Run Like Hell

Solace

"Is it any wonder I can't sleep?
All I have is all you gave to me..."

15

It was difficult enough negotiating the muddy, potholed lane on protesting wheels without the added hindrance of dusk cloaking the few familiar landmarks. He remembered the place well from his youth, having spent several humid summers there as a kid when his grandparents were alive; but evidently the place had changed somewhat since his teens. The derelict water tower he'd often climbed had gone, and the dark spruces flanking the road seemed much thicker and crowded gloomily together, forming a dark and unsettling tunnel in the headlights. Despite the little changes, however, Leon was encouraged; he was on familiar ground... it was the same old road, and if he remembered rightly, there was a sharp bend to the left up ahead, and -

"Bingo," he thought, gratified at the sight that yawned up at him in the headlights. A low wooden building, nestled snugly between two clusters of large, spindly fir trees...

"Well," he sighed, a kind of tired relief washing over him. "This is it."

Pressing her hands to the glass for a better view, Sherry gazed from the back seat and felt her anticipation drain quickly away. The blackness staring from the vacant windows of the cabin looked far from inviting - in fact, the place looked like it hadn't been lived in for a long, long time. She looked back at Leon, and her face told him she was far from feeling elated at the prospect of venturing inside, let alone staying there.

"I'll go check it out," he said, killing the lights and reaching for his Desert Eagle.

"I'll go with you!" Sherry piped, suddenly liking the idea of being left alone even less.

Leon slapped a clip into the gun almost automatically; the experiences of the last few days had taught him about reflexes he never knew he had, and forced on him a suspicion of almost paranoid proportions. Catching his glance in the mirror a few times as well, he'd been surprised at his own sullen, distrustful eyes staring back at him, bearing a deeper, wary perception, a kind of grim wisdom. And the look of bleak pallor in his face - somehow making it seem older, like the faces of people who were pulled from disasters and wars... people who had seen terrible things and yet lived. He'd been barely aware of these things before, caught as he was in that claustrophobic madness; but now, in the still, quiet evening, in front of his grandparents' cabin and the memories of days that knew no terror, he was painfully conscious of them.

We live and learn... he told himself. And although the place looks pretty empty, you never can be sure...

"Alright," he breathed. "Stay behind me, till we know it's safe." She nodded. Leon had slipped back into his authoritative tone again, but she was glad that he'd not refused. Since Raccoon, Sherry had decided that she hated the dark, but more so the thought of being abandoned - again. She couldn't bear it, wouldn't contemplate the possibility - somehow knowing it would break her already fragile sensibility. Besides, she liked Leon - he was a nice person, and he was looking out for her, and she didn't want to imagine what she'd do if he went out there and didn't come back...

"Stay close," he said, stalking up to one of the small windows and peering inside. Sherry held her breath and waited, shivering in Claire's pink angel vest. Nothing moved in the blackness; Leon tried the front door gently, expecting it to be firmly locked. Unfortunately, he was right.

"What do we do now?" Sherry whispered, looking worriedly at the shapes of the trees and the darkness between them.

"Guess I'll have to try a bit of B&E," he answered, a cynical smile touching his lips. In a way, it was almost comical - since arriving in Raccoon for his first day on the job, he'd put down dozens of people - well, zombies anyway, some of them fellow cops - ransacking as he went, and completely blown away what had once been a brilliant scientist. And now he was on the run, hiding out in the woods like a thief, having to break into his own hideout...

...You're one hell of a role model, buddy. You'd make Ned Kelly jealous.

Leon considered the back of the cabin - he remembered a smaller window near the back door, that now would be within arm's reach of the latch - and with the leather jacket on he could take it out easily enough with an elbow...

It proved a simple task. Before long, he and Sherry were standing in the dry, slightly musty-smelling room, taking in the layout by the faint illumination of a large skylight in the roof. Leon quickly discovered the lights didn't work - the generator was out, rusted up completely; but he remembered where the candles were. They threw out a close, rosy glow when he lit them, the shadows leaping back into the corners of the little room.

Sherry was comforted by the light - and although it wouldn't banish them completely, she knew monsters didn't like it. The cabin itself was homely enough, if a little dusty. There was a big couch in the centre, facing a yawning stone fireplace, with a wooden ladder behind it that lead up to a sort of balcony with a couple of beds. After a check upstairs, Leon holstered his gun, satisfied that the place was undisturbed, and that it could have been worse; he'd been right after all - it was a good place to lay up for a while, tucked away in the Idaho backwoods, just north of the border...

They could lie low here for a while, safe, till Claire called.

16

In his dream he was crouching, gripping the heavy Eagle tight in one moist palm, the other pressed to the cold, hard floor close to her head. Her skin was cool and firm, and she wasn't moving; except for her eyes, moving slowly beneath flickering lids, as if searching... but he felt sure she was already dead. Dead, but yet not so. She was beginning to stir again; the virus resuming cellular functions only a little less abruptly than it had shut them off. Soon she would be awake again, but with unseeing eyes; she would rise and reach for him - not for help, or for comfort - but to grasp and tear, seeking his warm, living flesh with a desperate, mindless hunger...

