[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 429 - Set Our Sights on Something Bigger

Rick had been staring at the burning log this whole time, lost somewhere inside his own head. Now he finally lifted his gaze.

It crossed the dancing flames and landed on Leon's face.

"Haven't you injected yourself too?"

"Look at you now."

"You can control those things. You can even control living people."

"You're the best proof of that."

"We've all seen what you've contributed to this camp."

Rick drew a slow breath, like a man making a decision he couldn't walk back from.

"So I'm in."

"If I die—"

He looked at Leon, and his eyes held nothing but trust.

"Lori and Carl are in your hands."

"I know you'll take care of them for me."

"But if I choose to be a coward. If I choose to just scrape by and wait to die, waiting for those things that can run to come through our walls..."

His voice paused for a beat.

"Forget about me — Lori and Carl won't make it either."

"I'd rather gamble this life right now than watch my whole family get chewed down to skeletons."

"A chance at survival, for everyone. And for myself."

Those words cut straight to the bone.

You want to live beside your family. But if you don't have the power to protect them, when danger finally arrives, no one gets to sit it out. In the end, you all just go together anyway.

Active choice versus no choice at all. That's the whole difference.

Fight for it and there's a way out. Don't fight, and the end is just death.

The rest of them fell quiet, turning it over.

Yeah.

Everyone here was human. Everyone had their own calculations, their own people they needed to protect.

Who the hell was that selfless?

Honest truth: outside of a handful of rare exceptions, this world had never had room for purely great people. It still didn't.

But when it came down to it, whatever the reasons, whatever the angles, everyone's survival ended up tied to the same rope.

Rise together. Fall together.

That simple.

Shawn Greene leaned against a tree, silent for a long stretch. Then something settled in his face, and he nodded.

He pushed off the tree, walked over to Rick, and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Count me in."

His eyes were complicated. There was recognition for Rick in them, and underneath that, a hunger for something he couldn't quite name yet, whatever that unknown power actually was.

He didn't want to die.

But he wanted even less to lose everything he had right now.

Abraham drove a hand the size of a dinner plate into his own chest. The impact made a low, solid THUD.

"About damn time!"

"Once I get strong enough, I'm grabbing two Walkers every morning and using them as dumbbells!"

Glenn Rhee already knew Rick was right.

Today Leon had saved him.

What about tomorrow?

He couldn't count on that kind of luck holding forever.

"I — I'm in too!"

The words left him, and every ounce of strength seemed to drain out of his body with them. But the stone that had been sitting on his chest, the one he'd been carrying for days, got a little lighter.

If you had people willing to die alongside you, what was there to be afraid of? At least you'd have company on the road.

Leon smiled.

He looked around at all of them.

Merle. Rick. Shawn Greene. Abraham. Glenn Rhee.

Unease still sat on each of their faces. But their eyes were burning with the same thing.

Leon felt something loosen inside his chest.

In the beginning, all he'd wanted was to survive this godforsaken world. Find a few people he could rely on. Put a crew together. Scavenge. Live a little better than everyone else struggling out there. That was it. Nothing more.

But now.

He looked at these people, these comrades willing to lay their lives in his hands.

And just surviving suddenly felt like a goddamn waste.

A group like this, behind him, trusting him, why keep the target small?

A thought took root in his mind, something even crazier than building super-soldiers. He didn't plant it. It just grew, wild and unchecked, filling every corner.

Conquest.

He was going to conquer this world. Every rotten, festering piece of it.

"Heh..."

Leon dropped his head. His shoulders started to shake.

"Ha. Ha ha ha ha!"

The laugh came out full-throated and unstoppable.

With a group like this, what obstacle in hell could actually stop them?

The others exchanged glances, thrown off. None of them understood what Leon was laughing about.

➤ Next: Taking Effect