[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 432 - He's Here — Clash

Leon watched the slaughterhouse through his binoculars. The door had just swung shut. Through it, faint and muffled, came screaming.

He let out a slow breath.

Fuck.

He'd wanted to wait one more day. Just to be safe.

Didn't look like that was happening.

Wait any longer and Gareth's people would end up as the main course.

Not that he had much doubt about the water. Sure, maybe one or two fanatics could hold out — but a full day and night, no water, no warning? He didn't buy it.

Leon lowered the binoculars and got to his feet.

"Move."

"Time to go to work."

...

Inside the slaughterhouse.

Mary was naked and shaking.

Not from the cold.

From fear.

Two butchers — thick-necked, dead-eyed — had her pinned flat against the bloodletting trough. The blood in the channels hadn't gone cold yet. She could almost feel the chill radiating off the blade before it even touched her.

"Robert... please..."

Gareth's voice had nothing left in it.

Two men had him face-down on the floor, cheek grinding against the filthy concrete. All he could do was watch. Watch his mother held down like an animal waiting for slaughter.

Robert walked over and crouched in front of him.

He used the baseball bat, still wet with Sam's brains, to pat Gareth's cheek.

"You did this to yourself, Gareth."

"I gave you a chance."

"All you had to do was tell me what you were planning. But you wouldn't say a word."

"Fine. You don't want to talk, I won't force it. Today, your mother's going to teach you what silence costs."

"And if you still won't talk after that..."

His eyes drifted to Alex, sitting off to the side with a cast still on his leg.

"Next is your brother."

"Then you."

"I want you to remember this day for the rest of your life."

Robert straightened up, that slow, satisfied smile spreading across his face.

He walked to where Mary was pinned and stood over her, studying her the way you'd study a painting you were pleased with.

"Don't worry. We won't waste any of you."

He glanced back at Gareth.

"When we divide up the meat, you'll get a share too."

"She's your mother. Only right you get a portion."

Something went white in Gareth's skull. A sound like a struck bell, and then nothing.

He thought he was losing his mind.

No. Not him.

The world was.

But he was not going to give up the man who had handed him a shot at revenge.

BANG!

The iron door blew off its hinges.

Someone had kicked it clean open.

10 figures stood in the doorway, backlit, the grey light behind them turning them into silhouettes. Their clothes were rags. Their skin and gear were caked in dried blood and filth. They looked more like Walkers than the ones shuffling around outside.

But every one of them was holding an automatic rifle.

Nobody in the slaughterhouse moved.

The smile on Robert's face went rigid.

The butchers still had knives in their hands. Not one of them used them.

Gareth stared.

He'd actually come.

Leon stepped forward out of the group.

He looked at Mary, naked and held down against the trough.

He looked at Sam, strung up nearby, carved so thoroughly there was barely anything left.

Then his gaze settled on Robert.

"Yo." Leon's mouth curved. "Dinner party?"

He showed his teeth.

"Looks like you're eating well."

Robert came back to himself.

The hell?

Where did these bastards crawl out from?

"Who the fuck are you people?"

He squeezed the bat, voice loud and hard, but the volume was doing the work his nerve wasn't.

"Drop the guns or you're dead!"

Behind him, his men finally moved, snatching up whatever weapons were close.

The room went taut as a wire.

Leon didn't acknowledge any of it.

He just turned his head, unhurried, and looked at Merle.

"Merle."

"Right here, boss!"

"What do you think," Leon said, pointing at Robert. "If we took this guy's head off and bowled with it, what kind of score are we looking at?"

Merle grinned.

"I'd say a perfect game."

"FUCK! KILL THEM!"

Robert was past words.

"Chop them up and feed what's left to the dogs!"

But what came back at him wasn't gunfire.

It was a voice. Quiet. Unhurried.

"Hold on."

Robert's body locked up.

One second he was surging forward, the next he couldn't move. Not a step. Not a twitch. Like every signal between his brain and his limbs had simply stopped arriving.

The fury on his face curdled into something else.

Terror.

He wanted to move.

He wanted to grab a weapon, any weapon.

He couldn't do either.

All he could do was watch Leon close the distance between them, one easy step at a time.

"What did you do to me?"

The question came out stripped raw. This wasn't the fear of pain or death. This was the fear of something he didn't have a name for.

Around him, the Terminus members who'd been ready to rush forward had also gone still. Something was wrong. They could feel it.

Why wasn't their boss moving?

Leon stopped in front of him.

He reached out and lifted the bat from Robert's grip without any resistance.

Then he patted Robert's face with his open hand.

"Easy."

"I just want to talk."

He leaned in close, until his mouth was at Robert's ear, and dropped his voice to barely a murmur. Just the two of them.

"You like treating people like livestock."

A pause.

"So tell me." Leon's tone stayed perfectly even.

"How many pounds do you think you're worth?"

➤ Next: The First Time Encountering This Situation