[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 304 - Controlling the Horde's Assault
The morning air at the prison was soaked through with the thick reek of rotting meat.
Leon stood by the modified pickup, a bag of fresh oranges in one hand, peeling one without any particular hurry.
The sweet-sour juice burst across his tongue and cut right through the gagging stench hanging over everything.
Only Leon could manage that. Anyone else wouldn't have been able to keep food down.
In front of him, Murphy was pulling on the specially-made corpse-coat.
The thing was sewn from the chest skin of several walkers, still not fully dried, sticky and clinging to the outside of the shark-proof suit underneath. He looked like a ghoul that had just dragged itself out of a landfill.
"Don't give me that look, Murphy."
Leon tucked a slice of orange into his cheek and spoke around it.
"You're the Commander of the Whisperers now. All of humanity's... no, the entire prison's hopes are riding on those shoulders."
Murphy tried to smile. It pulled at the rotting mask freshly glued to his face and made him look less like he was smiling and more like he was having a seizure.
"Boss, any chance I could get a meal upgrade?"
His voice came muffled from behind the mask.
"Do the job right, and I'll crack open that ten-year bourbon from the wine cellar."
Leon patted his shoulder, then swept his gaze across the assembled team.
Michonne stood off to one side, her signature katana on her back, face unreadable. She'd pulled on corpse-skin camouflage too, two chained walkers shambling at her sides as cover. Her murderous stillness — the kind that kept every living thing at a respectful distance — not even the reek of rotted flesh could smother it.
Roberta, Lee, Andrea, Sasha, and 10K were ready.
Those five weren't Whisperers. They were the fuse.
If something went sideways during the operation, they were there to eliminate the problem with sniper fire before it had time to become one.
"Remember the plan."
Leon's voice dropped. The casual, cynical edge was gone.
"We don't want Woodbury turned into a dead zone."
"We want the Governor's defense system completely paralyzed. We want his ammo exhausted. We want his deceived civilians to see, in the middle of their despair, who their real savior actually is."
"And then we let everyone see the Governor for what he is."
Assaulting Woodbury head-on was the dumbest play possible. Their walls and heavy weapons were roughly on par with the prison's. A direct fight would only burn through resources he'd spent months scraping together.
But a walker horde was different.
Free. Inexhaustible. Cannon fodder that didn't require a casualty notice sent to anyone.
Drive those hundreds of thousands of walkers straight to the Governor's doorstep, and he'd have exactly one choice to make.
Save his bullets and wait to be devoured, or burn through every round he had for a few more days of air.
Once the ammo ran dry and the morale caved, Leon would show up with his people, armored vehicles rolling in a line, cresting the horizon like a savior out of a dream.
At that point, Woodbury's civilians would get on their knees and beg him to take over.
"Move out." Leon waved a hand. "Stay safe. Every one of you comes back alive."
The pickup rolled out through the prison gates. Behind it came the smaller trucks loaded with speakers and generators. Daryl's motorcycle carved a path out front, he was on point, scouting ahead, making sure this bizarre funeral procession reached Woodbury without incident.
One hour later. The bridge funnel.
The stench of death had thickened to the point where you could almost choke on it solid.
Tens of thousands of walkers packed the edge of the broken bridge, a seething mass of black and gray, like a heap of writhing maggots dense enough to blot out the ground beneath them.
"The stage is yours now, Commander Murphy."
Leon stood on the hillside, lowered his binoculars, and keyed the walkie-talkie.
Murphy drew a slow breath. He could feel them. All of them.
It was a strange thing, like standing in a perfectly silent room and hearing the static of countless radios bleeding through the walls at once.
He walked into the horde.
Michonne followed a step behind, watching him.
The kid was a coward in every conventional sense. But when he entered the zone, when he started moving with them, there was a rhythm to it, a kind of eerie communion with the dead that she couldn't deny was something close to awe.
The walkers didn't attack.
They stopped their mindless clawing and turned, one after another, hollow eyes struggling to process the commands being issued by this thing that felt like kin.
"Urgh... urgh... gah..."
Murphy let out a low, grinding snarl and swung his arms in stiff, jerking arcs.
The dead black ocean rippled.
The walkers milling at the bridgehead began to shift with purpose, shuffling in the direction Murphy guided, southeast, across the open plain, straight toward Woodbury.
"Generators!" Leon's voice crackled through the walkie-talkie.
The generators on the trucks roared to life.
Then the recording cut in, the carefully assembled walker feeding track, all wet gurgles and cracking bone, blasting through the massive speaker arrays across the open wilderness.
"Urgh... gurgle... CRUNCH."
It was like dropping a bucket of ice water into a vat of boiling oil.
The entire horde detonated.
Walkers at the rear crushed forward. Those at the front, steered by Murphy and Michonne, turned with the mass and moved, pouring across the plain in a single surging wave, the largest migration of the dead since the world ended.
From high above, it looked like black magma. Slow, unstoppable, erasing everything in its path.
Saplings along the roadside snapped under the press of bodies. Abandoned cars disappeared beneath the tide.
Nothing was going to stop it.
"This feeling... it's goddamn magnificent."
Merle stood beside Leon, binoculars in his fist, the cigarette dropping from his lips without him noticing.
"Boss — is this what you'd call herding?"
"Of course, Merle." Leon kept his binoculars up, watching the endless black tide roll toward the horizon.
➤ Next: Woodbury's in for a World of Hurt