Wasteland Requiem

“It seems they didn’t give you any vacation or time off, I’m a little surprised they chose you for this mission… but apparently you made quite an impression after you rescued that pretty lady… what was her name? Ashley…?”

The black military van bumped along the road, they’d been on the move for several hours now, and the cityscape was fading more and more, replaced by overgrown wilderness that seemed eerily quiet. Leon looked out the passenger window, mentally going over the objective of his mission again and again, while his driver couldn’t resist trying over and over to strike up a conversation with him, but he wasn’t in the mood for it. Right now, he generally wasn’t in the mood to talk, he hadn’t fully processed the events of the last mission yet. The trauma ran deep, even though for him all the gruesome mutations, the walking corpses, the cult-like structure, and his own infection with this damned parasite carried little weight. The worst part was that he had lost a companion, a person who didn’t deserve to die. His survivor’s guilt was stronger than anything he’d had to experience firsthand. 

He was still young… just 27, and yet he’d had to witness so much cruelty in recent years that he’d almost grown accustomed to it and was becoming colder and colder inside. He hadn’t voluntarily chosen to go from being a simple rookie cop to a DSO government agent. The government hadn’t asked him after Raccoon City, they had something he couldn’t lose: Sherry, a young girl who had already been through more than most people do in their entire lives. The authorities had her in their custody, and Leon knew exactly what could happen to her if the wrong people took an interest in her. So he had signed up.. not for himself, but for her. Since then, his life had consisted of training, missions, and orders, of things he’d never wanted to do and memories that still haunted him, and… he didn’t whine, he didn’t complain… but when he was on missions, his heart and mind decided the course of action, not always guidelines or orders. He wasn’t a soldier who would immediately blow up an entire city full of people just to save humanity. He would go into the city and first save as many people as possible. 

Outside, the landscape continued to change. The abandoned forests looked dead. More and more often they passed checkpoints, some long abandoned, others still guarded by heavily armed soldiers. High fences stretched for miles across the landscape, topped with barbed wire and yellowed warning signs.

WARNING: RADIATION.

NO ENTRY.

MILITARY RESTRICTED AREA.

Leon let his gaze drift over them as the van crossed another border, the barriers only opened after their IDs had been checked several times. A few years ago, a nuclear strike had wiped everything out. An entire city erased from the map, perhaps even more than that. Officially, to prevent the spread of a catastrophe, unofficially, Leon had long known that the truth was rarely that simple. But their destination wasn’t there, the actual exclusion zone was still many kilometers away, they were merely in the border area, a sort of buffer zone separating the contaminated area from the rest of the world. And even here, the scars were impossible to miss. Rusted vehicles stood abandoned at the roadside, crumbling buildings jutted out from among the trees, even nature looked sick, as if it had never fully recovered from what had happened here. Leon crossed his arms over his chest and gazed out in silence until the car stopped and his driver grinned broadly at him again. 

“So, Kennedy, we’re here. I’m supposed to leave you here alone and pick you up in two days. They think you’re up to this mission… well… I wouldn’t want to be wandering around alone in an area like this… it’s like the Appalachians.. you never know who or what you’ll run into, but that seems to be routine for you, right?”

Leon merely nodded, got out, and checked his weapons and the other gear he carried in the pouches attached to his clothing. The pistol in its holster, several spare magazines, his combat knife, a radio, and a small flashlight. He also carried some basic first-aid supplies and other tactical equipment, he’d never been one to carry more than necessary. Too much weight could be just as deadly in a dangerous situation as too little ammunition. The driver hauled a heavy crate out of the van and placed it in the garage of a dilapidated house, Leon could return there anytime if he needed anything else. Food, gear… and so on. 

“See you later, Kennedy!”

Leon nodded and took a deep breath as the van finally drove off and all he could see were clouds of dust. 

“Great, a partially irradiated border zone, and probably some new mutated beast that wants to kill me… this is starting to feel a lot like a vacation.”

He muttered to himself as he activated a small device designed to alert him if he was exposed to too much radiation. Generally, he didn’t care if he got a little of it, but he wanted to avoid dying from it in the middle of the mission. The display flickered briefly before the current readings appeared. The radiation was above normal background levels, significantly higher than outside the exclusion zone, but still well below a level that would be dangerous for a short stay. Leon glanced at it briefly and put the device away again.

“Scout the area, run some analyses… back up data if necessary… check.”

With those words, he set off, leaving normality behind, entering every dilapidated house, taking whatever he might need someday, and glancing several times at the map he’d been given. Hours passed, and the further Leon ventured into the border zone, the clearer it became to him that this place wasn’t simply abandoned. The streets were crisscrossed with cracks, between which tall weeds had spread, dilapidated houses stood scattered on the horizon. There were no birds, no wild animals, not even the usual rustling of small rodents in the bushes. Only the wind moved through the ruins, occasionally causing the creaking of old metal frames or the clattering of loose roof sheets. Leon had by now searched several buildings, saved some data, and documented everything that seemed unusual to him. As he passed the remains of an old gas station, a sound caught his attention. At first, he barely paid it any mind. It sounded like the distant hum of a power line, but the longer he listened, the clearer it became to him that this sound wasn’t coming from the surroundings themselves.. it was moving. He stopped and slowly raised his head, his gaze wandered over the treetops, the crumbling roofs, and the overgrown streets. Nothing.... yet the uneasy feeling wouldn’t go away. The hum grew louder, instinctively, his hand slid to the grip of his pistol.. then he spotted the source: something darted through the ruins.

“Oh, you can’t be serious…”

The thing was a mosquito… or at least it had once been one. The mutated insect had grown to nearly the size of a German Shepherd, its body looked grotesquely bloated, its thin legs dangled beneath it like twisted wires, and its long proboscis resembled a spear more than a natural body part. The wings moved so fast that they were only visible as blurry discs and produced precisely that unnatural buzzing sound. For a moment, Leon simply stared at the creature. After all these years, he really shouldn’t have been surprised anymore, yet these creatures always managed to find new ways to insult every notion of normality. Then he cursed under his breath, for behind the first mosquito, a second appeared. Leon drew his pistol and cocked it.

“Of course they’re giant mosquitoes.”

He shook his head and aimed the gun at the swarm.

“Why can’t these mutated animals ever be something harmless? A rabbit, a hamster... something cute.”

He received his answer in the form of an aggressive buzz as the first creature shot straight toward him.

“Yep, the question wasn’t really worth asking.”

The mutants could take a beating... that was creepy. Once he’d eliminated the swarm, he heard another buzzing behind him, but this time he didn’t wait for it to get closer, he leaped through a broken window into the gas station building and waited there quietly for the moment.

“Sure... the horror starts at gas stations... that’s almost blasphemy.”

He walked slowly through the partially overturned aisles, found a few cans of Coke that had expired ages ago, but then he heard a noise again. His eyes narrowed, annoyed, he gritted his teeth and crept slowly toward the sound, then he saw a shadow moving quite quickly. Another mutation? What was it now? A werewolf or something? With his pistol drawn, he approached, pushed open the door that had been moving earlier, then he made out a silhouette and fired twice. Only now did he realize that this silhouette strongly resembled something human. Male... slender... alive? Leon’s eyes widened, his gaze swept over the holes in the concrete he’d made... they’d missed the guy by a hair’s breadth.

“Are you out of your mind?”

he asked monotonously, to hide his own shock. Because what was the guy supposed to do? Wave a white flag? Perform a tap dance? Despite everything, the gun remained raised and Leon aimed at him. 

“Calm down… stay calm, no strange, unnatural movements… and if anything grows out of you… then I’ll shoot…”

@Nic Brooks. :)