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🕑 Added 2025-07-07 04:10:49 +0000 UTCA New Beginning From the End of the World
Chapter 215 - In the Darkness (3)
Boom!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
A series of pounding blows echoed, even louder than before, and the subway tunnel trembled violently once again. The rocky mass that had broken off from the ceiling and walls was collapsing in a wide area ahead, falling at a speed visible to the naked eye.
“Run!”
With morphine coursing through his body, Jason lowered the weapon in his hand, firmly grabbed Alicia’s hand, and made sure they were running together.
The walkers nearby were crushed by the falling stones from the ceiling, many of them roaring in confusion, unable to grasp what was happening.
“Jason, what are you doing?!”
Without the light from the flashlights on the path, Alicia was moving forward almost completely blind. Her heart pounded as she whispered to Jason, “There are walkers ahead. If we keep going, we’ll die. We need another way.”
“The upper part of the tunnel is full of cracks. We can’t stay here any longer. And behind us are smart walkers. If we keep moving forward, I think we’re not too far from the exit. We have to take the risk!” Jason quickly explained what he had discovered and what his plan was as they moved.
Alicia glanced up at the tunnel ceiling but still couldn’t believe there were cracks. She thought that if the tunnel really collapsed, it wouldn’t just be concrete falling on them—it would also bring down water from the main pipes that led to a nearby lake.
Just imagining that scene made her feel certain they wouldn’t make it. She thought about her family and said nothing more; she simply followed Jason’s lead in silence.
They kept going, getting closer and closer to the walkers along the dark tunnel. They could already hear the groans and chaos ahead.
When they were close enough, Jason pulled a grenade from his belt, removed the pin, aimed in a specific direction that would work in their favor, and hurled it forcefully.
The grenade spun through the air, crossed the tunnel, and landed in the middle of the second-to-last train car, striking a walker on the head.
Arghhh!
The walker, hit by the unknown object, roared and charged toward the source of the sound. In no time, numerous walkers clustered in that area—and then, suddenly, a tremendous impact shook the tunnel again.
Boom!
With a loud bang, the grenade exploded, blasting nearby walkers into pieces in a blood-soaked spray.
Some were even thrown through the air.
Shrapnel scattered, embedding itself deep in the heads and bodies of the surrounding walkers.
Ironically, a weapon once used in battlefields against humans now failed to produce monstrous lethality against so many walkers.
Beyond the initial impact, the most effective part of the grenade was the shrapnel, which could cause various levels of damage to human bodies—but it was far less effective against walkers piled on top of one another. Jason’s reason for doing it was simple.
Boom!
The blast echoed through the tunnel, immediately drawing the attention of the nearby walkers, who rushed to the site of the explosion.
The walkers at the far end of the tunnel charged forward in unison.
Of course, the ones behind Jason and Alicia were no exception and began advancing quickly in that direction.
“We have to keep moving—don’t let go of my hand!” Seeing no threats ahead, Jason sprinted, but several corpses lying on the ground blocked his path.
Fortunately, he reacted quickly. Stepping over the bodies and reaching the back of a stationary train car took only seconds.
Immediately, Jason crouched down and let Alicia step on his back to climb onto the car. Then he handed up the backpack with their weapons and supplies.
Roarrr!
Not long after they climbed up, the walkers following them closed in, crossing into the train and merging with the swarm.
Jason and Alicia lay flat on the train roof, not daring to make a sound or even breathe heavily. From both sides, they could hear growls at intervals.
The train was roughly two to three meters high, as far as they could tell. Now lying on top of the car, Jason used his night-vision goggles to clearly see some of the walkers’ heads below. The number was terrifying.
That explained the silent presence of the train in that part of the tunnel: the passengers had long since become walkers.
All this time, the walkers had remained in the darkness, which explained their eerie ability to move in it. However, after the noise caused by Alicia and Jason climbing up, the walkers slowly calmed down and returned to their erratic wandering.
When the walkers beneath the train finally stopped moving, Jason looked around. Noticing they had lost interest, he let out a breath of relief and tapped the sole of Alicia’s shoe a few times.
Receiving the signal, Alicia slowly raised her hands and crawled toward the front of the car, moving with extreme caution, trying not to make a sound.
Though the darkness was terrifying, the walkers had no vision. As long as they stayed quiet, they wouldn’t be detected. Still, the time spent in the darkness had taught these walkers to navigate by sound or any vibrations that broke the silence.
Jason followed close behind. The night-vision goggles were a great help for navigating, but something inside him told him to be ready for anything.
Luckily, the top of the train car was fairly smooth. As long as they crawled carefully, they could avoid making noise.
But as Alicia moved from the first car to the second, she suddenly spotted a black figure ahead, although she couldn’t make out what it was in the darkness.
The sudden appearance of the shadow startled her, but she didn’t stop. She crept closer, little by little.
When she was close enough, Alicia finally saw that it was a corpse—just the upper half of a torso.
The body lay on the roof of the train, both hands gripping a groove, as if trying not to fall. The lower half showed clear signs of having been torn apart.
At the sight, Alicia didn’t need to imagine much to understand what had happened to this person before they died.
They had probably tried to do the same as her and Jason—climb onto the roof. But unlike the relative calm she had now, that person must have drawn the attention of every walker around.
The thought made Alicia’s scalp tingle. She shook her head, forcing herself to stop thinking, and moved aside to continue.
Jason followed closely behind, and unlike Alicia, he got a clear look at the incomplete corpse.
Noticing there was someone else on the train, where they thought they were alone, his expression turned tense.
Then he remembered the other group that had been on this train—the ones who had left behind the backpack they found earlier. It was likely this man had belonged to that group.
They had also encountered the tunnel walkers but failed to recognize the danger in time and entered all at once. By the time they realized what was happening, it was already too late.
As for the corpse in front of him, it was probably someone who had climbed up in desperation. Even though he briefly found safety, he couldn’t escape his fate.
