Only a few seconds had passed since Magnus Vane and Rick Grimes left the tank, but the walkers around them were already closing in.
Several of the dead that had been feeding on Rick’s horse had abandoned the carcass after hearing the gunshot, while others stumbled between the abandoned cars from both sides of the street.
Magnus and Rick stayed nearly back-to-back as they moved, Rick clearing the way with his Colt Python while Magnus watched their rear with the military entrenching tool.
The alley Glenn had directed them toward was probably less than forty feet away, yet with the dead surrounding them, it felt impossibly far.
“There are too many.
We need to move!” Rick snapped before his expression suddenly changed.
“Magnus!”
The warning came too late.
Before Magnus could turn, something jerked violently against the lower back of his combat uniform.
Instinct took over, and he twisted around while swinging the entrenching tool behind him.
The flat of the steel shovel smashed into the head of a walker leaning through the shattered window of an abandoned car, knocking it backward into the vehicle with a heavy thud.
Magnus barely noticed the kill.
Rick was staring at him.
“What?”
Magnus followed his gaze toward his lower back.
He reached behind himself and felt torn fabric first.
Then exposed skin.
His stomach dropped.
A sharp burning pain followed almost immediately, and when Magnus brought his hand back around, fresh red blood stained his fingertips.
His face went pale.
“No.”
He stared at the blood.
“I got bitten?”
For several seconds, Magnus’s mind simply stopped functioning.
He knew exactly what a walker bite meant in this world, yet somehow he had never seriously considered that his entire second chance might end less than an hour after it started.
There was no established cure waiting for him, no vaccine hidden somewhere inside Atlanta, and nobody in the world he remembered simply walked away from a confirmed bite.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Magnus raised his head slowly, his fingers trembling despite his attempt to control them.
Fear surged through him harder than anything he had felt since waking inside the tank.
Rick’s expression suddenly made perfect sense.
As far as Rick knew, Magnus was already dead.
The noise surrounding them faded beneath a high-pitched ringing.
“Mason—”
Rick caught himself.
“Magnus!”
Hands grabbed his shoulders.
“Magnus, can you hear me?
We have to get out of here!”
Rick shook him hard enough to drag his attention back to the street.
Magnus blinked, focus returning just in time to see another walker closing in behind Rick.
He grabbed the deputy by the shoulder and pulled him sideways before bringing the entrenching tool down one-handed.
Crack!
The blade struck the walker across the skull and sent it stumbling sideways onto the pavement.
The blow didn’t destroy its brain, but the corpse became tangled beneath its own legs and bought them a few more seconds.
Magnus sucked in a hard breath.
“Rick.”
“What?”
“I’m not going with you.”
Rick stared at him.
“You saw the bite.”
Magnus’s chest rose and fell rapidly.
The terror that had overwhelmed him only seconds earlier was still there, but something hotter was beginning to burn through it.
Anger.
He had graduated into a terrible job market, watched his first real career opportunity disappear, and spent years working on a slaughter floor because it paid the bills.
After finally saving enough money to start something of his own, he had somehow been ripped out of his world and dumped into the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
Now he had been bitten almost immediately.
That was almost impressive.
Magnus laughed once, but there wasn’t any humor in it.
Rick looked at him uneasily.
“Magnus…”
For a moment, neither moved.
Rick had known him for barely fifteen minutes.
Under normal circumstances, they probably never would have met, yet Magnus had already helped him survive the tank and guarded his back while they crossed a street filled with the dead.
Rick clearly wanted to say something, but there wasn’t much either of them could say about a walker bite.
“Go!”
Magnus pulled the fragmentation grenade from his gear and shoved it into Rick’s hand.
His breathing remained heavy as he tightened his grip around the entrenching tool.
If the bite had already killed him, he wasn’t going to spend whatever time remained running until fever dropped him.
Rick stared at him for another second.
Then he turned.
The Colt Python thundered several times as Rick fought toward the alley Glenn had indicated.
Each shot became more distant until the noise was finally swallowed by the groans filling the streets.
Magnus watched him disappear.
Then he looked toward the approaching walkers.
“Well.”
He rolled his shoulders and adjusted his grip on the shovel.
“If I’m already dead, you bastards are coming with me.”
A ridiculous thought still lingered somewhere in the back of his mind.
Maybe dying here would send him back to his original world.
Maybe whatever impossible force had brought him here would simply drop him back home when this body died.
Magnus knew how desperate that sounded.
He didn’t care.
A walker stumbled toward him with half its jaw hanging loose.
Magnus stepped forward.
The moment he stopped worrying about another bite, his entire approach changed.
Until now, every movement had been restrained by the instinct to avoid teeth and fingernails.
Once that hesitation disappeared, the creatures surrounding him stopped looking like supernatural monsters and started looking like something much more familiar.
Bodies.
Muscle.
Bone.
Joints.
Balance.
Weak points.
Years working at a meatpacking plant had taught Magnus exactly how flesh and bone fit together.
He had spent thousands of hours cutting, separating, breaking down, and deboning carcasses.
Walkers were different.
But not different enough.
“Come on.”
Magnus swung.
