[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 574 - Encountering Tara and Lilly

Brian dragged the number out, letting each digit hang in the air.

The gun barrel pressed hard against Sherry's soft temple — hard enough to leave a red mark in the skin.

Sherry's tears spilled over. Her small body shook without stopping, pinned in Brian's grip.

Claire's fingers were locked tight around the edge of the trigger.

She was only eighteen. Two months away from nineteen.

She was an excellent shot. Chris had taught her how to fire under extreme stress.

But the target in front of her wasn't a stationary one. It was a seasoned operator using a little girl as a human shield.

Brian's eyes, buried deep in folds of fat, gleamed with cold cunning.

Decades in law enforcement. What kind of desperate criminal hadn't he seen? What kind of rookie hadn't he played?

He knew exactly what was going through the head of someone this young, this green, this stuffed full of righteous conviction.

"What are you hesitating for?" Brian looked at Claire with a mocking smile.

"You think you're faster than me?"

"Go ahead and try." He tilted the barrel down slightly.

"But you know what?"

"Even if your bullet punches through my skull, my muscles will spasm in that instant, and this gun will go off."

"Bang."

He supplied the sound effect himself.

"This little darling's head will pop like a watermelon."

Claire's breathing turned ragged. The arm holding the gun started to tremble, just barely, just enough, and she couldn't stop it.

Brian caught that detail immediately.

Heh. Right on cue. Cracks were already forming in her psychological defenses.

"Listen here, little spitfire."

He shifted to a reasonable, almost fatherly tone.

"You came busting in here to be a hero. That's admirable."

"But reality isn't a Hollywood movie."

"If you pull that trigger right now, this girl will absolutely die."

"She didn't have to die."

"But if her head gets blown open today, that's on you."

"Your stupid recklessness will have killed her with your own hands!"

Brian's words landed like knife strikes, finding every soft spot Claire had.

She didn't want to kill anyone.

She definitely didn't want her own rash impulse to get this innocent little girl killed.

But she still wanted to save her.

"Shut up!" Claire shouted, trying to bury the wavering inside her.

"You disgusting freak!"

"Freak?" Brian laughed out loud.

"In a world where people eat each other, what I'm doing, preserving the crystallized art of humanity — is called greatness."

"Now. I'll give you one last choice."

He dropped the smile. His expression went cold and flat.

"Either shoot, and we all die together."

"Or you can keep holding that gun and slowly back yourself up those stairs."

"As long as you get off my turf, I promise nobody dies today."

Sherry heard those words and looked at Claire with desperate eyes.

"Sister..."

"Please, don't go..."

"Don't give up on me..."

Sherry's sobbing voice twisted something in Claire's chest into a knot.

But she looked at Brian's rock-steady arm. At the sidearm that could take Sherry's life at any moment.

She had no choice at all.

Claire clenched her jaw and swallowed.

She slowly lowered the revolver half an inch.

"Hah. Now we're getting somewhere." Brian raised an eyebrow.

"Good girl. Back up slowly."

Claire kept her eyes locked on Brian as her feet began to shuffle backward.

One step.

Two steps.

She reached the stairwell entrance.

"No!" Sherry screamed.

She struggled with everything she had. Brian pinned her in place without effort.

"Sister, don't leave me!"

"Please..."

"I'm begging you, I don't want to die..."

Claire's eyes went red.

She looked at the despair filling Sherry's eyes.

"I'm sorry."

She choked the words out.

"I really can't save you."

Then she spun around and ran, taking the stairs fast.

Brian watched Claire disappear around the bend of the stairwell. The fat flesh at the corners of his mouth bunched up again.

"Heh heh. What a good, obedient little girl."

He yanked Sherry up off the floor and walked her to the heavy iron door.

BANG!

He slammed it shut.

CLICK!

The lock cylinder turned, sealing out the outside world entirely.

He wouldn't make the mistake of leaving it unlocked out of impatience again.

He turned around and looked at Sherry, curled in the corner and shaking.

"Now," he said. "No one can save you."

The basement's pale, harsh light fell across his twisted face and made it look all the more ghastly.

---

First-floor lobby of the police station.

Claire burst out of the basement stairwell and pressed her back against the wall, gulping air in great ragged lungfuls.

She didn't run for the front door.

Instead she slid the revolver back into the holster at her waist.

She scrubbed her hands hard over her stiffened cheeks, forcing herself to think.

