[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 616 - The Inuit Girl Who Had Never Seen the World

Simon held the wooden bowl, eyes locked on the gray-black sludge sitting inside it.

The rim... ugh. Coated in something, grease or congealed blood, he couldn't tell which, and a gut-punch of fishy stench shot straight up his nostrils.

How to put this.

Intestines done right were a rare treat. Done wrong, they had a way of bringing along things they really, truly shouldn't.

Simon felt his stomach turn over.

The look of this thing. The smell of it. Together they were assaulting him on a purely biological level.

He swallowed. His Adam's apple worked its way up and down with considerable effort.

He looked up at Kaya sitting across from him, wiping her hands on a dirty rag.

"This is your polar signature dish?"

The revulsion in his voice wasn't subtle.

Kaya stopped cold the moment she heard that.

She rolled her eyes, slow, exaggerated, unmistakable, and reached out and snatched the wooden bowl straight out of his hands.

"Stop being so picky." Her face was flat. "This is an exceptionally rare delicacy."

"You call this good?" Simon stiffened.

"Honestly? That smell alone. I'd rather starve to death than eat another bite."

Kaya gave a cold snort, picked up the bowl, and turned toward the fire.

"This is a paste rendered from seal fat mixed with lean meat." She shot him an impatient glare. "In a godforsaken place like the Arctic, calories are what keep you alive. One small bowl of this and you can make it half a day without freezing solid."

Simon leaned back against the log bedpost, staring at the thick sticky paste.

Still couldn't do it.

"Fussy outsider." Kaya stirred it with a wooden spoon, making a point of raising it toward her own mouth. "Are you eating this or not? Because if you're not eating it, I will. Don't think I'm begging you to fill your stomach — nobody's going to coddle your bad habits out here."

"Wait." Simon shot out a hand. "When you dragged me out of that snow pit — did you see anything scattered around nearby?"

Kaya's brow furrowed. She stopped.

"What things?"

"Food." Simon traced a cylindrical shape in the air with both hands. "Metal casing. Roughly the size of a fist."

Kaya's eyes narrowed, visibly straining to recall.

"You mean those cylindrical metal lumps?"

"Yes. Exactly those." Simon nodded rapidly. "Those are cans — all my rations are packed inside them. Did you bring them back?"

Kaya set down the wooden bowl, turned, and crossed to a battered reindeer-hide sack slumped in the corner.

"We brought everything back. We had no idea what those things even were."

Couldn't blame them. Their world was cut off from everything outside. They didn't know what a can was.

Kaya crouched, pulled the sack open, and dug out several cans of beef.

All of them still sealed.

Simon stared at those familiar labels. He nearly burst into tears.

These were his lifeline out here. His entire survival in the polar region, sitting in a pile on the floor.

"Get them over here." He rubbed his hands together, suddenly alive with excitement. "Today I'm going to show you people what real food tastes like."

Kaya handed the cans over with an expression somewhere between belief and serious doubt.

Simon fished a multi-function army knife from his pants pocket and, with the ease of someone who'd done it a thousand times, flipped open the pull-tab on the first can.

CLICK!

The tin tore open.

He set it near the fire to warm, and within moments an intensely rich braised-beef aroma bloomed outward and flooded the narrow wooden cabin.

That smell, the layered spice blend of modern industrial cooking, swept through the room and erased every trace of the stale, years-deep fishiness that had soaked into the walls.

Kaya swallowed.

Even the old man in the corner, who had been turning a hunting knife over in his hands in silence the entire time, even the old woman perched on a wooden stump nearby, both turned their heads at the same moment.

Those two pairs of clouded eyes fixed on the tin can in Simon's hands and didn't move.

For people who had spent their entire lives eating boiled dried meat, that aroma was more lethal than anything else in the world.

"Get me a clean iron pot." Simon tilted his chin and gave the order.

Kaya didn't waste a single word. She handed over the cooking pot with crisp efficiency.

Simon tipped both cans into it, chunks of beef, thick broth, all of it. The meat's deep red color caught the firelight and glowed.

"Add some clean snowmelt and hang it over the hearth." Simon instructed.

Kaya did exactly as she was told.

The iron pot was suspended directly above the fire.

A few minutes passed. The contents began to bubble, steam rising in slow curls.

Then the full aroma hit.

Simon scooped up a piece of beef on a clean wooden spoon, a soft chunk with a strip of tendon still attached, blew on it gently, and held it out to Kaya.

"Try it."

Kaya took the spoon with careful hands.

She put the piece of beef into her mouth and bit down.

Her eyes flew wide instantly.

The meat was impossibly tender, almost falling apart. The savory depth of the braising sauce hit first, then the spices opened behind it, and the whole thing detonated across her palate at once.

She had lived for over twenty years on this earth. From birth, she had eaten seal meat reeking of the sea and reindeer jerky tough enough to crack teeth. That was all she had ever known.

This, whatever this was, had been made by hands and machines she couldn't imagine, seasoned with flavors she had no names for.

It conquered her completely.

"Good lord."

She was chewing fast, barely able to get the words out.

"What kind of meat is this?"

➤ Next: Citizen Z's Die-Hard Fan