bone mother

You feel like puff pastry rolled so thin that you're see through and then stuffed so full you're threatening to rupture. The doctors tell you that you'll hit labor any day now, but you think Lottie has taken that to mean any hour with how often she's sending you check-in texts. It's like she's waiting for you to send her a photo, baby in hand; proof of your hard work coming to fruition.

Before you have the time to daydream of that, your team lead has other plans.

His message rivals the length of Tolstoy's War and Peace, outlining several projects and who he wants heading them. Many of your co-workers have reacted to the message with thumbs up, or asked clarifying questions that your team lead answers with too much excitement and heavier verbiage than needed. You skim through the message with glassy eyes, ready to move on with your day, until you see your name listed for a solo project.

Due at the end of the month!

Your scoff is enough to disturb the baby. Heels dig into your stomach, pressing against your ribs until you're breathing deep just to get enough air into your lungs. Your hands hover over the keyboard to respond to his insane request, but you're not sure how to word it. Standing up for yourself always feels like a battle. You ask for an inch but everyone reacts as if you're demanding a mile. Unearned. Unworthy. Even now your mother's teeth nip at your ear, malice ready to spew down your spine.

Shaking your head, you roll out your shoulders before your fingers finally settle down on the keyboard. Eloquent and kind. (No one likes listening to a whiny girl).

I am unable to be the solo head on this project, as my due date is next week. If I had a partner working on it with me, I would be able to assist until the baby's arrival. Would you be able to assign someone else with me?

You hit send. Amicable enough. Blunt and straight to the point without unnecessary flowery thank yous! or other types of ass kissing. A part of you wants to add in how you're sticking around for their sake. You could have started your maternity leave weeks ago, giving yourself the time to prepare for the birth. But you have no clothes to buy. No nursery to furnish. What else would you do besides work?

Lunch hits the clock but you can't move from your desk. Your team lead is typing in chat, displaying his name at the bottom of the screen as he orchestrates your response. You could leave—you should leave—and return to the message later, but you're glued down. Stuck watching and waiting until it eventually pops up on your screen.

I set the deadline with your due date in mind. You should have plenty of time for your hospital stay and to finish this project up when you return! Thanks for your help.

They're hot coals placed between his shoulder blades, burning through the fabric of his shirt and all the way through the bullet proof vest he pretends protects him from the violence that the world is capable of these days. He reminds himself he's not special. Every soldier on the wall receives the same treatment. This stare. Eyes like hazard lights, blinking slow and steady like predators kneeling for the kill. The discontent can only boil for so long before it splashes over, sprinkling scalding malice on anyone unlucky enough to get in the way.

Leon ignores the heat at his back in favor of the barren landscape sprawling out in front of him. Twenty years or so has given nature more than enough time to reclaim what humanity abandoned to nightmarish creations. What used to be a sprawling Mid-West city now lies in the ruins of overgrown foliage blanketing each building from view. There are several tiny hills Leon is sure are just cars covered by the passage of time, engines rusted shut, doors blocked and doomed to never open again. Most buildings are hardly holding together, crumbling bricks dusting at the base, walls leaning, patched together with nothing but vines and the grace of a higher power Leon has long since stopped believing in.

"Two… About 300 yards down to the South-East."

There are some areas that are clear. Manicure days, he calls them. When the army sends out soldiers to cut away each and every overgrown shrub and soon-to-be tree in a thick perimeter around the wall for better visibility. It makes Leon's job easier as he twists his body, shoulders hunched forward, rifle pressed firmly against him as he spots two infected through his scope. Powerful security lights illuminate their bodies through the darkness of night, washing them out until their skin is paper thin with protruding veins and bloody eyes.

"Do you see them?" His spotter is new. Anxious. His name is either Adam or Adams—Leon isn't sure if the kid introduced himself by his first or last name, and no one really cares to wear name tags in the apocalypse, and he isn't sure if he cares enough to ask for clarification.

Leon's only reply is a hum.

