Chapter 78 Hit It Again! Reaching the Control Room

Magnus Vane raised the Quality 5 Stone Sledgehammer high above his head and planted his feet in the center of the narrow corridor. His legs tightened first, followed by his waist and shoulders as he prepared to drive every bit of Strength Lv10 into one downward strike. Beside him, Shane immediately brought up his shotgun and aimed toward the corner, flashlight fixed on the path where the grotesque Walker Centipede had disappeared. The rapid slap of hands and feet against concrete grew louder by the second, coming closer until both men could smell the concentrated stench of several rotting bodies moving together.

Then the noise stopped.

Magnus and Shane both stiffened.

Neither man lowered his weapon, but the sudden silence was somehow worse than the approaching sound had been. Shane kept his flashlight pointed around the corner, waiting for the creature to rush into view, while Magnus held the sledgehammer overhead until the muscles in his shoulders began to tighten. Before either could decide what the creature was doing, the scratching noise returned without warning, now faster and much closer.

Shane aimed toward the floor.

Nothing was there.

His expression changed.

Slowly, he raised the flashlight.

“Son of a bitch.”

Five connected walkers were crawling across the protective metal framework surrounding the overhead lights. Their hands and feet clung to the mesh while their twisted bodies hung upside down, moving almost silently compared with their earlier charge along the floor. Even worse, every ruined face was turned toward Magnus.

Magnus had already seen them.

That was why he hadn’t moved.

The thing had frightened him twice already, and seeing it crawl across the ceiling finally transformed most of that fear into irritation. His grip tightened around the Stone Sledgehammer until the handle creaked faintly. “I’ve had enough of this nightmare.”

The Walker Centipede crawled closer.

Magnus moved.

His legs drove against the floor, his hips rotated, and the force traveled through his waist and shoulders into both arms. The Stone Sledgehammer came down from overhead with everything Strength Lv10 could produce. “GET DOWN!”

WHAM!

The hammer struck the face of the leading walker.

Its skull collapsed instantly.

The force didn’t stop there.

The entire connected mass, still weighing several hundred pounds even after losing two bodies earlier, was ripped away from the ceiling and slammed onto the concrete floor as if someone had torn down a hanging tarp. Limbs snapped beneath the impact, and the remaining walkers twisted over one another while trying to recover.

[Experience +1200]

Shane opened fire immediately.

BANG!

BANG!

The muzzle flashes turned the corridor white for fractions of a second as buckshot tore into the tangled bodies. Magnus threw the Stone Sledgehammer aside, brought the Remington off his back, and joined him without hesitation. After everything the creature had put them through, neither man seemed interested in conserving ammunition.

BANG!

Magnus worked the pump.

“Crawling on the ceiling now?”

BANG!

Another walker jerked beneath the blast.

“First the warden’s office tries to kill me, then you freaks start throwing each other down hallways!”

BANG!

Shane fired beside him.

Magnus pointed toward the ruined mass. “Reload.”

Shane stared at him.

“It’s barely moving.”

“Reload.”

Shane actually laughed despite himself and fed more shells into the shotgun.

The next few seconds became excessive.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

By the time the firing finally stopped, the Walker Centipede was no longer recognizable as anything that had once moved. Magnus lowered his shotgun and breathed heavily, anger finally draining away as the adrenaline began wearing off. Shane, however, had already drawn his machete and looked ready to start cutting apart whatever remained.

Magnus caught his arm.

“Okay. That’s enough.”

Shane looked down at the corpse pile.

Then back at Magnus.

“The more I look at it, the more pissed off I get.”

“I know.”

Shane tightened his grip.

Magnus tugged him backward. “It’s dead, man.”

After another few seconds, Shane finally stopped resisting and put the machete away. The two leaned against opposite walls before gradually sliding down to sit on the floor, neither caring how they looked anymore. The fight hadn’t lasted long, but the combination of fear, adrenaline, gunfire, and the unnatural way the creature moved had exhausted them more mentally than physically.

Shane looked toward what remained of the Walker Centipede.

“What the hell was that?”

Magnus shook his head. “No idea.”

That wasn’t completely true.