He knew she would wake -

And that when she did, he would have to kill her.

He would have to pull the trigger.

Because she wasn't the human being she had once been. She was a monster. She was one of them. Those things -

Her eyes snapped open, white and sightless. Wide and crazed -

"Ada!"

With a fevered yell he awoke, chest heaving, little beads of sweat weighting his forehead. A sharp moment passed, and Ada was gone; the ghastly vision faded, its meaning dissolved into darkness, leaving only the bitter taste of alarm...

Another dream - no, nightmare -

Get a grip, Kennedy. Just a dream...

He caught his breath, brushed a curtain of damp hair out of his eyes... and saw Sherry, watching him anxiously from the balcony above.

"Bad dream?" she asked quietly.

"Uh - yeah," he stammered, his head aching.

"Were you dreaming about the lady in the red dress?"

Leon checked himself.

"You know Ada?" he asked, amazed, meeting the little girl's gaze evenly. His thoughts were still swimming, settling slowly, the image of Ada as she had been that night flashing back into his mind without recall; and Sherry, at the station too. By chance they could have met...

"She's pretty, isn't she?" Sherry answered.

Leon blinked slowly. He was aware of his mind's voice, chiding and cold, in the absence of organised thoughts. Yeah, she's pretty alright; pretty big trouble...

He nodded tiredly, ignoring himself, and Sherry smiled. As if she guessed the turmoil in his heart, almost as if she knew what he'd been dreaming of -

"I saw her in the police station," the little girl went on. "I was scared at first, so I ran. But then I saw she wasn't bad, and -"

Leon turned away.

"You miss her?"

He said nothing, Sherry's young words echoing through his mind like something from a dream, distant and hazy, giving sudden voice to the pain within... asking, demanding, pleading... and finally, accusing...

...In Ada's voice. For a moment, he thought he might be going mad. All these thoughts, these nightmares... had Ada really been there at all, that night - the night they kissed?

Jesus, I'm so tired...

Was it real? Or a dream? Some kind of hallucination, maybe? Something that just happens when people don't sleep for days and their brains start tripping out?

For some reason, his hand sought his jacket pocket of its own accord, searching. His cold fingers closed on something small and feathery, the scrap of paper, the tiny note with Ada's scrawl and the stain of red mud; and he brought it up close to his eyes, staring hard at it. It was real enough - unless people wrote from beyond the grave - which he'd never really believed.

She'd sloughed him off again, as though he'd meant nothing, or less than nothing. It hurt, deeply; worse than any flesh wound, worse than any insult. Just why he had enticed her to gouge his most vulnerable self he couldn't even guess - perhaps because he wasn't so accustomed to revealing it. He'd maintained distance, even caution, with a good number of people in his life before, that was true - as most people do. Nobody wants to get hurt, or used, or made to look the fool; it was a natural reaction, a defence mechanism. And he'd been hurt this way before, though not as deep or so scathingly, because the wall was there, protecting him. But when barriers are dropped, when souls are bared and at their most brittle, the gouge is deep; and sometimes, it never heals...

But Leon was neither secretive nor shy behind his defence, and his heart was plain to read. Perhaps it was his weakness, but honesty was, he felt, worthier. Ada hadn't really meant to hurt him, so he thought - she was doing what she thought was best (as selfish as that was); and he was galled most of all by his own eagerness to forgive her. It was not survival instinct, as he now so crudely knew it, to follow and to forgive, to plead and to lay one's own heart selflessly at the feet of another, in spite of pain or shame... That was -

Love.

He did not deny it. But it was unbearable, all the same; and with an effort, he tried to swallow back the choking bitterness of it all, the waste. It was all he could do; he could not exist alongside it.

And then the other half of his mind spoke up, the angry half - the part of him that hated the world he'd been born into for its injustice and deceit, and its cruelty. That part of him was still strong, still bitter, and it laughed at the other roughly, mercilessly.

Shit happens. It's the way of the world. Get used to it.

He half-nodded his assent, stooping to what he felt was good and inevitable logic, though his heart was obstinate, locked in grief; a grief he hadn't the will or force at that moment to fight. Thoughts barely plumbed the surface of it, and he knew he shouldn't go there. Not with the things he had to do, now, in the present. Regret, self-pity... all that could come later.

Sherry seemed to understand his silence, and she lay back down quietly. For a while, Leon was very still and very quiet, and she wondered if he was all right; but he soon got up and moved to the window, gazing out at something from a slit in the thick curtains. He stood there for a long time, and she guessed he was keeping watch; and even as she gazed at him with one eye, the other buried in her shoulder, the heavy hand of sleep led her away.

He thought angrily of Ada one last time, before promising himself to banish her from his mind completely.