With some spears piled up within reach, Daniel took just a moment to admire his new club. It was wicked good and was probably closer to a mace. While created from wood, he had forged the head to be as heavy as physically feasible, piling cells on top of each other and using every trick he could to make it as dense as possible. He was sure it was nothing compared to a metal weapon, but it had a good heft. It would hit like . . . well, a mace and anything it smacked would feel it. With his magic supporting it, Daniel was confident that he could keep it functioning no matter how many things he hit.

Better still, he had left some of his plant magic embedded in it. He had already inlaid patterns into the weapons to help them transform into new shapes. With a pinch of his magic, one of the sharp points that adorned the head of the weapon could be expanded like a spike. It would destroy the integrity of the club briefly, but as an emergency measure to kill a zombie, it was good to have it in his back pocket.

Now for the serious work. First, he spent ten minutes reinforcing the door and then, ever so cautiously, he opened a hole in the middle of it. The gap he created was initially little more than a pinhole. After getting a claw in his exposed foot, he did not want to risk the same outcome with his eye, so he picked up the mirror shard that they had designed to check the room safely. There was nothing obviously visible, so he expanded the hole. Then, manipulating the mirror with wooden branches, he looked around the neighbouring area. Slowly, he expanded the window, and he then could angle the mirror more widely. There were lots of areas he could not see primarily behind the beds and into the bathroom, but what he could was empty.

No monsters to be seen. He no longer thought that there was a zombie behind the door. The more he had thought about what he had sensed through the wood the more he was convinced that whatever had moved had been small. Like cockroach sized.

“Last test.”

“What?” Ivey asked.

Daniel ignored her and picked up the water glass and baseball threw it into the room via the hole he had created. The aim was for it to smash to pieces and startle any zombies.

The glass hammered into the wall in a puff of dust. There was no tinkling. It just bounced and landed on the soft carpet with a dull thud.

Tough glass. Nothing responded.

Sucking in a deep breath and after a touch of his magic, he pushed the door open and entered with the club, ready to hit anything that moved.

Empty. He took the time to check the bathroom and then behind and under the beds.

“Clear,” he called out.

Ivey came in and looked around in annoyance. Her eyes lingered on the mess in the room. The beds were used, towels dumped on the floor. The occupants had clearly checked out in the morning, and housekeeping had not had time to clean it.

Tutting in disappointment, Ivey went over to the fridge and let out another disappointed sigh. “What sort of person clears out the minibar?”

That set alarm bells going in his head, and he was instantly over to have a look. The fizzy drinks were still, there but the chocolate bars, chips—excluding salt and vinegar—and all the nuts were gone. A glance at the bin showed it was overflowing, which probably explained the thing he had felt moving. “They’ve been here for a few days.” He waved at the trash can as an explanation. “Probably just got peckish and ate a small amount each day.”

“Yes, but this was supposed to be dinner.” She looked around and then pointed. “There! Another connecting room. These suite rooms must have been able to be extended to three.”

Daniel nodded and went through the same procedure as before without converting the extra wood to weapons. They had enough of them for the two of them. The door could be kept in reserve for when they pushed into the hallways. It was a big hotel, so once they had cleared the hallway, they would have an unlimited supply. Carefully, Daniel got his weapons together and created a pinhole, ready to repeat his careful assessment of the neighbouring space.

Same as the first room. A small gap to let him use the mirror.

He jumped. The mirror was blasted out of his grip.

“Far out.”

A long claw poked briefly through the hole. Before disappearing. If he hadn’t been careful with the mirror, that might have been his eye.

“RARRAG.”

Across the room, Ivey squealed, but Daniel did not have that luxury. His hand was already on the door, working out what to do. First, he closed the hole and then focused on strengthening the barrier. Almost as an afterthought, he pushed the wood harder into the carpet and its sides, sealing it properly.

Then he waited. Now that he was safe, at least temporarily, he would wait to see what the monster did. Depending on its actions, he would adjust his own. If it started battering itself against the door, then he would resort to spikes and, if it was something else, he would adapt.

