“HANK! YOU HAVE A VISITOR!” Sally cupped her hands around her mouth and screamed at the closed door to Hank’s office.

Immediately after, sounds of something dropping to the floor followed by muffled curses and angry steps approaching the door travelled from inside the room.

“Goddamit Sally, I’ve already told you a million times to stop screaming! You don’t need to yell like that! I’m old, not deaf!” Hank opened the door forcefully, as if the wooden object was the target of his annoyance.

Sally, on her turn, smiled deviously at Hank’s outburst, showing a completely unrepentant attitude while facing the towering man.

Pleased with the successful prank she had pulled on Hank, Sally smiled sweetly, ignoring Hank’s protesting outburst entirely before saying with the most charming tone she could come up with, “Danny’s back and wanted to see you.”

Then, she gestured with one hand demurely, as if her previous devilish persona had been just a mirage and she was the paragon of innocence. An entirely well-behaved lady.

Taking notice of Danny for the first time - whom stood to the side watching Hank and Sally’s back and forth with amusement – Hank turned his head around and nodded at him.

The first time Danny saw them like this all those days ago, he had been a bit thrown off by their display. He felt it strange how someone in a lower station could be so blatantly disrespectful towards their hierarchic superior – and the most powerful and influential man at the settlement – like Sally was.

Now, however, he didn’t bat an eye at their shenanigans. Danny came to realize that Sally was much more than a mere underling or a secretary to Hank. Their relationship went further than the simple bonds of employment and hierarchy. Though what exactly they were to each other, he was not privy to.

In any case, he found it amusing to watch their interactions all the same. Sally had some of that impish daughter vibe to her that Danny felt was quite endearing.

“Hi there, lad. Sorry about the lass, she is getting trickier to deal with as time goes on. I think its high time someone taught her some manners,” Hank said while staring down the much more diminutive in size girl.

“Oh, what could you possibly mean by that? I have no idea.” Sally said while blinking her eyes successively, as if she was confused by Hank’s statement, though her façade of innocence was not fooling anyone.

Hank merely shook his head and clicked his tongue before he gestured his visitor to come inside his office, clearly no longer wishing to deal with Sally’s antics.

Following the older man’s prompt, Danny went inside the room whilst the playful girl smiled at him and waved him goodbye with one hand behind her back until Hank finally closed the door behind him.

“Sigh. The lass is getting bolder and bolder these days. I swear, she needs something to distract herself with other than pulling pranks on this old man,” Hank said while rubbing his forehead and walking to his desk with a tired face. “God knows it must incredibly boring spending her days sitting there at the front desk all alone, but she will be the death of me if she keeps this up…” He concluded as he sat heavily on the padded office chair.

“But enough of that,” Hank slowly wiped his face and beard downward with both hands, as if the gesture helped him shift gears and recover his business-like attitude. “You didn’t come here to listen to me whining.”

Then Hank gave Danny a once over, his gaze stopping momentarily at the many tears on his equipment and the dried blood splotches he sported all around his outfit.

“Damn lad, it seems like you had a date with a dinosaur and she was not happy that you didn’t want to pay for the full meal. Come take a seat.” Hank rubbed his chin as he finished his quick inspection before inviting Danny to join him at the other side of his table, sitting across from him.

“Did you go to the factory? I told you it was no easy nut to crack. At least you came back in one piece… well, mostly. Now that you have returned, we can start planning for a way to effectively tackle this obstacle in front of us. I have gathered a few others that are willing to join us in this expedition while you were away.” He said as he reached for a booklet and a pen that were sitting atop his table.

Hank’s question had been a rhetorical one. He had assumed that Danny had gone to the factory and that, once confronted with the massive waves of undead located there, returned humbled and defeated as his mauled gear attested to.

Obviously, he was wrong. Not about visiting the factory and it being a tough nut to crack, that much was true, but about the following results.

Pulling the chair back to join the settlement’s commander, Danny sat down and smiled at Hank before answering.

“I did go to the factory, true. But there’s no need to plan any further or gather any more men. I cleared the place like I said I would.”

Upon hearing his visitor’s words, Hank’s hands paused midair, his pen hovering above the white pages of the opened book as his gaze left the object to focus on Danny’s eyes. His eyebrows were raised, painting on his face a mix of surprise, incredulity and suspicion.

“… you said you cleared the factory?”

“Yes. I did.”

“The entire place?” Hank asked once more, not sure if he was hearing wrong, if the man in front of him was playing some sort of trick, or what other possible angle his visitor had to say such things. He couldn’t help it. The idea of one man dealing with hundreds of zombies by himself was way too ludicrous.

“That’s right.”

After Danny’s second confirmation, silence hung over the room for a while, until Hank finally closed the booklet in front of him, laid his pen gently on top of it before leaning over his desk. His elbows placed on the wooden surface and his chin resting atop the back of his hands, his interlocked fingers supporting its weight.

