Kira and I continued to explore the vast building. As we walked, she said, "A while back you predicted religion will again be popular with the majority when our present technology fails or wears out. Why do you think that? I'm especially interested because I've gathered from what you've said before that you're not inclined to practice religion."
I stopped walking, and we leaned against a single pallet of goods left at the edge of the aisle. We turned the lights off to conserve the batteries and spoke into the total darkness. In the ebony space, I lost all sense of direction and focused on Kira's fragrance so close by. "A majority of people need something bigger than themselves to believe in. It becomes more prevalent in hard times. It's a human condition. We, the survivors of today's zombie curse, have had religious leaders, politicians, movie stars and sports heroes to look up to all our lives. I believe the reverence paid to most of them was misplaced. Now that they're all gone, I still strongly predict someone will slip under the holier than thou cloak of religion and preach about a benevolent but strict god that all must worship or be condemned to eternal damnation."
She hesitated and I waited... "And from your tone, I gather you think that's bad. Why?"
"I do. Throughout the entire recorded history of mankind, the worst atrocities were committed in the name of religion or politics. I'm lumping dictators as well as democratically elected officials under the mantle of politics; they've waged war, destroyed economies as well as the people in villages, towns, cities and entire countries under the guise of national security, racism or to expand the reach of their power. Man has done it in the past, and he will do it again in the future. While the earth will have hundreds or thousands of years to regenerate itself, man will foolishly repeat the same mistakes. And we'll do it soon. It's in our nature to not be satisfied; we've always looked for a shortcut to wealth and happiness or to blame someone else for our failures and shortcomings." Silence enveloped us when I stopped talking, and only the slightest of sounds in the distance assured us we weren't alone in the world.
Kira stayed silent for several seconds. I heard her move before she slid her hand along the edge of the pallet to place her hand on mine. "I'm not sure I agree with all of that."
"You don't have to, and it doesn't matter because we'll never live it. Most of it will occur long after the two of us are dead."
"But don't you see any positive aspects of religion? They do a lot for the homeless and the needy and they encourage good behavior in their members."
"Of course, they do some good. Very few things are one hundred percent good or bad. They definitely enable a peer pressure that encourages their members to behave and believe in the teaching of their founders. Peer pressure is something that has been sorely missing from our general society for at least the past fifty years. Weak people fell into the if it feels good do it philosophy and flung common sense personal limits aside."
She laughed. "That indicates you think half the people are mindless idiots."
Seriously I said, "Yeah, I do. At least half have proven me right as long as I can remember. How did the incompetent and crooked politician's stay in office? Over half the voters kept them in power because they were so uniformed they didn't know what they were voting for."
I stood, clicked the switch on my light, and we continued our scouting mission.
She needed closure on my short, hasty, unprepared, verbal treatise on the subject of our future. "So you believe the worst of mankind will rise to the top again?"
"Absolutely! It's human nature for some people to want to assume leadership and control others. And if good leaders surface to stop the crooked ones they'll be condemned, ridiculed, and denigrated until the people turn on them, just like in our lifetime. You'll start seeing signs of it before we die, if we survive the zombies to live to old age. Even in our group, if things start to go bad and stay bad for an extended period of time who will be blamed; will the average person accept a measure of the blame, or will they point at me and the others on the leadership committee?"
Kira remained silent. I assumed she was analyzing our conversation as we continued our stroll with flashlights in one hand and the other hand near our pistol butts purely out of habit.
Out thoughts were quickly overridden and pushed aside. Our light beams highlighted stacks of food as far as we could see. There was enough food to feed our group for years on end. We'd have to decide which items were the most important to take before we looked for Shane and Vince and shared our plan of taking an entire truckload of food with us.
While the forklift's batteries charged, Shane and Vince worked on a huge maroon Peterbilt tractor to haul the food we'd chosen. Kira and I braved the closeness of the zombies still congregating at the fence to locate a sixty foot long insulated box trailer with heating units. The undead’s wailing increased noticeably the closer we got to them: and their clawing caused us to shudder at the thought of being in their grasp. During our outing three zombies found a way inside the fence, and we
