Chapter 77 Horrifying! Sanity Takes a Hit!

The corridor connecting Cell Block C to Cell Block B was even darker than the sections Magnus Vane and Shane had already crossed. Without the Helmet Light Mod hidden in Magnus’s Stalker Hood, he probably wouldn’t have been able to see more than a few feet ahead, yet something else immediately bothered both men more than the darkness. The piles of bodies that had filled the earlier corridors suddenly became much smaller here, leaving long stretches of strangely clean concrete. Considering how many people had died inside the prison, an empty hallway wasn’t reassuring at all; it meant the dead that should have been lying here had probably gotten back up and wandered somewhere else.

Magnus and Shane followed the corridor through three turns, moving carefully while checking every doorway and shadow along the way. At the next corner, Magnus stepped out far enough to look down the adjoining passage, then instantly jerked backward with enough force to make his boots scrape against the floor. His heart slammed several times in his chest, and without thinking he threw one arm across Shane and pinned him against the wall. “What the hell is that?”

Shane grunted under the pressure and tried to move, only to discover that Magnus’s Strength Lv10 arm might as well have been a steel bar. He managed to pull himself barely an inch away from the wall before Magnus absentmindedly pushed him right back into place. Shane stopped struggling and stared at the darkness with a look of deep irritation. “Magnus, either let me look or get your damn arm off me.”

The complaint finally snapped Magnus out of what he had seen. He released Shane and cautiously leaned around the corner a second time, but after only one look he immediately pulled back again and closed his eyes. When he turned toward Shane, his expression was so genuinely disturbed that Shane’s annoyance quickly turned into curiosity. Magnus pointed toward the corner and muttered, “You know what? Use your flashlight and see it yourself.”

Shane stared at him.

Magnus rarely looked shaken by anything.

That alone made Shane want to know.

He exchanged positions with Magnus, switched on his flashlight, and partially covered the beam with one hand before slowly directing it around the corner. The light first landed on a pair of dark red feet twisted upward at an unnatural angle, as though every bone in them had been broken by tremendous pressure. Shane frowned; disgusting, certainly, but not enough to explain Magnus’s reaction.

Then he raised the beam.

Higher.

One body.

Another.

A third.

Shane recoiled sharply and nearly dropped the flashlight.

“What the hell is that thing?”

Magnus gave him a helpless shrug that clearly meant now you understand. He motioned for Shane to get behind him and leaned around the corner again, this time forcing himself to study the creature instead of immediately retreating. The initial shock was fading, though the sight remained deeply unpleasant.

At least six or seven walkers had somehow become tangled together into one enormous moving mass. Their torsos were connected almost end to end, while the arms and legs sticking out from different sections gave the entire thing the appearance of some grotesque human centipede crawling through the prison. Each corpse still moved independently enough to claw and twist, yet together they formed one long, coordinated body. Magnus had faced Berserkers before, but this was the first time the system had produced something that looked this deliberately unnatural.

A Walker Centipede.

Magnus grimaced.

The second look wasn’t as frightening as the first, but it was definitely more disgusting. He had no desire to think too carefully about how the bodies had become connected, and the system’s new long-term prison mission suddenly felt much more suspicious than it had that morning. Whatever rules affected this prison clearly allowed system-altered walkers to appear inside its boundaries.

Magnus looked back at Shane and tilted his head toward the corridor.

Neither needed to say much.

Which one of us goes first?

Shane inhaled slowly, closed his eyes for a second, then tightened both hands around his 12-gauge shotgun. His expression looked almost like a man accepting an unpleasant assignment that somebody had to do. He stepped past Magnus, took another breath, and moved fully into the corridor.

“Happy Halloween.”

BANG!

BANG!

Two shotgun blasts tore through the darkness. Muzzle flashes briefly illuminated Shane, the prison walls, and the grotesque mass at the opposite end of the passage. Pellets tore into several of the connected bodies, and all six or seven walkers released low, overlapping growls at once.

They didn’t sound hurt.

They sounded excited.

The uppermost section of the creature suddenly bent backward.

Magnus’s eyes narrowed.

“Shane—”

The Walker Centipede snapped forward like a living catapult.

Two walkers attached near the top were violently thrown loose and launched down the hallway.

Shane’s eyes widened.

Before he could react, his collar suddenly tightened and his boots left the ground. Magnus yanked him backward with one hand, dragging him out of the impact zone just as both corpses slammed into the exact spot where Shane had been standing. They hit the floor in a tangled heap, still snapping and clawing despite being partially connected to each other.

Magnus stared.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He looked toward the remaining creature.

“You’re walkers, not artillery.”

The two thrown corpses tried to stand, but the way their bodies were still tangled made coordinated movement nearly impossible. Magnus stepped forward with the Stone Sledgehammer and drove the first blow into one walker’s torso instead of immediately targeting its skull. Bones cracked loudly beneath the impact, and as the weapon rebounded, Magnus redirected the next swing into its head.

CRACK!

The walker stopped moving.

He finished the second one moments later.

[Experience +1200 ×2]

Magnus paused when the notification appeared.

Twelve hundred each.

The same reward as a Blood Moon Berserker.

That confirmed these things weren’t ordinary walkers.

Still, after seeing how helpless the two separated bodies were once they hit the floor, Magnus’s confidence returned quickly. The creature looked horrifying, but so far its only unusual advantage appeared to be the ability to fling parts of itself at prey. Once those pieces became tangled on the ground, they were easier to kill than a normal standing walker.

“Looks worse than it fights,” Magnus muttered.

That was his first conclusion.

He immediately stepped back into the center of the corridor, Stone Sledgehammer resting confidently against one shoulder. Five walkers remained connected farther ahead, and Magnus’s initial fear had already turned into irritation. “Come on, then. Let’s finish this.”

The creature went still.

Magnus took another step.

Then something changed.

The remaining five bodies lowered together.

Their limbs pressed against the floor.

Every head turned toward Magnus at almost the same time.

That synchronized motion made him stop.

“Huh?”

The Walker Centipede dropped fully onto the concrete.

Then charged.

All of its arms and legs began moving at once, scraping and slapping against the floor in a rapid series of impacts. Instead of shambling upright like normal walkers, the entire mass came crawling down the corridor with disturbing speed, each limb helping propel the others forward. In the confined darkness, the sound resembled dozens of hands sprinting over concrete.

Magnus froze for half a second.

He had slaughtered livestock for years before the apocalypse.

He had reached Level 23.

His Strength attribute was maxed.

He had survived two Blood Moons.

None of that mattered.

His brain simply rejected what was coming toward him.

“Oh, hell no.”

Magnus abandoned the imposing stance he had taken only seconds earlier and backed away almost as quickly as he had stepped forward. The cramped corridor, total darkness beyond the headlamp, and the five-body creature crawling toward him on all fours combined into something far more horrifying than its actual combat strength suggested. His heart hammered, and adrenaline surged through him as he retreated toward Shane.

“Shane!”

Shane raised the shotgun.

“Get ready!”

Magnus moved in front of him with the Stone Sledgehammer gripped tightly in both hands while the crawling mass rapidly closed the distance.

Whatever that thing was, they were about to find out how hard it was to kill.

[System Note: Special mutated walkers may appear only inside areas currently influenced by the System. They do not naturally exist elsewhere at this stage of the timeline.]

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