Telltale's Walking Dead: Last Man Standing

Episode 1: Shattered Dreams - Chapter 1

This book adapts through the way you interpret its contents. The story is tailored by how you read it, and the outcome you get depends on the views you form and the choices you make.

Chapter 1

Cain stands before the doorway as the dead crawl towards him, his heart racing at a million miles an hour. The things bite and snarl at him, shuffling across the tile floor as they try to squeeze into the narrow opening between the doorway and the overturned shelf that blocks it. One of the walkers is able to make it through and lurches forward, arms outstretched, before Cain brings his machete down onto its head. There's an audible squishing sound as the blade cuts through bone and brain tissue with a splash of blood, and then the corpses falls down to the ground again.

It wasn't supposed to go down like this, Cain thinks as he eyes the crowd of bodies pushing up against the doorway. They had everything planned, everything perfectly accounted for, and then his stupid fucking brother had to ruin it. They had come all the way out here for him, to rescue him from the monsters that had taken him. Those monsters were ones that lived and breathed, but they were almost more savage than the dead ones that Cain is guarding against now. But Aaron, his brother, wasn't content with just leaving this place. He had to be the hero, had to go deeper into the fortress to kill the man who took him. Cain and his ally, an older man named Ken who had tagged along to rescue his daughter, had tried to reason with Aaron, but he had heard none of it. It was made worse when Ken's girl agreed with Aaron, and the two ran off deeper into the raiders' base leaving their would-be rescuers with no choice but to follow

Now, Cain thinks to himself, look where it's gotten them. Aaron and the girl are in one of the converted offices behind him, beating the shit out of a redheaded man while Cain and Ken hold the dead at bay. Even as his mind wanders to the events that led them there, another walker slips through the makeshift barricade and reaches a rotting hand towards him, its teeth bared, but Cain thrusts his blade into the corpse's empty eye socket before it gets the chance to sink those teeth into him. He wonders how long Aaron and the girl will take with their prisoner, because he can tell that the way things look now, they won't last ten minutes in this fucking mall.

Suddenly, two disasters happen at once. Spurred on by something outside of Cain's view, the crowd of walkers surge forward with a renewed ferocity and the shelf blocking the doorway starts to crack under the pressure. Simultaneously, from the room his brother is in, Cain hears the sound of glass shattering and the girl crying out in surprise. Feeling the adrenaline coursing through him, Cain steals a glance back towards the room, only to have his heart drop like an anvil. The glass wall at the room's far end has shattered in on itself, and somehow, a group of six walkers has made their way onto the balcony and into the office. The man that Aaron and the girl were interrogating is wrenched from their grasp as Cain watches in horror, and the corpses sink their teeth into his neck and arms and pull his limbs apart to the sounds of the dying man's screams. Ken yells out a warning for his daughter and Aaron as he pulls out a pistol from his belt, but the warning is too late and is drowned out by their prisoner's final scream

Before he has a chance to see anything else, Cain whips his head around as the shelf breaks in half with an audible crack. The swarm of walkers outside the doorway spill in, tripping and falling over themselves in their frenzied rush to get to the fresh meat inside. Cain tries to keep his breathing steady as he swings his machete down time and again, but he's no fool. He knows that there's too many of them to fight by himself, and with walkers coming in from the broken window in the other room as well, the four of them don't stand a chance.