The sun rose. The red timer hit [00:00:00].
The sky turned back to a bruised purple. Phase 2 was over.
We spent the morning repairing. I used the stone from the destroyed stairs to build a ramp. It wasn't pretty, but it was functional.
We were sitting in the lobby, eating the last of the crackers, when we saw them.
People.
Not monsters. Five humans were standing at the edge of the street, staring at our building. They looked like hell. Their clothes were torn, their faces covered in soot. One of them, a tall man with a baseball bat, stepped forward.
He looked at the barricades. He looked at the pumpkin guts on the walls. He looked at me, sitting on a throne of rubble with a fire axe across my knees.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Is this a Safe Zone?"
Silas looked at me. "What do we do?"
"We need workers," I said quietly. "But we don't need freeloaders."