The next day Danny woke at the break of dawn feeling well rested.

He quickly ate his meal, went through his daily routine of stretches and exercises and ate his first crystal of the day as usual.

Then, Danny removed the furniture blocking the door to the room he had slept in and went outside. The corridors of the third floor were quiet. It seemed that none of the undead had managed to get there during the night.

Danny went to the emergency stairwell to check if any of the zombies had stumbled their way inside, but the place was empty as well. After that, Danny made his way to the second floor. Everything remained as he had left it the previous day. It looked like Luke had kept to his word and stayed inside his room and the barricade still stood strong, blocking the way to the first floor.

‘Perfect, now it is time to decide how to deal with the remaining horde.’

Danny was not confident that he would be able to explore the first floor like he did the previous ones. The close proximity to the ground level made it so that the chances of him being detected by the larger groups of undead who stayed at the lowest floor and roamed all around the factory’s compound was fairly high.

Too high for him to risk it.

So far, he had made good progress in clearing the place, however, if he just proceeded as usual and during his exploration of the first floor he attracted the attention of the undead downstairs, causing them to come up the stairway, he would have no option other than to flee through the emergency stairwell to the roof to avoid being surrounded on both sides and jump back to the water tower, leaving the factory grounds momentarily.

He held no illusion that he would be able to hold his ground on the roof against more than a hundred raging zombies.

If that came to pass, all the work he put up in erecting the barricades and creating layers of defenses would go to waste and he would have to find a new point of entry to the factory grounds, starting the process all over again from a different direction.

Instead, Danny decided to take a more head-on approach this time. It was a calculated risk, but he felt like pulling it off was within his capabilities.

His idea was simple.

He had already fortified the stairway in two different points – the entrance to the second and third floors respectively. From there, he would improve his defenses even further by clogging the passage. At every step from the top to bottom, Danny would place any objects he could find, like beds, filing cabinets, and whatever else he got his hands on to narrow the passage, making it so that only a single person – or zombie in this case – could go through at a time.

His hope was that in doing so, he would be able to funnel his enemies every step of the way, dealing with one at a time and stepping back whenever he needed to get some space or breathing room.

Since by doing this, Danny would establish a uniform battlefield, spanning at least two sets of stairs – two from the second floor to the third and whatever else he managed to claim from the second floor to the first one until he was detected – he thought he had ample room to deal with any and all undead as they came.

He also had the whole third floor hallway to retreat to in case he needed, from the end of the stairway to the entrance of the emergency stairwell. From there, he could head to the roof and flee if he failed to handle the waves of zombies.

‘I think this will work.’ Danny nodded to himself and got to work as soon as his mind was made up.

The whole process of trapping the third floor hallway and the stairs did not take very long. With his improved strength, Danny felt almost no strain lifting the heavy objects and carrying them to their allotted location.

Still, once he had completely narrowed the passages of the topmost sets of stairs and third floor main hallway, he still took 10 minutes or so to take a rest and adjust his mindset.

He did not feel tired, but he wouldn’t have time to catch his breath once the battle started, so better make sure he was in tiptop shape before getting the party going.

After that, Danny went upstairs and left his backpack on the roof. He wouldn’t be needing it anytime soon and it would only get in his way during combat in any case.

On himself, Danny only had his trusty hammer and a spare which was snugly placed in his toolbelt, just in case he dropped his weapon for whatever reason. He also made sure to check his gear and armor to see if everything was in place and in perfect condition before continuing.

Lastly, Danny went to the barricade on the second floor and opened the way. There were no zombies waiting for him on the other side, so he started expanding his kill corridor. He had no reason to stop furthering his death hallway before he was spotted given that the longer it was, the more room he had to maneuver when things really got heated.

He kept going back and forth to the second floor. He had left a bunch of furniture pieces ready for him to pick up for just that purpose of expanding his ever-growing corridor of death.

It didn’t take very long for the first zombies of the day to spot him though. Once he got sufficiently close to the first floor, a couple of the undead creatures stumbled their way up the stairs and towards their prey.

