Chapter 85: Fight Like Hell!

Magnus Vane stared down at the drooling Walker Centipede as it used its own connected bodies like a ladder and tried to climb straight toward his face. A sharp chill shot from the base of his spine to the top of his head, and everything in front of him suddenly seemed unnaturally clear. His hands trembled slightly around the metal framework while sweat rolled down his forehead and fell into the horde beneath him. Magnus recognized the feeling immediately—his body had flooded itself with adrenaline again, buying him a few more seconds of speed and strength before exhaustion caught up.

“My body’s still fighting, so you think I’m giving up now?”

Magnus suddenly pulled with both arms and tore part of the protective metal frame loose from the ceiling. He planted one boot against the highest body of the Walker Centipede to keep himself from dropping into the horde, then shoved the metal frame directly against the creature’s leading face. The connected walkers growled together, their overlapping voices blending into an insect-like chattering sound while their jaws snapped uselessly against the barrier. They became increasingly frantic when they realized the metal kept them from reaching Magnus.

Then all of them growled at once.

Their bodies bent.

The lower walkers compressed themselves at unnatural angles, while even the corpse supporting Magnus began arching backward.

Magnus’s eyes widened.

He recognized that posture.

“Again?”

Instead of panicking, he immediately changed his grip. Magnus turned his body sideways, caught the loosened metal frame with both hands from the opposite direction, and planted both boots flat against it. The Walker Centipede continued folding in on itself beneath him, building tension through the connected bodies exactly as it had when it launched walkers down the corridor earlier.

Then it released.

The entire upper section snapped forward.

Magnus was launched.

His body shot through the corridor as though fired from a giant slingshot, the world blurring around him while he crossed over the tightly packed horde below. For nearly three seconds, Magnus flew above heads, reaching arms, and snapping jaws until he finally saw the rear edge of the mass approaching. The momentum faded just as he cleared the last walkers, and he crashed onto the concrete behind them with a heavy thud.

For one second, everything went quiet.

Magnus slowly lifted his head.

One walker turned around.

Then another.

Then dozens.

Soon nearly every corpse at the rear of the horde was staring directly at him.

Magnus forced a crooked smile.

“Hey, guys.”

The closest walker growled.

“Already eat breakfast?”

More heads turned.

“If not, feel free to go somewhere else.”

Magnus scrambled to his feet and ran.

The horde immediately changed direction.

What had been a packed mass moving deeper into the corridor now surged after him, stumbling over one another as they tried to follow. Magnus sprinted back the way he had come, and after clearing several turns, he finally spotted Shane peeking from the passage where they had separated earlier. Shane looked as if he had spent the last several minutes trying to decide whether Magnus was still alive.

“Quit staring!” Magnus shouted from a distance. “Get back to Cell Block C! If you get trapped, lock yourself in the control room!”

Shane didn’t waste a second.

He turned and ran.

Magnus reached the next intersection and immediately cut left, deliberately leading most of the horde farther into Cell Block B instead of letting them follow Shane. The maneuver worked, but not perfectly; a smaller cluster of walkers still broke away toward Shane’s route.

Magnus saw them and grimaced.

That’ll have to be enough.

Shane was armed, protected by the heavier turnout gear, and had Oscar and Big Tiny waiting inside the control room. If he couldn’t handle a small group with all that support, then Magnus couldn’t save him from everything forever.

Right now, Magnus had a much larger problem.

He made another sharp turn into a long Cell Block B corridor.

The walkers behind him hit the corner too fast to slow down. Several slammed into the wall, and the dead behind them immediately climbed across their fallen bodies, turning the whole horde into a wave of limbs and rotten flesh spilling around the bend. Magnus didn’t need to look back to know what was happening; the crashing footsteps and endless growls were enough.

“This isn’t working.”

His breathing had become rough.

“I can’t just keep running laps around the prison.”

Magnus’s throat was dry, and even the adrenaline keeping him moving could no longer hide how exhausted he had become. He had already crossed a huge portion of Cell Block B while sprinting, fighting, climbing, and hanging from the ceiling. Every stride now felt heavier than the last, as though someone had filled his legs with wet concrete.

His speed dropped.

That was all the Walker Centipede needed.

The mutilated creature had recovered again and was crawling near the front of the pursuing horde, moving much faster than the ordinary dead around it. Its leading mouth snapped only a few feet behind Magnus, close enough that he could almost feel its breath against the back of his neck.

Magnus gritted his teeth.

