In the morning, we had a family meeting over breakfast. Valerie and I both ate a bowl of cereal (without milk) and a glass of purified water. Bryce ate a moldy hamburger bun and an expired can of tuna. My parents ate empty hot dog buns with mustard and a cup of hot tea. Not a particularly fancy breakfast, but there were millions of people within driving distance who would have traded everything they owned for it.
I told my parents I wanted to try scavenging the rest of the lofts with Valerie's help and Bryce's protection. My parents didn't like the idea, but they conceded it was no more dangerous than my excursions to the convenience store.
"Remember, Bryce is there to protect you," instructed my mother. "NOT the other way around. If someone attacks you, run. Let Bryce handle the attacker. Bryce is expendable. The two of you are not."
As I gathered our equipment, Valerie expressed how unfair it was for me to have a "gun" while she didn't. She suggested she should take a kitchen knife.
I sucked in air through my teeth. "I don't think that's a good idea. I know it's the apocalypse and all, but I'm not ready to give a knife to an eight-year-old." Valerie did a face scrunch at that and appealed to our parents. My mother, possessing a key understanding of diplomacy, gave Valerie a baseball bat to wield. Valerie was pleased. But I wondered how long before my ditzy sister accidentally bonked herself in the head with it.
The hallway was pitch. Valerie held the handsome man's flashlight in one hand and was pulling the wagon with the other. Inside the wagon was her baseball bat, a box of empty trash bags, cotton balls, and a hand mirror. On my head, I wore my "POLICE" hat. In my left hand, I carried my large, police-issued maglite. In my right, I held my pepper spray gun.
I found Valerie and Bryce's company comforting. The dark hallway was not quite as forbidding with them there.
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Loft 6E, where Abigail was shot, was our first stop. If we wanted to scavenge the other lofts, we first needed to recover the master set of keys from Abigail's corpse. 6E was at the building's far end, and as we drew near, we faced the stench only a rotting corpse could create. Valerie gagged. My father anticipated this. It was his idea to bring cotton balls to shove up our nostrils. It helped.
6E's door was still open. I looked into the loft and shouted. "Hello! Anyone in there?" No reply. "If you don't want me to enter this loft, just say so!" There was no sound except for the faint buzzing of insects. Bryce sidled up. "Okay, Bryce, you go in first." Bryce apparently understood, because he padded in and looked around. Then he briefly disappeared from view, came back, and yawned.
"I guess yawning is his way of telling us it's safe." surmised Valerie.
I entered. Abigail's body was in the exact spot I saw her die. I approached cautiously. Her skin had turned black. Maggots, flies, and various other insects were active. The anxiety I was feeling at the sight was made all the worse by the horrible stench. My nostrils were sealed with cotton, but the foul, penetrating reek still reached my sinesses through my open mouth. I nearly threw up.
I went back to Valerie and took the hand mirror from the wagon.
I returned to the body. "If ANYONE is here, speak up NOW!" No response. I extended my arm and held out the mirror to look down the hall with the reflection. I saw an open door to a bedroom. On the floor, I could see a pair of shoed feet. "You there, on the ground! Can you hear me?!" The feet didn't move. I put the mirror down and crept forward toward the bedroom, pepper spray ready to fire. The feet belonged to a dead man. Behind him, on the bed, lay a dead woman. I closed their door.
I removed the master key set from Abigail's belt and clipped them onto mine. We loaded our wagon with food and returned to our loft.
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Loft 6B, Abigail's loft, was next. We unlocked the door using the master set of keys. Abigail's loft had a southwest theme. Orange and red were the dominant colors. Native-American tapestries adorned the walls and hand-crafted pottery was displayed prominently on shelves. In the center of Abigail's living room was a computer work station every bit as impressive as my father's. Not surprising when you consider they worked together. In one corner was a stack of moving boxes Abigail never had the chance to unpack.
Valerie and I collected all the food from the kitchen, but there was not much there. Judging from all the take-out menus stuck to the refrigerator, Abigail didn't like to cook.
We delivered our loot to Mom and Dad.
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Scavenging the rest of the lofts was uneventful; evidently everyone else was on vacation or trapped someplace else during the peak.
We cleaned out the kitchens and delivered our loot to our loft.
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