Dave didn't want to hear how Sid knew how the walkers got excited. "I doubt that they will see us, but we should probably stay more in the middle of the roof. That way they don't see us and hopefully they won't hear us."
"Do you think it worked?" asked Sid and Justin gave Dave a serious look.
"They don't seem to be trying to break open any doors," said Dave. "They're just there. I'm pretty confident that if left alone that they'll disappear as quickly as they arrived. The good thing is that we can now be confident that when they do disappear that they aren't coming inside this shopping centre to do so."
Justin sounded a bit nervous. "Let's move and find a place to sit. We should probably plan out what comes next."
All of them said nothing as they left the roof's edge. Together they walked to where Justin slept.
"The weather is very mild at the moment," said Justin, "but it's still nice not being in the direct sun for too long."
Justin spread out a blanket and sat down. The others followed.
"Well," said Dave. "I have to admit to being surprised. The first part of my plan worked out really well."
Justin nodded. "That's good to hear. Although we do seem to have gotten a bit more attention then I expected."
"Was the generator that loud?" asked Sid.
"It was rather shocking. I wouldn't say that it was loud but more of a rumble."
"The generator was in the basement," said Sid, "it's surprising that you could hear it through the shopping centre."
"I'm no engineer," said Dave, "but I'll guess that the generator wasn't attached to the floor correctly. It didn't need to be very loose, but even a little bit might cause it to rattle a lot. It certainly seemed a lot more noisy than I expected, but I can't say that I'm familiar with such things. And then there are the air vents all around us - I guess they helped to conduct sound up here."
"Strange that they didn't secure the generator fully," said Justin.
"This shopping centre looks new," noted Dave. "Ten years at the most. Maybe they never had an emergency or the time to do the testing needed to reveal that there were issues. Keep in mind that I'm guessing. If we actually had a member of staff who was responsible for the generator then they might very well have a completely different response. I might even be completely wrong."
"But I'm guessing that this doesn't matter anymore," said Justin, "with the main entrance doors closed we don't really need to start up the generator again."
"I don't have any plans for it," said Dave. "One thing that you should remember is that it is petrol driven and there's probably tightly limited supplies of that. I don't think that you could run the generator for very long if you wanted to. It's best to just plan as if there is no generator."
"And that leads to my next question, what are your plans?"
Dave looked at the assembled people for a moment. "I got no plans."
Sid laughed. "You always seem to know what you're doing."
"Well," said Dave, "I sort of have the plan on living through this. It's just that I've not figured out the details. Obviously, trying to survive on my own is difficult. It would be great to get a community set up so that we can share the workload - whatever that might be. So here I am trying to make sure how to keep this community safe, but I don't know what that community can do to help me survive. My thinking is a bit vague and I'm sort of improvising."
"Sounds a bit selfish," pointed out Justin.
"It's the paradox of being selfish," said Dave, "helping others is an act of selfishness. By helping others they are in a better position to help you back. Cooperation is the easiest way to satisfy one's needs, which sort of sounds upside down."
"I think we're getting a bit deep here. Anyone got any ideas what we should be doing next?"
Sid nodded. "I think Dave said this while we were downstairs. We'll need to spend a bit of time searching this whole building. We need to know that it's completely safe."
"We made a lot of noise," pointed out Dave, "so I feel certain that if there was anything in this place then they would have come out where we could easily see them. And yet we saw nothing. That's not to say that we're clear, but it's a good sign."
"So, we need to search this place fully," said Justin. "Anything else?"
"Even if we secure the door leading into this place," said Dave, "there's nothing wrong with having extra security. I think we should take a few vehicles like the trucks and park them in front of the big entrances."
"Won't they just climb under the trucks?" ask Justin.
"Maybe. It's just that I've never seen the walkers do that. And even if they do then they'll have to attack the doors while laying down or in some other awkward pose. I doubt that they could attack the doors with the same strength as if they were standing and a part of a large crowd."
Justin nodded. "It's not like using trucks as a wall is our only defensive line. Any little bit that eases the strain is a victory."
"Also," said Sid, "we can block off the space under any trucks we use as barriers. Maybe we could use tables from the furniture store to cover the big gaps. Maybe we could make sandbag out of the more useless clothing."
"Those are good ideas," said Justin.
"Sid has a lot of good ideas," said Dave. "One idea that he told me that I really like is the idea of blocking off the road accesses that lead to this shopping centre."
"What?" said Justin surprised.
"I was rather taken back by the idea of it as well," said
