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The rain that had plagued their escape from Raccoon City had once again found them at the dingy motel that desperation for shelter and rest had driven them to. Leon sat at the scuffed table in the corner beneath the window, his injured arm tucked close to his body, his other hand tapping out a quiet rhythm on the wood with the blood splattered edge of his RPD badge. In the small bathroom, a pile of ruined clothes waited to be thrown away. The three of them had used every towel they could scrounge up, taking turns scrubbing themselves raw in the shower until the scents of blood and rot and sewage were buried under cheap motel soap. After her shower, Claire had disappeared for a few hours—long enough that Leon had started to panic, had been wiping muck from his gun belt preparing to go out after her—and had returned with new clothes for each of them. Well, new to them. Leon had had the sneaking suspicion they had come out of a laundromat or off some poor unsuspecting citizen’s clothesline. He’d stared her down, watched her blink innocently back at him, before taking the clothes she’d found for him. It wasn’t as though he was a cop any longer; they would need supplies, and the room itself had dug deep into what little cash he had been carrying when he left his apartment two days ago.
After showers and a round of candy bars and soda that had come out of the motel lobby’s vending machines, the girls had almost immediately passed out. Leon had laid himself down in the other bed, had given sleep a good honest effort, but had barely closed his eyes before a zombie was snarling inches from his face, the nightmare forcing him back into wakefulness and into the seat by the window. It didn’t help that his shoulder ached something fierce. The wound was a straight through and through that had been thoroughly cleaned and re-bandaged, and by some miracle there was no sign of infection, the zombie making kind or otherwise. A handful of painkillers had turned the burning ache into a dull throb, but the lingering pain had been plenty to stop sleep from taking root.
That and the fact that he couldn’t seem to turn his brain off no matter how hard he tried.
Across the room, Claire and Sherry slept peacefully, Sherry snuggled in close against Claire’s side. The soft light of a muted infomercial played across their slack features. Leon had tried to turn the TV off on his way to the table, only for Claire to stir and ask him not to leave them in the dark. He had complied, of course, not exactly thrilled at the idea of sitting in the quiet dark himself. Even still, the television’s light was limited and shadows gathered in the corners of the room. They had him on edge, which was a fun new quirk. He wondered how long it would take for it to go away and got the feeling he didn’t actually want the answer.
If he strained his eyes, the very tops of Raccoon City’s skyscrapers were just visible, a graveyard in the distance. Thousands of lives lost to Umbrella’s scientists, to a lab accident and hubris. When they’d found the motel after walking for what felt like hours in the opposite direction of the hell they’d fought their way out of, the stooped old lady behind the desk had wrinkled her nose at their dirty, scraped appearance and had taken Leon’s cash with judgmental eyes but no further questions. Nobody outside the city limits knew what had happened, not yet. They needed a plan, needed to alert some kind of authority. Chief Irons’ involvement in everything that had happened made him leery of taking their story anywhere near a police precinct, but he didn’t know where else to go. Who else could they turn to when the crime was such a massive, unimaginable horror?
He glanced at the other bed and the two lumps curled up beneath the thin motel blanket. He needed to keep Claire and Sherry safe. After meeting William and Annette Birkin, or what was left of them, he couldn’t help but admire Sherry’s resilience. She had been remarkably cheerful as they’d left Raccoon behind them, hanging from his and Claire’s hands as she asked if they were adopting her, but he had a feeling reality would crash around her soon. He wanted to shield her from the fallout, but he had no idea how.
And Claire, as capable as she appeared to be, had come to Raccoon looking for her brother and ended up leaving empty handed, and she didn’t strike him as the type to accept defeat like that. He knew that she couldn’t be more than a year or two younger than him, and their time in Raccoon had proven she could more than handle herself, but she looked impossibly vulnerable in sleep, her features slack, too exhausted to be troubled by the nightmares that had driven him out of the other bed hours ago. She was strong, but strength could only carry you so far when the world was trying its hardest to fall down around you.