"They're about 300 yards down."

"I heard you the first time."

The infected have changed a lot over the years. They're not as fresh. Half rotten, skin peeling around their eyes, their nails, their mouths, teeth hardly staying in their skulls. Neither of these two would be a threat up close. Waifish, decaying things. A strong wind could blow them over.

All it takes is a deep breath and a gentle squeeze to send one crumbling to the ground, head blown to bits with the round sent barreling through its skull. The one left standing pauses in its aimless wandering to look back at the corpse, almost human in the way it stares at the old blood spilling from a new wound. Leon wastes little time dispatching the other one—two new bodies for the cleanup crew to dispose of in the morning.

"Wow," Adam breathes as he pulls his range finder away from his face. "Those were clean. Really clean. I don't think I've seen someone hit a shot that well besides you."

Leon shrugs. "Years of practice."

Adam leans back in his seat—an old camp chair that has seen better days. The fabric sports no fewer than twelve patches and one very bent leg. "It's like you were born with a gun in your hand."

"Yeah, I came out the womb duel wielding," Leon deadpans.

It's enough to get Adam to chuckle. Leon rolls out the tension in his shoulders as he tries not to think about how he used to be like him—young and naive. Joining the police department in Raccoon City just to watch it all burn and crumble without the power to do anything about it, now banished to watch perimeters and live off scraps. He tells himself he's still doing the right thing. A good thing. Offering sanctuary to people who otherwise would die out in the wild.

The grandeur of it all blinds most people, but not him. It's hard for reality not to settle in; that life in a cage is no different than life outside of it when the predators outnumber you, and he might be a guard dog for these lambs, but he's still in the kennel all the same.

Time passes slow like molasses. Leon isn't sure if it's because of the cold of the dwindling summer or the weight pulling at his eyes that warps everything. He tries to focus on his breathing. The beating of his heart. Slight movements of animals through his scope. The occasional question from Adam when it bleeds from his mouth.

Leon reaps the benefits of the patience he sowed when the distinct tapping of two booted footsteps approach. It hits along the makeshift wall of old cement scraps and half welded vehicles like rain on a metal roof. Loud. Echoing. It prompts Leon to remove his face from the scope for the first time in hours. His relief stares at him oddly—most likely from the indents he's certain he has on his face—but neither of them say anything as they switch spots with him and Adam without so much as a good evening muttered between the four of them.

While the two men climb off the wall using the precarious, half-rotting ladders, Leon thinks about how all he has to look forward to is a closet-sized room and a cold bed without so much as a shower to wash off the grime of his shift. Civilian life isn't much easier. Dilapidating buildings, families shoved into homes and apartments too small to house their children, parents fighting tooth and nail to earn food with reserves that dwindle each day. For over twenty years humanity has lived like this. There are many communities like Deer Haven scattered across the country where people play pretend at government and society. He's heard radio chatter about some communities falling, destroyed from the inside out, humans ripping each other apart as opposed to infected. People can only be satiated for so long before zoochosis settles in.

A few years ago, Leon thought about leaving Deer Haven after an officer was caught raping his daughter. It was the kind of secret everyone knew. He's seen civilians face the firing squad for less, but the officer was acquitted after they deemed the girl was too young to carry an incestuous child. No harm, no foul, they said. He's not sure why he stuck around. Maybe it was the sight of his naked body strung up on the wall with the word traitor carved into his chest that convinced him to stay because it meant that there was at least one sane person left. Or maybe it's because he's still trying to prove to the old version of himself—the young Leon Kennedy—that he can still help people.

Leon tries to shake those thoughts out of his mind as the barracks grow closer, but Adam's presence makes it nearly impossible. He reminds him so much of his younger self it's almost frustrating. Every time he looks at him, it's as if he's been transported back in time. A time that he can't reach anymore. It's why he should be surprised when Adam walks off the beaten path into the frigid grass along the side of the building where the lights grow dim.

