Chapter 1: Beneath the Ruins
The world had been reduced to the cone of her flashlight beam, cutting through a darkness so thick it felt like breathing tar. Milly’s boots splashed through stagnant water, the sound too loud in the dripping silence of the tunnel. The air was cold, smelling of wet rust, decay, and something else—a sour, meaty scent that made the back of her throat tighten.
Her light swept over buckled track, over graffiti-scarred pillars, and then caught something that wasn’t concrete or steel.
A hand. Pale, streaked with grime and something darker. Clenched around a jagged piece of rebar.
Milly rushed forward, her breath hitching. The beam climbed from the bloodied hand to a torn police uniform sleeve, up to a face turned away, partially buried in rubble from a partial ceiling collapse. The badge, miraculously untarnished, gleamed on his chest.
“Hey. Hey!” She dropped to her knees, stones biting into her skin. She shoved at a chunk of concrete pinning his legs. It didn’t budge. “Can you hear me?”
A low groan. He turned his head. Young. Too young for this. Light brown hair plastered to his forehead, blue eyes clouded with pain but intensely focused. On her.
“Milly?” His voice was a rasp, surprised.
She froze. “How do you know my name?”
“Your… your ID badge. On your lanyard.” He managed a weak gesture with his chin. “You’re from the records office. I saw you this morning. In the lobby.” He tried to shift and a sharp gasp escaped him. “Was trying to get to the station for my first shift. Didn’t exactly… stick the landing.”
This was Leon Kennedy. The rookie. The one everyone said had the worst luck in history, starting today of all days.
From somewhere deeper in the tunnel, a sound ripped through the silence. A long, wet, chattering screech that seemed to vibrate in Milly’s bones. It was answered by another, closer. The Lickers. They were hunting.
“Okay. Okay, new plan. We’re leaving right now,” Milly said, her voice low and urgent. She holstered her flashlight, letting the dim, flickering emergency strips light the scene. She wrapped both hands around his wrist, above the blood. “On three. One, two—”
She pulled, bracing her feet. He cried out, a raw, pained sound that echoed terribly, but his body slid an inch, then another, as the rubble shifted. With a final grating shudder, his legs came free. He collapsed against her, his weight knocking the air from her lungs.
For a second, they just knelt there in the near-dark, breathing hard. He smelled of sweat, blood, and cordite.
He let out a shaky, disbelieving laugh, his head against her shoulder. “First day on the job,” he muttered, his voice muffled by her jacket. “And I already need rescuing. Reports are gonna be a nightmare.”
Milly couldn’t help it. A choked laugh escaped her too, born entirely from frayed nerves. “You’re worried about paperwork? Seriously?” She shifted, getting an arm under his shoulders. “Can you stand?”
“I’ll manage.” He gritted his teeth, using the rebar like a crutch. He got one foot under him, then the other, leaning heavily on her. He was taller than she’d realized. “We can’t go back the way I came. It’s… blocked. Thoroughly.”
Another screech, closer. Much closer. The chattering was like knives on glass.
“This way,” Milly said, pointing her beam down a service corridor branching off the main line. “There’s an old maintenance elevator up to the streets. Maybe. If the power’s not completely dead.”
They hobbled forward, a four-legged creature of desperation. Every drag of his foot, every hitched breath was amplified in the tunnel. Milly kept glancing back, her light slicing the darkness, finding nothing but empty track. That was worse.
“You shouldn’t be down here,” Leon said, his words clipped with pain.
“Someone had to check the evacuation routes from the lower sectors. That someone got volunteered.”
“Lucky me.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
They reached a heavy steel door. Milly shouldered it open, the screech of its hinges making them both wince. The small elevator cage was there, a relic from another century. She hit the call button. Nothing. No light, no hum.
“Power’s dead.” The statement fell between them like a stone.
The screech echoed again, right at the tunnel junction behind them. It was followed by a heavy, wet dragging sound.
Leon straightened, pushing off from her. His face was a mask of grim determination. “Give me your gun.”
“What? No.”
“Milly. I’m the police. You’re a records clerk. Give me the gun.”
“And you’re a rookie who got pinned by falling concrete,” she shot back, her fear sharpening her words. “I’ve been down here for three hours. I’ve evaded two of those things. You haven’t. So we do this my way.” Her heart was hammering against her ribs. “The manual release. There’s a crank mechanism behind this panel.”
She pried at a metal plate on the wall with her fingertips. It gave way, revealing a rusty hand crank. “It’s a mechanical override for the brake. We turn it, the elevator drops a few inches, then we can pull the doors open and climb the shaft.”
“Climb.” He looked from the crank to the ceiling of the cage, skepticism warring with desperation.
“You got a better idea?”
The dragging sound was closer now. A rhythmic slap-squelch on the wet concrete.
“No.” He moved to the crank. “You pull the doors the second it gives. I’ll hold it.”
They didn’t waste another second. He grabbed the crank with his good hand, bracing his body. He turned. Muscles corded in his neck. The mechanism screamed in protest, then gave with a metallic clunk that sounded like a gunshot.
The elevator shuddered.
Milly threw herself at the cage doors, digging her fingers into the gap. She pulled, her feet slipping. They groaned open a foot, revealing the inky blackness of the shaft. A cold, damp wind breathed up from below.
“Go!” Leon grunted, still holding the crank, his injured hand pressed white-knuckled against the wall.
Milly scrambled into the opening, finding a rusty ladder bolted to the sheer wall. She climbed a few rungs, then reached back down. “Leon! Now!”
He let go of the crank and lunged for the opening, grabbing her outstretched hand just as the elevator groaned and dropped another six inches with a deafening crash. Something entered the room behind him. She heard it—a fast, skittering crawl, and that low, hungry chattering.
She pulled with all her strength. He hauled himself up, his boots finding the ladder as the thing in the room slammed into the now-empty elevator cage with a sound of rending metal.
They climbed. Not speaking. The only sounds were their ragged breathing, the scuff of their shoes on rust, and the furious, frustrated screams fading beneath them.
After an eternity, her head bumped against a trapdoor. She shoved. It was heavy, locked from above. “No. No, no, no.”
“Let me,” Leon whispered. He maneuvered around her on the ladder, his body pressing hers against the cold rungs. He drew his sidearm—she hadn’t even known he had it—and placed the muzzle against the lock. He turned his face away. “Cover your ears.”
The blast was catastrophic in the confined space. The lock shattered. He slammed his shoulder against the door and it burst open, spilling grey, pre-dawn light and fresh, cold air over them.
They collapsed onto cracked asphalt in a filthy back alley, gulping breaths that didn’t taste of decay. The city around them was ominously quiet, smoke staining the sky.
Leon lay on his back, staring up. “So,” he said, his voice hoarse. “This is Raccoon City.”
Milly sat up, looking down at him. The brave, stupid rookie. She found a half-smile. “Welcome to the force, Officer Kennedy.”
He started to laugh again, a real laugh this time, though it ended in a wince. He offered her a hand up. She took it.
A new sound cut through the morning stillness then. Not a screech. A slow, deliberate, dragging footstep from the other end of the alley. Then another. The silhouette that emerged from the mist was unmistakably human-shaped, but its walk was all wrong, a stiff, shuffling gait. It turned its head toward them, and a low, guttural moan drifted down the narrow space between the buildings.
Leon was on his feet in an instant, pushing Milly behind him, his gun raised again. His first-day-on-the-job bravado was gone, replaced by something colder, harder. “Stay close,” he said, and it wasn’t a request.