“I will leave you guys to it then. Nice to see you again, Danny.” Sally said before making her way out of the room carrying a stack of documents with her.

“You won’t be sticking around?” Danny asked as she approached the door.

“Unfortunately, there’s much to do and not enough of me to go around,” she said with a teasing smirk on her face. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other later.” She nodded at him and closed the door, leaving only the two men inside.

“Come here lad. Don’t just stand there like that, take a seat.” Hank gestured to the chair in front of him and across his work desk.

“So… you have a job for me?” Danny asked whilst taking the offered seating place.

“Yes, I do. But before we get into that, give me a moment to finish with these documents, will you?” His gaze fixed on the paper in front of him as he scribbled some notes here and there.

“Done!” Hank exclaimed a few instants later, placing his pen down. “Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee? Beer? Something else? Just name it and I’ll have someone fetch it for you.”

“Thanks. I’ll have a coffee then.”

“Great. I think I’ll have one cup as well.” Hank said before passing some instructions through a landline telephone that rested on his desk, which Danny only took notice of now that it was being used. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t there the last time he was in Hank’s office so it had to be a new addition.

The last time he visited the settlement – just a few days ago, really –, there were no working phones, only radios. It seemed that during the short period he was away completing a job, the people back here hadn’t been idle. It might not seem like much, but it was a right step in the direction of a full-recovery from the downfall of modern human society.

After hanging up the phone, and seeing his guest looking at the communication device with curiosity, Hank started explaining the settlement’s new developments to him.

“Oh, right! I guess you haven’t seen those yet.”

“Now that things have calmed down somewhat, we’ve been sifting through the people in order to find individuals with particular skillsets useful for the survival and improvement of our camp.” The commander said while massaging his sore wrists and stretching his neck from side to side.

“After all, we can’t sit on our asses and wait for things to get better by themselves, right lad?” The man said in good humor after loosening his tense muscles and leaned on his desk.

“Anyway, though we are not nearly done screening everyone, we already found some useful talents among the residents of the camp. One of them managed to set up a few landlines in key locations. They only connect to one another however, so they can only be used for internal communication. Still, it goes without saying that just this is already making my life a whole lot easier.” Hank exhaled in relief.

“I can imagine.”

Just the added efficiency of instantaneous communication between two key locations in the settlement was enough to reduce the camp’s workload by a significant amount. Though it was true that, technically, this wasn’t such a huge innovation since they already had radios that did basically the same thing, one can never have too many options.

Besides, radios were a finite resource that consumed batteries. Though they couldn’t be said to be hurting for supplies, most of them were diverted towards maintaining the camp’s military structure and operations, meaning that the bureaucratic and administrative facets of the settlement suffered the shortage instead.

Even Hank’s own office – the workplace of the factual leader of the settlement, the most influential and powerful man around – was not immune to the insufficiency of resources and could not afford a dedicated communication device until now.

They kept talking for a little while about unimportant matters before being interrupted by knocks on the door. Shortly after, a female clerk wearing an office suit came inside carrying their steaming cups on a wooden tray. She placed it on top of the desk under Hank’s orders before beating a swift retreat and closing the door.

“Well, I guess that’s enough small talk for now. I heard you just came back from finishing a job. How is that working out for you?” The older man said, bringing the cup filled with the hot beverage to his lips at the end.

Even though Danny hadn’t mentioned anything about his last job to the man in front of him, he was not surprised in discovering that Hank was well-informed about his activities. The man controlled pretty much everything here after all.

It would be easy to have someone keep track of him, even more so considering that Danny used the staff from the warehouse to set up most of his jobs nowadays, which were all people Hank could make use of to keep tabs on him.

Not that he cared, really.

His relationship with Hank was entirely cordial if not friendly, and the man had kept every single one of his promises to Danny so far.

In fact, after he took care of the issue regarding Lara’s family and returned to the camp, Hank did not waste time to fulfill his end of the bargain – namely, providing him with a handgun, bullets, a silencer and giving him a few lessons on how to properly handle his new gun and take care of it.

Honestly, Danny’s new firearm haven’t seen much use ever since he acquired it. Now that he was basically superhuman, zombies didn’t pose much of a threat to him. In low numbers, he had no trouble with killing every single one of them without a scratch on himself. On the other hand, when too many undead grouped up together, it always felt more prudent to retreat and search for a more advantageous positioning or a softer target instead of engaging in a difficult fight.

Moreover, from that one job, he only earned himself 30 bullets - two magazines with 15 rounds each. Enough for emptying his 9mm pistol and then recharge it once.

Given the limited number of bullets he had available and the difficulty in getting more – which only got harder with each passing day –, he had to choose carefully when to spend them.

