208

You shift in the padded metal seat and lean across the table.

"Leaving the Cathedral had the greatest impact on Mindy. Back at our former safe haven, she was one of the core members: going out on supply runs, valuable in firefights against zombies and raiders, and essential on watch duty. She even led our group for a while.

"Mindy disagreed with many of the choices I made. She didn't approve of living in the Depot; she considered it a glorified prison. She argued about the delegation of responsibilities and distribution of labor. It got to a point where every discussion became contentious, nearly leading to a physical altercation on many occasions. She felt our group wasn't aggressive enough in finding resources.

"Eventually, we split the depot into separate divisions. Mindy lead out security team, which was like our own private militia. She ran that group with an iron fist, and we felt a sense of safety not experienced since the outbreak. We didn't argue much after that as she finally had a team to lead as she sees fit."

"Years two and three were times of prosperity. Our community was building, people were finding us from all over: Vermont, Florida, Washington, Texas. A council formed to govern the hundreds of people moving into the Depot, and we stretched our borders outside to the forest and set up camps in the surrounding areas all supported by this compound.

"In year three our borders had expanded a great deal to other towns nearby, while the depot remained as our central command. Excess food and resources are stored here, and we use the technological resources to train survivors, engineer new tools to increase our efficiency, and as always a safe haven in case of attack.

"By year four, the living dead had spread to the lesser populated areas of the country. Lacking humans as food, they went into a state of hibernation, making them easy to avoid and kill. In those later years, we encountered fewer and fewer zombies. Our real fight was to survive the elements and find food to support the mass of people now living among us."

You stare at the man who nods and writes, as if he has no care in the world but to hear a tale of the last five years of your life.

"That basically brings us to the present. We tried to get the terminal to work, tried to make contact with whoever was on the other side of that large screen."

The man takes his glasses off and closes his notebook. "You've shared your story; now I'll share mine. We were obviously on the other side of that screen as you metaphorically described it, and we had so well encrypted communication that without proper training, you would need an advanced computer engineering degree and 100 plus years to crack the code. We thought this bunker would be maintained but for whatever reason, the staff abandoned it. We haven't checked all of the earlier records yet, but it seems several of the depots in this area were used for unauthorized experimentation, the workers became infected, and were locked away in areas inaccessible to you."