Chapter 68 Clearing in Progress!

Magnus Vane slowly crouched in the middle of the darkened administration building with an empty glass bottle in one hand. Without saying anything, he set it on its side and gave it a gentle push down the hallway. The bottle rolled across the dusty floor with a crisp clink-clank, bumping against scattered papers and chair legs as the sound carried far deeper into the otherwise silent building. Walkers might be drawn to blood, but noise was often enough to bring every corpse in earshot shambling straight toward it.

The bottle finally disappeared near the far end of the corridor, its noise gradually fading into the distance. A moment later, doors on both sides began to shift as more than a dozen decaying figures stumbled into view one after another. Magnus straightened and rolled his shoulders, looking almost pleased by what had answered the call. “I had enough to drink last night that I could use a little exercise this morning,” he said, casually turning the Quality 5 Stone Sledgehammer in his hand before walking toward the approaching dead.

Sunlight poured through the open entrance behind him, outlining Magnus’s broad frame beneath the Athlete’s Attire and making his already imposing silhouette look even larger in the dim corridor. For a moment, the others standing farther back had the strange impression that the dozen walkers weren’t surrounding Magnus at all. It looked more like Magnus had entered the hallway and surrounded all of them by himself. Nobody said it aloud, but judging by Glenn and Maggie’s expressions, several people were thinking exactly the same thing.

Magnus was thinking about something simpler.

“How strong is Strength Lv10 really?”

The former correctional officers outside had gone down too quickly for him to get a proper sense of the difference. Ordinary walkers were safer test subjects, especially with everyone else standing far enough back to intervene if something unexpected happened. Magnus tightened one hand around the sledgehammer handle and held the weapon low at his side while three walkers stumbled into range. “All right,” he murmured. “Let’s see what max Strength actually does.”

He swung.

WHOOSH!

The Stone Sledgehammer cut horizontally through the hallway with almost casual speed. The three walkers closest to him were struck nearly at once, their upper bodies snapping violently sideways as the impact destroyed necks and skulls with frightening ease. One corpse spun hard enough to crash into the wall, while another folded backward over an overturned desk before sliding to the floor. Magnus barely felt resistance through the weapon.

He stared at the fallen dead for half a second.

That was it?

Before maxing Strength, killing multiple walkers with a wide swing had still required proper footing, momentum, and enough space to bring the sledgehammer around cleanly. Now the weapon felt almost weightless in his hands, and the difference between striking one walker and several barely seemed worth noticing. Killing those three had felt less like fighting and more like knocking over objects someone had left in his path.

The remaining walkers continued advancing anyway.

Rotting hands reached toward him.

Teeth snapped uselessly.

Magnus’s expression slowly sharpened with excitement. Against absolute physical power, the walkers’ aggression meant almost nothing. They could keep coming as long as their ruined brains allowed them to move, but if one clean blow ended everything, persistence wasn’t much of an advantage.

“So this is what Level Ten feels like.”

Heat seemed to spread through Magnus’s muscles as he stepped forward.

He didn’t actually grow larger, and there was none of the uncontrolled frenzy that had overtaken him during the second Blood Moon, but his body felt alive in a way it never had before. Every movement carried reserve strength he wasn’t close to using, and the heavy sledgehammer might as well have been a wooden bat. Magnus advanced into the remaining walkers instead of waiting for them to reach him.

“Still just walkers.”

The first one raised both arms.

Magnus crushed it aside.

The next tried to bite.

A short upward strike sent it crashing into the wall.

Magnus kept moving.

Every walker he passed either fell immediately or hit the ground too damaged to rise again. He didn’t need elaborate techniques or careful combinations; Strength Lv10 turned simple movements into devastating attacks, while Skull Crusher Lv4 and Heavy Weapon Handling made the sledgehammer even more effective in his hands. Within moments, Magnus had crossed the entire corridor.

The last walker collapsed behind him with a dull thud.

Magnus stopped at the far end and rested the Stone Sledgehammer against one shoulder as though he had merely finished a warm-up. The oppressive intensity around him disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. “Check every one of them,” he ordered. “I want at least two solid punctures or cuts into the head of anything lying on that floor.”

Several people blinked.

Magnus looked back at them. “I’m serious. I don’t want one corpse getting back up because somebody decided it looked dead enough.”

That got everyone moving.

Firearms were lowered while knives, axes, and other quiet weapons came out. Rick, Shane, Glenn, Maggie, Andrea, T-Dog, Daryl, Merle, and the others moved carefully from body to body, confirming that each walker was permanently down before dragging the corpses away from the center of the hallway. Magnus watched closely, correcting spacing and making sure nobody stepped carelessly over a body that hadn’t been checked.

“Pile them together in one room,” Magnus added. “Don’t keep walking over corpses every time we move through here. Once the whole building is secure, then we’ll worry about carrying everything outside.”

