[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 575 - Shooting Down the Old Pervert

Claire gritted her teeth and crawled forward on hands and knees through the narrow metal duct.

Her knees scraped raw against the rivets. She moved faster.

Finally — the louver vent at the basement ventilation shaft.

She slowed.

Claire inched toward the grate and peered down through the slats.

The basement was lit in harsh, dead white.

Sherry was huddled in the far corner, her small body shaking hard, both hands pressed over her eyes, not even daring to cry out loud.

And the fat pig in the police uniform, Brian, had his back to the vent.

He stood in front of the stainless steel gurney. The one with the little girl's body on it.

Claire narrowed her eyes, trying to see what he was doing.

What she saw next made her stomach turn inside out. She nearly vomited on the spot.

Brian was unbuckling his belt.

His bloated body pressed against the corpse, gutted, hollowed out, skin crosshatched with suture lines.

"Oh, sweetheart. You're so quiet."

A wet, revolting wheeze came out of his mouth.

"You're a defective piece, but before I start on the new material, I always like a little warm-up first."

"Your muscles have stiffened up a bit. That's fine. I can work with that."

He actually—

Claire felt her scalp lift off her skull.

No human being could do this.

This thing wasn't a man. It was a monster with a face on.

She bit down hard on her lower lip and forced the nausea back down. The revolver in her grip was white-knuckle tight. She wanted to pull the trigger right now, put a hole straight through that fat skull.

But the metal slats were in the way. The angle was wrong.

If she missed and set this lunatic off, Sherry wouldn't survive.

Claire forced herself calm.

She waited.

Waiting for the two women upstairs to move.

Brian was lost in his own filth. Muttering his obscenities in a steady, unbroken stream.

In the corner, Sherry buried her face lower. She couldn't look. She just sobbed, small and helpless.

Then,

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Heavy, muffled impacts from directly above. Then the crash of something solid slamming into metal. The basement's iron door shuddered and rang with a sharp, vibrating hum.

"Open up! Is anyone alive in there!"

Tara's voice, loud, deliberate, carrying.

"The lock's jammed! Try the crowbar!"

Lilly shouted from outside to play her part.

Brian stopped dead.

He jerked upright, hitching up his trousers as he spun around. The jowls of his face twitched and jumped. The lust in those small eyes snuffed out and ignited as pure rage.

Who dared interrupt him?

Who dared come to his station and pound on his door?

"You filthy bitches!"

He fumbled at his belt, buckled it with clumsy hands, and snatched the service pistol off the gurney.

He stormed toward the iron door.

"Get lost! This is private property!"

He pressed up against it and roared at whoever was on the other side.

"Knock again and I'll shoot you both dead!"

The noise outside didn't stop. It got louder.

Tara was clearly someone who didn't scare easy.

"Go ahead and shoot, dumbass!"

She hollered right back.

"Come open the door if you've got the guts! Let's see who shoots who!"

Brian's face went iron-gray. His whole body was pressed against the door now, head cocked, straining to hear, gun tight in his fist, thumb already pushing off the safety.

Perfect.

Claire drew a slow breath.

The racket outside swallowed every small sound she made.

She reached into her hip pocket and pulled out a folding knife. She worked the tip into the rusted screws along the louver's edge. This grate hadn't been touched in years. The screws were already half-loose.

She moved fast and careful at the same time, chipping rust from around each screw, then levering them up.

One.

Two.

Brian was still at the door, trading insults.

"You're looking to die! Do you know who I am!"

His attention was locked on that door completely.

He had no idea death had already crawled into position directly above him.

Claire worked out the last two screws.

She cupped the grate with her palm and eased it back into the duct.

No sound.

The shaft was open.

She folded the knife and slipped it back into her pocket. Every noise she'd made was buried under the crack of Tara's gun stock hammering the door outside.

Sherry seemed to feel something.

The little girl lifted her head. Through the blur of tears, she found the woman in the red top.

She'd come back.

Sherry's eyes went wide. Her mouth fell open.

