Daniel went to work. There was lots he could do before they got to the tricky bit of turning the structures into a killing field. He could barely believe that they were planning on trying to kill multiple zombies at once. First, they needed to put together the infrastructure to give them a chance.

The entrance and splitting were easy. When you could enhance wood to be almost as strong as steel, it took little to create the structures the design called for. Unfortunately, the quantity of building materials was lacking and was clearly becoming a problem. He soon scavenged the table built into the wall to increase the mass available. Even the faux-wooden cladding and wardrobes were sacrificed.

Then he opened up the room. Shifting the beds, mattresses and everything into the next door room. The hotel room, even though it was a large room looked small with all the furniture gone. He would use the extra space for the lanes. They would come through the door and then he would split them up. The problem ultimately drilled down into how to turn what they had set up into a lethal ambush that would take out a zombie. He understood the concept of a spring, but designing something that met the requirements for their plan was difficult. First, it needed to be deadly. Second, trigger reliably and finally, to work instantly. The way the zombie had blurred forward and his panicked leap aside haunted him. Then he had started that move when the zombie was still meters away, triggering it well before the zombie was in range and it had barely closed in time. He needed his trap to be faster, or at least as fast as a metal contraception. Snap, bang, done and dusted in a moment. Was it even possible for a wooden trap to move fast enough?

“Wood will never be as good as metal.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he answered, having not intended to mutter that first bit out loud. Mouse traps triggering were instant, and that is what he was going to build. Snap! And then a dead zombie.

Daniel threw around ideas in his head. Ultimately, this was a tension or compression thing. Springs could work in both directions. Who had not played with an elastic band as a kid? It could accelerate things towards you or in a slingshot to shoot things away.

He did not have a rubber band; all he had was wood and the very useful ability to turn it into any form he wanted. Pulling back a branch and releasing it to smack his mate in the face. Trees could have tension; it was just turning that into a consistent weapon. What was the best trick to get the effect that he was after? Tricking his siblings by holding onto the branch as he walked through so that when he let it go, it would spring back and smack them. From experience, that could deliver a fair amount of power—after all, his sisters had got him as often as got them. Especially as they had been older. The method could work, but it had flaws. It was slow, and he was not sure it would put down a zombie. Making elastic bands out of plants would also work, but how to do it eluded him totally.

Rubber tree? He was sure that was a thing, but the method of creating elastic items from it was something he did not know, nor was it relevant. It was not like he could just turn wood into a rubber band. The spring-back trap was a classic one, and he could visualize how it worked. Simple, really just a tree branch in his face. The real question was whether he could use magic to arm it.

First, he spent twenty minutes testing different densities of wood, putting a stick in a hole and then pulling the end till it snapped into its initial position. Learning how to layer the wood till the thin sticks got to where it was a struggle to bend them back, and when he released, they returned to their natural straight state with an audible snap. The difference between his first couple of attempts and the one he ended with was chalk and cheese.

To Ivey’s credit, she did not interfere with his testing, but she scrutinised the maze of spikes. Traversing all the way right up to the door, she came back and suggesting a host of changes. Her major input was so simple he was annoyed he had not done it himself. She placed a bed sheet over the wood and left a space underneath for a mat of two-inch spikes. The zombies coming into the room would shred their feet when they stepped on the spikes through the sheet. It would not be sufficient to kill them, but it was definitely going to slow them down, and that was good enough for him.

Finally, his testing completed. If the wood was too elastic, then there was no power stored when it got bent. If there was not enough flexibility, then it broke. He focused on the hard-to-bend wood, altering it to avoid it splintering. As he worked, he noted what happened to the wood while the tension was being applied and which combination of cell types had the best mix of stability and power when released.

Finally, it was time for the last part of the plan, which was arming the trap.

The core issue was that he lacked the strength to guarantee that a trap manually set would destroy a zombie, even one of the small types. Unfortunately, there were no pulleys available that would let him impart more than his raw strength in arming the traps. Even if statistically his strength was almost twice the average, he could not bend the wood far enough to give it sufficient oomph to slay a zombie.

That left him with two options. The first was to kill the zombies just like the previous one. Trap them and then kill them using a spear. It would work, but if four of them came at him, it might get dicey, especially if it was the big one that had been throwing itself against the door.

Trapping them had to be a backup solution. The method that he wanted to focus on developing was using his magic to impart tension into the trap. If it worked, then his personal strength would not matter, and the traps might have the power to even kill that giant monster of a zombie.

If it worked.

Such simple words.

With a flick of his mind, the bamboo-like wood stalk was converted to its flexible form. He then bent it effortlessly and latched it into position. It was precariously held. A tiny shift and the latch would shift, and the wood would snap straight once more.

