[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 483 - The Confident Ada

Just as Merle was wrestling with whether to make his move.

Pfft!

A muffled pop, so faint it was almost swallowed whole by the Walkers' snarling, cut through the noise.

The Walker closest to Merle — its rotting head just exploded. Red and white splattered across Merle's face.

Merle froze.

Everyone instinctively looked toward the direction the bullet had come from.

Deep in the darkness, a figure emerged from the shadows of the treeline. Slow. Unhurried.

High heels on dead leaves. The sound was soft, but it landed on every single person like a boot on bare skin.

A red cheongsam caught the swaying headlights and burned like an open flame.

Ada Wong.

"Fuck! That bitch again!"

Shawn Greene was the first to curse. His gun barrel swung instantly, locking onto the woman strolling toward them like she was out for an evening walk.

"You've got some fucking nerve showing your face!"

"I will kill you right now."

Abraham raised his gun too. His weathered face was all killing intent, nothing else.

"Where's Rebekah? What did you do with her!"

Ada stopped.

She glanced at Leon — at whatever demon was wearing his face right now — then swept her eyes across the men surrounding her, every one of them treating her like target number one. Not a trace of fear showed on her face.

"I'm here to help him."

"Help my ass!"

Merle wiped the brains and gore off his cheek and leveled that grenade launcher straight at her.

"I watched you stab the boss with my own eyes! What's your story now? That was Chinese Acupuncture?"

"Where's Rebekah?"

Rick's voice came out low and flat. He wasn't wound up like Shawn and the others, but the cold in his eyes cut deeper than any gun barrel.

"She's safe."

Ada finally pulled her gaze off Leon and settled it on Rick.

"Somewhere you'd never think to look. But she's safe."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"The Spencer Mansion." Two words, dropped clean.

The name meant nothing to Rick or any of them. But the absolute certainty behind it left no room to argue.

"Now." Ada took one step forward, completely ignoring every gun pointed at her.

"You can keep aiming those at me and throw away the last chance you've got. Or you can bring him back."

She nodded toward Leon.

Silence.

She was right. The biggest threat here wasn't this woman. It was Leon, completely off the leash, pulling a Walker Horde down on all of them. It didn't matter how good they were. Against that many Walkers, people would get hurt.

"You have a way?" Rick asked.

Ada nodded. She started walking, step by step, straight toward the center of it all.

Closer to Leon.

Ten meters.

Five.

Leon's hollow eyes drifted away from the cluster of prey he'd been tracking and settled on this new arrival.

He tilted his head. Assessing.

Ada stopped in front of him. Less than three steps between them.

She looked at his face. Familiar. Wrong. She looked at his eyes, and found nothing human left inside them.

The Walkers kept packing in around them, their roaring loud enough to rattle teeth.

But between these two, right in the center of that hellish noise, something strange settled. A pocket of quiet that didn't belong.

"Leon."

"It's me. Ada..."

She spoke.

Leon's body went still. Just for an instant.

Something flickered in those empty eyes. A fragment of confusion, there and gone.

It's working.

Every heart in the group lurched upward.

Rick stepped forward without thinking, something wild and disbelieving breaking open on his face.

Ada watched that brief struggle move across Leon's features and took it as a sign. Two months of living side by side had left something in him, buried under all that savagery. She'd found it.

She stepped closer. Reached out, fingers moving toward his face.

"Leon. It's me. I'm back..."

The next second.

Leon moved.

Black lightning. No one tracked it.

BANG!

The impact hit like a sledgehammer wrapped in silence. The kind of sound that registers in the jaw before the brain catches up.

Ada's slender body whipped backward in a horrible arc. She flew off her feet and slammed into the Humvee with bone-jarring force, then crumpled and slid to the ground.

Her mouth was open. Blood and bile came up together and hit the dirt in front of her.

Leon's fist. Her stomach. No hesitation at all.

The whole world seemed to mute.

Everyone stood frozen.

They stared at Ada on the ground, curled around her midsection like a shrimp, coughing in ragged, wrenching bursts. Then they looked at Leon, slowly pulling his fist back, face completely blank.

He didn't know any of them anymore. Not a single one.

A flicker of fury moved across Ada's face.

➤ Next: Large-Scale Domestic Violence Scene