Danny knew that very soon he would reach his destination, and having not found any signs of Lara’s family along the road, probably meant that they had managed to reach Clear Water village, but hadn’t returned from there.

“That complicates things…” Danny scratched his chin and thought out loud, quickly stopping to check for zombies in what seemed to be a car crash up ahead on his route.

Since he couldn’t tell where they would go from Clear Water village or why, if he didn’t find any clues to their whereabouts there, then the mission he took upon himself and on Lara’s behalf would get incredibly harder.

Without knowing what had kept them from returning and where they could possibly have headed to other than the farm Lara was still waiting for them at, following their trail would get complicated.

But Danny was putting the cart before the horse. He was overthinking things again. There was no sense in worrying about where they could be if not in the village when he hadn’t even actually step foot inside the place.

For all he knew, the family could still be there, stuck in place, so he should worry what to do afterwards only when he properly established that they were, in fact, missing. Therefore, that was what Danny did. He dismissed the worries that were crowding his mind and left them for the future.

To be fair, it was hard not to overthink things. Travelling the highway with nothing to distract him other than the occasional fight with zombies was incredibly boring. His options were limited when it came down to passing the time.

Danny could always take his mother memento and listen to some songs while he travelled, but he felt that doing so was beyond stupid. He needed to pay attention to his surroundings and what he was doing. Depriving himself of his hearing and letting himself get lost on the songs – and the memories that they brought with them – was definitely counterproductive to that goal.

No matter how much he wanted to chase out the monotony, that was a good way to get himself ambushed, or worse, killed. Be it by the dead or living. Therefore, Danny prudently chose to do the smart thing and face the boredom the hard way.

That left him with only his thoughts to keep himself company. When it came down to it, his mind mainly turned to two main concerns: firstly, where he would find Lara’s family – and under which circumstances – and secondly, how he could make Tutu spill the beans on how to better evaluate his progress.

Danny had no doubt that the demon had a way to gauge his progress regarding the absorption of crystals. After all, the demon was the one to show him how to use them in the first place. Tutu being able to solve his problems was not the issue, making him willing to talk was.

Unfortunately, however, pondering on both subjects did not present him with any epiphanies, but it helped him pass the time nonetheless. That was pretty much the main reason why Danny kept coming back to those topics anyway, so he was not disappointed in not being able to come up with a way to deal with them so far.

Danny knew that he would reach his destination today. By his estimations, he should have already travelled the majority of his planned route, so it was only a matter of time until he found the place, really. He just had to press on.

Almost as if responding to his thoughts, Danny finally came across a sign that pointedly said “Welcome to Clear Water Village!”

His short journey had come to an end without spotting the girl’s family along the way. Now came the hard part.

Although he knew from his conversations with Lara that the village was a fairly small place, with a closely knit community, there was still a couple thousand of habitants living there. Which meant possibly thousands of undead concentrated in one single place.

That was by far way better than Lakeview from where he had came from and many other cities, but it was still a considerable number. A dangerous number for Danny even as empowered as he currently was.

One zombie was a cakewalk for him. One hundred, however, was a menace, not to mention thousands.

To look for Lara’s family amidst the danger would require him to act carefully and stealthily, but Danny was confident he could do it. As long as he did not overestimate his own abilities and took a cautious approach, even if he was spotted and was pitched against multiple undead at the same time, he could always run away before trying again.

Danny left the highway that stretched towards the distance and entered the road that would lead him to Clear Water village. He kept running at the same pace until he finally spotted the first buildings in the distance, and also the first zombies.

He stopped his feet and looked at the place from the distance, while organizing his thoughts and reviewing what he knew about this village and his goal.

John, Lara’s Uncle, had a twelve-year-old son and lived with his wife in what could be called the western part of the village, closer to the center unfortunately. Danny’s approach had been exactly from that direction so he did not need to go around the perimeter of the place to enter it from another location, which made his life easier.

Danny scouted the road leading into the village for a few minutes and, not seeing anything worthy of notice other than some random undead coming and going, started to approach it silently and cautiously.

Danny knew from his experiences that although the zombies could see, they would not be attracted to him if he did not get too close. He did not know what was the reason behind it – whether the undead had poor eyesight, could not differentiate the dead from the living at a distance, or if there was another underlying motive –, it was just one more mystery among many others regarding the current world that Danny was not sure about.

But it did not matter. He knew that if he kept a good distance he would not be spotted and that was enough.

Approaching the wall of the first house facing the direction he came from, Danny swiftly stuck close to the brick surface that composed it and crouched down before he stopped moving. Danny silently waited with bated breath as he tried to listen for any sounds coming from the village that would give him an idea of what was going on there. Be it signs of survivors or of struggle.

His empowering by the crystals was not restricted to his strength. Danny’s eyesight, perception and hearing also had received a significant boon, which allowed him to pick up things from a distance that he was not able to before.

Even then, he still came out with nothing to show for his efforts. There was nothing special going on as far as he could tell, and he did not manage to pick up any indicators of survivors either. He only heard the groaning of the undead and their shuffling steps.

Danny was not discouraged though. He had just arrived there and was still on the fringe of the village, so there was still much left to explore. Danny had not really expected to immediately stumble upon Lara’s family after reaching the place.

Realizing he would have to go deeper into the town to get answers, Danny agilely climbed the wall and got onto the roof of the house, as if he was a monkey. His grip and limb strength were no joke by this point, so he easily got on top of the building.

As soon as he got to the roof, Danny crouched down again to avoid drawing attention, keeping his body low and out of sight of the zombies roaming the streets below. Following that, after seeing that he remained undiscovered, Danny looked around, getting a clear view of the inner parts of the village. There weren’t many tall buildings in the village to obstruct his vision, after all.

After a quick scan of the area, Danny immediately noticed an issue. There were just too few zombies walking the streets.

That was not a problem in itself, but Danny did not know what to make of the situation. This village was supposed to house a couple thousand of habitants, but the number of zombies walking around was way inferior to that. Even when considering that some zombies might still be stuck inside the buildings, there were still way too much people unaccounted for.

Normally, that would be good news, as it probably meant that a lot of people managed to avoid the tragic fate of succumbing to the undead onslaught and were still holding on somewhere inside the village.

Only a couple of weeks had passed after the start of the apocalypse as well, which meant that most people probably could bunker down and endure if they had a fully supplied house at the start of this chaos. Even without a decent stock of food, people could still hang on with some difficulty by rationing their supplies or simply enduring the hunger as long as they had water available.

However, there would be clear signs of habitation in some of the houses if that was the case. From his vantage point, Danny could not spot a single residence that appeared to be occupied still.

There was always the possibility that he overlooked a few places and missed a few spots, but given the huge number of unaccounted people, there was no way that it could be explained simply by Danny failing to spot them.

A few overlooked areas here and there was to be expected, but hundreds? No way.

The few places in the village that at first glance could be used to gather and house a significant percentage of the residents packed up together also looked to be completely deserted.

“Where could they have gone to? Did something happen to them? Were they rescued by the government?” Danny mumbled softly under his breath.

Going through many possible scenarios in his head would not get him any closer to the truth, so Danny started moving in the direction of Lara’s uncle’s house.