[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 776 - You Always Have to Pay a Price for Your Own Actions

Alice let out a cold snort. The Telekinesis eased, just slightly.

Fresh air rushed back into his lungs.

"Cough, cough, cough—!"

Ron convulsed with coughing, spitting up mouthful after mouthful of black blood.

He could finally make a sound again.

In that instant, he had genuinely believed he was about to be crushed alive into pulp.

All that madness, all that hatred and jealousy, it had evaporated the moment death pressed close enough to touch.

He just wanted to live.

"Mom... Mom..."

Ron strained to turn his eyes toward Jessie, who had collapsed onto the ground.

He begged.

"Save me... please, save me..."

"I don't want to die... I really don't want to die..."

Tears rolled down Ron's face, sheer terror pushing them out.

Jessie watched her son in that wretched state, her heart twisting like a knife turning in a wound. But in the end she stopped herself.

She turned her head toward Leon, who stood to one side.

"Are you sure you want to open your mouth?" Leon asked. His voice was flat.

Jessie's whole body went rigid.

"He is beyond saving."

Leon pointed at Deanna, still kneeling on the ground nearby, then at Reg, clutching his arm.

"If I hadn't arrived when I did, Deanna and Reg would already be two corpses."

"Believe me — he is capable of exactly this. When he raised that baseball bat just now, did he hesitate even one second?"

Each word landed like a blade finding its mark.

Jessie stood motionless, her hands limp at her sides.

She knew he was right.

The way Ron had looked just now, he was more terrifying than any Walker.

He had even gone crawling to that gang of thugs, fawning over them, all for the sake of revenge.

If Leon let him go today.

What about tomorrow?

The day after?

This son of hers, his soul twisted beyond recognition by hatred, sooner or later, he would get everyone killed.

Jessie turned and looked at Ron's face, every feature contorted in desperate pleading.

Her lips moved. No sound came.

She knew Leon was right.

She had no right to forgive Ron on Deanna's behalf. She had even less right to ask Leon to spare a man who had tried to kill him.

Ron watched the hesitation and anguish move through his mother's eyes.

He understood.

She wasn't going to save him.

She was going to stand right there and watch him die.

The terror flipped into rage.

"Why aren't you saying anything!"

Ron screamed, the sound tearing out of him.

"You whore!"

"You've been sleeping with this man all along!"

"All you have to do is spread your legs and beg him, say the word and he'll let me go!"

"Why are you letting me die! I'm your son!"

He went off like a rabid dog, a torrent of filth pouring out of him, every ugly word he knew.

Deanna and Aaron stared at Ron in stunned silence. Neither of them could believe it, that to save his own skin, he was demanding his own mother spread her legs and beg Leon for his life.

Jessie stared at him.

Those curses worked through her like teeth, shredding the last thin thread of maternal love she had left.

She rose slowly from the ground. She looked down at Ron as he thrashed in the muddy water, and her expression settled into a calm no one had ever seen on her face before.

"Ron."

"Isn't all of this something you brought on yourself?"

Ron went silent. The cursing stopped dead.

"You tried to kill Deanna out of revenge. Tried to kill Reg."

"You made yourself someone's dog just to save your own skin."

"You even had the audacity to shoot at the one person who could save all of us."

Jessie drew a slow, deep breath.

"People always pay a price for what they do."

"You're grown now. It's time you learned to carry that yourself."

She turned away.

She didn't look at Ron again. Not once. She walked straight toward Deanna and Aaron, her steps steady, without a single glance back.

Ron stared at his mother's retreating figure.

There was no one left who could save him.

The terror came back, vast and bottomless, and swallowed him whole.

"No — Mom! Come back! Mom!"

"I was wrong, I shouldn't have said those things to you."

He wailed in despair, his hands clawing at the ground.

Jessie didn't turn her head.

Leon looked at Alice. He tilted his head, just slightly.

Alice didn't hesitate.

BOOM!

The invisible Telekinesis spiked to 10 times its strength in an instant.

A sound came up from the drainage ditch, dull, wet, and utterly wrong.

Ron's screaming stopped.

His entire body, head included, was crushed flat by that force into a spread of pulp.

Blood seeped slowly through the drainage ditch.

Alice withdrew her Telekinesis and stepped back behind Leon, quiet as smoke, as though nothing had happened at all.

Everyone kept their heads down. No one dared breathe.

"Simon."

Leon spoke.

Simon, the Saviors' second-in-command, kneeling somewhere in the crowd, jolted like he'd been shocked and scrambled out on all fours.

"Here! I'm here!"

He dropped to his knees in front of Leon, head bent so low it nearly touched the ground.

Leon pointed at the trench coat lying in the dirt.

"Pick it up."

Simon reached out with both hands and carefully lifted it, handling the dust-covered coat like something that could bite him.

"You people haven't exactly gone without looting your share of good things, have you?"

Leon looked at him. His tone didn't change at all.

"Sir, we... we..."

Simon stammered, his mouth moving without finding a single useful word.

➤ Next: Preparing to Absorb All of Washington's Survivors