The whole idea of hundreds of battles had shifted Daniel’s entire mindset. Every fight had to be a certainty. If he took shortcuts and engaged in battles with risks, then he would die. That was just mathematics. That meant even if it was boring, he needed to stack the battlefield in his favour.

He returned to the room with the bodies and looked over it in a state of shock. They had access to three rooms, and two of them were filled with corpses, but he ignored those mangled carcasses and instead focused on the remains of his trap.

It did its job, he thought to himself. Four dead and slowed the fifth sufficiently for him to kill it. Realistically, it had exceeded expectations, and now it was kindling. He walked over and looked closer and nodded to himself. It was not as bad as he had feared. There were still large chunks mixed in amongst the splinters.

There was nowhere near enough wood for him to be happy, but then he guessed that till they had access to the entire floor, there never would be, and after that there would not be sufficient time or manpower or something. Ideally, before extending into the hallways, he would install bulwarks across the corridor in both directions and then slowly, methodically, clear the level. Unfortunately, life was not all cream and peaches.

Mechanically, he started gathering their timber, acknowledging that he would have to settle for what was achievable. There were insufficient materials to build a solid defence. Hell, given how wide the corridor was, they would probably need to clear half the floor and repurpose all the available wood before he could raise enough defences to feel safe. Even then, the structure would only be impenetrable if he stood next to it to continually reinforce it.

All in all, that sort of setup was impractical and was only useful if the zombies were going to keep throwing themselves against it, even when they got nowhere and the occasional one got chewed out by one of his traps. According to Ivey, they would not do that. They had been reduced to animals, but they were not mindless. He would need to be more flexible in his approach.

The pile he had built up was not very impressive. Hopefully, there were only a couple of zombies out there, because if there was an army . . .

The thoughts were not helpful.

“What are you thinking?” Ivey asked him.

“I am not sure yet,” he answered honestly. “Skirmishers?” He shrugged to show that he really did not know what to think.

The ones that had escaped. Hopefully, they were injured or slower than the others, which was why they had failed to make it into the room. It was plausible and that would make his coming fight easier. If he was in the corridor and the enemy zombies could move like the speed ones, then he would be in trouble.

The alternative was less palatable.

If they were as fast but smarter and held back, then when he stepped out . . .

Daniel shook his head. That line of thought was not profitable. If they were as strong as Superman, he had no chance. It was easy to build scenarios where he had no hope. The likelihood was that they had just been slow to get into the room. Hopefully, it meant they were not speed based, but he was not basing strategy on hope.

How smart were they?

Ivey could not articulate a definitive answer. From her hand-waving explanation, he got the sense it ranged from rabid dog to the peak of humanity, with more of the former but that just suggested there were some of the latter out there, and that would be scary, especially if the brainy ones ended up controlling entire hordes.

For now, the question did not matter.

With glowing hands, he went to work. Daniel combined separate chunks into a single form and then, once the basics were done, he started transferring pressure. Screw the arms, he set up a bench-press functionality to generate the maxim potential energy as possible.

His legs burnt, and finally he dropped his hands and looked at what he had created.

Smart or not? It was a simple enough question. If they were at the rabid-dog level, then what he had done would work, but the further up the curve they got, the more useless his work would become.

To seize the hallway, they had five pressure plates. They were bulky things the size of a medium backpack and a couple of inches high, and he knew when he moved them, they would be heavy. Surprisingly so. After all, there was lots of compressed wood in there, including making the teeth as sharp as steel.

When they were triggered, they had two effects. One was inch-long bullets of wood that would be propelled straight upwards at speeds approaching a gun shot. The other was a classic bear- or mousetrap, where the two sides would spring together to crush and cut whatever was between them.

If the zombies were dumb enough to step on them, then it would probably be game over, but the drawback was how unwieldy the pressure plates ended up. They were neither camouflaged nor quick to deploy.

Daniel shrugged. It was what they had, and if you were at a bar and there were half the number of sheilas as blokes, then if you were choosy, you went home lonely.

The second type of trap was a rolled coil of wood, as tall as him. Expanded out, it would be as wide as a corridor with foot-long slivers of nasty thorns poking out. The design was simple: when you threw it, a one-use tension band would open it up to three or four meters and then it would snap shut, hopefully pinning one or more zombies within. It was something that only Daniel could use, as Ivey lacked the strength to toss them as hard and as fast as they needed to be thrown. The idea was to throw them in such a way that the zombies would blunder into them and promptly get entangled as it closed up. Used right, theoretically, they should comfortably entrap a zombie and after that, Ivey could finish it.

There were three of the coil traps to go with their five pressure plates. The whole set up felt like it was hardly enough.

“Don’t look so worried. We can probably fight them even with none of these tricks.”

We? More like me, he thought, but there was no point expressing that view. It would just annoy her and plus she would agree. After all, she was a healer. He immediately regretted his earlier thoughts. Her healing would keep him alive and in some ways having a healer was better than a spear woman or something like that.

“And you won’t be fighting by yourself,” Ivey reminded him. “My healing will keep you going far longer than you imagine.”

He stopped from staring at her with suspicion. Did their connection let her read his mind?

Slowly, he eased the door open, peeking out each way. Three of the pressure plates were at his feet and in a position for him to retreat into the room if zombies were waiting for him. After looking both ways, for now they were safe.

Yet Daniel still hesitated. That female zombie had waited for him to stick a head in, and these might play similar games. He carefully eased a fourth plate out the door. At worst, the zombies would have to go around it.

He looked left, then right. It was like crossing a road.

Then up.

Nothing. Phew!

Always look up. He was not sure horror movies had taught him anything useful to surviving the apocalypse, but helping him remember to look up might be the exception. Two more pressure plates out the door and then he stepped out with one of the restraint traps in his arm.

With a beach head in place, he kept watch while Ivey ferried the remaining plates and restraint bundles out.

This was part of the plan they had rehearsed. Next would be to rotate positions and cross the hallway and seize another room. After that, they would slowly but surely grow their reserves of traps, double or even triple their numbers, and then they would start yelling to attract the remaining zombies to them. It was a simple plan. Expand slowly and then when they were entrenched, spring their trap shut.

Whack!

They both tensed and looked down the corridor. Daniel knew that noise and from the look on Ivey’s face, she recognised it too.

Whack!

They flinched and made eye contact, each not sure what to do. He was on the balls of his feet, ready to react. Thoughts of a new room and slow expansion pushed out by the need to respond immediately. Did they stick to the plan or respond?

Whack!

He cringed once more at the noise. What to do? He was paralysed by indecision. There was only one reason for the noise, and it was not a human.

Whack!

Around the corner, a zombie was pounding on a door. The big one was dead, but the smaller ones had made progress on the first door before it had got involved. Whatever room the zombies were attacking was unlikely to have someone of his skills on the other side strengthening the door and undoing the damage.

“Help!” Ivey screamed next to him.

He jumped again and looked at Ivey, horrified. The woman just smiled and stepped back into the shadow of their door, bow in her hand.

The thumping stopped.