A large dark wood executive desk sat in front of a wide window. Drapes were closed but enough light filtered through for us to see the bulky shapes of other furniture. I opened the drapes two feet and light flooded the room. Dust from disturbing the musty cloth danced in the sunrays. I glanced around the room without the aid of my flashlight. A dark brown leather couch sat against the wall we'd entered.
I motioned to Kira. "Let's move the couch over in front of the credenza on the side wall. We can sit on it and face the door where uninvited guests could arrive from."
We sat, and I passed a bottle of water to Kira. I unscrewed the cap on mine, wiped the threaded mouthpiece with my shirttail, swallowed a third of the bottle, recapped it and sat it on the floor. I straightened and tensed.
"My God!" I uttered softly. "James Anderson was killed downstairs. I failed to protect him." During our gyrations to escape our pursuers and avoid other zombies, James' death had been thoughtlessly pushed from my mind. The death of such an innocent young man caused my stomach to roil.
Kira sat staring ahead, the water bottle in her hand, her Glock on the arm of the couch. "I liked James; we all did. I've notice how you suffer after each death of your people as if you were solely responsible. I suppose it's a sign of a good, companionate leader. But if you continue to get that deeply involved for each of us, the stress will eventually destroy you." She turned on the couch and brought her bent left leg up onto the cushion. "Back off and let it go. We're each responsible for our own actions, not you. James did something dumb back there and paid a terrible price for it. But it wasn't your fault or my fault, it was his decision. I have no idea why or how James dropped his pistol, but his decision to linger while retrieving it led to his death. There was nothing either of us could do to save him. If there was, we would have done anything it took."
I leaned back into the thick cushion. "I honestly wish it were that simple. I know I wasn't responsible in any way for James' action, nor could I have prevented what happened to him. However, I am responsible for the overall day-to-day safety of everyone in our group. It's up to me and the people closest to me, Shane, Ed, John and Ira, to make the right decisions for the whole group. In doing that, I've gotten to know and like each of them, including you. In that respect, I don't want to back off and distance myself from anyone. I'll be alright. So far I've been able to cope with it and keep moving ahead each morning.
"Now let’s get off the morbidity and move on. Think of how we're going to escape from here without becoming causalities ourselves."
"I'll drop it for now," Kira said, "but at some point, I want to discuss your sense of total responsibility further with you."
I quickly stood to end the conversation and walked to the window. Kira was behind me when I stopped. She moved in front of me to peer through the glass. The top of her head barely reached my chin. I inched forward and took in her earthy fragrance as I put both hands at my back and intertwined the fingers to resist a sudden urge to embrace her. After a few deep calming breaths, I tilted my head to see that the view was out the side of the building onto a paved lot trucks traversed to reach the warehouse and receiving portion of the complex behind the main store. Several zombies wandered aimlessly on the drab, gray, concrete, and two stood silent and unmoving as if in a trance or asleep.
"We should reload our empty magazines while we have a chance. Then we'll go through the lunch room and other offices to find food that might have been left behind. After the adrenalin rush, I'm hungry."
Ten minutes later, we were down the hallway cautiously and stealthily searching offices for food. We stopped when we felt we had enough snack food to last two days. Several packets of microwave food were passed up fearing they might be rancid and could make us sick.
In a large meeting room, we removed USA and Iowa flags from poles in a stand in a corner. A credenza on an end wall yielded a table cloth big enough to cover the twelve foot long meeting table. A full case of bottled water sat in the opposite end of the credenza, so dehydration wouldn't become a problem for several days. I certainly didn't want to stay cooped up away from home any longer than that.
Kira silently opened the second floor emergency exit door as I stood with pistol drawn. Outside, a platform with metal stairs led away from where we needed to go. The stairs would be noisy and the extra distance could get us killed. That meant we'd have to leave through the first floor exit. We'd wait until we felt it was safer before we'd make our way back down there and fight our way back to the truck.
