The Dead Circle (13 page)

Sarah scrunches her forehead. “Wait. Try the BBC news service, there’s no way the feds could shut down the news stations in Europe.”

Chris finds the station and it too is silent.

“Well that’s unsettling.” Sarah mumbles.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not broadcasting, it could be that the government just blocked access.”

“Maybe. Or it could mean that the virus or whatever is global.”

Sarah keeps creeping them down the street. It’s a difficult task to drive in Detroit on a regular day, but Sarah has to avoid hundreds of abandoned vehicles scattered over the roads like leaves. She winds her way down alleys, over medians, on the sidewalks and down the wrong sides of streets.

“Never thought I’d be off-roading in midtown.” she says with a grin. “Reminds me of when I was a kid on the farm.”

“Don’t remind me. I can’t believe you survived driving that four-wheeler like a maniac.” Chris never understood Sarah’s parent’s willingness to let her drive tractors, ATVs and snowmobiles all over their property when she was as young as nine. He grew up in a suburb so the idea of letting your child tool around on vehicles designed for adults seemed crazy. Even now the idea still made him a bit nervous. So cautious in every other way, Sarah had developed a sense of invincibility behind the wheel that just doesn’t seem safe to him.

“Man I wish our phones had signal. I don’t know how we ever navigated without GPS.”

Chris attempts to make himself useful by searching through the truck. It’s filled with duplicate copies of work orders and crumpled fast-food wrappers, but Chris eventually finds an old dusty map in the glove compartment.

“Ah ha! No GPS, no problem. We can pretend it’s the 90’s.”

“Lucky us.”

“The 90’s were awesome. So, since we know they’ve bombed the highways, let’s take route 5 and see if we can get out of the quarantine on a side road.”

“OK. There’s a Costco in Livonia. We can go there after we hit the roadblocks.”

“Proverbial or literal?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

*

Forty minutes into a trip that should have taken twenty, even with traffic, they notice the first signs of trouble. They had weaved for miles through the strange landscape of abandoned cars, clothing, purses, backpacks and other possessions. It looked like God had pressed pause on the world and deleted all of the humans. Chris made a joke about the Rapture that Sarah didn’t think was that funny. But, just before they got to Farmington, things changed.

In front of them, the cars have clumped and created a huge traffic jam. Both directions of the highway are filled bumper to bumper with cars that had been attempting to drive northwest, out of the city.

“Well that’s different. These people seem to have been trying to leave.”

With the road now fully blocked, Sarah stops the truck. They have to continue on foot. Turning off the ignition, Sarah glances nervously at the sky. Chris, having already checked for clouds, nods grimly and steps out onto the road.

“Looks like we’re near the perimeter.”

“There’s nobody here. Maybe they got through?” Chris says hopefully.

“There was nobody anywhere else either.”

They walk slowly between rows of cars trying to see down the road, hoping to spot what kind of barrier prevented the cars from leaving.

Sarah grabs his arm and stops him. “Uh, Chris. Is that a bullet hole?”

There is a large round hole in the windshield of a Subaru Outback parked to her right. The glass had splintered out from a three inch impact near the rear-view mirror.

“I don’t know? Maybe? Let’s keep moving.”

“I don’t like the looks of this one bit.”

Reluctantly, Sarah continues walking between the rows of cars. After another fifty feet, she can almost see what might be an improvised barrier a half mile or so up the road. She stops and reaches into her bag for binoculars.

“Fuck. Sarah get down!” Chris abruptly grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her to the ground.

“What is it?!”

Slumped between an old black Saturn and a green Kia SUV is the body of a young woman. Her head seems to have exploded. Blood and brain matter are sprayed up the windshield of the Kia. It had obviously rained and the water had washed the detritus down the glass, thinning the blood until it covered the entire hood and much of the ground below with a sticky reddish-brown residue. The windshield wipers had trapped several bright white chips of skull and some spongy grey bits of brain matter.

“Oh Jesus.” Sarah fights hard against her sudden urge to throw up. “What happened to her? Her head looks like it fucking blew up.”

“She’s not alone.”

