The Damned

by Andrew Pyper

  Then it gets bad again.

  Not just the damages to the landscape, the cinder-block bars and Check ’n Gos, but a chill in the air that has grown more solid over the past few blocks. The distance between where I started and where I am now has brought on a change of seasons, from dreary fall to dreary winter. With every mile I get closer to downtown the temperature drops another ten degrees. The fog hardening.

  If I ever reach Alfred Street the ground will be frozen. So will I.

  I’m crossing Grand Boulevard when I hear the roars again.

  Hide.

  Eddie’s voice. Breaking through from wherever he is. Which means he’s closer to this side than he should be.

  Something’s coming.

  “No! Eddie? Go back!”

  The sound of my voice echoed by an Amtrak overpass. The dead seeking warmth under cardboard blankets raise their heads to see me shamble past.

  Hide!

  There’s a car lot on the left. Jimmy Dale’s Pre-Owned. Random stock here and there, along with piles of scrap metal. A chain-link fence, still upright, stands between the lot and the street. A vine of some sort has snaked through its honeycomb of holes, acting as additional cover. It’ll have to do.

  The problem is the fence. Climb over? Look for a gate? No time for either.

  I’m about to run on when I spot a tear along one of the posts. Wide enough for a man to squeeze through if he doesn’t mind getting grated by cut metal.

  Another round of roars.

  Now.

  When I make it through to the other side, my chest, stomach, and legs crosshatched with cuts, I look for cover. If the beasts are as close as they sound, the sales building is too far away. There is only a sculpture of steel rods and fenders and car body parts, thirty feet to the right and against the fence.

  I’m falling to my knees and scrambling around behind the pyramid of scrap when Red Eyes roars beneath the railway overpass. Its voice louder and deeper than the other two, thrumming and hypnotic.

  There is no way to confirm whether it has seen me or not. Not without moving. And moving means it will hear.

  Even thinking is a risk. Because if I can feel its thoughts, it must be reaching out for mine. And I can feel its mind. Subtle as radio signals picked up by the fillings in your teeth.

  Quiet.

  This is new, too. The whole of Detroit suspended in the airless silence of a vacuum.

  How much time passes before I decide to crawl over and take a look out at the street? Enough for my hands and feet to go numb.

  I wriggle through the dirt, staying low. Nothing there.

  Maybe it thinks I’ve gone farther along than I have. Or it knows I’m watching and will do some hiding of its own. It doesn’t matter. I have to start walking again or freeze.

  I come out from behind the piled metal. Start toward the gap in the fence. Feel something watching me.

  My feet stop but my head turns.

  Wolves.

  Guard dogs of no discernible breed to begin with, but now, on this side, enlarged and mutated. Wolves combined with the grotesque creations of dollar store Halloween masks. Eyes sunk back in their skulls. One brown, one spotted like a cow, one black. Stepping out from what was once Jimmy Dale’s office.

  Even as I start to think of what I might do next, they spread apart. A widening semicircle that cuts me off from where I’d been hiding. A couple seconds later, one of them stands between me and the hole in the fence.

  There is no going ahead. There is only what’s behind me.

  I swing around and run for whatever’s there.

  A Crown Vic sedan. Long and wide as a tugboat. Judging from the faded blue stripes along the sides, a decommissioned Detroit Police cruiser.

  It’s all simple now. I make it there, the door opens, the windows are still intact, I get in, and all of it holds. Or the wolves rip the feet off my legs.

  The passenger side door is closer, but it’s closed—possibly jammed, possibly locked—and I can see that the driver side door is ajar. I figure the odds of a sure thing are better than an unsure thing, even if I have to get to the other side.

  The wolf-things close in behind me. Teeth chattering with excitement. The promise of meat.

  I hit the front of the car instead of shearing around it, a painful meeting of fender and thigh. It doesn’t stop me, though. My hip slides over the end of the hood and I find my feet again on the far side.

  One of the creatures, the brown one, jumps onto the hood. Its teeth would be on my arm if its nails didn’t slip on the smooth surface, a scratching dance that makes it snarl with fury.

  I’m rounding the partly opened door when the black wolf comes out from behind the car. Behind me, the brown makes it off the hood. Lands on the spotted cow, who shrieks with surprise.

  There’s a fraction of time when all three see how easy it will be to take me down. Time enough to also see there will be a race between them as to who gets me first.

  It’s why, when they come at me, they jump earlier than they likely otherwise would.

  I fall sideways into the driver seat. Grab the handle as I go. Most of me inside when I slam the door closed, but not all. Not the foot of my already injured leg. The foot the door closes on.

  The brown is on it instantly. The teeth tearing neatly through the sides of my shoes. Sinking into skin. Pulling me out.

  I’m another tug or two from being on the ground when the other two wolves fall upon the first.

  It lets me pull my leg back in though it costs me a scream. Which returns the creatures’ attention to how I might be removed from the car.

  With a yank, the door clicks shut at the same time the monsters throw themselves against it. And again. Their heads used as battering rams against steel.

