Chapter 79 FBI! Drop Your Weapons!

The correctional-officer control room was surprisingly spacious, large enough for more than a dozen people to move around without crowding one another. Metal storage shelves lined the walls, holding personal belongings, paperwork, and miscellaneous prison records, while two couches had been pushed together in one corner to create a makeshift sleeping area for officers working long shifts. What interested Magnus Vane most, however, was the equipment along the side wall: several firearms rested there beside a glass-front cabinet containing multiple sets of black riot gear identical to what some of the armored walkers outside had been wearing. More than a dozen heavy rubber batons were stacked nearby as well, making the room a small armory by apocalypse standards.

“Find the alarm control?” Magnus asked as he looked over the equipment. Shane was already examining the main security console, checking the switches and labels until his hand stopped over one small control. “Got it,” he said, sliding the alarm system into the off position before finally relaxing. With that problem handled, they could eventually start the prison’s backup generator without risking a facility-wide alarm immediately drawing every walker in the surrounding blocks toward them.

Shane glanced around the dark room and gave a faint smile. “Once we get the generator going, everybody might finally see an electric light again.” He seemed not to notice the change in his own wording; instead of talking only about Lori, Carl, or himself, he was increasingly thinking in terms of everyone at the prison. Magnus noticed but didn’t comment, simply nodding as he said, “We should check the inmate cafeteria on the way. We’re burning through food fast, and Hershel’s seeds won’t help us until something actually grows.”

Shane agreed and turned toward the shelves, where his attention landed on an old manual razor among the officers’ belongings. Magnus followed his gaze and immediately understood. “Yeah, Rick could use that. Another week with that beard and he’s going to look ten years older.” Shane smiled faintly, remembering a younger Rick sitting beside him in a patrol car, trading stupid jokes during shifts when their biggest problems had still involved ordinary criminals and paperwork. It was hard to believe that life had existed only months ago.

Magnus watched his expression but left the thought alone. Rick and Shane were finally repairing something that had nearly destroyed both of them, and the prison was beginning to look more like a community than a temporary survivor camp. “Leave the supplies here for now,” Magnus said. “We have to come back through this corridor anyway.” The two ate a few energy bars, drank some water, and rested until the last of the adrenaline from the mutated walkers had faded before setting out for the generator room.

The farther they moved into the prison, the more complicated the interior became. Corridors split repeatedly, secure doors separated sections, and distant walker growls echoed from directions they couldn’t always identify, but Magnus’s system map and the hand-drawn prison layout kept them moving roughly toward the right area. The dead from Cell Blocks A, B, and C had apparently scattered deep through the facility after the outbreak, creating pockets of walkers throughout the interior instead of one concentrated herd. After roughly twenty minutes, Magnus and Shane reached a set of double doors along their route.

According to the map, they had reached the main inmate cafeteria.

Shane started to reach for the door.

Magnus caught his arm.

“Wait.”

Shane immediately became alert. “What?”

Magnus tilted his head toward the doors. “Listen.”

For several seconds both men remained completely still. At first there was only the distant moaning of walkers somewhere deeper inside the prison, but then Shane heard something else through the heavy doors—faint, irregular, unmistakably human voices. He slowly lowered his hand from the handle and pressed his ear closer. “Someone’s talking in there.”

That possibility changed the situation immediately. They had already encountered surviving correctional officers outside the prison, and in a facility this large it wasn’t impossible that inmates had survived too. Shane’s grip tightened around his shotgun as another concern entered his mind: if people had been living inside the prison all this time, they might already consider parts of it theirs. That raised questions about territory, food, weapons, and whether those survivors would accept Magnus’s group taking over the complex.

“Guards?” Shane whispered. “Or inmates?”

“Could be either.”

“What do you want to do?”

Magnus noticed that Shane was asking rather than simply acting, which was already an improvement. “We go in and find out. We both have shotguns, and if they’re reasonable, we talk.” His expression hardened slightly. “If they aren’t, I’m not risking our people for strangers.”

Shane nodded.

Magnus brought the Remington 870 Police into his hands and pointed toward the pair of doors. “One each.”

Shane moved to the other side.

Magnus counted with his fingers.

Three.

Two.

One.

Both doors flew open.

Magnus and Shane entered almost together, immediately separating their attention toward opposite sides of the cafeteria while keeping close enough to cover one another. Several figures inside froze in surprise, apparently as shocked by the newcomers as Magnus and Shane were to find living people this deep inside the prison. Magnus swept the room once and, unable to resist the opportunity, shouted, “FBI! Drop your weapons!”

Silence followed.

Shane slowly turned his head.

Magnus caught the look and shrugged without lowering the Remington. “What? I’ve always wanted to say that.”

They advanced farther into the cafeteria, and the layout quickly became clear enough to confirm there were no hidden walkers or large groups waiting in the dining area. The surviving figures had backed toward the kitchen, and their clothing immediately answered one of Shane’s questions: prison uniforms. These weren’t correctional officers.

They were inmates.

Shane’s expression hardened instantly.

The shotgun remained pointed toward them, his finger ready near the trigger as he evaluated each man in turn. Years in law enforcement had taught him not to assume every prisoner was equally dangerous, but finding a group of convicted inmates alive inside an abandoned prison was hardly something he intended to treat casually. Until Magnus decided otherwise, Shane considered every one of them an unknown threat to the people waiting back in the administration building.

Magnus noticed his posture but didn’t stop him.

Caution was appropriate.

Shooting first without knowing anything wasn’t.

The inmates exchanged uncertain looks, apparently trying to understand why two armed men had just stormed into their cafeteria claiming to be federal agents. Finally, one of them looked at Magnus with a confused expression and spoke.

“FBI?”

He paused.

“Aren’t we a little outside your jurisdiction?”

[Community Goals Ongoing]