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...
