Everybody waited for the priest's signal.
For a moment, everything felt still.
Then—
BOOM!
A building in the distance collapsed with a deafening roar.
The sound echoed across the city.
And the city answered.
Screams erupted from every direction.
Every undead creature that heard the explosion seemed to awaken at once.
Thousands of walkers hurled themselves from buildings, crashing onto the streets below. Many shattered on impact, only to be buried beneath the hundreds that followed, using the broken bodies as cushions for their fall.
Others poured across the rooftops.
Some of the fused walkers crawled from one building to another, their tangled limbs dragging them across gaps that should have been impossible to cross.
From below, it looked as though a living cloud of bodies was sweeping across the skyline.
Like a swarm of ants rushing toward a battlefield.
The ground began to tremble.
Then it shook harder.
Manhole covers flew into the air as hundreds of walkers burst from the sewer system.
More poured out of subway entrances and maintenance tunnels.
It looked as though the city itself had split open and was vomiting out its dead.
"Oh, fuck. We have to do this quickly!" Carol said, panic rising in her voice.
The horde was moving far faster than she had expected.
Max immediately pulled her beneath an abandoned bus as thousands of walkers rushed past their position, completely focused on the distant explosion.
For the first time since entering the city, Carol understood just how many undead were truly hiding within Atlanta.
The realization terrified her.
They waited several minutes for the undead to pass.
By the time the main horde had moved toward the explosion, most of the streets were noticeably less crowded. Even so, plenty of walkers remained behind.
The tunnels were the biggest problem.
Only a few hundred had emerged after the blast.
The vast majority were still down there.
It was almost as if they hadn't heard the noise at all.
Carol knew that wasn't the case.
By now, everyone understood that walkers were smarter in groups than they were alone.
They didn't blindly rush toward every sound.
They followed.
They investigated.
But they rarely committed everything at once.
Even when drawn toward a disturbance, they left a significant number behind.
It was a behavior that made them far more dangerous.
The explosion had worked, but not as well as Carol had hoped.
Thousands of walkers had moved across the city, yet thousands more remained.
Still, they had come this far.
There was no turning back now.
Max glanced toward the tunnel entrance.
Carol followed his gaze and tightened her grip on the detonator.
Without another word, the two of them moved forward.
"Carol, I've lit the fuse. We're heading to your position. Is everything okay over there?"
Maggie's voice crackled through the radio.
"Yes, we're good, Maggie," Carol replied.
"Okay, then everything is going according to plan. As soon as we reach the halfway point, the charges will detonate, drawing most of the walkers in the subway station toward the explosion. Then we'll blow your side of the tunnel and trap as many of them as possible. That should make it easier to grab the medicine."
Maggie paused briefly, her breathing heavy as she ran.
"We need to do this fast. Please, everyone, be careful."
"Understood," Carol replied, tightening her grip on the radio.
Max and Carol waited for nearly a minute and a half.
Then they heard it.
BOOM!
The explosion shook the underground chamber. For a moment, the entire tunnel system seemed to tremble.
Screaming erupted from below loud enough for Carol to hear clearly, not just Max.
The walkers drawn by the previous explosion now moved toward the new source of noise.
In the distance, they spotted Maggie and Daryl cutting through walkers as they advanced toward their position.
Without wasting another second, Carol lit the fuse.
It hissed as it burned, steadily eating its way forward.
Max and Carol immediately stepped back, knowing they needed to be at a safe distance from the blast.
Before the fuse burned out, Maggie and Daryl arrived.
"Okay, we need to do this quickly. As soon as the tunnel blows, we move. We only have about two minutes to retrieve the medicine from the medical shelter before the walkers gather here," Maggie said hurriedly.
She had come up with the plan herself, and she wanted it to go perfectly—without any deaths.
"Max, are you ready?"
Max nodded calmly. He was the fastest among them and also a doctor, giving him the best chance of finding the medicine and retrieving it quickly.
BOOM!
As soon as the explosion went off roughly two hundred feet away, collapsing the tunnel, Max sprinted toward the underground entrance with his sword in hand.
The other three stayed behind, dealing with any walkers that approached the subway.
Carol stared in disbelief as Max moved effortlessly through the undead, cutting down dozens within seconds. The way his sword moved, it looked more like dancing than fighting, slicing through walkers as though they were grass.
"Shit. That kid isn't just good with a gun... he's good with a sword too," Daryl said.
He had never seen anyone move so fast with such control while making it look effortless.
"He's doing his job. Let's do ours," Maggie said. "Focus on the walkers ahead."
All of them turned their attention to eliminating any undead approaching the entrance.
But more and more walkers kept coming from every direction.
Even from a distance, they could see hordes so densely packed that they looked like black blankets draped across the streets.
