[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 488 - The Sewer's Clogged?

Leon punched again and again, bare-handed, pounding a wrecked SUV into scrap.

He was stripped to the waist, muscles coiled tight, steam rising off his skin in the cold wind.

By the time Rick and the others arrived, the sight stopped them cold.

The car had still vaguely held its shape before. Now it was a crumpled heap of twisted metal, like something a giant had taken its hands to.

"Holy shit..."

Merle sucked in a sharp breath. His cigarette slipped from his fingers.

"Leon turned into Superman?"

He looked at the wreckage. Then at Leon standing in the middle of it. Something in his eyes shifted, not just awe. Fear.

Pounding a car into scrap wasn't just raw power. You had to make sure your bones didn't shatter, that your body could actually carry the load.

The T-Virus enhancement, it seemed, had gone straight for the flesh. Murphy's Restoration Vaccine had gone for the mind.

Leon right now was the complete package.

"Leon." Rick called out.

"We've got a situation."

Leon nodded. The rage was out of him, and he felt cleaner for it.

The Loss of Humanity had been pushed back further. He wanted to test it this time, no Rebekah, no treatment, see exactly how long he could hold the line. Maybe he could close out this vulnerability for good.

He followed Rick back to the prison.

"Has the boss gotten... weirder?" T-Dog asked, voice low.

Merle glanced at him. "No shit. The man's not even human anymore — of course he's weird."

T-Dog scratched his head.

"Not human? He seems the same to me."

Merle rolled his eyes. "You ever seen anybody tear a car apart with their bare hands? Because I sure as hell haven't. He's done being human, T. Accept it."

Back at the prison, the tension hadn't lifted.

Ashley's room was under tight guard, Candice planted outside and not moving.

In the lab, the Solar Stairway sat in careful storage.

Then a survivor sprinted up to Leon, face ash-white.

The trouble Rick had mentioned.

The man was shaking so hard he could barely form words.

"Leon, the drainage pipes — the drainage pipes are clogged!"

"I heard sounds inside. Like... like thousands of snakes, all moving at once."

"I can't go back down there. I'm not going back down there."

"Take me there." Leon's voice went flat.

Had the Leeches followed them here?

Their sewer system was well-maintained. Someone cleaned it on rotation. It didn't just clog for no reason.

He had to see it himself.

The sewers hadn't seen daylight in years.

Old pipes running in every direction, sewage moving in a slow, thick crawl. You used to catch fat rats bolting through the dark every now and then. Now there were no rats. Nothing moved. The silence had a texture to it.

Leon walked point, his high combat boots making soft wet sounds against the slick concrete.

T-Dog, Glenn, and Abraham came behind him, high-powered flashlights cutting through the dark, sweeping every corner.

"This place is genuinely disgusting." T-Dog had one hand clamped over his nose.

Glenn's frown deepened. His light stopped on a section of pipe wall.

Fresh black slime. Several thick streaks of it, winding across the gray concrete like someone had dragged a brush loaded with ink.

"What is that?" He pointed.

Leon crouched down and touched a fingertip to the slime. Brought it to his nose.

The stench hit like a fist, rotten and animal and wrong.

"Leech excretion." Ice in his voice.

"Leeches?" T-Dog's voice jumped. "You don't mean the Leech Queen? Didn't we blow her apart?"

Leon stood and kept walking.

The slime trails grew thicker the deeper they went. The stench thickened with them.

The tunnel opened up.

An abandoned cistern. Massive, circular, the sewage standing waist-high, every surface slick with something that turned the stomach.

The flashlight beams swept across it.

Every one of them went still.

There was no giant monster at the center of the cistern.

What was there was worse.

A nest.

Countless black Leeches, plastered over every wall, every pipe, carpeting the surface of the water itself. They writhed against each other in a constant, heaving mass. The sound they made was the kind that got under your skin and stayed there.

And at the center of that black, suffocating sea, a creature. Half a person's height. Shaped like a swollen teardrop. Growing. Visibly, steadily growing.

Its entire surface was covered in vesicles.

Each one trembling.

Then — pop.

A miniature Leech punched out of one, hit the water, and vanished into the swarm.

At the base of the creature, a thick umbilical cord pulsed with every heartbeat, sunk deep into the sewage below.

"Jesus Christ." Abraham's voice had lost its steadiness.

"Is that... a new Leech Queen?"

Leon's breathing went heavy.

There it was.

The damn thing just wouldn't stay dead.

His eyes pulled in detail fast. Something deep inside the creature pulsed dark red. It was pulling organic matter from the water around it, converting it, pumping out offspring at a rate that made no sense. Faster than anything they'd seen at the Cadre Training Facility. Far faster.

And it didn't need anything from them to do it. Once the Leech count hit critical mass, they'd turn on each other, devour until only the strongest survived. Until something new evolved.

"This isn't over yet?" The despair in T-Dog's voice was raw.

"No." Leon's face had gone stone.

He stared at the creature. Still swelling. Still birthing.

"It's just getting started."

"And we got here exactly in time."

He turned to look at Rick and the others.

"This thing is more dangerous than every Walker outside that fence."

"It's using the prison's entire sewer system to build its army."

"When they come up, the whole prison is gone."

"Then what do we do?" Rick asked.

Leon moved.

Straight toward the cistern.

"Boss!" Merle's voice cracked. "What the hell are you doing?!"

Leon didn't turn around.

"Pulling it out by the root."

Every step he took, the weight of the air around him changed. That compressed, violent force he'd been carrying since the parking lot, it wasn't compressed anymore.

The Leech swarm at his feet felt it. They surged toward him, flooding over each other, climbing for his legs.

Leon's eyes went cold and sharp and utterly focused.

He was going to end this the direct way. The brutal way. The only way that actually finished it.

He was going to make this body, this flesh the T-Virus had rebuilt from the inside out, do what it was made to do.

He was going to make these things pay. Every last one of them. So Ashley could wait in safety for whatever miracle was coming.

This was the first thing he would do for her.

Leon hit the black water at full stride, the surface exploding around him.

He drove straight at the miniature Leech Queen, still swelling, still spitting out her young, and she had no idea what was coming.

➤ Next: Encountering Marcus Again