Whether it was fortune's cruel jest or a fleeting moment of mercy, they could not say. The price for their arrival was tallied in hot, spent brass and the coppery scent of fear that even the suit filters couldn't wholly erase. The core fighters, the men entrusted with the precious firearms, had each burned through at least five magazines. Over ten percent of their irreplaceable ammunition supply was gone, leaving a hollow, anxious feeling in every gut. It was into this atmosphere of depletion that Captain Liu finally pointed a trembling, gloved finger.
"There," he said, his voice a dry rasp over the radio. "That has to be it."
Before them lay the corpse of a building. It wasn't just ruined; it had been unmade. A structure that had once stretched towards the sky now ended in a jagged, toothy stump about three stories high, its upper floors sheared away as if by a giant's cleaver. Before this shattered edifice, sprawled across an area of roughly ten acres, was a dense, unnatural thicket of thorny scrub and mutated bramble, growing in a distinct, shallow bowl in the earth.
The topography was the most telling clue. This was a crater. Not the glassy, vitrified scar of a nuclear kiss, but the broader, deeper pockmark of a conventional explosion of monumental scale. Michael's mind, trained on a diet of wartime documentaries and survivalist forums, pictured it instantly: a massive aerial bomb, a 'blockbuster' from a bygone age, plunging from the sky to carve this bowl of sorrow into the city's flesh. The ground would not be fused silica, but packed, shocked earth—perfect for later generations of hardy, radiation-loving weeds.
Gathering in the lee of an overturned truck, Michael, Captain Liu, Zhang TieZhu, and a few others huddled around the brittle map. The air inside their huddle was thick with the sound of their own ragged breathing and the hum of suit fans working overtime. They weren't looking for a hidden door, a secret entrance. In this landscape of total collapse, such things were fantasies. Their plan was brutally simple: find the right patch of dirt, dig until they hit reinforced concrete, and then cut or blast their way in. It was a plan that allowed for zero error.
Around them, the convoy became a frenetic hive of desperate activity. The majority of the men, faces pale and set behind scratched faceplates, formed a defensive perimeter, their weapons pointing out into the grey, watching silence. Their eyes constantly scanned the skeletal buildings, every shadow a potential threat. A smaller group, driven by a frantic hope, fanned out. They scrambled into the treacherous, half-collapsed stump of the building, kicking aside decades of dust and debris. They waded into the thorny thicket, ignoring the scratches on their suits, their hands clawing at the dirt and roots. They were archaeologists of the apocalypse, searching for a single shred of proof to justify what might be a collective suicide note.
The weight of the decision pressed down on them, heavier than the ruined sky. Every passing second in this exposed, hostile zone was borrowed time, purchased with bullets and blood. They had one chance. One dig. If they were wrong, the consequences were unthinkable—a waste of lives, the last of their ammunition, and the final, guttering hope of Base 0005. The burden was not his to bear alone, Michael knew. He had brought them here, provided the tools, the muscle. But the final, awful yeshad to come from the people whose entire future hung in the balance. His eyes, behind the fogging plastic, sought Captain Liu's.
The old soldier's face, visible through his own visor, was a mask of agonized indecision. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again, like a fish gasping in a drained pond. No sound came out, but sweat beaded on his forehead and temples, tracing clean lines through the grime. The pressure was breaking him.
Salvation, as it so often did in the wasteland, came from the garbage.
The searchers began returning, their arms full of the city's forgotten detritus. A mound of time-ravaged relics grew at the leaders' feet. This area, deep in the heart of the infection zone, was a scavenger's virgin field, untouched by generations of pickers. The story of the last days, and the decades of decay that followed, might be written in this trash.
With a sense of grim ceremony, they began to sift. Michael grabbed a mildewed, shapeless handbag. Inside, a collection of plastic cylinders and glass pots—foundation, lipstick, all turned to a uniform, grey cake. Useless. Women of all ages carried such things. He tossed it aside with a grunt of disgust.
Next, a wallet, leather petrified into a stiff shell. Inside, a laminated card with the photo of a weary-looking man named 'Marcus F.' The identification was a driver's license. Michael was a former salesman, not a psychic. He couldn't divine a man's profession from his DMV photo. He almost discarded it, but a lifetime of pinching pennies stayed his hand. He pried out a few stained but intact pre-Collapse bills and tucked them into a thigh pocket. Every little bit helped.
