Detroit Reanimated

by Michael Halliday

  “Do you submit?” Matt demanded.

  “Not yet!” Evan said hoarsely. He wrapped his arm around Matt’s legs and brought him down backwards. “I got you now, boy!”

  Evan brought his chin down into Matt’s chest and dug into it.

  “Is that all you got little man?” Matt dared to say.

  “You know, Matt. I haven’t shaved for a couple days. I bet it would sting without a shirt!”

  “Oh shit!” Matt screamed with terror.

  “Eliot, Simon, grab his legs!” Doug ordered his boys. They both went and held down Matt’s legs while Doug held down Matt’s arms. Evan lifted Matt’s shirt to expose his chest, then brought his chin back down and rotated his jaw against Matt’s sternum.

  “Torture, bwhaha,” Evan bellowed.

  Matt screamed and shrieked while laughing uncontrollably.

  “Do you submit?” Evan asked the boy.

  “I will never… submit… to you!” Matt countered while laughing.

  “Ok, more torture!”

  “Stop, oh my god, it stings! My stomach hurts! You win! You win! I hate you all!” Matthew yelled.

  Doug lost his grip on Matt’s arms, and instead of fighting Evan off, he wrapped his stomach. This told Evan that the boy had enough.

  Matt had laughed to the point of shedding tears. The boys let go of Matt’s legs and Evan helped him to his feet. Matthew lightly punched Evan in the gut. Realizing his mistake, he took off running.

  “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” Matt repeated. Evan charged after him.

  Edward approached Adam, who was watching with a sideways grin.

  “It’s great to be a kid,” Adam said.

  “Did you have any?” Edward inquired.

  Somewhere in the store something fell loudly to the floor. Edward heard Evan and Matt laughing at the two running around the store. It actually helped Edward to know the two were having the time of their lives, and growing a strong bond.

  “Nah, I never found the right woman. I did have a serious relationship not too long ago, but we never talked about having kids. Do you have any?”

  “Yep, a daughter Matt’s age,” Edward replied. “I also have a son, who’s nine.”

  Adam looked at Edward with the mention of his son.

  “Don’t tell these other people,” Edward said. “I’m divorced. I haven’t seen my kids for a year.”

  “That must hurt,” Adam said.

  ‘Not really,’ Edward thought.

  “Be honest with me,” Edward said sternly. “What do you think about Mary?”

  “She’s good looking,” Adam remarked. “Not my type though. Why do you ask?”

  “You can tell me,” Edward insisted. “If you had the chance, would you do her?”

  “Maybe,” Adam answered to play along.

  Edward gave Adam a sideways glance.

  “She’s the finest girl I’ve seen in a long time,” Edward suggested. “Get what I’m saying?”

  “I think we understand each other perfectly,” Adam said so only Edward could hear. “You’re an asshole. Leave her alone.”

  Edward watched Adam walk away with disbelief. He turned to walk away too, but stopped in his tracks. Out by the main entrance stood a girl he recognized. She was one of the half dozen he paid to have sex with. She had appeared as an undead, and she only gave him an accusing look.

  “Edward, are you ok?” John asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, just a head ache,” Edward replied after the girl disappeared.

  When Evan and Matt returned, Doug ruffled Matt’s sweat soaked hair, which earned him an elbow jab to his stomach.

  “Ok, I think that’s all I needed. You boys get all your testosterone worked off?” Nikki asked.

  “I’m gonna sleep like a baby when we camp tonight,” Evan said.

  “Me too,” Matt said. “I’m beat!”

  “Ha! I win!” Evan said. “I tired you out!”

  Evan threw up his arms in victory.

  “Just wait.” Matt said with a challenging look. “I’ll get you back!”

  “You’re such a character!” Nikki told Matt with a tap on his nose. “And you’re cute as a button!”

  “No one’s ever said that to me before,” Matt whispered to Evan.

  -----

  Four days have passed since the fire in Detroit had started, and in some areas, the fire continued to burn. Most of the towers were unrecognizable, and some, like the GM headquarters, were mere skeletons.

