[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 276 - Crude Emergency Treatment

The world was spinning. Glenn's ears were full of roaring.

He was holding something warm and soft in his arms.

Mia.

Her body was light, months of malnutrition had made sure of that. He'd caught her on instinct, and the force of impact sent him staggering back two steps before he went down hard, landing on a ground covered in spent casings and scalding blood.

The Hummer accelerated away.

Vincent's twisted face flashed past behind the bulletproof glass, a phantom there and gone.

The heavy machine gun fell silent.

The world went eerily quiet.

Only a few shot-up pickups still burned, crackling and spitting, black smoke twisting up into the sky.

Glenn looked down.

Mia's eyes were still open. Those sea-blue irises reflected his face back at him, blood-smeared, bewildered.

On her chest, the old shirt she'd washed so many times it had gone nearly white had blossomed with dark flowers.

Blood welled up from the holes and soaked into the ground beneath her.

"Wh... why?"

Glenn asked it softly. He couldn't help himself.

He couldn't figure it out.

He fucking could not figure it out.

He'd called her an idiot. He'd meant it. So why had she thrown herself in front of him?

What the hell was going on in this crazy woman's head?

Mia's lips moved. She was trying to say something.

But when she opened her mouth, what came out wasn't words. It was a mouthful of foamy blood.

"Hgh... hgh..."

A strange sound leaked from the wound in her chest. Barely there, like some invisible little figure drinking through a straw. But with every inhale, every exhale, a string of tiny blood bubbles formed and broke against her lips.

She was like a fish thrown onto the bank. Her body thrashed in Glenn's arms, mouth gaping wide, desperate to pull in any scrap of air that might keep her alive.

But the air wouldn't stay. Just like her life, it couldn't be held.

It hissed out through the hole in her chest.

"Damn it! A doctor! Who the fuck is a doctor?!"

Glenn screamed it at the drug dealers still trembling face-down on the ground around him.

But these people were dealers and addicts. Not a doctor among them.

"Glenn..."

Oscar crawled out from behind the wreck of a truck, face gray with ash.

"She's... she's not going to make it."

"I know she's dying!" Glenn's eyes had gone red. "You think I don't fucking know that?!"

Then Paco came scrambling over, half-crawling.

He looked at the wound bubbling on Mia's chest. His face went whiter than a dead man's.

"I... I've seen this before." His voice was shaking. "Back when our block had a shootout with another gang — one of my boys got hit right there too."

Glenn's head snapped up. A drowning man grabbing the last straw.

"Then what?! Did he make it?!"

"The doctor... the doc did this thing..." Paco looked like he was remembering something that still haunted him. His teeth were chattering. "He found a piece of plastic, pressed it over the wound... taped down three sides... said that way the air trapped inside could get out, but air from outside couldn't get in..."

"I don't know the science behind it. That's just what he did."

"So did he live?!" Glenn grabbed Paco by the collar.

Paco looked like he was about to cry. He shook his head hard.

"N-no... he still died... bled out..."

Glenn's heart dropped.

He looked at Mia's small face, her lips starting to go blue from lack of oxygen. Then he looked at the sympathetic eyes watching from all around.

He looked back at her.

"I made you a promise," he said. "I was going to get you out of this hell. You don't get to die yet."

Fuck.

He swore again, harder.

To hell with bleeding out. To hell with dying no matter what you do.

Today, he was going to arm-wrestle Death itself.

"Plastic!" Glenn roared at the people around him. "Tape! Who the fuck has tape?!"

Rat Boss reacted first.

He dug frantically through his own pockets and came up with a roll of electrical tape, crushed nearly flat.

A young dealer, hands trembling, fished an unfinished bag of potato chips out of his jacket, dumped the crumbs on the ground, and held out the greasy foil packaging.

"Will this work? It's kinda dirty..."

"It works! Anything fucking works!"

Glenn snatched the bag. It still smelled like chips.

He didn't hesitate. He tore Mia's shirt open — already soaked through, plastered to her skin, and got a clear look at the wound.

The entry hole was small. But it looked deep.

He checked her back fast. No exit wound.

The bullet was still in there.

Damn. Bad news.

He pushed it aside. Couldn't think about that now.

He spread the greasy foil flat and pressed it over the wound, which was still hissing and frothing with blood.

"Hold it down!" he barked at Rat Boss.

Rat Boss didn't hesitate, this was no time to worry about propriety.

Glenn grabbed the tape Rat Boss handed him, bit off a strip with his teeth, and started sealing the edges fast.

One strip across the top.

One down the left.

One down the right.

His hands were shaking. His movements were shockingly fast anyway.

"The bottom — don't seal the bottom..." Paco murmured from the side.

Glenn didn't acknowledge him. He'd listened carefully the first time. He already knew.

Three sides sealed. He carefully shifted Mia upright into a half-sitting position, propped against his knee, her body tilted slightly toward the wounded side.

All of it happened in seconds.

When he finally looked up, he found the surviving dealers had closed in around him without him noticing. Every one of them was watching. The sympathy in their eyes was worse than anything else.

Mia's breathing steadied, just a fraction.

At least the hole in her chest wasn't bubbling anymore.

But she was still bleeding. Life was still draining out, bit by bit, through the gap he'd deliberately left open.

Glenn peeled off his tattered jacket and draped it over her. Then he raised his head and swept his gaze across the ring of dirty, shell-shocked faces surrounding him.

The gunfire had stopped.

The enemy was gone.

But they were like travelers lost in the middle of a desert, with no idea which direction to walk.

Glenn understood, in that moment, what every pair of eyes here was saying.

He was all they had.

He looked back down at Mia. Her breath was faint as gossamer. He reached out and gently wiped the bloody froth from the corner of her mouth.

"Fucking hell," he said quietly. "What do I do now."

Oscar sidled over to Rat Boss and nudged him, dropping his voice low.

"She really does look like she's about to go."

"Maybe we head back to the prison first. See if that crazy woman Lee Mi-ju has any ideas?"

➤ Next: Cleanup Work