Left Alive 1

by Jeremy Laszlo

  Away from the ferocity of the storm, I take a drink of water and wipe away the caked dust and ash so I can check my watch. I am making good time, all things considered. I am just at the overpass, about to make my way over the freeway. I pull a map off one of the racks of brochures and unfold it on the derelict counter, looking over my coming journey into Detroit. I trace my finger along Van Dyke Avenue and follow it as far as I can go. I figure that if I don’t stop, I can make it to the Detroit River by just past midday. I realize this might be overly optimistic, but I am suddenly feeling better. I look out the window and pray that the storm holds up. I will need to scavenge some food, but I will worry about that when the storm begins to abate. I need to use the cover to move openly and freely.

  Back out in the storm, I make my way across the overpass and push toward Detroit. The storm picks up even harder, gusting from different directions as I blindly walk down Van Dyke Avenue. I bang my knees on the bumpers and trunks of cars, slowly navigating around them, cursing my blindness. My feet become tangled in something before I fall loudly against the side of a van, cursing loudly, my words lost in the wind. Panic grips me thanks to my clumsiness, and I listen to make sure no one is listening or making their way toward me. I pick myself up and limp forward, seeing that my unknown attacker was nothing more than a bicycle. I continue forward, making my way block after block through the storm until I see the swirling ash part and a form emerge. I run my hands over it, letting them see the structure for me, and realize that it is some sort of tower or spire that has been knocked over from the side of the road. It had smashed down on two cars, caving them in, and I follow it blindly until I can get around it. A shattered cross is sprawled on the road. I look at it with complete apathy, reaching down to take a closer look at the center of the cross’s structure. Finding a long metal piece of rebar, I shake it and bang it on the road to get the fiberglass off, and decide to start using it as a staff to distinguish if anything is lurking ahead of me in the swirling veil of ash and dust. No more running into cars.

  Blindly picking my way down Van Dyke Avenue, I look up at the sky, trying to spot the sun so I can find out the general time it is. Darkness reigns oppressively and I am still left blind, even to the sun. Turning back to the task at hand I make my way down the road. Every time I find a car or a truck, I stop and check to see if the doors are unlocked. Twice I have found guns hidden in trucks, but both of them had been unloaded, no doubt stripped of their ammunition by others, though I am left to wonder why they didn’t take the guns as well. Eventually I give up trying to find anything of value in cars and just focus on the road.

  I ponder my path ahead with grave uncertainty. This infuriating, blinding storm is the only thing helping me at the moment and sooner or later, it’s going to cease and I will be left naked on my way downtown. I can’t help thinking about the kid from the previous night. He had been brutally murdered by those lurking in buildings and I am surrounded by similar buildings at any given moment. How am I supposed to survive Detroit, let alone everything that sits between me and Florida? I realize I was wrong earlier. I am going to need a car, but the nearer my proximity to Detroit, the more congestion on the road there is. There’s no winning with this dilemma. Survivors had driven cars as far as they would go, jumped out, and then hotwired the next car; leaving an endless expanse of useless cars. Reckless anarchists and nihilists had taken cars for joyrides, crashing them into whatever happened to be in the way as well. The streets are littered with debris and carnage. Even I have to abandon the road on foot after a while and follow a rod iron fence along what looks to be a massive park.

  I keep walking, listening to the howling for a little more than an hour until I think I hear something on the wind. I freeze when I first hear the sound, keeping to the sidewalks now, just far enough from the buildings that I’m not visible to those inside. At most, they might see me as a faint silhouette. Fear is what’s propelling me at every turn. The slightest sound is enough to make me stop and listen, hunkering down to avoid being spotted. I keep the rebar firmly gripped in my hands, ready to use it as a spear if need be. I slowly stand up and creep forward, time and again, listening and making sure my footsteps are as quiet as a mouse, even if the wind is still howling.