And Leon? Well, he had nothing. With his parents long dead in the ground and the ex he’d left behind over a week ago glad to be rid of him, Raccoon and the RPD had been the stepping stones to a bright new future, right up until Umbrella’s actions had shot that future clean between the eyes as surely as Leon had done the same to his former would-be coworkers, to the citizens he had sworn to protect. He didn’t know what came next. His exhausted brain was working overtime trying to organize his priorities, to come up with a direction to point them all in when morning came, but he was spinning his tires in the mud, no traction left to help him out of the spiral.
He didn’t know what to do.
For the longest time, he had followed a straightforward path to his goals—high school, community college, the Academy. He had chosen a post at Raccoon City, recent subject of national news for the mysterious murders in the mountains, hoping to break into the Arklay investigations and truly make a difference. Now, there was no more path, no other goal, no going back to Raccoon City and whoever he had been before he’d stopped for gas a half mile out of the city limits.
Thunder rolled beyond the small window and Leon’s hand stilled, the badge slipping from his slackened grip. Leaning forward, he set his face in his hands, fingers pressing at the headache that had planted itself above his right eye a few hours ago. He didn’t know what to do.
Lightning flashed, lighting up the empty road that led back into a nightmare if you started down it in the wrong direction. Across the room, Sherry made a small noise in her sleep as she rolled onto her side. It was late, far too late to be sitting there in the dark with his own self-pitying thoughts. With a sigh, Leon swept up the RPD badge and padded back across the room, shoving the worthless thing into the drawer beside the other bed and forcing himself back beneath the blankets. He couldn’t fix it all by himself. Tomorrow was a new day. The three of them would find somewhere to get a decent meal and they would figure it all out. They weren’t alone, and as he pulled the scratchy blanket up around his bad shoulder, he told himself that that was enough, for now.
It had to be.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead.”
He didn’t startle when a hand touched his shoulder, but it was a near thing. He came awake beneath the touch instantly, reaching for the gun beneath his pillow before his sluggish brain registered Claire’s voice. She stood above him, soft morning light creeping in around her edges from the window, its curtains drawn but thin enough to not be particularly effective keeping the light out. He drew his hand out from beneath his pillow and used it to rub at his aching eyes.
“Morning,” he managed, the word scraping up his throat on its way toward his mouth.
Claire sat on the edge of the bed, her hands reaching for his bandaged shoulder.
“And how’s this looking?”
Slumping back against the pillows, Leon let her poke and prod at the bandages, wincing when she poked a little too close to the edges of the bullet hole. She mirrored his wince, her hands falling still against his shoulder.
“Sorry, my bedside manner leaves something to be desired. At least it does according to my brother.”
Leon managed a weak smile. “It’s okay, the shoulder feels fine.” She just stared down at him, and he relented with a huff. “Okay, fine, it feels bad, but there isn’t much we can do about it.”
Claire was frowning, but he knew she wouldn’t argue. When they’d first escaped Raccoon, they had debating finding a hospital, but aside from being unable to explain who had shot him, where it had happened, and why they’d traveled miles afterward to get help, the thought of watching hapless doctors use Umbrella’s medical supplies and equipment to patch him up had been less than appealing. They’d made do with the first aid kit from the motel lobby and its safely non-brand-name supplies. She dragged the kit over from the nightstand and handed him another small handful of painkillers and their last bottle of water.
“Fine, medication time, then.”
Leon stuffed the pills in his mouth.
“Aren’t you not supposed to take these on an empty stomach?” he asked, washing them down with a hearty swig of lukewarm water. Claire grimaced.
“Sherry ate our last Snickers for breakfast.”
Chuckling quietly, Leon tossed the empty bottle into the small trashcan across the room.
“Well, I would be a real monster if I’d tried to steal candy from a baby, so I guess we can let it slide.”
Claire was quiet next to him, her eyes on the bathroom door where, Leon assumed, Sherry was. He ran his words back to himself and winced again. Surely Sherry had had enough of monsters in her life; Leon certainly wasn’t about to let another one get anywhere near her.
