The door fell apart. If they were expecting more, it would have been anticlimactic, but with his senses, it was exactly what Daniel was imagining. He had felt the wood corrode from the inside, and in the end, it just collapsed into a pile of dust.

This was a failure. He was furious with himself. Carelessness got people killed. He had woken Ivey automatically when he realised they couldn’t wait until morning. In shock at the need to act, he had forgotten to whisper. The zombie happened to have been passing by their door, and their conversation had alerted it. The thing had gone to work using its own magic to corrode the wood and Daniel had been too distracted to notice.

Stupid. Arrogant. He should have been paying attention, but he hadn’t. This time he doubted it mattered as with only one zombie incoming and especially after it had just used its magic on the door. They would not be in danger.

It was the mistake and not the consequences that rankled him.

With his club in hand, he stepped forward in front of the women, ready to meet the charge.

It stalked into the room through the broken bits of door. The bright light Tamara had created seemed to flee from the creature, and it was dark and hard to see, even though it should have been lit up like a Christmas tree.

A touch of his power.

The trap outside the door triggered, coming down from the roof and swinging through the now-open door. It had been designed to spike creatures beating the door and impale them between itself and the reinforced spike timber that used to be a door. With the anvil—so to speak—broken, it would be less impressive, but as Daniel figured, there were two potential outcomes. The first was that it would get impaled and die, and the second was the swinging trap would knock it forward onto the three pressure plates they had on the inside and kill it.

Either way, he expected it to die, and if it didn’t, then the restraint mesh should buy the time for Tamara’s spell to incapacitate it. The fight was a forgone conclusion.

Whoosh.

The spikes impaled it, bursting through its body in multiple spots and lifting it an inch or two off the ground.

It was hard to see through the unnatural darkness shrouding its face, but the zombie’s mouth opened in shock, and it looked down at the wooden spikes that had pincushioned it. It blinked twice, and then the abnormal darkness washed away from it.

“Nice,” Daniel said, looking in admiration at the successful trap. “Wish I had one of those last night.”

“Step one complete,” Tamara quipped. “What’s next?”

“We save the girl.” Daniel hesitated, while he had a plan, he was not sure how best to articulate it. “We all sneak into the room next to it and then I use my wood growth abilities to build a cocoon around her. When she is safe, we kill the monster.”

No one made any objections.

Animal Sense was good, but getting a tendril in to observe was just best practice. Power pushed into his tendrils in the roof. He was already close to the destination, and they surged forward and once there, they slipped through the panels on the roof to gain access to the room. Wood sense immediately confirmed that the zombie and the girl were alone and that the rooms on either side were empty. He sighed in relief. Animal Sense was new, and while theoretically, he trusted it, it was worthwhile double checking.

“What are you doing?” Tamara whispered.

“Gathering intelligence,” he told her. “One minute.”

A tendril dropped to connect to the zombie’s door. He had learnt that the plants conducted his power efficiently up to a certain point. The two-centimetre-wide vines he was using were the right side to allow his overflow mana generation capacity to be transferred without the noticeable loss of energy. If he attempted to send his reserves through, they would get severely degraded over these types of distance. Luckily, for this purpose, the overflow was more than sufficient.

Completely silently plant matter expanded, and half a minute later, the door was totally sealed. It would stop light from the corridor from getting in and dampen sound. With that protection in place, they could proceed more safely.

“I just sealed the zombie door. Light and sound,” he told Ivey at curious look.

It seemed like everyone but the baby was awake. Tamara had just finished explaining the situation to the other adults.

“I will stay and protect the kids,” Jayden offered, holding Anthony’s sword. “Unless you think I am needed to kill the nasty zombie.”

Daniel looked up from where he had immediately knelt to disable the traps. Jayden took the moment to swish the sword through the air. Daniel knew he personally was not much of a sword fighter, but the way Jayden stood as he swung screamed incompetence. Plus, the man was obviously a coward.

“Probably a good idea,” Daniel agreed, then nodded at the zombie corpse and the door. “It will be best if you all go to the other room. Then we can trap the connecting door to keep you guys protected.”

Jayden, with a gallant flourish, escorted the other women back into the room. “I will keep you safe, ladies.”

From where he was picking up the traps, Daniel barely avoided an eyeroll.

He quickly placed the traps on the inside of the connecting door and the surrounding restraint to make sure the kids could not accidentally reach them. Time was ticking for the girl trapped by the zombie, but he took a few minutes to grow mesh at kid level, thickening it up so little fingers could not get to where they were not supposed to. He did not want any errant kids triggering the plates.