Claire raised one finger to her lips, fast, sharp, unmistakable. A look in her eyes that left no room for questions.

Sherry clamped both hands over her own mouth and nodded hard and fast.

The tears came harder. But this time they were something else.

Claire's gaze dropped back to the bloated figure below.

Brian was still raging.

"You picked the wrong person!"

"When I get out there, I'm going to strip you two bitches naked, string you up from the station gate, and let you rot in the wind!"

He kicked the door.

Claire drew the revolver. Her thumb pressed the hammer back.

Click.

The mechanical snap vanished in the noise outside.

She raised the gun. Both hands. Steady grip.

She looked at this hysterical, heaving animal below her, and her stomach turned over one more time.

"Go do your art in hell."

She pulled the trigger.

She hadn't planned on leaving him alive. Not for a second. Letting filth like this breathe only meant more girls ended up on that gurney.

BANG!

The gunshot detonated inside the basement.

The revolver spat a tongue of fire.

The large-caliber round punched straight through the back of Brian's skull.

The back of his head exploded in a burst of red mist. Brain matter and blood fanned out across the iron door in a wide, wet spray.

His obese body lurched forward and hit the floor like a dropped sack of meat.

Those small, disease-filled eyes stared open.

He never figured out what happened.

Claire held the firing stance, breathing hard.

She watched the fat body on the floor go still.

Her hands started shaking. She couldn't stop them.

This was the first living person she had ever killed.

She felt no regret. Only the clean, quiet satisfaction of taking out the garbage.

In the corner, Sherry watched it all in a daze. She didn't move until Brian had been completely still for a long moment. Then her hands finally came down from her mouth.

She struggled up from the floor. She saw Claire drop down from the vent, and she stumbled forward and threw herself in.

"Wuu... wuu..."

Sherry locked both arms around Claire's waist and wept without holding back.

Claire holstered the revolver. She dropped to one knee on the floor and pulled the little girl in tight, one hand patting slow and steady across her back.

"It's over."

Her voice came out soft.

"He can never hurt you again."

Outside the iron door, Tara and Lilly heard the shot and went still.

"Hey!" Tara pressed her mouth to the door. "What's the situation in there? You still alive?"

Claire raised her head.

She took Sherry's hand and walked to the door.

"Still alive," she called out. "The scum is dealt with. He locked it from inside — I'm opening it now."

The door swung open. Tara and Lilly stood there with guns up.

When they saw Claire, and the small, unharmed girl behind her, both women let out a breath.

Lilly stepped past and took in the basement. The wretched corpse on the gurney. Brian face-down in a spreading pool of blood.

She turned to Claire.

"Nice work." Real approval in her voice. "With a beast like that, you put him down. No hesitation."

Tara crouched in front of Sherry.

"What's your name, little one?"

Sherry gripped the hem of Claire's shirt and looked at the two strangers with wary eyes.

"My name is Sherry."

"Sherry Birkin."

Claire didn't react to the name. She'd only just arrived. She had no idea who William Birkin was.

Lilly's eyebrow went up.

She had a vague memory, someone at the prison had mentioned a researcher connected to the Umbrella Corporation. The name Birkin had come up. It wasn't a common name.

And there was already someone at the prison with that exact surname.

"Alright," Tara said, standing back up, scanning the room. "Whatever your name is, we can't stay here. That gunshot was loud. It'll pull walkers in from the street." She headed for the door. "We need to move."

Claire nodded. She squeezed Sherry's hand.

"Let's go."

But as they moved toward the exit, Claire looked over at Tara.

She'd fought alongside these two women. That was something. But she still knew almost nothing about them, and she still had to find her brother. Taking a little girl into that was not a rational plan.

The question was whether she could actually trust these two.

She decided to watch them first. Get a feel for who they were. Then decide whether Sherry could be left in their hands.

But Sherry was just a child. What if they saw her as dead weight and said no?

Claire didn't have an answer yet.

➤ Next: An Invitation to Travel Together