[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 632 - Nice Guys Finish Last

Northern Light Listening Post. Main control room.

The central screen carved North America into a grid of glowing cells.

Simon held the mug of hot coffee Kaya had just brewed, eyes locked on the block representing Georgia.

Something was off.

He set the mug down and his fingers hit the keyboard.

"What the hell." He muttered it under his breath.

Kaya came over and propped both hands on the back of his chair.

"What's wrong? Equipment issue?"

Simon shook his head and zoomed in.

"Not the equipment. The people."

He pointed to the cluster of small green dots scattered along Atlanta's outskirts.

"Look at this — half an hour ago, these survivor groups picking up our broadcast were still moving toward the prison."

"Now every single one of them has stopped."

"A few dots have already turned around. They're heading the other way."

That made no sense at all.

Survivors in the apocalypse were like travelers who'd gone three days without water in a desert. You spot an oasis, you run. You don't stop. You sure as hell don't turn back.

It was like a naked woman standing right in front of you — didn't matter how upright a man you were, you'd still reach out without a second thought.

Something had gotten to them first.

"Unless they heard something along the way." Kaya cut straight to it.

Simon was already moving.

He pulled up Georgia's public band frequencies and ran a full spectrum scan, methodical and fast.

A signal buried in static came back almost immediately.

He turned up the volume.

An announcement pushed through the Loudspeaker, rigid, clipped, official.

The warning from Fort Benning's military command authority echoed through the control room.

"Illegal armed elements."

"False bait."

"Luring civilians into slavery."

Simon's face went dark.

Those sons of bitches.

They'd left civilians to rot on the wasteland without lifting a finger. Now, the moment the prison started pulling people in, they came crawling out to sabotage it and drag the name through the mud?

Throwing filth directly on his Citizen Z brand.

Were these people even human?

"Warlords making a move." Kaya's laugh was cold.

"They're cutting off the boss's foundation." Simon was already patching into the encrypted line.

---

Thousands of miles away. The prison base.

Leon was on the shooting range, running his daily check on the training.

The communicator clipped to his Tactical Vest buzzed.

He released the trigger and hit the answer key.

"Boss, we've got a situation." Simon's words came fast.

"Talk." Leon swapped out the magazine with practiced ease.

"Fort Benning broadcast a warning over the public channel."

Simon kept it tight, a quick rundown of everything intercepted.

"They've branded us a criminal den. Dozens of survivor groups that were almost at the city outskirts have all stopped dead. Some of them have turned around entirely. They're heading to Fort Benning instead."

Simon swallowed.

"They're poaching our labor."

Leon's hands went still for two seconds.

The corner of his eye twitched. Something cold and dangerous surfaced in his gaze.

Population. The single most scarce resource the prison had, and always had been its biggest vulnerability. He needed civilians to fill the rear-line gaps. Most of his people were fighters, good at killing, short on anything technical. He needed technicians to run advanced equipment.

Fort Benning had aimed straight at the main artery.

In this world, whoever dared touch the food on his plate had better be ready to be torn apart.

"Understood." His voice was perfectly flat.

The calmer he sounded, the more certain it was that he'd already decided to kill.

"Boss, want me to fire back over the broadcast? Try to clear our name?" Simon asked.

"No."

Leon cut the line.

Getting into a propaganda war with these slippery veterans hiding behind an official flag was pointless. He wasn't going to waste the breath.

Survivors right now were like birds startled by an arrow, no amount of talking would settle their nerves.

Fort Benning had decided to step out and play roadblock.

Fine.

The most direct solution, the only effective one, was to rip that roadblock out at the roots.

Once Fort Benning disappeared from the map entirely, nothing would stop those survivors from moving again.

Leon walked out of the shooting range and pressed his earpiece.

"Shane. Rick. Chris. Glenn."

"Drop what you're doing."

"Armory. Now."

---

Less than 10 minutes later, the core fighters were assembled in front of the armory's heavy iron door. All fully armed.

Even Smith had made it over, already geared up in a full set of tactical equipment. The special forces soldier had settled completely into his role as head of security.

"What happened?" Chris shifted a shotgun onto his shoulder, working a piece of gum.

Leon walked up.

His gaze swept across the group, killers the wasteland had ground down to the bone, every soft edge long gone.

"Someone doesn't like what we're doing. They've cut off our recruitment."

He laid out the Fort Benning broadcast in plain terms.

The veins on Shane's thick neck surfaced instantly.

"Gutless pieces of shit."

"They're sitting in their base living easy while I've been busting my ass out here building something, keeping people alive — and they have the nerve to steal from us?" He spat on the ground.

Rick's eyes went cold. He'd never had any use for the military's do-nothing commanders.

"Boss, what's the play?" Glenn rubbed his hands together, barely containing it.

"The play?" Leon's smile had nothing warm in it.

"They want to call us an illegal armed force? Fine. Let's go earn the title."

He looked at Smith.

"Your people ready?"

Smith nodded without hesitation.

"Ready to engage at any time, sir."

"Good." Leon put both hands on his hips and glanced up at the Georgia map on the wall. His eyes found Fort Benning without searching.

"Pull all the armored vehicles Jim modified out of the garage."

"Best gear we have. All of it."

"If you want to block my road," he said, "don't cry when I flip the whole table."

"We're going to Fort Benning."

"Time to show these cowards, the ones who've spent the whole apocalypse hiding behind the lines, what real violent negotiation looks like."

---

The order went out.

The base shifted into combat footing with machine precision.

Ashley stood at the floor-to-ceiling window on the third floor of the Administration Building and watched the square below fill up.

Heavy trucks and armored vehicles rumbled to life, engines growling low and deep. A dark column of vehicles stretched across the square in a long, bristling line.

Every soldier climbing aboard wore the same look. Undisguised. Hungry.

Leon walked to the lead vehicle, grabbed the frame, and pulled himself up in a single clean motion.

He wasn't going to negotiate.

He was going to take the place apart.

Out here on the wasteland, there was only one law that still meant anything.

Whoever hit the hardest made the rules.

➤ Next: Progress on the Mutant Fruit Tree