We can start there."
Leon nodded, "Awesome. So that's our plan. Get there, get three doses of the cure, blow that son of a bitch up back there and get the hell outta here."
Jill shook her head, "You only need one dose. Let's be honest here."
Surprised, Leon gave her a droll look. She told him, "Come on, Leon. You're immune. We both know that...and me? I'm dead anyway. If I can't stop that thing out there, I'm dead where I stand. Let me do the right thing here and hold it off so you two can escape. You didn't have a reason before when it was just us...but this girl needs you."
Leon stared at her until Yoko said softly, "...what am I missing here?"
Leon laughed, jaw flexing with anger, "Just a girl trying to be a hero."
Jill spat, "Come on! I'm no hero! I'm just trying to do the right thing! Help this girl. It's what you're here for, right? Help her out of the city. Let me do my damn job and help you do that."
He started to answer and a voice came through the office, startling them, "It would seem you need some incentive to fight on and stop cowering. You're running out of a time I'm afraid...so shall we break the stalemate here? Let's remove the bone of contention."
There was a crack of a gun firing. Yoko was thrown back against the lockers with a splash of blood and a squeal of metal. She slid down, leaving a macabre red smear as she went. Jill slid to the floor with a cry of horror. Her hands slapped against the girls chest as she whispered, blood bubbling from her lips, "...west...library...two...one...eight...seven..."
She slumped. Jill whispered, "...don't...please."
And the girl died with a gasp of pain.
She went still, eyes staring and fixed.
Leon shouted, making Jill shiver on the floor, "YOU BITCH! YOU COWARD! YOU CAN'T PLAY WITH PEOPLE'S LIVES LIKE THIS!"
The laughter was sharp and fast, "I can do whatever I want. Now it's just two heroes...which one is the bravest? Will you let Leon go alone into the dirty city now, Jill? Or will you help him to safety? Decisions, decisions..."
The silence was so loud.
Jill stared for a moment at the blood all over her hands.
She lifted them up to stare at them as Leon encouraged, "...get up, Jill.."
She said nothing. He coaxed, "I know it's bad. I know that. I'm-it's...we gotta go. That thing is coming. We gotta move, Jill. Please?"
She let her eyes drift closed. She felt her body seize with the need to cry. She was losing it here. She'd spent days and nights unable to sleep because of nightmares before this. She'd spent hours at her board in her apartment charting, tracking, graphing and deciphering - trying like hell to bring down Umbrella. Now she understood the truth - she was fighting a losing battle.
She was being watched the whole time.
She was toy. She was a game. She was a puppet on a string. She was a chess piece on a board playing against the devil. There was no way she could win. How did she fight that thing chasing her? How did she stop it? How did she protect him?
Her eyes snapped open.
Him?
She knew better. She knew it was stupid, infinitely stupid, to start to worry about the man behind her. He was going to die on her. She knew that. He was going to die on her or leave her or let her down. It was stupid to consider him at all.
She rose to her feet and he caught her forearm to use his shirt and wipe the blood from her hands, encouraging, "...thank you...we can do this. Ok? Just stay with me here. We can do this."
Her gaze drifted over his downturned face as he wiped at her bloody palms. His lashes fanned pretty and long over his cheeks as he worked. She thought Alyssa was right. He was something to look at.
She told him, "...I can't save you."
He lifted his gaze and met hers. They stood in silence for a handful of seconds before he told her, "...yes, you can. Just don't stop trying."
Jesus.
He was a guy who never really stopped believing.
Her heart surged with the stupidity of hope as she nodded, "...ok."
He nodded. He let go of her hands. He offered her the spear. She shook her head. A sad thing to have a fucking spear between them. What could they possibly do with it?
She told him, "...we need better weapons."
He nodded. "Suggestions?"
She sighed and nodded, "Yeah...actually, yeah. I know exactly where to find them."
And, she figured, Chris didn't need them anyway. It was the least he could do for her now. They rushed out into the rain toward his bunker.
It was one of those things she'd always teased him about. He'd insisted he needed it in the event of the apocalypse. He and Claire could live for years down there if needs be. She'd told him he was crazy.
Who was the crazy one now?
He was laughing up his sleeve somewhere.
