by Wade Ebeling
Daniel tried to keep his pace up, and he was soon ducking through a hole in a wooden fence that led to the field behind the Korean church. The din overhead had cleared, allowing the moon and stars enough room around the thin cloud cover to glow brightly enough to see by.
By the time he had crawled back over the wall leading back onto his street, Daniel hardly cared to see what was in front of him. His feet carried him along, his eyes fogged and unfocused. Still, he broke out into a run, relying on past knowledge to get him safely past the cracks in the pavement and over the felled trees. There was absolutely no light showing from any of the surrounding houses. No light, no sound, no life. They were alone. They had to leave.
Corinne would undoubtedly be worried about his being gone for so long, and he was equally worried about her and Rebecca. This new world was confusing and dangerous. It would be best to just to stay by his family’s side from now on. No more going off alone unless it was absolutely necessary. Daniel wondered if he had enough strength for them all. From them, he would have to try and gather the will needed to continue on, to continue moving forward. He would have to find a way to keep the cruelness of this new world from even coming close to touching them. He would have to find a way to hide when necessary and run when possible to escape this damned world.
Daniel cut across the last three lawns, almost hyperventilating now that he was so close to home. A feeling of safety had been permanently associated with the house, but Daniel knew that era was over. Getting as far away as possible from here, from his childhood, from the pain, was all he could think about. Bounding over the overgrown holly bushes that ringed the front porch, the pokes and scratches going nearly unnoticed, he yanked open the squeaky screen door when both feet landed.
Daniel started banging erratically on the front door before remembering what he had told Corinne about the series of three knocks. Quite unexpectedly, the door had been moving slightly as he pounded on it. It felt nowhere near as solid as he thought it should have, and he wondered if Corinne had forgotten to put the brace back in like he had asked her to.
The door knob turned freely when he tried it, the door swung silently inwards.
Daniel’s arms started shaking as he brought the rifle back around to the front. After only a few steps inside he smelled it, death; the odor of feces and blood. The unforgettable smell was still fresh in his memory from the night before, and he knew what it meant. Daniel pulled the small flashlight out and turned it on. Everything looked exactly the same in the front room. The wood brace remained propped against the wall, right where he had left it.
“Corinne!”
“Rebecca!”
Silence the only answer.
Halting, unsure steps carried him into the hallway. The stench lessened as he went down the short corridor, checking the bedrooms and bath as he went. Retracing his steps, Daniel turned into the dining room. The flashlight cut slow arcs through the darkness. He scanned the living room and kitchen. Again, nothing looked out of place. Nothing looked to have been touched since his departure.
“Corinne! It’s me! Where are you guys?” His voice was high and strained.
He could taste the rising panic, bitter as gall at the back of his throat. His heart thumped audibly, and his hands started to shake uncontrollably. As he followed the growing stench to the top of the stairs, cordite joined in with the other all-too-familiar smells assaulting him.
Gunfire.
Death.
Courage faltering, Daniel made his way downstairs. The sparkly pink barrettes on Rebecca’s head caught Daniel’s light. For some reason, she was lying in the middle of the floor. He panned the light down her body, stopping when he saw the gaping wound in her unmoving chest. The blood looked dried and black, and, in direct contrast to the dark blood, her skin looked pale as alabaster.
There was no question, Rebecca was dead.
Daniel stumbled down the last few steps, just barely keeping his balance. He searched the basement with the flashlight for any sign of his wife.
It did not take long to find her. In amongst the inky blackness, Corinne sat crouched against the wall by the bed; the shotgun still clasped between tucked up legs. A large flap of her skull was tenuously hanging off to the right, covering her ear. Above what was left of her head, blood and chunks of fleshy tissue clung in a tight pattern to the wall. Streams of blood reflected in the white light like rivulets of rubies, tracing fork-tongued lines back up to her eyes and nose.
Corinne’s front teeth had been partially knocked outwards from the force of the self-imposed shotgun blast. This gave her the look of a beaten dullard. She looked like, and became, nothing but a dead moron to Daniel’s fogging eyes.
Daniel fell to his knees. It felt as though he was no longer in synch with the earth’s rotation. His anger and sorrow fought for control.
Corinne’s dumb-looking grimace roused his anger, but it was Rebecca’s pained expression that won sorrow a narrow victory.
His eyes rolled up into the backs of their sockets. The darkness came for him.
PART II
Chapter 10
Sunday, July 19 - 2029
Allen Moore was the superintendent of Sunnybrook Apartments. The four disjointed buildings of the complex formed a loose square, bound by concrete walkways. Each unit had a separate letter that went in clockwise order from the northern building A, and held two stairwells that jutted in on the courtyard side. This separated the buildings into two halves, and each half was home to four apartments. Two doors bookended the small landing formed at the summit of the stairs, two more sat outside, off of the concrete pad at the base of the stairs.
The manager’s suite was in building C, the southernmost building in the formation. Both ground floor apartments of the eastern section had been merged to form the suite. A large portal was cut into the fire wall to accomplish this task, and that opening was now clad with French doors that never closed. The western, interior rooms of the suite were dedicated to three bedrooms and an ample bathroom. The eastern rooms held the large living room, small kitchen, and a cluttered den.