  Sarah sat with Tracy in the cafeteria that the safe zone survivors had built. Sarah fell in love with the food that Alicia Briggs and Julie Collins cooked up each day. According to Tracy, the food was better than Sarah’s.

  ‘Ah, the innocence of youth,’ Sarah thought after Tracy told her.

  Others around the building worked feverishly to fortify the building. The former store was consumed with hammering, the chorus of power tools and the hum of power generators. The maze of walls that Sam and Jerry had designed was beginning to take shape, while Edgar and his team were out searching for more materials.

  Robert came into the cafeteria by himself with a proud look on his face.

  “Good morning, ladies,” Robert said to the Carters. “Did you two get any sleep last night?”

  “Good morning, Robert. This little one slept like a log. She’s still worried about the fire, but I told her the wind took it away from their direction.”

  “Don’t worry, Tracy,” Robert said. “That fire actually helped us in a way. If there were any shamblers in there, they’re all gone now.”

  “I’m still sad about daddy,” Tracy said.

  Robert knelt down beside Tracy.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Robert said. “You loved your dad. He died protecting people, and from what I hear, he was a good man. I’m sure he’s in good hands now.”

  Jeremy, Craig and April came into the cafeteria, which meant it was almost time for their run.

  “You all should get something to eat,” Sarah told her team.

  The girls ate quickly so they could go to the game room. Sarah’s team gathered to one table once the girls were gone.

  “What’s the assignment?” Sarah asked Robert.

  “We were asked to go to Dearborn Heights. We need to see just how thick the west is with those poor bastards, but we’re free to do what we want. I kind of wanted to see what’s going on in Farmington.”

  “We don’t want to run into the military,” Jeremy said. “They might not like the fact we didn’t join in on the evacuation orders.”

  “We need answers,” Sarah said. “I can’t even tell you how many questions are swimming around in my head, but the main one I have is, what the hell happened in Dearborn? Why didn’t they get evacuated?”

  “There’s a few I’d like answers for myself.” Robert said. “Someone there might tell us something.”

  “So Farmington it is,” Jeremy stated. “You’re both right though, we’re entitled to answers. The least they could tell us is that they’ll get this under control, and our loved ones didn’t die for nothing.”

  Sarah instantly thought of Mark as soon as Jeremy made his statement. Mark didn’t die for nothing.

  ‘He died for thousands of shamblers in Dearborn,’ Sarah thought furiously.

  “Speaking of questions, why don’t you tell us about yourself, Sarah,” Robert said with a wink.

  “You don’t want to hear about my boring life,” Sarah replied. She felt her face heat up from embarrassment.

  “Bah, come on,” Robert goaded her.

  “Are you all playing with me, or do you really want to know?” Sarah asked.

  “I’m interested,” Jeremy said convincingly.

  Robert propped his elbows on the table, rested his chin on his hands and gave her a pouty look.

  “Oh stop, fine,” Sarah said. “How much do you want to know?”

  “Where did you come from?” Jeremy asked. “What did you do before all of this?”


  “I was born in Traverse City, where I lived until I was ten. We moved to the Eye when my dad got a nice job with GM. I went to U-M to become a teacher, and specialized in special needs children. I was a teacher at Bagley Elementary.”

  “Do you know how to sign?” Craig asked.

  “Definitely, I know how in American and Spanish.”

  “You should teach us,” Jeremy told her. “That way we can communicate quietly.”

  “That’s a great idea, I’m willing to teach you, if you’re willing to learn,” Sarah said. “Where are you from, Jeremy?”

  “I’m from a small town in California, called Willitz. I was born and raised there, but I discovered a really nice college here in Detroit. I used to be an artist before all this began, and I attended the College for Creative Studies.”

  “Really,” Sarah asked. “Evan went to that school.”

  “What a small world,” Jeremy said.

  “You all ready to go?” Sarah asked.

  She got her answer when the men stood up nearly simultaneously.

