[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 500 - Confidence to Back It Up

"Let them find us."

Leon traced the red line on the map with one finger, stopping at Fort Benning.

"We're not the same outfit we used to be."

Rick frowned. He set the marker down, opened his mouth, and Leon raised a hand and shut him down before a word came out.

"Those soldiers you're worried about — they carry M4s, drive Hummers, and if we're unlucky, they roll up in a Bradley."

Leon knocked his knuckles twice on the table.

"I've got more Walkers than I can count. We could bury them in sheer numbers. Unless they're ready for a full-scale war."

"And if they really want to go that route, I wouldn't mind making a personal trip to Fort Benning. Give those boys a hands-on biology lesson. Show them exactly what one T-Virus carrier can do to a base."

Two seconds of dead silence.

Merle cracked first. A short, sharp laugh burst out of him.

"Boss, I'll be honest, that one gave me goosebumps."

Shawn was leaning against the wall, both arms crossed. He tilted his head and watched Leon for a long moment.

"Yeah," he said finally. "You've actually got the legs to back that up now."

Of course he did, right now Leon was a human-shaped tyrannosaur who could bend steel plate with his bare hands. If he decided to slip into Fort Benning and make a mess of things, he could turn the entire base into a screaming nightmare.

Which was exactly why the Leeches couldn't wait.

You didn't hamstring yourself just to stay invisible. You grabbed every hour available and grew, fast, until you were something they couldn't afford to touch before they even realized you'd become that.

Weakness got you killed. Nobody could save you from your own lack of preparation.

Leon glanced out the window.

"That said — let's not go looking for trouble."

Nobody needed that spelled out. War with Fort Benning wasn't in any of their plans. But if those uniformed idiots decided to come knocking, they didn't have to be gentle about answering the door.

"One more thing."

Candice came in flipping through a notebook, her white lab coat streaked with something unidentified. She'd clearly just come from the lab.

"Large-scale Leech farming has a side effect."

"What side effect?" Jim leaned in.

"Waste." Candice pushed her glasses up. "The higher the density, the faster it accumulates. Nitrogen and phosphorus will blow past safe levels fast. The whole river becomes severely eutrophic."

"Plain version: the water turns green, starts stinking, and probably breeds a thick bloom of harmful algae."

Jim's face dropped.

"So we'd be poisoning our own water supply?"

"Who said anything about poisoning it?"

Leon cut in.

Everyone looked at him.

"That's fertilizer. Ready-made."

Candice blinked.

"You mean..."

"Let the waste settle and ferment, dilute it with water, and run it straight onto the fields." Leon stood up and tapped the farming area on the western side of the map. "Nitrogen and phosphorus overload isn't a disaster for crops. It's a windfall. Just watch the concentration so you don't burn the roots."

"Drain the moat water into sedimentation tanks on a regular cycle. One week to ferment. Dilute it tenfold, then irrigate. Whatever's left over flows back into the river naturally."

"We'll be producing more grain than this prison can eat."

Candice nodded slowly.

"It's workable. Organic nitrogen in Leech waste converts to ammonium nitrogen at a high rate. Properly diluted, it's genuinely excellent liquid fertilizer. Just keep a close eye on the dilution ratio — too concentrated and it'll kill the roots outright."

"That's Hershel's problem," Leon said. "He's a farmer. He knows this better than any of us."

"Drinking water, we dig wells."

Plan locked. Leon handed out assignments.

Rick would oversee the overall pace of the moat project. Dawn would take a team south into the tree line and clear an isolation corridor. Jim and Dale kept working on the existing water pits and started roughing out the sedimentation tank design.

"We don't have enough excavators."

That was the hard ceiling on all of it. Two crawlers, trying to cut artificial channels across the west and south perimeters. At current pace, 2 months wouldn't be enough.

"Atlanta." Leon picked up the car keys from the table and bounced them once in his palm. "Every construction site in the city has what we need."

Merle's ears went up.

"Boss. Let me go."

"You stay and keep catching Walkers for the Leeches." Leon didn't look up. "Daryl's team can handle it."

Merle's mouth opened. Shawn smacked him on the back of the head before anything came out.

"Boss says do it, you do it. Stop whining."