TWD - Chapter 522: Did You Run Into an Old Acquaintance? (Patreon)

Just as the convoy Sasha was escorting crossed into West Virginia, two vehicles pulled out of Alexandria.

“We’re forty minutes from the target area,” Bossie reported while operating the drone. “The drone is two kilometers ahead conducting low-altitude reconnaissance. The road is clear. No walker hordes or armed personnel detected.”

“Kill the lights after dark,” Calista said calmly.

“Understood.”

Carver kept both hands steady on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the winding mountain road ahead. In the back seat, Leah and Turner checked their equipment.

Mike drove the second vehicle while Jenson, Wells, Jonathan, and Wagner rested with their eyes closed.

Thompson and Ethan had been left behind in Alexandria, along with Aiden, who had volunteered to act as a guide.

Calista had refused his offer on the grounds that the drone could scout ahead instead. The three of them remained with the Black Hawk, ready to provide air support if the team needed it. A helicopter was much faster than a car, after all.

Aiden was brave enough, but he was not as capable as the people on this mission. If he died during the operation, Calista would have a hard time explaining that to Deanna.

Outside the windows, the open hills gradually narrowed into a cramped mountain valley. The forests along both sides of the road grew denser, branches intertwining overhead and cutting the last traces of daylight into scattered fragments.

Forty minutes later, the two vehicles stopped at the planned position. Engines off. Lights out.

Ahead was the only winding mountain road leading into the resort.

Bossie’s drone flew fifty meters ahead at low altitude to guide them, while Leah took point on foot.

About an hour later, the team reached the designated observation point.

It was a ridgeline northeast of the resort, roughly a hundred fifty meters above the target. The view was wide open while the vegetation around them was dense, making it an excellent concealed observation position at night.

Turner and Mike established security on the eastern and western flanks. Jenson selected a high point and built a sniper position where he was.

Carver crouched behind a rock, raised a pair of high-powered night-vision binoculars, and slowly swept the valley below.

Then he stopped dead.

“...Calista.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper as he held out the binoculars. “You should see this yourself. They’re still fighting down there.”

Calista took them.

Through night vision, the outline of the resort gradually came into focus.

Seven or eight fresh bodies lay scattered across the open ground in front of the main building, twisted into unnatural positions.

Judging from their clothes and the weapons lying around them, they were Wolves.

Again.

But these were not the corpses from two days earlier. Those had long since gone cold.

This was fresh killing, and the fight was not completely over yet.

Near the staff dormitory, more than a dozen figures used doorways, windows, and abandoned vehicles as cover while firing sporadically toward the main building.

There was no discipline to their shooting. Bullets struck the exterior walls in irregular bursts, sometimes heavy, sometimes sparse.

The remnants of the Wolves were counterattacking.

And their opponents...

Calista shifted her view toward the main building.

Eleven figures occupied different firing positions.

Another exchange of fire passed.

The Wolves lost several more people.

The mysterious group lost no one.

Behind the rooftop water tower, one figure knelt with a rifle shouldered, the muzzle held steadily toward the dormitory. He remained almost completely motionless.

At a window on the left side of the second floor, another figure leaned against the frame with most of the body hidden behind the wall. Only the muzzle and half of a mask were visible, leaving little more than a sinister outline through night vision.

Behind a pillar on the first-floor porch, another person crouched while changing magazines.

Their clothing was uniform.

More striking were the full-face masks that covered every inch of skin.

For a moment, the sight gave Calista a bizarre flash of Delta Force and PUBG.

She could tell immediately that with this level of accuracy and firepower, those eleven people could clear out the Wolves in the dormitory in half an hour.

It was not that they lacked the ability to wipe them out.

They were running low on ammunition.

The rate of fire from the main building kept dropping.

Even so, the eleven masked figures still controlled every firing lane.

Their choice of cover was flawless. Their overlapping fields of fire covered every dormitory window the Wolves could possibly use to return fire, and they could unleash a much heavier barrage at any moment.

But they did not.

They could not afford to waste the ammunition.

Calista noticed the black moth mask by the second-floor window changing magazines.

The white skull mask behind the base of the rooftop water tower was spacing out his shots more and more.

The rusted metal mask behind the porch pillar had even started picking up weapons dropped by dead Wolves.

They did not lack the desire to end the fight quickly.

They lacked the ammunition to do it cheaply.

The Wolves were in the same position.

Their shooting had been wasteful from the beginning. Panicked. Disorderly. Fingers held on triggers far too long.

Their ammunition had vanished even faster.

Someone cursed in broken Spanish.

Someone else shouted in English, “Save your ammo!”

Once people got caught up in the fight, nobody listened.

The Wolves lost patience first.

The wooden door of the staff dormitory, already shredded by gunfire, was kicked open.

Three figures charged out howling.

The first was a large man swinging a fire axe.

Behind him came a tall, thin young man carrying a baseball bat wrapped with rusty nails.

The third did not even have a proper melee weapon. He carried a letter opener.

As they rushed toward the main building’s porch, the rusted metal mask behind the pillar drew something from his waist.

The fire axe came down.

The masked fighter shifted sideways, letting the blade skim past his chest.

Then he drove his weapon upward.

It entered beneath the large man’s jaw, punched through the base of the tongue, and buried itself in the upper palate.

The fire axe crashed to the ground.

The man’s body still pitched forward from momentum, but his consciousness was already gone.

The rusted metal mask was already looking past him toward the young man with the baseball bat twenty meters away.

The young man froze.

He saw blood dripping from the blade in the masked man’s hand and turned to run.

An arrow flew in from behind him.

It entered the back of his neck and burst out below his Adam’s apple.

He collapsed less than two meters from the fire axe, limbs spasming violently several times before going still.

At the staff dormitory entrance, the third man with the letter opener had already fallen backward and was scrambling away on the ground.

No one chased him.

The eleven people in the main building did not appear to be trying to exterminate every last Wolf.

At least not yet.

Calista gave a low whistle of appreciation.

Aside from Leah and her team, this was the most capable group she had seen so far.

“Leah, take a look.”

She handed the binoculars over.

Leah raised them.

A second later, she sucked in a sharp breath.

Carver immediately sensed something was wrong.

He turned and saw Leah’s face go pale, her pupils widening dramatically.

He gently took the binoculars from her hand and looked for himself.

Then he passed them to Mike.

Mike looked once and said nothing.

The binoculars moved silently through the team.

Turner.

Bossie.

Jenson.

Calista stared in surprise.

Every one of them wore the same expression.

They looked at each other, but no one said a word.

Calista finally could not stand it anymore.

She walked over to Leah and patted her sister’s arm.

“Leah... did you guys run into an old acquaintance?”

Her heart was pounding.

She had the overwhelming feeling that the answer was about to reveal something enormous.