It didn’t take us long to find the security room. It appeared to be abandoned.

“Strange,” Kim said. “All the computers are still on. And by the looks of it so are all the cameras.”

“Well, at least this will make it a lot easier to secure the building,” Kenji said.

“And that means we can eat sooner!” Jack added with enthusiasm.

The cameras showed the entire gaming floor from practically every angle. They showed all the restaurants and the VIP sections. It even showed the insides of the elevators. The only thing the cameras didn’t show were the hotel rooms of the upper floors.

Kim sat down in front of one of the computers and started looking through some files. “Oh my god,” she said. “Check this out.”

She had found some security footage from the previous night. It showed people frantically running in all directions. In the top corner of the screen you could just see a security guard wrestle with some of the customers. The footage then cut to another angle, poker chips were everywhere, some people were dropping to the floor to scoop them up.

“Wow. That is messed up,” Maria said.

Kim clicked through more files, looking for something more recent but she couldn’t find anything. “Looks like the cameras are on but they’re not recording.”

“So why did they leave them on?” I asked. “And where has everyone gone?”

“Maybe they evacuated everyone on this side of the bridge as well?” Maria suggested.

“I’m not sure,” Kenji said as he leant over Kim and pointed at the computer screen. “There’s the main restaurant,” he said. “Probably our best chance for food and water. Can you bring up a map of the building, Kim?”

She minimized the live footage from the security cameras and searched through some more files. “Here it is.”

She enlarged the map which showed just how big the casino was. The gaming section was only a small part. The rest of the building contained shops and bars. There were even a couple of theatre rooms and a whole hotel upstairs.

I was so glad we decided not to split up. We would’ve got lost for sure.

“OK, we should secure this floor first,” Kenji said. “If we close these doors here and here, we should be pretty safe. There are two stairwells that we can use to move up to the higher floors. And we can use this stairwell at the rear of the building as an emergency exit if we ever get in trouble. It leads us out here on to the road that runs along the water. From there we can make it to one of the boats in the harbor.”

“Yeah, because that worked out so well for us last time,” Jack said.

“I know it’s not the greatest back up plan but at least it’s something. The last thing we want is to be trapped in here without an exit strategy.”

“We should also lock the front doors,” Kim suggested. “We don’t want anyone just walking in off the street like we did.”

“How are we going to do that?” Maria asked.

“Not sure. Maybe we can find something to jam the doors so they can’t open.”

We took one more look at the map of the gaming floor. It was a large area but we knew once we had checked it out and made sure it was safe, our reward would be all the food we could eat from the restaurant. Before we left the security room, Kenji did a quick sweep for supplies. He found a couple of walkie talkies and a gun locker that had been left open by the last security guards to leave here. I guess they left in a hurry. Inside the locker was a shotgun and a smaller handgun.

“These might come in useful,” he said as he gave the handgun to Kim. “We don’t have a lot of ammunition, there’s only one clip for the handgun, and only two shells for the shotgun, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” Kim said.

“And these radios probably won’t have the best range but they should work inside the building.”

Kim brought the security camera images of the gaming floor back up on the computer screen. We studied the images closely for one last time. The place seemed to be deserted.

“OK, is everyone ready?” Kenji asked.

“Yeah, let’s get this over with,” Jack said. “I’m ready to eat some real food.”

We didn’t split up to search the gaming area but we did spread out so we were in a long line with about five meters distance between us. We checked under every roulette table, black jack table and craps table. We checked behind all the bars and behind all the poker machines. We found nothing. The place was indeed deserted, just like the security cameras had told us.

Once we were satisfied we were alone, we headed for the main restaurant. Our eyes lit up. There was an all you can eat buffet set up in the middle of the room and by the look and smell of the food most of it was still fresh. I guess they didn’t abandon the casino up until the last minute. I could understand why they would want to stay open. Casinos are designed to take people’s money. They can’t do that if they’re closed. And people will always want to gamble, no matter what. I remembered reading something on the internet about how people actually gamble more during recessions. Maybe the same goes for zombie apocalypses.

