By the time Magnus Vane slowly opened his eyes, morning had already arrived.
Low walker growls drifting in from outside pulled him out of a deep sleep, while the bathwater around him had gone completely cold during the night.
The chill snapped away the last of his drowsiness almost instantly.
Magnus rubbed his face, climbed out of the tub, and started getting dressed.
Once he was ready, Magnus walked to the window and looked down at the street.
Three walkers were wandering lazily around the battered SUV where he had parked it the night before, circling the vehicle as if they had been assigned to guard it.
Magnus stared at them for a moment before reaching into his system inventory and pulling out the massive Stone Sledgehammer.
The heavy head dragged across the floor as he headed downstairs.
Scrape—
The sound of stone grinding against pavement immediately caught the walkers’ attention.
All three turned toward Magnus and began shambling in his direction, their sleepy movements suddenly becoming more animated when they noticed fresh prey.
Magnus stepped forward and swung the sledgehammer before the nearest one could reach him.
The impact twisted its head violently to one side and sent several rotten teeth spinning through the air.
Magnus looked at the mangled corpse with an amused expression.
“What?
Never had somebody tip you like that before?” The other two walkers came in from opposite sides, but neither posed much of a threat anymore.
Two more brutal swings ended the fight, leaving all three bodies sprawled across the road with their skulls crushed beyond recognition.
Magnus rested the Stone Sledgehammer against one shoulder and looked over his work.
“Huh.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“Is this going to become my signature?” Every walker he killed lately seemed to end up with its head reduced to fragments.
“Pretty soon people are gonna see a smashed skull on the highway and know I’ve already been through.”
Magnus shook his head at the thought and climbed back into the SUV.
Most of the town had already been searched, and from where he was parked, he could see the highway beyond the eastern edge.
“Might as well finish the rest today.” He started the battered vehicle and continued east.
Magnus passed a movie theater, the municipal building, and a school without stopping at any of them.
Before the outbreak, those places might have held hundreds of people at once, which meant they were exactly the kind of buildings likely to contain large numbers of walkers now.
The potential reward didn’t justify the risk, especially when most of what he needed could be found somewhere safer.
Magnus kept driving until he reached the far eastern side of town near a narrow creek.
A bright red sign caught his attention.
FIREHOUSE
Magnus slowed the SUV and looked over the building.
“Food and water aren’t a problem right now, but a fire station should have emergency equipment.” Firefighters dealt with accidents, hazardous materials, fires, rescues, and disasters, which meant a functioning station could contain gear far more valuable than another half-empty grocery store.
Magnus parked and grabbed the Stone Sledgehammer.
The front apparatus-bay door was partially raised, leaving a gap large enough to see inside.
Dark blood stretched from beneath the opening and continued across the concrete floor deep into the station.
Magnus didn’t immediately crawl underneath.
Instead, he stepped to one side and hammered his fist against the metal door several times.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
The rolling door rattled loudly enough to carry down the street.
Magnus moved beside the opening, raised the Stone Sledgehammer, and waited for whatever might be inside to respond.
If walkers were packed into the station, he would rather draw them out one at a time than crawl blindly into their reach.
Nearly a minute passed without a growl, scrape, or moving shadow.
“Strange.”
Magnus crouched and looked through the opening again.
There were bloodstains, abandoned equipment, and several motionless bodies, but nothing appeared to be moving.
After checking both sides, he grabbed the bottom of the apparatus-bay door with both hands and pushed.
With his system-enhanced Strength, the heavy door rolled upward until the opening was tall enough for him to walk through normally.
Magnus entered with the sledgehammer ready.
The firehouse interior looked like a fight had ripped through it—equipment lay scattered across the floor, dried blood covered the concrete, and several corpses were already too badly damaged to reanimate.
Then Magnus noticed water slowly spreading beneath his boots.
A steady stream was leaking from behind a door farther inside.
He followed it and pushed the door open.
A walker immediately came into view.
Magnus actually relaxed.
“Okay.
That makes more sense.”
The corpse had somehow become tangled around the station’s brass fire pole, trapped by lengths of clear synthetic line and other debris wrapped tightly around its body.
It twisted uselessly as Magnus approached, unable to pull itself free.
The sight was so ridiculous that Magnus stared for several seconds.
“Having fun up there?”
The walker answered with a hoarse growl.
“Yeah, figured.”
Magnus lifted the Stone Sledgehammer.
“You’ve been keeping watch long enough.
Time to clock out.”
Crack!
The walker’s skull collapsed under one clean hit.
[Experience Gained: +300]
Magnus pushed the corpse aside and used the fire pole area to make his way up to the second floor.
