[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 624 - Smith Has Come to Take Ashley Home

Several desert-camouflage mine-resistant armored vehicles lurched and jolted along a crumbling interstate highway.

Colonel Smith sat in the front passenger seat.

He gnawed on a strip of jerky so hard it was practically unchewable, his right hand locked around the safety handle above the door.

This errand was more punishing than running a decapitation strike in the Middle East.

He was President Graham's most trusted special operations commander. A hardened operator who'd come up through the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment of the U.S. Army, a unit so classified before the catastrophe that the government had never officially confirmed it existed.

When the apocalypse hit, he'd led his best soldiers on a running escort from Washington to the underground bunker, staying glued to the President's side the entire way.

The President had barely caught his breath before dropping an absolutely critical standing order.

Go to Atlanta. Bring his daughter Ashley back in one piece.

To keep potential traitors within the Military from catching wind of it, and to avoid drawing the attention of that terrifying cult, Smith had killed the idea of taking a Black Hawk Helicopter, too conspicuous, and chosen the brutal option of pushing by ground instead.

Six vehicles. All the way from Washington, cutting a road through blood. And now, finally, Atlanta.

A third of their ammunition was gone. Several of his men weren't coming back.

All of it just to reach that damned correctional facility and collect the President's daughter.

But the order had to be completed. He'd given his word.

"Sir."

"Navigation shows 5 kilometers to target coordinates."

"Past that stretch of forest ahead, we'll be in the prison district on the outskirts of Atlanta."

Smith slapped his palm hard against the center console.

"All units, listen up."

He pressed down on the radio.

"Rounds chambered, safeties off."

"We're about to reach the objective."

"Per our intelligence, the place doesn't even have a proper perimeter wall."

He issued orders over the channel, drawing on every standard assumption he'd ever held about a civilian prison.

"Any troublemakers who don't know what's good for them — skip the warnings, fire in the air."

"If they dare use the young lady as a hostage, shoot them on the spot."

Clean, crisp acknowledgments came back over the radio.

They'd already prepared for the worst. As far as everyone in that convoy was concerned, the so-called survivor camp was probably nothing more than a trash heap cobbled together from abandoned vehicles and scrap wood. Packed with refugees reeking of filth. The kind of people who'd gut each other over half a moldy piece of bread.

The President's pampered daughter had probably been scared into some rat hole and hadn't shown her face since.

Or worse.

But that wasn't their problem to think about yet.

The armored convoy roared up a gentle rise and crested over a dense stretch of pine forest.

Ahead should have been open wasteland. Flat, empty, easy to read.

In that single instant, the entire field of view blew wide open.

Smith grabbed the tactical binoculars hanging from his chest and pressed them to his eyes out of pure habit. He was already planning how to pick apart the defensive gaps in some run-down prison.

The image came into focus.

Smith's hands gave a violent jolt.

What filled the lenses completely wiped the expression off this battle-hardened veteran's face.

What refugee camp surrounded by wooden planks and barbed wire?

This was a goddamn iron fortress that looked like it had erupted straight out of the earth.

Monstrously thick concrete walls rose from the ground, ten stories high, maybe more. The original outer walls of the correctional facility had been bulldozed flat and replaced entirely by a super defensive rampart of reinforced concrete. The middle sections were studded with enormous high-voltage electrified fencing, the kind engineered to stop anyone from scaling it in the dark.

And that was nowhere near all of it.

Along the top of those walls, every 50 meters, sat an automated dual-barrel autocannon emplacement.

At all 4 corners of the wall, Smith could see phased-array radar systems. The kind you only found at top-tier Military installations. Those massive antenna arrays were rotating in slow, perfectly measured sweeps, pulling in every anomalous signal within a 10-kilometer radius.

The prison had spent time sweeping Atlanta clean. That much was obvious.

Obscenely well-stocked didn't even begin to cover it.

"Holy shit!"

The Lieutenant in the driver's seat stomped the brake all the way to the floor.

The armored vehicle dragged 2 deep furrows through the dirt before grinding to a halt. The 5 vehicles behind it braked one after another, nearly piling into each other.

The Lieutenant's eyes went wide. His mouth hung open enough to fit a fist.

He couldn't stop staring at the war fortress in the distance.

"Sir, are you certain we didn't take a wrong turn?"

He swallowed hard, his throat working with visible effort.

"This is a prison?"

"Even the Pentagon's defense systems aren't this insane!"

The radio channel detonated.

Every soldier who'd laid eyes on this scene forgot entirely how to keep a straight face.

"God Almighty — those calibers on the wall, that's at least 30-millimeter armor-piercing."

"Where the hell did these people get military hardware at that grade?"

"If that fire grid goes fully active, forget Walkers, an entire armored division rolling through wouldn't make a single ripple."

Smith lowered the binoculars. He yanked his Tactical Vest away from his collar, his breathing short and ragged.

Cold sweat had broken out fine and dense across his forehead.

Those 6 mine-resistant vehicles he was so proud of, in front of that fortress, they were ants picking a fight with an elephant.

If they dared fire a single warning shot,

They wouldn't even need anyone on the wall to respond. Those semi-automated defense towers would blow them, vehicles and all, into a smoking pile of scrap metal inside 2 seconds.

Just what in the hell kind of people were running this place?

"Everyone, put your weapons away."

Smith changed his approach fast.

"Nobody moves. Everyone stays in the vehicles and keeps their heads down."

"I'll figure out what we're dealing with first."

He pushed open the door, dropped to the ground, and walked around to the rear of the armored vehicle.

"Damn. Am I dreaming?"

"Is there actually someone out here in the apocalypse who built a Sanctuary on this scale?"

"The manpower alone — what would that even take?"

"Even before all this, a construction project of this size would have taken an enormous effort."

He muttered to himself as he dragged out the heavy military-grade encrypted satellite communications terminal. Extended the portable antenna. Keyed in the highest-level authorization code.

The progress bar filled.

The remote video link connected.

President Graham's face appeared on screen, a face carved deep with exhaustion. Even here, sealed away in what was supposedly the most secure underground bunker on earth, the man who had once commanded all of America was still being crushed breathless under an avalanche of reports. Dark circles cut deep under his eyes. The stubble on his chin had gone unshaved.

"Smith, you've arrived?"

The President's voice came through the speaker tight with urgency.

"Have you seen Ashley? Is she hurt?"

He leaned in close to the camera.

"Get her in the vehicle immediately, head back at once, not a single day of delay."

Smith stood in the open wind of the wasteland.

He looked down at the President's face on the screen. Then he turned and looked at that steel wall in the distance, a structure that belonged in an apocalyptic fever dream, and his expression went strange. Conflicted.

"Mr. President."

He drew in a slow breath.

"We have arrived at the coordinates."

"But I've run into an unexpected situation."

President Graham's brow knitted tight.

➤ Next: You'd Better See This for Yourself — Is This Real?