The bunker was beneath a small shack in the woods just beyond the park. They raced against the storm to get there. The Nemesis, it seemed, had lost her scent for the moment.
She caught the rug in the shack, jerked it back, and opened the small manhole beneath it. Leon blinked as she told him, "Yeah...crazy, right?"
Not so crazy after all.
They went down into the bunker as she hit the lights and the small generator fired up to show Chris' underground hideout. It was a couple of cots, a wall of food in cans and jars, and a wall of weapons.
It was so very, very Redfield.
"All the essentials, he'd say," Jill remarked, "How good are you with heavy weaponry?"
Leon scanned the guns on the wall. He laughed, like a kid in a candy store, "Where has this been all my life?"
She grinned, "Pretty right? Bad news is there's limited ammo. I don't know where he kept most of it. Probably some other bunker, the paranoid bastard. So what we have is only good for a single chance against that thing."
Leon plucked the assault rifle hanging on the wall and seemed pretty steady with it. Jill tilted her head, considering. "Did you say you have some kind of SWAT training?"
He glanced at her and nodded, "I tested high enough with my FTO to qualify for the SWAT course. I was about two days out of that when I signed up for Raccoon."
Jill studied him as he took the single magazine for the AR in his hands and deftly loaded it. He moved like a guy who knew what he was doing. She forgot, when the world was burning around them, that he was trained under the green exterior. He was young, sure, but he was capable. He'd proven that more than once. He was ashamed of cowering, but she didn't think he'd done that all. He'd simply stepped into the training module that said when you're down, your partner backs you up.
Like it or not, he was kinda her partner now.
She was going to do her level best to make sure he stayed alive even if part of her wanted to abandon him to spare him from the thing chasing her and calling for her blood.
She turned toward the closet beside her as Leon spoke into the silence. He was talking about SWAT and S.T.A.R.S. and a desire at one time to have joined the force to work under Wesker. He talked about proving himself from just a kid from a small town with an eye for skeet shooting.
Amused, Jill hissed with pain as she removed her shoulder holster and tugged her shirt up over her head, "Where ya hail from anyway?"
Head down as he loaded his weapon and cleared it like a champ, Kennedy remarked, "Little spot in the road in Texas. Not even a town really, more of a thought after Austin. My parents are the local Sheriff and run the hardware store down there. There's been a Kennedy in the proud Cone County Sheriff's Office since Jesus was a child."
Jill used some of Chris' sanitary wipes to clean up some blood on her belly and arm. Her chest was oozing where she'd been stabbed by the tentacle, but it was healing. She winced and teased, "...you're a rebel huh? Left that proud lineage to be a big city cop."
He glanced up smiling, froze, and she realized it was that she was in her bra. It was just a sports bra, nothing fancy, and covered ten times more than bathing suit would have, but the good boy from the small town? He looked away and faced the ladder.
Touched, Jill remarked, "You should change too. Get a clean shirt on, you never know when we might get the chance again."
She tossed one of Chris' S.T.A.R.S. uniform tops on the table between them with one of Chris' vests. He glanced over and nodded. She slipped a clean undershirt over her head in plain blue, strapped on a tactical vest, and secured her holster back on. Leon shed the bloody shirt he wore and reached for the button down while Jill gave him the same privacy and turned to face the ladder.
"The crazy bitch on the camera must have cleaned your wound there."
Leon murmured, "...kinda scares me that she did."
Jill tended to agree.
She instructed, "We're gonna have to get him into a kill box. To do that, we need a place where we can control the variables."
He stepped up beside her and made her breath catch in that damn top. He looked good in a S.T.A.R.S. uniform, no getting around that. They hefted their respective weapons as Jill told him, "I've got about a dozen rounds for the shotgun. You've got what you found for that. Between us, we need something bigger."
Leon, considering, finally mused, "...what if we use it's goddamn momentum against it?"
Surprised, she tilted her head. He shook his and informed her, "The eyes are everywhere, right? Follow my lead and you'll understand."
He started up the ladder, hissing as his wound protested, and Jill followed, curious, "You gonna make it?"
Leon chuckled a little, "I'm gonna give it my best shot."
She rolled her eyes, "...you just make a pun there?"
He snorted. She appreciated, more than he knew, the stab at humor. Stab? Her shoulder ached. Apparently, her mind wanted to make bad jokes too. Maybe this was how they dealt with it.