There was a faraway look in Claire’s eyes, but not the one he might have expected after what they had all been through. No, this look was shrewd, calculating to a degree that almost made him uncomfortable. It was clear that while he might have been up half the night about it, he hadn’t been the only one trying to come up with a plan. The thought somehow made him relax even as unease churned in his stomach. He opened his mouth to say something—he wasn’t exactly sure what—but before he could the bathroom door opened and Sherry came out, dressed in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt a little too big for her and a pair of leggings under fraying shorts. She smiled up at him.
“You look a lot less like a ghost than you did yesterday!” she informed him cheerfully, surprising a laugh out of him.
“Thanks for that,” he replied with a wry smile, reaching out to ruffle her ponytail. It bore a striking resemblance to the one Claire had been sporting throughout RC and Leon wondered if that had been the inspiration. “My turn in there?”
Claire waved him on, holding up Sherry’s scuffed white sneakers. “Shoe time, kiddo, and once Sleepy Beauty over there is all set we can go get ourselves a real breakfast.”
Sherry took the shoes while Leon untangled himself from the sheets. His shoulder was the worst of the injuries he’d picked up, but as if that wasn’t enough, his entire body felt like a gigantic bruise. He hobbled to the bathroom and closed the door behind himself, pausing for a minute to lean against the counter. The pills on an empty stomach had really not been a great idea. He was dizzy and his stomach was churning, but the throb in his shoulder was lessening, at least. Small victories. When the dizzy spell had passed, Leon used the bathroom and washed his hands, pausing to splash cool water over his face. There were three toothbrushes and a tube of paste next to the basin, a blue brush still in its packaging. More ill-gotten supplies. Leon fought down the initial surge of discomfort that flagrant law breaking elicited and picked up the toothbrush clearly meant for him. It was one = for kids, with a tiny police cruiser on the handle. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry, so instead of doing either he simply brushed his teeth.
He emerged from the bathroom fully dressed and prevented himself collapsing into the chair by the window, but only just. He laced up his boots, freshly hosed down and no longer quite as much of a hazard as they had been before.
“I paid for another night so after we get something to eat, we can come back here and…” Claire trailed off, gazing around the room with that same half distracted look she had been wearing before. Sherry darted a glance between the two of them. There was a tightness around her eyes that Leon hadn’t noticed after he had woken up, and it seemed his prediction from last night was proving correct. Sometimes he hated being right.
“We’ll make a plan,” Leon finished decisively. “But we can’t do that on an empty stomach, so I say we roll out.” Claire smiled gratefully at him. Leon plucked her leather jacket off the back of a chair and handed it to Sherry as Claire shrugged into a denim jacket with bleach stained pockets. “C’mon, pancakes on me.”
He ushered the two girls out of the room ahead of him before backtracking to grab his gun from under the pillow. He didn’t really think they’d run into trouble on their search for food, but paranoia was the least of the bad habits he’d picked up this week. He slid the gun into the holster he’d put on beneath his own jacket and followed Claire and Sherry out.
The diner was brightly lit, even at mid-morning, a neon beacon on the dusty, derelict road. Sherry practically skipped through the front door she was so excited for a real meal, and Leon couldn’t blame her. The pills had settled, finally, and as they entered the grease-choked dining room he realized he was ravenous. Beside him, Claire stopped, closing her eyes and inhaling the scent of burning toast and ancient coffee.
“Careful, Redfield, I think your drooling,” he teased. Claire swatted at him, mindful of his injuries.
“I haven’t eaten anything aside from a two Crunch bars and a tiny bag of peanuts in the last day and a half, drool is allowed.”
“Fair point,” he conceded as a round-faced woman hollered at them from behind the counter to sit anywhere.
Claire led the way to a booth in the back corner that had a good view of the two exits. Relieved, Leon slid in on one side while Claire boxed Sherry in against the wall, a shield between the girl and anything that might even come within an inch of breathing on Sherry the wrong way. The round-faced woman swung by their table to drop off stained menus and plastic cups of water.
“Do you all know what you want?”
Leon glanced at Sherry, who was biting her lip as she looked the menu over.
“Get whatever you want,” he told her. “As long as you get also get a big glass of milk and drink the whole thing.” He didn’t know a ton about kids, but growing up his mother had always insisted on milk at breakfast, and he figured it couldn’t hurt to get some calcium and vitamins into all of them. Sherry didn’t fight him on the milk rule, ordering it alongside chocolate chip pancakes with a side of bacon, sausage, and hashbrowns. Leon let out a low whistle at her ambition.
