In the month since David had found himself alone in the world, he had made his house into a fortress. He had gas powered generators in his basement that provided all the electricity that he needed and his pantry was fully stocked with food. Fresh food was quickly running out - David knew that he soon would never drink milk again - but he had wisely brought several large freezers into his garage and filled them with a multitude of steaks, hamburgers and other meat.
So David was eating well and he was keeping himself entertained. David had gotten himself the nicest sixty inch television he could find and had an impressive library of DVD's to choose from. Between the movies and video games, David was rarely bored. There were times when he thought that this might be the happiest he had ever been.
When David did grow tired of his home entertainment, he travelled. At first, he was hoping that he could find other survivors (if that's what he was), but eventually the trips were just to see what supplies he could find. He was wary of going too far away from home for a couple of reasons. First, his blackout at the sporting goods store was always in the back of his mind and he didn't want that to happen to him too far away from home. Second, the gasoline situation was a real concern for him. He had been lucky so far and hadn't had any trouble getting gas from nearby stations, but he knew that eventually the reserves would run out. He figured that he would eventually have to move his home to a different area where there would still be gasoline in the stations, but he wanted to conserve as much as he could to avoid moving for as long as he could.
The driving gave him a lot of time to think. He stopped wondering what had happened to the world after the first week. He couldn't come up with any fresh ideas and there really wasn't much to think about it. He really didn't have the slightest idea where to start looking for an explanation.
No, instead he thought a lot about his life before the world emptied. He wondered what it was inside him that wouldn't allow him to be satisfied. He had a good job, a nice house and a fiancee that loved him, but all he ever thought about was quitting his job, moving away and leaving Allison behind. What he wondered most was why he had never truly been happy until he found himself alone in an empty world.
David had figured out some other practical issues fairly quickly. His garbage began to build up and he decided to use the house of a neighbor down the street as a landfill. He knew that he wouldn't want the garbage too close to his house, or else he'd smell it, but he didn't want to travel too far to dump it either. The neighbor's house was a good place because it was several houses away. It also served as somewhat of a symbolic gesture for David, because he had always hated that neighbor. It sort of felt good to dump his garbage in the guy's living room. He thought that eventually he might have to burn the house down, which would also be fun, but he wanted to be sure that he had figured out how to burn it down without catching anything else on fire.
He also worried about water. He didn't really know how water and sewer services worked or, more importantly, why they were still working for him. He had a plan to use the library to learn about how it all worked so that perhaps he could perform any maintenance that would be needed to keep it working for him. He didn't know if that would be possible, but he couldn't think of any other ideas. For now it was all working and he felt lucky that he hadn't had to cross that bridge yet.
Besides food and entertainment, the other thing David had stocked up on was guns. On his second trip to the sporting goods store he had taken a shotgun and a handgun to replace the one that was missing from his closet. A part of him still thought that it was irrational since he hadn't seen another living thing and couldn't imagine where a threat would come from. The other part of him thought "what could it hurt?"
Shortly thereafter, he again heard voices, this time at his house, and having the weapons seemed like a really good idea.
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