Leon Kennedy

The sun hung low over the horizon, painting the sky in shades of amber and crimson as Leon Kennedy poured grain into the feeding trough. The cows shuffled forward with lazy contentment, their breath misting in the cooling air. Daisy sat nearby, ears perked, golden tail swishing against the dirt as she kept watch—always keeping watch.

Ten years.

Ten goddamn years since the world had gone to hell, since the dead started walking, since everything he'd ever known had crumbled into ash and blood. Leon's hands, calloused and scarred, moved with mechanical efficiency as he finished the feeding routine. The farm was his now—his fortress, his prison, his last stand against a world that had already ended.

He'd stopped counting the Walkers months ago. Maybe years. They came in ones and twos now, drawn by sound or smell or whatever instinct drove rotting corpses to seek warm flesh. His traps caught most of them—sharpened stakes hidden in tall grass, tripwires connected to bells, pit falls lined with rusted metal. The ones that made it through? Well, his aim hadn't dulled with age.

The farm had been empty when he'd found it five years back. Bodies long gone, either walked off or put down by someone else. He'd cleared the place methodically—two story farmhouse, barn, outbuildings—then started the slow work of making it livable. Fortifying. Surviving.

He'd been alone then. Preferred it that way. People were liabilities in this world. They slowed you down, made you weak, got you killed. He'd learned that lesson the hard way too many times.

Then, about six months after settling in, he'd heard the whimpering.

Soft at first. So soft he'd almost missed it over the sound of rain hammering the barn roof. But Walkers didn't whimper—they moaned, groaned, made that wet rattling sound in their throats. This was different. This was... alive.

He'd found her in the old grain storage shed, curled up between two rotting feed bags. A golden retriever puppy, maybe four or five months old, all matted fur and protruding ribs and eyes that looked too big for her skull. She'd been starving. Dying, probably. Should have been dead already.

Leon had stood there in the rain, water dripping from his hair, staring down at this pathetic little creature who looked up at him with those huge, trusting eyes like he was some kind of savior.

Not your problem, the voice in his head had said. Waste of resources. She'll die anyway.

But he'd reached down anyway. Scooped her up—so light, Jesus Christ, she weighed almost nothing—and carried her back to the house. Set her by the fireplace. Found some canned chicken, mashed it up, added water. Fed her small amounts every few hours because he remembered reading somewhere that you couldn't just give a starving animal a full meal or it would kill them.

She'd lived.

Somehow, against all odds in a world where nothing good survived, she'd lived.

He'd named her Daisy after—well. It didn't matter after what. That life was dead. But the name stuck, and so did she. Five years later, she was healthy, strong, loyal as hell. Better company than any human he'd met in the last decade, that was for damn sure. She didn't ask questions. Didn't judge. Didn't expect him to be anything other than what he was.

She just... stayed.

But the dream still gnaws at him.

Once upon a time—back when he was twenty-one and still believed the world made sense, back when he wore a rookie cop's uniform and thought he could save everyone—he'd imagined something different. A wife. Kids. Sunday mornings with pancakes and laughter. A life that meant something beyond survival.

He'd been a good cop. Started as a rookie, worked his way up through the ranks. Respected. Reliable. The kind of guy people called when things went sideways. He'd saved lives, made a difference, built something that mattered.

And he'd always thought—someday. Someday when things settled down, when he'd proven himself enough, when the timing was right—he'd find someone. Build that life he'd been dreaming about since his early twenties. The house with the white picket fence. The family dinners. The normal life.

The apocalypse had buried that dream alongside everything else. Buried it so deep that most days, Leon could almost forget it had ever existed.

Almost.

Daisy's sudden growl snapped Leon from his thoughts. His hand went to the Matilda holstered at his hip, fingers wrapping around the familiar grip as his eyes scanned the treeline. Movement. Slow, shambling—

No. Not shambling.

Running.

Leon's jaw tightened as a figure burst from the brush, stumbling, falling, dragging herself forward through the dirt. Blood streaked her clothes, her skin, matted in her hair. She collapsed maybe thirty feet from the fence line, chest heaving, fingers clawing at the ground.

For a split second, something in Leon's chest clenched—something old and buried and human. Then the walls slammed back into place.

He vaulted the fence in one smooth motion, Matilda raised and aimed as he approached. Daisy followed, hackles raised, a warning growl rumbling in her throat. The dog positioned herself slightly behind and to the left of Leon—the way she always did, the way he'd inadvertently trained her through years of clearing Walkers together.

"Don't move," Leon barked, voice rough from disuse. He hadn't spoken to another living person in... months? Maybe longer. The last group that had wandered onto his property had been three men looking to "trade." Trade had meant taking everything he had and probably putting a bullet in his head.

Leon had put bullets in theirs instead.

Three shots. Three bodies buried in the back forty where the soil was soft. Daisy had watched with her hackles raised, growling even after they'd stopped moving. He'd cleaned the blood off his porch the next morning, methodical and detached, the way he did everything now.

That had been four months ago. Four months since he'd heard another human voice that wasn't his own muttering to Daisy or cursing at stubborn fence posts.

"Keep your hands where I can see them."

The girl—woman, really, maybe thirty or so—didn't respond. Her breathing came in ragged gasps, blood pooling beneath her, but Leon had seen this before. Seen people play dead, play injured, play human right up until they got close enough to—

"Were you bit?" His tone turned razor-sharp as he closed the distance, keeping the gun trained on her center mass. Daisy circled around, sniffing the air, her growl deepening. "Answer me. Were you bit?"

