Chapter Text
THEN
It’s probably around three at night when it happens.
Peak of summer, mid-September, post-football game afterparty. You were confident enough in your abilities to brush off curfew by sneaking through your window after you got back from the game, and before you knew it, a few hours had passed. You could say with confidence that you were too drunk off of cheap beer and sloppy kissing to care about the fact that you might be in trouble. When the party was over, you crawled back in through your open window, half-sweaty, makeup sliding off your face, and you flopped onto your bed in a state of what could only be described as drunken exultation. You kick off your dew-stained shoes and hear them clunk to the floor somewhere in the dark.
The bedside clock glares at you as if to say, I know what you did. 2:48. You have school, and you’re certain that if you don’t sleep right now you’re going to have the absolute worst day tomorrow. Or today, because school starts in less than six hours.
Remnants of alcohol and the aftertaste of someone else's mouth swill around on your tongue, and gosh, you really need something to drink. The crickets shriek loudly just outside of the house when you all but roll out of bed in search of a glass of water, your bedroom curtains fluttering nicely as if to say goodbye. The layout of the house is familiar to you, even in the dark, and you trace the hallway wall with your fingertips as you make your way down to the kitchen.
Last night’s supper still sits on the stove, lids on pots and thin Saran-wrapped covers on dishes. Rolls of cornbread nestle in a small breadbasket, covered with a cloth. You take one and grab a glass, then move over to the fridge.
You’re in between bites of cornbread and sips of water when you hear it, through the crickets- if a sound can be described as small, it sounds just like that- like wingbeats of a broken bird, of something struggling, rustling somewhere in the dark past you.
You freeze. Sure, you know you’re too old by now to be deterred by stories of the paranormal, but you cannot shake off, for the life of you, the strangeness of that sound. It simply sounded wrong.
A part of you tells you to go back to bed.
Another part of you, the overconfident, shut-up-and-stop-being-a-baby part, tells you to check it out.
So you do. You have no flashlight, but the moon’s out tonight, and it leaks through the open blinds. Your steps are flimsy, feet off-kilter from the remnants of alcohol. The wooden floor feels like a clammy touch to your feet, still warm from the summer mugginess, creaking as you step gingerly through the kitchen and past the living room to that sound. It does not get louder in the living room, but when you reach out a hand in one of the darkened corners of the house and touch the master bedroom’s door, you can almost feel the sound vibrate through you, the wrongness of it amplifying.
It’s a human sound, irregular with no repetitions, almost like the uneven swallowing of how a snake eats its prey, if it can even be described as that, and in one breath you twist the freezing doorknob and let the door fall open-
You freeze, the glass shatters at your feet in moon-soaked shards of crystal; everything that you’re holding on to slips. You fall, and by now, you know for sure that you can’t wake up from it again.
───────
PRESENT DAY
The backyard looks like a mess.
Weeds- crabgrass, dandelions, you name it. It tangles over itself and is snarled around the wire dog fence that’s definitely seen better days, made of old galvanized steel that’s beginning to slant a little from years of age. Small piles of weed and detritus dot the landscape, you in the middle of it all, ripping tallow saplings and ivy from the back porch flowerbed. Saturdays are typically spent with you attacking different parts of the house, completing your self-assigned chores for the day, the garden now your new interest. Early summer signals the beginning of it all. Last year’s remnants of your flower garden, brown plants dried and withered, are removed, the new green shoots of weeds rooted out, and new soil tilled, fertilized, and moistened. It’s a process all too familiar with you, year after year. Only the flowers change.
The sun bakes the back of your neck as you work, noon stretching into two o’clock, then into three. Cars buzz by languidly along the street, few and far between. The heat seems to make everything slower, like a fly trapped in molasses. By three-thirty the flowerbeds are properly done, seeds planted to join the older plants, and the pull on your muscles makes you wince when you stand back upright.
You’ll check on them tomorrow, and then the day after, and after that. This is your routine. This, now, is your life.
It’s the thing that keeps you here trapped in this suffocating town, the routine. You’ve seen it happen to people that you’ve grown up with for years. Five decades could pass within a blink of an eye and you’re still sure that the same people you went to school with are still going to be working the same jobs they are now, living in the same houses, thinking the same thoughts. People will still gossip and blather about drama that’s been years-old, and stare at you when you walk by, with those hangdog-esque looks of sympathy. They don’t know much about the world that exists outside of their bubble. Why should they?
You want nothing more than to leave. People who say that small towns have their charm have never seen or lived in a place so economically defunct that residents live in places that crumble down around them, or drop out of school several years early to be able to pay for the family that they’ve accidentally begun. It’s awful, for lack of a better word, seeing people that you know for a fact could escape and find something better for themselves become trapped in the cycle that they were raised in. There’s not really much you can do about it other than worry about yourself and help out when you can, at this point. There's something out there for you, that much you know. What it is, though, you're not too sure yet. But you know you need to be.
