Chapter Text
Bryan had just hit someone. A woman, in the snow, at night, to be specific. She had run in front of his car, and now his windshield was cracked and she was unresponsive in his passenger seat.
Fantastic start to the evening.
He checked his phone again, still no service. Michelle was mad at him and sleeping at Katie’s house, he had a distressingly strange patient bleeding right next to him, and a kid’s new heart or a drunk’s liver in the backseat that he really needed to get to the hospital in Raccoon City as soon as possible. Things really couldn’t be worse.
And then police lights flashed in his rearview mirror, momentarily blinding Bryan before he lifted a hand to shield his eyes. The sirens of the cop car echoed through the woods, somehow making an already upsetting noise a million times worse.
“Fuck,” said Bryan.
He pulled over, and waited for the cop to walk up, already running through a script of what he was going to say. Footsteps crunched in the snow as the officer grew closer. The industrial flashlight the cop carried illuminated the woods in front of the cars, highlighting just how particularly eerie the mountains could get at night.
The officer stopped by the driver’s window, and Bryan was quick to roll it down. Immediately the heated air of the car dissipated into the biting winter chill.
Bryan took a deep breath before looking over at the policeman. He was younger, but tall and blond, and very clearly well-built. If you shook a firefighter calendar but for police, he’d fall out of it. However, the guy carried himself with an oddly confusing mix of hesitance and confidence that Bryan couldn’t read at all.
So Bryan smiled, albeit strained.
“Good evening, officer,” he tried.
The tipped his head in acknowledgement to that, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and clearing his throat. “I pulled you over because you were swerving. You really need some chains on your tires if you’re going to be out here in this weather,” he said, gesturing uselessly to the snow blanketing everything around them.
Damn it, of course his voice was authoritative and cool, he was such a picture-perfect cop it was unsettling.
Bryan nodded, trying his best to follow along and pretend he cared about proper vehicle outfitting. There were more pressing matters at hand.
“Yeah,” Bryan started, “uh, I kind of have a situation.” He pressed himself against his seat so that the officer could get a better look at his passenger.
The woman was strange, and hadn’t said anything the whole time. Shock, maybe, Bryan had considered. But she was very touchy, as evident by her reaching out again to put her hand in his face.
“Damn it, sorry, she’s been doing that.” He swatted the hand away and turned back to the cop. “I hit her with my car, she ran out and I didn’t see her and then I didn’t have time to stop and-”
“You hit this woman with your car?” the cop asked.
“Yes sir, I did,” Bryan responded, nodding along.
“Alright, uh, please step out of your vehicle.”
“Yep,” Bryan knew that was coming and was quick to unbuckle.
–
After a breathalyzer test and a bit more explaining, the cop seemed to be coming around to Bryan’s story.
“I’ll help you get her and your delivery to the hospital,” the officer said after taking a beat to absorb the situation.
Bryan sighed in relief. “Thank you, thank you so much,” he said, hands clasped in gratitude.
“So, uh,” the cop began, looking between the cars and Bryan. “Follow close behind me, alright? Please don’t drive off, or crash. It’s my first day and I definitely should be handling this differently, but I’m not. That means you’ve got to work with me.”
A couple things clicked into place for Bryan. First, of course it was the officer’s first day, with tonight’s luck, why wouldn’t it be? Second, it explained why Bryan was getting off so easy, which in retrospect was probably a big plus and he didn’t want to open his mouth and tempt fate. So he chose his words very carefully.
“Yeah no problem, dude,” Bryan said aloud, but then hesitated as another thought crossed his mind. “But, do you think she can ride with you? I don’t know, what if she has a medical emergency or something, you're the one who’s trained to handle that sort of stuff.”
Plus, she was kind of creeping him out. Just a little.
The officer did not look totally on board with that plan, as evident by his clear grimace. But he relented anyway.
“Sure, fine. Okay,” he said.
–
It took a bit of maneuvering and teamwork for Bryan and the cop to get the woman out of the car, but eventually they had her arms around their shoulders and were practically dragging her to the police car. They started to put her in the shotgun seat, which Bryan thought was definitely against cop rules or something, but the guy had said something about it being easier to help her quicker if need be, so Bryan didn’t say anything. Instead, Bryan held out his hand to help tuck the woman’s head down so she didn’t hurt herself any further getting into the seat.
Once she was settled, the cop met with Bryan outside of the car again.
“If you disappear from my view I will assume you’re fleeing and I will apprehend you like a criminal,” the cop warned, but there wasn’t much authority behind his voice.
Bryan steeled his face to keep from laughing at how serious he was trying to sound. It really was his first day on the job.
