[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 434 - Resolving Terminus

"Ah—"

The pain hit Robert like a thunderbolt. He screamed, clutched his hand — bent now at a wrong, ugly angle — and dropped to his knees, gulping air in ragged heaves, sweat pouring down his face.

Leon looked down at him.

"You know, you're special."

"You're the first person I've ever seen who still thought about fighting back while under my hands."

Robert lifted his head. His eyes were pure red, every vein blown, and he glared up at Leon with everything he had left.

Still defiant. Written all over his face.

Good. Plenty of spirit.

Leon turned to Grey, still on the ground.

"What about you? Do you hate him?"

Grey pulled himself up slowly.

He looked at Sam, strung up, barely recognizable as something that had once been human.

Then he looked at his mother, shaking in the corner, folded into herself like she was trying to disappear.

"I hate him."

"A few days ago I was already ready."

"I contacted a few people I trusted. We hid knives."

"Tonight, even if it cost every single one of us our lives, I was going to kill him."

Leon nodded.

"Your people probably would have all died. You would have died too."

"I know." Grey's face twisted into something worse than grief.

"But that's still better than being penned up like pigs, waiting for the day they drag you to the table."

"And then you showed up." He met Leon's eyes. "Thank you."

Leon smiled.

"No need for that. None of you have to die now."

He walked over to Grey and put a hand on his shoulder.

"You work for me, I settle your scores."

"Guaranteed satisfaction."

"How about it?"

Grey went still.

He looked at this man who had appeared from nowhere and dismantled everything, in a way Grey couldn't even begin to understand.

No hesitation. Not a second of it.

"Me and my people. We'll work for you."

The most direct pledge of loyalty there was.

Leon was satisfied.

He turned and walked back toward Robert, still keening on the ground.

Leon nudged his body with the toe of his boot.

"You like eating people, don't you?"

"So. How about I let you find out what you taste like?"

Robert looked like he'd just heard the worst thing that had ever existed. He had no answer for it.

Leon straightened up and issued his command.

"Eat yourself."

Robert's whole body locked up.

An expression of pure, tearing struggle crawled across his face.

But he couldn't stop it.

His intact left hand reached out on its own, fingers closing around his own thick calf.

"Ah! No!"

He was fighting himself. Wrestling with his own arm like it belonged to someone else.

"Shit, boss." Merle was watching from the side, mouth stretched in a wide, crooked grin. "That is one twisted way to have fun."

Leon frowned.

"Kind of disgusting."

He had no interest in watching this live.

He pointed to an empty shipping container nearby.

"Get in."

"Handle it yourself."

"Out of my sight."

Robert got to his feet. He walked in stiff, jerking steps, one foot in front of the other, into the dark of the container.

BANG!

Leon shut the door behind him without looking.

"Alright. This place is mine now."

He turned to face the Terminus members standing slack-jawed in the slaughterhouse, still not fully back inside their own heads.

"Starting today, you work for me."

"Follow orders, you eat. I won't treat you badly."

He pointed at the sealed container.

"Cross me, or try anything behind my back, and what's in there is your preview. I'll have you converted into Mutants, and even then you'll still end up working for me."

"We clear?"

Silence. They stared at him with something between awe and raw fear, and then, one after another, they bent.

Leon had pulled them out of hell. They were still processing the gratitude. Rebellion didn't even register as a thought.

"Good. Looks like we're all on the same page."

He looked at Grey.

"Clean this place up. And get everyone out of those containers."

Grey nodded, hard and sure.

He walked to the door of the container holding Robert and stopped. He didn't open it.

Just spoke toward the darkness inside, his voice flat.

"Robert. This is what you owe us."

Nothing came back.

Only the sound drifting through the metal walls, wet, rhythmic chewing, and underneath it, low, muffled sobbing that couldn't quite be swallowed down.

A few hours later.

Every original resident of Terminus, and every survivor who'd been caged as livestock, walked free.

They stood and stared at the guards who had once herded them like animals, now moving in quiet, obedient lines under Leon's people, cleaning the outpost from floor to ceiling.

They couldn't believe what they were seeing.

When Grey explained what had happened, the way they looked at Leon changed entirely.

Shane sent someone to check the container.

The man came back and Shane got the report. By the time Shane crossed the floor to Leon, his face was the color of old ash, like he'd walked face-first into a flour sack.

"Boss... that guy..."

He stopped in front of Leon, words failing him.

"What?" Leon was running inventory with Rick and didn't look up.

"He... he actually ate himself."

"Couldn't reach his stomach and torso, but his legs, his arms, ate until there was nothing left but bone."

"Jesus Christ. I never want to see anything like that again as long as I live."

Leon's interest was approximately zero.

"Fine. Dispose of him."

He had never once claimed to be a good man.

Getting Grey his payback had been an afterthought, a convenient bonus. The truth was simpler: uncontrollable trash like Robert was worth more dead than alive. He could be managed while breathing, but managing him would always eat up a slice of Leon's focus, and that was a tax Leon had no patience for.

So Robert got an invitation to die.

Clean solution. Eliminate the hidden threat. Bank Grey's gratitude in the process, the kind of gratitude that made a man work without being told twice.

What Leon actually cared about was the haul.

"53 Mutants converted this operation," Rick said, reading from the list in his hand. His expression had gone somewhere between disbelief and the beginning of acceptance.

"20 original Terminus residents. 6 survivors from the cages."

"Combined, we picked up roughly 80 able bodies."

"And this."

The sound reached them before the machine did, the low rumble of an engine, and then Abraham came rolling in from the far end of the track, driving a small locomotive, taking his time.

"Still runs," he said.

"Get us diesel, we can go wherever we want."

Leon looked at it.

His eyes sharpened.

Now that was something worth having.

"Merle. Take a few people, clear the track. Park it on the line closest to the prison and put someone on it around the clock."

"I'll figure out how to move it back to the prison properly. We'll find a use for it."

"All the shipping containers here come back with us too, construction, storage, whatever we need."

"And pull down the station's broadcast equipment. That thing has range. Might be useful for herding Walkers."

Leon worked through the list, calm and methodical, one order at a time.

➤ Next: What Would Happen If Walkers Could Shoot?