The flowers keep you busy, an easy distraction from the lingering misery and loneliness that clouds you after you come home from work to an even lonelier house, on the corner of a block surrounded by moldy double-wides and broken-down cars. This year, a bag of wildflower seeds, cheap and easy, is scattered across the raggedy scrap of ‘backyard’ that you hope will eventually grow to strangle and choke out the dandelions and clover that plague it. In the flowerbeds, gladiolus and lilies are blooming from the year prior in creamy bursts of pink and white. Petunias and daisies will join them, give or take two months. The seeds fall like peppercorns when you drop them into the soil.
Hours pass by while on your day off. You manage to get some other chores done, and by the time evening falls, you find yourself half-slumped on the front porch steps with an errant book in hand; something given to you by a person whose name you forgot a long time ago. A lukewarm bottle of water sits forgotten on the bottom step.
Summertime here approaches quickly after spring. June keeps the weather at a happy medium, not too hot to be unbearable, and the danger of frost has, for certain, gone away. You paused your reading, momentarily forgotten in favor of watching a moving truck roll down the street and park in front of Mrs. Walter’s old house, halfway down the block. It’s only a simple building, standard tan vinyl siding with green accents. It’s something that lasted from the burst of homes that popped up like mushrooms from the 80’s and never changed to match the modern tastes of present-day architecture.
What strikes you as odd, however, is the fact that someone new is here in the first place. Nobody moves into this place quite often; if anything, people leave. From the looks of it, it’s only one person that’s coming in, given that when the door of the truck opens, you see a minimal amount of furniture stored inside- your standard bedframe, matching cabinets and tables, a few errant chairs, and about a dozen boxes. The truck blocks the entire driveway, and you crane your neck nosily to peer at the newcomer. Still, after a brief moment of ogling at the little house down the street and a resulting flash of pain in your neck, you give up and pick up your book again, rifling through the pages. Banana bread would probably be a good housewarming gift, you think humorlessly to yourself, and you imagine handing over a loaf to your new faceless neighbor. Mildly interested, you trace the movers' path with your eyes as they begin to unload the boxes.
A few brief moments depart, and you’ve gotten about three-quarters of the way through a remarkably dense chapter when you hear the sound of a car thrumming down the block, same path as the moving truck. Your unknown neighbor, probably. Your reading is paused when you look up and see a roughshod square-body truck, plain black, pull into the space behind the moving van.
Nosiness is nothing uncommon here, it’s something that comes with the place. Anyone who’s been here long enough knows by heart that people don’t stare out of maliciousness but rather because of curiosity, similar to which one gets by staring at a colorful creature exhibited in a zoo. What does your neighbor look like, you wonder? Make-up scenarios bubble up in your mind: a widowed old man who wanted to peacefully spend the rest of his time in a place that would let the world forget him, a mother of two children who wanted to find a place to start over, someone who simply thought the town was just so charming that they had to scrape up their entire life off the ground and come here, God knows.
A car door slams across the street, and you can’t help but close your book to watch. You see someone’s booted feet step past the truck, away from you, but from the five seconds of viewage you can tell that whoever has moved across the street from you is certainly a guy, see the stretch of long legs and broad shoulders as he enters the house, keys glimmering from a pocket in his jacket (who even wears that during the summertime?)
You go back to your book, try to find interest in the paragraph you left off at, and with little success you heave a sigh and check your watch. 8:18. You have work at seven. Might as well turn in for the night.
Gathering your things from the porch, you step off from the front steps and begin to make your way back inside. Before you shut the screen door, however, you cast one last quick look across the street, just out of curiosity. You see him there, unfocused, only a glimpse, but that must be the new guy-
The wind picks up, scattering cottonwood fluff like dandelion seeds in the breeze, but through it all, the only thing you can see is the face of a man who has something to hide. The door slams behind you, and the sound of the gusts is left outside.
───────
Well, fuck.
By now, Leon’s been doing this kind of stuff long enough to be able to tell when a situation can go from mild to bad to worse.
Receiving approximately 9 missed calls from Hunnigan is in ‘bad’ territory. Either he’s about to be in hot shit or the DSO building’s on fire, whichever one comes first.
She picks up on the first ring, and he hears the stern bite of her tone before he can squeeze out an apology.
“Hunnigan-”
“Leon, what the hell have you been doing? I tried getting a hold of you, what- nine times now? And you haven’t answered or left a message, you know that’s protocol-”
“Sorry.” He sets the phone on a countertop before sliding his jacket off his shoulders and tossing it over a kitchen chair. “This place doesn’t exactly provide what I call quality signal service.”
A long, drawn-out sigh. “Okay. That being the case won’t help us out much when you’re in the field, but I’m sure we can find ways to make it work. How’s the new lodgings fitting you?”
Leon looks around uninterestedly at this new expansion of space, much larger than his original apartment but compact enough to house a small family. In this case, however, it’ll only have him for the time being. The kitchen is a small, cedarwooded thing with linoleum floors, and the living room and adjoining bedrooms aren’t particularly anything to die for. Just ecru walls, banged-up hardwood flooring, and a backyard that houses a maple tree that’s got to be at least a century old.
