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Leon leaned heavily against the main doors to the cafeteria. Every few seconds he craned his neck to peer through the diamond-patterned glass panes. The hospital hallway was lit by emergency lighting, same as the room that they’re in, and the infrequent spotlights left too many dark spaces between them for his liking.
He almost would rather have kept one open to give him a better vantage of the hall, but that would only benefit them if he had the range of motion to go with the constant back and forth sweep of his gun. With one hand pressing hard on makeshift bandages - a torn smock from the first un-ransacked supply closet they had found - over the wound on his side, he didn’t want to turn his torso more often than he needed to. Moving his eyes from one window to another would suffice.
“You see anything?” Claire asked from deeper in the cafeteria. She had called clear after scanning the room a minute ago. In a minute she’d be back with something sturdy, hopefully, to barricade the door. Right now Leon would even take a few wimpy broomsticks if it meant that he could take a second to sit down.
“Nothing yet,” Leon replied. His breath ran out quickly. He had to pause and work through a few shallow inhales to get enough air to continue. “Think they’re still upstairs.”
The cafeteria was in the basement, an odd sort of relief. Though it gave Leon the sense of being buried, it also meant that there were less creatures around. This city had broken out over a week ago; most of the food supply had fled, so the infected dead were slowly following suit. The one good thing about Umbrella’s creations was how very inhuman they were. Base instincts of eating were easier to predict compared to, say, a true predator who might hole itself up in a den between meals.
“Good.” Claire appeared at Leon’s elbow after another minute. She was getting damned good at moving silently, or maybe he was too distracted by the torn skin at his side. He broke away from the window to take in what she’d brought for a barricade. Stainless steel pipes, still dripping water from one end, slid easily through the door handles and wedged tightly behind the vending machine with its still-blinking cash feed.
“Kitchen?” Leon asked. He noted how one of the pipes had a sprinkler head sticking out in the middle. Claire nodded. Then she stuck out a hand to pull Leon from the door. He moved more like a sack of potatoes than a trained soldier, trundling along the next few steps before getting deposited at the end of a cafeteria table’s bench.
“Tell me that’s not a bite,” Claire said.
“It’s not a bite,” Leon faithfully obliged. He tried to pull his hand from her grip to return to his side, but Claire wasn’t so easy to dislodge.
Her face drew into a tight frown as she peeled back his jacket to examine the wound herself. “Bullshit. When did that happen? I thought we didn’t let anything get close?” She might not have been trained like he was, but the pair of them had been able to clear the halls and stairwell of the Umbrella hospital side by side, lockstep. She even had gone further down the next flight to take out a nasty cretin lurking on the underside of the stairs, waiting to slither up and over to their level. It just so happened the licker had had a buddy, and Leon had been more focused on prying open the chained up doorway to realize until it was right on him. A little crowbar to the face, a bit of knife work to finish the job, and here they were now.
“Claire, I’ll be fine,” Leon forced himself to say. She didn’t need to worry about him. They had bigger problems to worry about. Like extracting the evidence they had come here for in the first place.
“Bullshit,” Claire repeated. Her face was sallow. “You and I both know that doesn’t look good.”
He finally yanked his wrist out from her grip and replaced the cloth over the wound. “It’s really not going to look any better if you don’t let me stop the bleeding,” Leon growled. When Claire’s expression soured further Leon softened his approach. “I’ve had a psychotic cult put a bronze age worm in me. I think I can handle a little zombie spit. Besides, we’re in an Umbrella hospital. There’s bound to be at least ten separate stockpiles of antivirals around here. It’ll be fine,” he said emphatically.
He didn’t quite believe what he was saying, but none of it was strictly false. If he kept saying it, that was almost like thinking it. It would have been easier if Claire had laughed or tossed her hands up in exasperation. Her continued quiet and furrowed brow only deepened the pit in Leon’s stomach.
“If it gets bad, we’ve got enough brass to spare to make a permanent fix, anyways,” Leon suggested.
“Absolutely not,” Claire replied instantly. She stood fast enough to shake the table, turning her face away. Leon sank against the tabletop, giving himself and her a long ten-count to recover. And then another, just for kicks. All too soon he got to the end of his count and had to peel his eyes open once more.
“C’mon, Claire,” he made himself call out. “We’re not going to get very far if we sit around all night. We gotta keep moving.”
He hoped that he was right and that there would be some nice, perfectly preserved antivirus stashed away by paranoid and self-preserving Umbrella scientists. He really, really did. But if not…
Leon checked his clip to make sure he wasn’t empty yet.