Then, he recoiled. A pale, grime-caked limb. A body? His heart hammered. He leaned closer, and a hysterical laugh caught in his throat. It was a synthetic torso, a life-sized doll of exaggerated proportions, its silicone skin cracked and weathered. He kicked the thing away in a sudden burst of revulsion and frustration, sending it tumbling into the brambles. He didn't see the keen, interested glances several of the mercenaries shot after it.
The pile was yielding nothing but disappointment and absurdity. Doubt, cold and slithering, began to coil in his chest. What if they were wrong? What if this was just a random bomb crater near a random building?
Then, his fingers brushed against something different. Not paper, not cloth. Plastic, but rigid. He pulled it free. A keycard. Smudged, scratched, but intact. He wiped the faceplate on his sleeve and held it close.
It was a photo-ID access card. The face was of a middle-aged white man with a receding hairline and a tired, scholarly expression. The name: Dr. Paul Josef. The title below: Senior Research Fellow, Joint Bio-Containment Laboratories.
The name sparked a faint, elusive echo in his memory. Where had he heard it? In the fragmented files from Base 0005? In one of Old Gimpy's rambling stories? The connection danced at the edge of his mind, maddeningly out of reach.
"Screw it," he muttered to himself, the thought a tangible thing in the stifling helmet. He turned and thrust the card towards Captain Liu. The old man was squinting at a worm-eaten restaurant flyer as if it were the Rosetta Stone.
"Look at this," Michael said, his voice tight. "Might help you decide."
Captain Liu took the card. His eyes scanned the information once, twice, three times. The silence stretched, punctuated only by the distant crackof a sniper rifle dropping another approaching infected. Then, he looked up, and something had settled in his gaze. The doubt was still there, but it had been overruled by a desperate, final resolve.
"It's here," he said, the words exhaled like a prayer. "We dig."
The decision, once made, was a catalyst that transformed the entire convoy. Hesitation vanished, replaced by a single, focused purpose. Michael's voice, amplified by the suit's external speaker, boomed across the site. "Machines up! Start at the bottom of the crater! Now!"
With a deafening roar, the two loaders and the excavator ground to life, their diesel engines shattering the uneasy quiet. They lurched towards the center of the bowl-like depression. The excavator's massive bucket bit into the earth with a sound like a giant tearing meat. It swung around, dumping loads of dark, packed soil. The loaders surged forward, their wide buckets scooping up the spoil, not just to clear the hole, but with a new intention. They rumbled to the periphery of the site and began dumping their loads in a deliberate, continuous line. They were building a berm, a low, hasty rampart of dirt. It was a pathetic barrier against the agile infected, but it was something—a psychological line in the sand, better than naked earth.
Simultaneously, on the side facing the dense, ominous heart of downtown Detroit, the remaining vehicles were maneuvered. They were pushed, dragged, and driven into a rough, semi-circular barricade, bumper to bumper, creating a wall of steel. This was the expected avenue of the heaviest assault. The old Sherman tank, 'Old Ironsides', clanked into the center of this automotive fort, its green-painted gun tube traversing slowly to cover the broadest approach. It was a silent promise of final, overwhelming violence.
No one needed to be ordered. Every man understood the brutal calculus. Their only hope of survival was to find what they came for, and then run like hell back down the path they had carved, a path now likely teeming with drawn enemies. To flee now was suicide. To stay and dig was a gamble. They chose to gamble, and they worked with the frantic energy of the doomed.
As the hole in the crater grew deeper, dark and hungry, the makeshift berm grew higher. The intermittent popof rifles and the thwackof arrows became a near-constant soundtrack as infected, drawn by the monumental noise, came in small, testing groups. They were cut down, but they kept coming.
Watching this, a strange, cold gratitude settled over Michael. The infected were terrifying—each one possessing the speed and strength of a seasoned warrior. But they came in ones and twos, in packs of a dozen. They were mindless, driven only by base hunger, surging forward without tactics or coordination. They were a deadly force, but a stupid one.
As he watched another trio be shredded by intersecting fields of fire before they reached the dirt berm, he sent a silent, fervent thought into the poisoned air: Thank whatever gods are left that these things don't have a commander. Thank fate they have no cunning, no leader to marshal them into a single, overwhelming tide.For if such a thing existed, this desperate dig would already be their mass grave.