TWD - Zomboid - Chapter 296: The Whisperers Mobilize in Full Force (Patreon)

As they walked, Tallahassee slowed down and moved closer to Luke.

“Luke, right? You’re pretty damn good. You didn’t even look winded when we were fighting that walker horde.” He grinned, his tone carrying a hint of probing curiosity.

“The ones who don’t breathe are dead,” Luke replied calmly without breaking stride.

“That’s different. I can tell you’re not afraid of those things at all. You’ve seen plenty of fighting, haven’t you?” Tallahassee asked.

“Something like that. I’ve got a tiny bit of experience dealing with walkers.”

Tallahassee continued, “Never asked you this. Where are you from?”

“Atlanta,” Luke answered casually.

That wasn’t a lie.

Atlanta, where it had all begun.

Now, though, Atlanta had practically become the gateway to hell.

Funny how things turned out.

Luke wondered how Greene Farm was doing these days.

Had it become a walker paradise by now?

“Atlanta?” Tallahassee slapped his thigh. “Then Atlanta it is! That’s what we’ll call you from now on!”

He turned toward Ellie.

“And the little one can be... Little Atlanta!”

Ellie: “...”

Seriously?

These people really did whatever they wanted when it came to using place names as aliases. They just renamed people without even bothering to ask.

Ellie quietly moved closer to Luke and nudged him with her elbow.

“Hey.”

She lowered her voice. “Are you seriously planning to keep traveling with these people?”

She couldn’t make sense of it.

This man was the leader of the [Ark]. The entire Commonwealth was his territory, yet here he was pretending to be an ordinary survivor, tagging along with a group of strangers and even walking the rest of the way on foot.

Was he treating this like some kind of field trip?

“It’s not often I get the chance to come out here. Might as well walk around and clear my head.” Luke strolled along with his hands clasped behind his back.

Ellie was completely speechless.

So from the very beginning, he really had just come out here to have fun.

He had dragged her all this way, run into walkers, encountered mutants, and now picked up this bunch of weirdos along the way...

“We’re heading to the same place anyway. You’ll understand when we get there,” Luke said, deliberately keeping her guessing.

There was something deeply satisfying about being mysterious.

Ellie pursed her lips and stopped asking.

People who talked in riddles should be kicked out of the Commonwealth.

She had learned her lesson by now.

Luke was impossible to read. Until the very last moment, nobody could tell what he was planning.

The group walked for roughly another hour.

The outline of the outpost was already visible at the edge of the horizon.

But then...

Everyone stopped again.

A huge number of wandering walkers had appeared across the open ground ahead.

This was nothing like the relatively small group that had blocked the highway earlier.

There were far more walkers this time, scattered in groups of twos and threes across the open plain leading to the outpost.

And there was no way around them.

Any survivor trying to reach the outpost would have to pass through this area and run straight into the horde.

These walkers seemed to have broken away from an even larger mass.

“More walkers?” Wichita frowned and tightened her grip on her gun. “This area’s getting crowded.”

“Wait.”

Columbus seemed to notice something.

“The way they’re moving... doesn’t it look strange? They’re not wandering around randomly. They all seem to be heading in the same direction.”

Luke already had a pretty good idea what was happening.

Unlike the others, he didn’t stop to study the walkers directly in front of them.

Instead, he looked farther into the distance.

Then Luke left the group and headed toward a higher slope.

“Hey! Atlanta, where are you going?” Columbus shouted after him.

“Getting some elevation. Something about this doesn’t look right,” Luke called back without turning around.

The others exchanged glances.

They had only known this “Atlanta” for half a day, but he clearly seemed to know more about the [Ark] than they did.

That alone made them want to follow and see what he had noticed.

Had he figured something out?

The group climbed to the top of the hill.

Luke stood at the crest and looked out across the wilderness.

Damn.

This was something else.

Far across the open land, beneath the heavy fog, an enormous dark mass stretched across the landscape like a flock of crows swallowed by storm clouds.

A vast sea of black.

This horde seemed to have no end, nearly covering every inch of the wilderness.

Thousands upon thousands of walkers crowded together near the outpost, spreading across the land like a black plague.

The sheer scale of it was staggering.

There was no way this had formed naturally.

It had to be the Whisperers.

There had been too many walkers last time for them to wipe the Whisperers out completely.

Sure enough, they had come back.

Still, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Walkers might keep appearing at an absurd rate, but every one killed was still one fewer walker in the world.

The Whisperers had probably herded nearly every walker in the surrounding area here.

That made things simple.

Wipe out the Whisperers and the horde together.

Judging by the numbers, Alpha must have committed everything she had.

The Whisperers themselves had probably mobilized in full force too. Otherwise, there was no way they could control a horde this massive.

Their numbers had grown far beyond what they had been in the original series.

Columbus, Wichita, Tallahassee, and the others reached the hilltop soon afterward.

The moment they saw the horde clearly, every one of them sucked in a breath.

It looked like a black ocean.

“My... God.”

Even Tallahassee’s hands trembled slightly.

None of them had ever seen anything this terrifying.

There were too many walkers to count. Just seeing that endless mass gathered below was enough to make anyone’s blood run cold.

“How... how many of those things are there?”

“At least ten thousand.” Columbus’s throat went dry. “At least ten thousand walkers... A horde that size could swallow any settlement whole. We need to get out of here.”

Wichita instinctively pulled her younger sister behind her, her face turning pale.

The [Ark]?

Forget it.

Not even Noah’s Ark could stop a walker horde this large.

They had traveled all this way, only to end up having to turn back.

This was Ellie’s first time seeing anything on this scale, and even she felt her scalp prickle.

A few hundred walkers?

She could grit her teeth, keep moving, and slowly wear them down with hit-and-run tactics.

Ten thousand?

Forget it.

She might as well dig herself a grave right here. At least then she might leave behind an intact corpse.

Ellie looked toward Luke.

He was still perfectly calm.

For a moment, she wondered if his face simply didn’t know how to change expression.

How was he still this composed?

Whether Luke could stay calm hardly mattered now.

Alpha had clearly gone all in and thrown everything she had into this attack.

That woman never let a grudge go.

Unfortunately for her, she had chosen the wrong enemy.

“Leon, Crane. A massive walker horde is moving toward your position.” Luke pulled out his radio.

“Copy!”

Leon responded almost immediately.

“We’ve already spotted them. At their current pace, they’ll reach the outpost in about an hour. We’re prepared.”

“Good.”

Luke nodded.

“Commonwealth reinforcements will arrive within half an hour. Until then, don’t let any of the Whisperers escape.”

“I want their heads on spikes, displayed on top of the outpost.”