No. There was absolutely no way she was leaving that little girl behind.

The retreat just now was a delaying tactic. Nothing more.

A direct confrontation had no chance of success. She had to find another way.

Claire lifted her head and swept her gaze across the cluttered lobby.

A floor plan hung on the wall behind the reception desk.

She walked over quickly and wiped the blood spattered across it away with her hand.

Her eyes traced the basement layout on the diagram.

Just then.

Footsteps at the entrance. Extremely faint.

Not the shambling, dragging sound of Walkers.

The soft, deliberate scuff of a living person treading light.

Claire snapped to attention instantly.

She wrenched the revolver out, rolled, and dropped behind the reception desk in one motion.

The gun barrel poked through a broken gap in the wood paneling, trained on the front door.

Tara and Lilly were moving through the entrance one behind the other, careful and slow.

Lilly had an old-style hunting rifle. Tara had a handgun.

Both of them hugged the wall.

"Where's that girl in the red jacket?" Tara asked in a low voice.

"Didn't see her come out. She's probably still inside." Lilly answered.

"Stop right there."

Claire's voice came from behind the reception desk, carrying an unmistakable edge of warning.

"Are you looking for me?"

Tara and Lilly froze.

Lilly swung the hunting rifle toward the sound in an instant.

"Put the gun down!" Claire rose slowly, the revolver aimed steady at Lilly. "Are you two working for that fat bastard?"

Tara frowned.

"What fat bastard?"

"We're just passing through. We saw you go in and came over to see what was happening."

Lilly looked at Claire's face, young, but hard with a fierce edge, and slowly let the rifle barrel drop.

"We don't mean any harm." Lilly said. "We're just looking for weapons."

"If you're talking about whoever is in this station, we have no idea who they are. And if you're one of them, we'll turn around and leave right now."

Claire watched the two of them for a few seconds.

They genuinely didn't look like that twisted cop's accomplices.

They looked like survivors drifting from place to place.

She lowered her gun barrel slightly.

"There's a deranged cop downstairs. He's got a little girl, around ten years old." Claire laid it out fast. "He has her locked in a basement specimen room. There are bodies of girls in there."

"The reason I couldn't shoot just now was because that bastard was using her as a human shield."

Tara muttered a quiet curse.

"This world really does have every kind of garbage in it."

Lilly stepped forward.

"You need help?"

Claire looked at them.

"You're willing to help me?"

"That little girl is scared half to death. I have to get her out."

She pointed at the floor plan on the wall.

"The ventilation duct in that basement connects to the rear yard garage."

Claire looked at Tara and Lilly. "If you're willing to help, I need you two to make some noise up here — draw that fat bastard's attention to the front entrance. As long as he moves toward that iron door, I can drop through the vent and pull her out."

Tara and Lilly exchanged a glance.

This had risks.

But making noise to draw attention wasn't too difficult.

And besides, they were already heading to find the man named Leon, a small favor like this could earn them a bit of goodwill going in.

On top of that, Lilly had a daughter of her own. She was a mother. She couldn't stand the sight of something like this.

Clearly, the decision she'd made just moments ago had already been thrown out the window.

That's just how it is with people who can't harden their hearts.

"Fine." Lilly nodded. "We'll go bang on the front door. Move fast."

Claire nodded, gratitude plain on her face.

"Thank you."

She turned and ran deeper into the corridor, straight for the rear yard garage.

Several scrapped police cruisers sat out back.

Weeds grew thick along the walls.

Claire found the ventilation opening marked on the floor plan.

The iron grate was rusted solid.

She pried out the corroded screws by force and threw the grate aside.

Inside was a pitch-black duct.

Without a moment's hesitation, Claire clamped the revolver between her teeth, got on all fours, and crawled in.

Dark. Impossibly cramped.

It could barely fit one person moving on their belly.

She forced down her discomfort and inched forward.

A faint glimmer of light appeared ahead.

The louvered vent cover for the basement air shaft.

Confirmed — she could already hear Brian's voice.

"Don't look so miserable, sweetheart."

"This is an art form."

Claire quickened her crawl.

---

In the basement.

Sherry was curled in the corner, knees pulled tight against her chest.

Claire's departure had taken the last sliver of her hope with it.

All she could do was stare at the fat man with eyes full of despair.

➤ Next: Shooting Down the Old Pervert