Leon gently pushed Amy away, handing her trembling body over to Andrea. Then, he turned.
When he faced the endless horde of walkers surging like a black tide once more, the tenderness vanished. In those deep eyes, only ice remained. He raised the rifle, the cold buttstock pressed firmly against his shoulder.
Hawkeye Vision, activated.
The world deconstructed. The warm glow of the campfire, the terrified faces, and the swaying shadows faded into a cold, deep blue composed of data streams. Every walker became a silhouette flickering with an ominous red light. Their movement trajectories, skeletal structures, and the fragile points of their skulls were marked on his retina in pale gold lines.
He ignored the common threats. His gaze, like a high-precision scanner, locked onto the silhouettes with the most piercing glows.
A walker wearing football pads was using its bulk to ram the makeshift barricade Shane had built. Another, in a firefighter's uniform, ignored the stray flames thanks to its heavy gear. These were the nodes of greatest pressure. They had to die first.
"Rick!"
Leon's voice pierced the chaos. It wasn't a roar, yet it landed precisely in Rick's ears. "Three o'clock, the one in football pads!"
The moment the words left his mouth, he pulled the trigger.
Crack.
The shot was short and muffled. The bullet traveled dozens of meters, slipping through the gap between two ordinary walkers to pierce the eye socket of the armored target. The walker fell instantly.
Almost simultaneously, Rick turned his muzzle and fired.
Bang! Bang!
The armored walker's charging momentum died as the head beneath the helmet exploded into a mist of black blood. The massive body collapsed, toppling a group of its kind behind it. The breach was stabilized.
"Daryl, high point on the left flank—the firefighter!"
Leon shifted his muzzle. Crack. Crack. Two more precise shots. Two walkers trying to bypass the RV to reach Dale and Andrea were dealt with cleanly.
The rifle in Leon's hands was no longer a tool for killing; it was a scalpel. Every shot was a calm, efficient removal of a lethal lesion from the tide. No spraying. No wasted lead. Every bullet extinguished a red dot.
It was a stark contrast to Shane's manic style. Shane was venting his fear by blasting anything that moved; Leon was conducting a massacre.
"Shane, tighten the line! Don't waste bullets—hit the ones close by!"
Shane's body stiffened. The madness on his face faded, replaced by shock and humiliation, but seeing Rick and Daryl following Leon's lead, he gritted his teeth and pulled the defensive line back.
The resistance, which had been uncoordinated and on the verge of collapse, was forcibly integrated. Rick's precision, Daryl's silent arrows, and Shane's shotgun formed a layered, cross-fire network. The pressure on the survivors lightened.
In the chaos, no one noticed Ed.
Carol's husband had been hiding behind the crowd the whole time. Seeing the line stabilize, he didn't step forward to help. A flicker of secret joy passed through his eyes. He crouched down and slipped away, attempting to sneak into a tent behind the line. To him, thin nylon felt safer than gunfire.
It was a fatal mistake. A walker, knocked over by an explosion but still "alive," was rising from the shadows of that very tent. The moment Ed lifted the flap to crawl in, a rotting, withered hand grabbed his ankle.
"Ugh... Ah!"
A shrill scream of terror pierced the clamor. Ed was dragged backward, falling heavily. He looked back to see a visage so rotten that only gums and cloudy eyeballs remained.
"No! He—"
His cry for help was caught in his throat. A second, a third—more walkers were drawn by the scent of blood and his screams. They swarmed from the darkness like hyenas.
The sound of tearing flesh followed. The snap of bone. The muffled sound of chewing. Ed's screams turned into incoherent wails, then faded into silence.
"Mom..."
Sophia saw it. She saw her father—the man who beat and scolded her—being torn apart like a rag doll.
Carol's reflexes were faster than her thoughts. She spun around, pulling her daughter's head into her embrace and covering her eyes and ears. "Don't look, Sophia! Don't look!"
Carol herself did not look away. Her body trembled violently, her face pale as a ghost, but her eyes remained fixed on the hellish scene. She watched the man who had brought her endless pain being devoured bit by bit.
In her gaze, there was no fear. No sadness. Only an empty, deathly blankness.
Leon saw it too. In his Hawkeye Vision, the green dot representing Ed's life was extinguished in seconds. His heart didn't stir. In this broken world, cowardice was an original sin.
He pulled the trigger with even more stability. Crack. Crack. Crack. The speed of his fire increased. He knew any distraction now would lead to more meaningless deaths. Ed was merely an insignificant interlude.
The battle continued for twenty minutes, a double drain on ammunition and willpower. When the last walker stumbled out of the woods, Leon's magazine was empty. As he reached for his pistol, a thwip sounded.
A crossbow bolt whistled through the air, pinning the walker's skull to the ground. Daryl lowered his weapon.
The battle was over.
The gunshots and roars vanished, leaving the world in a dead silence. The thick smell of gunpowder mixed with the stench of rot.
The camp was no longer a camp. It was a mess of ruins—mangled remains of walkers, charred tents, and hot brass casings covering the blood-soaked grass. The survivors stood where they were, staring blankly. No one cheered. The relief of survival was quickly replaced by the heavy aimlessness of losing their home.
Amy pushed away from Andrea and rushed to Leon. She dove into his arms, holding him as if he were the only pillar in a collapsing world. She didn't cry; she just buried her face in his chest, her body still shaking.
Leon held her silently. The hand that had just performed a systematic massacre was now gently soothing her back. His gaze passed over her head, sweeping across the hollow, numb expressions of the survivors.
His eyes were heavier than ever before.