  “Don’t go any closer,” Sarah ordered vehemently.

  Ahead of them were hundreds of shamblers that spread across Halsted Rd. They were lucky that they weren’t noticed yet, other than by a few on the way to Farmington.

  “Look at them all,” Craig said with a fearful gaze. “There are even soldiers with them.”

  “What the hell happened?” Robert voiced with disbelief.

  “We need to leave before they catch wind of us,” Sarah said.

  The others on her team agreed and quietly went back to the Durango.

  “They were just aimlessly moving around. Does that mean the camp had fallen?” Jeremy asked.

  “We should find a way to figure that out,” Sarah said. “I’m just not sure how.”

  “I can go check it out,” Jeremy volunteered. “Take the truck south. There was a road that might get me in.”

  “I’m going too,” Robert said.

  “I don’t like that idea,” Sarah protested.

  “We’ll be fine,” Robert insisted. “We need to see if the entire camp is like what we just saw.”

  Robert was right. Sarah told herself not to become controlling and trust the members of her team.

  “You both better not do anything that you’ll regret,” Sarah warned.

  The look Jeremy gave her seemed to say ‘Trust me.’

  She turned onto a road that took them to the south side of the golf course. Jeremy grabbed a set of binoculars and a spear, while Robert decided to use Sarah’s machete. Sarah parked beside the parks department building to stay out of sight.

  Jeremy and Robert snuck quietly to the rear side of the camp, but stopped when they saw thousands of shamblers wandering aimlessly.

  “Jesus age Christ,” Jeremy whispered loud enough for Robert to hear. “All of them? They all turned?”

  Jeremy made note that there was a mix of the undead, and it seemed that no one was spared.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Robert replied morbidly. “Let’s go. Sarah’s right about not letting these things detect us. We don’t need to drag all of those anywhere near the zone.”

  Jeremy and Robert quickly returned to the Durango with the bad news.

  “Thousands,” Sarah repeated after Robert told her the number he thought he saw. “You said you saw thousands?”

  Robert nodded with a grim look.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Sarah said with a sigh. “Did you see women and children?”

  Again, Robert nodded.

  “Mark was right. He told his brother and me not to go to the shelters. They were death traps.”

  “We need to check on the others,” Craig said. “Where were they again?”

  “Sterling Heights and Warren,” Jeremy told them. “We could check Warren and get back before dark if we hurry. We don’t know how bad the freeways are.”

  “Let’s get going then,” Sarah said.

  She gave Robert the keys so he could drive. She had begun to get a headache from all the fear and doubt she felt.

  The roads were worse than they had thought heading in each direction of a camp. People simply had given up and went on foot to the closest camp. Robert drove on the opposite side of the road so they could pass the abandoned graveyard of vehicles.

  Robert decided to take Reuther Freeway to get to the Warren refugee camp, and he was forced to find a way to change sides as the traffic had shifted direction.

  As they got closer to where Jeremy remembered hearing the camp was suppose to be in Warren, they noticed that the numbers of Shamblers dramatically lessened.

  “This is it,” Jeremy said when they got to Halmich Park.

  “Are you sure?” Robert asked. “There’s nothing here.”

  “I’m certain of it. Farmington Hills Country Club was one, Halmich Park in Warren, and Rammler Golf Club in Sterling Heights. That’s what the emergency alerts said on the radio.”

  “I remember hearing that too,” Sarah confirmed. “Let’s just go see what’s going on in there.”

  As soon as they got within the camp, Sarah regretted making the decision to go. On both sides of the park were rows of dug up dirt that stretched on for hundreds of yards. The four were confounded, hoping the lines weren’t what the team suspected they could be.

  “Is it even worth imagining a…” Jeremy tried to say, but the words refused to come.

  Jeremy wasn’t the only one that was speechless. Craig was white as a ghost, and he looked as if he could collapse at any minute. Between the Farmington and Warren camps, half a million people had been killed or had reanimated. There was Sterling Heights they hadn’t checked, but no one in Sarah’s team had to strength, or desire, to go. Not that day.