Dust had collected across the surfaces, and there were no recent signs that anyone living had been using the building.
“Nobody’s been here for a while,” Magnus murmured as he wiped a finger across a metal countertop.
The room appeared to be the firefighters’ kitchen and lounge.
Canned food was stacked around the counter along with several small appliances.
Magnus swept the cans directly into his system inventory before opening the cabinets below.
The moment he saw what had been stored there, his expression brightened.
“Now we’re talking.”
Four cases of Coca-Cola sat inside.
Each case held twelve large bottles, all still sealed.
“Firefighters had good taste.”
Behind the soda were two dusty boxes of long-lasting emergency crackers that looked as if they had been sitting there since well before the outbreak.
Magnus understood why they had been ignored; when fresh food was available, nobody voluntarily ate dry emergency rations.
Now, however, shelf life mattered far more than taste.
He stored both the crackers and every bottle of Coke without hesitation.
Finding enough calories to stay alive and actually enjoying what you ate were two very different things.
Magnus could still occasionally find canned food, liquor, soda, hot water, and other remnants of modern life while scavenging.
Back at the farm, Daryl and Merle were often surviving on whatever they hunted while the others relied heavily on basic farm food.
Magnus looked at the cases disappearing into his inventory and grinned.
“Now this is a haul.”
He pushed through the side door and began checking the rest of the second floor.
This section contained specialized firefighting and rescue gear, and almost every cabinet Magnus opened produced something worth keeping.
His interest grew with every new piece of equipment he uncovered.
An aluminized heat-resistant proximity suit used for high-temperature rescue work.
“Taking it.”
A chemical-resistant hazmat suit.
“Definitely taking that.”
Several sets of heavy structural firefighting turnout gear with reinforced coats, pants, helmets, boots, and gloves.
“All of it.”
Magnus cleared out whatever remained usable and also collected the station’s last three fire axes.
Even if he personally preferred the Stone Sledgehammer, fire axes were excellent close-range tools against walkers and could be handed to other members of the group.
By the time he finished upstairs, the system inventory held enough specialized protective gear to significantly improve the farm camp’s equipment.
Magnus found a stairwell on the opposite side and returned to the first floor.
This led into another apparatus bay whose exterior door was still completely closed.
Halfway down the stairs, he stopped.
Sitting beneath the overhead lights was a nearly pristine red fire engine.
Magnus’s eyes lit up.
“Well, hello there.”
He walked around the truck slowly, running one hand across the bodywork.
The red paint was still bright enough that the engine looked almost new compared with everything else outside.
Magnus glanced through the station window at Andrea’s battered seven-seat SUV, then back at the massive fire engine.
He looked at the SUV one more time.
The decision wasn’t difficult.
Bang!
Magnus shut the fire engine’s cab door and placed the Stone Sledgehammer in the passenger area.
Sitting behind the wheel immediately felt different from driving the damaged SUV.
The controls were heavier and more substantial, and the cab offered far more protection simply because of the vehicle’s size.
Magnus began testing the equipment.
The engine had multiple external cameras covering much of the area around the truck, a vehicle radio, navigation equipment, and the kind of visibility systems designed to help such a large emergency vehicle maneuver through crowded streets.
He rested both hands on the steering wheel and leaned back slightly.
“Yeah.
This is more like it.”
A large vehicle gave a different kind of security than a house ever could.
A fixed building could be surrounded, but a heavy fire engine could carry supplies, push through lighter obstacles, and relocate the group when necessary.
It wasn’t invincible, especially against abandoned vehicles or a large herd, but compared with their damaged SUV it was a major upgrade.
Magnus found the keys hanging on the station’s key board and started the engine.
He raised the apparatus-bay door and slowly drove the fire engine outside.
When he passed the SUV, Magnus stopped and backed up several yards.
He climbed down, transferred the remaining supplies from the SUV into the fire engine’s large storage compartments and available tank-area storage space, then gave the battered vehicle one last look.
It had survived Atlanta roads, the motorcycle recovery, and an entire Blood Moon.
Magnus figured it had earned retirement.
He climbed back into the fire engine.
“Farm’s gonna like this.”
Magnus shifted into gear and began turning toward the road that would take him back to Hershel’s property.
Bang!
A distant gunshot cracked through the morning.
Magnus instantly hit the brakes.
Screech!
The fire engine stopped hard.
Magnus turned toward the highway in the distance and listened.
A thought suddenly crossed his mind.
His expression changed.
Without hesitating, Magnus spun the steering wheel, turned the entire fire engine around, and accelerated east toward the sound of the gunshot.