Nothing happened.

Without depleting his reserves, he continued strengthening the door. Privately, he was impressed with how high quality these doors were. Thick, dense wood, and it made the whole thing significantly easier. If they had been installed with the light stuff that all his internal doors at home were, then what he was doing would probably have been impossible. That plywood crap would have disintegrated under the first strike.

Over a minute had passed, and apart from the poke and roar, the zombie had done nothing.

Alarm bells were ringing. Finally, he pulled back with a finger on his lips as he drew Ivey to his original room, and he shut the secondary door.

“I don’t like it,” he confessed, leaning close to her so they could whisper and not have their voice carry into the other room. Technically, they were dumb animals, but he did not want to risk one of them having kept their language skills.

“You will just need to kill it.”

“Something stinks.”

Extravagantly, she looked toward the bug corpses, a small smile on her lips.

“It is a saying.” Ivey grinned wider. “The behaviour makes little sense. It saw the hole, investigated it, and then nothing.” Daniel nodded at the remains of the zombie in the front door. They probably should have taken it down by now, but neither of them wanted to touch it, and it was easy in theory to just get another room rather than trying to clean out this one.

“That is not what they did,” Ivey said.

“What are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know. It is either smarter or dumber than the others.” Ivey patted him on the arm. “However, we still need to kill it.”

Her logic was impeccable. Daniel couldn’t help but wonder what it was thinking. What happened if some of them were human inside and their minds were intact? That claw had not been friendly. If he had converted into a monster physically and still had his faculties intact, then he would have tried not to be threatening.

The zombie in the other room had not done that. That claw had been lightning fast. If it had human intelligence, it was trying to poke the eye out of whoever was looking in the room.

Its lack of action since genuinely worried him. It was possible it was dumb and had lost interest when he closed the pinhole. If that supposition was right, then it would be easy to kill. Nope. While the reasoning might be sound and might end up correct, that was not the right way to approach the issue. He needed to assume the worst. Daniel knew his working assumptions had to be that there were multiple monsters in that room and they were both geniuses.

“How are you going to do it?” Ivey asked.

“Same plan as that.” He gestured toward the impaled zombie. “But with more time, we can do it better.”

Daniel leapt into action. In minutes, the spare door was converted into a tunnel the length of a bed that a human adult could crawl through. It would look innocent till they started crawling, but then he could drop a wooden portcullis down to seal the end and then push lots of different spikes through to make things unpleasant for any trapped zombie.

It was a simple trap.

Once you entered and got sprung, there was no getting out of it. A small part of his mind pointed out that was only if it was strong enough.

Boom! The door had shaken so much. Any wooden structure would struggle against that power. Nothing to be done but strengthen the container that he was creating.

What should he do? That monster that had almost beaten in their door existed, but if he planned for that, then the size of his trap would shrink. Thickening up the walls would require something else to give. Then what happened if there were two smaller ones instead of one big one? His trap would be wrong. Ivey had stated that the zombies were all different. If he tailored everything for the giant one, then would he be susceptible if there were multiple enemies. There was not enough wood or time to cover both bases.

He was overthinking things. If the zombie was powerful, it would not be hanging around in the room, and that claw would have been a first.

Guesses.

He was not even sure that he could do anything against the big zombie. Play the percentages. There had been a large group attacking the other door and only one massive monster.

Stepping back, Daniel looked at the tunnel-cage that he had created. It was an elegant and clever solution, if he could say so himself.

“What do you think?”

“Keep your weapons ready,” Ivey suggested. “It looks pretty flimsy.”

She was wrong. This would most likely even stop the enormous monster, but he understood where she was coming from. Building complex wooden structures was different now with magic than before the event; without magic, what he was looking at would be trash. The very act of cutting those shapes out would have weakened the wood, not to mention the weak points that the extensive gluing would have created, but the masterpiece he had shaped was a single piece of wood. It had none of the weaknesses that other people would be expecting.

