Before dawn, Terminus was quiet. The woman who usually stood at the entrance roasting meat to lure in survivors was nowhere to be seen.
Apparently, even the cannibals hadn't expected anyone to come knocking this early. How inconsiderate!
Outside the eastern wall, Zhou knelt amid the weeds while Leon crouched beside him, carefully wedging a block of plastic explosives deep into a crack in the wall and attaching a thin fuse.
Murphy and Leslie were concealed farther back, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings. Although Zhou and the others had only spotted people near the main gate during their earlier reconnaissance, no one dared let their guard down.
Rick's hushed voice came over the walkie-talkie. "All teams, final check. Zhou?"
"East side in position. Charges are set," Zhou replied quietly.
"Main gate. Tyreese?"
"We're in position."
Rick paused. "OK. Thirty seconds. Zhou's team blows the wall. The explosion is our signal to launch the assault."
"Copy."
Thirty... five, four, three, two...
Leon pressed the detonator with his thumb.
"BOOM—!!!"
A deep explosion ripped through the silence. Amid a cloud of thick smoke, a section of Terminus's eastern wall collapsed inward, opening a breach nearly two meters wide.
"Go! Go! Go!" Zhou growled.
He sprang from cover first, keeping low as he raised his HK417 and rushed through the swirling dust and smoke, charging straight through the breach.
Murphy, Leon, and Leslie followed close behind. The four immediately spread into tactical formation, their weapons covering different sectors.
Almost simultaneously, an even louder crash came from the main gate. Tyreese, Sasha, and the others had made their move.
Shouts of alarm and frantic footsteps immediately erupted from several of the main buildings.
"Who the hell is that?!"
"Holy shit! We're under attack! The wall's down!"
"Get your guns! Hurry!"
Several men carrying handguns or machetes rushed out of the nearest prefab building in a panic. Before they could even make out the figures at the breach, bullets were already flying toward them.
"Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!"
Zhou and Leon's rifles spat short bursts, their suppressors keeping the gunfire muted.
The heads of the two men in front burst apart in sprays of blood. Neither managed so much as a groan before falling flat on his back.
Murphy and Leslie covered the flanks, quickly dropping the men who came running from another direction.
Zhou's team never slowed down. Following their planned route, they headed straight for the warehouses and the largest two-story brick building in the center of the rail yard.
Their four-man team's job was to create chaos, split up the enemy, and determine as quickly as possible whether any survivors were being held captive.
At the main gate, the fighting was even fiercer.
Tyreese and Sasha drove a heavily reinforced truck straight at the fortified entrance, flooring the accelerator and smashing through the gate. Five members drawn from the Prison Reserves followed behind them.
The main squad immediately ran into several Terminus members who had reacted quickly enough to grab their weapons.
Gunfire erupted in a rapid barrage.
But just as Zhou had expected, the Terminus members' resistance was disorganized and untrained.
They had never been particularly formidable fighters. Until now, they had relied almost entirely on drugging the barbecue and drinking water to incapacitate the survivors they lured in.
Against hardened veterans like Tyreese and Sasha, both among the strongest fighters in The Walking Dead, they were quickly suppressed.
Rick, T-Dog, and Jacqui circled around from the side entrance and encountered almost no real resistance. The only person they had to deal with was one unlucky man who tried to escape through the back.
They quickly joined Tyreese and the others, who had secured the main gate, and began systematically clearing the buildings one by one.
Everything went smoothly.
Until they opened the largest warehouse's steel door.
A nauseating stench rolled out all at once. It was like rotten meat had been dumped into a toilet, gotten lodged in the pipes for several months while people kept using it the entire time, and then the plumbing finally burst, forcing everything in the toilet back up...
Several people at the front immediately gagged and clamped their hands over their mouths and noses.
At first glance, it looked like a food storage warehouse. Rows of things hung from iron hooks along the overhead beams, resembling slabs of dried bacon and salted ribs. They were dark brown, their surfaces gleaming with grease.
Then everyone looked more closely.
Those slabs of "meat" had the unmistakable outlines of human limbs. One particularly greasy piece hanging from a hook was even still attached to a section of human neck.
A chill shot through everyone from the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads.
"My God..." Tyreese's face went deathly pale as he hurriedly made the sign of the cross over his chest.
On one side of the warehouse stood several crude concrete worktables. Machetes, saws, and hooks polished to a bright sheen were scattered across them. Layer upon layer of dark stains had soaked deep into the surfaces and run down onto the floor, forming a thick, sticky crust of filth.
A pile of bones lay in one corner. Large and small, they had been thrown together haphazardly like discarded garbage.
And on the nearest worktable...
A man's body had been strapped down spread-eagle.
His chest cavity had already been opened. Some of his internal organs had been removed, leaving his hollow abdomen exposed, its edges lined with rough, uneven cuts. His head lolled to one side, his eyes still wide open, and his face remained twisted in the expression he had worn at the moment of death.
If Zhou and the others had been there, they would have recognized him as one of the six hunters. The one named Lou, if they remembered correctly.
Beneath the table sat a stainless-steel basin filled with foul-smelling, dark red liquid and scraps of tissue.
Beside it stood a charcoal brazier. The embers had not yet completely died, and a blackened pot rested above them.
Inside was a broth with beads of oil floating across the surface and a layer of white fat congealing on top. Several chunks drifted half-submerged in the liquid.
Their shapes and colors made it unnecessary to look any closer.
"Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!"
This time, someone actually vomited. It was one of the younger members of the team.
He doubled over, retching violently as tears and snot streamed down his face, looking as though he might throw up his own insides.
Sasha's lips had gone pale and her face twisted with nausea. She clenched her teeth hard, barely keeping herself from joining him.
Rick's stomach churned in waves as a murderous fury surged up from deep inside him.
Whatever faint doubts any of them had previously harbored about Calista's order to "take no prisoners" were completely obliterated by the bloody, living hell before them.
All that remained was the urge to wipe the animals responsible for this from the face of the earth.
"Search everything! Turn this whole place upside down! Don't leave a single one alive!"
The sweep that followed was fueled by pure rage.
There were only a dozen or so people in Terminus to begin with, and most of their brutality had always been directed at helpless prey. Faced with attackers armed to the teeth, the cannibals proved remarkably fragile.
A tall man in a bloodstained apron charged out wildly, brandishing a boning knife. Tyreese put a bullet through his head, spraying brain matter behind him.
Two men hiding outside and firing toward the group were each dropped by Sasha with a precise shot to the head.
The woman who had been roasting the meat looked like nothing more than an ordinary, harmless housewife. Tyreese and another member of the team dragged her out as she sobbed and begged for mercy, claiming she had been forced to do it.
Tyreese hesitated and turned to his sister. "She doesn't look like..."
"Bang!"
Sasha shot him a glare, raised her weapon, and fired.
The woman's pleas stopped instantly.
"You'd better stop talking."
Rick counted his people, then asked, "Anyone seen Zhou and the others?"
Sasha shook her head. "They probably went to look for any victims who are still alive."