Daniel stood watching the door. The creature outside hit it again. The wood splintered, but the door still held, including the frame that he was worried about. If the whole door popped out, that was another level of disaster as opposed to them breaking in via a narrow gap. Whatever the things were, they were not human. No human could batter through solid timber that easily.

It was basic tactics, or at least how he imagined strategy books would go. If there was a narrow entrance, one man could hold the fort so to speak, however if there was no choke, then the man would quickly get in trouble. The whole opening was too large, but if there was a narrow space they were squeezing through, then he could attack them when their hands were pinned. Hurt enough of them, and then maybe he could convince the monsters that he was not worth the effort. Scare them off, that sort of thing. A section of the door popped out, creating the first hole.

Just a matter of time. The dislodged section was small and effectively demonstrated that a standard hotel door was not capable of stopping determined monsters. That was not something that he had never thought he would be thinking. The door was already disintegrating. He was running out of time. Daniel stood on his toes, wanting to do something. Through the gap, there was a brief glimpse of a weird, grey-coloured limb that he was sure ended in either a paw or a hand.

“Fair dinkum!” he yelled, surprised despite himself. It had only been a glimpse, and it was dark, but it was enough. The limb had been thicker than a human arm, but the business shirt was pretty distinctive.

Was he seeing things?

“ROARRA!”

Daniel glanced at Ivey. “What’s happening?” he yelled at her, unable to moderate his voice.

He was so shocked by what he had seen. It had been an arm; monster, human, zombie, genetic experiment, nothing else made sense. Thankfully, Ivey had not frozen and was searching through his suitcase.

“The end of the world,” she snapped. “Don’t let them in.”

More stupid, unnecessary advice. He wanted to scream, match the noise they were making, but he doubted it would help. Daniel watched the fingernails or claw pushing through the gap and grabbing the wood. The claws caught the edge of wood, and they ripped backwards, taking a few splinters off the door and widening his holes. The expanded opening and let in additional light.

Daniel’s mind froze up. It was definitely a monster with a business shirt, but it was not like an ape. Those hands, excluding the claws, were human. Despite the bugs, his fur, all he could think about was a genetic experiment, some sort of human being crossed with a gorilla and then dressed. Then his mind latched onto the lightning centipedes, the evidence of his club, Ivey being able to literally heal him, her initial terror directed at him, and his mindset shifted. Daniel remembered the dream that despite all of his efforts to tame the energy that it had run wild within him. That brief loss of control had made him grow fur on his back, and that outside force had been increasing when he had whited out. He must have succeeded in taming the power. That owner of that grey arm had not.

Zombies? Changed humans? Werewolf?

The term hardly mattered, but to Daniel, it felt like zombies fitted better!

The clothes, that almost-human hand, could barely be described as that. The arm which was clearly no longer human, but with the shirt it still wore. Whatever the creature was now, once upon a time, it had been some poor sod on the way to work. The grey arm came back, reaching through the opening.

He thrust with his club.

The tip caught and ripped, and the arm withdrew hurriedly.

The tip? The whole wood fantasy was real. Daniel looked in disbelief at the weapon. It was just what he had wished for: a fat club with a short spike at the end. A point that was red with zombie blood. Magic? Was this all real or had the world had gone crazy? Or maybe he was still tripping hard.

“Where is the goddamn knife?” Ivey yelled at him.

“At the bottom in a pouch.” he snapped. “It is a goddamn zombie apocalypse!” The arm punched through once more, clipping the edge and sending more wood flying.

It was trying to open the gap but while it was in the room. Daniel thrust out with his spear-club hybrid.

The spike in the end had gone straight through the paw and into the door.

The creature started hollering and tried to pull its arm back. This time, it failed. Daniel held on grimly. If it couldn’t get its limb back, then it couldn’t claw the door down.

Hold on.

He had this.

The spear slipped. He lacked the leverage, and the wood underneath the weapon gave way and, no longer pinned, the monster yanked its arm away. Instinctively, Daniel examined his weapon, expecting the weak point to have been snapped off, but it was unaffected. Whether it was his magic or the couch had been created from some form of dense wood, for whichever unlikely reason, the club remained undamaged despite the punishment he was putting it through.

A face appeared in the wood’s gap. It looked human in the way a gorilla without fur and with human eyes and teeth looked human.

“ROARRAG.”

Spittle flew at him. All Daniel could think about was he had to make that ugly thing to go away. He thrust with all his strength, changing the aim at the last moment to targeting an all-too-human eye in an alien face.

The small but nasty point of his makeshift club plunged in accurately. It was not something he had experienced before, a slight resistance and then the sudden release as the eyeball popped, then the weapon kept going compressed the soft tissue like it was not there before, cracking hard against the bone. It felt like the eye socket had shattered under the thrust.

To be honest, Daniel had not expected to land the blow so cleanly. Sure, he had spent hours on the farm thistling, which is what he called going through the paddocks and cutting down weeds with a hoe, so when he swung for something, he hit it, but that was always stationary targets. He had anticipated the zombie to have some residual human reflexes. A flinch, a raised hand. Anything would have been enough to protect it, but it did nothing. So the strike landed clean. It had been a powerful thrust, but miles away from being a fatal strike. If that tip had been a couple of inches longer, then it would have created a different result.

