"You disgusting monster," said the woman from before.
"What?" said Dave as his line of thought was interrupted.
"How could you do that to those poor things?"
"I'm sorry. You've completely lost me."
"How could you violate their rights like that?"
Dave froze. "'Rights'? The walkers are dead. How can the dead have rights?"
"Well, you call them 'walkers' because they walk. And if they walk then they are obviously not dead."
Dave had previously noticed little warning signs from Trevor but only now realised exactly what Trevor was referring to. Maybe Dave should have guessed it. Dave had encountered enough people to know that there were many people who had been deeply affected by recent events. Most came across as being shocked in the cliche way - unresponsive and apathetic. But this was different. This was a complete breakdown in a person's perception of reality.
Trevor had done this deliberately, keeping his observations to himself, and yet Dave didn't hate Trevor. Had Trevor told him the truth up front then Dave would never have believed him. How could people view the same set of events and yet come away with the opposite interpretations. Dave turned his head to the tent entrance where he could hear noise of people living in the camp. Dave gritted his teeth at the thought that much of the camp were filled with people who's minds had broken under the strain.
Dave took a deep breath to recover himself. "I'm sorry. You've raised a good point that I never thought of."
The woman puffed up her chest and the others around her offered up supportive murmurs that stroked her ego. "Indeed."
"However," said Dave trying to chose his words carefully, "this sort of experimenting is very valuable. We've discovered so many facts about the walkers that it changes how we can deal with them. Is there any way we could continue with the experiments that wouldn't be exploitative of the dead's rights?"
Pleased at becoming the centre of attention the woman spoke confidently: "Clearly you have to get consent from these 'walkers'."
Dave wanted to laugh out loud at the nonsense that he was hearing, but he swallowed it down and regained his composure. There is no reasoning with the unreasonable. "Should I go with verbal or written consent?" asked Dave unable to control a trollish whim.
The woman looked surprised at the question, turned to the group of people that stood near her and began to confer with them. Dave and Trevor shared a bemused glance at each other, obviously amused that Dave's question had been taken so seriously. The woman and her followers had been talking for a few minutes when Holden and Jordan rushed into the tent and approached Trevor.
"What's the rush?" asked Trevor. "I wasn't expected you back for a few hours yet."
Through puffing breath Holden blurted out. "They're in the hills."
"What?" said Dave trying to calm his own sense of alarm.
"There are walkers in the hill. You can't see them from the field because they are in the trees right now, but they are fucking close."
"How close?" asked Trevor.
Holden and Jordan looked at each other and Jordan nodded to Holden to confirm who should speak.
"The forrest is full of them," said Jordan. "It's impossible to count them but there's easily hundreds of them."
"And they're all coming this way," finished Holden.
Trevor went pale. He realised that experiencing a period of safety is not the same as being actually safe.
"This field isn't safe," said Dave. "We need to evacuate. The walkers can't climb, so are there any buildings that we can climb onto?"
The self-important woman from before had stopped her discourse when the Army man had burst into the tent and had listened to the discussion. "There's no need to evacuate," she said. "Instead we need to go to them and greet them as brothers and sisters. We must greet them with open arms and show them that by accepting their identity that we can be one."
The woman and the people around her walked from the tent. Dave stood staring at the ground. he couldn't think of a single way to reason with that way of thinking. Did she completely fail to understand reality to that extent? He knew that that way of thinking would lead to a massacre but there was nothing that he could think of to stop it.
"Now," said Josh, "this got really fucked up."
* * *
Dave turned to Trevor and asked, "Is there any where we can go?"
With a clear expression of worry, Trevor looked over the camp in the direction of the hills. Dave tapped Trevor on the shoulder but Trevor was obviously too lost in thought to be useful at that moment. Dave turned to the other military men who were glancing about the camp in an agitated manner.
"Any ideas? Anything?"
Jordan was pale. "Don't they get it, there's so many coming. There's just so many."
Dave grabbed Trevor by the shoulder. "How about you guys set up a line at the edge of the field and shoot them as they come out of the forest? We know how to kill them now."
Trevor seemed to snap partially back into focus. "We can't. We don't have the resources."
"We don't need you to destroy them all, just hold them for a few minutes while we evacuate the camp."
Seemingly shaking his head to free it of cobwebs, Trevor finally came fully into focus. "We don't have the ammunition."
"You had a lot a few days ago," said Dave perplexed.
Trevor gestured around him. "This place is just a small community area. There's this football oval, some shops, even a dance hall. We didn't choose to come here. No one planned this. People just spontaneously came here."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"There's no Army base here. When we tried to set up a firebase at the intersection where you