"What are you doing?" Leon asks, stopping on the crumbling sidewalk. He could just leave. It's late and he's tired, and Adam is an adult. But it's the same thing that always stops him. That irritating ghost of himself.

Stopping a good distance away, Adam points at the ground. "Someone left their bag. Figured we could bring it back, see if anyone's looking for it."

Leon squints through the darkness and spots a backpack with a broken strap. A pit gnaws on the inside of his stomach like sour milk not playing nice with the acid. When Adam lifts it off the ground, he has to use his free hand to brace himself against the wall.

"Damn, what do they have in here, rocks?" he mutters to himself.

Before he can even think to control his movements, Leon's finger is raising to point at Adam. "Kid, put that down!"

There's just enough time for him to look up at Leon before the explosion ignites the night.

A thick wall of compressed air knocks Leon's lungs flat as he's tossed to the ground several feet back from where he stood just mere moments before. The pressure change in his ears rings throughout his skull. It echoes like broken church bells, fractured and resonating deep in the marrow of his bones. He feels the earth wiggling underneath him despite the sky being stationary above him. For several terrifying moments his diaphragm refuses to work. Back arching, shoulders pressing into the grass; he writhes until the useless muscle decides to contract. He tastes soot on the inhale and blood on the exhale.

It takes time for his limbs to work properly. Rolling onto his side, he paws at the ground as if the dirt will help him stand while his bleary eyes slowly focus on the orange light flickering in front of him. The entrance to the barracks is blown open. A hole resides where the door used to and shattered bricks lay around it like too many teeth shoved into one mouth. Several rooms have been compromised, and he can hear people inside shuffling to get out as dust and sparse smoke rise into the sky, blotting out the faint stars.

Leon staggers to his feet just in time to find what remains of Adam. It's not much. A hole spans all the way down his side and eats deep towards the center of his body like a child got too excited with a cookie-cutter. Bubble gum pink intestines smattered with blood, bile, and acid spill into the soil like ink. He must have been hungry. There's no food seeping from his stomach. Completely bifurcated from the blast, Adam's legs lie separate from the rest of him. Not even his face remains unscathed. Shrapnel, bone, blood, soot—the only reason Leon knows who this used to be is because he watched the very destruction of his body.

Another bright-eyed kid—another version of himself—lost to a world that screams it doesn't want saving. Cries out that it doesn't want men like Leon Kennedy.

He doesn't stick around long. Soldiers and civilians alike swarm the area with fingers ready to place blame and pull triggers. The animosity is so sharp he can hear it through the ringing in his ears, slicing through the noise of his pain as if it's nothing but butter. Someone takes one good look at the bleeding cut on Leon's head and the way he clutches his side before he's tossed towards a medic who barely cares enough to tell him to go to the infirmary before abandoning him for someone with higher acuity.

He marches on staggering feet, back turned towards the commotion. It feels wrong. Leon's always refused to run away from danger—first boots on the ground, and last ones to leave—but now it's as if he's unraveling himself. Maybe these edges have been fraying for longer than he's realized.

The moment he stumbles into the building, Leon is whisked away for triage. He's swarmed by a handful of doctors and nurses—cleaner than medics but still just as frigid. His clothes are torn off, he's poked and prodded, and suffocated with gauze on the crown of his head until he's left to lay on a bed with nothing more than a hospital gown to protect his dignity and flimsy curtains to offer privacy.

Leon tries to be a good patient, and for a few hours he manages it. Sitting in a bed that smells of stale breath and expired laundry detergent, he stares at the ceiling, or the floor, or his hands. No matter where his eyes land, he knows it's not clean. He can't stop thinking about how he tried to reach for Adam but wasn't quick enough, just like how he wasn't enough back then—never enough. Raccoon City, swarmed. That infected girl and her mourning father. The spread. They told him he was going to change the world for the better, but as the sun breaks through the infirmary and he finally can bite off his vertigo long enough to stand and peek through the curtains, he knows that claim was nothing but a farce. He's the only patient. The morgue will see more patrons than this place will.