Chris can see at least four other bodies draped over cars or lying on the ground between them and the barricades.

“This is a massacre. All these people! What happened?”

She sees a hand limply sticking out of a window and a set of feet poking out from under a pickup truck in a pool of drying blood. She turns around searching for something to look at that isn’t a picture of horror.

“They shot them. Probably with rifles. High caliber sniper rifles maybe.”

“Again, you’re apparently a military expert? How do you fucking know that?!”

“Xbox. Call of Duty.”

“You know that from a fucking game? Jesus. That’s sick!”

“Maybe, but it’s no less true. We have to get out of here. You were right. There’s no way we’re getting out of the city.”

Sarah, still a little light-headed, starts to head back in the direction from which they came. Taking dazed, shuffling steps, she walks back towards their truck.

“Sarah! Keep your head down!”

She crouches below the tops of the cars and keeps moving. She does not say anything. Chris follows behind her for a moment. After two minutes of silence, he somewhat meekly speaks.

“Jesus, Sarah. I’m sorry. You were right. I never should have brought us here. I’m sorry you saw that. Fuck, I’m sorry
I
saw that.”

“Do you think it’s like this everywhere?” She speaks in a flat monotone, as if she can’t think logically and process her emotions at the same time.

“I don’t know. I mean, they blew the bridges, they blocked the highways. We’re already on a side road.”

“Maybe we could sneak through the woods somewhere?”

“I thought you didn’t want to leave at all?”

Sarah shakes her head. “I didn’t. But whatever’s inside the city has scared the shit out of the freaking military. Enough to commit murder. Guns or outbreak. Pick your poison.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“Well, we walk a hundred yards in that direction and we get shot. Back in the city, who knows? I’ll guess I’ll take possible death over certain death.”

Chris thinks for a moment and can’t find a flaw in her logic.

“Works for me. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

*

Twenty minutes later and five miles away from the perimeter, Sarah pulls the truck to the side of the road and silently starts to cry. Chris tries to think of a way to comfort her, but after a minute, starts to cry himself. After quietly holding each other for a time, Sarah looks up with dry eyes and puts the truck back into gear. It’s time to keep moving.

*

When they arrive at the parking lot of the Livonia Costco, Chris hops out of the truck and flashes Sarah a brave smile he only half means.

“Ah Costco, where would we be without you? Did you remember our membership card honey?”

“This isn’t funny.” Sarah says morosely.

“Oh come on. Haven’t you always dreamed of doing an 80’s movie shopping montage? Running through a store taking whatever you wanted?” Chris grabs a shopping cart, starts to run and rides it off of the curb like a kid.

“You’re an idiot, husband.”

“That’s why you love me!”

Sarah knows he’s faking his good cheer, but she appreciates it anyway. After a few minutes she does feel better, OK at least. Though she knows she’s going to have to re-calibrate her concept of ‘OK’.

When they get to the entrance of the store, they realize that while the front door is unlocked and welcoming—because there was nobody to lock up the night before—it’s gloomy and dark inside. The wall of sarcastically large flat-screen TVs that normally light up the front entrance like Times Square are all dark. No power. Luckily for Chris and Sarah, the warehouse is at least partially illuminated by a bank of battery-powered emergency lights. It makes it possible for them to move around but the normally cheery, if somewhat chaotic atmosphere of Costco is now a bit creepy.

They each grab a cart and begin working their way through the aisles together. Chris plops three enormous bags of rice into his cart with a clang.

“So I don’t understand why we didn’t see anybody on the drive. I mean there have to be other survivors like us. There’s no way everybody got exposed.”

Sarah thinks for a second. “I think more people were infected than you’re thinking. It was pouring last night. When was the last time you didn’t get at least a drop of rain on you when it was coming down like that?

“Sure, but a lot of people wouldn’t go outside.”

“You’re right. I’m sure plenty of people didn’t leave their house, but how many of them didn’t take a shower, water the plants, or brush their teeth?

“Or have a cup of coffee or wash their hands after taking a leak. Yeah, I see where you’re going.”

“I mean, making contact with water is hard to avoid even if you’re trying not to. And the government shut down communication so I doubt many people got the warning we did.”

