Planning

The book it turned out was very easily acquired. It was simply tucked behind the counter under the cash register. Alice handed me the book with no reservations. It seemed only fair after she had taken my book and read it while I was in conscious. I quickly devoured all the information that I could from it.

It gave the same information my book did regarding the future dangers of the world. It did not go into detail about evolution however, instead they talked about how the natural talents that reside in individuals will be augmented to be stronger.

This kind of explained how Alice gained her precognition without having been forced to the brink in a life and death struggle.

This fact was very interesting to me because it meant that Alice must of had some sort of observational skill that allowed her to infer what was going to happen in the near future. I was not sure if it was simply the ability to read people's intention, some sort of hyper- awareness, or if she had a mystical power unexplainable by our current science.

Regardless of the origin this power was derived from, it was definitely going to be incredibly useful for Alice and everybody around her.

When I looked at the cage that we had forced ourselves into, I realized that my long-term goals were completely irrelevant if we could not think of a way to remain safe after we escaped from the protection of the store. I was very interested in evolving and becoming stronger, but rushing gung hoe into a city where a simple bit of bad luck could cause you to be shredded into hamburger by a huge flock of murderous birds was completely idiotic.

I never would've come this deep into the city if I knew how fast things would escalate. I was terrified of the mere thought of going out into the street. Staying here and waiting for things to change for the better did not seem like the winner's choice either. I decided to ask everybody about their opinion on how we should proceed. I was not the only person that could have ideas.

The way I see it our options are very limited currently. We have nothing to protect ourselves from a flock of birds if they descend upon us. The light is fading and it's going to be night soon. This is likely going to be the best time to move because very few birds are nocturnal. I'm not confident in being able to keep everybody safe however. Does anybody have any suggestions about how we can protect ourselves if we go outside.

Alice pointed out the fact that she would be able to tell if there was danger heading our way. "I knew the moment that I saw the first pigeon that things were about to get very dangerous for everybody in this mall. If we rely on my premonitions we can probably avoid any real life-threatening situations."

I had already considered this a bit. How could we possibly put our lives in the hands of a completely untested ability? I point of this fact out to them "What if you're premonitions only give us seconds of warning, or what if you simply have the premonition that we are in mortal danger without giving us any indication of what the danger is and how to protect ourselves. I'm not saying that your pre-cognitive abilities are useless, I just feel like we need more information about how it works exactly before we can trust it with our lives. It seems to me that preparation is the key to survival. We need to figure out how to prepare in order to have the best chances of survival."

I looked around at my companions to see if any other ideas were forthcoming. I saw a large amount of fear in the three teenagers eyes. There was also hopelessness and a small amount of resignation visible. This made me want to start doing something right away so that we could distract ourselves from our slowly encroaching dark thoughts.

I walked over to the gate that was holding us captive, and looked out at the other stores in the mall. I could smell an overwhelming stench of blood wafting towards me from all the dead bodies covering the floor. I could see what looked like hundreds of mutilated corpses strewn up and down the hallway.

Looking at this morbid sight firmed up my resolution to survive at any cost. Forcing myself to look past the devastation I started creating a mental inventory of the shops that might have useful items in them.

There was a candy shop right across from us that had grabbed my attention immediately. The carnage in front of me only dampened to my appetite slightly, but I was still ravenous. It appeared that my incredibly accelerated healing burned calories at a ridiculous rate. I was likely going to need an enormous amount of calories just to stay alive. There are always negatives that come with every positive.

There were a number of clothing and jewelry shops everywhere as well as toys shops shoe shops and gag shops. None of these stores have much use in my eyes. There was however an electronics store that might have a pair of walkie-talkies. With all the cell phones in a completely useless state and the power outage, walkie-talkies might be a good option for short range communication.

There was also a Target at the very end of the mall. This seem like a very good option to find any other useful items.

As I was starting to build up the courage necessary to go out and start collecting supplies Savanna came over and tapped on my shoulder.