“Nice,” Claire said. “I’ll take the same but with eggs sunny side up instead of pancakes.”
The waitress jotted it all down before turning to him. “French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon please. And hell, milk for me, too.”
“Oh, and coffee!” Claire added. Leon almost moaned out loud.
“Yes, god, please, coffee,” he all but begged, gazing up at their waitress with the best puppy dog eyes he could conjure.
“Coming right up,” the woman said with a cheery wink as she collected their menus and bustled away. As soon as she was gone, Claire leaned forward.
“Okay, so what’s our plan.”
Leon, who had been in the middle of draining as much of the ice-cold glass of water that had been placed in front of him as possible, choked. Just a little. Coughing into a flimsy paper napkin, he set his glass down.
“What makes you think I have one?” he asked, slightly bewildered. Claire narrowed her eyes at him.
“Because I know you weren’t sleeping last night.” That caught him off guard. His eyes narrowed in suspicion as a wry little smile slipped across her face. “I got really good at faking sleep to keep Chris off my back after our parents died.”
The statement was blunt, but somehow also gentle, as though Claire was aware of the fact that she was dropping a bomb and, though she had no other choice but to let it land, she would at least contain the impact.
“Damn,” he muttered. Sherry was looking up at Claire now, her mouth open on a muffled gasp of shock, and Leon thought he knew what Claire was trying to do. What she didn’t know was that Leon could help. “I guess I should have been able to pick up on it. The older kids at the orphanage they sent me to after my parents were killed used to pull the same trick, though usually that was just to get past curfew so they could sneak out the windows. Some cop I turned out to be, I really thought you were out of it.”
Sherry’s pale blue eyes turned to him, and he smiled gently down at her. The three of them were orphans through and through, but that didn’t mean they were alone. He only hoped Sherry wasn’t too far gone to realize it. She returned his smile, and though hers shook a little at the edges, it held.
“So,” she piped up. “What is the plan?”
“Well, I still think it’s better if you see some sort of medical professional about that new hole you acquired,” Claire chimed in, eyeing his shoulder with concern. “I’m possibly the farthest thing from a nurse this side of the state line.”
“I don’t know about that, I bet you could pull off one of those uniforms with the little white hats,” he replied with a smirk. A pretty blush bloomed on Claire’s cheeks even as she scowled at him.
“You’re right, and then I would have access to plenty of scalpels so I could—,” she cut herself off abruptly with a half glance in Sherry’s direction. Sherry stifled a laugh into her water glass, and a triumphant grin cracked through Claire’s glower.
From beside them came a crash of shattering glass. Leon and Claire jumped, both of them whipping toward the source of the noise. Their waitress stood a few feet away, her newly empty hands clapped over her mouth, coffee soaking into her sneakers from the carafe she had dropped. She was staring out of the big picture windows lining the walls at the diner’s front. With a pit beginning to open up in his stomach, Leon followed her gaze.
Out of the window, a massive cloud was blooming against the horizon.
“Oh, my god,” Claire breathed, slipping out of the booth and across the slick linoleum like the window had a gravitational pull that was dragging her closer.
“What is it?” Sherry asked, eyes wide. Leon stood as well.
“Sherry, stay here.”
He didn’t wait to see how she took the demand as the view outside the windows pulled him in, too. The cloud was gigantic, and it was growing bigger by the second. Four dark specks against the clear blue sky caught his eye. Leon pressed himself against a window on the diner’s far side, the back of a booth digging into his stomach. Craning his neck, he caught a glimpse of four military green jets streaking across the blue.
His brain struggled to process what he was seeing, though his heart already knew the truth: the U.S. government had just bombed Raccoon City off the map.
In the end, Leon had to pull Claire back from the window. The rest of the diner’s patrons had all pressed forward to get a good view, goggling at the destruction the same way some people slowed down on the highway to get a good look at a car crash. Claire’s face was white, her blue eyes huge. Her breathing was harsh, erratic, and she clutched at his wrists like if she didn’t, she would fall apart.
