Black Man's Zombie War

After due consideration, Marcus Patterson decided that it was time to go. The Enclave, perhaps the last stronghold of Humanity during the post-Zombie age, held nothing for him. The big and tall young black man looked at the place where he'd grown up, and allowed himself a sigh. With a population of two hundred and seventy eight thousand souls, the Enclave was simply unheard of in these dire times. Built on the remains of Detroit, Michigan, the Enclave is protected by a seventy-foot-high stone wall designed to keep the Zombies out. The Wall has done its job for decades...

"Babe, please don't go," said Shari Nguyen, and the dark-haired, slender young woman pressed her body against Marcus, gently wrapping her arms around him. Marcus and Shari met ages ago, having been assigned to Special Patrol Unit Seven, and they'd bonded while fighting zombies in the Outer Regions. In their lexicon, the Outer Regions described the huge swaths of North America populated exclusively by the damned Zombies.

"Come on, Shari," Marcus replied, and Shari scowled, knowing that once he made up his mind, there was no arguing with him. Like Marcus, Shari was born and raised in the Enclave, and knew next to nothing about the world before. When the Zombie apocalypse began in 2031, the world was caught by surprise. Within a year, over a billion people got turned into zombies, and then made short work of most of the other six billion. Civilization ended, and Mankind joined the endangered species list...

The people of Detroit, Michigan, acted fast while the rest of America fell to the Zombies. They cut themselves off from everyone else by air, land and by sea. A man named Omar Jefferson, a bad-ass former U.S. Army Colonel helped save Detroit by abolishing democracy in the future Enclave, replacing it with a military dictatorship. For the next few decades, the Enclave became self-sustaining, and while every other place fell, they survived and actually managed to thrive.

Marcus Patterson was born in 2042, eleven years after the zombie apocalypse began, and at the age of twenty two, this was the only world he knew. The Ancients talked about the world of airplanes, social media, movie theaters and the like. To Marcus, they might as well be talking about the days of ancient Rome. He has never known a world without zombies. To his generation, learning to shoot the undead with crossbows came as natural as riding bicycles. Marcus Patterson is a natural-born survivor, perfectly adapted to a world overrun with the living dead...

At present time, the Enclave is run by Theodora Hunter, a powerful woman who has successfully replaced the military dictators of the past with her democratic but not benign rule. Most people within the enclave approve of Theodora Hunter, and Marcus had to admit that the tall, blonde-haired and blue-eyed politico looked good, and talked a good game. Too bad the gal has no conscience. Marcus knows this for a fact. Sadly, most people either don't care or refuse to believe that their shiny new leader is a sociopath.

A couple years ago, before Theodora Hunter's meteoric rise to the top of the Enclave's political leadership, Marcus got to see what the future leader was all about. Every able-bodied citizen of the enclave, whether male or female or transgender or nonbinary, black or white or brown, must learn to fight and defend it when the need arises. Marcus and Shari were part of a routine patrol that went outside on a raid, led by none other than Theodora Hunter.

"We need a few things from certain stores in Dearborn, we'll be back home before you know it," Theodora Hunter assured the unit, before heading out. Marcus and Shari went out, along with their pal Vincent Yamamoto and a few others. They left the Enclave on bicycles, as the town's armored cars, helicopters and other special vehicles are rarely used because gas isn't as plentiful as it once was. The way was cleared for them by the tough-as-nails Sentry units, and they went out of the Enclave, toward a half-forgotten town called Dearborn...

The raid went south, and the unit found the town of Dearborn crawling with zombies, just like every other place. Theodora Hunter and her pals found what they needed inside an old warehouse, and then the group made their exit, with zombies in hot pursuit. As they fled to safety, Vincent Yamamoto, one of Marcus and Shari's close pals fell behind. Marcus went back to help his buddy, but Theodora Hunter, who considered Yamamoto to be dead weight, shot him in the head.

"Bitch, what did you do that for?" Marcus shouted at Theodora Hunter, and she flashed him a cold smile before hightailing it out of Dearborn. In the zombie apocalypse, any person who gets bitten by a zombie will turn into one within twenty four hours. Marcus knew for a fact that his pal Vincent Yamamoto hadn't been bitten. He'd fallen behind, and the zombies were gaining on him but he was still unscathed. In Marcus world, ending a friend's life to prevent him from reanimating is an act of mercy. Killing a non-infected person is still considered cold-blood murder.

When Marcus returned to the Enclave with his pals, he was still pissed at Theodora Hunter, and told everyone who would listen about her cold, murderous tactics. Of course, nobody listened to Marcus, for he was a nobody. As the woman who brought back military-grade explosives to the Enclave, something the defending units desperately needed, Theodora Hunter was hailed as a heroine. A couple of years later, Theodora Hunter parlayed her popularity into a leadership role...and took over the Enclave. That's when people who dislike the new leader began to have, ahem, unfortunate accidents...

Marcus Patterson saw the writing on the wall and knew that he had to leave. Staying at the Enclave would get him killed. Shari urged Marcus to stay at the Enclave because, well, there was nowhere else to go. The last place in the Outer Regions to still hold out was the Forge, a community of around forty thousand souls located in a walled-off town in southwestern Arizona. For years, the Forge and the Enclave had excellent trade relationships, and helicopters flew goods and personnel back and forth between the two communities...

For the past couple of years, trade and communication ceased between The Enclave and The Forge. Some thought that relations had soured between the two communities. Others thought that perhaps the Forge had fallen to the zombies, like so many others. To Marcus, the Forge represented his last best hope at a future. After all, his parents Nathan and Julianna Patterson had been part of an exchange team that served in the Forge while their counterparts served in the Enclave. If his folks were still alive, they'd be at the Forge...

"You're a fool to leave this place," Shari said, and she shoved Marcus away, snatching him out of his reverie. Marcus sighed, and watched Shari go. He thought about asking her to go with him, but knew she wouldn't. Shari hadn't seen Theodora Hunter kill Vince Yamamoto and bought the evil bitch's story about putting him down due to infection. For Marcus, staying in the Enclave was quite simply suicide. If Theodora Hunter's goons didn't make him disappear, he'd have an unfortunate accident and end up dead. What other options did he have?

Marcus headed to bed that night with a lot on his mind. The young African American man's mind was made up. The Enclave wasn't home anymore. The people were like sheep, and Theodora Hunter was the sociopath leading them to their doom. The local humans were so terrified of the zombies that they failed to realize that a power-hungry, sociopathic leader was far more dangerous. The people of the Enclave welcomed democracy, but didn't realize that while authoritarian, the military leaders of the past had been tough, fair-minded, and practical. Theodora Hunter craved power and would do anything to get it. Anyone who trusted her was a fool...

"Sometimes goodbye's the only way," Marcus said to himself as he finally went to sleep. He slept alone, for Shari didn't care to come see him. She was still pissed. The next morning, Marcus would slip out while on a routine patrol, never to return. He had a bike stashed away a short distance from the Wall, along with weapons and supplies. In the Outer Regions, with millions of zombies roaming every damn square foot, a solitary man's chances were like a snowball's chance in Hell. Marcus will take those odds over staying in the Enclave, at the mercy of a murderous sociopath and her acolytes. Time to move on...