"That sounds like a great idea. I'd join you if it wasn't for my grandmother."
The conversation became awkward with unsaid statements.
"How about you come with me?" asked Josh.
"Sounds like a possibility. How far north are you?"
"I'm not too far over the bridge. Barely half a suburb in."
"That's still a very built up area. There will be a lot to deal with there."
Josh shrugged. "What else can I do?"
"How about we get your grandmother and all head west?"
"Sorry mate. She's old. There's no way to move her. It's difficult at the best of times and impossible during the worst."
Dave looked down, avoiding eye contact. "I still think that going west and getting out of the thickest part of the city is for the best."
"I got to do what I got to go."
"It'll be hard. The power and water will probably fail at some point."
"I'm not bad with my hands and if something comes up then I'll just have to figure something out."
Dave looked up and placed a hand on Josh's shoulder. "You love your grandmother. You're a good fellow, Josh."
Josh looked embarrassed. "A man just has to grit his teeth and face his responsibilities. Remember, we've only just met. There's no need to feel any sense of responsibility to each other."
"I just feel like I'm abandoning you."
Josh gave a tired smile. "We've all been abandoned. No point worrying about something like that now. It's best to focus on staying alive."
Dave lightly laughed in an effort to counter the miserable mood. "I've been such a selfish cunt all my life that I'm perplexed by what's happened. I just can't make a decision that I can place my full conviction into."
"Hey. At least a cunt's useful for something, and you don't seem like a bad person. Whatever happens just do what you can. No need to expect the impossible."
"Thanks. And I guess that this is goodbye."
Josh reached out his hand and shook it with Dave's. "See you mate. Stay alert."
"You too. Let's meet up again and have a beer."
"By then this will be all over and we'll have some amazing stories to tell."
They broke their hand shake and quietly took turns climbing down Josh's ladder. They both took one final look at each other and started to jog their seperate ways.
* * *
Dave slowed down and stopped jogging. He stood with his hands on his hips while regathering his breath.
He had gotten to the edge of the central business district but he was still not free of high rise buildings. It was mid-afternoon and the streets were eerie in their silence. Abandon cars filled the road - many with doors and windows open. But not a single person was to be seen - not even a discarded corpse. No weapon of mass destruction, no outbreak of the plague, no uncontrollable form of mass panic could have been this thorough at making the people of a once crowded city disappear so completely without trace.
Not all life was gone. Those feathered rats of the city - pigeons - roamed here and there, frustrated in their inability to find food. Dave was unaware that the pigeons were starving because no one had eaten lunch. No lunch meant no food scraps. And no scraps meant that the pigeons were left starving, and they were really upset. Had Dave been aware of the state of the pigeons he would have been greatly unsettled.
As expected, Dave had plenty to be unsettled about.
He had seen enough of the process to understand how it went. You take one of the dead who appeared mostly grey skinned with yellow patches. That dead person would bite into a living person. The biting continues until the once living person is dead. The original dead wanders off, looking for a new victim. After some time (Dave made a mental note that it might be helpful to time the transition.) the newly dead person's skin would turn almost completely grey with yellow, hand sized patches. Any damage to their body was healed even to the point of reattaching limbs that had been cut off. Then the once living person was now "dead" (with quote marks), and would stand up in a manner that was incomprehensible. As a new dead they would then walk off and repeat the process.
That was a disturbing sequence. Dave had this terrifying thought that nearly everyone in the city had become this weird dead that had the weird colouring scheme of being grey skinned with some sort of yellow patches. They also had red eyes and had an unavoidable craving for human flesh. Dave gave a rapid series of glances all about the streets. They were empty now, but what if they filled up with these strange dead people who desired to eat flesh? What could he do on foot with no weapons or other means of defending himself?
These were terrible thoughts and Dave struggled to come up with a plan. When he was jogging earlier he only focused on putting one foot in front of the other. His plan was escape and otherwise his mind was white and unthinking. It was possibly a reaction of his mind that was struggling with maintaining his sanity. But Dave was open to the idea that he had long left the realm of sanity. Sometimes insanity was more comfortable than reality.
A vague plan came to Dave. Night time was coming and he didn't like the idea of being caught on the dark streets. Dave looked at a nearby convenience store and decided that he needed supplies and shelter. There was little in the way of shelter, but the store hinted at a decent stock of consumable supplies.
Dave stared suspiciously at the store's automatic doors. The dead didn't seem all that intelligent but even they could walk through an automatic door. But man cannot live on nothing, so Dave cautiously approached the
