"Hi. I'm Dave. I'm looking for your boss."
Most of the people in the small group just stared back at Dave and said nothing. A lone, little girl pointed to one side.
Dave looked directly at the little girl. "Thank you."
The little girl looked confused and smiled.
Dave walked in the direction that the little girl had pointed. There appeared to be the top of an elevator shaft against which someone had hung a tarpaulin. Under the tarpaulin was a messy collection of blankets. As Dave approached, a young man approached Dave quickly from the side. Dave tried to orientate himself and noted that it was from the direction that Dave had talked to Eric.
"Hold up," said the young man.
"Are you Sid?" guessed Dave.
"Ah. Yeah." said Sid looking uncomfortable.
"I'm Dave," said Dave as he held out his hand towards Sid.
Sid blinked before reaching out and shaking Dave's hand.
"I'm not a threat," said Dave. "I'm just passing by. All I want are some fresh clothes from downstairs."
"I'll be deciding if you're a threat," said a voice awkwardly from beneath the tarpaulin.
Dave looked towards this new voice. Another young man, probably only slightly older than Sid, crawled out from beneath the tarpaulin before standing up. Dave noticed that there was a woman still under the tarpaulin - she stayed wrapped in a blanket and looked to be sleeping. At first Dave thought that this might hint at some sort of relationship between the two, on a second look Dave noticed that the woman appeared really ill. Dave was prepared to change his opinion of any man that showed this sort of compassion.
"Okay. Well, I'm Dave," said Dave holding out his hand.
The young man stared at Dave's hand.
"There's nothing wrong," said Dave. "I'm not carrying the plague."
The young man looked out in the direction of the highway and looked nervous. Maybe making a reference to disease wasn't a good idea.
The young man finally shrugged and reached out to Dave's hand and shook it. "I'm Justin."
"I gather you are running this place?" ask Dave.
"Yep," said Justin with a fragile pride that confused Dave.
"This is a bit of a challenging time," said Dave testing Justin. "It's important that people step up and do their bit."
"I guess so," said Justin in a disinteresting manner.
Dave had a low opinion of this group. Maybe he was the one who was mistaken. Maybe he had some wacky idea of people working busily together to overcome any disasters that come their way. This plain apathy was a little unsettling to Dave. It seemed that this group had accepted Justin as their leader but there was more here that Dave couldn't parse.
"I don't want to get in your way," said Dave. "I've been wearing the same clothes for days now. I wouldn't mind something clean. I'll grab a few things from downstairs and be on my way."
"Where are you going?" asked Sid.
"The city is hell. Especially at night. There was once a lot of people in the city, now there's a lot of dead walking the street."
Although Dave had the term 'walkers', he knew that it was his own term and that no one else would really know it. Still, what other term could he use to describe what he had seen. For now Dave would stick to using 'others' or maybe even the 'dead'. Until some communications network was build up again, trying to push terminology might not go anywhere.
"We don't get many of those things roaming around here," said Sid. "Especially not during the day."
"That's what I noticed," said Dave. "Which is why I'm travelling during the day."
"So where are you going?" repeated Justin.
"I don't have a goal," said Dave "but I want to keep going west. The fewer people around, the happier I'll be. The city must have crowds of hundreds if not thousands of the dead. If I get somewhere rural I might only end up seeing individual dead. I've not yet had to fight one of those dead but if I do get into trouble then I'd prefer to be facing just one instead of hundreds."
"That sounds a bit vague," said Justin. "You don't have a particular place that you trying to get to?"
"When all this happened I spent most of the first day trying to get out of the central area of the city. I did find a running TV at one point. There was a news show on, but they didn't really know what was going on either. They just sounded lost and gave out no useful emergency advice. I was hoping that the News would report on an evacuation point. Then the power went out completely and I've not been able to turn on a TV since."
"We've not had any luck trying to find out some news either," suggested Sid.
Dave was starting to noticed a tonal difference. Sid was a bit rough but it seemed like it was because he didn't know what was going on. Justin on the other hand seemed really vague and confused.
"So yeah," continued Dave. "I just guessing that there might be an evacuation zone to the west. It just seems the safest place."
"You're not working with much there," said Sid. "You seem to be basing your actions on a lot of guesswork."
"That's true," said Dave. "But one has to start with something. If I waited until I knew everything I'd be still back in the middle of the city."
"I don't know," said Justin expressing a lack of commitment.
Dave suspected that Justin was worried that Dave's arrival would cause a change to the hierarchy that Justin was somewhat at the top of. Dave was a little less impressed with this apathetic group of people - it wasn't something that he would enjoy taking over, so Justin had no reason to fear Dave's arrival.
"I don't intend to stay long," said Dave. "I'll grab some clean clothes and be on my way. If I do find
