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friends out there and they couldn’t comprehend the
idea of leaving them out there with everything that was happening.

 
    But
deciding between leaving and staying wasn’t the only thing that we were
fighting about that morning. How we were going to handle the Zeds that were
already in the building nearly started a war. One of the employees that had
been in the back room didn’t like the idea of not having a plan on how to deal
with the infected that we were sure to encounter once we left the safety of the
break room. His name was Trevor. He along with a few of the others wanted Paul
to use his gun and shoot our way out. Well, that was met with stiff opposition.

 
    You
see there were still a good percentage of people who still believed that the
Zeds were just sick people. Shooting them wasn’t an option for them, not then,
and after a lot of yelling and name-calling, we all decided against it. It
seemed the only thing that we could agree on was that we all needed to work together
if we had any chance of getting out of there in one piece. We knew we needed to
close the back doors. We knew that even if we were going to leave it was going
to take a group effort to get all of us past the monsters in the store and in
the parking lot.

 
    Eventually
we came to a consensus that we needed to arm ourselves to keep the infected at
bay. We weren’t going to use Paul’s gun. Not unless we absolutely had too. Then
we came up with a plan to get to the back door and once that door was closed we
could work on getting out to the cars safely.

 
    We
scoured every drawer and locker looking for anything we could use as a
defensive weapon. We didn’t find much. Trevor found a broom and broke the
handle in half creating something that closely resembled a baton. Cody chose to
grab the fire extinguisher off of the wall and planned on using it any way he
could. The rest of us couldn’t find anything of use in the break room. We would
have to find things elsewhere.

 
    Once
we all felt that we had worked up enough courage to go through with what we
were about to do, we slowly started moving the lockers out of the way. Once the
path was clear I remember my heart racing as Trevor pulled the door open.

 
    Nothing.

 
    The
hallway was just as empty as it had been when we passed through it only moments
before. I am not sure what I had been expecting, but it wasn’t an empty
hallway, that’s for damn sure.

 
    So we opened every door in the
hall, searching for anything that we could use as a weapon. The rooms were
mostly offices and storage areas that were mostly filled with paper work and
old holiday decorations. But as luck would have it we did manage to find a few
things that turned out to be of some use.

 
    We
found a box of triangular metal pieces that looked they were used for holding
up shelving. They were about a foot and a half in length and very thin, but at
least they were made of solid metal. They were narrow at one end so they were
actually very easy to hold in your hand and they grew wider towards the other
end. You know, the business end as they say in movies. They made for a fine
club, and the fact that they were light made them reasonably easy to swing. I
grabbed one and so did a man named Ray. He was an African American man who I
guessed was in his late fifties. Then most of the others followed suit and
picked one up.

 
    Once
we were armed I remember standing at the top of the stairway waiting anxiously
for someone to lead the way. We couldn’t see anything at the bottom of the
stairs but we could definitely hear someone or something moving around down
there. The view of the back room was blocked by a concrete wall that enclosed
the staircase so we wouldn’t be able to see what was down there until we turned
the corner at the bottom of the stairs.

 
    We
set out slowly for the bottom. Paul was leading the rest of us with his gun in
hand, while we all followed closely behind. My heart was pounding and I