When I awoke it was dark outside. I could hear the rain hitting the roof on the house I was in, and the thunder booming in the sky. I could barely make out the shapes in the room, but it was enough to tell what my surroundings were. I crawled over to the end of the bed and looked at the floor where Leon had passed out. He wasn't there.
"L-Leon…?" I called out, feeling panic slowly wash over me.
"Hey, relax." A man said. "I'm right here."
I felt a warm hand gently place itself on my shoulder and I knew immediately that it was Leon. When I turned around, I could make out his face in the shadows from the torches outside. He looked pretty healthy, despite the fact that his hair was caked in blood, but mine probably was too, so I pushed that aside.
"Are you okay?" I asked, remembering how much blood he had coughed up earlier.
"Never better." He said assuringly, but I could hear the worry in his voice.
I gave him a sympathetic look and decided to change the subject. "So how long have you been awake?"
"About two hours. I saw you sleeping and just decided to leave you be. We've had a pretty rough day."
"Oh, thanks." I said casually, even though I was melting on the inside.
He grinned at me. Obviously I wasn't as good an actress and I'd thought. I stood up and began walking to the door.
"What about your shirt?" Leon asked, pointing to the blue tank top I had used as a pillow.
I shrugged. "It's probably ruined now; that bed was filthy."
We exited the house, with me now only wearing black clothing, and my make up completely smeared. I wiped the underneath of my eyes.
We continued walking, turning to the right and walking on wet, soggy mud that made squishy noises as we got drenched in the rain. There was another door (what did you expect?) and there were a few random tiki torches that lit up the way. On the other side of the big, heavy, annoying, I'm-getting-sick-of-all-these-creepy-doors door, we heard rushing water.
"Hey Leon, didn't that paper say that the key to the church is behind a waterfall?"
"I think so…"
We kept walking up the path that was surrounded by a rock wall, which, to me, kind of looked like it was bowl shaped, when one of the creepy men began walking towards us. But something about him seemed… odd…
Then, his head began twitching. I went to pull out my gun when Leon stopped me. We carefully watched the man as he walked towards us. All of the sudden his head exploded and out came what must have been that Las Plagas thing that was mentioned in the note. It was red, slimy, and kind of reminded me of a squid. It had an eye on the left side of its face (if you could even call it a face), and tentacles that slashed around viciously trying to slice you with its claws. The thing was beyond anthropic.
I didn't care what Leon said; I pulled out my gun and began shooting bullets into the thing, one after the other with Leon's help. Thirteen bullets later, it still hadn't died. We both continued to shoot volleys of bullets into the thing, until it made a loud, ear-shattering screech, and disintegrated.
"What the hell was that thing?" I asked Leon, breathlessly.
"I don't know… But I don't like it…"
Was that thing going to be in me? Leon promised he wouldn't let them do anything, but just in case, I don't think slapping him would make it better.
We continued walking up the path and the roaring sound got louder, up a few steps there were planks that you had to jump across to get to the other side of the river. Of course, Leon had to catch me, and every time my cheeks would flare red. I was hoping he hadn't noticed, but with my luck he probably did. On the other side of the river it was a dead end, or so we thought.
"Hey Leon, there's a rope here!" I pointed to said rope that was tied to a part of the rocks. "I think we have to climb down it."
Leon walked to where I was standing and observed the rope. "This thing will never hold both of us at the same time." He finally said after minutes of examining the strength and length of it.
"Then what do we do?"
He thought for a second. "Here, I'll go down first and check out the area. If more of those things show up while I'm gone, shoot them." He tossed me a full box of handgun ammo.
I nodded and he began descending down the cliff. Nobody ever did come, so the extra ammo was useless. When it was my turn, I tightly clutched the rope and slid down, kicking off the wall every so often. As soon as I got to the ground I felt the sting on my fingers from rope burn.
"Don't worry," Leon said. "I have it too." He showed me his fingers: they were bright red and had scratches and scrapes on them.
I clenched my fists. It hurt. I had never had rope burn before, but I figured that was the least of my problems at the moment, so I tried not to worry about the pain.
To our right were big, heavy gears that squeaked and hurt my ears. We walked forward and were forced to turn right, but part of the bridge across the river was missing. It wasn't like before where the gaps were small enough to simple jump across (Well, for Leon anyway…), these gaps were at least twice as big. If you fell in, you'd be washed away by the running water.
"What's the box for?" I asked, pointing to a wooden container that was being held up by chains above the river. Wait… maybe if we broke the chains somehow, the box would fall and be stopped by a board placed on the railing beside us and we could jump across?
I voiced my thoughts and Leon shot the box down. My plan worked perfectly and we jumped across. The gap wasn't as big as the others, so I jumped myself. The waterfall was big, and loud. We had to shout so we could hear each other.
"How do we get past there?" I shouted over the noise.
"I don't know, but there's got to be a switch or something to shut the water off! I mean, what else could those gears be for?" He shouted back.
There was another gap and this time we had to shoot down two boxes. We jumped across them and then he climbed up a ladder and pulled a lever, shutting off the waterfall.
"Well that was easy." I said to Leon once he jumped back down. He smiled, giving me the butterflies. I didn't want to think about why, so I thought about something else; cake seemed to work.
We walked back to where the waterfall once was. As soon as we jumped across the second box and onto the bridge, a numerous amount of infected villagers began emerging from the tunnel that was once hidden behind the waterfall, and from the path Leon and I had come from. We quickly turned around and jumped back over the boxes, since there was nobody over there. We pulled out our guns and shot the men as they were jumping from box to box, making them fall in the water. Once everyone was defeated, we entered the tunnel that was once hidden behind the waterfall, and I took a serious note to get new shoes when I got back home.
Home…
"I think this is the key." Leon said, snapping me out of my thoughts.
We had reached the back of the cave and it was formed to look something like a small room. It had at least fifty candles lined along the side walls, and in the back, was some sort of circular stone that was mounted on the wall. Leon removed the stone from its spot, and said wall rose up into the ceiling, revealing a hidden part of the tunnel.
