"Do you think I'm lying?" asked Dave. "I like to think that I'm a rational person, but do you think I'm caught up in some sort of conspiracy and trying to mislead everyone?"
Trevor sighed. "Not in the least. The opposite, in fact. Over the last few days I've managed to independently see for myself everything that you've referred to. The only thing different is that you've tried to record what you see, organise those records and try to understand what is happening."
"Thanks for the reassurances, so what is the issue?" asked Dave.
"I guess that's it's an issue of habit," said Trevor. "We've never sent a patrol to the hills so there's some resistance."
"I'll go," said Holden. "I doubt that I'm going to contribute anything to this meeting. So going for a walk might be perfect for me. Also, going for a walk amongst some trees might clear my mind a bit. For some reason I feel like avoiding the discussions that are coming. I'm not political so I want to avoid that shitstorm."
"Can I ask something from you?" said Dave.
"Sure." said Holden.
"If you find no dead roaming the forest then see if you can find a reason. Is there another river? Is there a large fence? See if you can spot some sort of barrier that keeps the hills clear."
Holden nodded. "Got it."
Jordan sighed. "Okay. I get it. I'll just have to delay having my morning cup of tea. I'll join Holden. Two pairs of eyes are better than one."
Trevor nodded to the two Army men. "Thanks. I know that I'm being paranoid, and I'm betting that there's a perfectly logical reason why we've been safe so far, so go and find it. The ridge-line isn't too far away. Climb it and use its height to spot out. Take some binocs and have a good look. You should easily get back for a late lunch."
The two army men nodded at Trevor and Dave before turning away and walking off in the direction of the hills.
"Now for this meeting," said Trevor.
"You say with an odd tone," said Dave.
Trevor just shook his head and the pair walked into the tent.
Josh had gone into the tent before them and was idly standing to one side. As Josh saw Dave come in, Josh walked over to join Dave.
"Are we all here?" asked Trevor to a small group of about six people.
"I do not understand why we have to be here?" asked an intense woman. "But your man was so insistent. I hope that you know that I have a lot to do today."
Trevor looked like he was about to say something before clearly changing his mind. Trevor took a deep breath and spoke: "I'll keep it quick then. Yesterday I went out on a reconnaissance and came across these two lads. This is Dave and this is Josh." Trevor gestured to Dave and Josh in turn, and the pair nodded back to the others.
The woman made no effort to introduce herself. "We're having a meeting over some randoms?"
Another man came forward. "This really is a waste of time. I'm leaving." And in contradiction to his words he just stood there.
"What are you doing that's so important that you wouldn't want to even have a chat?" asked Dave simply.
The woman looked personally offended. "I don't have to explain myself to you."
Dave laughed which startled most people in the room. "I was just being conversational. I'm not here trying to pull off a hostile takeover. I just want to talk to some different people for a change. Think of my arrival as just a social visit. I'd like to get to know people. And this is a good chance to talk and exchange anything that we've learnt."
The woman looked suspiciously at Dave. "So how long are you here for?"
"I want to share some observations that I've made and I would hope that you'd be happy to share what you've experienced."
"What's the point of that?"
"Survival. The old cliche is true: knowledge really is power. The more that we know about our circumstances then the more likely we'll come up with ideas for how we can survive all this."
"I'll have you know that we are surviving quite well here and it's all because of our leadership."
"That's great. Maybe we can talk about the policies that you've implemented and how they were so useful."
"We've not implemented any. We are doing well precisely because we are in charge."
Dave looked confused and tried to stutter a response. Trevor caught Dave's eye and with a quick gesture convinced Dave that this wasn't a good line of discussion to go with.
"I think," said Trevor, "we can get the ball rolling by hearing from Dave about the dead and how he describes them."
Dave looked thankfully towards Trevor. The others in the room looked less impressed. And the woman that Dave had been talking to was clearly the least impressed of all.
Dave kept it simple. He avoided talking about his journey from the city centre and just focused on his current opinion of the dead. He talked about how the dead were walkers during the day and became dashers at night. He described the various changes in appearance and locomotion abilities. Dave also noted how the dashers came across as more intelligent but were overall not very smart.
So far the response he got was boredom. But the response changed to denial when he brought up the talkers. And that response resulted in murmurs of discontent when he described having an actual conversation with a talker. Dave diffused the murmurs by being honest. The conversation between Dave and the talker had only served to leave Dave confused. Dave admitted that he doubted the words of the talker at face value but that a sensible conversation could be had implied some interesting future experiments.
And when it came around to the idea of experiments, Dave caused shock when he began to describe how he had tied up a walker and
