September 29th. Mizoil Gas Station (Raccoon City Limits). 8:15 P.M.
Leon dropped the bags of chips onto the laminated wood counter. The crunch of the plastic hitting the surface was the only sound that dared to defy the monotonous, almost hypnotic beeping of the phone off the hook, which swung slowly behind the register like a pendulum of bad omens. His instinct, that keen sense that had earned him honors and top grades at the police academy, screamed at him that something was terribly wrong. The silence wasn't natural; it wasn't the peace of an empty business, but the heavy, charged silence that precedes an ambush in hostile territory.
"Sir?" he called out again, his voice echoing through the metal shelves as he approached the storage room door. "I'm... well, I'm almost the new police officer. Kennedy. Do you need help? Is anyone back there?"
He cursed himself for the hesitation in his voice and for that "almost" that sounded so ridiculous now. He still didn't have the badge on his belt, nor the fitted official uniform, much less his service weapon in his hand. He felt naked and vulnerable, an imposter playing hero in a lost gas station, while his first day on the job slipped through his fingers due to a damn delay and a hangover that was still hammering at his temples.
Pushing the door open, the flickering white light of the storage room, emitting a constant electric buzz, revealed a scene straight out of a clinical and visceral nightmare. On the floor, amidst overturned supply boxes, a man in a blue gas station uniform was bleeding out, his hands uselessly scratching the cold floor. Another figure, back turned and wearing clothes torn into dirty rags, was hunched over him, making a wet, rhythmic sucking sound. When the figure turned, Leon saw the true face of death: grayish skin hanging in decomposed strips and eyes clouded by whitish cataracts that reflected nothing but a ravenous, primitive, and absolute hunger.
"Back! I said get back!" Leon roared, backing toward the store as the creature stood up with a gruesome stiffness, bones creaking like dry branches under dead skin.
The rookie cop didn't wait for the monster to decide its next move. He turned to run toward the exit, but as he reached the center aisle of the store, the explosive mix of adrenaline, panic, and lack of sleep played a dirty trick on him. His right boot slipped in a puddle of viscous liquid—blood or oil, he wasn't sure—and he stumbled right into a shelf of canned goods.
The crash of soup cans hitting the linoleum floor was deafening amidst the sepulchral calm of the place. He jumped to his feet, heart hammering against his ribs like a caged animal, and just as he reached the foggy glass door, he saw his reflection and something else: the "gas station attendant" from the back room, who was supposed to be dying, was now walking heavily right behind him, arms outstretched and jaw unhinged in a grimace of perpetual agony.
"Shit! Don't come any closer!" Leon exclaimed, desperately looking for any object that could serve as a defense.
The creature lunged at him with a physical strength that defied all medical logic given its cadaverous appearance. Leon, although terror tried to paralyze him, reacted with the muscle memory of his grueling CQC (Close Quarters Combat) sessions at the academy.
Instead of simply backing away, he took a calculated side step, intercepting the zombie's outstretched arm. He used the attacker's weight against it, projecting it into a row of metal shelves with a leverage maneuver, but the creature didn't emit a single groan of pain. It turned immediately, with an empty stare, launching a savage bite that passed millimeters from Leon's neck, close enough to feel the icy, fetid breath of death.
Leon threw an instinctive punch, charged with all his frustration, straight into the attacker's face. He felt the repugnant texture of dead flesh yielding and tearing under his knuckles, a sensation that made him want to vomit right there. The blow unbalanced the being enough for Leon to reach a red fire extinguisher hanging on the wall.
It wasn't a Beretta pistol, but it was heavy enough. When the creature lunged again with twitching fingers, Leon struck him in the temple with the base of the metal cylinder. The sound of the impact was dry and blunt, and the body collapsed again, but its fingers kept clawing at the floor, blindly seeking the officer's ankles.
"Don't you ever die?! What the hell are you?!" Leon shouted, panting as the initial panic began to be replaced by violent frustration and a cold sweat running down his back.
In that instant, the roar of a high-displacement engine tore through the night. A road motorcycle skidded into the gas station lot, kicking up a cloud of water and asphalt, stopping right in front of the main window. A young woman in a bright red leather jacket with her hair tied back jumped off, wielding a Browning Hi-Power pistol with a determination and tactical calm that left Leon paralyzed for a second.
