[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 293 - The Language of the Walkers
Back at the prison, Leon charged straight into the kitchen.
"Rats! Who the hell saw a rat?!"
The female inmates peeling potatoes all looked up at once. One girl pointed to an iron cage in the corner, where a gray-furred rat sat huddled behind the bars.
Daryl had caught it for trap-testing bait.
All that little rodent had wanted was a free meal. It was about to pay a much steeper price.
"Good."
Leon grabbed the cage, snagged an old tape recorder from the supply room next door, and headed for the backyard where the chained sparring Walker paced at the end of its links.
Rick was passing through and pulled up short, watching Leon with undisguised confusion.
"Leon, what are you—"
"Little experiment."
Leon set the recorder on the ground and hit record.
Then he opened the cage and booted the squealing rat straight to the Walker's feet.
The Walker went still for half a second. Then something ancient and ravenous lit up behind those milky eyes.
It snapped its head down.
Crunch.
One clean crack of bone.
Then came the chewing, wet, rhythmic, skin-crawlingly enthusiastic.
"Hhhh... gurgle... heh heh, "
The sounds coming from the Walker's throat were nothing like its usual groaning. No flat, monotone snarl. This was something else entirely: a slick, burbling mutter loaded with greed and pleasure and ugly satisfaction. It tore into that tiny scrap of flesh like someone might steal it at any second, the whole time making that noise, that revolting noise.
Rick's stomach turned over.
Why is he recording this?
Leon looked like a man hearing Beethoven's Ninth for the first time. A slow, satisfied grin spread across his face.
He clicked the recorder off, walked to the perimeter fence, and hit play.
"Hhhh... gurgle... heh heh, "
The recording wheezed out through a tinny speaker.
Outside the prison walls, every Walker that had been drifting in aimless circles stopped dead, like someone had thrown a switch. They turned as one toward the sound and screamed, sharp, furious, hungry. Then they hit the wire fencing.
The frenzy was ten times worse than normal. At least.
Leon's grin stretched to his ears.
Yeah. That'll do.
---
Out in the woods, Roberta and the others had been waiting long enough to grow moss.
Then Leon rolled up in a pickup, hopped out, and hefted a large portable speaker onto one shoulder.
"Everybody back up."
He set the speaker on a clear patch of ground and pressed play.
"Hhhh... gurgle... heh heh— crunch—"
The doctored feeding sounds punched through the quiet of the woods.
And then the walkers lost their minds.
The handful that had been lingering nearby lurched forward like something had shorted out in their skulls, no more shuffling, no more hesitation. They came at a stumbling near-sprint, arms reaching, teeth snapping, charging the speaker like it owed them something.
That still wasn't the worst of it.
Further out, from the direction of the blocked-off river channel, more Walkers caught the sound. Dozens of them. Hundreds. They clawed their way out of the packed mass of bodies and poured toward the tree line, a flood of rotten flesh moving with horrible, single-minded purpose. Sharks converging on blood.
One. Ten. A hundred. More.
The rumble of it filled the air.
"Holy shit..."
Wrench had gone pale, legs visibly shaking as he stared at the black tide rolling toward them.
"Leon! Did this just get way out of hand?!"
"Stay calm." Leon's voice was perfectly even.
"Murphy!"
He turned to look at the blue-skinned man, who had folded in on himself and appeared to be attempting to teleport somewhere else through sheer terror.
"Your turn."
"Make them form a circle around you. Right now." Leon's tone didn't leave room for argument. "I need a wall, safe, tight, and solid enough that nothing punches through it."
"Move." He drove his boot into Murphy's backside.
Murphy stumbled forward and went sprawling straight into the horde.
When he got his eyes open again, the Walkers that had been bearing down on him had stopped. All of them. Half a meter away, like they'd hit an invisible barrier. They pressed in close on every side, a ring of rotting bodies, and held.
They still snarled. They still thrashed with excitement. But every shred of violence in them simply... dissolved when it reached Murphy. The Walkers outside the ring kept hammering at it, throwing themselves against the wall of their own dead, and couldn't get through.
Murphy stood in the middle of it all.
Untouched.
Doc and Roberta stared. Neither of them spoke for a long moment.
"Jesus," Doc finally breathed.
"This guy... he's a living goddamn Moses, isn't he? He can actually part the sea of corpses?"
Leon watched the massive horde begin to shift, guided now, moving in the direction he'd planned, then glanced back at Murphy standing straight-backed at the eye of the storm.
He gave a single, satisfied nod.
"Good. Now that we know it works, we need to figure out exactly where we're sending them."
➤ Next: Luring the Walker Horde to Woodbury