"The people who designed this room really put a lot of effort in it when they designed and built it," said Dave. "It was surprising easier to operate than I had feared it would be."
"Makes sense," said Sid. "This generator is something that you'd only use in case of emergency. When the shit hits the fan you want everything to be as easy as possible or else you'll waste time trying to figure things out and that could cost lives."
Eric walked into the room. He must have sprinted like a cheetah to catch up to the other two by this time. "So that's it?"
Dave nodded. "There's probably a lot more that we can do to secure this place even more."
"This centre is surrounded by roads and parking zones," said Sid, "but beyond that is a tall, wire-mesh fence. Closing that off would create a buffer zone."
Dave looked at Sid with surprise. "That's an absolutely amazing idea. I had only thought as far as securing the building itself. But having extra layers of defence is definitely not a bad thing."
Sid grinned. "Fuck. You'll make an optimist out of me yet."
All three smiled at each other - proud of their efforts.
"Okay," said Dave, "We're not done yet. Let's walk about and double check that this place is locked up."
"We also need to double check that the building is really empty," said Sid. "There's probably a million hiding places."
Dave looked at the generator. "One good thing about the noise this thing made is that if there was something asleep in the building before then it will be awake now and will hopefully be having a walk around so that we can notice it."
Sid groaned. "So there's still a chance that we'll get some nasty surprises."
Dave nodded. "With that in mind we should be extra careful and stay together at all times. I've never fought one of the walkers before. I have no idea if one man could deal with it or even if us three is enough."
There was no heroic posturing among the group. Just the harsh awareness of reality.
"We're never going to get a break," said Sid.
"So we might as well get this over," said Dave.
Together they left the generator room.
"Checking the entire building is too much work for one day," said Dave. "We'll just have to sweep through it many times over. Even then it wouldn't help to keep paranoid."
"Yeah," said Sid. "It's too easy to hide a body in this place and it only takes one of them."
They walked up out of the basement and into the shopping centre. Obviously nervous, all three looked about the shopping centre trying to spot any sign of activity.
"You think we closed all the doors?" asked Sid. "I know that we closed the main doors, but what if there were some sneaky small doors that were left open."
"I'm hoping so, but Eric should know."
Eric nodded. "This place is pretty simple. There were the three big doorways that people used to get into the shopping part, and there were the big doors out the back for the loading docks. Oh wait, I just remembered that there was a door near the loading docks. It might be a staff entrance."
"I saw that while I was waiting for you guys," said Sid. "There's some stairs to get to it, but it's a solid door. I'd have problems getting through that with an axe. It's got some serious locks on it too. I double checked and it's good."
"That's a relief," said Dave who suddenly froze mid-statement.
From one of the store entrances came a rattle. It was tricky to see through the dual doors but there was a few human shapes visible on the other side. Some were noisily bumping their bodies against the roller door. It wasn't a serious attack on the door, but the rattling was unsettling. With so many opportunities for things to go wrong the three had been unbelievably lucky.
"There's more," said Eric pointing to another gate.
"Looks like there's a crowd at each door," said Eric pointing to the third entrance. "Now what?"
Dave spent a moment in observation. "They don't look like they are trying to break in. If they don't notice us I suspect that they'll just go away in a bit of time."
"Should we call off doing any more today?" asked Sid.
"It's annoying," said Dave, "but we should do everything to avoid making this worse. At the moment it looks like they are just standing out there. If they see us they might try breaking down the doors. We should avoid that if possible."
"Back to the roof then?"
All three nodded to each other in agreement and began to quietly sneak up the to roof. During their journey they didn't notice anything other than themselves moving around inside the shopping centre. They would have to leave a more serious inspection of the building for a latter date. Now it was important to just lay low and lose the interested of the dead.
* * *
As Dave, Sid and Eric came out onto the roof of the shopping centre they were greeted by Justin. "You certainly got everyone's attention."
"Was it that loud?" ask Dave.
"Come and take a look for yourself," said Justin as he walked to the edge of the roof.
They all followed Justin, walked to the roof's edge and peered over the wall.
"Got to be about a hundred of them," said Sid.
"Weird," said Dave. "They aren't the usual greys we see at night. These have yellow patches."
"Maybe the sunlight damages them," suggested Sid.
"That's a good observation," sad Dave. "I first thought the patchiness of the skin colour was because they were newly converted from a living human and hadn't fully completed the infection process. But you're saying that they can be damaged in some way by daylight. This is the first time I've ever really contemplated something like that."
"Will they notice us up here?" asked Eric nervously.
"It doesn't look like they do," said Sid. "They just seem to be