Years of watching zombie films told him that a cracked skull would not take it out. You had to do significant brain damage to take one down, and unfortunately, the spike on the weapon was not quite long enough to get all the way into the softer tissue and kill it with a single blow. As expected, the creature stumbled away, roaring. Maybe thinking about them being zombies was not appropriate after all. They still bled and suffered pain.

The door would not last. Several other zombies had joined, and they were throwing their bodies against the thin wood that was protecting them. It creaked alarmingly. The hallway in his room was slightly constricting. He could not do a full baseball swing but had to rely on slightly awkward overhead posture. It would have to do as it was them or the spear thrusts, and he had got a critical spot and had only done limited damage to the monsters, so stabs would not be good enough.

In front of him, through the broken door, a new arm appeared. This one was unlike the first one, which had been animalistic, and instead it was very close to a white arm with long fingernails, until you looked closer and spotted the half-translucent scales covering the limb.

The appearance made Daniel pause for a moment. What on Earth was that? Definitely human; the finger and hand anatomy were too unique for this to be any other animal.

The bugs that fallen from the ceiling.

His foot healing in front of his eyes.

That brief connection he had created with the club.

That the cheap wood from the couch that had broken when he jumped on it was now strong.

It was so unnatural.

And now this. Evidence of a zombie. What was the saying? When in Rome . . .

When in zombie plague, you channel your inner animal.

The weird arm was reaching in to grab the handle.

“Hell no!”

Daniel swung as seriously as the cramped conditions allowed him and brought it down hard down on that reaching wrist. There was a sound of cracking and a yelp from the other side of the door.

“Hell yeah!” he yelled back at the monsters. “Time to be pulverised.”

Then something altogether too heavy slammed into the entire door. The whole thing shook, and a corner of the frame splintered. There was a brief glimpse of a dark-skinned humanoid that appeared to be wearing grey pyjamas.

Zombies, he thought. If they quack like a duck, then they taste damn fine roasted. Daniel backtracked hurriedly on that thought. There was no way he was going to eat roast zombie, so he really should not have varied from the traditional saying.

“They are zombies,” he yelled out. “Use your holy magic on them.”

One of the monster’s faces appeared in the gap, and it made Daniel’s skin crawl. It apparently wanted to see what type of tasty morsel was waiting for it and then to use its two arms to rip the existing hole open wider. The face that looked back may once have been female, at least that was what he guessed from the long hair of which over half had fallen out. The skin itself was puckered up like an elephant, and the eyes, the entire orb, was dark brown with no whites showing.

It hissed at him.

Stupid.

Just like the last time, he used his weapon as a spear and poked. It did not attempt to evade the strike, though this one might have actually blinked. It made no difference. The club slammed home, and Daniel started bitterly regretting not trying to make that point end longer. If he had, he might have already killed two of them.

The second zombie stumbled away, screaming. That was two eyes lost, but he doubted that would slow them for long. They were not dead.

There was no time for regrets. Red blood covered his club. From chemistry class, he thought that meant oxygenated, but in a land of apparent magic and zombies, it might have meant anything or nothing.

Thump!

It was another zombie throwing itself at the door. More of the frame broke. How many hits like that could it actually survive? One, maybe two. Unless something changed quickly, they were going to get through and do it en masse.

“Bless them,” he yelled once more towards Ivey. “Light magic always does extra damage to zombies in games. It is our only chance.”

The door had rocked once more while he was talking.

There was no verbal response and nor did any magic flash past him to destroy the zombie, still trying to get through. What was the girl waiting for?

Concerned, Daniel glanced back to find that Ivey, in her small black dress, had moved to stand behind him, clutching his utility knife with the blade open. Her hands shook slightly, but she stood ready. At least there was that.

“ROARRG!”

A puff splintered out of the door as groaned dramatically. Daniel’s hands had reached forward and touched the wood, and a green glow spread out. The structural damage was immense, and mentally he pushed the cracks to close. His intervention had done something, not enough, because at best it had bought them tens of seconds. With his hand still on the wood, he could sense its integrity. Another three hits and it was coming down.

Think. If he was getting out of this, it would rely on brains more than brawn.

God help me, he prayed. Then stopped himself mid-thought. He had never been religious, and now was not the time to rely on someone else.

Plus, zombies were trying to bash in his door. If there was any evidence that God did not exist, this was it. Amusingly, he wondered how the evangelist who saw God in everything would rationalise this. The zombie plague would probably be evidence of Armageddon and the coming rapture. Screw that. His attitude had always been if God brought suffering into the world, then he was not worthy of worship. And frankly, a God that brought zombies into the world was definitely in his “I want nothing to do with that guy” category.

His club came down hard on a paw that had curled through a hole and was preparing to rip a chunk backward. There was a satisfying thump, and it withdrew quickly.

“Can you do anything?” he asked.

