[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 785 - The Clown
Every eye in the room went wide.
Negan was on his knees. Bolt upright, stiff as a post, kneeling on the floor.
Gregory stood frozen in place, the hand that had just clapped Leon on the shoulder still hanging in mid-air.
He blinked. Looked down at Negan on the ground. Looked over at Simon sweating through his shirt.
His brain simply refused to process it.
What in the hell was this?
Negan. The Saviors' absolute tyrant. The nightmare haunting every survivor camp for dozens of miles in every direction.
And right now, without a single word of warning, he was on his knees in front of him. Gregory.
Gregory dry-swallowed.
An utterly absurd thought took root in his mind and began spreading wildly, his heart pounding against his will.
Could it be... Negan was kneeling to me?
The more he turned it over, the more sense it made.
It had to be that.
The Hilltop had been delivering more supplies, and better ones, lately, and he had always performed like the most loyal dog imaginable.
Had Boss Negan been moved by his loyalty?
Or was this Negan's way of holding him up as a "model" in front of the other camp leaders?
He had to admit.
Gregory had spent years ground under the Saviors' boot, living like a wretch day after day. The moment he saw Negan kneeling in front of him, something detonated in his chest, pure, shameless, glorious satisfaction.
He was absolutely bursting with it.
He even felt his old bones go light as air, as though he had arrived at the single highest point his life would ever reach.
But Gregory was an old fox.
No matter how good it felt on the inside, the surface had to stay composed. He absolutely could not let Negan think he was getting too big for his boots.
"Oh my, oh my! Boss Negan!"
He switched on an expression of overwhelmed humility, bent down quickly, and stretched both hands toward Negan to help him up.
"What are you doing!"
"I, Gregory, have always been a loyal partner of the Saviors!"
"How could you kneel to me? Come on, come on — get up, get up!"
He kept talking as he pulled hard at Negan's arm.
Negan, still kneeling on the floor, stared at those two withered hands reaching for him and listened to the garbage pouring out of Gregory's mouth.
He went completely blank.
His bloodshot eyes locked onto that old face.
What was this idiot saying?
Thinks I'm kneeling to him?
Who the hell do you think you are.
I hit the floor because you, you old bastard, put your hand on that living ancestor's shoulder, and I was terrified you'd drag me down with you!
And now you're going to help me up?
Are you really that eager to die?
"I knelt to you?"
Negan knocked Gregory's hands away and exploded off the floor like a maddened bull.
No hesitation whatsoever.
He wound his arm back. His thick forearm carved a blur through the air.
CRACK!
The slap detonated through the conference room.
Negan had put every ounce he had into that blow.
Gregory's scrawny body spun two and a half rotations on the spot, then slammed hard into the conference table beside him and sent the water glasses flying.
"Ow!"
Gregory clutched the half of his face already ballooning up, lip split at the corner.
He was stunned clean out of his senses. His skull rang. Golden stars crowded his vision.
What was happening?
The same man who just knelt in front of him was the same man who just slapped him?
How could one person be this fickle!
"Ne — Boss Negan..."
Gregory pressed his hand to his face, tears threatening, voice slurred and muffled.
"I — what did I do wrong? I genuinely can't figure it out!"
"Do wrong?"
Negan was shaking.
He lunged forward, grabbed Gregory by the collar, and hauled him bodily off the table.
"You're fucking blind!"
Negan roared, spittle spraying across Gregory's face. He spun around and jabbed a finger at Leon, who was standing off to the side watching the whole spectacle.
"Open your goddamn eyes and look!"
"That is the one who calls the shots here!"
"That is the one and only master of the Sanctuary!"
"You had the nerve to pat him on the shoulder?"
"You had the nerve to call him little brother?"
"You told him to watch where he was walking?"
Every sentence Negan spat out, he gave Gregory's collar a violent shake, like he was trying to scramble the man's brains into a smooth paste.
"If you want to fucking die, don't drag me down with you!"
"I honestly cannot tell if you're stupid or just suicidal!"
Something detonated inside Gregory's skull.
He stared blankly in the direction of Negan's jabbing finger.
At the young man in the black trench coat. The one he had written off as some clueless low-ranking soldier.
The one who calls the shots.
The one and only master of the Sanctuary.
And Negan had to kneel before him like a dog.
Gregory replayed everything he had just done.
He hadn't only bumped into this man. He'd clapped him on the shoulder. He'd spoken to him in that tone, the one you use to lecture someone beneath you.
Cold sweat soaked through his shirt all at once.
It finally hit him.
The soldier he had looked down on was the hidden boss. The real one.
And he had just been dancing on his own grave.
Negan let go. Gregory's legs buckled and he dropped straight to the floor.
He had no attention to spare for the pain. He knew exactly what was true: if he could not make this man relent today, he was not walking out that door.
SMACK!
Gregory's own hand came up and cracked across his face. Harder than Negan's slap.
"I was blind!"
SMACK!
A backhand. Then the other side.
He worked both cheeks in a frenzy, slapping himself again and again. The sharp cracks rang out through the conference room without stop.
"Sir! Boss!"
He slapped and wept and begged all at once.
"I couldn't see what was right in front of me!"
"Please, please spare me!"
Less than half a minute. Gregory's face had swollen to the size of a pig's head, blood running from his chin and dripping onto his chest.
He did not stop.
As long as Leon said nothing, he would not stop. Even if he had to beat himself to death.
Everyone else in the conference room, Ezekiel included, had gone completely still.
They watched Gregory destroy his own face. Then they looked at Leon, standing in the middle of the room, who had not moved, had not spoken, had not done a single thing.
Every heart in the room was hit by a wave it couldn't measure.
Who was this man?
Leon watched Gregory sprawled on the floor, slapping himself senseless. His gaze was cold.
Spineless sycophants, bully the weak, grovel before the strong. The apocalypse was absolutely full of them.
"That's enough."
The room went quiet.
Gregory's hand froze in mid-air.
He lifted that face, swollen past all recognition, and looked up at Leon with wet, desperate eyes.
"Stop being an eyesore."
Leon waved one hand. Shooing away a fly.
"Get over to the side and stand there."
Gregory looked like a man who had just had his death sentence commuted.
"Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir!"
He scrambled and crawled his way up off the floor, scurried to the far corner of the conference room, and stood with his head down, not daring to breathe too loudly.
Negan exhaled a long, slow breath.
He wiped the cold sweat off his forehead, bent forward at the waist, and gestured toward the head seat at the top of the conference table, the attentive posture of a dutiful doorman.
"Please. Take a seat."
Leon didn't stand on ceremony.
He crossed the room in a few long strides, dropped into the head seat, and settled in with the easy, wide-shouldered sprawl of a man who had never considered sitting anywhere else.
His gaze swept the length of the table.
Ezekiel instinctively straightened his back.
In front of this man, he didn't dare put on a single ounce of his so-called King's bearing.
Leon had no time for pleasantries with camp leaders.
He had called them here for exactly one reason.
"I don't care what rules you followed under Negan."
"Starting today, there is one rule within a hundred miles of this place."
"Mine."
No one spoke.
Not a word.
Even Negan could only stand behind Leon like a bodyguard, meek and obedient. So what exactly was anyone else going to say?
➤ Next: Unified Management