With a shake of his head, Daniel kept working to manhandle the unwieldy contraption into place. If the creature was strong enough to get out of what he had built, it would already have blasted through the door to reach him, even with him reinforcing it. If it was that strong, and hidden its strength? He stopped his thoughts. There was no point worrying about unsolvable hypotheticals. If it was that powerful, and that smart, then they had always been doomed to die, and it was better to plan for what they could kill.

“Maybe you should—” He nodded towards the other room.

Ivey ignored him, gripping one of the lighter spears. “I will help, plus you might need healing.”

Daniel turned back to face the zombie. Using his club to extend his reach with his magic, he degraded the lower part of the door. After a few minutes, the bottom third crumbled. If there happened to be usable daggers in the falling mess that were surprisingly dense, then sue him.

It was time. He moved into position on the other side of his tunnel, waiting and ready for what was going to come through. The dust cloud took a moment to clear, and then he could see into the other room. There was no sign of any movement.

Smart or dumb? The question ticked in his head.

No movement.

“Woo-hoo.”

Silence.

Another minute. Daniel had not imagined that claw. Something was in there, and he did not know why it was not responding—he was getting a bad feeling.

Maybe they should have reinforced their current room more. If it was that smart, it might have friends and be planning on flanking them. If this zombie was linked to the sizeable group outside, it would only take a couple of blows for the giant zombie to bring down the corridor door.

Then he looked toward the windows. Thankfully, the blinds were open so they would see a threat coming in that direction. It seemed unlikely they would go around on the outside of the building; it felt like unless you had wings, that sort of manoeuvre did not have a positive risk-to-reward payout. They would not be flanked via the windows. It was a silly thought because if the zombies could do that, then they would already have attacked the first room. Plus, those windows were designed to be unbreakable. Unless the event had . . . nope, stupid and unproductive thoughts. Where was the monster?

Paranoid.

There was still no movement in the other room.

“Anyone there?”

Nothing.

Another glance at the windows, then up at the roof after all the bugs had come there. If it just dropped, then all these traps were useless.

“They are not smart,” Ivey told him. That made him feel a lot better. Still, the ones he had fought earlier would have been launching attacks by now. “Well, sometimes they are,” Ivey muttered abruptly.

What? Had she been reading up on stuff? He risked a glance at her. Yep, her eyes were unfocused.

The question was, did they abandon this attempt or keep trying to lure it? Maybe he needed to throw something into the next room.

Daniel peered through the little trap that he had created and wondered what he wanted to do.

Maybe they should abandon it, but this plan was a good one. The zombies might be faster and stronger than him, but if he could stack the battlefield with these sorts of clever traps, then they could be culled.

The head appeared suddenly, dropping from above the gap he had made. He half jumped in surprise, even though he had been expecting it to appear. That upside-down head stared at him, and he could imagine it hanging on the wall, upside down like a spider, to look through that hole. The face was ugly, but unlike the others, he could see the humanity in it.

He gulped.

It had been a living, breathing female just a few hours earlier. A human that had lost her hair and ears, but apart from that, there was nothing monstrous about the face. With a hat to hide the baldness, she could walk down the street and no one would have blinked.

Then it smiled, and he recoiled despite his promise to himself to avoid showing fear. There was not one row of teeth but two, and they were all sharp and created for rending. The former woman licked its lips, its tongue still red like a human. Was it longer?

Daniel’s mouth was dry. Internally, his mind was screaming at him to run. A nice solid metal door and a safe room would be great right now. He held his position.

The sick mockery of humanity scared him. As casually as you would like, it rotated its position, coming down from hanging upside to be on its feet. The body, now that it was visible, did not resemble a human anymore. It made the whole thing even more grotesque.

That head!

On that body!

The skin had gone bumpy all over, and the lack of clothes let him see the genitals were gone, just melted away. Instead, there was a humanoid form with grey skin and lumps the size of acorns all over it.

Extra toes.

Who cares? But his mind saw them. Two extra toes, one on each side, curling out from under the heel. Both feet were the same.

Not human, but the face.

