[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 525 - The Military and the President
Fort Benning Military Base.
The conference room was thick with smoke, cigar stench hanging in every corner.
A rush fax stamped with a red-and-white Umbrella Corporation logo hit the solid wood table with a crack.
"Read what this garbage actually says!"
Fort Benning's top commander, Major General Carter, had his tie half-yanked loose. Both hands braced on the table, the flesh at his jowls trembling with every ragged breath.
Field-grade officers lined both sides of the long table. Every face was grimmer than the one next to it.
The fax itself was brief.
A major safety incident at Umbrella Corporation's Spencer Mansion facility in the Arklay Mountains. Fort Benning's military forces were to deploy mechanized units immediately, coordinating with Umbrella's internal security teams to seal off the entire mountain region.
Not just Stryker Armored Vehicles. They were also demanding Apache gunships for aerial fire coverage.
"These bloodsuckers in white coats think they're commander-in-chief of the United States?"
"Have they forgotten what they are? A pack of drug dealers."
The armored regiment colonel on the left ground his cigarette dead in the ashtray.
"They turn the whole world into a slaughterhouse. Monsters eating people everywhere."
"Now their own backyard catches fire, their Subjects break loose, and they want us to mop it up?"
"Exactly." Another staff officer nodded.
"Mobilize mechanized troops for a sweep? On what authority? Our ammo and fuel aren't infinite."
"Outside Fort Benning's defensive perimeter, thousands of the dead slam against us every single day. We're barely holding our own line. Who has time for their problems?"
Carter's fist came down on the table.
"These parasites think we're their attack dogs. Whistle and we come. Wave us off and we go."
"Sir, you're saying we refuse?" the staff officer asked.
Carter's laugh was cold and short.
"Scan that garbage, package it, encrypt it, send it to Washington."
"Let His Excellency the President, the one still playing statesman in his underground bunker, figure it out."
"We're done here. Not our concern."
Washington, D.C. Underground nuclear bunker.
The air circulation system droned on without pause.
The Oval Office had been reproduced one-to-one inside this deep shelter. But no amount of fine decor could touch the tension that lived in the walls.
The current President of the United States, Arthur Graham, stared at the urgent telegram in his hand.
The man who had once stood before cameras looking vigorous and sure of himself now had graying temples, sunken eyes, and dark circles so deep he looked like a gambler three days without sleep.
"Bastards."
President Graham slapped the document onto the desk.
"A pharmaceutical company. A cancerous enterprise that does nothing but burn taxpayer money on bioweapons. By what right do they bypass the Pentagon and issue direct military orders to local garrisons?"
"By what right?"
The Chief of Staff standing before the desk kept his head down and said nothing.
"Send a reply to Carter at Fort Benning." Graham tugged at his collar, breathing short. "Tell him my position is clear."
"Refuse the lockdown."
"Without Pentagon authorization, not a single Humvee leaves that base."
"A bunch of lunatics made this mess. They can clean it up themselves."
The Chief of Staff hesitated, then accepted the order and left.
Graham picked up the whiskey from his desk and raised it to his lips.
The door opened.
The Chief of Staff was back. His face had gone 2 shades worse.
"What now?" Graham frowned.
"Mr. President. We've intercepted a communication." The Chief of Staff handed over a new briefing. "Inside Fort Benning itself. A faction with real authority has already gone around Major General Carter and reached a cooperation agreement with Umbrella Corporation."
"2 mechanized infantry companies and one armored platoon. They've already left the base. Heading for the Arklay Mountains."
Graham's hand stopped in midair, glass still raised.
He stared at the briefing. A full half minute passed.
He didn't erupt. He didn't throw the glass.
A bone-deep exhaustion climbed out from somewhere in his marrow and took everything with it.
"Carter." His voice came out flat and hollow. "What exactly does that man think his job is."
He sank back into the wide leather chair.
The glass slipped from his fingers. It rolled twice across the carpet and stopped.
The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away.
That old Eastern proverb. It had become the truest portrait of America.
The apocalypse had arrived. 98 percent of the communication network was gone. Government orders couldn't make it past the ruins of Washington.
The generals held the guns and the food. They had their own territories now. They were warlords, and they had been for some time.
Who was going to care about scraps of paper from a president hiding underground?
Umbrella Corporation had vaccines. Technology. Supplies. They could put real, tangible things in those warlords' hands.
What could he offer?
Verbal commendations?
His grip on this country was coming apart in real time. Visibly. Irreversibly.
And Fort Benning, a military stronghold of that scale, didn't even bother to pretend he mattered anymore.
Graham pressed his fingers against his throbbing temples.
The nation was gone.
His power was gone.
He genuinely wanted to resign. Just walk away and let whoever wanted this wreckage come take it. He was spent. He had nothing left to give it.
Then a thought surfaced.
Fort Benning was close. North of Atlanta.
And Atlanta was close to the Georgia State Correctional Facility.
Everything else dissolved. One thing remained.
His daughter.
Ashley.
His pampered, slightly stubborn, sweet-smiling daughter.
When the virus first broke out and the situation had already gone past saving, he had used the last favor he had left. Overriding every objection. Forcing a small shelter to be set up at the Georgia State Correctional Facility, and getting emergency supplies routed there.
That facility wasn't anywhere on the strategic defense list.
As a second layer of insurance, he had also quietly bribed the inmate boss running things inside that prison. A mafia figure. A hard-timer with a serious sentence.
The man had real reach. A lot of the inmates in A-Block moved when he said so.
A-Block wasn't somewhere you stumbled into. Everyone operating there with any ease was dangerous.
Graham had promised him more money than he could spend in a lifetime and a presidential pardon. The condition: take care of Ashley inside those walls, and make sure none of those thugs put their hands on her.
And there was a second layer beyond that.
He had also heard, back then, that Ashley had hurt someone in the prison. Stabbed a female inmate badly with a toothbrush.
He remembered the warden. Wallace.
He had promised Wallace a promotion, a move up to the state level. So Wallace had gone light on Ashley, kept the case inside the facility rather than handing it to the courts, swallowed it whole.
And because he feared the prison might fall, he had also arranged for a heavy machine gun to be sent in quietly. The kind of weapon a correctional facility had no business having. He wanted it there as a last defense for his daughter.
Against those weak, shambling things crawling out of the labs, it should have been more than enough.
But that had been months ago.
No word since. Nothing.
Satellite phone, dead. Shortwave radio, nothing.
In a world like this one, a young woman. Pretty. Alone. In a building full of violent felons.
Even with a deal made in advance, who could honestly guarantee that man hadn't already flipped?
And Wallace, he'd heard, had died later. Something about corruption. Bribery.
The chill crept up Graham's spine the longer he sat with it.
Cold sweat ran down his forehead.
No.
He couldn't keep waiting.
The government could rot. He had no strength left to hold it together, and he no longer wanted to try. Whoever was willing to inherit this disaster was welcome to it.
But his daughter had to be alive.
He pressed the red intercom button on his desk.
"Get me Colonel Smith. Now."
➤ Next: William Cracks