Once the door went down, they would be in trouble. He could just imagine those claws shredding skin and the power they had demonstrated going through the door overpowering any resistance Daniel and Ivey could muster. There were at least five out there, and while hitting them with his club was definitely satisfying, he did not think it would work to stop them if they had an opening to rush them.

Not without magic, anyway. Magic could usually save the day. Fire or holy magic, something to burn them away to nothing.

“Your magic?”

“Useless,” she told curtly.

“What can you do?”

“Heal you and stab.” Faced with the clear eventuality of what was about to happen, the trembling in her hands had stopped.

The pink, scaled arm came in again, this time it was the left arm. The zombie had the same idea. This one might be smarter than the others, but it was still stupid. He whacked it just before it reached the door handle. More broken bones.

Boom!

The door bowed inwards again. Without the magic he had worked, Daniel knew it would have shattered under that impact. That was providing it had lasted this long. One more blow like that at the most.

Think!

More splinters.

If they all rushed him, that was it. He needed to have them come one at a time and preferably through a small gap. Three times he had felt a connection to wood. Twice with the club, a wooden weapon that was miraculously still functional, and when he had partially mended the door.

There were zombies.

Ivey was a healer.

He could not reject the fact he might have magic.

Was it really that big a stretch to think that he could manipulate wood? Especially when his club was evidence of that ability.

His mind was piecing together the bits of information. If the zombies all swarmed him, then they were dead. At worst, if this failed, he would look stupid for a moment before being torn to shreds. That was the same outcome as doing nothing.

Remembering and clinging to those other times, he had felt the wood sense. Daniel stepped forward and his hand reached out to touch the door. In his mind, he held a memory of those previous connections.

His hand touched the wood, and his consciousness, for lack of a better description, entered the cells. Instantly, he could feel the whole internal structure of the door, the fault lines and, more precisely, the weaknesses and spots where the integrity of had been impacted by the solid zombie blows. His previous fix had delayed things, but there were only so many beatings that it could take before there was a catastrophic failure. Potentially, that would be the next time the big zombie slammed into it.

If the door fell apart, he was dead. He imagined one of those claws tearing himself or Ivey apart. If they could do that much damage to heavy wood…

He needed to preserve the door while splitting their force into pieces.

Reinforce.

That was the only thing that mattered. He borrowed from the top and bottom in order to strengthen the central. Expanded that healing wood so that it joined to the frame. If they changed tactics and hit the bottom section, the whole lower third would crumble.

That thought gave him an idea.

Apart from the pink-armed zombie, they were stupid. Not one, but two had let themselves be poked in the eye.

What would happen if he presented a crawl hole?

Would they go down on their hands and knees and enter headfirst and give him a chance to kill them?

It felt like a stupid leap of faith.

Boom!

Even his new reinforced section buckled, and there were puffs of wood dust from both of the bottom and top of the door.

A Hail Mary.

Daniel started the change, reinforcing some sections, while weakening others. He wanted the smallest gap that would entice them to come through.

The next blow was moments away, but he felt like he had time to impart a flourish to the opening he was making. Teeth grew at the bottom of the door. They were modelled on a rose bush’s thorns. They curved outwards; hopefully, when the zombies tried to come in, some of them would get caught and cut up on the thorns.

An alternative way to hurt them had to help.

With nothing else to do, Daniel stepped backwards.

Boom!

The moment of truth.

The door rocked, but the central area held, and the right side of the bottom half of the door fell away. Through the wood dust, he could see the spikes he had imagined had been left, ready to hook anything silly enough to push through the gap.

“Crikey,” Daniel muttered, unable to help himself. He had hoped what he was doing would work and even logically determined that it would, but a large part of him had been thinking no way. That everything else was him being delusional.

Until this moment, there had been no genuine evidence. It was improbable the fragment of couch he held was such an effective club, but not impossible. It was unlikely the door could have held up as well as it did, given the noise each of those blows generated, but once more, not impossible. However, that crawl space lined with nasty thorns was not a possibility. They did not appear by chance. That was his doing! His magic.

He had magic! Despite the horrible situation and the imminent threat of death, he felt like screaming in excitement. You beauty, he thought. Magic! Real magic, and he could do.

Feverish dreams of reality television producers could not have done this. What he was looking at was his construction. His touch and his desires. His power!

He had genuine magic to command.

He felt elated.

If he survived this, then he was a mage. It was not fire balls or lightning, but it was real, tangible and not of his world.

Daniel’s lips turned up.

Magic!

Daniel did not have a clue where his modest skill stood in the hierarchy of abilities. It might end up being the most common ability out there. Possibly it might end up that all the other cool magic users and healers considered it to be complete trash. They could laugh at the growers all they wanted, but at that very moment, Daniel did not care.

It was magic.

It was like he had filled a void in his life that he had not even known existed.

Real goddamn magic.

“Yes!” The word slipped out.

Boom!

Daniel jumped. Dust billowed out from the door. A gap appeared in the top right corner as small piece of wood fell out.

“Come get me,” he yelled.

A head appeared in the bottom opening, looked at him then ducked away.

What? Were they smart?