I am in that school in Crawford and there is this quick time event to barricade this door with the hatchet to stop the zombies from breaking through and no matter how fast I pound the Q key, I can never get to the E prompt and I eventually get killed.

Is this just straight up broken? because I haven't really had any trouble with QTE's in this game so far and I have reloaded the game a couple of times and no luck.

Maybe its giving you the wrong button prompt? Does it look like its not even reacting to your presses? Try mashing one of the other buttons they sometime ask you to mash. I don't remember running into this problem when I played.

It seems to be reacting the <> signs are moving inward but keep getting pushed back and never get to the point were the E prompt pops for me.

I don't know then man....press harder? That sucks I always thought button mashing was not a good thing to put in games, simply because some people (me) suck at it and find it uncomfortable Worse yet, plenty of people out their simply might not be able to push the button fast enough, and to restrict the player's experience like that, especially in a game like Walking Dead, is pretty shitty.