  Suddenly, there is a lull in the wind, as everything slows to a lazy drift for the time span of maybe fifteen seconds. The furious swarm of ash and dust ceases and the drifts float down the road like a sea of feathers and I see that I am standing on the street corner looking directly at a church. The barren lawn has several tents propped up on it, housing refugees or looters. The only thing that immediately draws my attention about the scene is the very intimidating man standing maybe twenty feet away from me with an assault rifle. Thankfully, he has his back to me and as soon as the storm lets up, he looks back to the church and shouts to those taking refuge inside.

  “All clear!” he calls. “Might not last long. Start ‘em up!”

  “You got it,” someone calls back.

  The man turns and looks straight ahead, but I can tell he’s caught me out of the corner of his eye. Thankfully, that same instant, I am engulfed in the renewed rush of the raging wind and the man’s shouts are immediately swallowed by the storm. Everything is suddenly drowned in a whirl of ash and dust. I limp out into the street, away from where he had seen me and I head down the road as quickly as possible, not wanting them to have a chance when the storm lets up and they can truly start searching for me. I hear the faint roar of an engine and could swear I hear the echo of gunshots, but I just keep moving, waving my metal staff in front of me, avoiding anything it hits.

  Eventually, the storm abates once more and begins to disintegrate completely. It tapers off near the end of the afternoon. Somewhere along the line, I have lost Van Dyke Avenue in the storm and am wandering between buildings, which frightens me more than being on the open road. As the last of the storm slowly dies, I find myself between a pair of brick buildings in the middle of a street that I don’t recognize. But as I look down the road, all I can do is smile. Right there, in the warm afternoon light sits the Detroit skyline. If I keep walking, I can be in the heart of the city by the time it’s midnight. I weigh the value of travelling onward late into the night, if it means I will get through Detroit faster. Time is my most important commodity now.

  Playing it smart is key so I decide to put that decision on the back burner until I make it closer to the city. I keep close to the buildings after finding it nearly impossible to keep to the streets with the hundreds of accidents on the road and the traffic jams that block every hope of passage I discover. Eventually I find a Save a Lot and my growling stomach can be ignored no longer. I sneak closer to the store after watching it for nearly an hour. Safety is my top priority now. That reality keeps sinking deeper and deeper in me with every passing minute and mile. I rely on my sight and my hearing, waiting for any indication that going inside the store might be suicidal.

  When I decide that there is no one inside, I make my way around the building and slip in through the loading bay doors. There are dead bodies heaped against the wall, resting where someone deposited them, or where they fell. It’s hard to tell. The darkness of the backroom is tangible and my quivering hands cling to my rebar staff with ferocious terror. If there is someone in the store, I have to remember where I am going and how best to escape. I kick myself for this plan. I can smell stale, rotten food that has long since turned to rancid puddles and stains. The whole backroom still stinks of that old decay and festering horrors. It takes everything that I have to not gag or vomit as I move slowly into that hungry darkness. When I find the doors into the main floor, I cautiously push them open and find that I am definitely not alone.

  Entering the store from doors beside the dairy cooler, I scan the shelves that are stripped and pushed aside to open up the aisle. There is a pile of old wood next to a large metal drum that is smoldering and flickering with an ominous, orange light across the room, revealing thirteen sleeping figures. They
are rolled up in blankets and sleeping bags, softly snoring along with the snapping of the fire and the pounding of my heart. Remaining motionless, terror of what I will need to do if these sleepers wake up fills my mind. I hear footsteps and instinctively drop down into a crouch and listen as I hear soft humming carry through the air like some mournful death cry, and I search the dim darkness to the wall of windows on the far side of the building. The windows are murky at best, but they let a pale brown light pass through them and I see a blackened figure moving along that wall of light. I can’t tell if it is a hunting rifle or a shotgun the silhouette carries, but it is leaning against his shoulder as he meanders across the front of the store, humming the dreadful tune.

  Slowly and as silently as death, I make my way back through the swinging doors, meticulously opening and closing them before I sneak my way through the thick darkness of the backroom. My head is whirling with a thousand scenarios that will undoubtedly happen if I make a single sound. Unspeakable horrors are lurking in the wings, hungrily and eagerly waiting for me to slip up. Images of Tiffany, Lexi, and Val whirl like dervishes through the maelstrom inside of my head as I move as quickly as I can in the darkness.