  I try to move the foot that the brown chewed on. It throbs like a swarm of hornets are attacking it, but doesn’t seem broken anywhere. If the pain can be tolerated, I can likely still put some weight on it.

  So it can carry me where?

  I’m not leaving this car with those leaping, howling things out there. And their seeing me here every time they jump up for a look only doubles their frenzy. Makes them run their heads against the door again.

  After a while, it knocks some sense into them.

  The spotted wolf jumps onto the trunk. The black onto the front hood. The brown takes running leaps at the rear passenger window on my side, which is open a few inches and already webbed with cracks. Pounding, scratching. The three of them in a race to find the way in.

  I try to think of my family, the ones left behind. Summon a face or spoken word in their voices. But I can’t remember their names. There is nothing but the wolves. Wailing with an almost pitiable need.

  At the same time as the brown knocks a mug-sized chunk out of the rear window, the black smashes its snout through the front windshield. The teeth snapping two feet from my face even as the shards slice its jaws.

  I don’t want to think of her. But she comes anyway. Her name. The exhilaration she felt when she saw something was going to die.

  “Ash?”

  Curious.

  She’d be interested to see which wolf finds my throat first. And while I called out for her, even as I reached out for her, she would feel nothing for me. Only disappointment if her pick didn’t win.

  And then, all at once, I’m not alone.

  40

  * * *

  Someone sits in the passenger seat next to me who wasn’t there a second ago. Not Ash. There isn’t her smell, for one thing. And there isn’t the swallowing sadness that comes before the confirmation that it’s her.

  A man. A uniformed cop with a moustache that suits his wide face. He’s not oblivious to how bad this is—he sees the wolves-that-aren’t-wolves as well as how they now see him, his eyes darting between their three positions. Yet his features remain open, the professional skill of communicating calm to others who need it.

  Greg.

  His name comes to me even if it doesn�
��t return his wife’s—my wife’s—with it. Her first husband who took a bullet to the throat in his own home. A good man, she’d called him. A soul sent to a better place than this, but here all the same. Come here for me.

  Things, feelings, people. Souls. Maybe they can go back and forth more than we think.

  “I know who you are,” I say.

  He nods. A kindly, distinctly masculine gesture. A signal of peace between those who might otherwise have conflicting interests.

  “I’d say we ought to get a drink somewhere,” he says. “But I’m pretty sure this is a dry county. And you don’t have the time.”

  The black wrenches its head out of the hole in the windshield and drives it back through. The whole snout in the car now, almost the ears, too. Once it gets past those it will come in to the shoulders. More than far enough for its teeth to find me.

  “Here,” Greg says. “You need this more than I do.”

  He reaches inside his Marcellus Police windbreaker and pulls out a gun. Not his service revolver, but a small Browning semiautomatic. He flips it over in his hand, smiles at the return of a memory.

  Greg hands the gun over to me. The surprisingly heavy metal of a proper weapon, the density of purpose in the palm of my hand.

  “We called it the Just In Case,” he says.

  I nearly thank him but he gives his head a slight shake to indicate it’s not necessary. And then it’s his turn to almost say something to me.

  I know you loved them, too.

  He opens the passenger side door and steps out of the car. The wolves pause to watch him walk away just as I do. A cop’s untroubled saunter around the side of the sales building and he’s gone.

  Once he’s out of view, the monsters start fighting to get in again.

  Two of them do.

  The brown through the rear passenger window, tumbling onto the bench seat. The black through the front.

  The glass falls away from around the black’s body at the same time I raise the Browning. It bites the hand that holds the gun. Its teeth cutting through skin as my finger squeezes off the shot.

  The bullet explodes through its back. The creature releases its hold, looks at me like this was only a game and it can’t believe I took it as far as I have. An expression it holds as its head collapses onto my lap.

  I spin around and fire into the back of the car without looking.

  The first shot misses the brown, but startles it. Gives me the chance to align my aim and put the next bullet into its skull.

  Which leaves Spot.

  Until a moment ago, it was banging away at the rear window. Now nowhere to be seen.

  I open the driver side door and let it swing out a few inches. I’ve got the gun aimed at the gap but no teeth come snapping into it. Did the missed shot find it? It’s possible that it lies on the ground at the end of the car but I don’t think so. It was smarter than the other two. Using new tactics after it saw what the gun did to its brothers.

  Kick the door open wide. Step out with the gun at arm’s length, scanning the lot. When my left foot finds the ground it sends an initial note of pain straight up to the back of my head so intense it brings me close to passing out. Then, just as quickly, it recedes. Finds a throbbing rhythm I can just about manage.

  I leave the Crown Vic behind, start backing up toward the fence where I found a way in. My eyes traveling around the edges of everything, looking for a shape to emerge from its hiding place. It’s why, when the spotted wolf comes at me from behind and off to the side, I don’t see it until it’s too late. Running silently from the same pile of scrap I used for cover from the tigers. Plowing into me.

  But it doesn’t take me down.

  My legs hold me against the impact and still do even as it clamps its incisors through my pant leg and pulls back. It wants to topple me over. Instead, I shoot it in the hip.

