[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 769 - A Chance Encounter with Carlos
High above, the wind screamed.
A sheet of metal tore through the air beneath the cloud layer at insane speed, fast enough to drag a white sonic boom trail in its wake.
Leon stood at the very front of it.
The wind whipped his trench coat into a frenzy. He didn't move an inch, planted like a nail driven into the metal, immovable.
Alice stood behind him, both arms locked around his waist.
She glanced down at the wasteland rushing past far below and felt something cold settle in her chest.
This was a brutally crude way to use psychic power.
Pure Telekinesis. Nothing but sheer, overwhelming force pushing two people through the sky. The kind of mental reserves that required, she didn't even want to think about the number.
Leon's face right now looked like death.
The men Simon had described over the comms, figures in black trench coats who could actually command Runners, they had to be Umbrella Corporation. Had to be.
Those worthless trash he'd already beaten into fleeing like dogs. Back again, crawling out to cause trouble.
"Hold on tight."
BOOM!
His psychic power detonated again, and the metal sheet lurched upward in speed by another savage notch.
Several dozen minutes later.
The outline of Washington, D.C. appeared at the edge of their vision.
Leon steered the metal sheet into a sharp dive, dropping hard toward the Alexandria Safe-Zone.
When the scene below finally came into clear view, the last trace of warmth left his eyes.
Devastation.
The kind that had no words for it.
The heavy iron perimeter walls that Deanna had once been so proud of, leveled. Flattened like they'd never existed.
Inside the camp, fires clawed at the sky. Thick black smoke rolled upward in massive columns.
The streets. The lawns. The rooftops.
Torn, incomplete bodies everywhere.
Over a thousand blood-soaked Runners were running rampant through the ruins, tireless as ghouls, shredding scraps of flesh from the ground, dragging intestines across every surface.
But the Umbrella operatives who had done this were already long gone.
"We're a step too late." Leon's voice carried nothing but killing intent.
The surrounding Runners snapped toward the noise in unison.
A terrifying, invisible psychic force detonated outward with Leon at its center.
It compressed into countless razor-sharp blades, invisible and moving faster than eyes could track.
The Runner at the front went rigid.
SHHK!
Its head slid clean off its neck. A jet of black blood erupted from the perfectly flat cut.
That was only the beginning.
An invisible psychic meat grinder raged across the plaza.
SHHK, SHHK, SHHK, SHHK!
The sound of flesh being torn apart came in so dense a cascade it made the scalp crawl.
The Runners were as fragile as wet paper in front of Leon's psychic force.
Arms. Thighs. Internal organs.
Shredded and mangled in midair.
Black blood sprayed in every direction.
Under a minute.
Not a single Runner was left standing anywhere on the central plaza. Within 50 meters of Leon, the ground was buried under a thick layer of shredded flesh and black blood. Not one piece of those remains was whole.
Alice brought the metal sheet down in a slow landing, surveyed the carnage spread across the ground, and drew a sharp breath.
That killing efficiency was more terrifying than a sweeping M2HB Heavy Machine Gun, even she, as she was right now, couldn't have managed this.
Leon stepped through the sticky mess of blood and flesh and closed his eyes.
His vast Perception Web unfurled instantly, spreading across the entire Alexandria ruins.
He was searching for familiar signatures, or failing that, bodies.
A few seconds later, Leon opened his eyes.
Nothing.
Every body lying in this camp belonged to an ordinary survivor.
Deanna. Aaron.
Not a single corpse from any of those key figures had turned up.
"They're not dead." Leon narrowed his eyes.
To escape a Walker Horde of this scale, they had lives to spare.
But where could they have possibly run?
The roads outside were crawling with fast-moving mutant creatures in every direction. They couldn't have gotten far.
He had to find them. Fast.
Leon turned and looked toward the main roads leading out from Washington, D.C.
---
At the same time.
On a stretch of road roughly 10 kilometers from the Alexandria ruins.
Several abandoned school buses were completely surrounded by over a thousand Runners.
The horde was growing restless. They climbed over each other's bodies, scaled the roofs, and caved the metal in, deep, groaning dents spreading across every surface overhead.
Inside the buses, the air was thick with desperate crying and screaming.
On a ridge less than 500 meters from the buses.
Negan leaned against a pickup truck door, chewing gum, watching the carnage below.
"About time."
He tossed his binoculars to a nearby underling.
"Once that busted door gives, the people inside won't last three minutes."
Negan ran a hand along Lucille.
"Get everyone ready. Once these freaks eat their fill and scatter, we go down and pick through the scraps." He paused. "I just had a look — the people down there are carrying some decent guns."
The underling nodded quickly. "Boss is wise. We'll wait until they're all dead, then go down and take everything."
Negan adjusted the red scarf around his neck and settled in to watch.
Then.
An engine roar tore down the road from nowhere.
Negan frowned and turned his head.
A modified black muscle car blasted out from around a bend at the far end of the road like a cannonball. The speed was absurd, exhaust pipes spitting actual fire. Several large loudspeakers were strapped to the roof, and deafeningly loud heavy metal music exploded across the open road.
