The city stood still former home to Hundreds of thousands of souls, dilapidated buildings blighted the sky obscuring clear sight to the moon, huge hulks of steel and stone sticking up out of the cold ancient street, cars that have been parked waiting for their owners to return look back thru dusty windshields, flat tires and rotting seats.
Waking along down Bagley Avenue was jade, the only movement for blocks, confident, beautiful, and deadly she searched for the opening to the building she was striding towards.
In a dark obscure corner of the backside of the building was a door recessed and devoid of a handle was the only door visible.
She knew it well, though she hadn’t been here in over 10 years.
She had traveled far, over 400 miles to find it, not really knowing if she would ever make it, or if it was even still standing.
She had walked, starved and struggled to get back here wondering, wanting, wishing to find it.
Jade slowed her pace as she approached, thinking , this is too easy, where was the barricade, the military, the gangs, the resistance she had found in other city’s other where’s and whens.
Detroit looked like it always had, dilapidated, rotting but much much worse, buildings had fallen, streets were cracked and broken into huge slabs of concrete jutting between trees and brush, steam poured from beneath the sewer cap about a block away where some piece of machinery continued to heat the sewer to prevent freezing in the winter, the lumbering machine running on a small solar power farm still providing some small source of energy to this part of the city.
The building was dark; it was almost dawn, the small rays of sunlight just starting to peak out from beyond the eastern border of the Detroit River.
She walked slowly toward the building noting that all the glass windows, floor to ceiling windows had been broken, small remnants remained in the frame jutting out like broken teeth.
As she got closer she saw the café, dark and decayed, a small sign still shown in the light, Lucy & Ethel’s, shining like it was new, made out of stainless steel it would be there for a hundred years unless it fell.
She approached the door to the café, only 10 feet away now, she wondered what kind of trap she must be walking into, she hadn’t seen anyone in 2 days, 2 days of approaching the city calculating her moves had seemingly been for nothing, this city was dead.
She wondered why no one was in Detroit. Toledo after all was much more lively, with about a hundred or so people there.
She slowly looked around waiting for some sort of sign of life waiting for some type of ambush maybe, she was only 2 feet away from the door, looking thru the broken glass to see the counter and a few dishes littering the tables and floor.
Small movement from the corner of her eye and she whirled pulling the revolver from her hip as she spun, a rat ran down the sidewalk, she almost pulled the trigger not caring what was there to kill, but just to get the jump on it, but her instinct held her hand, instinct and a serious shortage of ammo.
Im jumpy ‘she thought, calm down damn you, you came this far and with no one around for days and nothing to stop you….she let the thought trail off.
She walked toward the door and stepped thru the broken glass, pushing the second door open with her free hand, It groaned and shuddered along the floor, she was still holding the revolver, a 357 magnum, a very powerful but very loud gun, last time she used it, it brought half the city to her.
She wouldn’t risk finding out if the city was really dead or if there were people here unless she absolutely had to.
The second door required some effort to budge open, years of weather, rain, snow and heat had buckled the steel frame and bent the door towards the floor.
It moved in enough making scraping sounds against dingy almost black tile floor that once had been white.
The sun was slowly coming up over the road and it glistened on the stainless steel grill hood in the diners small kitchen just in view, reflecting light in many directions making it easer to see her surroundings, one of the things she taught herself was don’t go into the bigger buildings, there unstable, but she needed to be in this one.
Slowly she walked into the café carefully moving around items lying on the floor including the cash register smashed in between two smaller tables, a small amount of change lay around the register covered in dust.
She moved to the counter and picked up a menu laying on the counter, pictures of semi good looking food looked back at her, the paper was yellowed with age and a small area of the plastic was torn away. Someone, gods knew who or how long ago, had drew a hand with the middle finger up and the words bite me.
She expected it to smell foul but after 10 years any food stuff would be long gone, still there was something in the air, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it but it reminded her of mushrooms.
About 15 feet in front of here was a door that led into the hallway that led to the main entrance foyer. She knew this place well she hadn’t been here in 10 years but she spent every weekend here for 6 years, this building, this place was her home away from home…or at least it used to be.