Still nothing. Unconsciousness pulling her under, maybe, or shock, or—

"Fuck," Leon muttered, dropping to one knee beside her. He holstered the Matilda and grabbed her arm, rough but efficient, checking her wrists, her forearms, rolling up torn sleeves to examine her skin. No bites. He moved to her neck, her shoulders, checking everywhere exposed skin met fabric. No bites. Her legs—scratches, bruises, cuts from running through brush, but no telltale Walker wounds.

His hands stilled as the pieces clicked together.

The injuries weren't random. Defensive wounds on her forearms where she'd tried to protect herself. Rope burns on her wrists, raw and fresh and still bleeding in places. Bruising around her throat in the distinct shape of fingers—large fingers, a man's grip, dark purple and angry against pale skin. This wasn't Walker damage.

This was human damage.

Leon's expression darkened as he sat back on his heels, jaw working. She'd been running, alright. Not from the dead.

From the living.

His eyes tracked over her torn clothing—not ripped by Walker hands, but by human ones. Deliberate. Violent. The kind of violence that made his stomach turn even after everything he'd seen, everything he'd done. Dirt under her fingernails from clawing at the ground. Bare feet cut and bleeding, shoes lost somewhere in her desperate flight.

She'd fought. She'd run. And somehow, she'd made it here.

Daisy whined softly, nudging his shoulder with her nose. The dog's demeanor had shifted—less aggressive now, more curious. She sniffed at the unconscious woman's hand, then looked up at Leon with those big brown eyes that somehow always seemed to know what he was thinking.

Leon's hand automatically went to scratch behind her ears, a gesture so familiar it required no thought. His eyes never left the unconscious woman, cataloging every injury, every tear in her clothes, every sign of violence.

Not your problem, the voice in his head—the one that had kept him alive for ten years—whispered coldly. Leave her. She'll bring trouble. They always do. Whoever did this might come looking. You'll have to fight them off or worse. She's a liability. Just like everyone else.

But another voice, younger and quieter, the one that sounded like the rookie cop he used to be, whispered something else entirely.

She's hurt. She needs help. Isn't that what you swore to do? Protect and serve?

That world is dead, the cold voice shot back. Those oaths don't mean shit anymore.

Leon exhaled slowly, steam rising from his breath in the cooling air. He looked down at the woman—really looked—taking in the way her fingers were still curled into the dirt, like she'd been trying to crawl even as consciousness left her. The way her chest rose and fell in shallow, pained breaths. The way her face, beneath all the blood and dirt, looked young—beautiful.

She looked... fragile. Broken.

Like Daisy had, five years ago in that grain shed.

"Goddammit," he muttered under his breath.

He checked her pulse. Weak but steady. Then, with practiced efficiency born from years of field medicine and too many injuries to count, he began a more thorough examination, checking for bites one final time—under her collar, along her spine, between her fingers, anywhere a Walker might have gotten teeth into flesh. He lifted her shirt just enough to check her torso, professional and clinical, looking for the telltale circular wounds.

Nothing.

Just bruises. So many bruises. Old ones yellowing at the edges, fresh ones dark purple and angry. This wasn't recent. This had been going on for a while.

Leon rocked back, running a hand through greying hair—streaks of grey through the dark blonde, another reminder of how much time had passed—as Daisy settled beside him with a soft huff. The dog laid down next to the unconscious woman, resting her chin on her paws, keeping watch the way she always did.

The sun continued its descent, shadows growing longer across the farmland. In the distance, a crow cawed. Somewhere beyond the treeline, a Walker moaned—distant, not a threat, just a reminder that the dead were always out there. Always waiting.

But right now, the living were the problem.

Leon's gaze fixed on the unconscious woman, his jaw set in a hard line. Every instinct screamed at him to walk away, to let nature take its course, to protect what little he had left. This farm was his. His sanctuary. His last piece of something resembling peace in a world that had none.

Bringing her in meant risking all of that.

But leaving her meant... what? Watching her die? Letting whoever did this to her finish the job if they came looking?

He thought about Daisy. About how easily he could have walked away five years ago. How he almost had. How that one decision to stop, to help something helpless, had given him the only real companionship he'd had in a decade.

This is different, the cold voice insisted. Dogs don't betray you. Dogs don't bring raiders to your door. Dogs don't—

Leon cut off the thought with a sharp shake of his head. He was too tired for this internal debate. Too old. Too goddamn worn down by ten years of surviving in a world that had stopped making sense.

Instead, he leaned forward, voice low and gravelly as he spoke—not expecting an answer, but needing to say it anyway, needing to hear his own voice confirm what he already knew he was going to do.

"You better not make me regret this."

He glanced at Daisy, who tilted her head at him with that knowing look dogs somehow managed. The look that said you're gonna help her, aren't you?

"Yeah, yeah," Leon muttered, pushing himself to his feet with a grunt. His knees protested—forty-nine wasn't old, but it sure as hell wasn't young anymore, especially after everything he'd put his body through. "Don't look at me like that."

Daisy's tail thumped once against the dirt.

Leon stood there for another moment, staring down at the unconscious woman, at Daisy keeping vigil beside her, at the blood soaking into his farmland. The smart play was obvious. The safe play.

But Leon Kennedy had stopped making smart, safe plays a long time ago.

"Alright," he said quietly, more to himself than anyone else. "Let's get her inside."