Again, he feels that urge to flee. He couldn't save his friends, he couldn't save Adam; he can't save anyone. It's torture pretending to be something he's not. No one would miss him. Most people either die before his age or drink themselves into prison. He's an enigma of a man. The frustrating zenith of human perseverance.

He ought to vanish in the hills. He could keep a garden and hunt for meat. When the summers get bad he can swim in a lake and he'll build good fires in winter. He won't rely on the fragmented remnants of the government to provide for him, and best of all, no one will depend on him. Just the way it should be.

"Mr. Kennedy."

A voice too warm and chipper for the early morning cuts through the tinnitus in Leon's ears and prompts him to glance to his left where he finds a man leaning back at a desk. He looks familiar, like he's seen him in a dream, or the haze of battle. White hair lays slicked back along his head, though the length isn't long enough to keep it's shape from turning him into a hedgehog. Even the sharp tip of his nose appears rodent-like. The only thing keeping him from looking like a rat is the smile breaking on his lips.

"Doctor," Leon huffs. He's not even sure if the man is a doctor, but the stethoscope around his neck leads him to believe he is.

He must be right as the man chuckles before slowly rising to his feet, a beaten up clipboard in his hand. "You look ready to go home."

"Sure. Could probably find my bed somewhere in the rubble," he deadpans.

There's something embarrassing about standing out in the open like this, hospital gown hardly tied in the back, body aching from hours of sharpshooting just to be tossed around like a ragdoll when he should have been resting. He thinks about how he could've been in bed and how the only thing that stopped him was Adam's curiosity. When he realizes that the kid inadvertently saved him by picking up that bag, it takes everything within him not to puke.

The doctor approaches Leon before gesturing back into the makeshift room with curtained walls. "How about this bed, for now?" he suggests.

Leon obliges, but not without a little sass bleeding through his groan. "That's just a polite way of telling me to sit down."

"It's easier to do exams on someone who isn't towering over me," the doctor quips right back.

Leon stays quiet as the doctor—whose last name he notes as Moor based off of the badge swinging around his neck—performs tests similar to the ones done on him when he first arrived. Eye tracking, pupil measuring, looking in his ears, nose, mouth, all while smiling and humming as if this is the greatest day this man has experienced.

"Your body has been through a lot," Doctor Moor notes as he prods at the healing cut on Leon's forehead. The sting is there, but he doesn't hiss. The nurse told him it was small, hardly noticeable. Blood likes to be dramatic when it comes from the face. "More than most."

"You don't say?" It's hard not to snip. Between the exhaustion and self loathing, Leon's sure he could destroy just about anything on the planet with one dirty look.

Taking the stethoscope off his neck, Doctor Moor walks around the other side of the bed and places the cold metal against Leon's back. "It is very rare to find a man like you. Breathe in."

He follows the requests as many times as he's asked despite the ache in his chest. "There are plenty of men like me," he says once his lungs are done being auscultated.

"Oh?" Doctor Moor asks as if it's a challenge. "I don't know of many people who have survived what you have, Mr. Kennedy."

Groaning, Leon rolls his shoulders out before placing his hands on his knees. "Yeah, well, maybe eating all those Lucky Charms wasn't as bad as they said."

"I think this is more than luck." Doctor Moor's feet tap against the ground; quiet, clawed paws against peeling linoleum, a wolf slowly marching its way into Leon's periphery. "Raccoon City, becoming a cop, exterminating infected, becoming a part of the anti-bioterrorism unit before the world crumbled… That takes something. Not a lot of people have that something."

Leon doesn't move. His eyes peer up through bloody hair and pinched brows as that familiar twitch in his fingers begin to ache in his bones. Doctor Moor is smiling. He's heard of wolves laughing when angry. "Burning the midnight oil for some light reading?"

"Our files show you as a very decorated member of our society," he confirms.

"Right, and do you always show your patients this same hospitality?"

