TWD - Chapter 577: The Wanderers (Patreon)

The third floor, the fourth, the fifth... Every level concealed more walkers.

Some lurked in laboratories, others hid in bathrooms, and still others wandered the corridors in search of prey.

The soldiers found them one by one and put them down without mercy.

A few walkers continued to struggle even after a spear pierced their throats. The soldiers simply followed up with a strike through the eye socket to make certain they were dead.

Sometimes a knife missed its mark and sank into a walker's face instead, making the creature thrash even more violently. The fighter would have to thrust again, harder this time, until the blade finally reached its brain.

At other times, there were too many walkers to dispatch individually.

Then the archers and crossbowmen fired together, arrows pouring down to drop several at once while the rest of the squad finished off those still standing.

The reek of rotten flesh and blood grew so overpowering that it seemed to fill the entire building, making breathing difficult.

Black stains covered the soldiers' faces, hands, and uniforms. Some had already dried into hard, dark crusts. Others were fresh and sticky, still dripping from their skin.

Nobody cared. Their expressions remained hard and determined as they repeated the same killing motions again and again, cutting down the dead throughout UTK's abandoned campus.

At last they reached the top floor.

One final walker stood ahead of them.

It was an elderly figure in a shabby suit, with a tie still hanging from its neck. Perhaps it had once been a professor.

Nearly all the flesh had rotted from its face, leaving something close to a bare skull. Its teeth were completely exposed as it turned aimlessly in circles at the end of the corridor.

Leah charged without hesitation and drove her bayonet straight through its skull.

The old walker swayed, then fell with a thump and never moved again.

Leah glanced down at the body.

A pen still protruded from the pocket of its ruined jacket. There was also an employee identification badge, so dirty that the name could no longer be read. The photograph showed a gentle-looking old man with white hair.

Leah sighed.

A few minutes later, the squad finished its head count. No casualties.

Satisfied, she nodded. "Ten-minute break. Then we'll clear the next building."

The soldiers scattered and sat wherever they could, gulping down water.

Anyone who's spent time killing walkers knows that it feels nothing like killing a human being. The physical sensation is different, but the difference in your mind is greater still.

After killing a person, you feel as though something inside you has been taken away.

After killing a walker, you think: well, that's one less walker and a little more room for humanity to survive. Not bad at all.

*

The biology building was a gray structure six stories tall.

Several abandoned cars stood in the little square outside. Rust mottled their bodies, their tires had long since gone flat, and most of their windows were shattered.

Leah inspected each vehicle. Some doors hung open, while others were shut tight.

An open door wasn't particularly suspicious. People fleeing in the first days of the outbreak had likely abandoned their cars without bothering to close them.

Most windows in the biology building were broken, and vines had spread across the outer walls. Yet several windows near the roof remained intact, their glass flashing brightly in the sunshine.

For a world left untended, none of it was unusual.

Still, Leah refused to send her squad inside blindly. She stood at the front and examined the building. Her gaze lingered for a moment on the second floor.

Several vine stems there had been snapped. The breaks looked fresh.

Someone had disturbed those vines.

Leah narrowed her eyes. "There are people inside. Quite a few of them, too."

Her certainty came from experience.

The biology building was the tallest one in the immediate area, and its roof offered a clear view over the eastern side of campus. If she needed to establish a camp, this was exactly where she would choose to do it.

Her hand settled instinctively on the pistol at her waist.

"Everyone, stay alert. We have living people inside. We don't know how many or what they intend to do. Be extremely careful. We're going in to clear the building."

At the same time, more than twenty people were huddled together in a third-floor laboratory, the atmosphere stifling with tension.

Jerry lay against a window and peered through a narrow opening in the curtain. Fear shook his voice.

"Dad! They're... they're right downstairs!"

His father, Harris, hurried to his side and pulled the curtain apart just enough to look out.

Below them, Leah's detachment was spreading out around the biology building with practiced coordination.

A dozen or more soldiers quickly surrounded the building while checking their equipment. Spears, knives, bows, and crossbows were in plain view, all of them close-combat or quiet weapons. Every soldier also carried a gun.

Their movements were far too disciplined and efficient to be ordinary survivors.

Harris felt his temples throb, an unfamiliar anxiety rising in his chest.

His group had once been wanderers living nearby. Earlier, teachers and students had occupied the UTK campus. The two groups had faced each other over supplies, though nothing truly violent had come of it.

Then, one day, the teachers and students vanished. According to several witnesses, a unit of heavily armed soldiers had taken them away.

There were fewer walkers on campus afterward, and UTK's buildings were sturdy. Harris's wandering group had eventually moved in.

In his struggle to survive after the outbreak, Harris had met people of every sort.

There were survivors like his own group, constantly hiding and worrying about where their next meal would come from. There were raiders who looted wherever they went, willing to do anything for supplies. And there were other wanderers who merely stopped to rest before moving on.

He had never encountered a group like the one below.

"Oh my God! They're coming in!" a woman whispered, her voice shaking with panic.

Harris glanced back at the others.

There were twenty-three of them. The oldest were over fifty, and the youngest were only in their early teens.

Everyone was thin, pale, and dressed in rags. Fear filled their eyes. Only Neville had something else mixed in with his terror: a flicker of greed and desire.

"Wh-what should we do?" someone asked quietly.

Neville couldn't contain himself. "There aren't that many of them. We have over twenty people. We could rush downstairs first and..."

"Are you insane?" Harris interrupted sharply. "Rush them? You'd be charging straight to your death! Do you want to be riddled with bullets?"

Neville's face reddened. "Then what do you suggest, Harris? We wait for them to come upstairs, and we're dead anyway!"

He pointed down at the soldiers, growing more agitated. "Look at what they're carrying. Food, water, weapons! If we managed to grab even one of those things, we could live off it for half a month!"

Several people exchanged glances. Those holding weapons tightened their grips on pieces of rebar, clubs, and the one decent fire axe they possessed.

By now, ordinary survivors had used up their ammunition long ago. A gun without bullets was little better than a brick. They weren't daring raiders who would risk looting armories and police stations.

Harris knew that look all too well. He had seen it countless times in the eyes of desperate people.

His heart sank. He lowered his voice. "Nobody do anything stupid. Listen to me..."