  It lets go. I start backing away again, thinking I’ve got some time, but then it’s charging at me. Its lame rear leg bouncing around like a hammer tied to a wire.

  I shoot it in the chest.

  It puts in another two strides before it falls.

  The lot is quiet again except for the Browning, clicking and clicking as I keep pulling the trigger before dropping it next to Spot. Then I pass through the fence and start south without looking back.

  41

  * * *

  I’m expecting the gunshots and howls to have brought more people out along Woodward to see me. Instead, the blocks that follow are oddly emptied of movement. Perhaps the Detroit of the afterlife is like the living Detroit in this respect: when you hear trouble, you don’t call 911 or come out to see what’s going on, you mind your own goddamned business.

  It’s only after I’ve crossed the I-94 that I see people once again. Most of them standing at corners in Pistons and Lions wear, waiting for something that will never come to take them home. Others look like tourists. Out-of-towners in brightly colored golf shirts or floral skirts. One wears a money belt around his waist, another squints at a map she’s holding upside down.

  They’re here because this section of midtown once attracted them here. A stretch of Woodward Avenue that has the Detroit Public Library on the one side and the Institute of Arts on the other. The white stone of both structures riddled with handprints and smears, loops and commas—not a word, not a name, not a picture—all of the same dark brown color. Graffitists who have used human feces for paint.

  “That’s all the high culture this town has left,” I remember my father saying as we drove between the two buildings on the day he took me to his office. “Blink and you’ll miss it.”

  It was a remark I didn’t really understand at the time, but now see was directed not at the institutions themselves but the very character of the city. How little the place he’d poured his working life into had to show after the decades of prosperity and seemingly unstoppable growth, all of it so swiftly peeled away. The way Detroit would always be the Motor City even after the motors stopped being made.

  The tourists stop to study me the same as the others do. I can feel their interest turning to something else, something I notice for the first time emits its own vaguely sulfurous odor. As before, I keep my eyes down. Don’t look at them in the hope they’ll let me pass.

  I would guess, if this were the living world, it would be late afternoon now. Here, under the uninterrupted dome of cloud, the sun never shows itself, the shadows not lengthening so much as thickening.

  The Ren Cen towers loom larger now, their curved skin visibly pocked where windows have been smashed out. Before them, the older, Art Deco office buildings look porous and brown, as though made of wet sand. In the gathering gloom, the Stars and Stripes hangs from a pole atop the First National, the flag shredded to a limp pom-pom.

  I’m close enough to see the baseball stadium, too, set off to the east. The light towers surrounding the outfield wall like sentries.

  The view from Alfred Street.

  THE HOUSE IS STILL HERE. If anything, it’s in better shape than it is on earth.

  It doesn’t need the steel posts to hold up its walls, and the distinctive turret at the corner of the building has not yet collapsed so that, in the lowering light, a degree of its former grandeur is returned to it. Because almost every other mansion along the street has been razed, it stands alone for hundreds of feet on every side. The solitude only adds to the suggestion of haughtiness, a refusal to be around others unworthy of its company.

  The other difference is that the house has no boards nailed to its doors or windows. What air and light is available passes through its rooms, though from where I stand, where the sidewalk used to be, nothing can be seen inside.

  When I leapt from my mother’s car on our sixteenth birthday I didn’t hesitate as I do now. Back then I had a feeling. An Ash feeling, therefore good as certain.

  Now there’s nothing. Less than nothing. A hollowness inside me I hadn’t detected since coming here. Maybe I’m just noticing how I’m becoming like
the others, losing myself as I come closer to finding my forever. Which may be here.

  I enter the brown light of the house’s front hall where the floor is less littered now, only low dunes of dust and tumbling bits of paper on the floor. The silence so dense I try to imagine something in it, the hum of another’s blood in their veins, but the quiet only reasserts itself.

  “Are you here?”

  I sound sixteen again. Or younger still.

  When nothing answers, I make my way to the hole in the floor. Somebody has left a wooden ladder where the stairs once went down. So lightless at the bottom I can’t see where it touches ground.

  I put a foot on the second rung. When it doesn’t snap, I get into position and hold on to its sides. It squeaks in complaint but feels sturdy enough. With another couple descending steps I’m swallowed by increments of darkness.

  It takes longer than I’d guess to touch bottom. The open rectangle above shrinking to something unreachable, the light at the end of a pier seen from a ship after it pulls away.

  The moment I’m standing on the earth floor I only want to start back up. But all at once I’m shaking so hard I don’t think my hands could keep their grip on the wood.

  Because it’s cold down here.

  Because I’m terribly afraid.

  When my vision adjusts to the dark I blink into the cellar’s space and guess where its corners are. Eventually, different shades of black become readable and I start away from the ladder. Hands out in front me.

  “I know you’re here.”

  This isn’t true. But it feels like the sort of provocation that might bring her out. A statement of superior knowledge she’ll be tempted to challenge.

  “I’m not scared of you anymore.”

  It triggers a noise. The shuffle of feet over the slats of the floor overhead. Followed by the long scrape of wood on wood.

  I turn around in time to see the bottom end of the ladder disappearing up through the cellar opening.