[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 422 - The Past

Gary lay face-down in the snow, his whole body shaking.

"You want revenge, don't you?" Leon asked.

Gary's lips trembled.

He nodded, using every last ounce of strength he had.

Leon smiled.

"Then talk."

"Prove you actually want it."

Gary kept his eyes on Leon's face, and the truth came out before he could stop it. He started talking about the past he wished he could forget.

"We... we weren't always like that."

"Terminus, in the beginning, was a real sanctuary."

"Me, my mother, my brother Alex... we were among the first."

"We believed that in the apocalypse, people should help each other."

"So we set up signs along the railway tracks, broadcast over the radio..."

"We told practically everyone who could hear us, there was food here, a safe place, a reason to keep living."

"All who travel to Terminus shall survive."

He recited the slogan. A grotesque smile crossed his face.

"That was a goddamn joke."

Merle spat from the side, impatient.

"Get to the point, kid. Nobody wants to hear your sad-sack sob story."

Leon raised a hand. Merle shut his mouth immediately.

"After that... more and more people came." Gary went on. "Good people. Bad people."

"One day, a group showed up."

"They looked no different from anyone else. Just desperate survivors with nowhere to go."

"We took them in."

"And then, that night..."

Gary's body started shaking again.

"They pulled out guns they'd hidden."

"They locked us in the shipping containers."

"They took everything we had. They... they violated our women right in front of us..."

"Alex's wife. She was tortured to death during that time."

"We tried to fight back. We lost. We lost completely."

"And then what?" Leon asked.

Fear flickered through Gary's eyes.

"At first, they were just straightforwardly evil. Using us as punching bags. It wasn't like it became later."

"But as the food outside kept rotting, as there was less and less to find — things were either too expired to eat or had already been picked clean — and they didn't farm. They only wanted to enjoy themselves."

"So they started to starve."

"One day, Robert, their leader — dragged Sam into the slaughterhouse car."

"That place was originally for processing the deer and boars we brought back from hunting."

"That night, everyone's dinner had an extra portion of... roasted meat."

"Shit!"

Glenn felt his stomach lurch and heave.

"From that day on, everything changed."

A strange expression crept onto Gary's face.

"They started keeping us like livestock."

"The survivors they lured in weren't companions. They were... they were 'long pigs.'"

"Robert locked them in the cars of Block A. Kept them like animals."

"To keep the meat fresh, and to make it last longer... he never killed them outright."

"The butchers... they would strap our people to the slaughter table and carve away just a portion of the flesh from their arms or legs."

"Not enough to kill you. But enough to make you wish you were dead."

"They even had the goddamn nerve to grade the meat."

"Young women fetched the highest demand. Because it was tender."

"They called it the premium cut."

"The slaughterhouse was right next to the containers. Every day... every day we could hear the screaming from inside."

"At first, we were still frightened by it. Still had nightmares."

"But after a while... after hearing it so many times, we just went numb."

"It became part of our lives. Like the squealing of pigs on a hog farm."

"They even... even drew up a whole procedure."

"First the bleeding. The blood drained down through the trough into buckets below. They said it could be made into blood sausage."

"Then the butchering. The deboning. They said none of it should go to waste."

"I... I saw it once..."

Gary's voice broke.

"I saw the butcher hang a man who was still alive. Hooked through the jaw."

"And then, like carving a Peking duck, slice by slice, they carved the flesh from his back."

"That man was conscious the entire time. He kept crying. Kept begging..."

"Nobody paid him any mind."

"God damn it!"

Abraham's eyes had gone red. He drove his fist into a nearby tree. Snow cascaded down through the branches.

Leon listened without expression.

This was normal. This was what the world was now.

People with full stomachs would never understand the pain of hunger. For food, any creature would fight to the death. Humans were no different.

"My mother... she refused." Gary's voice was shaking harder now.

"She wanted to take me and my brother and run."

"Robert found out."

"He broke my brother Alex's legs. And then... then humiliated my mother in front of all of us."

"He forced me to..."

Gary couldn't finish. He lay face-down in the snow and sobbed like a child, wailing from somewhere deep and broken.

The woods were quiet.

Just his raw, heaving cries. And the distant groans of walkers drifting through the trees.

A long time passed.

Then Leon's voice came again.

"So. Why did you choose to help these pieces of trash lure in innocent survivors?"

➤ Next: As Long As You Haven't Eaten People, Everything's Negotiable