The Flash

I was looking for an alternator.
Ever since the blasts, it had gotten hard to find simple car parts.
The old Walmart down at Steelyard was a good place to find things like that, if they still existed.
It was a bright, cold winter day.  As I walked through the huge parking lot, I looked around me at the old buildings and stores.  Some of them were half-upright ruins, and others were boarded up.  Like in most places, a lazy plume of smoke rose from the fires that the Lost kept lit for warmth.
Sometimes I would go and try to talk to the Lost, about why they didn't take the link.  Waste of time, to be honest.  I'd ask them what their lives were like, and why they didn't take the link, and they would babble about "love" and "truth" which is one of the reasons why I begrudgingly praised the Eye.  The Eye proclaimed that the Lost weren't worth interacting with, that we should ignore them like a bump in the road.  But if they were that unimportant, why not get rid of them? The Linked were often subjected to purges, when an incorrect thought wave occurred, so why were the Lost able to roam and loiter so freely?
I approached the old Walmart, and joined the line to get in.
You had to scan your link at a power station in order to enter stores then.  The Lost weren't allowed to shop at stores anymore.
We called it a "line" out of habit, but it was more like a throng, moving forward slowly with an irregular gait toward the power station checkpoint.
The checkpoints had sensors positioned about seven feet high, so you had to raise your hand above your head to get it scanned.
I waited patiently as the people in front of me raised their hand, black diamond tattoos visible, and chanted "I praise the Eye".  The scanner would briefly flash a radioactive green, reflected by their tattoo, and they would walk forward.
I was in a hurry.
I edged around some of the slow walkers in front of me, raised my hand, mumbled something about the eye, and pushed through the crowd.
Once inside the building, I walked past a heap of random machinery and rushed to the very back corner of the store.
Organization was in short supply those days.  I knew I would have to methodically walk each aisle to see if they had an alternator.
I had once found an old 24V power plug that I needed in an aisle full of children's toys, so I didn't want to chance missing this.  My car was simple and reliable, so finding this alternator was the difference between meeting my quotas and being a walker for the next year.

Eventually, I reached the toy aisle, which was about in the middle of the store.  I strolled down the stained tile floor, scanning up and down the shelves as I went.  A bright red doll caught my eye, and I stopped and stared at it.  It had big eyes on top of the head, like the old cartoons, a big orange nose, and soft red fur covering the whole body.
I had an irresistable urge to pick it up.  I reached out and grabbed it by the torso, and some sort of speaker inside of it made a loud childish voice.
"Heehee!  That tickles"
I jumped, startled by the ancient craftsmanship.

The memories of Lily, my first daughter, suddenly invaded my mind. I remembered her laughing as I tickled her on the couch.

Feelings seized me, as I remembered why we used to live. I needed to tell someone. I dashed down the aisle and into the next, until I found another customer.

It was a young man. He looked at me with puzzled eyes, and I screamed, "We're supposed to be loved! We're supposed to be free!" Then I ran off and did the same with every person I could find in the store. The incorrect thought wave alarm began to wail throughout the building.

I ran outside, and kept screaming it at the top of my lungs.
"We're supposed to be loved!  We're supposed to be free!"
The linked who heard it looked at me with blank eyes.  Most of them looked away from me the way a child looks away from a crippled person approaching them on the street.
Almost instinctively, I ran toward the slag heap that distinguished Steelyard Commons from the ordinary shopping plazas, even in the common era.  There were a few camps of Lost scattered around the area.  As I sprinted toward one, I noticed a pretty young girl, pretty even in tattered clothes and a face smudged with woodsmoke, staring at me.
I met her eyes and halted.
"We're supposed to be loved!  We're supposed to be free!" I bellowed into her face.
Her lips curled upward slightly.
"Duh.  What do you think we're waiting around for?"