  Not one word was spoken on the way back to the safe zone, but Sarah’s mind raced with what they had discovered.

  The team arrived back at the safe zone with the news. The mood was somber and melancholy after the survivors were told as a group. No one faulted Sarah’s team for taking time off to recover from their shocking discoveries, except for Scott. He insisted they should work on a plan to wipe out the Farmington reanimated. Robert got ready to knock some sense into Scott before Sarah separated them.

  “Look, we cannot do it Scott,” Sarah said. “We don’t have the means or the resources to even take on a swarm larger than the one we faced four days ago.”

  “We need to work on just surviving,” Jeremy said to support Sarah. “We’re not an army, and at this point, I’d say we’d better be extremely careful if we run into anyone from the military.”

  Scott just couldn’t believe that hundreds of thousands of people were simply killed or allowed to become shamblers. Sarah reminded him that the people in Dearborn had also been left behind. Jeremy estimated that eighty percent of the Dearborn population had become reanimated. The rest were either hiding, or outright dead.

  Sarah took Tracy out to Mark’s grave and they sat on the ground next to the makeshift head marker. While they were guarded by Jeremy and Robert, Tracy told Mark there at his resting place everything she had experienced.

  “I miss you so much, Mark,” Sarah said, and she began to cry.

  Tracy hugged her mother as Sarah allowed herself to let go of some of her despair.

  -----

  August had no choice but to let some of the people go when they wanted to leave. She tried to convince them to stay for their safety, and she got some to change their minds. Those who didn’t heed her warnings were told about the store in Dearborn. Most of the people who did go went their own way. Only a few decided to go to the safe zone.

  The sun beat down on Detroit the day after Sarah’s team had discovered what had happened to each of the shelters. Temperatures climbed into the hundreds and there was absolutely no sign of rain. August and her troops struggled to keep the civilian survivors occupied and together. The heat induced fights between civilians that her troops had to be broken up. Arguments were a dime a dozen. Sometimes the troo
ps would even get into brawls.

  She was thankful that she was able to keep them all adequately fed so far. Teams would go out to gather as much food and liquids as they could find. Supplies quickly became exhausted around the bowling alley. Her teams would have to go further and further from the alley, placing them all at more at risk of being discovered. She felt as if it was time to make contact with the people in the Walmart store.

  Alex had been sent several times to watch the store and take notes on the people’s activities. He reported back that the people in the store welcomed newcomers with kindness, and he also saw kids running around inside a fenced-in area. Despite the heat, the people from the store worked hard on the area, and numerous vehicles delivered building materials, supplies and food. Teams would go right back out as soon as the supplies were unloaded.

  “Tomorrow, we’re going to make contact,” August told the remaining members of her unit. “We need each other, so put away your uniforms. We’re going as civilians.”

  “What about weapons?” a freckle-covered private asked.

  “We’ll stash a majority of them here. I need volunteers to go out and talk with some of the civs. See if any of them know how to use guns. Gather those who can and arm them. They can help us get their families down to this store safely.”

  The private who asked about the weapons was one of the three volunteers. They found twenty refugees who knew how to shoot the battered weapons they had left from Farmington. The lieutenant went up to each of the volunteers and thanked them personally.

  August was told many times the Farmington refugees were grateful to her. They knew she cared for each person’s well being. August was completely in the dark about what had happened in Warren and Sterling Heights. She felt as if she was left for dead. Therefore, she served the well-being of these refugees.

  One of the refugees helped August out by cleaning and reconditioning the weapons so none of them would create an accident. August joined the woman and helped her clean the weapons to better show her gratitude toward the woman.

  Among the nearly two-hundred and twenty remaining refugees were eighty children and forty elderly. August explained to her troops and the armed volunteers how she wanted the line of people, so their positions could protect the refugees. She had them all run a few scenarios to prepare them for anything. If anyone or anything posed a threat to the refugees, their orders were to destroy the threat without question. August would take point and lead them down to the store.