"What the hell — where did this lunatic come from?"
Negan's eyes went wide.
The muscle car wasn't slowing down. Not even a little.
In the driver's seat, a man with a dark knit cap, long hair, and a thick full beard was steering with one hand.
Paul Rovia.
Everyone called him Jesus.
Jesus looked at the wall of Runners blocking the school buses and slammed the accelerator to the floor.
The muscle car plowed straight into the outer edge of the horde.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Several unlucky Runners were sent flying by the heavy front bumper, tumbling through the air and crashing hard to the ground.
Jesus wrenched the wheel and yanked the handbrake.
Tires ground against asphalt. The sharp, acrid stench of burning rubber filled the air. The muscle car came around in a perfectly clean drift, throwing up a wall of dust in every direction.
The heavy metal from the roof kept blaring.
Jesus rolled down the window, grabbed a loaded shotgun from the seat beside him, and thrust one arm out into the air.
He aimed at the sky and pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The gunshot and the music slammed together into one overwhelming wall of noise, completely burying the screaming from inside the buses.
Every Runner's head snapped around.
Those that had been hammering on doors and clawing up the sides of the vehicles all turned in unison.
"AAAARGH—!"
The lead Runner, the one gripping a fire axe, let out a piercing shriek.
Hundreds of Runners abandoned the school buses and lunged madly for the muscle car.
"Come on then, you freaks."
Jesus tossed the shotgun back onto the passenger seat, floored the accelerator, and the car surged forward with the tires screaming against the ground.
The horde came after him hard.
Their speed was extreme, fast enough to keep pace with a car that had barely started moving. But Jesus's driving was something else entirely. He threaded between wrecked cars and debris, always holding a distance from the horde that was neither too close nor too far. Never letting them catch up. Never letting them lose their target.
Just like that, he led every last one of them away.
---
Inside the school bus.
Aaron collapsed to the floor and gasped for breath in great heaving gulps.
Deanna and Jessie Anderson held onto each other, weeping without any sound left in them.
Outside was quiet.
Only the faint, fading sounds of an engine and music, drifting away into the distance.
"We... we survived?"
Jessie Anderson stared at the battered bus door in disbelief.
Aaron forced himself upright and peered outside.
The road was empty.
"Someone led them away." Aaron swallowed hard.
---
More than ten minutes later, an engine came back down the road.
The black muscle car rolled to a stop about 10 meters from the buses. The music was off. Jesus pushed the car door open and stepped out with a light, easy stride, like a man who'd just run to the store and back, not like someone who'd led a thousand Runners on a multi-kilometer chase and shaken them loose without breaking a sweat.
He walked up to the bus door and looked at the shaken, hollow-eyed crowd inside.
"Looks like you ran into a bit of trouble."
He smiled. His tone was completely relaxed.
"I'm Paul, though everyone calls me Jesus. Can you all still walk? This really isn't the best place for a chat."
Aaron stood up with Deanna's help holding him steady.
"Thank you," he said, his voice thin. "If it weren't for you, we'd already be dead."
Jesus waved it off and had just opened his mouth to say something.
Click.
The crisp, unmistakable sound of gun bolts being racked rang out across the silent road.
Not one.
Dozens.
The smile on Jesus's face froze.
He spun around.
On both sides of the road, in the tree line, behind abandoned vehicles, several dozen fully armed men had materialized out of nowhere. Assault rifles. Shotguns. Crossbows. All of it pointed directly at the school buses and at Jesus.
The encirclement was airtight. A fly couldn't have gotten out.
The crowd parted.
Negan walked out, that barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat resting on his shoulder, his stride carrying the absolute certainty of a man who owns everything in his field of vision.
He stopped less than 5 meters from Jesus. Cocked his head and looked the long-haired man up and down.
"Little piggy — did you piss your pants?"
A beat.
"Don't worry though. I'm not some bad guy."
---
Leon took to the air again with Alice, scanning the roads below for any trace of the Alexandria survivors.
On a stretch of desolate road beneath them.
A helicopter wreck lay tilted in a roadside drainage ditch, its tail section sheared clean off. On the fuselage, half-obscured by grime, was a white umbrella-shaped logo. Beside it, the letters: U.B.C.S.
Carlos Oliveira was sprawled flat on his back across the helicopter's bent main rotor blade, a shriveled cigarette dangling from his mouth, face buried under a thick beard.
Right now, all he wanted was to lie here. Wait for death, or wait for the next wave of monsters to come and pick him clean. Whichever came first.
"This godforsaken world," he muttered.
He stared blankly up at the gray, overcast sky.
Then a black dot appeared beneath the cloud layer.
It grew larger. Fast.
Carlos narrowed his eyes.
A massive sheet of metal.
With two people standing on it. A man and a woman.
Just, standing on a sheet of metal. Flying through the sky.
The cigarette dropped from his lips and landed on his face with a small thud.
He jolted upright and rubbed his eyes hard.
"Holy shit..."
➤ Next: Victor's Whereabouts