[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 770 - Victor's Whereabouts

The sheet of metal plummeted from the sky.

Carlos's eyes went wide. He reached for the pistol at his hip on instinct.

His hand found nothing.

The gun had been thrown somewhere, who even knew where.

Leon stepped down from the sheet of metal, his black trench coat swaying faintly in the wind.

Alice followed close behind.

Carlos stayed half-sprawled against the helicopter rotor, staring blankly at the two of them.

No parachutes.

These two had just dropped out of the sky standing on a piece of scrap metal?

"I must be hallucinating."

He muttered it to himself and slapped his own cheek.

Leon walked up to the helicopter wreckage. His gaze swept across the fuselage, the prominent red-and-white Umbrella Corporation logo, the U.B.C.S. markings stenciled beside it.

Then his eyes settled on Carlos's face. The thick stubble. The jaw.

That face he knew all too well.

"Carlos Oliveira." Leon said it flatly.

Carlos's whole body jolted.

He snapped upright from the rotor, eyes fixed on Leon, every muscle suddenly coiled.

"Who are you?" Carlos's brow furrowed hard. "How do you know my name?"

"I know more than just your name." Leon looked at him. "I know you're a Corporal in Umbrella Corporation's Biohazard Countermeasure Service. Delta Squad."

The color left Carlos's face.

Anyone who could rattle off his exact rank and unit designation in one breath was not an ordinary person. He could swear on his life, he had never seen this man before.

"Who the hell are you?" Carlos stood up.

Leon didn't answer.

"What are you doing out here?" Leon scanned the area. "Where's your squad?"

At that.

The tension drained out of Carlos all at once.

He dropped his head. Both hands drove into his hair and locked there.

"Dead."

"All dead. Just me."

Alice stared at the Umbrella Corporation logo on the fuselage, her eyes cold.

"Umbrella people." She said it without inflection. "No loss."

Carlos heard it. He looked up at her.

He didn't argue. He let out a laugh, hollow, broken.

"You're right." His voice was flat. "We deserve to die. I don't even deserve to be standing here."

"What happened?" Leon asked.

Carlos took a deep breath and fished a shriveled cigarette from his pocket. He bit down on it, then patted his pockets. No lighter.

Leon snapped his fingers.

A tongue of orange flame bloomed at his fingertip.

Carlos stared at Leon's hand. Then at Leon's face.

He was numb by now. If the man in front of him suddenly sprouted wings and turned into a dragon, he probably wouldn't even blink.

He leaned in and lit the cigarette. Drew a long, slow drag.

The tightness in his chest loosened a fraction.

These cigarettes were hard currency. Every one you smoked was one fewer, and he'd been rationing himself to the bone.

"By whom?" Leon asked.

"By Umbrella!" The fury detonated out of nowhere. Carlos drove his fist into the fuselage with everything he had. Blood welled from his knuckles.

He stood there heaving, chest working hard, eyes bloodshot red.

"3 days ago, our squad received top-priority orders from headquarters." His voice came out ragged. "They told us the research division had finally done it — they'd developed an antidote. Something that targeted the Walker virus."

Carlos shook his head, the contempt carved into every line of his face.

"An antidote. You know what that word meant to grunts like us out on the front line?"

"It meant this goddamn world had a chance. It meant we didn't have to face those biting Rotters every single day for the rest of our lives."

"Headquarters ordered us to load up and air-drop the antidote around the perimeters of several large survivor camps near Washington, D.C. They said it could spread through the air — neutralize the virus inside the Walkers, kill them outright, wipe out the infection."

Leon had already seen where this was going.

"So you dropped it." Leon said.

"Of course we dropped it!" Carlos's head snapped up. "We thought we were saving the world! The guys were popping champagne in the helicopter. We thought it was our last mission."

He pointed toward Washington, D.C. in the distance.

"First stop was the Alexandria Safe-Zone."

