September 29 — Early Morning
The road into Raccoon City was empty.
Not late-night empty — the kind that didn't have an explanation. Leon had been driving for three hours and he'd passed maybe four other vehicles, all of them on the shoulder, all of them dark. No drivers visible. No hazard lights. Just cars that had stopped and stayed stopped, positioned wrong in the way that said whatever had made them stop hadn't been planned.
He told himself it was nothing. Road construction. An incident that had closed the route and he'd missed the detour signs. There were explanations.
He didn't fully believe any of them, but he held onto them anyway because his head hurt and he was already three hours late for his first day.
The city appeared as a glow first — orange, low on the horizon, spread too wide to be normal lighting. He'd told himself that was nothing too, for about forty minutes, before it became impossible.
Something was burning.
A lot of something.
He drove toward it anyway because there was nowhere else to go and because that was where he was supposed to be.
The gas station appeared on the right about two miles from the city limits — a BP, fluorescent lights still running, the kind of place that never actually closed. He needed gas. He needed water and two minutes where he wasn't moving toward something that looked increasingly wrong.
He pulled in.
The forecourt was empty. One pump had its nozzle hanging out, the hose stretched toward a car still sitting at the adjacent pump with the driver's door open. Engine off. Nobody in it.
Leon sat in his car for a moment and looked at it.
Then he got out.
The night air smelled wrong. Not just exhaust and asphalt — something underneath that he couldn't identify and didn't want to think about. He started the pump on his tank and looked at the open car while it ran. Keys still in the ignition. A coffee cup in the cupholder, still upright. Phone face-down on the passenger seat.
Not a crash. Not an emergency stop.
Just stopped.
He topped off and went inside.
The interior was lit but wrong — one overhead panel flickering at the far end, the rest casting flat white light over shelves that hadn't been restocked in a while and a counter where the register was open and the cash drawer was sitting out and a soft drink had tipped over at some point and soaked into the mat below it and dried there.
Nobody behind the counter.
Leon stood in the doorway.
"Hello?"
His voice came out less professional than he'd intended.
"RPD. Is anyone—"
A sound from the back of the store. Behind the door marked STAFF ONLY — slightly ajar, a dim light coming through the gap.
He put his hand on the weapon at his hip — not drawing it, just touching it — and moved toward the counter.
His head wasn't helping. Two glasses of water in the last three hours, his mouth tasting like last night, his eyes feeling installed slightly too tight in his skull. None of that was relevant but it was present, making the edges of things slightly less sharp than he needed.
He pushed the staff door open with his foot.
Small stockroom, badly lit — a single bulb, no shade. Metal shelving along the walls, boxes stacked unevenly, a desk in the corner with paperwork curled at the edges.
The man was on the floor near the desk.
On his side, facing away from Leon, one arm stretched out. Station uniform — the green polo, the name tag. Not moving, but his back was rising and falling. Slowly. Unevenly.
"Sir." Leon crossed to him and crouched. "Sir, I'm with the RPD. Are you—"
He put a hand on the man's shoulder.
The man moved.
Not the way a person waking up moves. The head came around first and the body followed with a delay that was wrong, the eyes finding him and the eyes being nothing he had a reference for.
Leon stood up and took a step back. His hand was on his weapon. He hadn't made the decision to put it there.
"Sir — stay down, I need you to—"
The man rose. Not struggling — just rising, the movement economical and wrong — and turned toward him with a fixed attention that had nothing in it Leon recognized as awareness.
"RPD, stay where—"
It moved faster than he'd expected and Leon's gun came out and the shot hit the shelving unit two feet left of where he'd been aiming and then it was on him and they went into the shelving and boxes came down around them and Leon got his forearm up between the snapping teeth and his face and pushed and couldn't get purchase and pushed again.
He got his gun against its chest and fired twice.
It went down.
Leon stood in the wreckage with his gun up and his heart doing something he could feel in his throat and looked at what was on the floor.
He'd read the reports. He'd been briefed on escalating use of force and threat assessment and a dozen other things that had absolutely nothing to do with what had just happened.
He lowered the gun slightly.
"What the—"
"Behind you!"
He spun.
The second one came out of the bathroom doorway — he hadn't even seen the bathroom, hadn't cleared the room, hadn't done any of what he'd been trained to because he'd been thinking about the first one — and it was already close, too close, and he fired twice, one going wide into the wall and one hitting center mass and not stopping it and then it was on him too.
Something hit it from the side.
Hard. A metal shelving bar, swung with both hands. The thing went sideways, hit the floor, and Leon fired again, properly this time, and it stayed down.
He stood there breathing.
A girl was standing in the stockroom doorway with the shelving bar still in her hands, looking at him — equal parts adrenaline and assessment.
She lowered the bar.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." He wasn't entirely sure that was true. "Yeah."
They stood in the forecourt and Leon tried to put the last four minutes into some kind of order and couldn't.
More were coming out now — through the door, around the side of the building, moving toward the light. Not fast. But there were four of them and the forecourt wasn't that big.
"Car," he said.
They went.
He got the door open, keys already in his hand, and the engine turned over on the first try. The girl was in the passenger seat before he'd fully registered it. He reversed and the rear bumper caught the concrete pump island and the impact rattled through the car and one of them put a hand flat on the hood as he went forward and then the forecourt was behind them and the road opened up.
He drove.
Neither of them spoke.
Leon looked in the rearview at the station getting smaller — lights still running, figures still moving in the forecourt, everything completely ordinary looking from a distance except for the figures.
She broke first.
"What the hell were those things." Not a question. Something she needed to say out loud. "Those people. What was wrong with them?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" She looked at him. "You said RPD back there. And you don't know anything?"
"First day."
She stared at him. "Seriously."
"Yeah." A breath. "They definitely skipped this part in training."
Something moved in her expression — not quite a laugh, but close enough to matter.
She turned back to the windshield. He could see her working through it — jaw tight, hands in her lap, the adrenaline looking for somewhere to go.
"I drove in two hours ago," she said. "It wasn't like this. It was wrong but it wasn't — there weren't—" She stopped. Started again. "There were people on the street. Moving like that. I thought they were drunk or sick or—"
She stopped again.
"Leon Kennedy. RPD." He kept his eyes on the road. "That's all I've got."
A beat.
"Claire Redfield." Like she was reminding herself. "I'm looking for my brother. Chris. He was posted here — RPD, S.T.A.R.S. — do you know him?"
"I know of S.T.A.R.S."
"Is he — do you know if he's—"
"I don't know him personally." A glance. "I just started."
She exhaled. Looked at the city ahead — the fires burning low on the horizon, already hours old.
"He stopped answering," she said. "Weeks ago. So I drove out." Said it like she was explaining it to herself as much as him. "I thought maybe—"
She didn't finish it.
He didn't push it.
"RPD — that's where I'm going. If there's anyone coordinating a response, that's where they'll be. If your brother made it anywhere he could reach—"
"Okay." Fast. Like she needed to stop thinking about the alternative.
"I mean it. They'll have—"
"Okay, Leon." Not sharp. Just done. "I said okay."
He looked at the road ahead.
She went quiet. Watched the city coming closer through the passenger window.
Neither of them said anything else for a while.