After an hour, Zane had recovered from his injury somewhat, so he decided to show me around his bunker once again because he said he'd changed some things.
He tapped 1631 into the code lock on the vault door. The vault door, which was the only entryway down to the bunker, was made of thick steel. The little red light turned green on the code lock, and the magnetic lock slammed back.
Zane put his hand on the door, and he pushed it open.
'How would you get the door open if someone were to smash the keylock? The design has no failsafe.'
Zane walked confidently into the dark room and turned on a lightbulb with a pull switch. In front of him, I could see cold concrete steps that seemed to descend forever.
I followed him down the steps. As the narrow stairway began to grow dark again, Zane reached up and another lightbulb flicked on.
'It's deeper than I remember.'
We went another 30 steps before we came out to an enormous room. There were supplies everywhere. A water tank with several thousand gallons of water, drawn, filtered, and heated from an underground well.
There was a room with showers and bathrooms. A room with hundreds of various weapons, some of which would have been considered illegal. There was a room with preserved food, several thousand cans and hundreds of fridges stock full of dried meat and even several hundred tons of wheat. There was even a room filled with gym equipment.
He had it all. He had far more than what I had seen on my previous visit. 'One man could live here his whole life comfortably. But, what sort of life would that be? I want to be able to see the light. I don't mind how many Zombies try to attack. I will kill them all.'
I turned to Zane as he brought me through several other rooms. "We should build wooden fortifications outside. I don't want to be holed up inside this bunker forever. We need to make a foothold outside that we can live from. Maybe we should raise earthen fortifications around the bunker."
"That would take a really long time. We would have to cut down a lot of trees and then we would have to stick them in the ground, sharpen the tops, and dig out the front area and displace it to the back before building a second row. It would take months if not years for the two of us to do that."
"What else are we going to be doing?"
He blinked. "That is true. I guess we can go for it. I have plenty of tools and gasoline for chainsaws. That should make it much faster."
I nodded. "Good."
The rest of the day, I began to chop down the trees that surrounded Zane's property. I cut down about eight and I trimmed off all their limbs so that they were straight and could be shaped further from there.
Meanwhile, Zane began to haul the trees over in eight foot sections that he cut himself. He then sharpened the bottoms and split the larger ones into fourths. He made some mistakes, but in the end, he had 26 sharpened stakes ready to be driven into the ground.
When it grew dark, we both took a shower and then went down to the bunker with some food from the house. He had microwaved 9 frozen burritos using power from a generator. He gave me four of them.
I frowned at him. He looked at me and then smiled. "What? I've got more muscle than you, I need to eat more."
"Whatever Zane, just don't get fat."
I ate a burrito and washed it down with water from my camelbak. I looked him in the eyes. "So, how many other people do you think are alive in Dallas?"
He finished his bite and then looked up. "Well, there are probably a good few who were sitting in the bathroom or working in the cubicles in their office. A lot of people are indoors. Just as long as they weren't looking out the windows. But even if a lot survived, their numbers are going to be slimmed down by the countless Zombies in the city."
I nodded. "You know, what should we do about recruiting people? Even though we have more guns and a bunker, people will eventually take us by surprise or swarm us if they know we have so much stuff."
"I agree. I think we should drive around to my neighbors' houses and check to see if any of them have any survivors and if there are none, then we should loot what we need like vehicles, gasoline, weapons, and ammo."
"Okay, I'll drive my truck and you can ride shotgun so we can take another car home. We should be going for trucks or SUVs that have good offroading capabilities. I am low on gas, but I should be good for a short trip."
"Yeah, that sounds good. We can also fill your gas in the morning. I have a large gas tank down in this bunker."
"Isn't that like a fire hazard?"
"It's protected by thick steel. If the tank blew, everything else would already be gone. You're just going to have to carry the gas up from the bunker one gallon at a time."
We ate the rest of our food in silence, but my mind was whirling. 'If we find someone tomorrow, how do we trust them? Should we set up a hierarchy? That would definitely be necessary. My brother owns this place, but he would not be the best leader. I need to talk to him about that.'
After eating, we both reclined back in our comfortable cushioned chairs.
'There are definitely people out there right now who are being torn apart and eaten alive by those Zombies. That has never changed though, there are always troubles around the world. I need to make sure I am on the same page with my brother.'
I glanced over at him. "If we find other people, how are we going to control them? How are we going to trust them?"
Zane leaned back further. "Well, I was thinking about that too. I was thinking that we just shouldn't give them the code until we trust them."
"If we find a lot more than one, we need to have some sort of hierarchy though."
"That's true. We could both be leaders and start a sort of tribal clan where we are the leaders with complete authority. If anyone does something against our rules, we will decide their punishment between us."
I nodded and then reclined back with him into a sleeping position. "That sounds good."
My mind drifted before I fell asleep. 'Regardless of what happens tomorrow, both of us will be sleeping in these recliners again.'