"I might have an idea for a way of protecting ourselves after we leave the store. When you were telling us the story about your dream you said that there were people outside controlling fire. This sounds a lot like they were using magic. I'm not sure if it's the same, but my friends and I were planning on doing a Wiccan spell tonight. It was just a stupid love spell, but there are other spells that might be more useful. We could try to cast a protections spell."

This sounded completely insane to me, but most of the stuff that's been happening in the last day has been completely insane. I had no real reason to reject the idea, so I asked Savanna what she needed to make this happen. Luckily the only requirement was salt. We were in a store with a shelf full of salt.

The spell was most potent during the full moon. We were only two days off from the full moon giving me hope that there would be some power to it. I could see the sunset out the window and I knew that night would be upon us soon. This gave us two major opportunities. The first of which was to test out the protections spell. The second and more important of the two was that because very few birds are nocturnal, we were fast approaching the best opportunity for us to start moving. He told the girls to start preparing their spell, and I would go ransack the nearby stores for much-needed supplies.

I volunteered partially because I felt like I had a much higher likelihood of surviving any dangerous encounter, but primarily I wanted the opportunity to run over to that candy shop and start eating handfuls of tasty tasty calories.

Alice open the gate for me and I started navigating my way around the bodies on the floor. Once I finally got over to the candy shop I started gorging on gummy bears and M&Ms with abandon. After a few minutes of desperate chewing the hunger that had been gnawing at me finally started to subside. I took one last bite from a chocolate bar and looked over to the girls to see how they were progressing. All four of them were staring at me from their store.

The surprising thing was that all four girls had completely different expressions. Alice had an impressed expression, as if I had just done something of true merit. Felicia had a completely disgusted expression, it was as if she was looking at a pig wallowing in its own filth. Evie had an expression full of envy, as if there was nothing else in the world she would've rather been doing then joining me in my gluttonous rampage. Savanna had an insightful expression, as if she was trying to understand this new creature that she had stumbled upon in the wilderness.

In my drive to alleviate the needs of my body I had forgotten that they could see me perfectly fine. My face turned a dark shade of red, but I decided to ignore them and continue on with my scavenging as if nothing had happened.

I filled a good number of bags full of candy and brought them back to the gate where I place them. In terms of nutrition if this is all we could find we were going to have trouble in the future. In terms of survivability, calories were all that were necessary in the short term.

After dropping off the backs of candy I quickly made my way over to the electronics store. I found the walkie-talkies I was looking for, as well as a large number of rechargeable batteries, a solar powered battery charger, a number of flashlights, two voice recorders, and surprisingly a handheld Taser. It was a far more fruitful trip than I anticipated.

I decided to continue on to target because all that stuff only took one bag.

As I got near the entrance of the store I could hear shouting from inside. I crept closer intending to listen to the conversation before I announce myself. I finally got close enough that I could see three men with guns. They were pointing them at a family of five, the father and mother, a grandma holding a one-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy hiding behind his dad's leg.

"You guys need to come with us, our boss is inviting everybody that we can find to our headquarters. It is safe there."

The dad responded "We're just trying to get out of town. It is too dangerous to stay here. Don't mind us we are just here to grab a little food and we will be out of your hair."

"We can't be letting you take any of this here food. Make sure you grab as many bags as you can carry and follow us."

I started slowly backing away. I did not want to get involved with these troublesome guys and their boss. They did not give me a good feeling. I considered intervening with the family's predicament, but they had guns pointed at children and I did not want to be someone that raised the tension of the situation and got the children hurt.

As I was exiting the store a fourth man with the gun came around the corner and saw me. He shouted, and I started running.

If I had a group of men with guns chasing me, I of course would have no intention on going back to my companions. I did not want to get them into a dangerous situation because of me. However, I had only one route of escape from the men. It was going to take me right past the new age healing store. I started running down the corridor. I was going to run right past the store and hope the men followed me without looking around and finding my companions.

As I closed in on the ladies hiding location I could hear the shouting of the men behind me. I was just about to run past the store when Alice jumped out and grabbed me.

"What are you doing, there are men with guns chasing me."

"Come on it'll be fine, I have a feeling about this"

as she pulled me into the store and close the gate behind me I stared in astonishment at the new developments that had apparently happened during my short absence.