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Looking back at Marty, he had a sudden aura of sadness. Despite the wonderful Starcraft metaphor.

"Even if they could climb, it's not like they have siege engines. The rooms that even have balconies have small ones. As for everyone else in the building..." He then took a large breath, steeling his nerves to say something terrible.

"I think we should go around and see who's here. We barricade the main entrances, raid the bottom apartments, move their sofas and furniture to block their walk-outs from entry, and start controlling who gets in and who doesn't."

He raised his hands, both in gesture and to make sure they wouldn't interrupt him yet.

"Then we start going through the floors and seeing who's left. If we find people who seem fine, we send them down to help with the first floor preparations. If they don't seem fine... we defend ourselves."

He stressed the last part. This was serious business, and if this virus is turning people into cannibals than it's going to be "Us vs. Them" very quickly.

His brain began to churn about how to safely let people into the building, if they were being chased. Establish a perimeter? Use a second-floor balcony as the primary entrance, and make a ladder of some sort? With several floors to the building and access to the large, flat roof area, if a mob does break in they have a lot of choke points...

Nodding, Marty had to concede the point. If they were to stay here, that was a useful plan, except for a few key issues.

"But again, we don't know what they're capable of. We don't know what they can, and what they can't, do. If they can climb, that sort of plan leaves us in the center of the spider's web, hemmed in on all sides, with no supplies, and no an increasing number of enemies." Glancing at Liz, he gestured at her.

"And frankly, I don't care about most other people. My friends - the people I care about - are the only ones I have a problem expending." Glancing to Scotty, he shrugged, then turned back to Dave and Liz. "If it comes down to it, I have three people to worry about. That may change, but right now, I have to make sure that we three survive. That's my goal."

He hesitated, then grimaced. "Sadly, if you're set on this, we NEED recon. We need to know, before nightfall, what these things are capable of. Meaning we need to bait them into trying to climb. Some of us will have to go out there. Or, we need to spend tonight somewhere that danger doesn't exist, and we need to move before they become unstoppable. For tonight, any secure basement or isolated closet will do. But I want concrete on three walls, no matter what. They may be smart enough to dig through drywall, I don't know yet. I would do it."

Sitting down, he finally put the pizza aside, looking at Dave. "You know I'm in this for the long haul, but by the time the sun goes down, we need somewhere secure to be, next to people we KNOW are not going to turn on us. For now, I'm fine with you three. I'm not, however, fine with this apartment. Not tonight. Not against something we don't know."

Marty's argument was very good, and David nodded in agreement.

The gears in his head began to turn as Liz spoke. He addressed Marty, first.

"The only problem I have with three walls of concrete is no escape route. And, if we can assume that they're all going to be like the alphabet Liz dealt with, we should have a pretty easy time with the balconies. Especially if we use something like WD-40 on the rails, you know? I think the hardest part will be the attention we get from people who start attempting to come home in an hour or so."

He sighed, and some demon inside of him entertained the thought of preventing any access at all to the apartment building, to anyone. "I also agree that everyone else comes second to you guys."

He looked at Scotty. "I don't mean you're in that group, either. Even though we just met, you're keeping your cool well about this, and that's better than I would expect from most people. What do you think about all this?"

Liz chewed on the end of her pencil, thinking,
"...There are trashcans in the alleyway? I don't know what we'd burn, mind you, but..."

She scribbled some more notes down, "The only concern with that is what if some people decide to steal the fire for their own purposes? Also, they aren't afraid of anything it seems, until they're past the catatonic state, so, I guess while we're on th emove, we could carry torches that..that might work. Right? We'd need the light anyway."

Liz flipped the page and made three columns as instructed. She took a deep breath, "So, I'll record."

To emphasize this she pulled out her MP3 player, still attached to her belt, and hit the 'record' button.

Eying the recorder, Marty shook his head slowly and talked quietly, as if not sure. "Why do we have to record it? What's wrong with just an agreement? You...sorta make me feel like we're recording our last moments here, a cry for help or something. There are four of us. We can manage this without writing a new holy text for psycho-smashing, right?"

John nodded softly, at this. I honestly can't argue with that. It's her car, she's the one that saved my life, and I can't think of anything better at the moment anyways, he thought to himself, amidst a chaos of other swirling thoughts, including, but not limited to, raw base panic instincts, a growing feeling of dread that today was shaping up to be the worst day of his life, and a sense of confusion at how undisturbed he was at seeing the bloody death of two men right in front of him not even minutes ago.

After a few moments of trying to sort the mess in his head out, he spoke simply, "Sure. That's fine by me," but then quickly added, "I'll understand if you don't want to leave him once we get there too, I should be able to find my own way home." Or rather he was going to, and indeed had started to, but just as he was saying "if don't want to...", he had another thought pop into his mind, trailed off briefly, before finishing up with "... You know, we could give him a call, maybe?" and fumbled around in his pocket.

Pulling out his cell phone, he asked "What number should I dial?" He noticed he had an alert that he had a new message, but ignored it for the time being, which is fairly typical, actually. He sometimes even proceeds to forget about notices like that entirely, and then has to apologize to an irate friend, or family member complaining 'Why didn't you return my call?!"