September 29 — Early Morning
POV Jill Valentine
The gate hung open on a twisted hinge, one side dragged low enough to scrape the ground when the wind shifted. Jill slipped through without touching it and let it settle behind her.
The difference was immediate.
The city never stopped making noise — even at its worst there had always been something. Sirens cutting out mid-call. Distant gunfire. Glass breaking somewhere out of sight. The park swallowed all of that. Sound didn't travel the same way here. It flattened, softened, died early between the trees.
She paused just inside and listened.
Nothing moved toward her.
She didn't trust that for a second.
She adjusted her grip and stepped onto the path. Gravel shifted under her boots, louder than she liked, every step carrying farther than it should. The trees were dense enough to break the firelight into uneven patches that settled in strange places and made distance harder to judge.
Great. A haunted park. Just what the night needed.
She kept moving.
The path curved left, bordered by low fencing collapsed in two places. One section bent inward as if something had leaned on it and kept going. The ground there was disturbed, soil turned in long uneven lines already drying at the edges. She stepped over it without slowing.
An infected stood twenty meters ahead, just off the right side of the trail. Upright, head angled slightly to one side, not moving. She shifted her approach by half a step, closed the distance quietly, and drove the heel of her boot into the back of its knee before it registered her. It buckled. She caught it by the collar on the way down, controlled the fall, pressed the barrel to the base of its skull and fired once.
Low sound. Low cost.
Kept walking.
The path split ahead. One branch dipped toward darker ground where the soil looked damp and uneven, the other climbed slightly toward a cluster of old stone fixtures. She took the higher route.
Something moved in the trees to her left.
A shift of weight that carried through branches and stopped as soon as she turned her head. She held there, watching the space between trunks. Nothing resolved into shape. No follow-through. No second sound.
Come on then.
Nothing came.
She moved again.
The air changed as she went deeper — thick with damp earth and stagnant water, the path narrowing under overgrowth that hadn't been maintained in years. She brushed a branch aside and felt the resistance in it, fresh break where something heavier had already forced through earlier.
The ground dipped without warning.
Her left foot slid a fraction farther than she intended before she corrected. Pain flared along her ribs, sharp enough to pull a breath out of her. She rode it out and kept moving.
An infected lay half-hidden near the edge of the path, one arm pinned beneath it. It heard her before she reached it — pushed itself up faster than she expected, arm swinging wide. She stepped inside the reach, let it go past, hooked her forearm under its chin from behind and drove it face-first into the low stone border of the path. The impact was enough. She didn't waste a round.
Kept moving.
The path widened near a shallow pond.
The surface was still, dark enough to reflect only fragments of the trees above. She slowed. The silence here carried weight — a faint irregular pressure that didn't match her steps.
A ripple crossed the surface from left to right. Too straight for wind.
Don't.
She moved on.
The next section had once been maintained — path clearer, ground firmer, trees spaced with intention. A row of benches lined one side, one overturned with its legs snapped cleanly at the base. Wood splintered inward, not out.
A sound ahead — low, uneven, something dragging across stone.
Three infected this time, moving along the path in a loose cluster, drawn toward the same point beyond her line of sight. Too close together to take quietly. She checked the pistol — mag running thinner than she liked — and made the calculation fast.
She grabbed the overturned bench and shoved it hard into the path.
The noise pulled them around. All three turning at once, redirecting toward the sound, giving her the angles she needed. She took the outside one first — round through the temple, clean — stepped left before the other two processed it, used the nearest bench post as a pivot point and drove her elbow into the second one's face hard enough to drop it, then put her boot through the side of its head while it was down.
The third caught her sleeve as she turned.
The grip was strong — stronger than she expected, fingers locked, pulling her off balance toward its mouth. She twisted her arm inward against the thumb, broke the grip, and shoved the barrel up under its chin.
Fired.
Stood there for a second, breathing through it.
Three. Four rounds total. She needed to start being smarter about this.
The path bent sharply right into a narrow stretch bordered by low stone walls, older and darker, worn smooth by years of weather. Just high enough to block the view beyond them.
She stepped in.
Halfway through, something hit the ground behind her.
She turned, weapon up.
Empty path. Branches above the walls swaying slightly, settling back with no visible cause.
Her grip tightened. She held there one second longer than she needed to, then moved before stillness became hesitation.
The far end opened onto a break in the tree line.
Beyond it, the park sloped toward the river.
The ground had been torn apart. Earth lifted and displaced in long deep channels cutting across the terrain without regard for the path or the structures built into it. Stone collapsed inward where the ground beneath it no longer held. A metal railing near the slope bent outward at a sharp angle, base torn free from its anchors.
He came through here.
Jill stepped to the edge and looked down.
The river ran dark and fast below, reflecting firelight in broken streaks. The far bank was a shadowed line of collapsed structures, indistinct through smoke.
Something moved at the water's edge.
Half-submerged. Pulling itself along the bank with a deliberate motion that had nothing in common with the infected. She watched it for one second.
It slid into the current and was gone.
The water closed over it without resistance.
The ground shifted under her left foot.
Not a slide. Not loose soil.
Movement.
Jill stopped.
The pressure came again — stronger, rolling up through the ground and into her legs before she heard anything at all. She stepped back once, twice, reading the vibration the way you read a room, trying to find where it was coming from and where it was going.
The earth ahead buckled and came apart.
She was already moving sideways when it broke the surface — a mass of plated muscle tearing through soil and stone, mouth open wide enough that she caught the edge of it in her peripheral and didn't look directly at it because looking at it meant slowing down and slowing down meant dying.
It snapped shut on empty air. Drove back into the ground.
"What the—"
She ran.
The vibration split — behind her, then right, the ground rippling in two directions at once. She cut left, boots hitting uneven terrain as she pushed through low brush. Branches caught at her jacket, cost her half a step —
The earth split open directly ahead.
She stopped hard, dropped into a crouch as it burst up in front of her — the mass of it passing close enough that the displaced air hit her face. She rolled sideways, came up on one knee, fired twice into the underside of it as it crested.
The rounds went in. She didn't know if they did anything.
It slammed back into the ground.
"Son of a bitch—"
The vibration shifted with her when she moved. She stopped again and felt it — yes, tracking, following footfall.
She grabbed a chunk of broken stone from the torn ground and hurled it hard to her right.
It hit earth six meters away.
The ground erupted there instead.
She was already moving left, cutting across the slope toward firmer terrain, stone and packed soil replacing the soft ground near the river bank. The vibration lagged. She pushed harder, forcing distance, staying on solid ground, denying it the soft earth it needed.
Behind her, the surface ruptured once more — farther back now, the thing surging up and snapping at nothing before disappearing again.
Jill didn't stop.
She hit the main path and stayed on it, keeping her weight centered, not giving it purchase. The tremor faded to something she felt only faintly through her soles.
Not gone. Just losing her.
Good enough.
Her legs were slower now — not just fatigue, everything the last ten minutes had extracted presenting the bill all at once. The delay between intent and movement just noticeable enough to register, not enough to stop her.
The trees thinned. The path widened. The outline of the clock tower rose through the branches ahead, stone catching what light made it through the smoke, solid in a way nothing else in the city had been for hours.
The last stretch was the quietest. No movement. No distant sounds. The background noise of the city muted past the point of comfort. The air carried burned metal and something chemical underneath it, sharp enough to cut through everything else.
She stepped out from under the trees onto the open ground that led to the tower.
Okay. One thing at a time.
The park ended behind her.
She didn't look back.
__________________________________________________
And a special thanks to Zaheer_Ali_Khan_6774 for the power stone—really appreciate the support