Now was the hard part.

He wanted to transform the simple bamboo to no longer be nice and flexible but not convert it into a permanently bent support. He needed the wood to be a straight piece under tension so that when the latch got released, it would snap back into its natural form, hopefully with prejudice.

He focused.

Snap!

The pressure was too much, and the rod of wood splintered along the length.

Failure.

With a shrug, he repeated the process—and again and again. Then he rebuilt his sticks and kept going. There were enough minor successes to give him hope he was on the right track, but it was nowhere near where he needed to be. Going slower seemed to be more successful, but not always.

“Screw this.” He pushed himself back away from what he was doing. Why couldn’t it just work? He had to do something different.

What had he learned? A fat lot of nothing. There seemed to be no way to impart tension magically. Various techniques had potential, but when he investigated in more detail or increased the energy, the wood shattered—or worse, just went limp and became a complete failure.

Patterns initially worked, but then did not. He needed a step change to solve the problem. Energy was always conserved; it was finite. That is what his year-ten physics teacher Mr. Morris had said. You could not create energy; you could only transform it from one state to another. His existing approach to taking his magic energy and trying to transform it into potential kinetic energy was not working.

Daniel imagined pulling back a tree limb. The further he pulled it, the harder it became to hold and the more power he had when it was released. That was his muscles doing the work. Physical energy in his body being transferred to the branch.

What happened if instead of creating the kinetic energy, he shifted it from another source?

Could he combine his superhuman strength with his magic to overcome the concrete slab he was banging his head against?

It would not hurt to try, because if he did not find a solution soon, they would resort to killing with spears.

This time, when he crouched down to start his experiment, he bent two sticks, one designed to act as a store of energy and the other a flexible reed down onto a latch. They both held, and Daniel knew if he released both, one would snap back with enough force to give him a welt and the other would do nothing.

Touching each with a different hand while in his mind, he bridged them and started moving the potential kinetic energy between the two bits of wood. As the power transferred across, he adjusted the internal structure of the wood. In fact, the energy transfer demanded it, but it did not seem to take as much magic as usual took to change the cellular structure.

Opening his eyes curiously, he looked down at the two pieces of wood. They looked identical, but it felt like his wild theory had worked.

Ivey was at the window, staring down at the monsters outside, which suited him just fine. He did not want to have to explain what he was doing and was happy she had chosen to give him space.

Little butterflies in his stomach. Which one to trigger?

Finally, he went for the piece that he had struggled to get into position initially. In his previous experience, it would snap straight, but if his experiment had gone right, then it would . . . do nothing? Do something?

Probably something, but hopefully not much of it, he thought with an internal smile. If the energy was gone like he hoped, then there would be no power in it.

The latch fell off, and the wood drifted up, sort of like a piece of grass did when flattened. Slowly, without enthusiasm.

His stomach flipped further, but it was too early to celebrate. Potentially, all he had achieved was ruining a perfectly functioning pressure trap.

This was the one that mattered.

Crack.

Fist pump. “Yes!” it was barely louder than a whisper, but Ivey startled at the window, spinning to look at him.

“Progress?”

“Maybe,” he answered as quietly as he could.

He might be celebrating nothing, but his hypothesis had worked. He had transferred the energy. It could be the advantage he needed.

It had gone better than expected, and he had barely used his magic. In fact, while he had experimented, his pool had refilled. Now it was time to see if he could stack the effect, because if he could, then he would start eliminating zombies just like he would mice.

And get water to drink.

There was still the bottle that Ivey had left unopened, but Daniel did not grab it. She was right; they wanted to preserve their resources till they were guaranteed to get more.

This time, he reinforced both pieces of wood and then manhandled them into the latched position. Once more, a hand on both and the potential energy was transferred from one to the other. It was harder with extra resistance, but he powered through. As with the original test, the cells shifted into the new configuration to accept the movement of potential force. There was no visible failure, and it had taken seconds.

Daniel released the one he had sucked the energy from. Once more, it was like grass when it straightened, which made sense as he had drained most of the energy from it.

CRACK!

It was louder; across the room, Ivey startled. She went to get up, but he waved her away. It was working! It was time to see how far he could stretch the method. Could he get wood rivalling metal?

Two hours later, he pulled back. It was time to see if what they had planned worked. Curiously, he touched the business end of what he had created. Each of the deadly traps at the end of the pathways they had created thrummed with potential energy, so it should. He had transferred twenty lots of potential energy into each of the spring traps. Straining and bending the wooden bar till all his muscles ached before draining it away into the traps. It was a better workout than he had ever managed in a gym. That and the spikes that he had put into the trap meant any zombies hit were going to end up in a world of hurt.

“Time?” he called out.