[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 313

After hearing him out, Milton understood exactly why Martinez had come.

He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and unhurriedly wiped the tweezers in his hand with an alcohol swab.

"So that's the reason?"

"Because the Governor has lost his mind?"

"He hasn't lost his mind. He's a devil!" Martinez kept his voice low, but the agitation bleeding through it was impossible to contain.

"Milton! Can't you see what's happening? This town is being dragged into hell!"

"He's using people as food — feeding them to his daughter, who's already turned into a monster!"

Milton set the tweezers down. He turned and pulled a thick hardcover from the shelf behind him.

"You know something, Martinez?"

"The first month after the outbreak, I almost died in a supermarket."

He opened the book, his eyes drifting to one of the pages.

"Three Walkers had me trapped behind a shelf. I was certain I was finished."

"Philip saved me."

"He had one pistol and six bullets."

"He used five of them to put down those three Walkers. The last one, he said, he was saving for himself."

"He told me: if he got bitten, I should use that bullet to put a hole through his skull."

Milton closed the book and looked at Martinez. The conviction in his eyes had a quality bordering on obsession.

"He saved my life, Martinez."

"From that moment on, I promised him I would use my knowledge to help him build a new world."

"A new world without hunger. Without fear. Where human civilization could survive and carry on."

"Even — a way to restore the memories of the Walkers."

A chill shot from the soles of Martinez's feet straight to the top of his skull.

God damn it.

This bookworm had been brainwashed by the Governor too.

No. Worse than that. He was more terrifying than those ignorant residents.

The residents believed the lies the Governor fed them. But Milton, he believed in the Governor himself.

That was far more deadly than the former.

"A new world?"

Martinez's voice shook with rage.

"The Governor will never give you that new world. He can't!"

"He just wants to be a petty warlord! He just wants to feed his twisted need for control!"

"You have no idea what kind of man he really is!"

"I do know." Milton's reply was quiet and weightless.

"I know he killed those soldiers. I know he collects heads. I know he keeps Penny locked in her room." His voice didn't waver.

"I know everything he does."

Martinez went completely still.

He stared at the mild-mannered man before him as though he were looking at something inhuman.

"Then why are you still—"

"What exists is justified, Martinez." Milton cut him off.

"Building order always requires some sacrifice."

"Those soldiers, if they hadn't died, where would our weapons and Humvees have come from?"

"The ones who refuse to fall in line, if they don't die, how do we keep this town stable?"

"As for Penny..." A pause. "That's a father's last shred of tenderness. I can understand it."

Madness.

This whole world had gone completely, irreversibly insane.

Martinez felt his entire sense of reality caving in on itself.

He had thought Milton was the last person left in this town who could still be reasoned with.

He never imagined that this bookworm's logic was even colder than the Governor's butcher knife.

He was an accomplice. A complete and utter accomplice.

"You should leave, Martinez."

A flicker of guilt crossed Milton's eyes, barely perceptible, gone in an instant. He turned back to his workbench and picked up his dissection tools.

"The Governor has already noticed you're missing. He's got people searching everywhere."

"I won't tell anyone you came here. That's the last thing I can do for you."

"Your so-called mercy is just standing by and watching him feed every last person in this town to that thing, one by one?!"

Martinez didn't leave. He lunged forward and grabbed Milton by the collar.

"Let go." Milton frowned.

"Wake the hell up!"

Martinez roared. Spittle hit Milton's glasses.

"Once he's finished with everyone else, you're next! You think you're special? You think you'll be spared?!"

"None of us get out of this!"

Milton didn't resist. He just looked at Martinez in silence.

Then.

CREEEAK,

A sound that set your teeth on edge. The research room's door hinge, turning.

Martinez and Milton both went rigid at exactly the same moment.

Like a videotape someone had hit pause on, the two of them turned their heads inch by inch toward the entrance.

The door had been pushed open a crack. Neither of them had heard it happen.

A tall figure stood silently on the other side.

No sound. No announcement. Just a presence, dense and dark and suffocating, that flooded the room the instant he appeared.

The Governor.

He wore a clean leather jacket, his hair combed without a strand out of place. There was even a faint, ambiguous smile on his face.

In one hand, he held a bloodstained handkerchief, as though he had just finished wiping something clean.

Martinez felt his heart stop dead. Every drop of blood in his body seemed to freeze solid in that single instant.

The Governor was already here.

➤ Next: The Brutal Governor