The girl aimed directly at Leon's head. The young cop felt time stop, seeing the barrel of the gun aligned with his eyes.
"GET DOWN!" she shouted with an authority that admitted no reply or doubt.
Leon didn't think twice; he dropped to the cold tiles of the store, covering his head with his arms. The sharp, powerful sound of a gunshot rang out in the room, followed by the impact of a bullet piercing the skull of the creature that, ignoring the previous blows, had gotten to its feet and was mere inches from grabbing him from behind.
The zombie's body collapsed like a bundle of inert flesh onto the counter, spilling a dark, viscous fluid over the bags of potato chips and candy Leon had just chosen minutes before.
Leon looked up, gasping heavily. The girl in the red jacket entered the store with a quick, sure step, keeping her weapon raised and scanning from side to side with a tactical efficiency Leon had only seen in his most experienced field instructors.
"Are you okay?" she asked, offering a hand to help him up. Her eyes showed a spark of human concern, but her hands were steady as steel, without a trace of hesitation.
"Yeah... I think so," Leon replied, accepting the hand as he brushed the dust and dirt off his jeans, feeling his legs still wavering a bit. "What the hell was that thing? It was going to eat my face... and I hit it with everything I had, but it wouldn't stop."
The girl glanced sideways toward the storage room door, from where new guttural groans began to resonate, scratching the wooden walls like fingernails on a chalkboard.
"I have no idea what they are, but there are more outside. Many more. They're everywhere."
Leon looked through the store window, which was now vibrating with the wind. Under the yellowish, flickering light of the old pumps, erratic and deformed shadows began to emerge from the darkness of the surrounding forest.
It wasn't one or two; there were dozens, moving with that same slow, macabre, and persistent march toward the store, drawn by the sound of the gunshot and the roar of the bike. They were like moths drawn to a dying light.
"This is absolute insanity," Leon muttered, his mind finally accepting reality: this wasn't a riot, or a drunk brawl, or a rabies outbreak. It was something much worse. "Forget the gas and forget the sugar. We have to get out of here right now. We have to run!"
"My bike got stuck from the impact of the slide, it won't start in time," she said urgently, pointing outside where three of those beings were already surrounding the motorcycle with their pale, anxious fingers. "Is that Jeep over there yours?"
Leon pulled the keys from his pocket with hands that were starting to sweat cold, but whose grip was firm out of pure necessity to survive.
"Yeah. And the engine is already warm. We just have to get to it."
"Let's go then," the girl declared, leading the way out.
They exited the store in a desperate dash, breaking the dense humidity of the night that clung to their faces. Leon dove for the back door to retrieve his tactical bag—where he kept his service weapon and gear—while Claire went around the front of the vehicle, narrowly dodging a dead man dragging himself across the asphalt leaving a trail of black blood.
The sound of the moans intensified, becoming a terrifying collective murmur; the icy, fleshless hands of the beings began to graze the metal of the Jeep just as they both locked themselves in the cabin, hitting the locks with a sharp thud.
Leon inserted the key and turned it hard, praying internally. The engine made a feint to start, an agonizing metallic click-click-click, but it didn't catch. The Jeep, their only salvation, seemed to have decided to give up at the worst possible moment.
"Come on, come on, don't do this to me now!" Leon exclaimed, pounding the dashboard with his fist as he watched in horror as a bloody hand slammed against his window, leaving a trail of viscera and broken fingers.
"Start it already, move! More are coming!" the girl shouted, watching as the group of zombies began to completely surround the vehicle, hitting the bodywork with a brute, blind, and rhythmic force. The Jeep rocked slightly under the pressure of the piled bodies crowding against the doors, looking for a crack to get in.
Leon took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a brief second to block out the visual horror pounding on his glass, and remembered the old trick for engines at the academy that choked in the cold and damp. He floored the accelerator twice, turned the key with a dry, determined, and precise movement, and this time the Wrangler's engine roared with a liberating fury that vibrated through the entire chassis.
Without hesitating for an instant, Leon shifted into reverse violently. The Jeep jerked, running over a couple of zombies blocking the rear exit; the sound of bones crunching under the massive rubber tires resonated inside the cabin like dry branches snapping under a boot.