His blood was thundering in his ears.

Another lick of the lips, and they stood in a stare off.

Come in, Daniel prayed to the heavens. Crawl in and we will put you out of your misery.

A sniff, followed by that flickering tongue. He felt very much like it was assessing him, like he assessed meat at the supermarket.

“If you want to eat me, come and get me.”

Nothing. The monster still watched him. It reached out and played with the wooden tunnel near it. It was a section that he had left deliberately smooth because of paranoia that a creature might do this. Fear that it would show intellectual curiosity, but he had not been imagining it coming from a monster like the one in front of him.

Not paranoia at all—prudence. Another lick of its lips. It tapped the wood, and Daniel noted for the first time that its hands were different. One was a human hand, complete with an engagement ring, while the other arm was bumpy with thick animalistic skin ending in lobster like claw that was twice the size it should have been. Or maybe closer to a veritable monster. That thought was chilling. It was, of course, tapping with the mutated one.

Another lick.

It was creepy.

Maybe they should abandon this attempt. Shut the door and have him use his wood skill to create ropes to lower them, all the way down via the windows. Totally avoid the monster fights.

Admit defeat before it killed him.

The creature blurred forward!

Daniel screamed.

The fear was instinctive; he shut his eyes and threw himself to the side. The dead man switch triggered, and the trap collapsed shut.

Rolling to his feet, he tried to see what had happened. He could not believe that he had done that—shutting the eyes was such an amateur move.

It was squealing, and the entire trap was rocking back and forth. Daniel did not hesitate, and he started slamming down the various levers. The squeals got louder, and in ten seconds, the trap was filled with spikes. For a number, he needed to use his prodigious strength to force them down. In those instances, the points of wood skewered the zombie.

While its initial thrashing had made Daniel feel like the trap was about to break apart at any moment, now that the monster’s ability to move was so tightly restricted, the whole construction seemed as solid as a bunker.

It was ugly, and its blood was darker than a human’s should have been. Yet the creature kept fighting and squealing, and Daniel was thankful that they had carried out the extensive preparations. After all, it had been incredibly fast. Calculations once more flowed through him. If the hotel had been full . . . eighty rooms, many of them occupied by couples and families. Forty-five floors that were full of zombies to kill, and it was clear they would need to die.

Worse, from what he could see, Ivey was the exception. Most people were being converted. How many monsters were out there? Twenty per floor? Forty? What was that, a thousand in total?

Daniel grabbed a nearby spear and prepared to make the killing blow and thrust down hard through the gaps in the cage, aiming for the heart.

Thud!

The spear went through right where he targeted. Nineteen strength came to play, or maybe his mysterious innate strength ability was channelled for whatever reason. It was as clean a strike as he could imagine, and what he thought had been thick skin failed to slow the weapon at all.

It struggled for a moment, but blood was pumping out the wound, and the creature’s thrashing movements slowed.

Two down, a thousand more to go in just this building and who knew how many in the rest of the Melbourne. If he had to cut through hundreds of thousands to get to safety, then that was exactly what he was going to do.

Agonising pain exploded in his stomach.

What? Daniel thought in surprised confusion as he toppled over.

Log Report 5 - Entry 4

This new event has been so exciting. I’ve reached previous uncharted territory in how long my host has survived. My friends have named me a genius and I am actively helping my host to stay alive. Not directly, of course, because that would break the rules and, as I discovered with my first host, they know when you bend the rules.

To mitigate that risk, I was completely honest with my host. Ivey and her pet were not strong enough to fight the deconstructed sapients in two versus lots battle. I also was very clear that doing nothing would be detrimental to my aim of at least quadrupling my survival time record… I mean… I communicated that according to the cultural packs bipeds biology have a requirement for food and water.

As an aside, I don’t understand why that’s my responsibility, but you know bipeds probably are not as smart as the Wookins. Anyway, I did my job and my host sensibly used my wisdom to convince her pet co-wobub to expand the area they control.

