"Resurrection? No. Someone murdered the forensic pathologist and stole Gein’s body." Warden Holden stared at the empty autopsy table while refusing to accept Axel’s conclusion. The gruesome condition of the doctor had clearly shattered the last of his composure, and he immediately turned toward the ruined doorway. "We can’t stay here. We need to get everyone out of these ruins as fast as possible."
Axel Vance watched him for a moment before saying, "Warden Holden, if I were you, I wouldn’t do that." Holden spun around as if he had been provoked and snapped, "Are you crazy? There’s been another murder here, and half the prison is lying in pieces around us." Axel stepped forward, grabbed Holden by the shoulder, and forced him to look toward the survivors behind them. "Before you panic again, count how many people we actually have."
Holden turned and saw more than fifty prisoners along with roughly a dozen surviving corrections officers gathered throughout the damaged corridor. Extreme fear had made him temporarily forget that he still had a considerable number of people under his command. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and gave an embarrassed laugh. "Damn it. I forgot we still had this many people."
His confidence gradually returned as he straightened his uniform and looked around. "Fine. Even if some of those maximum-security lunatics survived, we still have the numbers to deal with them." Holden immediately ordered several guards and prisoners to collect every usable medical supply, bandage, and piece of equipment from the morgue before returning to their temporary base.
Axel remained near the doorway while everyone worked, but a faint sound suddenly reached his ears. The low rhythm was almost buried beneath footsteps and shifting rubble, yet he recognized it immediately as the same chanting that had come through the underground walls. His expression changed at once. Before he could warn anyone, a piercing scream erupted from the excavation site nearby.
Everyone rushed toward the sound and found a horrifying scene at the deepest part of the half-cleared passage. A gaunt inmate had tackled another prisoner and buried his teeth into the man’s neck, tearing at the flesh like a starving animal while blood sprayed across the rubble. Several prisoners grabbed the attacker from behind, but his strength was so abnormal that they could barely move him.
"Everyone back!" Axel shoved through the crowd and drew the Glock from his waistband. With several people struggling around the attacker, firing from a distance risked hitting someone innocent, so Axel closed the gap and pressed the muzzle against the side of the frenzied man’s head. He pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The attacker collapsed instantly, and two notifications appeared before Axel’s eyes. [Police Marksmanship: EXP +1] came first, immediately followed by [Kill EXP +10]. Axel understood the pattern at once: one point for successfully using the weapon and ten additional points for eliminating a target.
Compared with the endless physical grinding required for Prisoner Fitness, this specialization seemed much easier to improve. America certainly did not suffer from a shortage of firearms or ammunition, so Axel doubted opportunities for practice would be rare once he escaped this disaster. He pushed the thought aside and looked down at the two bodies tangled together on the ground.
The crazed attacker was already dead, while the prisoner he had bitten had lost far too much blood to survive. Axel had now personally killed a man, yet he felt almost none of the disgust or psychological shock he might once have expected. The attacker had behaved like a rabid creature rather than a rational human being, and killing him had been the only way to stop more people from dying.
"Axel, what happened here?" Holden arrived with several guards, his face grim as he stared at the bodies. One corrections officer quickly explained, "We were digging through the rubble when that guy suddenly came out from below. He attacked the first prisoner he saw and started biting him, then Vance shot him."
Holden frowned and stepped toward the excavation site, but Axel suddenly raised one hand. "Wait. Everyone be quiet for a second." The nearby survivors gradually stopped talking, and from somewhere deep beneath the broken concrete came a mixture of scraping sounds, low murmuring, and something even more familiar.
The chanting.
Axel’s expression hardened, while Holden’s face lost what little color remained. "The excavation must have broken into the underground maximum-security wing," Holden said quietly. Axel took a flashlight from one of the guards and aimed the beam through the narrow opening, revealing damaged concrete and sections of the reinforced structure below.
"The underground cells were built much stronger than the regular prison," Axel said while studying the rubble. "Those reinforced glass fronts absorbed a lot of the collapse, and the cells themselves barely compressed compared with everything above them." Holden swallowed as he understood the implication. "Which means those serial killers and psychopaths could still be alive down there."
The nearby prisoners immediately erupted into frightened arguments. "Warden, you’re telling us all those maniacs survived?" one man demanded, while another shouted, "Then screw this place. We should get out while we still can." A third prisoner pointed toward the breach and said, "Why not bury the hole again? If those psychos stay trapped down there, everyone wins."