  When my foot hits a can that rolls into a shelving unit, I feel my heart stop. I feel my whole world shatter and I reach down for the can, trying to silence it as it continues spinning on the concrete floor. My desperate fingers find a dormant can and I immediately grab it and feel another can next to it. I scoop them up and shuffle to the side of the wall, hiding behind a pallet of toilet paper and listen as I hunker down like a rat and wait for my life to end. I hear footsteps hurry through the store and then the inevitable boom of the swinging doors being thrown open to slam into the wall while heavy footsteps continue into the darkness. I feel the icy hands of death gripping my spine as I see light spreading like a disease up the walls and across the floor as the watchman makes his way through the backroom. The light darts across the walls and into half a dozen hiding spots that I might have taken if I could have seen anything in this nightmarish darkness. Thankfully, I hadn’t crouched in any of those spots.

  The man approaches a pallet and starts rummaging through the stock just as the boom of the swinging doors echoes again through the backroom and I immediately pray to God for forgiveness for everything that I have ever done. I pray that the girls will find safety and salvation in this hellish wasteland. I pray for a million things in those final precious seconds of life as the footsteps come to join the watchman. I can feel the light on my face, betraying me.

  “What is it?” a voice asks through the darkness in a low, gruff voice.

  “Rat or something,” the watchman answers. “Nothing here. Want a beer?”

  “Keep it down, damn it,” the second voice grumbles, his footsteps leading away until the boom of the swinging doors echoes again.

  “Asshole,” the watchman murmurs.

  I keep still until the watchman flicks his bottle cap away after the familiar, distinct hiss of the bottle opening. I listen to the tinking of the bottle cap before it comes to rest upon the floor and I keep still as the light ebbs back toward the door. Once I hear the boom of the swinging doors one last time, I don’t waste a second hurrying back to the loading doors and roll underneath them and down onto the asphalt below with the dead. I land with a loud thump and roll onto my feet before limping off toward the direction of the Detroit skyline. I make sure to avoid the streets now. Terror drives me into the alleys and whenever I come to a street, I waste no time rushing from car to car, waiting a second in a crouch and listening for sounds of anyone who might be watching me. Nowhere is safe this close to Detroit.

  This has been a shit idea. I realize it as I make my way through the growing dusk, my feet moving toward the city. I slip the two cans into my pack and keep moving, not wasting any time in trying to open them. I have only taken a few seconds to read that one can is tomato sauce and the other is kidney beans. I stay to the shadows and lurk through the alleys of the city until I find an old looking Catholic church whose spire has toppled over after a fire and is scattered across the dirt lawn in a crumbled line. It has taken on a sudden dilapidated state and looks decrepit enough for me to assume that no one has set up camp inside of it. I climb through a hole in the wall and arrange my pack and meager supplies behind the altar and carve my way into the can of tomato sauce with my knife and drink it as I look out the hole in the roof at the stars twinkling in the sky between the lazy clouds and swirling dust. There are fewer now than I remember. You would think with all the lights out there would be more, but no, the dust and smoke in the air obscures even the heavens. Earth has gone dark even from the cosmos.

  My life has become a hunt at every turn, being stalked by those who have no clue that they’re my hunters. I can trust no one. I don’t know how I’m going to get to Florida anymore, all I know is that I must get there. I have hope that there are others out there like myself—people who just want to survive with those they love. I fear everything. If I am to run into people like myself out there, will I even recognize them? How can people come together or even meet if everyone is as afraid as I am? There must be others like me, but I doubt I’ll be brave enough when the time comes to reach out to them as a lingering member of humanity.

