"'Walkers'?"
"That's what I call the dead that walk about in the day. When night comes the yellow patches on their skin fades away and they can move faster. I call the nighttime variants 'dashers'. Then there are other ones that come out at night and I gave them the name 'talkers'."
Jane didn't need and explanation of the term 'talkers'. "I've heard those 'talkers'. Creeped the hell out of me. Any idea what they are?"
"None. And I've even tried to talk directly to them."
Jane was clearly shocked. "What! You actually had a conversation with them? Whenever I hear them I just want to curl up into a ball and hide. Just the sound of their voice terrifies me to the core."
"I was like that at first, but I simply had to know."
"Know what?"
"Anything. But as I talked to them I just got more confused. I've been thinking about it and I'm now struck by how the talker sounded like he was a part of a religious cult."
"That makes no sense," said Jane frowning. "This is clearly biological."
"That's exactly my assumption. But I just keep coming across weird stuff. That's why I was writing in my journal just before. I'm alone at the moment so I have no other way of bouncing my thoughts around."
Jane looked about the rooftop before looking down at the chair in which she sat. "Your little campsite here is clearly set up for two people. Is it okay that I ask where the other one is?"
Dave blinked in confusion for a moment at Jane's discomfort. "Oh. Don't worry. He's alive. Josh - that's his name - found some recent experiences to be a little overwhelming and wanted to take a holiday. I kind of want a holiday myself, and when we recharge then we'll meet up again and get back to work."
"It seems strange talking about a holiday in a time like this," said Jane with a sad look on her face.
"I suspect that Josh will find some people to sit about with and end up getting rolling drunk. I'm going to focus my time on studying and building up some new skills."
"New skills?"
"Everything that I've been seeing lately just doesn't make sense. I think that it's because I've made some basic assumptions that mightn't be right. In particular I want to actually see if this is an infection. That's my biggest assumption and one that I've never tested."
"Of course this is an infection," said Jane looking slightly alarmed. "What else could it be?"
"It could be chemical," suggested Dave playing a devil's advocate.
"But as the dead attacked other people the chemicals in their bodies would become more diluted. At some point the chemicals would be so diluted that they just won't have an effect. It has to be an infection. With a biological source like a virus, new virus material could be grown every time a host is taken over."
"My thoughts exactly."
"So why dismiss it?"
"Because we've never actually proven it. I'm no scientist and though I've been trying to be one I have to admit that my tests are pretty rough. But it shouldn't be too hard to confirm that this is an actual infection. Doing something simple like look at a blood sample from one of the dead under a microscope should quickly reveal if this is an infection. I have many problems that hinder that approach. I need lab equipment. I need to know how to use that equipment. And, most importantly, I need to know what I'm looking for. A trained biologist could probably do all this in a blink of an eye. However, I'm just a useless office worker. I wouldn't even know how to start."
Jane nodded. "I get what you're saying but it seems unbelievable."
"I've seen a lot of weird crap and none of it makes sense. There's enough weirdness that I have to actually question the whole biological infection angle. To make sense of this I need to go through all the assumptions that I've made and just start testing them."
"Okay then. What can I do for you?"
"What? Why would you help me? I must have misunderstood what DOA was about."
"Things have changed. I told you earlier that there is nothing. Not a single organisation left. If we're going to save those who are left alive then we're going to have to start rebuilding everything on our own. And right now you are the only person that I'm aware of who is actually doing anything. So what help do you need?"
Dave frowned while thinking for a moment. It was a responsibility that fell heavily on him. "I don't know where to start but I'm going to need all of it."
Jane nodded. "You got it."
* * *
Dave and Jane stood on top of the bus that made up the western wall of the defences that been built around intersection. Dave looked down from the bus at a street light. At the base of the street light were some loose coils of rope.
"What's up?" asked Jane noticing how Dave's attention had wavered.
"I was just thinking of Charlie."
Jane had no idea what Dave was talking about and waited for him to continue.
"Charlie was a walker that Josh and myself had tied to that lamppost." Jane turned to look where Dave was pointing. "He was my first test subject. We used to cut him up in order to test out his healing abilities."
"Damn," said Jane in a partial whisper.
"We learnt so much from those experiments. It was while experimenting on Charlie that I started to doubt the whole infection idea and began thinking that something else was going on."
"So where's Charlie now?" asked Jane.
"We accidently destroyed him," said Dave with a surprising hint of sadness in his voice.
"What?" said Jane in a surprised tone. "How did you do
