Chapter 33: Cellblock C
The steel door to Cellblock C groaned open like the mouth of some hungry beast, releasing a wave of stale air that carried the unmistakable scent of death and confinement. Jake's death sense immediately exploded with proximity warnings—thirty walkers within his thirty-five-foot range, their hollow minds scattered throughout the maze of cells and corridors that stretched into darkness.
"Jesus," Glenn whispered, his flashlight beam cutting through the gloom to reveal glimpses of shambling figures in the distance. "How many?"
"Thirty that I can sense," Jake replied, his consciousness reeling from the sheer concentration of unlife pressed into such a confined space. "But they're spread out. In cells, corridors, probably the common areas."
Rick checked his ammunition with practiced efficiency. "We go slow. Room by room, clear as we advance. Jake, you guide us around the worst concentrations."
But as they moved deeper into the cellblock, Jake realized his usual advantages were severely compromised. The tight quarters made his death sense almost overwhelming—too many signals pressed too close together, creating a psychic cacophony that made precise tracking nearly impossible. Worse, the metal walls and concrete construction seemed to create interference, distorting his perception in ways he'd never experienced.
Then Glenn's flashlight died.
The darkness that enveloped them was absolute, impenetrable, the kind of black that pressed against your eyeballs and made you question the existence of sight itself. Somewhere in that darkness, thirty walkers shuffled through their eternal hunger, drawn by the sounds and scents of living flesh.
"Stay close," Jake said, his voice steady despite the panic clawing at his chest. "I can feel where they are."
"This is insane. We're navigating a maze full of the hungry dead using nothing but my supernatural radar. One mistake, one moment of lost concentration, and we're all torn apart in the darkness."
But Jake had no choice except to trust his abilities completely. He closed his eyes—a meaningless gesture in the absolute dark—and let his death sense paint the cellblock in stark detail. Walker positions became pinpricks of cold awareness in his mind, moving slowly through spaces he could map by their absence.
"Three cells ahead, on the left," Jake whispered, guiding Rick's hand to point the sheriff's weapon in the right direction. "Two more around the corner. Stay behind me."
They moved through the darkness like blind men in a minefield, each step carefully placed, each breath held until Jake's supernatural guidance proved accurate. Rick's Colt Python barked three times, muzzle flashes illuminating frozen moments of horror—walkers dropping with holes blown through their skulls, the corridor painted in blood and brain matter.
"This is insane," Rick muttered after they'd cleared the first section.
"Welcome to my world," Jake replied, surprising himself with a flash of dark humor. Here he was, navigating a zombie-infested prison using powers that shouldn't exist, and somehow he'd found the absurdity to make jokes about it.
The realization hit him that this had become normal. Impossible situations requiring supernatural solutions were just another Tuesday in his life now. He was adapting to impossibility, becoming someone who could laugh in the face of nightmare scenarios that would have paralyzed his old self.
"Medical student vs. reality. Reality is winning by a knockout."
They reached the main door to the cell commons just as Jake's death sense detected movement beyond—a concentration of walkers that had been drawn by their gunfire and were now pressing against the barrier between them and the living.
"Fifteen, maybe twenty," Jake reported. "All clustered right behind that door."
"We could try to thin them out through the window," Daryl suggested, peering through the reinforced glass at the shapes moving in the common area.
"Or," Jake said slowly, an idea forming in his mind, "I could try something different."
He knelt on the concrete floor, pressing his hands against the cold surface while his death sense searched for what he needed. The prison had been a violent place even before the outbreak—guards had died here, inmates had been killed, and their bodies had been left to rot in forgotten corners.
Jake found what he was looking for: six walker corpses scattered throughout the cellblock, victims of violence that had occurred in the early days of the outbreak. They were dried out, partially decomposed, but their nervous systems were intact enough for his purposes.
"Six is my maximum. I've never tried to control this many for extended combat, but if I don't try, we're all dead anyway."
The door opened and walkers poured through like water through a burst dam—fifteen shambling nightmares that had once been guards and inmates, now united in their hunger for living flesh. But before they could overwhelm the group's position, Jake's power reached out and grasped the six corpses he'd located.
The dead rose to fight the dead.
It was a scene from hell painted in shadow and muzzle flash—Jake's commanded walkers lurching into battle against their mindless brethren, dead hands tearing at dead flesh with mechanical efficiency. The necromantic battle created opportunities for Rick, Daryl, and Glenn to pick off the remainder with careful shots and brutal efficiency.
Jake maintained his control for forty-five minutes, longer than he'd ever managed before. His nose bled steadily, painting his lips crimson, but the flow was manageable now. His body had adapted to demands that should have killed him, rewiring itself to handle the impossible.
When the last walker fell and Jake released his grip on the commanded corpses, the silence that followed was profound. They'd done it—cleared Cellblock C through a combination of supernatural intervention and tactical precision.
"Clear," Daryl announced, his crossbow still ready as he checked corners for hidden threats.
Jake slumped against the wall, exhausted but functional. The recovery time that had once measured in days was now down to hours. He was becoming something more than human, something designed for exactly this kind of work.
The cells of Cellblock C stretched out before them like a promise of safety, individual spaces that could be secured, defended, made into something resembling home. The group moved through the corridor slowly, each person claiming a cell with the careful deliberation of people who understood that choices made here would define their lives for months to come.
Jake and Maggie took adjacent cells, maintaining the propriety that Hershel expected while acknowledging the reality of their relationship. The cells were small but clean, with functioning plumbing and electrical systems that spoke of infrastructure still largely intact.
"We're home, baby," Carol whispered as she tucked Sophia into a bottom bunk, her voice thick with emotion. "Really home this time."
It was the first time anyone had used that word since the farm burned. Home. Not shelter, not refuge, not temporary safety—home. A place where they could build lives instead of just surviving day to day.
Jake stood in his cell doorway, looking down at his hands in the dim light. The bleeding had stopped completely, the tremors that had once followed every use of his powers reduced to faint aftershocks. His body was adapting, evolving, becoming something suited to the demands he placed on it.
"What am I becoming?"
The question whispered through his mind like a prayer or a curse. Jake Martinez, third-year medical student, was disappearing by degrees. In his place was emerging something else—a necromancer, a healer, a provider of impossible resources. Someone who could command the dead and bend reality to his will.
But was that person still human? Still worth saving? Still deserving of the love and trust these people had placed in him?
Maggie appeared beside him, her hand finding his with the natural ease of practiced intimacy. "You okay?"
Jake looked at her face in the cell's dim lighting—beautiful, concerned, radiating the kind of warmth that made impossible things seem merely difficult. She was his anchor to humanity, the reminder that some things were worth preserving no matter what he had to become.
"Yeah," he said, pulling her close. "I'm okay."
And for the first time in months, that might actually have been true. They had walls around them, family close by, and the promise of building something lasting in this place of concrete and steel.
Jake Martinez was becoming something other than human. But maybe, with people like Maggie to anchor him, he could become something better than human instead.
The prison settled around them like protective arms, shutting out the hostile world and offering the possibility of peace. Tomorrow would bring new challenges, but tonight they were home.
And that was enough.
Author's Note / Promotion:
Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them (20+ chapters ahead!). No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1