Tenebrae

style='font-size:18.0pt'>Tenebrae

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1. The
   office of matins and lauds sung on the last three days of Holy Week, with
   a ceremony of candles.


2. Medieval
   Latin, from Latin tenebrae, darkness

___

Body trembling from exhaustion, Leon
slumped to the bottom of the boat. With a shaky hand he reached for his holster
and gripped the pistol within. A poor defense should the lake decide to come
alive again, but his arms felt like lead weights and he knew he would be unable
to throw any more harpoons.

Wiping water from his eyes, he pushed himself back to a
sitting position where he stayed for a moment, catching his breath and possibly
his sanity.

Never a dull moment.

With a sputter, Leon
painfully restarted the small onboard motor, and made for the opposite shore.

Idly, he wondered what sort of nightmares waited for him
there.

___

Pueblo, it was
called. But within the same language was a more appropriate word for what had
lurked inside the ‘village’- infierno.

How oddly fitting that it had been a cold day in hell. Those
demons walked not through fire but through chilled air, a vacuum from which the
very life had been sucked. Horrors in the daylight, an unnatural setting for
such a perfect cinematic scene. Leon Kennedy enters the Pueblo.
Roll cameras, cue demons. Action.

And somewhere between the hundredth squeeze of the trigger
and the sound of wet flesh being parted left the thought that none of it could
possibly be real. Real was in the blood at his feet. Real was subject to
renegotiation.

Raccoon City
seemed just around the corner. Life had never been more distant. It was a
juxtaposition he was well familiar with.

Like all such twisted roads everything bent gradually,
turning upside down and over until the shape of things to come was no longer
discernable. He was moving by his bare fingertips, hand over hand in
treacherous navigation. The President’s daughter had little to do with anything
now. She was either dead, or she wasn’t. He wasn’t, and he intended to stay
that way. Thinking about Ashley Graham did nothing to forward this goal.

It was a necessary lie. To pin his hopes of escape on a girl
he had yet to see except through photographs did little to convince him of his
chances. In reality, leaving without her was not an option. There was no way
out but through, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave her to die and still
be employed on his return. Besides, he wasn’t willing to let an innocent die if
he could prevent it. His mission was his clearest path- anything else would be
misguided.

___

Leon
reached the dock on the other end of the lake, the boat scraping loudly against
the wooden planks. Bent over in pain, he quickly roped it securely then
scrambled out onto the shore.

He was dizzy, nauseous- stumbling on even ground. His mouth
felt dry and swollen, his tongue seemed thick as if he might choke on it. Dimly
he wondered if he was dying. There was something in his neck, he thought,
without fully understanding why. Something in his neck. His spit tasted
metallic. He opened his lips to jet some out but instead only let a rivulet of
drool escape, oozing into his jacket. What was happening to him?

He ran heavily into the door of a cabin that he hadn’t even
realized was there. With trembling hands he gripped the knob and it seemed by
almost sheer force of will opened it. His clumsy footsteps banged loudly on the
wooden floor. He managed to close the door behind him just before he collapsed,
letting out an unexpected shout of pain.

The floor rushed up to meet him, and greeted him with
darkness.