While still crouching down and without tearing his gaze away from the fracture on the ground, Danny heard the sound of captain Wallace’s footsteps slowly approaching him from behind.

A few seconds later, the man stood side by side with him, still staring incredulously at the horizon. “What do we do now?” He asked.

“I suppose we’ll just have to press on.” Danny answered and stood up, dusting his hands in the process. “Given what we are seeing, I think it is fairly obvious now where your mysterious strangers came from.”

“You think they came from… there?” The captain asked with some uncertainty, gazing at the completely untamed wilderness stretching in front of him. Not a single trace of human civilization in sight. Not a single piece of infrastructure.

“It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise, wouldn’t it?” The younger man replied calmly. “A group with unknown origins pairs quite nicely with a unknown land, right?”

“I guess that makes sense… It’s just… I’m having trouble processing all that. Things just keep getting weirder and weirder. First, a group of people with no ability to speak English appear out of nowhere, and now… this. Whatever this is. This… land shift, or whatever. Is it even safe to cross to the other side?” The captain asked, eyeing the divide with suspicion, as if afraid it would suddenly split him into two if he so much put one foot across.

“You think this is weird? What, because the corpses of dead people rising once more and trying to kill you isn’t?”

“Touché.” The captain relented with a nod. “Still, my point stands. I feel things are getting crazier as time passes.”

“Well, you are not wrong either.” He said and shrugged. “But hey, on the bright side, look,” he skipped to across the fracture. “It’s perfectly safe to cross. It’s just a normal crack on the ground.”

“It appears so.” Wallace nodded his head, his nerves calming down as he directed a scrutinizing gaze towards the younger man before opening his mouth once more. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?” he replied, raising his eyebrow in question.

“How can you keep calm like that, so collected, so centered, facing all of this?” The captain paused, giving himself a moment to deeply inhale the smoke of his cigarette and gather his thoughts, before exhaling it all out and continuing.

“I’ve been paying attention you know? I like to think of myself as an observant man. You didn’t even twitch when we got here. No flinch, no surprise, no nothing. How can someone see the very land shift abruptly before their eyes, witness all that and have no reaction whatsoever? How do you do it?”

Hearing the small squad leader speaking like this and looking into his eyes, Danny understood immediately what was going through the man’s head.

He was simply seeking advice.

Wallace was not accusing Danny of anything nor was he insinuating anything. He simply felt truly and deeply shaken by the whole experience, he felt insignificant and inadequate, and thus, sought answers for his own insecurities from the younger man.

Captain Wallace had his own burdens to carry. He was responsible for the lives of every member of his squad team. In this particular mission, he was also charged with the safety of the people they were escorting. It was easy to forget that this was just an ordinary man who got saddled with a bunch of responsibilities. He had no previous military or police training from before the Apocalypse. He was just a guy who rose up to the occasion and took upon himself the duty of leadership. Just a guy who survived long enough and now had a bunch of people depending on him.

Danny didn’t have any miraculous answers. Yet, when confronted with the captain’s frankness, he still wanted to treat the subject with seriousness.

“There’s not much to it, really. No big secret involved.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked back to stopped vehicles, some of Wallace’s squad members had started to disembark and would soon join the both of them.

“I guess there’s a lot of pretending involved. It’s like you are putting on a mask at first, an impassive expression to hide your true thoughts and emotions. With time, the mask gets easier and easier to wear, and suppressing everything else becomes ever more natural each time. Eventually, the mask becomes just another facet of you. Something as simple to turn on and off as the flick of a switch.”

Turning back towards Wallace, he was met with the pitying gaze of the older man. At some point or the other during his speech, while he was not looking, the captain got something else out of the message he was trying to convey. The gears on Wallace’s head were already turning as he gazed at Danny, conjuring different tragic pasts for the younger man that would explain his cold demeanor. His inherent somberness, indifference and reservation.

Wallace did not know how close to the truth he had come.

“I know it’s not my business but, if you want to talk about anything, I can lend an ear.” The captain offered kindly.

Danny shook his head internally before replying, “Thanks.” He had no intention to take Wallace on his offer and the man had clearly misunderstood something there (or not), but he was thankful for the gesture anyway.

Turning away from the crack, the two men made their way towards the rest of the ten-men squad. After talking it out for a little bit and discussing their options, the group decided to keep heading East and beyond the land’s divide instead of turning around and checking the remaining spots they had marked on their map. Given this new development, they all felt it was more likely that they would find the people they were looking for on the other side of the rupture.

After deciding their course of action, they then got back into the vehicles and started making their way into the unknown territory.