Maybe it was bad jokes and surviving.
Maybe it was just the only way to keep from collapsing in regret and remorse.
They reached the top of the ladder and she told him, "The woods will open to the park about a half mile that way. If we cut through, we can use the clo-"
He caught her arms to hold her still. Surprised, Jill fell silent. His eyes were locked over her head. There was flickers of firelight in them and she thought,- Pretty. Pale blue with the flames in them...pretty.
She tended to agree with what Alyssa had said. He was pretty to look at.
His face wasn't amused anymore. It was a mask of something bad, something wrong, something she didn't want to know. So, she asked, "...what?"
He closed his eyes and shook his head. She jerked on her arms now, demanding, "What!? What is it!?"
She turned toward the fire. A bus was burning near the road toward the mountains. Her eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of it. It was just one more burning pyre in a funeral that had once been a metropolis.
But it wasn't.
It wasn't.
It wasn't.
The license plate on the bus read L1K1T. Her mind flashed back -Olive laughing. Olivia and the children pointing and joking, "Lick it! Who would lick a bus!?Ewwww!"
Who would lick a bus?
The funeral pyre was the bus she'd sent to safety. It was all those she'd gathered and risked her life for. It was the last hope she'd had in a horror show of loss. She sank to her knees right there in trees.
The gun clunked to the ground and left her vulnerable. It left her exposed. It left her unguarded.
There were smears of blood all over the windows. She could see faces against glass and bodies tossed inside the burning interior. The bus had been waylaid. She had no doubt Sister Adaline had stopped to pick up more survivors. Something had joined them on that bus. Something had turned. Something had killed them from inside and forced the bus to crash.
Olivia had died screaming.
They all had.
She'd failed them.
Her eyes stayed on the fire as a single tear squeezed free to slide down her cheek.
Undone, Leon gripped her arms to try to lift her up, but she stayed there on her knees. Afraid, he demanded, "Get up, Jill. Up. Come on...get up."
Her wet gaze shifted to his face, "...why? I can't do this anymore. I don't want to...I want to walk over there and let the fire take me." To his horror, she shouted, "I'm here! YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH! COME TAKE ME!"
He slapped her and made them both freeze in surprise.
It worked though, she hunkered away and the rage on her ate through the surrender. He crouched and spat, "...not like this. You hear me? Not this way. I need you to get up. I need you to help me. I can't just lay down and die like this...I can't. And I can't let you do it either."
Broken, she let him cup her face gently now on one side. She wanted to fall forward and weep until she was empty on the dirty ground. Her hand lifted and gripped his wrist, seizing around it, "...why!?"
He leaned forward and informed her, "...if you don't save one life, you'll never save any."
Jesus.
He wanted to save her.
He cared enough to risk everything for her - some woman he'd never met in a city gone to hell. What kind of man was this? What kind of faith was that? How did he manage it when they'd already lost so much?
He urged, "Bertolucci and the girl, Kendo and his daughter...it's not all lost, Jill. It's not over. Help me...save me...and make it count."
Her heart seized, "...damnit, Kennedy...I'm not special. I'm not anything but a person who tried to do the right thing. Look what happened to them!" Her shout echoed and scared him.
He caught the other side of her face and held her there to look at him as he demanded, "I know...I see it. I can't even imagine what it feels like for you. I can't, but I can do this. I can end this. We can do it together. Get up, come with me, and save my life."
Her hands came up and shoved against his chest. He released her as she rose, gripping the gun in both hands. Her teeth clenched to stop the wet tears that leaked from her eyes.
Save him.
Could she?
She'd failed them all. She wanted to cross through the woods and roast beside them. And then?
He told her, "...let's the kill the son of a bitch who did this to them."
What?
What did that mean?
And then she saw what it meant. She understood. Standing in the swirling flame before the bus, the thing she'd spent all this time fleeing waited for them. He watched them, the flames eating at his clothes while he simply stared. The Nemesis.
He'd stopped the bus. He'd killed them all. He'd sought them out to finish them...to lure her there to his kill box.
Hell or high water...it was time to see who'd be the last man standing.
It was time to stop the Nemesis.
It was the last thing she could do for all of them.
