[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 756 - Departure

Several battered off-road vehicles pushed through a highway choked with abandoned cars.

Mark gripped the steering wheel with both hands, his face hollow with exhaustion and numbness.

He had fled all the way from Florida.

He had seen too much death on that road.

Walkers sprinting through city streets. Human nature twisted beyond recognition. Survivors drawing guns and shooting each other over a single mouthful of food.

His convoy had started with more than fifty people. Fewer than ten remained.

Ten had died in an armed robbery. Most of the others had been bitten by runners and had to be shown mercy before the virus finished the job.

"Mark, how much longer?" the woman in the passenger seat asked, her voice barely there.

"Almost there. The place from the broadcast is right at the junction between Atlanta and Fort Benning."

He said it through gritted teeth. In his heart, he had no certainty at all.

That safety-zone broadcast looping on the radio, it sounded too good. The kind of thing you set up to lure desperate people in.

Plenty of food. Absolute safety. Hot water and medical care on top of that.

And most importantly, open endorsement from the President of the United States.

In the apocalypse, that was the stuff of fairy tales.

At first, they had kept their doubts firmly in place.

But now they had no choice. Their camp had been destroyed by the runners. They had been driven from their home.

The fuel gauge was sitting on empty. They couldn't squeeze a single drop of water out of the trunk.

The convoy swung around the curve of an abandoned overpass.

Mark's foot slammed the brake on instinct.

The tires dragged a long black streak across the asphalt.

The vehicles behind him hit their brakes in a chain reaction, nearly rear-ending each other.

"What's wrong? Is it a herd?" a panicked voice crackled over the radio.

Mark didn't answer.

He pushed the door open in a daze, half-stumbling out, his eyes locked on the horizon several kilometers away.

The woman from the passenger seat climbed out and followed his gaze.

She instantly covered her mouth.

It wasn't a herd.

It was a city.

A miracle city that belonged only in science-fiction films.

Enormous walls as tall as two-story buildings rose straight from the earth, sealing the Atlanta Prison and everything around it inside a tight perimeter.

What was most staggering was the material.

Not steel and concrete.

Countless vines, thick as pythons, in a deep crimson red. They wove and coiled around each other, forming a layer of indestructible biological armor, the surface coated in a hard chitinous shell that caught the light with a metallic sheen.

In the sunlight, this vine city radiated an immense pressure, and yet at the same time gave off a feeling of safety that no words could quite capture.

"God..."

Mark's legs gave out. He dropped to his knees on the asphalt.

The convoy got moving again fast, barreling toward that vine city like something had broken loose inside all of them.

The closer they got, the stronger it hit.

On the open ground outside the walls, there were no wandering Walkers. Instead, green farmland stretched as far as the eye could see.

Dozens of heavy harvesters rumbled through the fields, pouring out cascading waterfalls of golden grain.

On the other side, a livestock area sat enclosed behind tall wire fencing. Herds of cattle and flocks of sheep grazed lazily in the grass.

"I must be dreaming." Mark's companion gave him a hard slap across the face. He barely avoided getting punched for it.

The convoy rolled slowly into the buffer zone outside the walls.

There were a lot of people lined up here.

Not only survivors who had come from all over the country, there were even people who had disembarked at the Atlanta port, refugees who had crossed oceans and survived everything to get here from other countries.

Every language imaginable clashed together in a noisy, chaotic mix.

Mark drove on slowly, passing through the outer free trade zone.

What he saw there shattered his sense of reality entirely.

No robbery. No killing.

Stalls lined both sides of the street.

Cases of military-caliber ammunition. Brand-new assault rifles. Body armor. Heavy machine gun barrels. Tank gun tubes.

Strategic materials that in the outside world would have triggered a bloodbath, stacked around here as casually as vegetables at a market.

On the stalls across the way, fresh tomatoes, potatoes, large cuts of beef, and crates of antibiotics and medical equipment were piled high.

"Two cases of canned beef — I'll give you five hundred rounds of rifle ammo!"

"Got a ton of scrap steel, just stripped from wrecked cars — looking to trade for antibiotics!"

The sounds of haggling rose and fell from every direction.

Mark swallowed hard. He felt as if he had been dropped back into a marketplace from before the collapse.

In the distance, the tall smokestacks of an armory belched white smoke into the sky.

And faintly, from just the other side of the wall, came the sound of children shouting and playing on what had to be a school yard.

The convoy pulled to a stop in front of a spacious registration station.

A woman with a neat short haircut walked over.

Carol Peletier.

She wore a gray tactical uniform with a Glock holstered at her hip.

"Where are you from?" Carol looked at Mark, her tone all business.

"Ma'am, Florida. We fled all the way here." Mark rubbed his hands together nervously.

"Any weapons in the vehicles? Hand them over first. Everyone goes through quarantine and a medical check before entering." Carol typed rapidly on a tablet.

Mark nodded quickly.

"Ma'am, if I may — how many people are here?" he asked carefully.

Carol looked up.

"Just call me Carol."

"Current population is roughly 103,000."

One hundred thousand people.

Mark drew a sharp breath.

Out there, a camp of a few dozen already counted as a major settlement.

This place was a nation.

What he didn't know was that this hundred thousand was what remained after Maggie had run continuous screening. Anyone who settled here was essentially a skilled individual. You needed something to offer to join the prison camp.

But the prison didn't make a habit of turning people away, everyone had made a grueling journey to get here. So survivors who didn't pass were arranged to go to Fort Benning, or to communities like Woodbury and Terminus and others.