“Leon, I can’t—they just—”
“I know, Claire, I know. Breathe, okay? Just breathe.”
Leon glanced back at their table. Sherry was looking between them and the patrons clustered at the window, craning her neck, trying to see what was going on. They would have to tell her, but he couldn’t bring Claire back over there to her, not like this. Their waitress, her sneakers still soaked in coffee, was watching them, one hand over her heart and her eyes overbrimming with sympathy.
“You three,” she asked in a voice thin with unshed tears. “Were you from Raccoon?”
Instead of answering, Leon asked, “Ma’am, I need to help my friend here for a second, would you mind watching our…”
Unable to think of a word to describe what they were to Sherry, he merely jerked his chin in the direction of their table. The tears the woman had been holding back started to break lose..
“Of course,” she said. “You take your time.”
Leon led Claire over to a booth far enough away that no one else would hear them, setting her down on the bench. Not wanting to crowd her, he slid onto the bench on the other side and leaned across the table until he caught her gaze.
“Claire, you need to find your brother.” It shocked her out of her growing panic, just as he had hoped it would. “The S.T.A.R.S were trying to warn everyone before Irons and Umbrella drove them out of the city. They saw all of this coming. You said that note you found at RPD didn’t sound like Chris, but from what you’ve told me about him, he wouldn’t take that shit lying down. If he and his team left the city looking for a way to stop Umbrella, he’ll need your help. Everything we saw, everything we learned. He needs you.”
Wiping at the tear that had slipped down her cheek, Claire looked over at where their waitress was leaning close, keeping Sherry’s eyes on her as she showed her how to make origami out of the criminally thin napkins. He could see a muscle in Claire’s jaw working as she fought down whatever it was she wanted to say but wouldn’t let herself.
“And what about you?”
“I look after Sherry, and I fight the fight from right here. That explosion, Claire…it all happened so fast. There can’t be many people who made it out, and I’m betting even fewer managed to learn the truth while they were running for their lives. We didn’t make it out of there with much in the way of hard evidence, but if I can find the right people, they’ll listen to us. You out there, me right here, and somewhere in the middle, Umbrella pays for all the lives they took.”
It burned inside of him, his own failure. An entire city full of innocent people, and a single phone call that meant he hadn’t been there when it had all gone wrong. One whole day as a police officer and he’d saved little more than his own skin. Claire had rescued herself, and Sherry, and Leon hadn’t even been able to get Ada out.
…Ada…
He pushed the thought away. It was too much, too painful, he couldn’t—
“We owe it to everyone who didn’t make it out to make sure the truth is known.”
“Leon, I can’t just leave. You’re still hurt, and Sherry just lost her parents. I can help here, too, I can—”
“I know you can,” he hurried to reassure her.
“Aren’t we supposed to stick together?” The question came out small, so much more timid than he had ever heard her. It struck him again how young she was. He could see the impossible in her eyes, that she was willing to give up on finding her brother, her only family, if it meant they stayed together, and he just couldn’t let her do that.
“I know. Trust me, the last thing I want to do is to let either of you out of my sight, but we can’t do it all from here, and I’m in no condition to follow you halfway across the world while we track Chris down. And we can’t drag Sherry into another mess, not after everything she went through.”
Her expression shuddered, her eyes falling closed as she drew in a deep breath. Leon hated hurting her like this. He just prayed that in the long run, the ends really could justify the means, and maybe that would let him sleep at night. Bracing his arms on the table and ignoring the twinge the pressure shot through his shoulder, he leaned forward until he captured Claire’s gaze again.
“Claire, I promise you, we’ll be right here waiting for you when you get back.” He didn’t push it any further, simply leaned back in the booth and rubbed a hand over his injured shoulder.
“You’re a real sweet talker, you know that, Kennedy?” Claire tried, the joke landing flat. Leon laughed anyway.
“You wouldn’t be the first to say so.”
Silence bloomed between them as Claire chewed on what he had said, and Leon studied her, his own resolve crumbling the longer he watched her try to convince herself that he was right. He shook his head.
