Bloodbath Without End

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The words had barely left Evan's mouth when the Berserkers pouring up the stairs failed to stop in time and slammed into the side wall.

They knew no pain. They trampled over each other to reach him, as if Evan were the last piece of meat left in the world.

The Wood Spike Traps could hold them, but only for a few seconds.

Even the Berserkers skewered through the stomach and pinned against the wooden barricade still shoved their faces toward the square opening Evan had left, roaring with everything they had.

The staggered Wood Spike Traps were crushed under dozens of rotten bodies. The first line of defense was forced open by flesh and weight.

Evan tightened his grip on the Stone Sledgehammer.

Only when the Berserkers reached him did he move.

He faced the one squeezing through the gap, raised the tool that had kept him alive like a laborer bringing down a mattock, and smashed it down hard.

Blood burst across the floor under the red light of the Blood Moon.

It made Evan, already soaked head to toe in walker blood, look even more blood-hungry.

The Berserkers kept crowding toward him.

Evan reached straight through the opening and grabbed one.

He did not even know which one he had caught. He yanked it inside.

Before it could rise and bite, the giant hammer came down on its head.

One blow.

Then a second.

Then a third.

Only then did the skull finally break apart.

At that exact moment, a crack spread across the wooden block wall.

Crack.

Crack, crack.

The instant Evan looked over, one of the blocks splintered apart.

A Berserker burst out of the broken space.

"Eat!"

"You want to eat me that badly?"

Evan knocked it back with one hammer swing.

Several Berserkers behind it lost their footing and tumbled down the stairs. Heads, chests, arms, and legs slammed into the staggered Wood Spike Traps and stuck there, unable to move.

They had no intention of giving him time to breathe.

Evan had no intention of letting them keep destroying the barricade.

Through the third broken wooden block, he thrust the hammer out and swept it sideways.

More than a dozen walkers clogging the doorway were forced back at once.

Evan seized the opening and pulled the rifle he had taken from the survivor camp out of his inventory.

He locked in an extended magazine.

He did not aim. He dragged the barrel toward the walkers outside the barricade and opened fire.

The whole magazine emptied in ten seconds.

Then came the second.

The Berserkers' death rush did not stop.

They fought to shove their heads into the muzzle.

On average, three to five bullets were enough to punch through a Berserker's skull and drop it for good.

After six magazines, Evan had dropped more than twenty of them.

When the last burst ended, he put the rifle away, gripped the Stone Sledgehammer again, and stepped back.

Not because he was out of ammunition.

The wooden blocks were about to fail all at once.

Evan lowered his head and flexed his hand, letting a little of the ache drain out of his muscles.

He tore a short-sleeved shirt from the nearby wardrobe and wrapped it around his hand and the hammer handle like a tie.

That way, the blood slicking his palm would not send the hammer flying at the worst possible moment.

Crack.

Crack, crack.

The wooden blocks broke apart under a mass of growls.

Evan raised the hammer and swept it forward, knocking two or three Berserkers down.

More surged in behind them.

His face did not change.

He turned the sweep into a downward smash, triggered a headshot, and crushed one skull by force.

The instant the smell of their blood hit him at that distance, the mechanism inside his chest began to pound.

Hot blood rushed through him, driven outward by the violent beat of his heart.

One walker bit straight into Evan's chest.

The impact drove him back two steps before he found his balance.

The others swarmed in at once, slamming his hand and the hammer handle against the wall and grinding them there.

"Fuck!"

Evan clenched his teeth as pain drilled through every part of him.

The dozen remaining Berserkers had already surrounded him. They crawled over his body, searching for a place to bite.

Evan snapped his head up.

The red in his eyes thickened.

"Aaaah!"

His body suddenly swelled to half again its normal size. Veins bulged across him, twisting along his arms and neck like cords.

He planted his feet and shoved forward like a madman, driving the Berserkers in front of him into the opposite wall.

Crack.

Their heads hit stone with crisp, ugly sounds.

Evan could no longer feel his right hand.

Even so, he forced every bit of strength he had into one sweep of the giant hammer.

Shhk.

The sounds landed almost as one.

In the moment it rang out, the Berserkers in front of him went still.

Their ruined bodies swayed in place.

Then the first headless Berserker dropped with a wet thud.

The rest followed.

One after another, they collapsed and did not rise.

At that same moment, the Blood Moon outside the second-floor windows began to fade. Its red light thinned until it vanished completely.

What vanished with it was the bloodlust in Evan's eyes and the swollen power in his body.

As the Blood Moon set, weakness arrived first.

Then the pain came.

It came hard.

Evan sagged with relief. He gritted his teeth, braced himself against the wall, and was about to sit down.

Then a chorus of low growls sounded behind him.

His body stiffened.

Pale-faced, Evan turned.

At some point, the church stairs had filled with ordinary walkers.

"Fuck. Forgot about the regular ones."

Blood ran down from his hairline as he narrowed his eyes.

These walkers had clearly been drawn by the noise of his fight.

What Evan could not understand was why there were so many.

They did not just fill the stairwell. More were pushing in from the nave below, a whole horde still pouring through the church.

There was no time to think.

Evan unwound the shirt from his right hand and shifted the hammer to his left.

His right arm hung uselessly at his side. The pain of the fracture kept clawing at the edges of his mind.

Fighting through the pain and the negative effects, Evan raised the hammer with his left hand.

Covered in blood, he threw himself into the walkers.

How many did he kill?

Evan no longer knew.

All he remembered was swinging.

Blood and corpses piled across the church's second floor until it looked like a corner of hell.

When the last walker fell, Evan collapsed onto the ground.

His left arm was not broken, but it felt as dead as the right.

From head to toe, walkers had torn at him. Wounds covered him everywhere.

His vision blurred.

Then one final walker remained.

It staggered up the stairs.

'Wasn't that the last one?'

'I don't have any strength left... none.'

The walker was the kind he could usually kill with a single blow.

Now Evan could not even lift the Stone Sledgehammer lying across his feet.

Since his last level-up and point allocation, the hammer had felt lighter than a stick.

Now it might as well have been a mountain.

Panic stirred in him, but he could do nothing except watch the walker come closer.

'If only I had more strength... strength... wait. Strength.'

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