It was so hard to leave. For a while I just wanted to pretend that Miguel was sleeping and that everything would be alright in the morning, but the food was almost gone and the lights were now so dim that I could hardly see and sad though I am that Miguel died, I don't want to join him. I want to live.

So I spent most of the morning pulling down the barricade that we'd made and I pushed open the door. The sunlight was almost too bright after so many days of living in the dim emergency lights of the warehouse. How long was it since the power went out? I'm not even sure anymore.

The industrial area looked surprising normal. None of the panicked desctruction that we'd heard about on the little crank radio, before all the stations went quiet. Before I left, I packed everything I could into my school pack and my purse. Before Miguel got sick, we had thoughly checked over the warehouse and gathered everything that we thought might be remotely useful.

I filled the 2 litre pop bottle and all 6 half litre water bottles that we'd found with the water from the office water cooler. Thank goodness for that thing. It was the only thing that had saved us from dehydration. I also stuffed the pack with as many personal sized chip bags as I could. We'd already eaten everything more filling from the vending machine,and all that was left was the chips. I let the air out of the bags so that I could fit more stuff into my little pack.

The multi-tool that had a small knife on it went into my purse. The warehouse was filled with all kinds of cloth stuff, and I put a small blanket into my pack, which pretty much filled it up. I threw a bottle of over the counter pain killers that I'd found in a desk into my purse. I also slid a letter opener into my purse. As a weapon it isn't very much and I doubt that I'd be able to do anything with it anyway, but it made me feel better.

Once my eyes got used to the light I stepped out and started walking, without a destination in mind. I was pretty much numb and I didn't pay as much attention as I probably should have, but either I was lucky, or there truely was no one else left. When I finally came back to myself, it was evening and I needed to find shelter. I looked around and saw