ECHO

Welcome to Detroit

Wendy whistled a warning.

Little Caesar probed the gargantuan trash pile with his pubescent bottle nose sniffing along the surface for any sign of life. Despite his mother’s imprinting, he failed to keep his head on a swivel.

“CeeCee, there’s another GarBarge coming. Let’s go.”

“One more minute, Mom. I smell leftovers.”

“Now!”

Her perpetually irritated teen did as he was told. With a barely perceptible eyeroll, he pushed himself away from the treasure heap and glided into a parallel position alongside his mother. The pair were doing double-time as they departed.

Caesar’s growling belly began to interject.

“Mom, it’s been almost three days. I’m so hungry.”

The melodrama reminded Wendy of her little sister, Stella. It was a better memory than her screams. “If you want to live to eat another day, pick up the pace. You can’t coast through my slipstream forever, CeeCee.”

“I told you not to call me that,” he trilled back with indignance.

The boy’s mother ignored his insolence and returned her attention to the timed rubbish release. A hazy indigo-hued spotlight undulated overhead. It was slowly drifting up the dilapidated avenue to make a deposit. The glowing eye of Sauron was the size of ten square blocks. Anything caught under the klieg lights during waste liberation would drown under the immense mound of deposited debris.

With a cavernous belch, the bifurcated bottom of the trash transport unhinged like a snake’s jaw and spat its venom. The debris field filtered and fluttered to the ground as a thickened sludge underneath the spotlight. A dirty spray of triangulated filth continued to fall until its peak hardened a few meters below the opened undercarriage. The litter pile was placed square in the middle of Woodward Avenue. It was ages since an actual car utilized the thoroughfare. Detroit’s intersections were nothing more than debris bullseyes now.

The Trashmen remained an eternal mystery. No one ever laid eyes on the alien figures contaminating their habitat. Given the sheer volume of garbage accumulating all over the globe, there were whispers about acclimatization. The depth and breadth were more akin to a bed of fertilizer. It seemed clear the world was being remade in the strangers’ shitty image.

Wendy spotted the hungry horde beginning to head their way and took a sharp left turn into an abandoned building. Her son didn’t require any actual directive to follow her lead. He went wherever she went by design. It was both nature and nurture.

Stella said they called these places stores. The idea of paying with paper never made much sense to Wendy, but her little sister loved to squawk. Every clothing rack and display case was emptied of merchandise long ago. Granules of glass protruded from the silty dirt-stained floors and glistened like sunspots in the low light. It lit a path for mother and son as they tread deeper into the store’s darkened interior.

A slatted metal staircase led them to a second floor with far fewer windows. Wendy took a position overlooking Woodward. She directed her son to remain at a distance.

“Stay back, and keep quiet,” she commanded. “They’re coming.”

Caesar couldn’t tell if it was the vibrating girders or old-fashioned fear that caused his mother’s voice to quake.

A stampede of stealthy assassins and stubborn survivors swarmed up the street. Within a few seconds there was no visible asphalt. Established apex predators were identified by their brethren and afforded an appropriately wide birth. Wendy knew similar scavenging parties would be descending upon the trash heap from every direction in short order. Once there was nothing further to be found within the debris, cannibalism would become a consideration.

The animals were going to paint the town red.

“Can they see us up here? Or smell us?”

Her son managed to sidle up next to her in complete silence. Wendy wanted to give the boy a tongue lashing for leaving his position but realized it would only draw attention. She indexed the looming reprimand for later when they weren’t holding on for dear life. “The only thing those beasts respond to is blood in the water, babe. We’re not on the menu at the moment.”

From a distance they watched the burial mound swell in size as the mass of miscreants surrounded the sludge pile. The blackened tumor metastasized in every direction as the vultures picked the rubble clean and made off with their separate wares. Pockets of plasma popped free from the pustule at random intervals to signal the occasional skirmish over sustenance, but the pillagers remained relatively peaceful.

For now.