He spun the steering wheel violently, ignoring the impacts, and shifted into first. The Jeep leaped forward with power, ramming head-on into two others trying to climb over the hood, sending them flying against the gas pumps in a tangle of broken limbs.
As Leon put the vehicle in gear and sped down the dark road with his heart hammering against his ribs, the adrenaline that had kept him standing began to subside, leaving behind an icy void and sudden mental exhaustion.
Both were sunk into their seats, the only sound inside the Jeep being their heavy, rapid, and erratic breathing, which quickly fogged up the front windows due to the heat of their bodies.
Claire didn't take her eyes off the side mirror; she watched with feverish intensity as the service station faded into the distance, becoming a blurry point of light in the heavy rain, still surrounded by those silhouettes that kept reaching out toward them in the darkness.
She let out a long sigh, an air charged with a tension that seemed endless, and looked down at the center console of the Jeep. That was when she saw it. Despite the firmness with which the driver maintained course on the winding road, Leon's hand on the steering wheel had a slight but constant rhythmic tremor, an uncontrollable physical sign that the young man was at the limit of his nerves and endurance.
"Claire Redfield," she said suddenly, breaking the dense silence to anchor herself to reality and humanize that chaos. Her voice still trembled a little, but she tried to make it sound as sure as possible.
Leon gripped the wheel tighter, trying to steady his fingers, and looked at her for a second in the rearview mirror.
"I'm Leon Kennedy," he replied, swallowing with difficulty. "And thanks... for earlier. You saved my neck, literally." Leon let out a sigh laden with irony. "Although, to be honest, for a moment I thought you were going to shoot me. Seeing the barrel of that gun pointing at my eyes isn't exactly how I imagined I'd be welcomed to the city."
Claire let out a small nervous laugh, grateful for Leon's sarcastic tone to break the ice.
"Well, you were lucky I have good aim," she replied, holstering her weapon at her waist. "And that you ducked fast. You would have been a very short-lived police officer otherwise."
Leon forced a smile, though his eyes remained fixed on the shadowy road.
"Yeah... technically, it's my official first day. Although I get the feeling they won't be asking for my resume or references after this. What are you doing here, Claire? Doesn't seem like the best time for a sightseeing tour."
"I'm looking for my brother, Chris. He's a cop here in Raccoon City, but I haven't heard from him in days," she explained, looking back out the window at the trees passing like ghosts. "Leon... did you see those people? What do you think was wrong with them? They were... they were dead, but they kept moving. Their eyes... there was nothing in them."
Leon shook his head, his expression darkening.
"I haven't the slightest idea. At the academy, they taught us to deal with riots, active shooters, even chemical attacks... but nothing like this. They didn't respond to pain, or blows. It was like they just wanted to... bite. It's insanity."
Claire remained silent for a few seconds, observing Leon's young profile under the dim dashboard light.
"You look very young to be a cop, Leon. How old are you?"
"Twenty-two," he replied honestly. "I just graduated. I guess the rookie shows too much, huh?"
"Well, you defended yourself pretty well with that fire extinguisher for a twenty-two-year-old," Claire conceded with a softer tone. "I'm nineteen. And believe me, I'd rather be anywhere else but in this Jeep right now."
Leon let out a brief laugh, glancing at her sideways with a glint of amusement in his eyes despite the horror.
"Oh yeah? Am I so ugly that you don't want to be in this Jeep with me?" he joked, trying to lighten the weight of the air in the cabin.
Claire played along, laughing a little as she crossed her arms.
"It's not that, Officer. It's just that the 'transport service' is a little loud and there are too many dead people outside."
A small silence fell, but this time it was more comfortable. Unintentionally, Claire's gaze settled on Leon's face as he concentrated on the road. She observed the line of his jaw, his hair slightly tousled by the rain, and the determination in his expression.
Unconsciously, the thought crossed her mind: Actually, he's pretty handsome.
As soon as she realized what she was thinking in the middle of that apocalypse, Claire quickly looked away toward the window, feeling her cheeks burning and a slight blush covering her face.
Leon nodded, his knuckles turning white as the road became increasingly shadowy and the lights of Raccoon City began to loom on the horizon, shrouded in smoke and a silence that made their skin crawl.