“Look, maybe there is another way,” he conceded. “Maybe if you stay, we could—”
“No,” she cut in, her voice stronger. “No, you’re right, this is our best option.” When she dragged her eyes back to him, she was pure steel through and through. “Let’s take those bastards down.”
Explaining what had happened to Sherry nearly shattered them both, but once again the little girl surprised him by taking the news better than he anticipated. She sat still and quiet and listened to him and Claire lay out the facts, her chin stubborn and her gaze unwavering. When they finished, she stared out the window for a while before asking, voice quiet but firm, “What do we do now?”
Explaining that was harder. When Claire told Sherry she was leaving, and that she didn’t know how long she would be gone, all three of them had to take a minute. Leon and Claire both tried their hand at reassuring her but honestly couldn’t say if they were helping at all.
Eventually, their food came. They ate, most of it passing tastelessly across Leon’s tongue. The coffee was scalding and bitter enough to reach out of the cup and slap him across the face. He would have welcomed it if it did. It was his fault they were all so miserable now. He knew he was right, but knowing didn’t make it feel any better.
When they were done, he paid for their meals and left a generous tip, smiling gratefully at their waitress as they left the diner.
“We’ll need to stock up on supplies,” Claire muttered, the words only half for him. “And we’re gonna need cars.”
Leon ignored his sinking stomach. “Right. I guess we’re going shopping.”
The strip mall was crawling with shoppers, surprising for a Tuesday afternoon, but it would work to their advantage. They started with the small stuff. Sherry proved to be a fantastic distraction, grilling the sales reps with question after question, charming enough that they couldn’t possibly get annoyed by her, and smart enough to make sure they kept their backs to where Leon and Claire were fleecing them blind. More clothes, clean socks and underwear all around. They moved on to a luggage store and picked up a few backpacks and some smaller cases for equipment. An electronics store got them a few disposable cell phones and a laptop, while a detour through a bookshop rustled up a few small novels and coloring books for Sherry.
Their last stop took them away from the strip mall to a slightly dingier area of town. They couldn’t buy guns without alerting someone with a badge and the ability to track them down, but they could stock up on ammo for the guns they’d made it out of Raccoon with. They left Sherry outside for that one with an ice cream cone and instructions to whistle really loudly if a cop car passed while they were inside. He buried the police officer in him throughout the whole thing. What they were doing was bigger than his cracked moral compass. If breaking the law kept them off of a radar that would stop them in their tracks, he would do whatever it took.
Back at the motel, they laid out all of their gear and started packing. He and Claire moved around each other like a well-oiled machine, tossing each other supplies before they had to be asked for, trading bits and pieces until they were loaded out to their own specifications. Sherry, who had much less to pack than either of them, finished up with her bag and sat at the table, a coloring book open in front of her but watching them, instead. When his own kit was squared away, he took the laptop and joined her, cracking it open and booting it up. A friend of his at the Academy, a former con trying to go straight, had taught him a few tricks about hiding your tracks electronically. As someone who always prided himself on being polite, Leon had listened to it all even as he had assured himself he would never use the information. If only that guy could see him now.
He created a couple of untraceable email addresses for all three of them as well as programming the cell phones with each other’s numbers, and a few other helpful ones he could think of. It wasn’t much, but it would keep them in contact, and if that was the least he could do, then he was damn well going to make sure it was done properly. When he had it all set up, he showed Sherry and Claire and made sure they knew what each unlabeled number was before handing them over. Afterward, Claire insisted on redressing his shoulder. He sat patiently on the closed toilet lid, shirt discarded, shivering as the cool October air drifted in through the tiny window high up on the wall. Claire was quiet as she worked, preoccupied with, well…everything. He wanted to say something, anything that might help, but his brain was a withholding bastard when it wanted to be, and he let her finish up with him in silence.
With that done, there wasn’t much left to do but wait until nightfall, since carjacking didn’t feel much like a broad daylight sort of activity. Leon went out and found a cheap fast-food place, bringing back sacks of burgers and fries. On the way back he made a stop at an ATM, knowing the activity would draw eyes, but he was running out of time. His funds were modest verging on not much of anything at all, and he took out every last cent.