He had recognized something familiar in the creature’s behavior. Like the Blood Moon Berserkers, these walkers had clearly been altered by the system’s influence, except instead of simple speed and aggression, they had somehow become a single coordinated organism. If this had been 7 Days to Die, Magnus would have expected to find something like it guarding a high-tier location rather than wandering through an ordinary hallway.

And now the prison had produced one.

Magnus rubbed a hand over his face.

“This occupation mission better have one hell of a reward.”

Shane gave him a confused look.

“Nothing.”

They rested until their breathing steadied and the slight trembling in their hands faded. Once Magnus felt his strength return, he got up and pulled Shane to his feet. “The control room shouldn’t be far from here. We check it, and if the route gets any worse than this, we turn around.”

“No argument from me.”

Both men reloaded before moving again.

The corridor sat directly between Cell Blocks C and B, so after only another couple of turns, the red marker Magnus had placed on his system map appeared almost directly ahead. A reinforced door came into view beneath it. This was the control room they had been searching for.

Unfortunately, something was standing in front of it.

A massive walker.

It still wore the remnants of a correctional officer’s uniform and cap, but the body underneath looked hideously swollen. Its skin was stretched tight and discolored, giving the corpse the appearance of someone who had been submerged in water for days before somehow standing back up. The walker didn’t wander or scratch at the walls; it simply stood facing the control-room door, staring at the handle as though some dying fragment of routine had kept it at its post.

Magnus stopped.

“That one’s different too.”

Shane raised his shotgun slightly.

Magnus studied the swollen corpse and felt a familiar system-game instinct warning him not to get close. “And unless I’m remembering wrong, things shaped like that tend to explode.”

Shane slowly lowered the shotgun.

“That would’ve been useful information five seconds ago.”

“I just remembered.”

“Fantastic.”

The walker was standing directly beside the door they needed, so simply shooting it at close range could damage the entrance or create far more noise than Magnus wanted. If the prison alarm system could still be triggered somehow, causing an explosion beside the control room seemed like exactly the kind of stupid accident they were trying to avoid. Magnus decided to move it first.

He reached into his bag and pulled out a loose shotgun shell.

Then rolled it down the opposite end of the corridor.

Clink.

Clink.

The shell bounced lightly across the concrete before tapping against the far wall.

The bloated correctional-officer walker slowly turned its head.

Then its body followed.

One heavy step at a time, it lumbered away from the control-room door toward the sound.

Magnus smiled.

“Good enough.”

He borrowed Shane’s machete and motioned for him to follow. The two moved quietly to the now-unblocked door, where Magnus tested the keys he had taken from the dead officer in Cell Block C. One finally turned the lock.

Shane slipped inside first.

Magnus remained partly behind the steel door and looked toward the bloated walker, which was still standing near the spent shell at the end of the hall. He drew his throwing arm back, machete balanced in his hand.

“Hey, big guy.”

The walker slowly turned.

Magnus grinned.

“They paying overtime?”

The corpse tilted its head.

“Now.”

Magnus threw.

The machete spun through the air and struck the walker high in the neck with enough force to cut through decayed flesh and bone. The impact drove the body backward into the wall, and its head dropped to the floor a moment later. For one second, Magnus thought the problem was solved.

Then the corpse began swelling.

Fast.

Dark veins bulged beneath its skin as if something inside the body were inflating it from every direction. Magnus’s expression changed immediately. He ducked inside the control room and slammed the metal door shut.

BOOM!

The explosion struck the other side.

The heavy door absorbed most of the sound and force, reducing the blast inside the room to a hard, muffled concussion. Magnus waited a second before straightening, relieved that the hallway hadn’t erupted into alarms. When he turned around, he found Shane standing over another walker.

The corpse had apparently been trapped inside the control room since the outbreak.

Shane brought the stock of his shotgun down one final time.

CRACK!

The walker went limp.

Shane exhaled and wiped his forehead with one sleeve. “Another one locked inside until it starved.”

Magnus looked around the room.

Panels.

Monitors.

Controls.

Old prison equipment.

After everything between the administration building and here, they had finally reached their target.

It hadn’t exactly been an easy walk.

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