  Chapter Five

  I can no longer pick up the DJ. I listen to the radio through headphones as I watch the sun come up through a haze of gray and brown. Either he’s dead or he’s just out of range. The Preacher is still talking about God and how damnations has sorted us out. I can’t help but wonder where exactly he is in Detroit. Part of me wants to find him and to shake his hand. Another part of me can’t help but question how an old pastor was staying alive, and my mind immediately hunts down sinister conclusions that I hate myself for finding. Port Huron still comes in, but he doesn’t talk as much anymore. I think information is becoming harder and harder to come across. He spoke of a large band of militarized people he called an army making its way through his area, pillaging as they went. He said they were traveling down 94, which meant that they were heading straight for Detroit. Fear grips my mind once more at the declaration. I can’t help but feel fear when I see real, tangible dangers around every corner. I’m literally in a meat grinder with a giant boulder rolling down the metaphorical hill straight for me. I need to hurry. I need to get out of Detroit before they arrive. Nothing good can come of them ousting those who live here.

  Between me and that army, I imagine, is a small battalion of well-armed survivors who will no doubt fight for their lives to stop whatever sort of horde is headed this direction. I have no doubt that I can count on them to put up a fight while I make a run for it with the rest of the fearful and wandering. But if there are as many people heading in my direction as Port Huron led onto, then I am going to need to move quickly. My body still aches, but I need to get up and start moving again.

  I check the bandage over the gash on my cheek and grimace at the sight of it. It sends shivers of terror running down my back as I hold it in my hand. It’s brown and yellow. I reach up and investigate it with my dirty finger and wince at the bolts of agony that ripple through and across my damaged face. The flesh around the gash is puffy and swollen and I immediately know that it is infected. Knowing I have to try and clean it again, I find the bathrooms and can’t budge the men’s door. I wonder why I am so adamant to adhere to social norms, and kick through the women’s bathroom door. I prop the door open with my bag and luckily there is enough light for me to see the wound. I immediately wash it with one of my bottles of water, gritting my teeth against the pain and begin squeezing it to clear away the puss. I gag at the sight of the yellow mucus and blood in the discharge and quickly fight the dizzy spell that comes over me with a flood of nausea and pain. The smell of the wound, so near to my nose, makes me throw up what little I had in my stomach. Wiping my lips, I set to work once more. Either I am getting used to the pain or I am making progress. Perhaps my body is telling me that it is adjusting, or maybe I’m j
ust becoming numb. Either way I clean the wound and bandage it again, praying that it gets better soon.

  I return to the altar and try opening the can of kidney beans. I try wedging my knife into the top of the can and feel a tense vibration before the handle and blade snap apart. Cheap piece of shit. I look at the beans through a wave of dizziness and then grin at the altar’s pointed corners. Without thinking, I grip the can and smash it as hard as I can against the pointed corner. It begins to leak and with a smile I pry it open with the stump that remains of the knife before hurling it across the room. I am sweating a lot and know that I have a fever. I am going to need a lot of water, and something citrus won’t hurt either. I had passed a handful of DVS pharmacies on my way into the city and debate the merits of going back to one and trying to find some supplies. But then again, every other place appears to have been picked through, what would make them any different? Looting would have been more prevalent here in the city. Thousands—millions—had flocked to metro hubs like Detroit to try and find some structure or society to save them. Already I have found bullet holes and shell casings everywhere. I am just going to need to make it through the city and pray that I find something on the road out of Detroit.

  I point south and start my journey anew. Like a blizzard, the storm put down a fresh layer of powder that makes it easy to see if others have been on the move. The only downside is that others will be able to track me. I have to accept this and keep an eye over my shoulder as I go. Bodies litter the street and hang from windows, strewn about haphazardly. Only the dust and ash hides their horrible faces.

  I find tire tracks at a few of the intersections, but I can’t hear a motor running no matter how hard or long I strain. I wind around buildings and through alleys in hopes of avoiding main roads, but it is getting harder and harder as I draw closer and closer to the heart of the city. I can hear gunshots from inside Comerica Park as I pass by, darting from one abandoned car to another. The dead are left where they fell. I have seen corpses by the hundreds. Some are old, desiccated things, while others are fresh and bloated. I’m thankful for the ash, glad they don’t look back at me with lifeless eyes. I can’t help but feel terrified as I skulk through the heart of Detroit. This place was scary before it went to hell. Everywhere are hundreds of broken windows high above me, many of them having scorched walls around them from where smoke escaped from fires past. The earth is reclaiming everything. I know it is only a matter of time before all evidence of people is erased.