"It's still bloody dangerous," said Sid.
"And I'm agreeing with you," said Dave. "I need to think up a safe way of doing this before even trying it."
"So you're not going to do this autopsy thing?"
"Not now. I'm not that foolish. Well, maybe not completely stupid."
"There's hope for you yet," grinned Sid catching the joke.
* * *
After Dave, Sid and Eric spent another hour or so window shopping through the shopping centre, they returned to the roof where they saw Justin at the roof's edge looking out into the distance.
Sid tapped Justin on the shoulder. "What's up?"
Justine turned to look at the three who had arrived back on the roof. "I'm feeling weird."
"What do you mean?" asked Dave.
"For the last few days I've been in some sort of fog. I feel like I've been staggering around lost and unable to figure out what to do. But now I'm starting to make plans. I'm looking forward to getting this place secured. And once it is secured, moving from up here and into the shopping centre itself. There's a furniture store with a lot of nice looking beds. It would be something else getting off this hard roof and onto a soft bed."
"Sounds like you're planning on living the dream," joked Dave.
"It's certainly a simple dream. Before this happened there were always so many things to worry about and there never appeared to be anyway of being free of those worries. Work, politics, people, life, everything. It was like I had to worry about everything that existed and even those things that didn't exist. I had at least one worry for each brain cell in my head and my brain couldn't handle it."
"And that changed?"
"It was brutal at first. It still is. My mind's changing. At first I was kind of broken. I lost all those worries. I guess those worries had defined who I was and without them I became an empty, shell of a human being. But now I can feel hints at a purpose. It's a growing desire. Saying that my current goal is to sleep in a bed sounds so trivial, but there's a sense of liberation there. Instead of fretting about everything, now I only focus on what really matters. My life was once a haze, but now I actually appreciate being alive."
Dave looked at Justin. "I seem to be going through a similar journey. When all this happened I somehow managed to live through it. I was in the inner city and a lot of people were killed and turned into the dead. From seeing what happened to all those people I developed a fear of the city. I have no idea if that fear was warranted, but it drove me out of the city. Even now I don't really know what my main objective is. I don't have a clear goal. But I have this irrational belief that it is out there, just waiting for me to reach out and grab it. The only reason why I can't grab it is that I'm currently blind."
Surprise came over Justin's face. "You don't seem blind at all. In fact out of everyone here you seem to have the clearest eyes of all. We've been here for days and it never once occurred to us to secure this place. But you arrive and in minutes you're thinking of turning this place into a fortress."
"To be honest, I think I'm doing this because of guilt. Before this happened I was just your standard office working prick. I thought that I knew how the system worked and as long as things were good for me then I didn't give a crap how it was for other people. I took people for granted. And when there were no people I weirdly missed them."
"You don't seem lonely," said Justin.
"No. I'm actually rather comfortable either way. I'm okay with people and I'm okay without people. I don't find myself stressed by being alone. A concept changed within me while I was leaving the city. As I made my way west, there were times when the utilities would fail. First the electricity, then the water. Even though I managed to function without them, the loss had surprised me. I guess I was naive. I sort of assumed that even without people things like electricity and water would continue to work automatically. Instead they failed almost straight away."
Justin looked out over the car park below. Because the sun was getting ready to set, a few forms could be seen staggering in from the road way.
"I'm not putting my ideas together too well," continued Dave. "I think that there's a certain selfishness in me. I want to survive and that's not possible on my own. I can keep going through the short term but I have my doubts over the long term. It's not just about electricity and water. What about food? The fresh food stores really stink and how long will canned food last? Farms are the answer but those require people to run. What about emergencies? There's no doctors or fire department. Civilisation needs a lot of infrastructure to survive and right now we haven't got any of that. If we want it then we'll need people to build it."
Justin grinned. "Again. You're seeing things that we're not seeing. You looking at this from a perspective that none of us have. How can you call yourself blind?"
"I think that a lot of the roles that I've mentioned will be solved as we just gather more and more people. Civilisation has a habit of spontaneously emerging like that. As we get more people we'll find people willing to run hospitals and those other services that civilisation needs. There will be people who know how and