Back at the room, Claire and Sherry were curled up on the bed together, watching a rerun of an episode of Charmed while Claire braided Sherry’s hair. When he dropped his bounty on the table still crowded with plastic packaging and computer parts, Sherry dug into the bags gleefully while Leon pulled Claire aside. When he tried to hand her the money, she blanched.
“Leon, I can’t—”
“You can. Take it, Claire. I divvied it up, I’ve got enough for me and Sherry for a while, but you’re going to need money.”
“I have money,” she snapped, trying for indignant, but Leon didn’t buy it.
“Said the broke college cliché,” he fired back. Claire fumed. He pressed the bills into her hand, folding her fingers around them. “Please, take it. Let me do something to help.”
Biting her lip, Claire glanced up at him from beneath her lashes.
“Leon, I….” He could see her struggling to find the right thing to say and almost prayed that she didn’t. This whole thing was shitty enough. She dropped his gaze. “Thank you. For everything.”
“You can thank me later,” he said. “When you know your brother is safe.”
The carjacking went off without a hitch. They ate the burgers and watched bad TV, all of them with one eye on the room’s window only. When night fell, Leon’s heart began to pound, but he kept them all inside as long as he could stand it. At half past eleven, they gathered their bags and left the room, closing the door quietly behind them. He had done his best to scrub the place down, one more thing to make them harder to track, and they (hopefully) left no trace as they started off down the road, sticking to the shadows until they found a dusty parking lot that fronted a rundown old video rental place.
Claire did the honors, since Leon’s experience breaking into motor vehicles started and stopped with a police cruiser at a Mizoil station that had had its doors open and its keys still in the ignition. The car was a beater, at least twenty years old and nearly rusted through.
“There’s no way you’ll even make it out of this town in that thing,” Leon said as he checked under the hood. Claire’s faced popped up over his shoulder, scanning the motor with an appraising eye.
“You’d be surprised, Rookie. Looks as pretty as a Caddy in there if you ask me.”
Snorting, Leon let the hood slip from his grip. “If you say so.”
Claire stashed her bag in the passenger seat and knelt down to wrap Sherry up in a bone crushing hug.
“You be careful, kiddo,” she demanded into Sherry’s collar. “And watch out for this one, he doesn’t have a single ounce of self-preservation. He needs a guardian angel.”
The last was said in a stage whisper, Claire sending him a wink over Sherry’s head as she straightened the red leather jacket around the kid’s shoulders. Sherry’s smile was small but genuine as she drew Claire back in for one last hug. Then Claire was standing, facing him, holding out a hand like they were just supposed to shake on it as they bid each other farewell. Leon felt is throat tighten.
It was strange to think they’d known each other for all of three days. Their first meeting, as inauspicious as it was, had given him hope that he wouldn’t be alone in whatever they’d been heading toward down that dark street outside the gas station. He remembered how she’d looked in that stolen police cruiser, her pretty face a brave mask, imperfectly constructed, the both of them so determined not to let the other see just how terrified they were and failing miserably.
It felt wrong to let her out of his sight now. Not that he’d been of much use to her back in the city of the dead, but sticking together felt like a promise they’d only just made and were already breaking, even if it had been his idea. Umbrella’s fault, again. As he stared into Claire’s clear blue eyes, he had the sudden sinking feeling that Umbrella was going to keep messing up his plans and promises. Maybe if they succeeded, if they got the truth to the press and the government and took the company down, maybe once it was all over and done, there would be time to fix what had to break right now.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
He took Claire’s hand and pulled her in, wrapping his arms around her even though the motion made his arm scream with pain. Claire stood stiff in his embrace for half a heartbeat before she let out a shaking sigh and buried her face in the crook of his neck. They clung to each other there in the dark and the quiet, two strangers who were now, beyond a shadow of the doubt, bound to each other through nightmares and blood debts. He may not have known much, but he knew that Claire Redfield wasn’t someone he was going to let go of for a very long time, no matter how much space might lay between them. With a final squeeze, Leon let her go and stepped back.
“Be careful,” he warned. “Try not to do anything stupid.”
