It started the way these stories usually do.
I died.
No angels. No tunnel. No life flashing before my eyes like a dramatic PowerPoint presentation prepared by a bored cosmic intern. One second I was… somewhere, someone, doing something that mattered to a version of me that feels like a dream now—and the next second I wasn't.
The details don't stick. Faces don't. Names don't. Anything soft and warm and human got sandblasted right out of my skull on the way here. Convenient, isn't it? The universe kills you and then robs you of the evidence that you ever lived.
What did stick were impressions.
Gunmetal. Cold rain. A city that didn't deserve what happened to it. The sound of something wet and wrong hitting tile. A girl's scream cut short. A badge—no, not a badge, a patch. A radio spitting static and orders nobody could follow.
And underneath all of it, a feeling that I'd been running for a long, long time.
So yes. I died. And if you're expecting the cute version of reincarnation—waking up in a warm little cradle, cooing, getting cuddled by loving parents while I slowly regain my memories in a montage set to acoustic guitar—please. Stop reading now. Go find one of those stories where the main character is born to a billionaire vampire who immediately adores them.
This wasn't that.
I didn't "wake up" as a baby with a clean adult mind.
It was worse.
I was aware in pieces. Like someone had taken my old self, fed it through a woodchipper, and sprinkled the leftovers into a newborn's brain. I didn't have words. I didn't have context. I didn't have the ability to move anything except my lungs and my mouth.
But I had instincts.
And those are a hell of a lot more terrifying than memories.
I knew that loud noises meant danger. I knew that corners mattered. I knew how to watch hands. I knew that if someone is smiling too hard, they want something from you. I knew that pain was information.
I also knew—this one came early, sharp, and absolutely unhelpful—that I didn't belong.
My first real memory of this life is ceiling light. Hospital white. The smell of antiseptic. Someone holding me wrong—too tight, too stiff, like they were worried I might leak.
A woman's voice: "He's looking at me."
A man's voice, tired: "He's a baby, Karen."
"I'm telling you he's—" she cut herself off, as if the word she wanted to use would get her arrested. "He's creepy."
That was my mother.
Welcome home, Leon.
Yeah. Leon.
The name was one of the first solid things I got, and not because I had some deep spiritual attachment to it. My father picked it because he liked it. Because it sounded "strong." Because he'd seen some old movie with a guy named Leon and decided his son should have that kind of grit.
My mother hated it. Said it sounded "foreign." Said it sounded like I was going to grow up to be "one of those boys who get into trouble."
She wasn't wrong. She just had the wrong reasons.
We lived in Cobb County, in the Marietta/Kennesaw sprawl—close enough to Atlanta to feel its heat, far enough to pretend we were better than it. A two-story house with a yard my mother never wanted to step into and a garage my father treated like church. On paper, it was normal. Suburban. Safe.
On paper, my parents were normal too.
On paper.
My father, Mark Kennedy, was what people call "hardworking" when they mean "angry and tired all the time." He drove a truck for a construction supplier. Big hands, thick neck, permanent tan lines, and an impressive talent for making his problems into everyone else's responsibility. When he wasn't working, he drank. When he wasn't drinking, he slept. When he wasn't sleeping, he looked for an excuse to remind the world he was a man.
My mother—Karen, of course her name was Karen—was the kind of woman who learned early that the easiest way to survive disappointment is to make it everyone else's fault. She didn't hit me as often as my father did. She didn't need to. She could do more damage with a look and a sentence.
By the time I was four, I learned the rules.
Rule one: Don't cry where they can see it.
Rule two: Don't argue. Arguing is permission.
Rule three: Stay useful or stay invisible. Preferably both.
Rule four: Never, ever be alone with my father when he'd been drinking and his team had lost a game on TV.
Rule five: Get out of the house.
Rule five saved my life multiple times.
It started as "activities," because that's how you sell it to adults who don't want you around but don't want to look like monsters. Activities look good. Activities are responsible. Activities are what "good kids" do.
So I did them.
I joined Cub Scouts. Then Boy Scouts. Then every merit badge I could get my hands on, not because I wanted the little cloth patches, but because the woods didn't judge me. The woods didn't demand explanations. The woods didn't ask why my mother's eyes looked like she hated the shape of my face.
In the woods, there were rules you could follow and consequences that made sense.
You forget to waterproof your firestarter? You get cold.
You don't filter your water? You get sick.
You don't secure your food? Something with teeth takes it.
Simple. Honest. Fair, in its own indifferent way.
Also: knives.
Scouting meant adults gave me permission to carry a blade like it was wholesome, educational fun. It meant I learned knots before I learned cursive. It meant I learned to read weather before I learned to read people—which, ironically, made me better at reading people.
At school, I piled on the sports because coaches love a kid with anger he doesn't know what to do with. Coaches don't ask where the anger comes from. They just point it at a field and call it "drive."