T-Dog grabbed one of the office doors and pulled it shut after the last body was dragged inside. The hallway immediately looked cleaner, with only blood, scattered papers, and drag marks left behind. Magnus nodded with quiet approval. The group still lacked experience clearing large buildings, but they were listening, adapting, and following instructions instead of improvising recklessly.

That mattered more than being naturally skilled.

Someone could be weak and become stronger.

Someone inexperienced could learn.

The real problem was the person who made the same mistake over and over while refusing to admit it was a mistake.

“Keep moving.”

The first floor corridor extended forward until it reached a T-junction. To the left, a staircase climbed toward the upper levels, turning halfway up through roughly eighteen steps. To the right, a short set of steps ended at a reinforced metal door leading into what appeared to have once been a staff section, likely containing guard briefing rooms, a kitchen, and a cafeteria used by prison employees.

Rick came up beside Magnus and studied the stairs. “No reason to rush upstairs blind,” he said. “We can make them come to us.”

Magnus nodded.

Daryl had already moved toward the metal door and aimed his flashlight through the narrow opening and dirty glass. After studying the room for a few seconds, he stepped back. “Three, maybe four inside. Doesn’t look crowded.”

“Probably wasn’t mealtime when everything went bad,” Rick said.

“Works for me,” Magnus replied.

The cafeteria could wait.

The stairs were the larger threat.

At Magnus’s signal, everyone spread out along both sides of the stairwell, leaving the center completely open. Guns came up and aimed toward the upper landing, while anyone carrying a melee weapon stayed slightly behind the shooters. Magnus waited until every person had settled into position before lifting the Stone Sledgehammer.

He struck the hollow metal railing.

CLANG!

Then again.

CLANG! CLANG!

The noise tore through the building.

The entire handrail vibrated, carrying the metallic ringing from the first floor toward the upper levels. For several seconds after the final strike, the building became silent again. Magnus tilted his head and listened.

Then came a growl.

Another answered.

A scraping foot dragged across the floor somewhere above them.

More followed.

The isolated sounds gradually overlapped until the upper floors came alive with shuffling feet and low, hungry moans. What began as one or two walkers quickly became many, the footsteps gathering into a growing rush as the dead followed the noise toward the stairwell.

Magnus’s expression became serious.

“Stay off the center line.”

Everyone shifted farther toward the walls.

Magnus stepped directly into the middle.

Walkers had no tactics. Once they spotted a living target standing below them, they would take the shortest route straight down the stairs and pile into one another trying to reach him. That made Magnus the obvious bait.

He slid the Stone Sledgehammer away.

Then reached over his shoulder and brought out the Remington 870 Police.

Unlike Rick and the others, who settled into stable shooting positions, Magnus kept his stance wider and more relaxed. Boomstick Lv1 wasn’t going to turn him into a precision shooter overnight, and he didn’t need it to. His job was to hold the middle and keep pressure on whatever came down the stairs while the rest of the group fired from safer angles.

The footsteps grew louder.

Thump.

Thump.

THUMP!

Three seconds later, the first walker appeared at the top and immediately lost its footing in the crowd behind it. It tumbled halfway down the stairs, struck the railing, and rolled toward Magnus. Behind it came dozens more, pushing, stumbling, and falling over each other as the entire mass surged toward the ground floor.

Magnus raised the Remington.

“Here they come!”

BANG!

The shotgun blast thundered through the stairwell.

The leading walker dropped.

A second crashed into it.

Then everyone else opened fire.

Gunshots swallowed the growls almost instantly. Muzzle flashes strobed through the dim administration building, smoke collected beneath the ceiling, and walkers collapsed across the steps faster than the dead behind them could climb over the growing pile. Blood ran down the stairs in dark streaks, mixing with months of dust and grime.

Magnus worked the pump and fired again.

BANG!

Another walker went down.

He kept moving forward instead of backing away, closing the distance as the staircase filled with bodies. His marksmanship didn’t have to be exceptional when the target was a dense wall of walkers only a few yards away. At that range, all Magnus needed was the Remington pointed in the right direction.

Pump.

Fire.

Pump.

Fire.

The shotgun boomed repeatedly while Magnus advanced.

His lack of refined shooting experience barely mattered. The closer he moved, the larger the target became, and Boomstick Lv1 gave him enough improvement that the weapon felt far easier to handle than it would have before. Walkers at the front toppled onto those behind them, briefly slowing the entire mass and creating perfect openings for the others.

The final shell in the Remington fired.

BANG!

Magnus pulled the weapon back and immediately began reloading.

Around him, the rest of the group reached the same point almost simultaneously.

The hallway suddenly went from deafening gunfire to the sharp mechanical sounds of weapons being fed fresh ammunition.

Click.

Clack.

Click.

Clack.

And above them, the remaining walkers were still coming.

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