[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 298 - A Brother and Sister

Why?

The thought lodged itself in her skull like a bullet fragment stuck in meat, churning and churning, making her skin crawl.

In Woodbury, the Governor would smile at her too. He'd offer her hot soup. He'd say, "Make yourself at home."

But his eyes, by her own analogy, were a snake coiled in the grass, fangs always ready.

Every "generous" gesture he made had a locked cage hiding behind it.

Leon was different.

He didn't even bother to fake it. That insufferable I'm-the-king-of-the-whole-goddamn-world energy might as well have been branded on his forehead.

He handed her back her blade, opened the gate, and waved her off like she was a fly.

What the hell was that supposed to be?

Playing hard to get?

Or was it that, in this man's eyes, she wasn't even worth a second glance? Didn't even rate a second look?

Michonne tightened her grip on the katana hilt at her back. Being utterly dismissed pissed her off worse than having a gun pressed to her head.

"Shit."

She muttered it low and picked up her pace.

Who the hell cared what Leon was scheming. The farther she got from that godforsaken place the better. She'd survived on her own before. She didn't need to huddle up with anyone.

She was almost to the dead cluster of buildings in Macon when a sharp woman's scream ripped through the silence, tangled with the unmistakable snarling of Walkers, pouring out from an alley just ahead.

Michonne stopped cold.

Like a panther catching the sound of prey, she slipped soundlessly behind a rusted school bus, only her eyes showing as she scanned the alley.

A cornered-beast last stand was playing out inside.

Five or six survivors pinned in a dead end. Twenty, maybe thirty Walkers pressing in.

Up front was a massive, powerfully built black man.

He swung a large framing hammer, each strike trailing a howl of displaced air.

Crack.

A Walker's skull split like an overripe watermelon. Red and white splattered across his chest and arms.

"Hold the goddamn line! Don't break apart!"

He roared at the companions behind him, people already halfway to collapsing, all while chewing through the front of the horde like a human meat grinder.

His sister stood at his side, a small-caliber pistol in hand, calmly picking off anything that slipped through.

Sharp marksmanship. Steady nerves. Not a shot wasted.

The rest of the group was a different story.

A middle-aged man in glasses clutched a crowbar, shaking too badly to step forward. The woman who'd been screaming had already crumpled to the ground in terror. Crying. Nothing else.

"Allen! Donna! Stop standing there like idiots — move!"

The big man bellowed and sent another Walker flying with a hammer swing.

Michonne watched from behind the bus, face flat.

Rabble.

She'd seen this exact scene too many times. It always ended the same way: the strongest fighter burned himself out, and the idiots he'd bled to protect dragged him down with them. Then everyone became Walker food together.

She should have walked.

She wasn't anyone's savior, and she had zero interest in other people's survival problems.

But that man, that all-in, absolute refusal to stop fighting for the people behind him, made her look a second longer than she meant to.

He was fierce. Like an enraged bull.

But he wasn't just killing.

Every hammer swing, every pivot to block, was buying space for the people at his back.

Unbidden, faces from Leon's prison rose in her mind.

Shirtless prisoners hauling stone for the walls. A big man carefully wrapping a dog's leg in bandages. Women singing out in the field.

This man had the same thing as all of them.

That same damned foolishness.

The kind that should have been dead and buried in this world long ago.

In the moment her attention drifted, the alley went to hell.

More Walkers flooded out of the surrounding storefronts, crushing the already-tight circle inward.

"Tyreese! Behind you!"

His sister, Sasha — cried out.

Tyreese spun and smashed the ambushing Walker.

But the split second it cost him opened a hole in his forward line.

Three, four Walkers slammed into him at once, crushing him back against the wall.

"Brother!"

Sasha's eyes went red. She lunged toward him, but the horde cut her off. All she could do was keep shooting.

And Donna fell apart completely.

She screamed and scrambled backward on hands and knees, crashing into a stack of trash cans.

A Walker dragged itself up from the sewer, green slime coating its whole body, and swung its half-rotted jaw toward her pale throat.

"No—!"

Donna's scream hit the walls.

Michonne's brow pinched.

She didn't want to get involved.

She really, genuinely didn't.

But that scream pulled at something. Some person she'd lost.

"Damn."

Low. Through her teeth.

She moved.

No sound. No warning.

Shing.

Cold steel arced once through the air.

The Walker froze mid-lunge.

The upper half of its skull, sliced clean along the brow line, smooth as a butter knife through cake, slid back and dropped away.

Thump.

The body hit the ground at Donna's feet.

Donna forgot to scream. She just stared at the woman who had appeared from nowhere, a katana resting at her side.

Michonne didn't look at her.

Didn't even slow down.

She moved through the horde like a leaf caught in the wind, impossible to track, impossible to predict, elegant and lethal in the same breath.

Shhk.

Blade into flesh. Almost silent. The sound of parting tofu.

A Walker's neck split open. The still-snarling head flew free like a deflated ball.

Shing. Shing. Shing.

Three more flashes. Faster than the eye could follow.

Three heads launched skyward almost simultaneously, tracing three black-streaked arcs through the air before they fell.

Every survivor in the alley went rigid.

Allen's crowbar hit the ground with a clang.

Sasha stopped shooting.

She stood frozen, mouth open, watching this woman drift through the press of bodies, each draw of the blade a guaranteed kill, and felt something inside her simply break.

Was that... a person?

Was she absolutely sure she wasn't looking at something else?

Tyreese broke free.

He caved in the last Walker clinging to him and slumped against the wall, dragging air into his lungs.

He watched the dark silhouette. Watched that blade moving so fast it left nothing but afterimages.

All his own desperate, bloody fighting suddenly felt like a child swinging a stick at a tiger.

And this woman.

She was the real butcher.

No.

An artist.

Every swing, every turn, a kind of violent beauty he had no words for.

30 seconds, maybe less.

Nothing in the alley was standing anymore.

Michonne sheathed her blade slowly. The steel traced a clean arc through the air and flicked the last drop of black blood free.

She turned.

Those cold eyes swept the alley, passing over the survivors still frozen in place.

Her gaze settled on the big man leaning against the wall, drenched in blood, staring at her like she was something that shouldn't exist.

She said nothing. Just held her blade and stood still in the middle of the dead.

The wind moved through the alley, stirring her locs, carrying with it the thick, settled stench of blood that wouldn't lift.

Tyreese looked at her. He opened his mouth.

His throat was too dry to make a sound.

This woman.

She was something else entirely.

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