TWD - Chapter 500: “W” (Patreon)

A stale, dusty smell washed over them.

The room was dim, but traces of the life that had once filled it were still visible.

A family photo of five hung on the living room wall: Noah’s parents, Noah, and his two younger twin brothers. Other little traces of the three boys growing up were scattered around the house, making it clear that Noah’s family had been fairly well-off before the apocalypse.

Noah’s eyes passed over all those familiar things as he walked deeper into the house.

Then his gaze settled on a full-length mirror standing against the wall at the back of the bedroom.

Beside the mirror, someone had drawn a “W” on the wall in blood.

Noah didn’t notice it.

All of his attention was fixed on the mirror.

Reflected in the glass was a ragged figure standing with its back to the door, head hanging low.

It didn’t move, as though it were simply another part of the dead, silent room.

Noah stopped breathing.

“...Eli?”

He cautiously took a step forward.

The figure in the mirror slowly began to turn.

A grayish face appeared in the cracked reflection, patches of skin already shriveled and sloughing away.

The features resembled Noah’s, only younger.

Empty eye sockets.

A rotted nose.

Black and yellow teeth inside an open mouth.

It was wearing a plaid shirt Noah knew all too well.

Its movements were stiff and sluggish. It had clearly been a walker for a long time, apparently trapped inside this little house all along.

Then it finished turning toward Noah.

Drawn by the presence of the living, it began dragging its legs forward, making hoarse, rasping sounds as it moved toward the doorway at a surprisingly quick pace.

Noah saw it clearly.

Or rather, everything he had refused to see forced its way into his mind all at once.

That wasn’t Eli!

It was only a monster occupying Eli’s body!

His twin brother, the neat, slightly shy Eli who had always followed him around, who would fight with his other brother over a single cookie... Eli had been dead for a long time.

Maybe he had died shortly after Noah left.

Maybe he had died the very day the community was attacked.

The walker outbreak had taken his mother and one of his brothers. The Hospital Police Gang had indirectly cost him his father.

Eli had been the only family he had left.

And now he was gone too...

The sheer grief and absurdity of it all crushed Noah in an instant.

He didn’t scream.

He didn’t run.

He simply stood there, staring blankly as the monster wearing his brother’s clothes staggered closer, one step at a time.

He even reached out instinctively, as though he still needed to make sure...

“Noah! Back up!”

Tyreese’s shout came from outside the room, but Noah seemed not to hear him.

Tyreese immediately spotted the walker in the mirror.

Noah was still frozen in place.

Tyreese charged into the room, shoved Noah aside, and swung his hammer.

Crash!

The mirror shattered across the floor.

Only then did Tyreese realize he had attacked the reflection.

The real walker was in the corner of the bedroom.

Behind him.

But it was already too late.

Walker Eli had closed to within arm’s reach. His rotten arm shot forward toward Tyreese’s neck.

At that critical instant, Kango, who had been following behind and closely monitoring the room, smashed through the wooden boards covering the side window and threw himself inside.

He hit the floor, rolled, and raised his rifle almost without pausing.

“Tyreese! Noah! Move!” Kango barked.

The shout jolted Noah.

His survival instinct finally overpowered everything else, and he threw himself backward while Tyreese lunged one step forward out of the way.

Almost simultaneously...

Pop!

A gunshot sounded.

The bullet entered through Walker Eli’s open mouth at an upward angle and blew a small piece of skull from the back of his head.

Thick, filthy black fluid sprayed across the wall and the shattered mirror behind him.

Walker Eli froze.

Then his body toppled backward and struck the dusty floor heavily.

He didn’t move again.

The world fell silent.

The only sounds were Tyreese’s shaken, ragged breathing and Noah’s painful sobs.

Sasha came rushing in at the sound.

She swept her eyes across the room. One look at the shattered mirror and the walker’s position told her exactly what had happened.

She immediately checked her brother.

Once she confirmed that Tyreese hadn’t been scratched, she turned toward Noah, who was sitting helplessly on the floor.

“Are you out of your mind, Noah? That was a walker! You almost got my brother killed!”

Kango lowered his rifle, glanced at the furious Sasha, and wisely backed toward the doorway.

Tyreese tugged on Sasha’s arm.

“Sasha, let it go. He didn’t mean to.”

Sasha opened her mouth to continue, but Tyreese pulled at her again.

She stopped.

Tyreese tried to help Noah up, but the young man’s eyes were empty.

He could only stare at the body lying motionless on the floor.

His legs simply wouldn’t support him.

His greatest hope had just been shattered, followed immediately by the cruelest possible confrontation with the death of someone he loved.

It wasn’t something anyone could recover from in a few moments.

Sasha looked at Noah, then at the walker on the floor in the plaid shirt.

After a moment of silence, she sighed.

“Forget it. Kango, take care of him.”

Kango understood what his captain meant.

He found a torn bedsheet in the house and draped it over Eli’s body.

At the very least, Noah wouldn’t have to keep looking at that face.

“We need to leave, Noah.”

Tyreese crouched beside him until they were at eye level.

“There’s no one alive here anymore. Staying only puts us in danger.”

Noah’s eyes slowly shifted until they focused on Tyreese’s face.

Then the tears came again.

With Tyreese’s help, he finally managed to stand.

He looked one last time at his twin brother beneath the sheet.

Then he abruptly turned away and stumbled out of what had once been his home.

The journey out of the Greenwood community felt even heavier than the journey in.

Noah curled up in a corner of the back seat without saying a word, looking like an empty shell whose soul had been stripped away.

Sasha didn’t force him to talk.

She only told Tyreese to keep a closer eye on him.

Even Zach, usually the most talkative of them, stopped trying to guess everyone’s pre-apocalypse jobs after learning what had happened to Noah’s community and his brother.

For a while, the vehicle was completely silent.

The team retraced its route.

Their plan was to get out of this suffocating area first, then decide whether to continue north on reconnaissance or return to the prison.

Under Calista’s orders, they had already gathered valuable intelligence.

They had found concrete evidence of the mad raiders, confirmed the destruction of a community like Greenwood, and documented several small and medium-sized survivor camps along the way.

The mission had already produced critical information.

But about three hours after leaving Greenwood, as they drove onto a relatively wide state highway, Tyreese suddenly slowed again.

“Sasha, something’s wrong up ahead.”

Sasha immediately raised her binoculars.

About two hundred meters ahead, something dark lay across the middle of the road.

The SUV approached cautiously.

Finally, it stopped roughly fifty meters away.

Its headlights cut through the gathering dusk and illuminated the object ahead.

Everyone sucked in a breath.

It was a large red vehicle.

A school bus.

It looked as though someone had simply abandoned it there.

But...

“Look at the side of the bus,” Boone said, his voice more serious than any of them had ever heard it.

The side door was broken and jammed half open.

Through the gap, they could vaguely see that the bus was packed with something.

Sasha signaled Kango and Zach to provide cover.

Then she, Boone, and Tyreese advanced slowly with their weapons raised.

An indescribable stench rolled over them.

It was thicker and more complex than the smell of any walker gathering they had ever encountered.

When they finally saw what was inside, everyone’s stomach turned.

The bus was packed from end to end, layer upon layer, with walkers that had nothing left below the waist or chest.

They had been crudely severed in half.

The wounds had long since rotted black.

The walkers had been piled together like cargo.

Many were still moving faintly, their shriveled arms clawing weakly at the air while their rotten mouths opened and closed, producing soft, rasping sounds.

And on the forehead, cheek, or bare scalp of every mutilated walker, someone had painted the same crude but unmistakable letter in a dark red substance that looked like dried blood.

“W”