Crossing over did not prove to be a challenge as the fissure on the ground was not wide enough to prevent their passage. Though there were many places along the gigantic split where the gap was, in fact, dangerously large and would have no trouble swallowing their convoy whole, at many other sections, it was barely visible so narrow it was.

Where the road abruptly ended, the crack merely had the width of a fist, so they had no issue driving over it. With a slight bump, they were on the other side and driving slowly through the wilderness.

Prudently enough, all the vehicles they had brought with them were capable of traversing rough terrain. Even the bus had been heavily modified to ensure it would not get stuck or bogged down. With all the bumps and jolts, the trip definitely would not be a comfortable one. However, at the very least, they wouldn’t have to worry about getting stranded in the middle of nowhere.

A few hours later, in the middle of a grassy field somewhere further along their path, the convoy had stopped in its tracks, all the combatants were already out of the cars and spoke in hushed voices.

“Shit, what should we do? With the speed we are travelling we won’t be able to shake them off.” One of Wallace’s man said.

At the distance, one could faintly see the outline of a couple dozen shambling figures heading their way from the direction they had come from.

“It’s going to get dark real soon as well and we still haven’t found a decent shelter to spend the night.” Another squad team member interjected.

“We’ll have to deal with them before spending the night in the open then.” Danny said.

“Here? Out in the open? We’ll be too exposed!” The first man objected.

“There’s nothing we can do about it. Sometimes things simply don’t go our way. We have to adapt to our circumstances.” Danny said firmly, leaving no room for discussion. “Given there’s no place to hide around here, we should avoid firing any guns and keep the noise to a minimum to avoid attracting any further attention.”

Looking at the squad members gathered around him, he asked, “Who among you are confident in your close quarters fighting abilities?”

For a moment, all eyes looked at him with reluctance. No one willing to speak up. Why should they face off against that many undead with no gun support while others got to stay back safe and sound? No one wanted to take upon themselves the thankless task.

“Come on guys, we have to deal with this.” Wallace tried to motivate his people, but his words fell on deaf ears.

“That’s okay, I can deal with it myself. Just make sure to do as I said. No gunfire. If any zombie gets through, take it down quietly.” He said with an impassive expression.

Wallace opened his mouth to protest, seeing that the younger man was going to tackle the danger all by himself, but Danny beat him to the punch before he could object to the plan. Looking at the captain’s eyes, he said with confidence, “It’s okay captain, I’m used to working alone and just a couple dozen zombies won’t be a problem to me.”

“Besides, it’s better if we don’t force anyone who’s not confident in their abilities to come forward. Forcing things and pushing too hard is when accidents happen and plans spiral out of control.”

Wallace seemed to want to say something more, but in the end, he grudgingly nodded his head as his subordinates looked away feeling ashamed, desperately trying to avoid making eye contact with either Danny or their captain.

After settling the issue, Danny turned around and started making his way towards the approaching undead. He meant what he said. Since he was perfectly capable of dealing with the threat by himself, there was no shame in recognizing one’s own limitations. Better to meekly stay back and live to fight another day than to risk your own safety and maybe even others’ as well due to silly pride.

Picking up his speed with a steady jog, Danny dropped his backpack a few ways from the group of shambling figures he focused his eye on and picked up his trusty hammer from his belt.

Given that he had an audience, he had to be careful with what he showed of his prowess. A couple dozen undead with so much free space to kite around, dodge and run were no threat at all. Yet, it was best if he didn’t go overboard when taking them down.

Falling into a steady rhythm, Danny hounded his targets with brutal efficiency. Picking out any stragglers that strayed too far from the main group, he dispatched them with a solid strike to the head. The bodies crumpled down after the steel head of his hammer made intimate contact with their skulls. One hit, one kill.

He was already desensitized to the squelchy sounds that accompanied every swing of his arm, every blow of his weapon. The crunch of bones and splatter of innards had become an everyday occurrence to him by now. The sounds, the smells and the feeling on his hands, the tremor that travelled though his arms after every successful hit, and the liquids that splashed his skins. Everything was becoming second nature to him.

He didn’t know if he should worry. Should he be concerned with the changes he was going through? Should he be concerned that killing something – even if that something should not be alive by any stretch of the imagination – made him feel nothing at all? Was it normal or was he becoming something inhumane?

As the last zombie fell before him, no answers presented themselves to him. Shaking his head to dismiss his distracting thoughts, he looked down at his conquered foes with regret. With Wallace and co. nearby, his prize would have to remain uncollected. There was no way he could extract the crystals without looking incredibly suspicious doing so.

Turning around and coming back the way he came, Danny picked up the bag he had previously discarded further back and returned to the group of spectators who eyed him with both awe and respect in equal measures.