Danny didn’t get flustered. He safely deposited the plant pot he had been carrying to his side and readied himself to receive his enemies. He would show them who was the hunter and who was the prey.

The first one, who was a fair distance ahead of the lagging zombie, was quickly dispatched with a one-handed swing to the top of its head. The creature’s body instantly crumpled, like a piece of meat dropped from the butcher’s hook.

Danny had plenty of time to reposition himself while he waited for his next opponent to get near. The following creature posed no bigger challenge than the first one.

Seeing it stumble on the body of his first kill – and already expecting the outcome – Danny aimed a little lower with a horizontal backhanded swing, catching his enemy straight on its left temple with his hammer head. He could feel the skull of the creature give in from the vibrations that travelled to his hand through the handle of his hammer.

Having disposed of both his enemies quickly enough, Danny waited with bated breath to see if the short scuffle had attracted anymore opponents. However, as the seconds went by, Danny realized it would take more than that to truly agitate the horde downstairs.

Not that he was unhappy with that.

The longer it took for them to discover him, the more time Danny had to improve and stretch his kill corridor. There was no such thing as overpreparation when it came down to his personal safety.

Danny grabbed both corpses at once and hauled them to the second floor before depositing them in one of the closest rooms. Keeping the way clear was in his best interest after all. He wanted his enemies to stumble and fall, not himself.

After that, Danny continued to carry over objects and build up on his defenses.

‘Things are shaping up nicely.’ He thought, pleased with how things were turning out. At this point he was almost at the first floor. His worst predictions had him facing waves of undead by now, so every inch he could take beyond that, he would take gladly.

Sadly, good times never lasted. As soon as Danny stepped on the last step between the first and second floors, he was detected by some of the zombies that remained on that last floor above ground.

A quick look told him that there were way more zombies here than on the second floor. In fact, the number of undead creatures on the first floor easily surpassed both the second and third ones combined.

There were a whole lot of them.

‘I guess it makes sense that the closer I get to the ground, the more opposition I’m going to face.’ Danny spent his last free seconds on this tangential thought before firmly gripping his hammer and stepping back to position himself inside his death corridor.

He could already feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins. His sight was laser focused up ahead as he waited for the first among many to show his face to introduce it to his trusty weapon. Danny did not have to wait long.

The leading zombie came quickly, rushing from the first floor and bending to its left to get inside his kill zone. However, the poor creature barely had time to present himself as a threat before receiving the steel head of Danny’s hammer to his face. The resounding crunch that followed announcing its demise as the creature flopped back, falling to the ground on its back.

Danny did not have time to relish his swift victory though, as another one came after the first quickly enough.

With a horizontal swing with just enough force to get the job done, Danny easily took care of the newcomer as well, and watched as its body fell to the steps below him.

From that point onward, Danny had little time to catch his breath or reorient himself as, one after the other, the undead creatures piled into his death corridor.

Danny could not think about anything else other than swinging his hammer. Left, right, downward, kick and step back. Like a precise machine he kept swinging his hammer, punching and kicking to buy himself time or stepping back to clear some space between himself and his foes.

Danny was well accustomed to fighting those creatures. By now, hundreds of them had been felled by his hand. However, never in such explosive numbers at once and never without rest between each fight. Danny was really putting his newfound impressive stamina to the test.

After the twentieth creature, Danny stopped counting. He only cared to focus on his opponent and his opponent alone. The cacophony of grumbles, roars and groans that came from further down the stairs confirmed to him that Danny had truly kicked the hornet’s nest.

The horde had awoken and it was out for blood. His blood.

However, Danny quickly suppressed the errant thoughts. ‘Let them come.’ He thought to himself as he dedicated one hundred percent of his attention to the creature in front of him. They would all come face to face with him sooner or later and only one of them would prevail.

Their reward – his fleshy meat and, according to Tutu, tasty blood. His reward – another opponent until none remained.