Wendy took her eyes off the unfolding carnage for a moment. She did a double take when she saw what was headed in their direction.

A solitary marauder slowly drifted up the gleaming metal staircase thirty yards away. His head swiveled back and forth as he surveyed his surroundings. Wendy realized the new arrival was on the lookout for both predator and prey.

He had a bloody hammer at his disposal.

Wendy gave Caesar a double tap on the nose that caused his eyes to go wide. It was the predetermined signal for danger. Without another word, he fell in line behind his mother and began to mimic her every move. He was only allowed to deviate if she died.

The pair stayed low to the ground and flanked to the right of the hunter. Shelving and emptied merchandise tables helped camouflage their position in the waning light. Wendy was careful to keep an unceasing eye on the killer as they beat a hasty retreat.

Their oblivious pursuer locked onto the window where mother and son watched the unfolding chaos moments before. When he peeked outside to take a closer look at the carnage unfolding on the street, his skull exploded in red-tinged paint splatter.

Neither of them caught sight of the headsman. Wendy knew better than to pursue any further inquiry. They would be quickly sniffed out by the authorities. “Now, CeeCee. Move.”

She picked up the pace, but her permanent baby still beat her through the fire exit. Caesar hugged the sidewalk while his mother performed a brief bit of reconnaissance. Nothing appeared to be out and about on the backstreets. Wendy directed her son to follow her lead once more.

Mom used the circuitous route she learned in her younger days navigating Detroit. Wendy never got to see the bright lights, so she learned through repetition. Stella swore these same streets used to be lit up for miles. It was another lie her little sister chose to believe.

“We’ll house hop for the next couple of hours until the coast is clear,” Wendy said. “Don’t wander off on me.”

The first ranch they stumbled upon had family photographs still resting on the fireplace mantle. Caesar didn’t see any part of himself in their smiling faces.

“Mom, do you really think the Trashmen came from outer space like Aunt Stella said and abducted all of the people?”

Wendy watched the windows. “I don’t know, CeeCee. Whatever happens above our heads will forever remain a mystery.”

Wendy’s response would prove prescient.

On cosmic cue, a low seismic rumble invaded their rental along with a sickly green spotlight. Everything inside the single-story brick home was bathed in a gelatinous glow. It made them both feel queasy.

Caesar stressed the nausea by spilling his guts all over the floor.

It was mostly fish.

Wendy replicated the recycling effort herself onto the nearby couch.

The mother issued her entreaty between gulping breaths.

“Get out of the house now!”

The pair were half a block away when the fluorescent green laser beam of atomic breath spat forth from the beast’s open maw. It quickly covered their former home in glowing goop. The makeshift radiator made the surrounding ocean thirty degrees warmer in a matter of seconds.

Wendy took one last look at the warning light before turning her attention back to her son. “You’re on my tail the entire way. We don’t stop until it’s too dark to see. Understand?”

It took almost an hour for them to reach minimum safe distance.

When they were no longer in harm’s way, the boy went back to being snide from the shadows. “You’re getting old, mom. I could have lapped you.”

“Oh, please. I just didn’t want to embarrass my only remaining child.”

In truth, she had to purposely pace herself.

Wendy felt sick to her stomach.

***

They eventually made it to Comerica Park.

Wendy was dying of radiation poisoning in the dugout.

“I’m fine. Just let me catch my breath.”

Caesar caressed her limp body on the bench. “I don’t know what to do. You can’t die. I don’t know what to do without you.”

During her last hours on Earth, they observed dozens of toxic waste dumps interspersed with nuclear fallout. The effort seemed automated. Vertical beams of ectoplasmic light were shining now in every direction. The entire city was turning into a piece of irradiated pin art.

Wendy had a final moment of clarity. “Never go toward the light, Caesar. Promise me.”

“I won’t,” he swore. It transitioned to sniffling when she was finally snuffed out.

There was no way to bury her body, so he left it floating over first base.

Caesar swam for seven days before he died.

He never saw another dolphin.

No one did.