Chapter 83 The Howler! Trapped Between Two Hordes!

Once the plan was settled, Magnus Vane and Shane went over the route one last time. Then Magnus rested the Stone Sledgehammer on one shoulder and casually walked toward the mass of walkers blocking the passage ahead, as though he were approaching a group of livestock instead of nearly a hundred dead bodies. Most of them stood almost motionless with their heads lowered, and Magnus grinned as he grabbed the nearest walker by the collar and slapped its face twice. “Come on. Keep up, or I’m breaking your legs.”

He kicked the walker backward into the others, spun around, lowered his body, and started running. Shane remained hidden near the corridor they had come through, waiting exactly where Magnus had instructed, until the sound behind him began to resemble part of the prison collapsing. The floor vibrated faintly beneath his boots, and when he finally looked toward the noise, Magnus came sprinting through a cloud of dust. “Shane! Don’t move until all of them are past you!”

Magnus reached the intersection and made a sharp ninety-degree turn into the corridor leading toward one of the recreation yards. Shane finally saw what was chasing him and felt his expression tighten. There were close to a hundred walkers packed together, including several swollen ones like the exploding correctional officer they had encountered earlier, another grotesque Walker Centipede clinging to the ceiling, and several corpses tangled in lengths of barbed wire that had become embedded in their decaying flesh. Shane could only watch them disappear after Magnus and hope the plan worked.

Five minutes passed.

Shane had just started preparing to move when the same crashing noise returned, only much louder this time. The concrete beneath him shook hard enough to feel like a small earthquake, and Magnus suddenly reappeared at the far end of the corridor with both arms pumping as he ran. His Stone Sledgehammer was gone, and behind him the original horde was still coming, except Shane could now see even more walkers mixed into it.

“Don’t stand there staring!” Magnus shouted from a distance. “Get back to Cell Block C! If you get cut off, lock yourself in the control room!”

Shane had no idea what had gone wrong.

He didn’t waste time asking.

He turned and ran.

Five minutes earlier, Magnus had entered the route leading toward the outdoor recreation yard with the entire horde following him exactly as planned. He glanced back once and actually felt relieved when he saw that none of them had broken away, because as long as every walker followed him, Shane would have a clean path through Cell Block B. Magnus led the dead through three corners, past a restroom and shower area, until the final turn toward the yard appeared ahead. “Good. Get them outside, lock them in, then circle back for Shane.”

Then his boot landed on something soft.

A wet, sticky sound came from beneath his foot.

Magnus looked down.

A woman in a remarkably clean white nurse’s uniform was sitting against the wall beneath him. Unlike every corpse around her, her skin had barely decayed, her face remained almost human, and her wide eyes looked disturbingly alert. Magnus had accidentally stepped across one of her legs and snapped the lower half, but instead of blood, a thick pale substance seeped slowly from the wound.

Every instinct Magnus had immediately screamed that something was wrong.

This was a prison full of walkers.

Nothing that looked this intact should have been sitting calmly in the middle of a dark hallway.

The woman looked at her broken leg.

Then slowly raised her head.

Her mouth opened.

And kept opening.

The corners of her lips split wider than any human jaw should allow, pale fluid leaking from the torn flesh as her chest and abdomen suddenly contracted. Magnus realized what she was only an instant before the sound came.

“Ahhhhhhh—!”

The scream tore through the corridor.

It didn’t sound like a normal human voice.

It seemed to come from her entire torso, a shriek so sharp that Magnus felt it stab directly through his ears and skull. The sound spread through the prison almost instantly, echoing through multiple cell blocks and corridors.

Then an iron gate at the far end of the recreation-yard passage began sliding open.

Sunlight spilled into the darkness.

Beyond it stood another mass of walkers.

Dozens of lowered heads rose at once.

Every corpse turned toward Magnus.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The newly awakened horde surged into the passage.

Magnus stopped so sharply that his boots slid across the floor. Behind him came the original hundred walkers he had deliberately attracted; ahead, the scream had just pulled another large group directly into his escape route. The Howler continued shrieking between them, and the piercing sound made Magnus stagger hard enough that he had to catch himself against the wall.

Blood began leaking from his ears.

Magnus forced himself upright, raised the Stone Sledgehammer, and brought it down into the Howler’s chest.

WHAM!

Her torso collapsed inward.

The scream cut off for half a second.

Magnus immediately struck again.

The second blow destroyed her head, and the white-clad body slumped sideways against the floor. “Damn it. A Howler.”

He didn’t even have time to wipe the blood from his ears.

Magnus threw the Stone Sledgehammer into his system inventory and looked in both directions.

Walkers were pouring toward him from the front.

The original horde was closing from behind.

Solid prison walls boxed him in on either side.

For the first time since entering Cell Block B, Magnus found himself completely trapped between two advancing hordes.