A former co-worker of Allen’s, Jason Clarke, had inherited the apartment complex. Shortly thereafter, Jason left the window installation store where the two had become fast friends in just over two years, both working as salesmen for the “Factory Direct” marketed business. Allen tried his best to eke out a living with the commission based job, but the industries that usually bought new bulk windows had become scarce, and commissions had become even scarcer. The ash and dust had ruined everything, putting more and more businesses on the brink every day. In a world of sudden darkness, new windows seemed to fall way down the list of priorities.
Jason immediately fired the former superintendent of Sunnybrook and helped Allen and his wife, Maggie, and their boy, Danny, move in after the foreclosure. Allen tried to make superficial fixes to the empty accommodations in an attempt to fill them. Jason tried to get the wholly one half of the tenants, who were at least two month’s rent behind, to pay their obligations. Sunnybrook had been whispering its swan song for some time now.
Sunnybrook Apartments was not alone in its downward descent. The sputtering country had just taken a blow that had knocked it from kneeling to prostrate. The country, like the rest of the world, was already struggling to produce enough food, as a blanket of volcanic ash covered the ground and blotted the sky. While reports were still conflicting, what was known of the massive terrorist attack that began a week ago was enough to put all of Detroit into a panic. Tornado sirens blared briefly, and the radio and television were taken over by the Emergency Broadcast System, which was telling everyone to shelter in place and await rescue. No one listened, and almost every person within a hundred miles of a nuclear plant, not just the two that had been destroyed, got on the roads at the same time.
The roads quickly became impassible, as more and more people abandoned their vehicles. It was not just the willful-dependents of the world who were affected, even those who live
d within their means were unwittingly thrust onto the same sinking boat. In setting aside some of what they had, meant for leaner times, these folk marked themselves as prey. Swirling torrents of transient people had begun sweeping across the land, set on siphoning up the last nutrients of the lost world, willing to target anything stationary that ended up in their path.
People almost never had enough friends or family around to keep the things that they had deemed worth fighting for. And so, they just died for them. Entire communities were killed over useless baubles and trinkets, trading their lives for one more day with luxuries still in place. Some people held out longer than others but, once noticed, once spotted, time was always short. Disappear or join in, an easy thing to say, much harder for most people to actually do.
The extensive plans that laid out the terms for implementing martial law were kept hidden from the populace. Only after President Marshall had fully dissolved the remnants of the governance were they to be made known, announcing that he was stepping aside shortly after issuing a new Presidential Order. The stock markets and banks had all been closed, this taking place just before the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency temporarily took over control of the country.
The world had been inadvertently tied together is so many different ways that, when the first dominoes started falling, there was no way of stopping the building energy from turning into inertia.
Martial law was implemented with fleets of unmanned aerial vehicles circling the air space and armored patrols circling urban centers and key pieces of infrastructure. The riots and lootings had beaten the military to the punch by a few days, so a hard line tactic was being taken right from the onset. This consisted of engaging groups larger than thirty people, who were deemed destructive or disruptive in any way, with deadly force and indiscriminant bombings. This was the military’s one and only strategy. Effective and efficient, killing was the only thing that the government had truly perfected.
Large patches of the country, mainly in urban and suburban areas, had become war zones. These areas were labeled as no travel zones; in or out. Small groups, driven on by hunger or fear, escaped these cordons only to find they would have to fight to continue on with their existence. This spread the violence and fear to nearly every corner of the country.
Civil unrest ultimately took hold. Neighbors were viewed as potential threats, not potential allies. The hoarding of food, water, and armaments had been outlawed, with little explanation as to how much was too much. The simple act of feeding one neighbor could lead to being turned in, for a reward, by another. Patrolling your own neighborhood, while armed, might lead to your imprisonment or death. Once the trust died, America officially did, too.
The military’s not-so-effective takeover had been in place for four days now; the power had been off for eight. Allen could still see the orange glow of fires reflected on the dense cloud cover to the south. The fires were burning in the heart of what once was Detroit. Far enough away as to not cause immediate concern, close enough to smell the char of old wood on the breeze. He stood watching the ruination from the gravel patio just outside his family’s joined apartments.
As soon as the military made their presence known, with frequent, massive explosions, the fires had started. The conflagration made it hard to believe that anyone could have survived it. The bombings and the infernos kept coming closer, creating a great surge of humanity ahead of them. Like animals being chased down by a forest fire, people fled in the same manner.
Even before the terrorists attacked, stores had little available, and the word affordable no longer held any meaning. Seeing the signs of impending doom earlier than most, Allen had put the last of his money into storing food and supplies over the last few years. He had chosen to stop making house payments after the interest rate was “adjusted” for the third time in two years. Even though they had signed to a fixed mortgage, some specific part of a non-specific new law had given the banksters new rights when it came to loans; they enjoyed record profits right up until the end.