“Not too shabby. Whoever set this gig up did a pretty good job. I miss driving in a car that’s not a complete shitbox, though.”
Hunnigan hums in response, clearly unfazed. “Believe me, we didn’t really have that hard a time finding a fairly low-profile place. Half this town’s homes are either decrepit or are being sold for next to nothing. Not too much of a demand for living here. And in the case of your vehicle, I’m sure this town of a thousand people would lose its mind seeing someone in a Porsche move in a place like this. You’d be the primary discussion for months.” He can hear the rapid tapping of a keyboard. “Anyways, I sent you the preliminary files so you could check them out on the way here, but since someone said they didn’t have any connection, I can give you a quick run-down while we’re at it.”
Leon huffs a laugh. “Yeah, sure.” He slowly makes his way around the house, eyeing the old crayon stains on the wall and how some of the floorboards creak in response to the step of his feet.
He doesn’t have much in the way of furniture other than the basics: bedding, a couch, chairs, tables, drawers, and a small set of dining equipment he’s sure he’ll only touch about ten times. About a dozen or so boxes lie along the living room wall, each one waiting silently to be unpacked. Everything he knows he’ll need is kept locked away in two safes that he instructed the movers to handle with care: guns, knives, a rifle, two shotguns, and a plethora of ammunition. In the other safe, smaller, more squat, lies everything tied to his mission here- neatly organized files, a laptop, and a thin manila folder filled with documents and files that he knows for sure he’ll be looking over tonight.
Hunnigan’s voice jolts him from his mindless meandering around the house, and he leans against the kitchen counter. “This isn’t in the files you have already, also. While you were on the road, I did a little extra digging of my own.”
She continues. “What you probably already know so far is that this town pretty much sits right next to an old distribution warehouse that closed down in the late 80s, and was purchased by Umbrella as a way to ‘expand product distribution throughout the southeast region,’” Hunnigan takes a breath, “Our technical analysts picked up on a lot of small purchases made about five years ago that were billed to this warehouse."
Looking outside of the kitchen window, Leon watches a car crawl past the main street. It’s getting dark outside now. “Yeah, I remember that. What’s new?”
"Well, things didn’t start looking crazy until just a couple of months ago, when we received word that purchases of up to twenty thousand dollars were being made to this warehouse, all in biweekly sequences. But now, just yesterday, there was a bill for fifty grand. It's safe to assume that whatever's going on is shady.” More rapid typing. “We also knew that the smaller purchases were probably made just to keep the lights on and the facilities running, but the larger expenditures were blocked behind an encryption that wouldn’t let us see anything unless we were working from a device that was logged under Umbrella’s IT system. We were able to break the encryption this morning, but there was a fail-safe one of our computer guys forgot to disable, so that means the electronic copies are pretty much gone.” She goes silent for a bit. “So we’re gonna have to find out what these purchases are about, because something's up.”
It’s Leon’s turn to sigh this time. “Wonderful. Who’s in charge of this warehouse anyway? We can start there.”
“We don’t know that, either.”
Wonderful. The sun peeks just above the tops of trees, dying light fading across the street, pouring into his open window. He can imagine the last breath of warmth across his face like that of a final breeze.
“Any ties to the town? Hospitals? Budget allocations?”
He can almost hear Hunnigan’s head shake through the speakers. “No, nothing at all. So far, this looks like something independently owned and operated through Umbrella, no state or bureaucratic ties at all. It’s just…there. But that’s what’s so off about it.”
“It’s too quiet.”
“Yeah.”
Leon shuts his eyes and feels the tightness in his chest. It refuses to go away, kind of like a bad cough. It’s been like that, and he’s sure it’ll be there for the rest of his life. “I’ll check things out tomorrow. I’ve got the coordinates already.”
“Great. Let me know how it goes.” Voices chatter from beyond Hunnigan’s remarks, talking about grabbing a drink together. Coworkers, probably. It’s strange, that normalcy. A lifetime spent chasing down the exact opposite of it makes normal seem like a pipe dream. Partly because it is.
“Goodnight, Leon. And remember- try to keep things quiet, yeah? Wouldn’t want to scare the daylights out of the neighbors or anything. Words tend to travel fast in small places like these.”
“Yeah, I know,” he mutters. He brings a hand up to press at the tangled cord of muscle at the back of his neck. Maybe he is getting a little too old to make long drives a daily event. “I’ll be in and out.” The phone beeps when he hangs up.
Later that night, in a house that creaks too much and seems to give in to the wind, Leon remembers something. In the back of his mind, so quick he would have missed it, he sees the flash of a face peering at him from a house up the street. In that glimpse, he catches your gaze.
All he can see is the look of someone who wants to run, eyeing him with a sort of measured interest- half wary, half curious. He watches the door close shut, and he can’t shake off the feeling that he’s been discovered already.
When he wakes that next morning, he won’t remember what it was that tensed him.