So instead, he nodded. He flashed the officer a thumbs-up before heading back to his own car. The engine rumbled softly in the dark, and Bryan quickly hopped in, rubbing his hands together to regain some warmth. He rolled his window back up and re-buckled his seatbelt as he muttered to himself.
“I will apprehend you like a criminal,” Bryan recited the cop’s words from a minute ago, deepening his voice to fit the impression. In the safety of his own vehicle, he laughed out loud at the absurdity of the words and the scowl the officer had tried to wear in intimidation.
He looked behind him to ensure his courier bag with the Schedule A delivery was still there. It was.
He sighed in relief, it was going to be okay, he was getting back on track.
The cop car pulled away from behind Bryan and into the dark ahead of them. True to his word, he put the car in drive and followed suit.
–
It wasn’t long that they were on the icy road when the cop car started swerving. Without warning, it launched off the road, flipping several times in the process. It came to a stop upside down at the base of a slight hill.
Bryan slammed on the brakes.
“Holy shit. Oh fuck, oh fuck, fuck, oh my god. That’s not good, that’s like really not good,” he muttered to himself, fumbling to put the car in park and scrambling to open the door. He started running, feeling his socks soak through with snow as he stepped off the road.
In seconds, he was at the cop’s window, peering in. “Hey!” he called, then he knocked twice on the glass. “Hey! Are you alright?” When there wasn’t an answer, he tried the door.
Jammed.
Fuck.
Bryan ran to the other door, which was wide open. The woman was gone. Hopefully she got out alright after the crash and was sheltering somewhere nearby.
Bryan tilted his head to get a better look at the cop. He was hanging limply, eyes shut.
Bryan really hoped he wasn’t dead.
He climbed in, kneeling on the ceiling of the overturned car as he poked at the guy’s face.
“Hey, hey, Mr. Officer. Wake up,” Bryan said, going from poking to patting the cop’s face.
On one particularly hard pat, perhaps even more of a slap, the cop groaned, eyes flickering open.
“Oh thank fuck. Hi. I am so happy you’re alive,” Bryan said with an exhale of relief.
The poor guy looked around at his surroundings, still dazed.
“Are you upside down?” he asked.
Bryan was quick to reassure him. “Yeah, well technically you are. You crashed and flipped a few times, the lady got out, but I don’t actually know where she is.”
The officer stared off in the distance, eyes narrowing.
Bryan internally wailed. Now he had an injured woman and a concussed cop to watch over. The guy was clearly not put together anymore, zoning out the way he was.
“It’s going to be okay,” Bryan began, speaking as calmly and softly as he could, like he was trying to soothe a baby deer or something. “We were headed to the hospital anyways, I’ll just drive us there or you can radio for backup or-”
He was cut off by a gunshot.
Bryan screamed, some sort of high-pitched shriek pulling itself from the depths of his soul. He ducked down, body curling in on itself in some semblance of self-preservation.
“What the fuck,” he rasped, looking up through his fingers which he had clasped over his face.
The cop was holding his gun, arm extended just to the right of where Bryan had just been kneeling.
He certainly didn’t look dazed anymore. His eyes were pointed and clear, focused and hard. Icy even.
Bryan gulped.
Then he turned, ever so slowly, to see what the cop had shot at.
The woman, who most definitely wasn’t there before, was laying on the ground right outside of the open door of the car, a bullet hole in her chest.
Bryan turned back to the cop, eyes wide.
“Dude, you just shot her,” he whispered in disbelief.
Instead of responding, the cop reached up to set his gun safely on the sun visor before planting one hand on the ceiling below him and unbuckling with the other.
Instead of dropping like a ragdoll, like Bryan knows he would have done if he was in the guy’s place, the cop did some sort of invented handstand. With the pressure of his hand on the ground hard above him, he held himself upside down as he tucked his legs forward, dropping them steadily until he had flipped himself upright.
Bryan watched with a slack jaw as the cop’s arms strained against the fabric of his uniform and temporarily forgot what he was supposed to be upset about. Thankfully, it came back to him pretty quickly.
“You shot her,” he tried again, shaking his head as if it would clear his mind like an Etch A Sketch. As if the guy didn’t hear him the first time.
Now gravitationally correct, the cop frowned to himself before locking eyes with Bryan.
“She attacked me in the car, something’s not right with her,” the officer began, “Scoot, I need to get out.”
Bryan reversed out of the car, trying to look everywhere but at the corpse he knew was right at his feet.
The cop followed him out, kneeling down to observe the body. He placed his fingers on the side of her neck and Bryan held his breath.