That said, his cautious nature added by his overwhelming strength meant that his gun went entirely unused until now

…And maybe that was for the best. After all, to say that he had to make use of his gun was equivalent to say that he was forced into a corner. That he fell into dire straits and had no better alternative than to use it. One could imagine that this was not a good place to be in.

Better to remain safe than to find an opportunity to play with his new ‘toy’.

Digressions apart and back to the conversation between the two men, Danny shrugged in response to Hank’s question and then said, “I can’t complain, really. Most requests I take are relevant enough that I feel that I’m doing some good, which feels nice. The pay is decent as well.”

“Hmm… that’s good to know.” The commander smacked his lips, savoring the bitter taste of his drink before continuing, “my men tell me you have been a great help around the camp. Are you sure I can’t convince you to work directly under me? I can give you even more than what you currently get from your odd jobs, not to mention special privileges reserved for distinguished members of the settlement.”

“I appreciate the offer, Hank. I really do.” He paused and took a sip of his cup. “But my answer remains the same. I value my freedom and I wish to remain independent. It’s nothing personal.”

“I see…” Hank nodded his head, not at all disappointed by this last rejection as he already expected the outcome. However, Danny suspected this was not the last time he would be asked the same question if past interactions were anything to go by.

Hank was nothing if not persistent.

“Back to business then.” The military man drunk the last of his beverage in one gulp before putting his cup down. His face turning serious soon after.

“The job I have for you is… well, there’s not really other way to say it. It’s strange.”

“Strange?” Danny repeated while cocking his eyebrow.

“Yes. Strange.” Hank nodded his head. “To be more precise, the information I received from my men is the weird thing in this case.”

“As you are well aware, I periodically send out armed scouting teams to search our surroundings for survivors, resources and potential enemies.” Hank looked at his guest and seeing him nod in agreement, the commander continued with his explanation.

“Those expeditions are extremely important to our settlement, as they are the main way of obtaining information about the outside world we currently have available. Without the internet, cellphones and other means of communication, all we can do is go see for ourselves what the hell is going on.”

“Zombies, for all the mess they caused are only one concern. Who’s to say that there isn’t something even shittier waiting around the corner now that the dead are walking among us? Maybe there’s something else, maybe there’s nothing, but the only way to know for sure is for us to go look for ourselves. Humans can also be pretty nasty when they want to. In any case, we can’t afford to wait for the problems come looking for us. We need to be proactive!” He said and smacked the table with his right fist with enough force that his empty cup jumped and toppled to the side.

Danny very much agreed with Hank’s opinion. Knowing what he knew about what was out there and what was coming their way, he felt that the older man had the right mindset. Still, he chose to say nothing about it as he watched Hank picking up the toppled cup with his big and clumsy hands before putting it out of the way so that he would not end up breaking it in another moment of passionate speech.

There were two very simple reasons as to why he hadn’t revealed what he knew about the invaders to Hank.

One, there was not much they could prepare against the invading forces besides what was already being done. The older man had already begun placing countermeasures and contingencies against raiding parties and other likely human threats, and since Danny was not willing to reveal the existence of the crystals, his trump card, that was all they could reasonably do.

Two, from what he knew of the shrewd leader of the camp, Danny was sure that if he was to reveal the information he had about the invaders, Hank would definitely try to control him, possibly even trying to imprison him to extract as much as he could from him, regardless of how cordial and harmonious their past interactions had been.

If there’s one thing that Lara’s family sad experience showed, was that the man would not hesitate from doing what he thought was necessary to protect the camp, even if he had to harm an innocent in the process.

Though he didn’t judge the older man for his past decisions and actions, he had no intention to be locked up and interrogated. Thus, revealing what he knew was a no go.

“Anyway… I got a little bit excited there. Sorry about that.” Hank laughed awkwardly.

“Some fools have been pestering me lately to stop sending expeditions outside now that our food problems have been resolved. Bah! Their short-sightedness is frustrating me beyond belief!” He said while rubbing his temples.

“…But that has nothing to do with you. Now, where was I again before I got sidetracked?” He asked and leaned back on his chair with his arms crossed, brows furrowed and a pensive expression on his face.

“You told me you got some strange information from your men. I am assuming that the expeditions have something to with it? That’s why you mentioned them?” Danny questioned, trying to get Hank back on track.

“Yes! Precisely! Thank you, lad.” He clapped his hands and agreed with his usual loud and boisterous voice.

“You see, we found a large grouping of survivors quite a few ways from here. Multiple hundreds, maybe even thousands of survivors.”

“Really? That’s great, isn’t it?” Even if this newfound cluster of survivors didn’t end up joining Hank’s camp like many others before them did, they could still represent a valuable trading partner to exchange goods. So long they were not outright hostile, that was good news for the camp.

“It would be. There’s just one small problem… none of them seem to speak English.”