[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 593 - Nipped in the Bud

Spenser lay on the railcar floor, coughing up blood in violent spasms. His fractured ribs had punched through his lung. The internal damage was fatal, he couldn't even form the words to beg.

He could only lie face-down and convulse like a dying stray dog, blood gurgling steadily from the corner of his mouth.

Alice cried out.

She clapped both hands over her mouth, staring at Leon with pure disbelief.

Her mind was a tangled wreck, but somewhere in her gut she knew: brutally finishing off an unarmed man who had lost everything, every memory, every threat, crossed every line there was.

And this man apparently had some kind of connection to her.

"Are you insane!"

Alice screamed it, her composure shattering completely.

Her fingers were shaking. She actually wanted to rush forward and shove Leon away.

"He doesn't remember anything!"

"Why do you have to kill him!"

Leon didn't give her the chance.

His eyes were utterly cold. He raised his right leg again.

The tactical boot came down with devastating force. No hesitation. Straight onto Spenser's skull.

Splat.

The dull crack of a shattering skull spread through the car.

Spenser's head burst like a tomato under a hydraulic press. Red and white brain matter mixed with dark crimson blood and exploded outward in a radial spray, splattering violently across the floor and along the edges of the metal seats.

The headless body convulsed twice.

Then went completely still.

Blood droplets spattered onto Alice's red silk dress.

Alice stood frozen where she was.

The incomprehension and horror in those blue eyes just kept expanding.

She looked at the pulped, bloody wreckage on the floor. Then she lifted her head and stared hard at Leon's face.

She felt the man standing in front of her was somehow even more of a monster than Umbrella Corporation.

Leon slowly pulled his foot back and wiped the boot sole clean on Spenser's trouser leg, his expression one of pure, unhurried disgust.

"Shut up and listen to me."

He cut off whatever was building in Alice before it could erupt.

"Your memories, and his memories, will both come back. Slowly, but they will."

"I'm not blind. I know he's useless right now."

"But if we don't deal with this liability in advance, once he fully remembers just how filthy the things he's done actually were — he will absolutely sell out every single one of us to save his own skin."

"So you should understand the difference between one person dying and a whole group of people dying."

"I don't want to die. So the only option is that he does."

Leon tossed the body out through the railcar door, then turned to look at Alice.

"I've been burned by this kind of thing before. Many times."

"I believe everyone who's survived in this world has been burned by it too."

"So. If you want to make it out here — and live better than everyone else while you're at it — then mercy is the most lethal poison there is."

"You have to snuff out the risks that could blow up in your face, right there in the cradle, before they get the chance."

"That is the most sensible choice."

Leon stepped one pace closer to her.

He looked down at her from above.

"Alice. Truly. You had better trust me completely."

Alice looked down at his tactical boots, still smeared with brain matter. The nauseating stench of blood hit her straight through the skull.

She shook her head and retreated half a step, her back pressing against the wall of the car.

This level of extreme, bloody violence was something she genuinely could not process. Let alone think about building any kind of trust on, absurd or otherwise.

This man was simply too violent.

Leon looked at the fear and wariness filling her eyes. His brow furrowed slightly.

He drew in a long breath and let it out hard.

"Forget it."

A helpless sigh.

He was still a person, not some Tyrant who only knew how to issue commands. He understood exactly how massive a cognitive shock this was for a clone who had only just woken up.

But he could not ignore the safety of everyone around him just to build goodwill with Alice.

"It's fine if you don't trust me right now."

Leon turned away and walked straight to an empty seat and lay down.

"Give it a few hours. Walk through this underground nightmare yourself. See what's here with your own eyes. After that, you'll understand exactly what kind of scum I just stomped to death."

"You'll be glad he died at the very start, before he ever got a single chance to cause trouble."

At that moment, the train began to decelerate.

Ada pushed the lever at the control console, and the braking system engaged fully. The train slid slowly into the final underground platform and came to a steady stop.

"We've arrived, everyone."

Ada's cool, clear voice echoed through the car.

Leon led the way off the train, weapon up, scanning the surroundings with sharp vigilance.

The platform was almost completely dark.

Only a few red emergency lamps flickered on the walls.

The entire floor was covered in black standing water. Every step sent a flat, wet slap echoing outward.

Chris swept the Tactical Flashlight across the ground ahead.

Devastation everywhere.

Umbrella Corporation's classified documents and plastic folders were soaking in the standing water, drifting aimlessly. Overturned trash cans. Scattered mugs. The debris told the story of people who had fled this place in absolute panic.

"Everyone form up. Stay alert."

Chris gave the order in a low voice, raised his rifle, and moved to the front.

Jill stayed close at Alice's side. Ada covered the rear. Leon walked in the center of the formation, his eyes sweeping continuously across the metal blast doors lining both sides of the corridor.

The group moved through the long underground passage.

Boots splashing through standing water, the only sound of life in this place.

Not a single Walker anywhere in sight.

"How did this place end up like this."

Jill frowned, using her gun barrel to flick aside a damp printed page plastered to the wall.

"Because no one here could get out."

Leon picked up where she left off.

He knew exactly what this was: the Red Queen's defensive protocols, engaged and locked down hard. Ordinary people had no real way to contend with the Red Queen.

The group turned through two corridor bends.

The view ahead opened up without warning.

An enormous bulletproof glass curtain wall stretched across the passage in front of them. It had originally been an observation window looking into the core zone.

Chris's flashlight beam shot directly through the glass.

Every single person in the group stopped dead.

Chris forgot to breathe. The beam trembled faintly against the surface of the glass.

Sharp intakes of breath sounded one after another in the dim corridor.

It was an enormous Core Laboratory.

The heavy airtight door was locked shut. Sealed completely.

The entire laboratory had been repurposed. It was a gigantic aquarium now. Water all the way to the ceiling, not a single gap, and the murky mass of it threw an eerie green glow back at them under the flashlight beam.

Hundreds of corpses floated inside.

Men and women.

All of them dressed in white lab coats or black security uniforms. Their hair had fanned out in the water like seaweed. Some of them had their faces pressed hard against the glass, features bloated and distorted beyond recognition. Eyeballs bulging from the water pressure. Mouths stretched open wide.

The grotesque, agonized expression of people in their last moments, desperately craving oxygen before they drowned alive.

On the inside surface of the glass, there were dense frantic scratch marks left by tools.

These people had fought with everything they had as the water level kept rising.

The Red Queen had cut the drainage system and used the water to execute every last living person in this place.

Alice walked up to the bulletproof glass.

She looked at the face of a woman drifting slowly toward her through the water.

That woman's hands were still clawed at her own throat. The despair on her face was frozen, captured in the very last second before death.

Then, suddenly, her eyes flew open.

And stared directly into Alice's.

➤ Next: The Deranged Red Queen