I played whatever had tryouts. Whatever kept me busy. Whatever made my body into something that could take a hit and keep moving.
By freshman year, football stuck.
I was tall for my age, fast enough to be annoying, and stubborn in a way that conveniently passed as discipline. I worked out because a strong body was a safer body. And if that made my dearest father think twice before hitting me—well, that was just a pleasant side effect. I ran because running was the closest thing to freedom I'd ever been allowed. I hit because hitting was simpler than feeling, and no one ever asked questions about bruises.
And somewhere along the way, I started building a second life inside my head.
I didn't know it was a second life at first. Not consciously.
It came as flashes.
A hallway lit by red emergency lights.
A door that wouldn't open.
A man in a gas mask.
A woman's voice saying, "Leon!"
The last one hit me hard the first time I heard it. I was eight. I'd been washing dishes—because of course I was—and I dropped a glass. It shattered. My mother shrieked as if I'd stabbed her. My father slammed his hand on the counter and leaned close enough that I could smell beer on his breath.
"You trying to make me angry, boy?"
And there it was. Like a match struck in a dark room.
A memory of someone else leaning close, breath hot, voice low.
"You tryin' to be a hero, rookie?"
Rookie.
The word landed in my chest like a weight. It made my skin crawl. I didn't understand why, not yet, but my hands stopped shaking. My mind went blank in that way it does right before something violent happens.
I looked at my father and—this part is embarrassing—I evaluated the distance to his throat the way you'd evaluate a target.
Not because I wanted to kill him.
Because some part of me had practiced that thought a thousand times.
It was the first time I realized that my instincts weren't just generic survival. They were trained. They belonged to someone who'd lived through things no kid should even be able to imagine.
I spent years with that feeling—like I was wearing a coat that didn't belong to me. It fit in the shoulders, though. Too well.
When I was thirteen, I stole a book from the library. Not a novel. A field manual. Firearms safety, basic first aid, tactical movement.
Don't judge. Some kids stole cigarettes. I stole ways to not die.
I read it in my room at night with a flashlight, because my parents had this rule that lights went out at nine, as if darkness would magically turn me into a better son. Every few pages, I'd hit a sentence that felt like déjà vu, and my brain would itch.
At fourteen, I started running with a small pack in the mornings. Not because the football program told me to. Because my lungs liked pain, and because pain was predictable.
At fifteen, it happened.
The remembering.
It wasn't a gentle "oh, now I recall."
It was a car crash inside my skull.
I was alone in the garage, cleaning out my father's truck because he'd yelled at me to do it or else, and I'd learned that doing what you're told is sometimes cheaper than refusing. I found an old box in the corner—hunting gear, mostly. A cheap knife. Some rusted tools. A handgun case.
My heartbeat changed the moment I saw it.
My hands went numb.
My mouth went dry.
I opened it.
A Glock. Older model. Cold black metal, like a chunk of winter. My fingers wrapped around it and the world tilted.
And then I remembered everything.
Not "everything" like a clean list of facts.
Everything like screams and blood and running and failing and surviving anyway.
Raccoon City.
The police station that turned into a maze.
The smell of rot that didn't come from normal death.
A woman in red.
A man with sunglasses and a smile that made you want to spit.
Monsters wearing human skin, and monsters that didn't bother pretending.
I remembered my hands around a shotgun. I remembered the recoil. I remembered the way my arms had trembled afterward—not from fear, but from adrenaline and exhaustion.
I remembered people I couldn't save.
I remembered things that shouldn't exist, existing anyway.
I remembered being Leon S. Kennedy.
And I remembered dying.
I dropped the Glock like it had burned me. It clattered against concrete, and the sound snapped me back into my fifteen-year-old body in a suburban garage, breathing like I'd been drowning.
For a long time, I just sat there, back against the wall, staring at the gun like it might grow teeth.
Then I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the alternative was screaming until my throat tore.
So, yes. Resident Evil. That was my old life. If that name means nothing to you, good. Keep it that way. I wouldn't wish that universe on my worst enemy. (Okay, that's a lie. I have a list. Guess who is the first name on it. My dear father, of course.)
The point is: by the time I was fifteen, I wasn't just a kid with instincts.
I was a man who'd already watched the world end once.
And that's when the "flu" started showing up.
It began small, the way disasters always do. Not with fire and sirens. With people saying, "Huh. That's weird."
A news anchor talking about a spike in violence linked to a new drug.
A school email about "precautionary measures" and "risk of using drugs."
A kid in my English class taking a week off to visit his "sick" uncle and not coming back.
The first time I heard "Atlanta flu" said out loud, it was in a grocery store aisle. Two women comparing notes like they were discussing coupons.
"My sister works at Kennestone," one said. "She says the ER is packed."
"Kennestone is always packed," the other replied.
"Not like this."
They looked at me, at my football hoodie, at my height, and softened their voices like illness respects teenagers.