Then her eyes snapped open. And her hand launched out to grab the neck of the policeman. She scrambled forward, first to her knees, then to her feet as she pushed the cop backwards. The officer tripped with the force and she landed on top of him. They were back on the ground, and she was snarling an inhuman noise as she clawed at him.
Bryan, in a moment of clarity between the panic and fear figured he needed to do something, preferably very, very soon. He turned on his heels and dove back into the overturned car he had just left, frantically looking around for the gun he was ninety percent sure the cop hadn’t picked up again after he set it down.
Thankfully, it was right where the officer left it.
The metal was cool to the touch, and the brief thought that it was his first time holding a real gun flitted through Bryan’s mind.
With no time to spare, he hurried out of the car, hoping the woman hadn’t torn the cop to shreds in his absence.
She hadn’t, but she certainly was on the right track. The cop was kicking at her, holding her head and snapping jaws away from his face with his hands, while working to get a leg hooked around her to hopefully slip out of the predicament he was in.
Bryan steadied himself, and raised the weapon. He closed an eye like the people in the movies always did, and exhaled before pulling the trigger.
The gun clicked softly, but nothing happened.
"You have to disengage the safety,” the cop wheezed.
“I don’t know where that is,” Bryan yelled. He studied the weapon, looking for anything that might give. It was mainly smooth or grooved black metal, with a few protrusions. One, on the left side of the frame looked more promising than the others.
It was a tiny lever on the side, and when he prodded at it, it moved without much force.
“I think I got it!” he cheered.
The cop did not share the sentiment, trying to dodge trails of drool that were trickling down onto his face. “Anytime would be great.”
“Sorry,” Bryan muttered, before lifting the gun again. He steadied himself. He pulled the trigger.
The gun went off, rocking back in Bryan’s hand, making him startle at the force of it. But nothing happened to the lady.
“Did you just miss?” asked the cop from the ground.
“I don’t know, I’ve never used a gun before,” Bryan responded hysterically.
He, again, raised the gun. Aimed, just like he would in his video games, and for a third time, pulled the trigger.
This time however, the bullet landed. Right in the skull of the woman, to be exact. She fell forward, motionless. The cop rolled out from under her, wiping at his face and rolling out his wrists.
He silently extended his hand for the gun and Bryan handed it over with no hesitation.
They looked at the body, which was looking very not-human now. The woman’s dull eyes were red, and her skin was pale, with black veins creeping up her neck and the sides of her face. Her fingers were clawed and sharp, and her teeth were pointed, almost fanged.
Silence fell between the two for a beat, but surprisingly the cop was the one to break it.
“Well,” he started, “she was friendly.”
Another pause of silence.
Then Bryan burst out laughing, a bit deliriously. No way this guy was making jokes right now. No, not even jokes, but one-liners.
Finally, after he regained his composure, Bryan asked, “now what?”
–
The cop had tried radioing for help, but was met with static, both on his personal radio and the car’s. In the end, they decided to drive in Bryan’s car to get closer to service. They made their way back up the slight hill, only to find that the lights had gone out sometime in between the crash and the fight.
“Don’t tell me the battery died,” Bryan pleaded out loud. The keys were still in the ignition. He attempted the tried and true method of turning it off and back on again. Nothing.
The cop watched from outside the car as Bryan tried three more times. No change.
“Fuck. Shit. Fuck shit. Damn it.” Bryan’s head dropped to the steering wheel, and the car let out a continuous blare from the horn until he lifted his head again. Sighing, Bryan reached behind him, grabbing his most precious cargo from where it was nestled in the back seat. The green cooler was still safe, thankfully. Now he just needed to figure out how he was going to get to the city.
He climbed out of the car, and readjusted his beanie to better cover his ears. Then he pulled the bag over his head, letting it rest across his chest. He adjusted it so it wasn’t pulling at his jacket, and then joined the cop at his side.
“No dice,” he said, but the cop probably already knew that.
“There’s a house that way,” the officer replied, pointing off in the near distance to a faint light illuminating from the window of a classic big wooden barn and little farm house right behind it.
Bryan nodded. It was their best bet.
They left the car behind, and soon enough they passed the cop car and dead woman, and left those behind as well.
As they made their way towards the house, a thought suddenly hit Bryan, and he turned and shuffled sideways to face the officer as they trekked through the snow. He pulled a hand from where it was stuffed in the warmth of his jacket’s armpit and extended it towards the policeman.
“I’m Bryan, by the way,” he said.
A look of surprise briefly crossed the cop’s face before he smiled lightly, taking the offered hand and shaking it once.
“Leon,” the other man offered. “Nice to meet you.”