TWO
OCTOBER.3, 1998
TWILIGHT HAD SETTLED ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS,
painting the jagged horizon in shades of purple
dusk. The winding blacktop snaked through the gathering
darkness, surrounded by shadowed hills that
towered into the cloudless sky, stretching toward the
first faint glimmerings of starlight.
Leon might have appreciated the majestic view a
bit more if he wasn't so goddamn late. He'd make it to
his shift on time, sure, but he'd been hoping to get
settled into the new apartment first, take a shower, get
something to eat; as it was, he might have time to hit a
drive-through on his way to the station. Changing into
his uniform back at the last rest stop had saved him a
couple of minutes, but basically he was screwed.
Way to go, Officer Kennedy. First day on the job and
you'll be picking cheeseburger out of your teeth during
roll call. Very professional.
His shift started at nine and it was already just after
eight; Leon let his boot ride a little heavier on the gas,
even as his Jeep whipped past a sign that told him he
was half an hour away from Raccoon City. At least the
road was clear; except for a couple of semis, he hadn't
seen anyone for what felt like hours. A nice change,
considering the traffic tie-up just outside of New York
that had cost him most of the afternoon. He'd actually
tried to call the night before to leave a message
with the desk sergeant that he might be late, but
there'd been something wrong with the connection.
Nothing but a busy signal.
What little furniture he had was already moved into
a studio apartment in the working-class but basically
decent Trask district of Raccoon City, there was a
nice park not two blocks away, and it was only a fiveminute
drive to the station. No more gridlock, no
more overcrowded slums or random acts of brutality.
Assuming he could survive the embarrassment of
showing up to his first shift as a full-blown officer of
the law without having unpacked his bags, he was
looking forward to living in the peaceful community.
Raccoon is about as far removed from the Big Apple
as you can get, thank you very much - well, except for
the last few months. Those murders . . .
In spite of himself, he felt a tiny thrill at the
thought. What had happened in Raccoon was horrible,
of course, sickening, but the perps had never
been caught and the investigation was really just
getting started. And if Irons liked him, liked him as
much as the heads of the academy had liked him,
maybe Leon would get a chance to work on the case.
Word had it that Chief Irons was kind of a prick, but
Leon knew his training had been top-notch - even a
prick would have to be a little impressed. He'd
graduated in the top tenth, after all. And it wasn't like
he was a stranger to Raccoon City, since he'd spent
most of his summers there as a kid, when his grandparents
were still alive. Back then, the RPD building
had been a library and Umbrella was still several
years away from turning the town into an actual city,
but in most ways it was still the same quiet place he
remembered from his childhood. Once the cannibal
killers were finally put away, Raccoon would be ideal
again - beautiful, clean, a white-collar community
nestled in the mountains like a secret paradise.
So I get settled in and a week or two passes, and
Irons notices how well written my reports are, or sees
how good I am on the target range. He asks me to take
a look at the case files, just to familiarize myself with
the details so I can do some footwork and I see
something that no one else has seen. A pattern, maybe,
or a motive on more than one of the victims ... maybe
I run across a witness report that reads wrong. No one
else has caught it because they've lived with it for too
long, and this rookie cop just comes along and cracks
the case, not a month out of the academy and I. . .
Something ran in front of the Jeep.
"Jesus!"
Leon hit the brake and swerved, shocked out of his
daydream as he struggled for control of the vehicle.
The brakes locked and there was a screech of rubber
that sounded like a scream. The Jeep half-turned to
face the darkening trees that lined the road—and
came to a stop on the shoulder, dying after a final
lurching jolt.
Heart pounding and stomach in knots, Leon
opened the window and craned his neck, scanning the
shadows for the animal that had darted across the
highway. He hadn't hit it, but it had been close. Some
kind of a dog, he didn't get a clear look - a big one,
anyway, a shepherd or maybe an oversized Doberman,
but it had looked wrong somehow. He'd only
seen it for a split-second, a flash of glowing red eyes
and lean, wolfish body. And there was something else,
it had seemed kind of...
... slimy? No, trick of the light, or you were just so
shit-scared that you saw it wrong. You're okay and you
didn't hit it, that's the important thing.
"Jesus," he said again, softer this time, feeling both
relieved and suddenly quite angry as the adrenaline
leaked out of his system. People who let their dogs run
loose were idiots - claiming they wanted their pets to
be free and then acting surprised when Fido got
squashed by a car.
The Jeep had come to a stop just a few feet away
from a road sign that read RACCOON CITY 10; he
could just make out the lettering in the growing
shadows. Leon glanced at his watch; he still had
almost half an hour to get to the station, plenty of
time - but for some reason, he simply sat for a
moment, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. Cool
pine-scented air breezed across his face; the deserted
stretch of road seeming almost unnaturally quiet - as
if the landscape was holding its breath, waiting. Now
that his heart had resumed a more normal pace, he
was surprised to find that he still felt unsettled, even
anxious.
The murders in Raccoon. Weren't a few of those
people killed by animal attack? Wild dogs, or something?
Maybe that wasn't someone's pet dog at all.
A disturbing thought - and even more disturbing
was the sudden feeling he had that the dog was still
close by, maybe watching him from the darkness in
the trees.
