Danny dislodged his hammer from the skull of the downed zombie he had just killed. He then crouched down next to the unmoving body and cleaned the blood and gore from his weapon with the clothing of his defeated foe.

After making sure his hammer was decently cleansed, Danny looked at the highway that stretched as far as his eyes could see. He would be following its length until he reached his destination, Clear Water village – the place where Lara’s dad and uncle had gone to.

There weren’t that many vehicles abandoned in the highway as far as he could tell. When the earthquakes started half-a-month ago, it was already nighttime, therefore the traffic that usually went through the area had already been quite limited.

Danny didn’t know how many people came through the road ever since then, but he felt that there couldn’t have been that many, given that he wasn’t seeing many ran over zombies.

However, as there weren’t that many zombies scattered across the highway in the first place, he could not discard the possibility that people driving through merely avoided hitting the undead, swerving around them. It was completely feasible if you paid attention and drove carefully.

Seeing no more enemies coming his way, Danny started to process his newly gotten gains, going back to the dirty business of freeing the crystals from the inside of his enemies’ skulls. He took a toolkit from his backpack that he had dedicated to this exclusive purpose and started working.

He was already getting quite proficient at cracking heads open, but no matter how fast he managed to do it or how efficiently, Danny simply could not avoid getting splattered with blood and other unidentifiable pieces of what used to be a human.

After leaving Lara’s house, Danny headed straight here with a stable and fairly decent pace. He was still adjusting to the new extra weight he was carrying on his back, but he could comfortably run for a very long time without getting tired given his new strength and stamina.

Danny was already used to travel at this increased speed, something akin to a steady slow run. Neither walking nor sprinting, he crossed the distance in a comfortable rhythm.

Simply walking to where he needed to go was too slow and too cautious of an approach. He wouldn’t be able to get very far during the day in that case. On the other hand, going too fast meant that he would not be able to properly assess his surroundings, and would also make too much noise, making spotting enemies harder while attracting them easier.

So, Danny opted for something in between, which was neither too careless nor too slow. This way, he could cover a significant distance while also keeping the risks under an acceptable limit.

After adding three new soul gems to his collection, Danny organized the tools he had been using and stored them back where they belonged, before he picked up his pack from the ground and strapped it on his back again.

There were still a few hours until sundown, so Danny could keep going for a while longer before he had to start searching for shelter. Therefore, after checking the time on his wristwatch and checking the sun’s position, he started jogging along the way once more.

Danny could not stray too far from the road. He was searching for Lara’s family after all, so he had to check the route they had gone through. For all he knew, Lara’s family might never have made it to Clear Water village, so he couldn’t simply head straight to the place in the hopes of finding them there. Doing so was the same as leaving to fate whether he would be able to find them or not, and Danny was not someone that usually left such things to chance.

In order to make sure he wouldn’t just miss them or skip any clues about their whereabouts, he had to go through the whole path they supposedly travelled. That was the best course of action if he wanted to make sure he would bump into them or what remained of them - if there was anything to be found at all, of course.

“Doing the right thing sucks.” Danny thought while sighing. Since he had decided to assist Lara in her quest to find her family, Danny would do it properly, making sure to do his best in investigating what misfortune had befallen them.

Many things could have happened to Lara’s family. They might have gotten into an accident or the car might have malfunctioned along the way, forcing them to abandon it. There were just too many possible scenarios.

By following the road, Danny would be able to discard some of them since he knew how they looked and which truck they drove, meaning he would be able to easily identify both the people and the car if they were still at the highway for some reason, or never left it in the first place.

If he searched the whole length of the route that Lara’s dad and uncle should have travelled, and still did not find them, then there was a good chance that they had managed to reach their destination in one piece. What happened afterwards, was a mystery for later. Danny was taking a step-by-step approach, so first he had to exclude the highway from his current search area.

Thinking like that, Danny proceeded on his quest in a methodic manner. He kept running along the road, dispatching any zombies he came across and gathering their crystals before he restarted running again. The fact that there weren’t many undead in large groups meant that Danny had quite a leisure time travelling like that.

As the sun was already starting to set, Danny spotted a motel ahead of him while he was on his way and decided that this was the place that he would be spending the night on. A roof over his head, and a bed to lay on sounded very appealing to him, and Danny felt that he could not ask for much more.

