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own? With living people becoming a scarcity, they had to try to find the good
in those left, in one another. Hope their hardest that there was a speck of it
to find and cling to.
                There
was no more work to be done in 201 except help Jeff clean up the mess by
repacking his cupboards. As the group put his life back in order, they
concocted a story about Sheila’s whereabouts that sounded plausible. If the
truth came out the other residents might not be as understanding as Ben, Rob
and Isobel had been. Still the three of them felt wrong inside for the cover-up.
    Before going down one more flight of stairs to the first floor, they
armed themselves the best they could. Ben and Isobel had their handguns. Rob
had a machete from Ben, who’d used it while hiking during the summertime. And
it was decided that Jeff would not be given anything sharp or loaded. He was
trusted with a baseball bat from Rob‘s apartment, a purchase Rob had made for Gabe
but he‘d yet to use it. Isobel grabbed a few pairs of rubber gloves from Angela
Turner’s apartment and an old blue tarp that Ben had used for camping. She put
Jeff in the lead so they could keep their eyes on him.
     

1st Floor

     
    The
second floor residents moved slowly down the stairs, listening as hard as they
could for any of the undead. Once at the bottom, they went silently to work.
Rob and Jeff kept a look out near the front door as Ben and Isobel picked up
the body of the office manager. Ben let Isobel lift the feet end of Susanne’s
body since he’d made a mess of the head end earlier. Isobel kept her eyes
closed as they placed it in the center of the unfolded tarp that they had laid
on the hallway floor.
                They
left the tarp in front of the main office door, to wait for more bodies, as
they started the frightening task of going door-to-door on the first floor. The
windows of Willow Brook were old and, with enough pressure, easy to break
through. Isobel had no idea what they might find.
     

Uncertainty
    The
Cabels were hunkered down. They hadn’t left their apartment in days. Edward had
taken some of Moira’s heavier hand-stitched quilts and nailed them over the
windows and sliding glass door to keep the light and the life from drawing the
dead towards the apartment. Moira was the friendlier of the two and had always
tried to be polite with others in the building. Edward was 86 this year and
she, 84. They were the oldest people living at Willow Brook and the younger
generations needed some guidance, she thought. But since the dead were walking
around she had felt it best to withdraw; keeping the door locked and only the
company of her husband. It pained her though and she often looked through the
peephole for signs of life.
                For
the first time, she saw movement. “Something’s going on in the hallway. A few
of the residents are out there. Edward, come over here!” She snapped at her
husband whose nose was in a book.
                “Alright,
alright. Let me finish the chapter.” He grumbled without looking up.
                “Come
right now! They have guns!”
                Edward
jumped up as quickly as his 86-year-old body allowed. He had never been a gun
enthusiast but, the times had changed and a loaded weapon was something he had
been dreaming about.
                “Don’t
open the door yet Moira. Let’s see what happens.” Edward moved to the peephole
but was disappointed. “You can’t see anything! There’s no one there.”
                “They
were there a second ago. They looked like they were planning something.”
                Edward
remembered the gun. “You are sure they were people from the building?”
                “Absolutely.
That girl from the second floor and the man with the little boy were there.”
                “They
brought the boy down?” Edward was astonished. Who in their right