"If it's good," said Sid, "what's next?"
"Well, using some trucks to further block the entrances to the centre would be nice, but I think that we should be greedy and try and block off the roadway."
Sid looked towards the off-ramps where people could drive off the highway and entrance the shopping centre. "There's only two roads. One in and one out. Should be quick to block off."
"You should be able to get it done early tomorrow," said Dave.
"Why not do it now? There's still a good bit of daylight that we could work with."
"Driving some trucks will make a good bit of noise. If that attracts attention I want them to lose interest and go away before night. Who knows what it will be like if we have a lot of dead here when the night rush hour begins. Would that mean that we'd end up with several thousand of the dead roaming about?"
"They are pretty dense, but imagine what a mass of thousands could do," said Sid soberly.
Dave looked startled. "I don't think that we should ever stress test this place, so let's completely forbid anything that would generate that much attention. There's just too much at stake. Just a single breech of our defences would mean the death of everyone. Maybe latter if we had a series of defences about this place, then we could ask questions about how many bodies a type of defence could hold off. But that's an issue to contemplate latter. I don't think we should be doing experiments that place this shopping centre in danger."
"There's so much that we don't know about the dead."
"Maybe we should capture a few and start experimenting on them."
"I was half joking about it," said Sid.
"Which means that you are half in agreement. Our lack of knowledge shouldn't make us squeamish."
"Bloody hell."
"Like I said before. I'm just trying to survive and the first step to that is knowledge. But what is knowledge? If I don't look at this situation from as many different directions as possible then I might miss something. Until I disprove something I'm willing to try out any ideas."
"It's a mad time that we're in."
"I feel like I'm repeating myself whenever I talk. It's a sign of just how little real data I actually have. I kind of wish that I had a background in science."
"Why not look in the bookstore," suggested Eric.
Dave and Sid looked questioningly at Eric.
"This place has a big book store. I've not looked into it, but maybe there are some books in there that might help."
"That's a great idea," said Dave.
"Will we go tomorrow after we block the access roads?" asked Sid.
"No need to wait," said Dave. "To get to the bookstore we'll be staying inside the centre so we shouldn't attract any attention at all."
"I have my doubts that we'll find anything useful," said Sid doubtfully.
"True. A university bookstore might provide more technical books. However, you never know what we'll find until we look."
Sid thought for a quick moment. "I've never been one to read but let's go. I'm getting antsy having to waste daylight like this."
Together they left off walking about the roof's edge. They hadn't seen anything below that would cause them to worry. They walked to the stairwell. Near the door to the stairwell were the improvised weapons they had picked up earlier from the tool store. With these in hand the three used the stairwell to get into the shopping centre. Eric knew where the bookstore was and quickly lead the group to it.
Dave looked at the billboards with advertising. "Books about famous movie stars and tacky looking novels. That's rather dashed my hopes a bit."
Sid seem to retain Dave's optimism from earlier. "No point complaining about what you can't change. Let's have a look anyway."
The beginning of the store had exactly the sort of dreck that Dave feared the store would specialise in from what he had seen of the store's front display. But as Dave walked further into the store the books became more specialised. One section on cooking. Another on cars. A section on history. And a section on camping - this drew Dave like a moth to a flame.
Sid and Eric wandered past Dave and split up. Dave had barely skimmed over the books in the camping section when both Sid and Eric called out. Sid held up an advanced book on firearms - it had to be advanced as it contained the word "bible" in the title and looked to be thousands of pages thick. Finding a book on firearms in an Australian store was like finding a book of forbidden German porn. But the book Eric held grabbed Dave's full attention.
"A medical book on the human body?" said Dave.
Eric groaned as the book as rather hefty. "It's got a lot of pictures."
They took the medical book to a small table, and with the table supporting the book Dave began flipping through it.
"You're not wrong about there being a lot of pictures," said Dave.
"Eww," joked Sid. "Dead people!"
Although the book had numerous, brightly coloured schematics, it also had colour photos from autopsies.
"This is amazing," said Dave.
"Thinking of being a doctor?" asked Sid.
"Although that would be useful, this sort of knowledge could help use understand what is going on."
"How? Bones, muscles, nerves, organs, all stuff inside the body. You can't just look at one of the dead to see this kind of stuff."
"Which is why we need to cut one of them open," said Dave excitedly.
"Fucking hell," said Sid. "You're out of your mind."
Dave stopped talking and looked at Sid. "They are already dead so there's nothing too wrong with the idea of doing an autopsy on them."
"That's not the problem. Unlike the normal dead those buggers still move. It would be dangerous as hell."
"Good point. I've not had to fight them so I don't even know if it is possible to control one well enough to secure it to a table and operate on it. If
