Chapter 76 Empty Cell Block C

What Magnus Vane didn’t know was that only moments after he and Shane disappeared through the gate, someone stumbled out of the administration building. T-Dog turned and immediately frowned when he recognized Jim, who had barely managed to pull on a baseball cap before coming outside. “Jim? Hey, man, you all right?” Jim’s entire face was covered in sweat, and his already pale complexion looked almost colorless as he bent forward with both hands braced against his knees, struggling to catch his breath.

“I’m… fine. Just suddenly feeling a little off.” Jim’s thin shirt was soaked through, yet he didn’t feel hot at all; instead, a deep chill seemed to spread outward from somewhere inside his body. His strange appearance quickly drew the attention of everyone still in the yard, but before Rick or anyone else could question him, Jim suddenly straightened and hurried toward the open lawn. His movements were frantic enough that T-Dog called after him, but Jim didn’t stop.

He reached the spot where Magnus had dug the burial pit the previous afternoon, grabbed the abandoned shovel, and immediately started digging. Nobody understood what he was doing, yet Jim kept going with almost obsessive urgency until he finally reached the layer of walker corpses buried nearly ten feet below. Then he stopped. In the middle of the mass of decaying bodies was an empty space large enough for several more corpses.

Jim stared down at it.

His breathing slowly eased.

Relief crossed his face for reasons nobody else could understand, and his legs finally gave out beneath him. He fell backward onto the grass as Rick and several others rushed toward him, their figures becoming blurred through Jim’s unfocused vision. “Something’s wrong…” he whispered. “Something’s wrong…”

Inside the prison, Cell Block C was almost completely dark.

The moment the heavy rear door shut behind Magnus and Shane, the last strip of sunlight disappeared, leaving the narrow corridor swallowed in blackness. Magnus moved first with Shane only a few steps behind, both men walking slowly enough to check the floor before every step. In the confined passage, even their quiet breathing seemed unnaturally loud.

Magnus silently activated the Helmet Light Mod installed in his hidden Stalker Hood. A warm beam immediately spread across the corridor ahead, illuminating roughly thirty feet before the darkness swallowed everything beyond it. That distance wasn’t impressive outdoors, but inside a prison hallway it was more than enough to reveal doors, corners, bodies, and anything waiting directly ahead. Magnus adjusted his eyes to the light and kept moving.

“Take this.”

He turned and handed Shane the hand-drawn prison map.

Shane accepted it without question.

Magnus no longer needed the paper for himself. He opened the system map instead and compared the unexplored gray sections with what he remembered from the warden’s layout. After placing a small red marker near their intended destination, a corresponding directional indicator appeared in his field of view, pointing through the walls toward the control room.

“With the map marker, getting lost shouldn’t be the problem,” Magnus thought. “The problem is everything between us and it.”

He still had no reliable way to know how many walkers remained deeper in the prison or where the larger concentrations were gathered. The entire complex had become part of the system’s long-term occupation mission, so Magnus refused to assume the route would stay this easy. Still, entering through the rear of Cell Block C appeared to have given them an unexpectedly quiet approach.

They passed through a winding service corridor, then moved by the showers and communal restroom areas without meeting anything dangerous. Only one walker appeared along the route, and Shane put it down quickly before it could make much noise. Everything else they found was already dead—correctional officers, inmates, ordinary human corpses, and walker bodies with bullets through their skulls.

When they finally entered the main Cell Block C housing area, Magnus slowed.

“So that’s what happened.”

Shane nudged one of the corpses with his shotgun barrel before turning toward him. “What?”

Magnus gestured around them. “We’ve barely seen any walkers since coming through the back entrance. Mostly bodies.” He looked across the rows of cells and the open tier above. “A cell block this size should’ve held far more people than what we’ve found.”

Shane’s expression changed as he understood where Magnus was going.

“You think they moved the inmates before everything fell apart?”

“Some of them, yeah.” Magnus nodded. “You said it yourself this morning—the prison was designed so different groups of inmates could eat, work, exercise, and move through separate controlled areas without mixing unnecessarily.” He glanced toward the direction of the yard Glenn had sealed earlier. “What if a large part of Cell Block C was outside for recreation when the outbreak hit?”

Shane remembered the fenced yard immediately.

There had been well over a hundred walkers trapped behind the barrier.

But he shook his head after a moment. “That still isn’t enough people for a prison this size.”

“Exactly.”

Their eyes met.

Magnus continued, “Which means there were probably several separate yards and movement schedules. Different blocks, different security levels, different groups.” He looked toward the dark corridor leading deeper into the complex. “Anyone who wasn’t outside when things collapsed could’ve been trapped in the halls, cells, or transfer routes when panic started.”

Shane stared down the passage.

“So the whole place turned into a dead city.”

“Pretty much.”

Magnus crouched beside the body of a dead correctional officer and searched the belt. His fingers closed around a heavy ring of keys, and a faint grin appeared when he lifted them into the light. Several were marked for Cell Block C.

“At least we got lucky with something.”

He shook the ring.

Clink-clank.

The noise immediately produced an answer.

Several rotten arms suddenly pushed between the bars of second-floor cells above them, followed by weak, hungry groans. Magnus looked up in surprise as gaunt faces appeared behind the locked doors. The walkers were so badly deteriorated that some could barely keep themselves upright.

Magnus chuckled. “Looks like these guys picked one hell of a day to be locked in.”

“Starved to death in their cells,” Shane said as he drew his machete and started toward the stairs. “Then woke up hungry and stayed that way.”

“No wonder they look half-dead even by walker standards.”

The locked cell doors made the remaining walkers almost harmless. Shane moved along the tier and finished them one after another through the bars with his machete, while Magnus didn’t bother competing for the kills. The entire prison was full of potential experience, and losing two or three ordinary walkers hardly mattered.

For the next hour, the two searched Cell Block C from end to end. They opened accessible rooms, checked every tier, inspected showers, storage spaces, corners, and locked cells, and finished anything that still moved. Only after both men were satisfied that nothing had been missed did Magnus secure one of the main Cell Block C doors behind them.

Ahead lay the passage connecting Cell Block C to Cell Block B.

Magnus tightened his grip on the Stone Sledgehammer.

Shane checked the map once more.

Then the two continued deeper into the prison.

[Next: Special Walkers]

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