“Like take down a powerful pharmaceutical giant from the inside with only a 9mm and a can-do attitude? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He laughed, because laughing was easier than the alternative, holding the door open for her while Claire climbed behind the wheel. She rolled down the window as the engine turned over, meeting his eyes, and then Sherry’s.
“I’ll see you two soon,” she promised.
“Keep in touch,” he demanded with a pointed look. Claire gave him a thumbs up and a soft smile as the car began to roll forward.
Leon and Sherry stood there watching Claire’s taillights disappear down the street. Leon patted the pocket of his pants where his new phone sat. They had each other’s number, this wasn’t permanent. He had to believe they’d see each other again. Hope was just about the last thing left to cling to, and he wasn’t about to let go for anything.
“Our turn to find some wheels,” he said, smiling down at Sherry as he took her hand. “Though maybe we don’t commit two crimes in the same parking lot.”
“Probably a good idea,” she mused at his side, and he was relieved to hear no sign of tears in her voice. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to handle it if she broke down. It occurred to him that he was damn well going to have to learn how to handle things like that, and quick. Sherry was a tough kid, but everyone had their limits.
“Okay then, on to the next abandoned parking lot.”
They started off, Leon scanning the streets for any hint that they’d been seen, but it was quiet on all sides. He swung his and Sherry’s linked hands between them just to hear her laugh and was rewarded for his efforts by the bright peel of her mirth echoing off the empty storefronts. He kept them walking for a while, wanting to put a good bit of distance between the spot of one carjacking report and the next. They were two miles away, waiting for a crosswalk light to change in their favor (he could get over petty theft, but jaywalking was just dangerous) when a piece of paper fluttered down to land at his feet. Leon’s hand drifted to his gun as Sherry bent down to grab it before he could.
“Leon?” she asked, handing the paper over with a wrinkle in her brow. He took it, holding it up to the nearest streetlight so he could see.
In neatly spaced pretty cursive were two short sentences that made his blood run cold: They know where you are. Get out while you can. The note was signed with a berry-colored impression of a kiss. His stomach turned over, hope and fear warring wildly within him. Grabbing Sherry’s hand again, he started them back down the street, crumpling the note and tossing it in the first bin they passed.
“C’mon, kid, we’ve gotta move.”
“What’s going on?” she asked, and Leon wished he could explain. He would do anything to get rid of the fear lacing her words, but there was no time, not if the note was accurate, not if it was from who he thought it was from.
They didn’t run, running drew attention. Instead, Leon forced a casual pace, Sherry’s hand gripped tightly in his as he tried to mutter assurances. Half an hour. They hadn’t even been apart for half an hour and already he had screwed it all up. He pulled Sherry down an alley and out onto a different street, ducking across it and turning the first corner he came to. If he walked them in wide enough circles, maybe they could lose whoever was following them.
Of course, this was wishful thinking. Just as they were leaving behind a park they had cut across, three unmarked black cars poured out of the shadows, one of them hopping the curb feet ahead of them as it cut them off. Leon pushed Sherry back, turning to her and holding out Marvin’s sheathed knife.
“Sherry, you have to run—”
“I would strongly advise against that.”
The sound of a car door opening, sharp shoes on loose gravel. Leon kept his grip on Sherry’s hand firm but not crushing, trying not to scare her as he turned toward whoever had spoken. The man who got out of the beached car was average height, wearing a suit cut to conceal his muscle mass. The steel grey of his hair matched the hardness of his face when he spoke again.
“Officer Kennedy?”
Leon couldn’t suppress his snort. “That’s a stretch.”
The man smiled thinly as he pulled out a badge Leon could barely read against the glare of the headlights. “You’re to come with us. You’re wanted for question regarding certain events that happened in Raccoon City. Ms. Birkin, as well.”
Leon’s hand twitched toward his gun. There were six agents surrounded them, all surely armed, plus the man speaking. He’d had worse odds as recently as two days ago, but it was one thing to shoot the dead and rotting, and another thing entirely to shoot the living.
“And if we decline?” he asked, even as he knew what was about to happen next. He sent out a silent apology to Sherry, to Claire. To Ada.
“I’m afraid we’re not asking.”