Sanity Damage

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Settle in, take your time, and let's see what waits in the dark 🖤

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The passage between C Block and B Block was even darker.

If Evan had not had the Helmet Light Mod, he would have seen nothing at all.

The moment they stepped into the corridor, both men noticed that the corpses along the sides had suddenly thinned out.

The cleaner floor did not reassure them.

It made their expressions heavier.

Most of the people in the Prison had died here.

If the bodies were not on the ground...

Then those bodies had gotten up and wandered somewhere else.

Evan and Shane followed the corridor around three bends.

At the next corner, Evan took one step out.

Then he snapped back behind the wall.

Thump. Thump.

His heart kicked hard in his chest.

By instinct, he threw one arm across Shane and shoved him back against the wall with a single hand.

"What the hell is that?"

Shane, pinned to the wall beside him, grimaced.

He tried to move so he could see what waited around the corner.

He pushed once.

Evan's arm did not budge.

Shane tried again, getting barely an inch off the wall before Evan pressed him back into place.

In the dark, Shane sighed.

Of course.

He was being held against a wall by another man.

And the worst part was that he could not even break free.

The last time he had been this helpless, he had been a kid getting punished by his father for doing something stupid.

"What?" Shane whispered, forcing the word down.

Only when Shane spoke near his ear did Evan tear himself out of what he had seen.

He slowly lowered the arm blocking Shane.

Instead of answering, he tried looking around the corner again.

One glance.

Evan immediately shut his eyes and retreated.

He leaned back against the wall and stared at Shane through the dark.

"Why don't you take the flashlight and see for yourself?"

Shane froze.

He had never seen Evan make that face before.

Curiosity pulled at him.

Without a word, Shane traded positions with Evan.

He switched on the flashlight, partly covered the beam with his palm, and carefully leaned around the corner.

A thin wedge of light entered the corridor.

Shane released the beam little by little and aimed it upward.

The first thing he saw was a pair of blood-red feet.

The owner of those feet seemed to have been crushed under terrible pressure. The bones in the feet had broken completely, bending upward at an angle that made the skin crawl.

'Disgusting, sure. But not enough to make him react like that.'

For a second, Shane thought Evan's reaction was almost cute.

Then he moved the flashlight higher.

He saw the first body.

Then the second.

Then the third.

"Shit."

Shane yanked himself back.

He shone the flashlight across his own face and Evan's, then mouthed the question with his eyes wide.

What the hell is that thing?

Evan knew exactly what he meant and gave a helpless shrug.

'This has nothing to do with me. Blame the damn quest.'

He only thought it. There was no way he would say that aloud.

Evan tapped Shane's shoulder, gestured for him to fall back, and leaned around the corner again.

Seeing it a second time did less damage to his sanity meter.

He clicked his tongue, still amazed that inmates could turn into walkers and somehow make the result even worse.

What appeared in Evan's view was a hulking thing made from at least six or seven walkers.

They seemed joined head to tail, each body forming one segment of a greater whole.

Their arms waved without purpose, making them look like the limbs of a single massive creature.

From a distance, it looked less like a cluster of walkers and more like a centipede that had learned to rot.

A walker centipede.

The second look was less shocking than the first, but Evan still found it hard to believe.

He had already braced himself for the system's quest zone to warp the Prison.

This still hit somewhere outside his expectations.

The first look had been horror.

The second was pure disgust.

As for the exact mechanics of being connected head to tail, Evan's brain refused to describe them in detail.

He looked back at Shane and flicked his eyes toward the corridor.

He did not speak, but Shane understood.

Which one of us goes?

Shane drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes for a second, then opened them as if he had accepted a heroic death.

Me.

He tightened his hold on the twelve-gauge shotgun and traded places with Evan again.

He breathed twice more, as if preparing himself for something terrible.

Then he stepped out into the open.

"You getting ready for Halloween?"

Shane leveled the shotgun and fired twice into the walker centipede.

For an instant, muzzle flashes lit both Shane and the twisted creature across from him.

Pellets tore into the bodies.

All six or seven walkers groaned at once, the sound wet and hungry.

It did not sound like pain.

It sounded like excitement at finding something alive.

The centipede turned toward Shane.

The uppermost body suddenly pulled back.

Then, in the next second, the walker centipede snapped forward with its own momentum.

Like a human catapult, it launched the two walkers embedded at the front straight at him.

The flashlight beam caught Shane's face.

His eyes went wide.

Then something caught the back of his collar.

Both his feet left the ground as Evan yanked him back.

The two walkers crashed down exactly where Shane had been standing.

Evan could not stop himself from swearing.

"What are you, a corn cannon?"

"You're all walkers. Act like it."

He looked offended by the entire situation, but he did not forget to move.

He lifted the Stone Sledgehammer and stepped in.

"You boys look cramped. Let me help."

Evan did not aim the first swing at a head. He drove the hammer into the belly of the first walker.

Crack.

Something snapped inside it.

Then he used the small rebound to change the hammer's angle and crushed the first walker's head too.

[Experience Gained: +1200 x2]

'The walker centipede isn't as bad as it looks.'

That was Evan's first thought.

Apart from the surprisingly theatrical launch, the two walkers that had landed were basically tied together.

They tried to get up but could not manage it, only twisting in place.

Of course, the first sight of them was still a direct attack on the mind.

Once he understood what they could do, Evan's confidence returned.

He strode out again without fear, just as Shane had, and stood in the middle of the corridor staring at the remaining five-body centipede.

"Come on. Come on, then. You think I'm scared?"

He hefted the hammer with genuine presence.

But before Evan could take two steps, the five walkers that had been frozen in place shifted.

Thud.

The upper body pressed down, and the whole thing dropped to the floor.

All of their heads twisted toward Evan at almost the same instant.

The perfectly synchronized movement sent a new chill through the corridor.

"Hm?"

Evan stopped.

In that same instant, the walkers surged forward on hands and feet.

Their bare limbs slapped against the ground in a rapid, crackling rhythm.

It sounded like a string of firecrackers going off.

"Hey."

"Hey!"

"Hey!"

In that moment, despite years of butchering hogs, despite being Level 23, despite maxed base Strength...

Evan forgot everything.

His mind went blank.

The pressure he had built collapsed, and he retreated exactly the way he had come, hammer on his shoulder as he hurried back behind cover.

There was no deeper reason.

The image hit the mind too hard.

Especially in a sealed corridor with no windows and barely any light.

The horror spiked to its highest point.

Evan's heart hammered. Adrenaline surged like it had torn loose.

"Shane!"

"Get ready!"

Evan shouted and retreated behind Shane, standing in the middle of the passage.

'The system's influence should only warp marked quest zones. Outside those areas, freaks like this shouldn't appear until the timeline produces them years later.'

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