The tension in Leon's back remains even after Doctor Moor faces away from him in favor of rummaging through one of the cabinets on the wall. Leon's already sizing him up. The awkward gait on his right leg, the tenderness that seems to stem from his knee, every weak point this man has, and then he realizes how rabid he must be for planning the death of a man at least fifteen years his senior—of even considering him a threat.

"Only the ones I plan to ask a favor of," Doctor Moor admits as he turns back around to face Leon, spare clothes now in hand.

"Sorry Doc, I don't do personal favors. They usually have something to do with infected, and I think we're all going to be busy with funerals as is," Leon dismisses.

"This isn't a favor for me, but for humanity." Leon is taken aback by the conviction he speaks with. For the first time in this short while, that smile vanishes from his face and instead is replaced with tight lips and shaky hands that hold out clothes as if he's serving up food. "Get dressed. I would greatly appreciate it if you would at least humor me, Mr. Kennedy."

He slides the curtains shut with a sharp snap, leaving Leon what little privacy the infirmary has to offer. Huffing, he looks down at the clothes given to him. Simple sweats with frayed ends and a t-shirt that has seen better days. Deciding that anything has to be better than this gown, he slips them on and curses at the way the shirt suffocates his shoulders and cuts into his armpits. Each movement he makes has him fearing he'll rip the fabric at the seams, but he ignores it as he straps himself back into his boots before exiting.

Doctor Moor waits for him with his hands behind his back and shoulders hunched forward with age. That pained smile returns to his lips as he slowly approaches Leon, nodding towards the exit.

"How long have you been keeping tabs on me?" Leon asks as he allows himself to be led out of the room.

"Just since you were dropped in my lap last night," Doctor Moor responds flippantly. The morning sun beams harshly through the windows, worsening the headache Leon suffers from, prompting him to squint his eyes through the pain. "It was rather convenient. This opportunity presented itself to me only yesterday, and I was wondering how I was going to make use of it. Then that explosion happened, and now here you are, like a gift."

The mere mention of last night's events has Leon's brain filling with images he would rather forget. Each time he closes his eyes, he sees Adam. Dismembered, ripped apart like a chew toy. He wonders exactly what part of all this is supposed to be convenient.

Silence settles over the two of them as they wander through pale halls and past tired medical workers until the population begins to thin out and numbra begins to nip at Leon's heels like a bad omen. Eventually, they make it to the back of the building. There's nothing waiting for them except for a wooden door with a makeshift sign that designates the room as belonging to Doctor Richard Moor. The door opens with a lone, rusty key.

A wave of rubbing alcohol hits Leon's nose strong enough to make his eyes water, and it only worsens as he enters the room behind the doctor, door shutting behind him like it's sealing him in a tomb. Several desk lamps illuminate the otherwise dark interior, casting light on haphazard stacks of papers and folders. He notes old computers, several microscopes, testing tubes, and various unlabeled solutions in varying colors. This place is less like an office and more of a lab—sterile, brutal, and enough to send a bitter tingle through Leon's molars as he exhales.

"I take it you don't get out very often," Leon mumbles.

Doctor Moor ignores him as he continues to lead him through his labyrinth of an office. Eventually they reach the back of the room. It's separated from the rest with thick, plastic curtains similar to what Leon would expect to find in a meat processing factory. When the curtain is pulled back, there is a lone box sitting on a dolly.

There is a strange electrical hum that emanates from it as if the box itself is alive and breathing. He's not sure what it's made of, but the material looks strong, like some sort of metal or plastic alloy meant to take a beating or two. It's large. It comes up to his hips and is equally as wide, reminding him of the storage crates they used to use for ammunition. When Doctor Moor approaches it, he taps on a screen that quickly wakes up and displays the word STABLE against a green background.

"What is this?" Leon asks.

"This?" Doctor Moor pauses. His hand rests on the top of the box as he turns to face Leon. His smile is gone, not only from his lips but his eyes. Now, there is nothing but enervation. "This is the cure to everything."