"So what do we do with our Charlie friend then?"
"I don't really know, but I did notice something odd. When I was cutting away his clothes I would accidentally cut into his body."
Josh looked down at Charlie. "He doesn't look cut up."
"He isn't. All my cuts healed before my eyes. I couldn't see any process to it. The wounds just pressed themselves together and the corresponding marks on the skin faded away. I didn't see bleeding. I didn't see pus oozing out of the wound. I didn't see little tendrils reaching across the wound. I didn't see anything that seemed to be actually driving the healing process. It just happened."
"That's crazy. Maybe your cuts were just shallow."
"Maybe. I know that it sounds crazy, and that's why I want to know more. Maybe I'm trying to prove that I'm not crazy. Maybe I'm just being overly curious. Our society has broken down. There's no parent in the form of government telling us what we should know in order to survive. But I'm curious and I want to think things through for myself, so I'll first start with studying Charlie. If there's no one else to tell me what's happening then I have to do all the work myself."
"I've never been the one to think deeply but I feel that this is one of those times that I'm glad I'm like this. I'm just worried about what we'll discover. What if we find out something that we regret finding out? There's no way to unknow something."
"I don't have a good explanation. I just have some urge that I can't cleanly put into words. And I'm dragging you along into whatever it that I'm going to crash into."
Josh looked calmly at Dave. "Don't worry about me. I might have my reservations, but I still think that this is the only real option available to us. And that brings me to the question: what is our next experiment with Charlie?"
"Oddly nothing. I've noticed that walkers only come out during the day and disappear at night. I'm wondering what will happen to him at night. Will it go asleep? Will it panic? Will it die? Before doing anything else I just want to watch it. And while we are watching we need to beef up this base of ours."
"Good point," said Josh. "If you'll give me a hand I'll finish our attempt to block of access to the supermarket."
"Let's be quick. I'm expecting more visitors."
"Will you try to tie them up too?"
"Not for now. I'm hoping that when more appear that we'll be back on the roof and taking it easy. I'm not used to days of long physical labour and I need more breaks to rest than I'd like to admit to."
Together they climbed down from the wall on the opposite side to Charlie and then clambered up the wall that defended the south.
"Not seeing anything," said Dave.
"What we did was only the basics. Look at what they did with the wall that we're standing on right now. Whoever built it did what we've being doing and then wedged all sorts of junk in all the gaps making it impossible for a walker to get through. We'll need to do the same for our new additions."
"I'll jump down and hand up all our stuff."
Josh nodded and Dave jumped down. For a little while Dave would pass the previously looted items from the Arts and Crafts store up to Josh who would then carelessly drop them over the wall. Once he finished lifting everything up, Dave clambered up the southern wall. While Dave was climbing up the southern wall Josh was climbing down the southern wall. Then while Dave climbed down the southern wall, Josh climbed the western wall. There was more lifting of the items over the western wall and onto the ground near Charlie. When done Josh climbed down western wall while Dave climbed up and onto the western wall.
"That's a complete pain," said Dave.
"After I seal up this space between the supermarket and the fence , I'll try and find some boards to set up walkway across the corners in order to link up the tops of the inner defensive walls."
"You'll be a hero if you do."
"It shouldn't take long to fill the gap first."
"And while you do that I'll keep an eye out. I need to catch my breath and I can't believe that Charlie is alone. Being surprised right now would ruin a successful day. There are probably others around here and we've just not noticed them."
"Let build this," said Josh turning towards the gap next to the supermarket wall.
It didn't take long to make. It was a simply a few planks nailed horizontally across the gap between the supermarket and the fence that ran along the western side of the supermarket. The planks were placed on the street side of a fence post and the supermarket building and held in place with nails into the fence. This gave the improvised fence mechanical strength if something pushed from the street side but little of anything if approached from the other side.
"That's bloody rough," said Josh looking over his work. "But we'll hopefully we'll block of this street just like we did with the other one. If we do that then that should give us a buffer around the entire supermarket."
"That will definitely give us some peace of mind."
"And when you start messing with Charlie you'll have less chance of being surprised."
Dave looked up at the sky. "We've still got plenty of light. You want to find something to block this street off now?"
"No rest, eh?"
"Safety first."
"I agree with that. In these times safety is sexy as all hell."
Together they started walk along the western road. There were still many vehicles parked on the road.
"They didn't put as much effort into clearing this street than the southern one," observed Josh.
"That matches up with how I heard vehicles heading south."
"Do you think that they cleared the streets all the