"We dropped the first batch of gas bombs on the roads surrounding the community."

Something shifted in Carlos's eyes. Pure terror, crawling in from the edges.

His body wouldn't stop trembling.

"The bombs went off. The gas rolled over the Walkers wandering out there." His voice dropped. "We watched from the air, hearts full, waiting for them to drop."

"And?"

Carlos clenched his jaw so hard it shook. Tears cut down his face.

"They didn't die."

"Those slow, shambling Rotters that could barely walk in a straight line, the second that gas hit them, it was like a switch flipped. They went insane."

"They started sprinting. Fast enough to run down a moving car."

"And it wasn't just speed. They started working together. Coordinating. They figured out how to climb."

Carlos pressed his hands against his skull.

"That wasn't an antidote."

"It was poison."

"Headquarters used us to deliver it. They used that gas to turn ordinary Walkers into something worse, something specifically designed to kill what's left of us."

Leon watched him fall apart. His expression didn't move.

This was Umbrella Corporation, doing exactly what Umbrella Corporation did.

Cull the inferior genetics. Filter the survivors. The so-called antidote was never anything but a cover story, and Carlos was just the poor fool they'd handed the delivery to.

Carlos kept going.

"I watched those mutated things smash straight through the walls of the Alexandria Safe-Zone." His voice cracked. "There were hundreds of people in there. Old people. Kids. They didn't even get a chance to run. A few minutes, that's all it took. They were torn apart."

"We did that. We brought hell through those gates with our own hands."

He slapped himself. Hard.

"Our squad leader realized something was wrong and demanded answers from headquarters on the spot. The response?" Carlos laughed bitterly. "They cut the channel. Just like that."

"Then every instrument panel in the helicopter went dead. Headquarters had remotely killed our flight control system."

He pointed at the wreckage behind him.

"We went down."

"The squad leader caught a panel shard across the throat. Everyone else died in the explosion. I was sitting by the cabin door, the impact threw me clear. That's the only reason I'm breathing."

Carlos tilted his head back and stared up at the gray sky.

"What's the point?"

"I'm an idiot who destroyed those people's hope with my own two hands. I'd rather just lie here and wait for the monsters to smell the blood. Let them eat me down to nothing." He closed his eyes. "Call it penance."

"Penance." Leon stepped forward until he stood directly in front of Carlos.

"You die — and those people come back?"

Carlos looked up at him, blank.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" The despair in his voice caved into something raw and furious. "I'm a grunt. One grunt. What the hell can I even do?"

Leon's hand shot out. He grabbed Carlos by the collar and yanked him off the ground in one motion.

Carlos's frame was close to six-three, solid muscle. In Leon's grip, he was a ragdoll.

"Plenty." Leon held his gaze. "Umbrella played you like a tool. Made you their executioner. Then tried to put you in the ground before you could talk about it."

"And you're just going to lie down and let them have it?"

"You are not a dog with a broken spine."

"You think you owe those survivors? Then pay that debt with Umbrella's blood. Start with the ones at the top."

Carlos's breathing went ragged.

Leon let go. Carlos stumbled, caught himself.

"Tell me." Leon's eyes were steady on his. "Where is Umbrella Corporation's command center in this region? Those senior executives who were sitting back and monitoring the effects of what you dropped, where are they hiding?"

Carlos went still.

He stared at the man in front of him. Something about his presence pressed down like physical weight.

"You're going after Umbrella?" Carlos swallowed.

"Yes." Leon said simply. "They made the mistake of getting in my way."

Carlos thought of his squad leader's throat. He thought of the screaming from inside Alexandria's walls.

"I know where they are."

The grief in his eyes burned down into something harder. Something with edges.

"The man running this operation is named Victor."

"There's an abandoned chemical plant 30 kilometers from here. They've set up a temporary communications hub inside it. Every flight directive, every data feed, it all ran through that location."

➤ Next: Looting a Burning House