Finally satisfied, he shot off an Animal Sense to confirm nothing had changed and went out into the corridor to examine the outer layer of defence he had constructed to protect the door. He did not understand how the zombie had got in so quickly and effortlessly. Tamara followed with her light, giving him a clear vision of the traps.

“Great Scott,” Tamara breathed out in disbelief when she registered what had happened.

Internally, Daniel agreed with the assessment. The carpet through the middle of hallway had been corroded, leaving a meter-wide path of pitted concrete. Daniel looked up, and even the ceiling had the same effect occurring. The monster had just wandered around the hallway with its aura or something, eating away at everything it touched.

That effect stretched to traps they had left to protect the door. Close to the wall was immaculate, but the traps that had been further out were corroded almost to nonexistence. One of the simple deterrents that he had thrown in place, a thick spike that started off as wide as his arm, had fallen apart like it had been charred in a fire and turned to charcoal. When the zombie had approached, that spike had just crumbled instead of impaling it.

“I wonder what its room looked like.”

“I am surprised it did not fall through the floor,” Tamara said.

Ivey was half crouched down, touching the concrete where it had been worn away. “Carpet and wood got shredded, but the stone is good,” she declared after a moment. “Which way?”

Daniel pointed.

“Can’t be,” Ivey objected. “We checked all those rooms.”

“There is a strength zombie in the way.” He waved. “I don’t want to disturb it and have it make noise to wake up the other one. But before we go . . .” Daniel knelt down and grabbed the pressure plate closest to the wall. His power washed through it and confirmed it was not affected by decay.

It was the only one, but three minutes later he had fixed up a further four. Taking care to leave them in an inactive state, he passed them to the girls and picked up their spare restraint.

“Protection,” he told them. “We take them and set them up to make the room next door safe. Then we protect the girl. I expect once it realises it has lost the girl, we will be able to lure it out and into a death trap.”

“Lead away, then,” Ivey ordered grandly. They all made a point to not walk on the distinctive path the decay zombie had carved. Ivey was right. The concrete was barely affected, but he did not want to risk it, anyway.

Once they were closer, he indicated them to slow down.

Animal Sense. The power blurred out, scanning the entire floor. He had learnt to direct it so it only covered the area he was interested in. Which, in this case, was just this floor.

“Floor’s clear,” he told them.

The light vanished, plunging them into sudden darkness. Any night vision he had achieved when he had woken up was, of course, well gone.

“Umm, what happened to the light?” he asked.

“I killed it so we could sneak up.”

“I sealed their door,” Daniel said. “We can use the light at least till we are in the room next door.”

“Oh.”

The light bloomed once more. “Just try to be quiet.”

They followed him, and Daniel was awful glad for the illumination once he got going. They passed a room where the door had just decayed away, which explained where the decay zombie had come from. He was curious about what the inside would look like, but he would wait till after the girl was saved before checking. Their activities yesterday and the zombie had left debris everywhere, so they had to pick their way carefully.

When they reached their target, he leant in close to Tamara. “Really dim.”

The light bulb shrunk till it gave off the glow of the LED that you would see in power boards to show they were working. He nodded in appreciation, but he was not sure anyone saw him. Hands on the door. This bit was important. He needed the door to open silently, breaking the lock by shifting all the wood away, removing the automatic door by basically carving off the wood it was attached to and then anchoring the metal parts to the roof, just in case moving the door might make it move and create noise.

Then he shifted it open. Silently. With his poor human night vision, which was still impacted by the previous bright light, he could see that the curtains were up and moonlight was coming in. They would be able to see soon enough. Daniel waved everyone through and then followed, shutting the door equally quietly, using soft tendrils to cushion the impact to avoid any hard wood-on-wood noises. Then he set to work, first undoing the damage and then reinforcing the structure. Place the roof traps. Step over the pressure plates and then put up the restraints. The others were sensibly sitting on the ground on the far wall from where they knew the zombie was.

Finally, he left the door open. It was set up so that he could arm the traps quickly, but if he needed to get out to fight the zombie, he could do that, too.

Animal Sense, going through the entire floor apart. Nothing had changed. The humans were still in the same spot. Some rodents had moved, the strength zombie appeared to be asleep, and that was it.

With protection available while simultaneously being able to react quickly to what was happening in the next room, he was ready. It was time to save her.