[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 300 - Michonne Is Back Again

The next day. Dawn.

Michonne woke to the sound of muffled sobbing.

Her eyes snapped open. The hand on her sword hilt went white at the knuckles. She was on her feet in an instant, every muscle coiled, springing out of the corner shadows like a drawn bow finally released.

Donna.

The woman was barely holding it together anymore. She sat hugging her knees beside the dead fire, rocking slightly, making small wounded-animal sounds she couldn't seem to stop.

Tyreese was slumped against the far wall, dead to the world. His snoring rattled like a tractor on its last legs.

Sasha sat upright, pistol cradled in her arms, doing her best to stay alert. Her eyelids were losing the fight.

Michonne clicked her tongue.

She hated this feeling. Being forced to hold a group of strangers together by sheer will alone, like she'd somehow become their backbone without agreeing to it. She felt like a seasoned explorer, one who'd survived things none of these people could imagine, except now she was stuck leading a pack of deadweights who'd barely graduated kindergarten and couldn't tie their own shoes through the middle of the Amazon.

"Shut up," she said quietly.

Donna's sobbing cut off instantly.

She looked up at Michonne with wide, terrified eyes. Like she was staring at something that could swallow her whole.

"Or I'll do it for you." Michonne wasn't joking.

In this world, crying was the same as lighting a torch in the dark. A standing invitation broadcast to every predator within earshot: Hey. Over here. Fresh meat.

Donna clamped both hands over her mouth. The tears kept coming anyway, silent now, running down her face in a steady stream.

Michonne turned away and walked to the shattered storefront window. She stared out at the street, grey and still, wrapped in morning fog.

Why?

The question surfaced again. The same one she kept asking herself.

Why haul these people along? Why give a damn whether they lived or died? She could have walked away. Should have. She was fast enough, quiet enough, and she didn't need any of them.

She thought of Leon.

The man looked more like a villain than the Governor ever had — and yet there was something about him she couldn't name. Some quality underneath all that cold calculation. Something that almost resembled integrity.

She thought about the prison.

Kids kicking a ball around the yard. Women bent over garden rows. Men patching the walls. The whole place humming with purposeful life that belonged to the world before, not this one.

Did she want to destroy that?

No.

She didn't. If she was being honest with herself, she envied it. That bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

Which meant she couldn't let these few survivors become a wildcard — some loose variable that might destabilize what Leon had built. The cleanest solution was to hand them over directly. Let him figure out whether they were a threat. Whatever he decided to do with them after that was his business, not hers.

She turned around.

"On your feet. Time to move."

...

The road to the prison was harder going than she'd expected. Not because of the dead.

Scattered walkers were nothing. Background noise. One clean stroke each, like trimming weeds.

The deadweights behind her were the problem.

Allen sat down in the middle of the road and refused to get up, one hand clamped over his injured leg, breathing in harsh ragged gulps.

Sasha had to slap a bright wildflower out of Donna's hand before she could put it in her mouth. "That could be poisonous!"

And Tyreese. Tyreese trailed just behind Michonne's shoulder like an anxious sheepdog, filling every silence with noise.

"Hey, we still don't know your name. What's your name?"

Michonne kept walking.

"That sword is something else. Where'd you find it? I've only ever seen one in a movie."

She picked up her pace.

"So this prison — is it really as good as you said? Do they have hot showers?"

Michonne stopped.

She turned around slowly. Her eyes settled on Tyreese like a blade finding its mark.

"Say one more word," she said, letting her gaze drop to his throat. "I'll cut your tongue out."

Tyreese shut his mouth. His broad face went through a complicated series of expressions: surprise, embarrassment, something close to wounded confusion. He'd just been making conversation. Was that a crime? The woman was a walking powder keg.

By the time the sun was sinking toward the horizon, the shape rose against the dying light: high walls, dense coils of barbed wire, silhouettes shifting on the guard posts, the unmistakable black circles of gun barrels.

"There it is," Michonne said.

The others looked where she pointed. Nobody spoke for a moment. Sasha let out a slow breath. "My God."

It wasn't like any camp they'd scraped together out in the open. This was something built to last. The walls, the wire, the discipline radiating from every angle, it hit them somewhere deep, somewhere that months of running and starving and watching each other break had hollowed out. They'd stopped believing places like this still existed.

"Stay here." Michonne steered them into the tree line. "I'll go up to the gate."

She wasn't about to walk up to Leon's door with a group of strangers at her back. No misunderstandings. Not today.

She moved alone through the brush, silent, circling toward the outer perimeter.

Up on the guard post, T-Dog had an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip and binoculars pressed to his face, watching the wasteland do absolutely nothing.

Then he stopped.

He adjusted the focus. Pulled the binoculars back and rubbed his eyes. Looked again.

"Oh, shit." He grabbed the radio with a hand that wasn't quite steady. "Leon. Leon, get on the monitors right now."

"That Black woman with the katana?"

"She's back."

➤ Next: Michonne, You Really Are a Good Person