Chris mulls it over in his head remembering something his middle school biology teacher said once.

“
We humans, despite all of our advances in technology and food science, are still remarkably dependent on clean water. I know most of you only survive on Mountain Dew, but would you believe even that great elixir is still mostly water? And we are too. You and I are 60% water. That’s right. Water. Not bones or muscle, or fat and certainly not brains. Yes, I’m taking to you Mr. Wells. So what does this mean? It means that water is the most important factor in our survival. Humans can survive indefinitely without power, shelter and companionship… even MTV. Without food we can survive for weeks, if not months. But without safe water, we’re dead in a matter of days. Think about that next time you pee in the pool.”

“OK. I’ll accept that a high percentage of people would get exposed. But here’s the other thing that’s really eating at me: where are all the infected? I mean there are almost seven hundred thousand people in this city. If they all went crazy and started their own zombie rave, where are they? It’s such a huge amount of people. We haven’t seen a single person since last night.”

“I don’t know. The population of Detroit has been dropping like crazy anyway. Maybe white-flight went post-racial.”

“Sarah, this is serious.”

“I know. These are important questions, but we have no way of answering them right now. Let’s focus on the task at hand: Gatorade. Come on, if you ignore the fact that the world is ending, apocalyptic freedom can be fun!”

After loading the first two loads of supplies into the back of the pickup, they start to relax a bit. They race carts down the aisles, lob stuffed animals at each other like grenades and laugh hysterically when Sarah climbs on top of a palette of canned corn and drops an enormous bag of flour onto the cement floor causing an explosion of white powder that ends up making her look like she’d just been pushed into a snow bank.

“Why did you do that?” Chris chokes out between gusts of laughter.

“I’ve wanted to do that since I was a little kid! Of course now I’m a vandal.” Her smile fades a bit. “Crap, now I feel bad. It’s going to be a pain in the ass to clean up.”

Chris slowly stops laughing. “Nobody is going to clean it up. I don’t think there is anybody left to care.”

Sarah stops too. The mood has been shattered. “Maybe not for a while, but eventually people will return.”

“I dunno. I’ve been thinking about the satellite radio stations. They’re not all run out of Detroit, they’re run from all over the country. All over the world. The freaking BBC. They stayed on the air all through World War II. Nobody’s home.”

“But what about the music stations. Somebody’s still running those! Only DJs survive?”

“There aren’t many DJs anymore. Most of the music stations are all run by computers. They’ll just keep playing an algorithm of songs until their power gets shut off.”

“Do you know that or are you just talking out of your ass?” Sarah says grumpily.

“A little bit of both I think.” Chris says honestly.

Thump.

“Quiet!” Sarah sets down the huge jug of olive oil she had picked up.

“What? Why?”

Thump.

“Shut up! Listen!”

Thump.

Chris and Sarah instinctively duck down and hold their breaths. A loud noise is coming from the back of the store, but it’s too dark to see what is making it.

“What do we do?” Chris whispers to Sarah.

“Well first off we can give up on the pretense that whoever it is doesn’t know we’re here.” Sarah says in a normal voice. “We’ve been cackling like hyenas for an hour.”

“Right. OK.” Chris stands up and calls out “Hello?”

Thump.

“Is anybody there?”

Sarah grabs Chris’ hand and they duck back down. Sweat has somehow magically appeared on her brow. It drips onto the cement floor, leaving a trail behind her. Keeping her eyes peeled for movement, she motions for Chris to pick up his hockey stick and circle around the back of the store while she circles around the front.

She whispers in his ear. “You be quiet and try to get behind it. I’ll be loud and try to keep its attention.”

Chris nods and takes off behind the shelves. Sarah stands up and walks directly towards the noise.

“Hello? I don’t want to hurt you. My name is Sarah.”

Thump.

As she gets closer, she can tell that the sound is coming from the offices in the back of the store. The offices are behind a solitary red door set in a two-story white wall. A dry erase board on the wall lists the store’s checkout scanning leaders. Odell M is in the lead averaging 29 items per minute. Sarah thinks that Odell might be holding that record for a long time.