"It's almost been two minutes! Where is Max?" Maggie shouted as she drove her knife into another walker.
Carol glanced behind them.
"He must be coming up. We need to hold on until we see him."
Daryl continued firing his crossbow, but he was running out of arrows, and thousands more walkers were still coming.
They needed to move.
"I'll go look," Carol said, worry evident in her voice.
As she stepped forward, Maggie grabbed her arm.
"Stay here. You'll only make things worse."
Carol was about to argue when the ground beneath them suddenly began shaking so violently that they nearly lost their footing.
It felt like an earthquake.
A few dozen feet away, the ground erupted upward.
Massive chunks of concrete and stone were hurled into the air before crashing back down and crushing several walkers beneath the debris.
As the dust settled, the group finally saw what had emerged.
A massive centipede-like creature made from hundreds of fused walkers.
Its grotesque body stretched high into the air, twisting and writhing as it released a thunderous growl.
The sound sent a chill through the group.
Almost immediately, the nearby walkers began acting differently.
Instead of wandering mindlessly, they moved with purpose.
They started surrounding the group, packing themselves into dense formations.
Even the undead farther away began converging, merging into enormous clusters and forming a giant circle around them that tightened with every passing second.
Within moments, masses of walkers filled the area, sealing off every path and every possible escape route.
Even the nearest buildings were completely surrounded.
Everyone was so shocked that they could barely think straight.
Daryl was the first to recover.
"Everyone, we need to go. Now!" he shouted.
"W-what the fuck is that?" Maggie asked in disbelief, staring at the towering creature.
Most of its body was still buried in the tunnel, making it impossible to tell how long it truly was.
"We don't have time to figure it out. We need to leave before it becomes impossible," Daryl said.
Panic was written all over his face.
With only one arrow left, the situation was becoming desperate as the circle of walkers continued to close in.
"What about Max? He's still inside. We can't leave him," Carol said, pointing toward the tunnel.
"We don't have time for that, Carol," Daryl replied, fear and frustration creeping into his voice.
Maggie was just as unwilling to leave.
If they failed to get the medicine, her father, Glenn, and the others back at the prison would not survive.
They needed it more than anything.
Daryl gritted his teeth.
He understood.
If sacrificing his life could save the others, he would do it without hesitation.
But there was nothing they could do.
"Come on, we—"
Before he could finish, the massive creature suddenly began to move.
Hundreds of arms and legs shifted at once, driving its enormous body forward.
Countless hands grabbed the ground, walls, vehicles, and anything else within reach, dragging the grotesque mass ahead.
Its sheer weight caused the tunnel behind it to collapse even further.
The ground trembled violently.
"No!" Carol cried as she watched the tunnel entrance cave in.
Maggie stared in horror, her face filled with helplessness and fear.
With the tunnel collapsing, it felt as though the last of her hope had been buried beneath the rubble.
"Why are you still here? Run!"
Everyone turned toward the source of the voice.
It wasn't coming from underground.
It was coming from above.
Their eyes widened.
Standing atop the massive centipede-like creature was Max.
He held a bag full of medicine in one hand and a bloodied sword in the other.
Several grasping hands reached for him from the creature's twisted body, but each one was instantly severed.
With a powerful leap, Max launched himself from the monster and landed beside the group.
"Max!" Carol exclaimed.
"Are you okay?"
"We don't have time for that," Max said sharply. "Run before the circle gets any tighter. Stay behind me."
Without hesitation, everyone followed him toward the least crowded section of the encirclement.
Behind them, the massive creature gave chase, tearing through everything in its path.
Max led the way, cutting down hordes of undead with his sword.
Maggie, Carol, and Daryl followed close behind, helping clear the path whenever they could.
Their ammunition was nearly gone, yet more walkers continued pouring in from every direction.
Fortunately, Max was more than capable of keeping them at bay.
His sword flashed through the air again and again, carving a bloody path through the undead.
Walkers fell in droves around him, but thousands more closed in from all sides.
Carol exchanged a worried glance with the others.
They all knew the same thing.
If Max had been alone, he could have escaped easily with his speed and strength.
They were the ones slowing him down.
"Max, go!" Carol shouted. "Take the medicine and get out of here. We'll hold the walkers off as long as we can."
Maggie looked at him and quietly nodded.
"She's right. The medicine is what matters. If you stay because of us, nobody wins."
"Yeah, kid," Daryl said, gripping his last arrow. "We're just holding you back. We'll buy you as much time as we can. Just go."
As he spoke, Daryl glanced over his shoulder at the sea of undead closing in behind them.
His expression hardened.
He was already preparing himself to die if it meant giving the others a chance.
And this was his chance.