Every surrounding camp that Leon had once conquered had by now been reformed specifically to absorb more population. With food production up and supplies more than adequate, the requirements had been significantly lowered. Large-scale recruitment was now possible.

Just then.

BOOM!

A deafening engine roar burst from inside the towering walls.

The sound was enormous. It drowned out the entire noise of the trade zone.

Everyone looked up at the same moment.

A massive C-17 Globemaster heavy transport aircraft, trailing long white contrails, screamed out through a gap in the dome of the vine walls and shot straight into the sky.

Its enormous shadow swept across the heads of the newly arrived survivors.

"A plane! It's a plane!"

"My God, they can actually get one of those things in the air!"

Mark stood with his mouth hanging open, neck craned back until it ached.

In the apocalypse, keeping a heavy transport aircraft airborne meant aviation fuel, mechanical maintenance, radar navigation, all of it had to be in place and running. Every single piece of it.

In this world, that was a miracle that had no right to exist.

Carol watched the transport shrink into the distance and understood.

Leon was ready. He had departed.

This was no secret.

"After registration, head over there to collect supplies. Even if you don't end up joining here, don't be discouraged — everyone who comes to register gets 2 sets of clean clothes, a hot meal, and a fully automatic rifle with ammunition." Carol pointed toward the nearby tent.

"If you don't join the main camp, staff will arrange a bus to take you to other settlements shortly. Same treatment as here, and you can come back any time to trade. Don't worry, it doesn't matter which one you join."

Mark thanked her again and again.

At that moment, 10,000 meters above the ground.

Inside the cargo hold of the C-17.

Leon sat in a wide private seat, a cup of hot coffee in his hand, brow faintly creased.

He turned and looked toward the rear of the cabin.

Alexia Ashford was sitting quietly by the window, a sheaf of printed documents about the Antarctic base in her hands, flipping through them at speed. She had fully adapted to her supporting role by now. Not a single unnecessary word.

What was actually giving Leon a headache was the group of idiots in the middle of the cabin making enough noise for an entire bar.

"Fill it up! Fill it up! This is Rick's private-reserve bourbon!"

Merle sat spread-legged astride an ammo crate like he owned it, holding a stainless-steel cup and bellowing at Shawn Greene.

Shawn Greene rolled his eyes and slammed the bottle down hard on the crate.

"Can you keep it the hell down? You're not the only living person on this plane."

He cursed at Merle while pouring himself half a cup.

Rick leaned against the cabin wall, cleaning his Python, watching those two clowns with quiet resignation.

In the corner, Daryl Dixon silently worked on his compound crossbow, glancing over at Merle every now and then with the look of a man who had long since stopped being surprised.

Leon rubbed the bridge of his nose.

This trip to Antarctica had originally been planned as a lean operation. Just Alexia Ashford, a few professional crew members, and the personnel needed to move supplies. In and out, fast.

Then somehow these people caught wind of it and refused to take no for an answer.

Before takeoff, Merle had actually gone and lain down under the landing gear, announcing that if they didn't bring him, he'd die on the runway.

"Let me say this one more time." Leon set down his coffee cup.

Merle and Shawn Greene went quiet immediately, both turning to look at him.

"Antarctica runs at negative several dozen degrees year-round. No resupply. No backup."

"Where we're going is a top-secret base buried under layers of ice."

Leon's gaze moved across them.

"You got so bored with the good life back at camp that you had to come find excitement in a place like that?"

Merle grinned, showing a full set of yellowed teeth.

"Boss, you're looking at it wrong."

He stood up and thumped himself hard on the chest.

"Ever since I got shot up with that T-Virus the old madman Marcus cooked up, it's like I've got a nuclear reactor running inside me."

He threw a punch into the aluminum alloy cabin wall beside him.

CRACK!

The solid wall caved in, leaving a clean fist-print pressed into the metal.

"I can drop a full-grown bull with one punch now. Sitting around camp every day teaching rookie soldiers how to shoot, my bones are practically rusting."

Shawn Greene nodded along.

He rolled his neck. His joints cracked like a string of firecrackers going off.

"The T-Virus enhancement is something else."

"Strength, speed, neural response — all of it has completely blown past normal human limits."

He looked at his own hands, eyes lit with something almost feverish.

"Don't worry. We won't cause you any trouble."

"It's not just about combat." Rick looked at Leon. "You're the core of this camp. Going to an unknown place like Antarctica, you can't afford to have nobody reliable at your back."

He glanced toward Alexia Ashford in the corner.

"I don't trust her. With us here, at least your back is covered."

Daryl said nothing. He just moved quietly to stand beside Rick. His position said everything.

Faced with their suspicion, Alexia Ashford paid no attention whatsoever, staying wholly absorbed in the documents in front of her.

Leon looked at them.

They had all been injected with the perfected T-Virus, refined by William Birkin and Marcus working together. The risk of turning had been eliminated. The cellular evolution and strength amplification had been preserved to the greatest degree possible.

They were the West Georgia Correctional Facility's most elite soldiers.

"Fine." Leon exhaled.

"Since you're already on the plane, get ready. Once we're there, all actions go through me."

"Understood!" they answered as one.

At that moment, Alexia Ashford closed the documents in her hands, stood, and walked to Leon.

She held out a hand-drawn coordinate map.

"These are the precise coordinates of the Antarctic base."

"Weather conditions down there are extreme. To ensure safe arrival, we'll land first at an abandoned ice runway near McMurdo Station, then switch to tracked snow vehicles and push 200 kilometers inland."

Her fingertip rested on a red circle marked on the map.

"That is the place where I slept for fifteen years."

➤ Next: Different Reasons to Grow Stronger