Welcome to Raccoon City, Officer Kennedy. Watch
out for things that may be watching you. . .
"Don't be an asshole," Leon mumbled to himself,
and felt a little better at the sound of his no-nonsense
adult tone of voice. He often wondered if he would
ever outgrow his imagination.
Daydreaming like a kid about catching bad guys,
then inventing killer dog-monsters lurking in the
woods - let's try to act our age, eh, Leon? You're a cop,
for God's sake, a grownup...
He started the engine and backed onto the road,
ignoring the strange sense of unease that had somehow
managed to take hold of him in spite of his
mind's chiding voice. He had a new job and a nice
apartment in a nice little up-and-coming city; he was
competent, bright, and decent-looking; as long as he
kept his creativity glands in check, everything would
be fine.
"And I'm on my way," he said to himself, forcing a
grin that felt out of place but suddenly necessary to
his peace of mind. He was on his way to Raccoon
City, to a promising new life - there was nothing to
be uneasy about, nothing at all...
Claire was exhausted, both physically and emotionally,
and the fact that her butt had been aching for the
last couple of hours wasn't helping matters much. The
thrum of the Harley's engine seemed to have settled
deep into her bones, a physical counterpoint to the
butterflies in her stomach - and of course, the worst
of it seemed to emanate from her extremely sore and
overheated ass. Plus, it was getting dark and like an
idiot she wasn't wearing her leathers; Chris would be
totally pissed.
He's going to yell his head off, and I won't even care.
God, Chris, please be there to scream at me for being
such an idiot. . .
The Harley buzzed along the dark road, the sound
of the engine echoing back at her from the sloping
hills and shadow-laden trees. She took the corners
carefully, very aware of how deserted the winding
highway was; if she took a spill, it could be a long time
before anyone happened by.
Like it would matter. Take a spill without your gear
on, they'll be scraping pieces of you off the asphalt with
a squeegee.
It was stupid, she knew it was stupid to have left in
such a godawful hurry that she couldn't be bothered
to suit up - but something had happened to Chris.
Hell, something may have happened to the entire city.
Over the past couple of weeks, the growing suspicion
that her brother was in trouble had become a certainty
and the calls she'd made that morning had
cinched it for her.
Nobody home. Nobody home anywhere. Like Raccoon
moved and forgot to leave a forwarding address.
It was definitely creepy, although she could give a
shit about Raccoon. What mattered was that Chris
was there, and if something bad had happened to
him. . .
She couldn't, wouldn't think that way. Chris was all
she had left. Their father had been killed on his
construction job when they were both still kids, and
when their mother had died in a car crash three years
ago, Chris had done his best to take on a parental role.
Even though he was only a few years older, he'd
helped her pick a college, find a decent therapist - he
even sent her a little money each month beyond what
the insurance policies paid out, what he called "walking
around cash." And on top of all that, he called her
every couple of weeks like clockwork.
Except he hadn't called at all in the last month and
a half, and hadn't returned any of her calls. She'd
tried to convince herself that she was silly to worry,
maybe he'd finally met a girl, or something had turned
up on the S.T.A.R.S. suspension thing, whatever that
was all about. But after three unanswered letters and
days of waiting for the phone to ring, she'd finally put
in a call to the RPD that very afternoon, hoping
against hope that someone there might know what
was going on. She'd gotten a busy signal.
Sitting in her dorm room, listening to that soulless
mechanical bleat, she'd started to worry for real. Even
a small city like Raccoon had a voice-mail answering
system set up to field calls. The rational part of her
mind told her not to panic, that a downed line was
nothing to get freaky about, but already, her emotional
self was screaming foul. She'd gone through her
address book with trembling hands, dialing the few
numbers she had for friends of his, people or places
he'd told her to call if there was ever an emergency
and he wasn't at home - Barry Burton, Emmy's Diner,
some cop she'd never met named David Ford. She
even tried Billy Rabbitson's number, although Chris
had told her that he'd disappeared a few months
earlier. And with the exception of an overloaded
answering machine at David Ford's house, she'd
gotten nothing but busy signals.
By the time she'd hung up, the worry had transformed
into something close to panic. The trip to
Raccoon City was only about six-and-a-half hours
from the university. Claire's roommate had borrowed
her riding gear to go out with her new biker boyfriend,
but Claire had an extra helmet - and with that feeling
that was not quite panic spinning through her frightened
thoughts, she had simply grabbed the helmet
and gone.
Stupid, maybe. Impulsive, definitely. And if Chris is
okay, we can laugh about how ridiculously paranoid I
am 'til the cows come home. But until I find out what's
going on, I won't know a moment's peace.
The last of the day's light was draining from the
strip of cloudless sky above, although a waxing, nearly
full moon and the Softail's headlight gave her enough
light to see by - more than enough to see the small
sign ahead on her left: RACCOON CITY 10.
Telling herself that Chris was fine, that if anything
weird had happened in Raccoon, somebody would
have checked it out by now, Claire forced her concentration
back to handling the heavy bike. It would be
full dark soon, but she'd be in Raccoon before it was
too dark to ride safely.
Whether or not Raccoon City would be safe, she'd
find out soon enough.
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