The exhaustion disappeared beneath another surge of fear.

He forced his legs to move faster.

“Did I steal something from you?!”

The Walker Centipede kept coming.

“Why are you still chasing me?!”

Magnus reached the connecting passage between Cell Block B and Cell Block A.

Then stopped.

Dark figures filled the corridor ahead.

His stomach sank.

The inmates from Cell Block A had escaped their cells during the collapse just as those in the other sections had, but unlike Cell Block C, almost none of them appeared to have wandered away. They stood packed across the passage in such numbers that Magnus couldn’t see clear floor between them.

For one brief moment, they remained still.

Then Magnus entered their line of sight.

Every head rose.

Clouded eyes locked onto him.

The walkers began moving almost simultaneously.

Magnus stood drenched in sweat, his skin flushed from exertion, blood still running from the wound in his shoulder, and his muscles burning from repeated fights. To the dead, he was nothing more than fresh living meat suddenly appearing in a corridor that had been empty for months.

Their stumbling steps accelerated.

Growls spread through the group.

Behind Magnus, the Cell Block B horde answered.

The sound came from both directions now.

Magnus stopped in the center of the connecting passage.

For the first time in several minutes, he didn’t run.

Sweat covered his entire body and made his clothes stick uncomfortably to his skin, but he barely noticed. The adrenaline that had carried him through the last stretch was finally fading, leaving behind a crushing weakness that came from somewhere deeper than sore muscles.

His stamina was nearly gone.

Behind him were at least a hundred walkers, including multiple system-altered variants.

Ahead were even more.

Magnus looked at the mass filling Cell Block A and suddenly remembered the facility layout.

Cell Block C was the smallest.

Cell Block B was larger.

Cell Block A was the largest section of all.

Naturally, it had housed the most inmates.

“Perfect.”

His voice came out almost as a whisper.

More than a hundred walkers crowded the passage in front of him, perhaps far more once the ones deeper inside began moving. Combined with the horde coming from behind, Magnus estimated that he was trapped between close to three hundred dead.

And some of them weren’t ordinary walkers.

“What do I do…?”

Magnus repeated the question under his breath.

“What the hell do I do?”

Deep down, however, he already understood the answer.

There might not be one.

One man could only do so much.

If Magnus had fully developed another attribute tree, unlocked more advanced combat perks, or maxed additional system skills, then a horde this size might have been nothing more than a massive amount of experience waiting to be collected. But he wasn’t there yet.

He was only Level 24.

His greatest advantage was still Strength Lv10.

That strength could crush a skull with one swing.

It could throw a walker across a room.

It could tear apart doors and carry weights that would stop ordinary people.

But could it kill nearly three hundred walkers before his body gave out?

Magnus didn’t know.

His right hand rose slowly.

He wiped the sweat from his face.

Then took a long breath.

The panic faded.

The Stone Sledgehammer appeared in his hand.

Magnus turned sideways in the corridor and adjusted his grip. Dark blood still clung to the barbed wire wrapped around the Quality 5 hammer, gathering along the metal before dripping onto the concrete beneath him. Compared with the roaring hordes approaching from both directions, Magnus suddenly looked almost unnaturally calm.

“From the first day I woke up in this world…”

His voice was quiet.

“I never claimed I was fearless.”

The dead kept coming.

“But I didn’t quit.”

Magnus slowly raised his head.

He remembered Atlanta.

The tank.

The first bite.

The quarry camp.

The farm.

The raider compound.

The church.

Two Blood Moons.

Hundreds of walkers already dead by his hands.

A faint, exhausted laugh escaped him.

“All I wanted before this was to open a butcher shop.”

The growls grew louder.

Magnus closed his eyes for a moment.

He listened to the pounding footsteps, dragging feet, broken throats, and bodies striking the prison walls. It was an ugly sound, but there was something strangely final about it.

Then he opened his eyes.

There was no fear left in them.

Only determination.

His breathing grew faster as the first walkers approached striking distance. Magnus rolled one shoulder despite the pain from the embedded wound, then gave the Stone Sledgehammer a sharp shake. The movement threw the blood clinging to the barbed wire across the floor in dark droplets.

He lowered his stance.

His hands tightened.

The first horde came closer.

The second answered from behind.

Magnus’s eyes burned.

“Come on!”

His voice thundered through the prison.

The nearest walkers surged forward.

Magnus raised the hammer.

“ALL OF YOU!”

He grinned through exhaustion.

“COME ON!”