I didn't soften anything.
I went home and dug through my scouting gear.
I checked my first aid kit. Replaced bandages. Replaced alcohol wipes. Threw in extra water purification tabs. I started keeping a pack ready in my closet, the way you keep a fire extinguisher—hoping you never need it, knowing you're a fool if you don't have it.
Then my mother got bitten by a crazy man at a gas station. And got sick.
Not "bed for a day" sick. Not "sniffles" sick.
She started sweating at night, wet and ugly. And when she finally went to urgent care, saying that those "idiots are panicking over nothing"—
My father laughed. "People these days want an excuse to be scared."
He said that while the TV showed footage of hospital tents outside Grady Memorial in Atlanta.
He said that while some reporter talked about a "strain" that didn't respond the way it should.
He said that while the internet—what there was of it—started filling with shaky phone videos of people eating each other in parking lots.
Let's just say that I never saw my mom again.
At school, the principal called an assembly. Talked about being "community-minded." Told us not to "spread rumors."
One of the seniors asked if it was true that the National Guard had been seen on the highway closer to the city.
The principal smiled too hard and said, "Those are routine exercises."
Routine.
Right.
Then they canceled the spring scrimmage "out of an abundance of caution."
Then they canceled a week of classes.
Then it became two.
Parents complained online. People argued about whether it was real. Whether it was overblown. Whether it was a government plot.
And I sat on my bed at night, listening to my dad rampage through the walls, and all I could think was: I've seen this movie.
Just… not this version.
In my old life, it started with a virus too. Different name. Different place. Same arrogance. Same human stupidity. Same belief that nature can be controlled if you throw enough money at it and keep the ugly parts out of sight.
I didn't know what this "disease" was.
But I knew what it looked like when a system starts to fail.
The cracks weren't dramatic at first. They were… logistical.
Shelves in stores didn't restock the way they used to. Not empty, but thin. Like the world had gone on a diet.
Ambulances became a soundtrack.
People stopped shaking hands.
Then, one afternoon, a kid in my neighborhood—little Trevor from two houses down—was attacked in his driveway while trying to bring groceries inside. His mother screamed. His father ran out. An ambulance came. Men in masks came. It looked like a bad Halloween costume.
I watched from my window and felt something cold slide down my spine.
Because Trevor wasn't responding.
He was seizing.
A few days later, the news said a "neurological complication" had been identified in some cases.
And then they stopped giving details.
That's when I made my real decision.
Not "I should stock up on canned food" decision.
A decision.
If this became what I thought it could become, I wasn't staying in that house to die with him.
Let me be clear: I didn't want my father to die. I'm not that cartoonishly evil. I just… didn't want to die with him. There's a difference.
Also, if you've never lived with someone who hits you, you don't get to tell me what I owe him.
Two months into the "flu," my father started coming home earlier.
Not because he was worried about me.
Because his hours got cut.
Construction slowed. Deliveries got weird. Guys stopped showing up. Nobody said "pandemic," not in official ways, but my father's anger didn't need vocabulary. It just needed a target, and I lived in the same house.
He got drunk one Thursday and cornered me in the kitchen because I'd used the last of the peanut butter.
"You think money grows on trees?" he slurred.
I looked past him at the window. Outside, dusk was settling over our yard. The trees were still. The world looked normal in that way it always does right before it isn't.
"I'll replace it," I said.
"With what? Your big football scholarship?" He laughed like it was the best joke he'd ever heard. Then his face changed—quick, ugly—and his hand came up.
I didn't flinch.
That surprised him. It surprised me too.
His palm slapped my cheek hard enough to make my ears ring, but I didn't stagger. I didn't blink. I just looked at him, calm, like I was watching a dog decide whether to bite.
His eyes narrowed. "What's wrong with you?"
So many answers. None of them safe.
"Nothing," I said.
He shoved me once, not because he needed to, but because he needed to feel bigger. My shoulder hit the counter. Pain flared.
That was the moment it clicked.
Not the pain part. I'd had plenty of those.
The logistics part.
If the world went bad—really bad—I couldn't count on him for anything. Not food. Not shelter. Not loyalty. Not even basic human decency.
I already knew that emotionally.
Now I knew it practically.
That night, I packed my bag for real.
Not my "scout bag I keep ready because I'm anxious."
My bag.
A day's worth of food. Water tabs. A lighter. Ferro rod. Paracord. Small med kit. A decent fixed-blade knife I'd bought with cash from odd jobs and kept hidden. A cheap multitool. Socks—because if you ever want to know how civilized you are, go a week without dry socks.
I also stole the Glock from the garage.
Before you clutch your pearls: it was my father's. He wasn't responsible with it. He kept it in a case like the plastic alone made it safe. I didn't have ammo—at least not at first—but I knew where he kept it.
And yes, I knew how to use it.
I hated that I knew.
I also took a baseball bat. Just to be sure.