TWD - Zomboid - Chapter 301: Luke: Shane, Cut Out Her Tongue (Patreon)

Luke never missed.

Every shot from the Barrett sounded like a cannon blast, the explosions of gunfire merging into one continuous roar.

He alone made enough noise to sound like an entire camp opening fire.

Within just a few minutes, more than a dozen Whisperers had disappeared from the center of the walker horde.

Once the pheromones had compressed the horde enough, the helicopters dropped lower and unleashed their firepower.

Shane braced the heavy machine gun like the Punisher himself had taken over. The ammunition belt fed through in a constant stream as lines of fire swept across the horde, dropping walkers by the dozen.

Abraham’s helicopter hammered grenades into the densest part of the horde, blasting open huge craters filled with flying blood and flesh.

Merle, Daryl, Sasha, Rosita... the others poured in crossfire from different angles, treating the tightly packed horde like one enormous stationary target.

Why were Musou-style games so satisfying?

Roll the footage!

More than a dozen helicopters took turns bearing down on the horde, and the gunfire never stopped. At this rate, they looked ready to keep going for three days and three nights.

The mass of walkers below was nothing more than a field of living targets. There was nowhere for them to hide.

Alpha was paying the price for not understanding technology.

The horde was thinning at an astonishing rate.

Even a Blood Moon from 7 Days to Die would have to kneel before this kind of firepower.

And that wasn’t even counting Leon and Crane’s two teams attacking from the front.

Crane was leading the charge.

The Harran virus had transformed his body, giving him the strength of a human beast.

He plunged straight into the walkers with his bare hands, dropping one with every punch. Anything that so much as brushed against him was smashed apart, and his iron fists literally carved a path through the horde.

The white-armored soldiers behind him showed no fear of death. They followed the opening Crane created and pushed deeper inside.

Mutant walkers?

If one of them could actually survive a punch from Crane Superman, then next up was Luke, the man who could dismantle Mendez with his bare hands.

Leon wasn’t nearly as aggressive as Crane.

He was a Steelback Beast, but he wasn’t Superman. There was still only so much pressure he could take.

Leon led his squad along the edge of the horde, picking off the walkers that slipped through the main firepower while providing ranged suppression.

Ellie was with Leon’s squad.

She had no armor and was small, so Leon deliberately kept her near the center of the formation.

But Ellie was already highly skilled herself.

When a walker slipped in from the side, she immediately raised her shotgun and fired into its head, blowing half of its skull away at point-blank range.

Once the shotgun ran dry, she switched to her dragon-head knife, closed the distance, and went straight for the neck.

She killed quickly and accurately.

Not a single bullet went to waste.

The nearby white-armored soldiers could only stare.

She was fourteen?

When they were fourteen, they had practically still been playing in the mud.

Damn, this girl was badass!

The battle was a complete one-sided slaughter.

A horde of ten thousand walkers had been surrounded by only a few hundred people.

After more than an hour of fighting, their numbers had fallen to barely over a thousand.

Luke continued picking off Whisperers from a distance.

By the end, the open field was covered in mutilated corpses and black blood.

The Whisperers were finished.

Once all the Whisperers controlling the horde were dead, the remaining walkers completely lost direction. They reverted to scattered, aimless stragglers and were wiped out in groups by the white-armored soldiers.

Luke lowered the sniper rifle.

Leon returned from the front line covered from head to toe in blood.

The helicopters were still roaring overhead, cleaning up the remaining walkers.

“I saw you take a few alive?” Luke asked.

“More than twenty.” Leon wiped some blood from his face. Even he had gotten a little carried away with the killing. “Looks like they had two leaders. One called Alpha, the other Beta.”

“That Beta guy was something. Tried hiding among the walkers to ambush Crane. Crane put him to sleep with one punch.”

“Bring them over.” Luke raised a hand.

More than twenty Whisperers, plus Alpha and Beta.

There were actually quite a few of them.

The captured Whisperers were herded into an open area and completely surrounded by white-armored soldiers.

Even while kneeling on the ground, some of them still looked vicious.

They wore foul, rotting walker skins and struggled while hurling curses, though most had already accepted defeat and were trying to surrender.

Alpha knelt at the very front.

She was a bald woman who had ruled over a tribe built around the walker horde.

Even now, with everything lost, her expression was strangely calm.

Everyone was watching them.

Shane.

The four from Zombieland.

Joel.

Even Ellie, covered in blood and holding a shotgun.

Ada leaned against the doorway of a nearby building, quietly watching.

“Where’s the one who kept taking shots at us from hiding? Let me see who it was!”

Alpha raised her head defiantly.

Shane immediately stepped forward and smashed the butt of his rifle into her mouth, knocking several teeth loose.

Alpha dropped to her knees and spat out a mouthful of blood.

“Shut up, bitch!”

Shane spat on the ground.

“Hahahaha!”

Alpha’s mouth was full of blood, but she laughed wildly.

A person already facing death had little left to fear.

Especially after her daughter had been shot through the head by Luke.

Right in front of her.

“Guess I’ll start with you!”

Shane pulled the dagger from his waist and pressed it against Alpha’s neck.

“Let her go!”

Beta tore himself free from the white-armored soldiers and staggered toward them.

But he had already taken a punch from Crane and was still badly concussed.

Joel stepped forward and kicked Beta, knocking him straight to the ground.

Abraham personally grabbed Beta by the collar and slammed him down.

Beta passed out again.

Just as Shane was about to act, footsteps sounded from the stairs.

The crowd immediately parted.

Luke walked down from the watchtower.

No one dared stand in his path.

Everyone moved aside to make way for him, and even Shane stopped what he was doing.

“Where’s the baseball bat I asked for?”

Luke glanced around.

He looked like an innocent, cheerful young man searching for some treasured toy.

“Here.”

Rosita took the baseball bat from one of the white-armored soldiers and handed it to Luke.

Luke gave it a few swings.

The bat felt practically weightless in his hands.

“Come on, is this thing made of paper? Why is it so light?”

Luke swung the bat so quickly that several afterimages seemed to appear in the air, leaving everyone around him stunned.

He walked up to the row of kneeling Whisperers and rested the bat on his shoulder.

“So I finally get to see all your beautiful faces.”

Luke took another heavy step forward.

“I have to say, every single one of you looks worse than the last. You’re already living like this, and you still think you’re in a position to go around stirring up trouble?”

“Last time you were hanging around near the outpost, I couldn’t even be bothered with you. I just halfheartedly chased you off.”

“And somehow you still had the nerve to come knocking on my door.”

Luke looked down at Alpha and lightly tapped the top of her bald head with the baseball bat.

“I gave you a chance, and you still blew it!”

Alpha raised her head.

“You won this time!”

Her voice was hoarse.

“But walkers are endless. You can kill all of these today, but can you kill the next horde? The old world is already dead. All you’re doing by hiding behind these walls is...”

“Stop, stop.”

Luke cut her off.

“Did I say you could talk?”

He raised a hand toward Shane.

“Go on. Cut her tongue out.”