First Activation

I walked inside the store, which was a complete mess; the shelves of food had been spilled in every direction. I found Jack and Bernie standing over a man in a condiment aisle that also had canned vegetables and dried foods. He was holding onto a broken bottle that he must have thrust into his eye.

“Is she? Is she? Help me, the bottle… Finish it. I haven't the strength,” he mumbled.

“What do you want?” Bernie said.

“He wants us to help him complete his mission, doesn’t he?” I said.

“Grab my hands… push the bottle,” the man groaned.

“That wouldn’t be suicide if we help. He’ll die soon enough anyway. There’s nothing we can do for him,” Jack said.

“Perhaps we should help him? It would be like putting down a sick animal,” Bernie said, looking at me.

“Let’s have a think about it while we grab some supplies. I don’t want to hang around here all day.”

I was hoping that the man would die while we filled bags with food.

I packed cans of soup, chili, fruit, and some bottles of cola into two plastic bags and met Bernie and Jack back where the injured man was lying.

“Please, end it now,” he moaned.

Bernie pointed the rifle he had at the man’s head and closed his eyes.

“No, don’t do it. It will draw attention to us,” I whispered.

“I can’t just leave him to die like this. I can’t do it.”

“This man probably caved in the skull of the lady outside with a hammer. He would have done the same to you or me if we were in her shoes. Let him die.”

“Fuck this,” Jack said, stepping towards the man.

He stamped on the bottle, forcing it deeper into the eye socket; a thick purple stream of blood ran down the side of the man’s face. He let out a long breath, and his head flopped to the left.

Bernie looked over at Jack with fear in his eyes. Jack picked up his shopping bags and headed for the entrance.

“We need to stop debating and start making decisions,” he said over his shoulder.

Jack had ended the man’s suffering and given him what he wanted, but it still didn’t sit easily with me. There was no realistic way to imagine him being any kind of threat, so we should have left him alone. He could also have been an easy victim for any other killer heading in our direction. That would have taken care of another potential threat.

As we made our way back to Bernie’s apartment, I scanned the area, which was made up of housing blocks in a grid system.

“What’s the view like from the roof of your apartment block?” I asked Bernie.

“Pretty good. You can see quite far around. Why?”

“I am sick of feeling like we are constantly being hunted. It’s time to get a handle on our situation.”

“What are you thinking?” Jack asked.

“We need a diversion, some way of attracting attention. If killers turn up and take each other out, then it’s less for us to deal with.”

“What has this got to do with the roof?” Bernie asked.

“We pick a spot that we can observe from the roof,” I explained, “find a car, and turn on some loud music or set fire to it. We can then watch what happens from relative safety to see if there’s any kind of pattern or behaviour.”

“But that means we are drawing the killers to us as well. Isn’t it risky to create a loud noise in case there’s somebody in the vicinity already?”

“We observe an area that is a reasonable distance away for a couple of hours,” I answered, “and if there’s no movement, we run down to it, create the signal, come back, and watch what happens from the safety of the roof.”

“Wouldn’t smoke attract killers from miles around?”

“We don’t set anything on fire then,” Jack jumped in eagerly, “we just create a loud enough noise that can be heard in the local area. Let’s go up to the roof now and have a look.”

We dumped our supplies in Bernie’s apartment and went to the elevator that would take us to the top floor. Jack pressed the button and nothing happened. We both looked at Bernie.

“There must be a problem with the power,” he said.

Jack ran back to Bernie’s apartment. “There’s no power in here either, all of the appliances are off.”

I had wondered how long electricity would last if nobody was maintaining the system. We had no communications with the outside world now, and were on our own.

“We’ll have to go out again for some candles and a camping stove,” I said.

“I’ve candles. We can have cold food tonight and pick something up from a sporting goods store tomorrow,” Bernie replied.

We all trudged up the stairs discussing what the possible effects of no electricity would be. I remembered hearing that the Hoover Dam would continue to provide electricity for 100 years without any human contact. That obviously didn’t extend to suburban New York.

Out on the roof, we had a good view of the surrounding area and surveyed the immediate vicinity looking for a potential ambush location.

“Bernie, what’s that space over there with a few cars, between those two large buildings?” Jack said.

“It’s a parking lot for the two stores. That would work, I suppose.”

It was workable for what I had in mind. It was just over half a mile away, and we had a good view of the whole area.