The sharpened side of the entrenching tool tore across the first walker’s face and crushed its cheekbone.
The impact knocked it sideways, and Magnus immediately stepped forward before it could recover.
His boot came down against its head with enough force to drive the skull into the pavement.
Another walker approached from his right.
Magnus pivoted.
Thump!
The flat of the shovel smashed against its temple.
A dead woman with long, filthy hair reached for him from behind, and Magnus grabbed a fistful before her teeth could reach his shoulder.
He planted one boot, pulled violently backward, and used her momentum to throw her onto the street.
The entrenching tool came down across the back of her skull before she could rise.
Crack!
Magnus ripped the blade free.
No retreat.
No hesitation.
No concern about infection.
The fear that had been controlling him minutes earlier had been replaced by raw aggression.
Under normal circumstances, fighting like this would have been suicidal, but Magnus believed the bite had already sentenced him to death.
So there was no reason to hold anything back.
“Come on!”
Another walker reached him.
Magnus swung.
The shovel slammed into the side of its head and knocked the corpse onto the hood of an abandoned sedan.
Magnus struck again, driving the edge into its skull before kicking the body away.
The entrenching tool wasn’t built for this kind of abuse.
It could dig trenches, cut roots, and serve as an emergency melee weapon, but repeated impacts against human skulls were already damaging it.
Chips had appeared along the edge, and the shaft had begun bending slightly.
Magnus didn’t care.
He smashed another walker across the face.
“I spent years breaking down livestock—”
Crack!
A second walker stumbled into range.
“You think I’m going to let a bunch of rotten corpses—”
Thump!
Magnus buried the shovel in its head.
“—be what finally kills me?”
The shouting drew even more attention.
Walkers stumbled out from between abandoned vehicles, drifted away from Rick’s dead horse, and emerged from storefronts farther down the street.
The crowd around the tank was slowly shifting toward Magnus, pulled by every shout and metallic impact.
His entrenching tool was visibly warped now.
He still swung it.
The chipped edge buried itself in the side of another walker’s neck.
Magnus twisted hard, forcing the blade deeper until the corpse collapsed against him.
Thick black-red blood ran along the handle and coated his hands with a cold, slippery film.
Then Magnus froze.
Glowing text appeared directly in front of him.
[Walkers Killed: 10 / 10]
[Level Increased: Lv.1 → Lv.2]
[Next Level Experience Requirement: Previous Requirement × 1.02]
[Skill Points Acquired: 3]
[Skill Points Available for Allocation]
[WARNING: Infection Detected]
[Take Antibiotics as soon as possible]
[Antibiotics: Removes Infection and restores Health]
Magnus stared at the messages.
“What the hell…?”
A faint golden flash swept across his vision.
Something changed.
Four horizontal status bars appeared along the lower-left side of his sight.
[Food]
[Water]
[Stamina]
[Health]
Food, Water, and Stamina had already dropped significantly after everything he had gone through.
Health was worse.
It was still decreasing.
A small capsule icon flashed directly above the four bars, clearly indicating a medical emergency.
Magnus stared at it.
His eyes widened.
He knew that interface.
He knew those survival meters.
More importantly, he knew exactly what antibiotics meant in that system.
“No way.”
A grin slowly spread across his face.
“This is 7 Days to Die?”
The impossible situation suddenly made considerably more sense.
At least part of it did.
If his system followed 7 Days to Die mechanics, infection wasn’t necessarily a death sentence.
Antibiotics could eliminate it, which meant the walker bite that would normally guarantee death in this world could potentially be treated like an ordinary game status effect.
Magnus nearly laughed.
He had spent the last several minutes convinced his life was over.
Apparently, he had been wrong.
Then he looked up.
The grin vanished.
Walkers filled the street.
More were coming from every direction.
Magnus’s eye twitched as he realized that screaming and smashing skulls in the middle of downtown Atlanta had attracted a significant portion of the surrounding horde.
“Right.”
He glanced at the ruined shovel in his hands.
“That was probably not my smartest decision.”
Discovering that his infection could be cured meant nothing if the dead tore him apart before he found antibiotics.
Magnus quickly backed toward the nearest building until his shoulders touched the wall, removing at least one direction from which the walkers could attack.
His thoughts raced as he searched the strange interface for anything that might help him survive the next few minutes.
Allocate points.
The instant the thought crossed his mind, his vision changed.
A gray-white skill interface appeared in front of him, clean and easy to read.
The left side contained the available skill categories, while the right side displayed descriptions and requirements.
Magnus recognized the basic structure immediately.
Five primary attributes were listed.
[Perception]
[Strength]
[Fortitude]
[Agility]
[Intellect]
However, his version of the system had one major difference.
Only two attribute trees were currently available.
[Perception — Unlocked]
[Strength — Unlocked]
The remaining three were grayed out.
[Fortitude — Locked]
[Agility — Locked]
[Intellect — Locked]
Magnus glanced at the three unused skill points shown at the top of the interface, then looked through the translucent menu at the walkers steadily closing in.
Three points.
Two available trees.
Almost no time.
Magnus steadied his breathing.
“Doesn’t matter.”
His fingers tightened around the bent entrenching tool.
“Three points are enough for now.”