After moving what little they had managed to accumulate into the new apartment, Allen devoted every free second to packing food away for long-term storage. The choice now was to either run off into the possibly irradiated wind with very little or to stay put, trying to protect what they had amassed until things calmed down to the point where they could leave the area safely. Allen Moore had never been much for winging it, so he and his family stayed put while the mad rush to get away from Detroit started and stalled.
Walking around the outside of his apartment, Allen was looking for how much could be seen in through the windows. He had used an extra roll of window screening, found in the maintenance shed, to add a sloped upward piece to the inside of three windows. By adding the slight tilt to the mesh, it significantly cut down what could be seen inside the suite from a distance. Satisfied that no one could see in, unless they came within close proximity, and that he could still see out, Allen returned to the only door of the suite that was still accessible, the eastern door on the courtyard side.
Plywood had already been mounted over the other widows and three other doors, screwing it directly into the red brick exterior. He kept a small window on each of the north, east, and south facing walls unobstructed for viewing and to let in what little daylight remained. Sightlines included, from the window next to the main door on the north side, a complete view of the trampled grass ranging the courtyard, which was surrounded by the three other buildings that made up the complex. In the living room, two windows remained functional. One showed the community garden and thin wood line beyond to the east and the other towering elm patriarchs that dominated the panorama, sixty yards away to the south, lining both sides of the once busy thoroughfare of east/west running 10 Mile road.
As Allen rounded the corner, he saw the couple from A5, who were four months behind on their rent, carrying stuffed duffels and garbage bags. They headed for the ‘L’ shaped parking lot, situated on the west and north sides of the complex. Allen wondered where the couple thought they could safely get to on what little gas likely remained in their rust-brown, foreign-made sedan. There was little hope of finding additional fuel; nothing remained hidden away inside gas station’s buried tanks. It had all been siphoned away by the hordes or commandeered by the roving military patrols by now.
Even though he had asked the couple to leave three weeks ago, Allen was now tempted to run over and tell them that they could stay. Of course, only if they wanted to. The way things were panning out, he would not be enforcing any of the apartment regulations and policies anymore. Allen consciously dulled any guilt, by ingraining the heated last conversation had between them as his lone thought. He turned away without speaking a word to them, angry or otherwise, entering his door as quietly as he could manage.
The door led to a small, dull-yellow mud room, where there was a door to the den, now the graveyard for Danny’s outgrown and forgotten toys. His wife, Maggie, had insisted that Danny have all of his old toys to help him adjust to the move. Straight ahead from the exterior door and window was a patriotic curtain hanging across the opening into the kitchen. The thick fabric of the flag, strung on a robust wooden dowel rod, ensured that it would never quite open far enough to allow unhindered passage. Allen gave a futile attempt to detain the hanging bundle without it springing back at him.
Maggie saw his stubborn compulsion with the curtain, laughing for the first time in days. The laugh ended all too quickly, replaced by a beleaguered sigh. “The radio is only playing that creepy loop of…What’s his name? You know? The guy who says he is a general? Sliven or whatever it is? Anyway, I finally figured out what he was saying that name is. He’s saying, the ‘Department of Continuance’. The guy’s talking so fast, you can hardly understand him,” Maggie informed, updating him on what had transpired in the last three minutes.
“Continuance!? What the hell is that? Is it like that continuity stuff we heard about? So all the branches
of the military, Homeland Security, and FEMA are all now in some ominously named department? I can’t believe the Marines are on board for this,” Allen replied, shaking his head at just how crazy things had gotten so quickly.
Out of routine, at the mere mention of the Marine Corps, he looked for the stained-wood and glass case hanging prominently in the living room over the once working fireplace, which was long ago converted to gas. It held a folded flag partitioned away from his medals and dog tags. Two empty rifle casings were also pressed between the maroon velvet and glass face. He found the case with his eyes, quickly averting them right after. Memories, which required far too much time and effort, would sidle up alongside if Allen dared to linger.
“What did he say about the National Guard?” he asked, all too eager to get back into the conversation. Allen had heard the broadcast numerous times himself, and, despite the poor quality of the broadcast, knew what it was intended to signify. It was a warning to all those who would dare oppose the government, in whatever form it was taking at the moment.
“I don’t know. It sounds kinda like a threat, maybe. He keeps saying something about some kind of punishment.”
“Corporal punishment,” he said quietly.
“Just repeats it over and over,” Maggie continued on. “What do you want to do for lunch and dinner? We should try to eat up some of that tuna fish,” she said, trying to keep her voice from emitting the seemingly contagious angst. They both knew that they had to keep it together, for themselves, for their son, for each other. Quick tempers were something that they had always shared. Now that paradigm of their relationship had been put into a state of indefinite suspension.
“Yeah, Danny didn’t eat anything, except the crackers, last time we had tuna. We should just make spaghetti again. Danny really loves it, and we should use up all of those meat sauces first,” Allen remarked as he plopped into a chair at the round, faux-wood-laminated table in the kitchen. He loosened, but kept on, his tan jump boots.