Jack ran over to the buffet. “Aww man. I wouldn’t touch the seafood. But everything else looks pretty good, especially the potato salad.”

The buffet was long and completely covered in food. Even though we couldn’t eat from the seafood sections, and maybe some of the meat was a little suspicious, I still didn’t know where to start. So I ended up making the biggest bowl of Caesar salad the world had ever seen. I think I poured about a gallon of ranch dressing on and mixed in some of the potato salad for good measure.

Jack wasn’t interested in salad so he went into the kitchen to see what they had in the fridges. He came back with a couple of trays of cold meats. There was ham, roast beef, chicken and even turkey. It was a feast.

We must have gorged on the food for at least an hour. After eating so much so quickly, I needed to lie down. We all did. So we ended up having a nap right there in the restaurant. I crawled up under one of the tables and to my surprise, Maria curled up next to me.

“Where’s Jack,” I asked.

“He went back to the kitchen to see if he could find any fresh seafood.”

“He’s still hungry?”

“Yeah, he’s starving. And he loves seafood. I think Kenji is in there with him.”

“I’m so full I don’t think I’d be able to eat anymore, even if I knew we wouldn’t be able to eat anything for the next three days.”

“Jack’s mother is Italian,” Maria said. “I think that’s where he gets his appetite from.”

I knew what she meant. I’d been over to Jack’s house for dinner once. I’d never seen so much pasta in all my life. And Jack’s mother kept ordering me to eat. “You’re skin and bones,” she would say. “You need to eat!”

“I wonder if she’s all right,” Maria said after a while. “She’s always been so nice to me.”

“Do you think they made it out in time?”

“I hope so. Jack seems to think they’ll be all right. He reckons they would’ve left the city early on to stay with their relatives out in the country.”

“It was lucky your parents were overseas,” I said.

“Yeah. They’re probably worried sick about me. I hope my house hasn’t been blown up.”

“At least you know they are safe,” I said with a slight tone of bitterness and jealousy.

Maria reached over and held my hand. “Rebecca, your mother is going to be all right.”

Even when I was being a bitch, Maria was always patient and understanding. I quickly apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

“It’s OK. You don’t have to apologize.”

“But what are the odds my mother is still alive? You saw the other hospital. It was totally cleared out. The same thing probably happened at the hospital she was working at.”

“You can’t think like that. It’ll drive you insane. You have to stay positive.”

After our talk we were silent for a while. I tried to drift off to sleep but I couldn’t.

A few minutes later, Kenji and Jack had finally finished eating.

We decided that we should try and get some sleep in the security room. There weren’t any beds but at least we would be able to keep an eye on everything. It sounded like a good plan but when we got back to the security room all the cameras and computers had turned off.

“Did they turn off by themselves?” Maria asked.

“Maybe it’s got an auto shut down function or something?” Kim offered.

The feeling of paranoia was back. We decided that we should find a hotel room upstairs to get a decent night sleep.

Kenji made sure we found one close to a stairwell on the first floor so we could also leave in a hurry if we needed to. We found a room that was joined to the one next door. Besides Jack and Maria who had been sharing a bed all week while Maria’s parents were away, we all got a bed to ourselves.

In a matter of minutes everyone was asleep. Except for me. I was wide awake. To make matters worse, every now and then a helicopter would fly over the building or nearby and scare the hell out of me. I wanted to wake Kenji up a few times, tell him to get the shotgun ready or something. But I let him sleep. I kept telling myself that we were safe for the time being, that we were hidden and no one knew we were there.

I was trying to stay positive but it wasn’t working. After a while I began to think about all the bad stuff that had happened. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the carnage and all those innocent people trapped in the tunnel and on the bridge. I felt like I shouldn’t be alive, like I had no right to have survived when so many people died that very day. I wanted to believe my mother had made it to safety before anything bad had happened to her, but there was no convincing myself.

I think in the end I was just too scared to sleep.