None of them wanted to deal with inmates who had been considered too dangerous even for the regular prison population. Their current situation was already bad enough without intentionally releasing a group of unstable killers into the ruins. Holden seemed tempted by their argument, but Axel continued listening to the sound below.
The chanting was growing louder.
Axel slowly shook his head. "Whatever we decide to do now, I think we’re already too late." Before he finished speaking, a heavy rumbling sound came from beneath their feet, followed by several animalistic howls that echoed through the excavation tunnel.
Axel immediately stepped backward and shouted, "Fall back! They’re coming through!" A pale arm suddenly reached from the darkness and clawed at the broken concrete, followed by another hand covered in blood and dust. Seconds later, a twisted face forced itself into view.
"It’s too dark!" the prisoner screamed as he dragged himself upward. "I don’t want to stay down there! Help me!" Another inmate appeared behind him, followed by another, until one maximum-security prisoner after another began crawling through the breach.
Whatever sanity they had possessed before the collapse seemed to have been completely destroyed. Some screamed incoherently, others laughed while bleeding from their faces, and several attacked the nearest person the instant they reached open ground. Within seconds, the entire area descended into chaos.
One frenzied inmate rushed straight toward Axel. He raised the Glock without hesitation and fired once, dropping the man across the rubble. [Police Marksmanship: EXP +11] appeared immediately, confirming the same experience pattern as before.
A scream came from Axel’s right before he could examine the notification further. Another crazed prisoner had tackled a corrections officer onto his back and opened his mouth as though preparing to bite into the man’s face. Axel lunged forward, grabbed the attacker by the back of his uniform, and pulled with all his strength.
The inmate flew several feet through the air and hit the ground like a discarded sack. Axel stared briefly at his own hand, surprised by how easily he had thrown a grown man. Prisoner Fitness Lv.3 and his increased Physique had clearly pushed his strength far beyond what he had been capable of when he first entered the prison.
The attacker groaned and struggled to stand but could not recover quickly. Axel immediately recognized how useful that advantage could be and turned toward the panicking survivors. "Stop fighting them one-on-one! They’re insane, but they’re still human."
Several people looked toward him, and Axel raised his voice over the chaos. "Get into groups of three to five. One person controls the arms, another takes the legs, and the rest keep them pinned down. Use your numbers instead of trying to prove how tough you are."
The order spread quickly through the crowd, and those who still had enough sense to listen began working together. Three prisoners dragged one attacker to the ground while four others overwhelmed another inmate and pinned him against the rubble. Corrections officers joined the groups, and the previously collapsing defensive line slowly stabilized.
The maximum-security prisoners remained vicious and unpredictable, but many were weakened from days underground and the violence of the collapse. Once the survivors stopped challenging them individually, their superior numbers began making a clear difference. For the first time since the attack started, the situation appeared to be coming under control.
Then several screams erupted from behind them.
Axel turned sharply and immediately saw the figure responsible.
The Big Guy had returned.
More accurately, Ed Gein had returned.
Gein stood behind the survivors wearing the freshly removed human-skin mask of the forensic pathologist. A bloodstained scalpel rested in his hand, and unlike the frenzied prisoners screaming throughout the ruins, he moved with disturbing silence and purpose.
One prisoner noticed him too late. Gein stepped behind the man and drew the scalpel cleanly across his throat before immediately moving toward another target. Blood sprayed across the rubble as the first victim collapsed.
Another scream followed.
Then another.
"Behind us!" someone shouted.
The survivors who had just begun stabilizing the front immediately started panicking again. Maximum-security inmates continued attacking from the excavation breach while Gein silently slaughtered people from the rear, leaving the group trapped between two separate threats. Holden desperately tried to keep the defensive line together as prisoners began turning in both directions.
Axel clenched his jaw and rapidly assessed the situation. The frenzied inmates were numerous, but the survivors had already proven they could suppress them by working together. Gein was something else entirely: resurrected, unusually strong, armed with a scalpel, and calm enough to kill efficiently instead of wasting energy screaming.
The priority was obvious.
"Holden!" Axel shouted, and the warden turned toward him while helping several guards restrain another attacker. Axel pointed toward the breach. "Take your people and hold this side. Keep them working in groups and don’t let those inmates break through."
Holden glanced toward Gein and understood immediately. "What are you going to do?"
Axel tightened his grip around the Glock and turned toward the resurrected killer. "I’ll deal with him."
He stopped paying attention to the chaotic fight behind him.
Then Axel Vance charged straight toward Ed Gein.
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