Community Books

Shelter in Place

by Lanternlight

Rated Mature: for readers 18 and over.

Mature · In progress · 24,363 words · 8 chapters

Warnings: Major character death, Graphic violence

Tags: resident evil 2 (video game), claire redfield/leon s. kennedy, alternate universe - canon divergence, survival, slow burn, post-apocalypse, hurt/comfort, sharing body heat, forced proximity, episodic, sickfic

Dawn, October 1st, 1998. The missile hits Raccoon City while Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield are still underneath it.

In this canon-divergent AU, they never made the train. Sherry did. Leon, a rookie whose first shift outlasted the city, and Claire, a college student who came looking for her brother, ride out the strike in a forgotten 1962 fallout shelter under the half-collapsed RPD. Above them: ash, fire, a radiation meter, and the things that walked out of the blast. Below: eleven tins of survival crackers, a generator with thirteen hours of diesel, a radio, and each other.

Nobody is coming. Each chapter is one more problem to solve before it kills them, worked out on a yellow legal pad: water, fuel, fever, the first freeze, and a courteous stranger on a stolen radio channel who wants them out. Somewhere between the cracker tins and the coldest nights, the six feet between their mattresses closes.

Episodic survival, slow burn. Mature for horror violence, not explicit.

Chapters

  1. Chapter 1: Capacity 200 (2,909 words) Dawn comes down on Raccoon City from above. Below the precinct, two survivors start counting.
  2. Chapter 2: The Seven-Ten Rule (2,967 words) A wire up a dead elevator shaft, a voice from outside, and rain nobody trusts.
  3. Chapter 3: Half-Life (2,976 words) Five blocks of ash to a pharmacy. Getting there is the easy part.
  4. Chapter 4: Simplex (3,300 words) A courteous man on a stolen channel offers a way out. They set a test.
  5. Chapter 5: Five Drops per Quart (3,060 words) The drums turn. Under the old museum, twelve thousand gallons wait in the dark.
  6. Chapter 6: Day Tank (3,196 words) Winter's coming, the generator's thirsty, and three hundred gallons lie buried out back.
  7. Chapter 7: First Freeze (2,786 words) The first hard freeze, a fever that won't break, and a deal made alone.
  8. Chapter 8: Reassigned (3,169 words) Noon on the thirtieth, a polite voice, and the loudest thing they've ever done.

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