“Now, this ain’t some sort of game, lad. You might have been given the wrong impression of me after seeing me and the lass joking around. That’s understandable. However, you must know that I take matters regarding the safety and stability of the camp very, very, seriously.” Hank said, making sure to highlight his point as he stared straight into Danny’s eyes.

His message was clear – he would not tolerate any sort of misbehavior or delivery of false information when it came to issues of utmost importance for the camp’s security and well-being.

Though he was open to friendly banter, there was a time and place for everything and Hank was drawing a clear line for Danny to see. False reports were dealt with severe punishments here.

“I’ll ask you once again, just to make sure we are on the same page. Did you clear the factory? The very same one I showed you on the map previously? You are not pulling my leg, right?”

“Yes. I did. No leg-pulling from my part.” Danny nodded, unbothered by the older man’s heavy gravitas and still in a good mood. There was no reason for him to worry, after all, he was being truthful.

Besides, given all the pressure he had to deal with every day, with numerous zombies trying to take a piece of him and his own blood pact with a demon looming over him, it would take way more than the older man’s stern gaze to make him falter or second-guess himself.

He was way past the point that a mere stare down from someone much older and bigger could make him sweat.

After staring at the younger man sitting in front of him for a few silent seconds, and after failing to detect any signs of deception, of falsehood, coming from his visitor, Hank lowered his arms, crossing them one over the other atop the table and leaned forward - closer to Danny - before clicking his tongue and finally asking, “How did you do it?”

To that, Danny humorously slowly shook his head a couple of times while tsking thrice and swinging his raised right index finger from side to side to the sound of his clicking tongue before replying.

“No, no, no. A good magician never reveals his secrets, you know.” His eyes and mouth smiling as he delivered his line as if he was an experienced performer.

To his merit, Hank held his annoyance at Danny’s retort quite well and merely grumbled at his seemingly daft response.

“Now, don’t start acting all cute with me lad. I have my fair share of headaches dealing with the lass already without you mounting to my suffering.”

“I wasn’t aware you thought me cute, Hank. Though I appreciate the compliment, sadly, I don’t swing that way.” Relentlessly and ruthlessly, Danny continued jabbing at the towering man.

Somehow, he knew that Hank would not take offence to their little back and forth so long as Danny did not cross the lines he had established, which he wasn’t.

Besides, throughout all the gore, anxiousness and severity of his usual routine of planning his own future and worrying about demons and monsters, he really enjoyed those few and far in between tension-free moments.

Interacting with the survivor’s camp residents gave him the respite he didn’t even know he needed.

People were not machines in the end. We could not operate at 100% efficiency all the time. Even if he was more resilient than most, Danny could not escape the limitations that all humans were subjected to. He could not escape his own humanity.

He too needed to lay down his burdens every once in a while, and interact with others in a non-violent environment.

“Ha ha. Very funny.” Hank muttered before adopting a sterner countenance and narrowing his eyes at the man sitting across the table. “Seriously though, how did you do it?”

However, Danny was unaffected by the hulk of a man’s attempt at coercing an answer out of him. Sadly for Hank, there was no way that he would be shedding a light on this mystery as it touched matters surrounding his own baseline – his very own secrets.

The commander’s curiosity would have to go unsatisfied.

To Hank’s question, Danny simply shrugged his shoulders before speaking. “Come on now Hank, If I was trying to trick you somehow, do you really think I would choose such an easily verifiable lie? All it takes for you to discern whether or not I am speaking the truth is sending a couple of scouts there. Then you’ll know if there are any zombies remaining there or not.” He stated, completely unworried by Hank’s apparent austerity and disbelief. He was comfortable in the knowledge that facts would back up his words.

“I guess that’s true enough.” Hank conceded after a moment, leaning back into his chair and adopting a much more comfortable posture, his body language abandoning his posturing for answers in favor of a more accepting and welcoming attitude.

Next, Hank tapped his fingers rhythmically at the table’s wooden surface, frowning his brow in thought. Danny on the other hand, patiently waited on his own comfortable seat at the sound of the commander’s tip-tapping finger. He had no problem with waiting for Hank to gather his thoughts and wits about him, happy to give the man the time he needed to think things over.

A few moments later, they were out of the room as Hank barked orders all around the place. He had been convinced by Danny’s rational arguments, and soon after, they left the camp accompanied by a convoy of a few trucks and some armed men, heading directly to the factory compound while Sally remained behind as Hank’s representative to hold the fort while they were gone.

Though he could read the mood well enough to see that the men were tense - Hank himself included though the older man hid it better than his underlings -, Danny was not worried. After all, he had none of the misgivings that his company harbored about their trip, since he already knew what awaited them at their destination.

He knew that this silent tension that occupied the interior of the truck he traveled in would soon be replaced by relief and elation as facts would soon prove his words to be true and decree the end of the settlement’s food troubles.