It only took him a minute to reach the place after seeing it.

The place consisted entirely of a single box-shaped building with two floors. The structure was painted in white, with beige and pink stripes, which wasn’t much to Danny’s taste to be fair. Even then, he was not looking to be pleased aesthetically, but to find a secluded place to rest his head on.

There were about ten doors on the second floor, side-by-side, which Danny assumed were the rentable rooms. On the ground floor, however, there were not as many rooms, given that quite a bit of space was occupied by the lobby and other facilities necessary to run the place.

The lobby was located on the far left of the building and could be entirely seen from the outside through the glass double doors and glass panels that comprised its frontmost and left walls. Danny could not see any signs of struggle inside, and there weren’t any zombies shambling inside the place from what he could tell from where he stood.

This time around, before trying the main door, Danny took his time to loop around the building and see if he could spot any alternative point of entry. Last time he had been caught by Lara’s well-thought-of trap, but he was looking forward to not making the same mistake again. Hopefully, that had been the first and last time he got ensnared like that.

After checking all the sides of the edifice, Danny decided to enter the building through the second floor. On the opposite side of the structure from the entrance hall, there was a dumpster resting against the wall, which Danny could make use of to reach the second floor.

Having made his mind, Danny got on top of the dumpster before jumping up and grabbing the steel railing of the open-air corridor that passed in front of every single room on the second floor. Afterwards, Danny pulled himself upwards and easily jumped over the railing, finally getting into the building.

Even when carrying his fully loaded backpack, Danny had no trouble hoisting himself upwards and over the railing. He could very clearly feel the difference in his strength from before he started using the crystals. The action of pulling all that weight up and over the railing, which should have been reasonably taxing, had been a piece of cake for him.

Danny estimated that he had enough strength as of now to easily lift double his own weight, which was something that was previously impossible for him, even if he had always paid attention to his own fitness.

Danny then took his trusty hammer from its holster and slowly and carefully walked along the corridor, briefly stopping and placing his ear close to each door while holding his breath to see if he could hear any occupants inside. Dead or otherwise.

After traversing the whole corridor without detecting anything out of the ordinary, Danny reached a flight of stairs that led downwards, directly into the lobby. He then cautiously went down and looked around.

From the inside, the entrance hall looked exactly the same as from the outside. He still could not find any signs of a fight or struggle, neither he saw any indication that there were undead in the vicinity. There were no blood splotches anywhere in the room and everything seemed to be neat and tidy.

He continued his exploration by approaching the wooden door that was roughly on the opposite side of the room from where he had come from. It was the only door in the reception area other than the main entrance glass ones, so Danny guessed that they led to the few rooms that were not meant to be rented in this motel, and were instead dedicated to maintenance, storage and other day-to-day operation-related matters.

After getting close and failing to hear anything worthy of notice on the other side of the door, Danny placed one hand on the handle while keeping his hammer raised and at the ready with the other. He then swiftly opened the door, however, he was faced with only a plain empty corridor and a couple more rooms, proving that his caution was unnecessary.

Afterwards, Danny checked everything he could on the ground floor – other than the rentable rooms that could only be accessed from the outside –, before concluding that the place was truly empty.

Danny did not know if the place was already empty when the apocalypse begun or if it had been abandoned afterwards, but he did not care either way. He would only be spending one night there before continuing on his way, so he did not feel particularly compelled to find out more about the motel’s past.

Danny then came back to the reception area and started rummaging all drawers and cabinets to find the keys to the place. If when he arrived the place was completely immaculate, then it definitely wasn’t the case anymore. In his unrestrained search for the keys and any other valuable resources, Danny tossed documents aside, broke locks and emptied every furniture piece from all of its contents, littering the floor with all sorts of discarded items.

He could have contained himself and kept the place organized, but he opted to go at it as efficiently and fast as he possibly could instead. Searching the area without making a mess would take a longer time than simply tossing and turning stuff around.

Besides, Danny doubted anyone would care anyway. If the owners were still alive somewhere, they surely knew by this point that their motel business old days of receiving and tending to travelling customers was gone. The zombies and other perils made sure of that.

If anyone ever stepped foot in this place again, Danny was pretty sure it would be someone like him, just looking for a place to crash, or aiming to scavenge the building for anything useable. Definitely not a driver looking for a room to rent.