Given the complexity of the situation I feel it is appropriate to quote 73345’s notes verbatim on how to deal with situations where your host is deep faeces (I assume this term was coined for animals with acidic waste products and being covered in such a waste product is bad news just like what happened to my second host.)

Another divergence, but how was I to know it was not water? Yes, I realize you’re not supposed to take over your hosts, but there was a furry thing with no fur on its tail.

It was damn scary, and I thought I would help the host avoid it.

Anyway, I fully admit that I may technically have broken the rule about seizing control of the host’s body. The knee jerk reaction to block ‘the capacity of all of us to stimulate miniature lighting inside the host’s body’ is unfair.

I maintain that this is clearly a case of using minor environmental effects to aid in host’s survival and not as the prosecutors stated ‘maliciously overriding free will.’

Apologies for the rant, but even now three events later it still makes my… I will not resort to swear words but you know in local terminology it starts my blood boiling sort like in those cartoon moving picture things where steam comes out of their ears. I repeat, how was I supposed to realize the green bubbly stuff was not water and that small furry things with hairless tails were mostly harmless.

It had beady eyes.

Despite my opinion that using miniature lightning to encourage biological muscles to flex was reasonable. With the new rules, it is clearly not allowed, so I won’t use that technique from now on.

Anyway, where was I? Yes I was quoting 73345.

When facing stronger enemies, charging them straight on is not a good idea. Instead, methods of splitting the enemy or attacking from unexpected directions should be deployed. I shared this with my host, and I think she used some form of telepathic control to get her pet to do exactly that.

Good job Ivey and good job pet for listening to her. I didn’t know that bipeds had telepathic communication and if I get more evidence, I will write a paper on it.

Regarding the wider situation, we’ve established a large group which will hopefully end up as a single collective hive that can work together for survival. This group has been named Pobournes after the location of Port Melbourne.

I am so proud they accepted my suggestion for the name. No one else was clever enough to come up with it.

I get side-tracked. To save the Pobournes…such a cool name, if I have to say so myself. I still can’t believe everyone accepted it. Some said it was fun and 3781412 claimed it was stately and said I quote once more that ‘the locals would have used that name for themselves if they were all crackpots’ I’m not sure what a crackpot is but from context it’s related to taking drugs to presumably improve intelligence because why else would you take chemicals that change higher reasoning functional centres?

Put two and two together and all I can conclude is that bipeds were not clever enough to come up with it themselves.’ I guess I shouldn’t be too impressed with myself. I am, but I probably shouldn’t be. After all, they were just pre-event bipeds, so them failing to coin a name doesn’t mean much.

In any case, there is no reason to cheapen my achievement.

*Raise glasses and drink bitter liquid quickly to celebrate.*

So it’s a unique, outstanding name and now we need to save them.

The models… My one was called optimistic. I like that word.

It describes me perfectly.

Anyway, back to modelling. While percentages between us, might have differed all of our models agree that individual survival depends on community survival. The Pobournes are all in it together and for their own good the bipeds need to realise that.

Of course there are rules!

*Rolling electromagnetic sensory organs*

To help without breaking the precious rules we’re teaching morse code, which is a simplistic language that bipeds used to use. If our hosts have ever been exposed to it, we’re to sharpen their memories and allow them to communicate.

We even evoked protocol 4193 to push that programming onto the standard interfaces of the Pobournes. *He he*, that name again. The Pobournes are very very lucky to have me strategizing their escape.

In the meantime, the focus is on creating powerful heroes and co-wobub is one of the four key people identified to date.

Me again!!

The other potentials all seem so… boring.

An illusionist? Like really. They can’t even kill anything and so many other interfaces got excited hearing about her.

The other two future heroes sounded more reasonable. At least they enjoy hitting things.

Time to sign off.

Total Falls: 5 (+1). However, it has only been a brief period since my last update and both bipeds probably because of their lack of stability, spent the bulk of the time sitting down. Despite those mitigating factors, they still ended up with one tumble.

*Roll pointlessly on the floor making gasping noises.*

Bipeds are talented.

Not.

End Log Report