Rahima's War

"I hate sentinel duty," Rahima Hassan said to herself, shaking her head. The six-foot-tall, dark-skinned and curvy young African American woman hefted her rifle and stood on the Rampart. The eighty-meter-high, three-meter-thick cement wall was all that separated the remnants of metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, from the Darkness. Beyond the City lights, there was nothing but darkness. Rahima couldn't hear the endless moans and growls of the Undead, but she knew they were out there...

Everything outside of The City ( most people under fifty didn't call it Detroit anymore ) belong to the Zombies. Such is life for what remains of Humanity within the United States of America. Anyone who ventured out of the City of Detroit was considered a lost cause. The world beyond was a desolate place. Exile from The City, the harshest punishment administered to the worst of criminals, meant certain death. The Electorate, the twelve-member supreme council which rules The City, simply couldn't risk an outbreak of Zombies in Humanity's last stronghold.

Ages ago, the denizens of The City lost contact with the rest of the world. Europe, Asia, Africa, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, all of those places had gone dark in the weeks before the people of Detroit erected the Rampart. The Zombie virus caught Humanity by surprise, but the people of Detroit fought back ferociously. First, they cleaned up the Zombie infestation within their metropolis and then secured the place. At last count, The City's six hundred thousand inhabitants were all that remained of the Human species.

Rahima was born after The Event, the day when Humanity found itself battling the Living Dead. She has never known the world of the Ancients, the world of shopping malls, television commercials, international flights, airports, trains, universities and the like. From what Rahima learned from the old-timers, the world before The Event wasn't the kind of environment she would have strived in. The Humans who existed before The Event were complete and total idiots, to say the least...

Rahima's father Hafiz Hassan, often told her about how dreary life was before the Zombies rose against Mankind. Humans used to divide themselves along the lines of race, ethnicity, culture and religion, in enclaves known as countries. People couldn't travel from one country to another without a lot of dumb rules and regulations. Hafiz Hassan moved to the City of Detroit, Michigan, from his hometown of Mogadishu, Somalia, as a young man, and married a young white woman named Elisabeth Sherman. The two of them took up arms to defend Detroit when the shit hit the fan....

"Hey sexy," came a voice, snatching Rahima out of her little trip down memory lane. Rahima turned to find herself looking at a very familiar face. Joshua Adewale stood there, a cocky grin on his dark, handsome face. The son of Nigerian immigrants who moved to the City of Detroit, Michigan, from their hometown of Lagos, Nigeria, a mere decade before The Event. Like Rahima, Joshua is doing sentry duty tonight. Rahima looked Joshua up and down. The fact that he could still sneak up on her was quite annoying, to say the very least...

"Josh, we're on duty," Rahima reminded him, and Joshua smiled and shrugged. Joshua was part of Excelsior Platoon, under the command of Captain Sholonda Odoms, and he should be in the barracks but he volunteered for sentry duty just to holler at his favorite sentinel. Rahima, being part of Excalibur Unit, under the command of Captain Jerry Ahern, would be doing sentry duty for the next three nights. Rotations are a bitch but a unit member has no choice. That's life for armed units in the Zombie Apocalypse...

A few months ago, Rahima and Joshua had a one-night stand. To Rahima, it was just casual sex. To Joshua, it was something else entirely. He'd been hounding her for an encore ever since. Rahima sighed deeply as she looked at Joshua, wishing that he wasn't about to start flirting and bugging her. The brother is tall and good-looking. Surely there are lots of young women or men in town who wouldn't mind sharing his bed. Rahima just wanted to be left alone...

"Rahima, it's cool, I didn't come here to rehash the past," Joshua said, all seriousness all of a sudden. Rahima looked at him dubiously. Joshua held his hands up, and Rahima frowned. She nodded at him, and they began walking along the Rampart. There were a dozen other patrol units strategically placed along different parts of the Rampart. The Rampart was The City's first line of defense. If the Rampart ever fell, every Zombie for miles would come pouring through the breach, eager to feast on the Human populace...

"Josh, have you noticed that the Zombies don't come close to the gate anymore?" Rahima asked, pointing at the darkness. Joshua nodded and looked through the darkness with his special night vision binoculars. In the old days, whenever armed units did rampart duty, there were always Zombies massing in front of the gate. The only way in or out of The City was through helicopter. There were hundreds of operational helicopters and a few fighter planes which formed The City's Air Force. Due to an unfortunate incident in the past, large airplanes were no longer a thing...

"I guess they're scared of us," Joshua said with a grin as he handed the binoculars to Rahima. Sighing, Rahima took the binoculars and scanned the darkness. There were no Zombies within a mile of the Rampart. What the fuck was going on? Rahima and Joshua did their hourly radio check with the unit command, and then continued with their patrol. There wasn't much to do, but vigilance is a way of life in the Zombie Apocalypse. The days of Human carelessness were over...

"Maybe the Zombies are planning something," Rahima said, and Joshua shot her a look. Like Rahima, Joshua had been in firefights against the Living Dead. In a rare outing with the helicopter unit, Rahima and Joshua, along with their colleagues Dwight, Jeremy, Holly and Anneke went on a raid in Zombie territory. They flew to Grand Rapids, to the remnants of a fueling station, and while gathering fuel, they attracted the attention of a hundred Zombies. They had to shoot their way out of that one, and not all of them made it...

"Rahima, my dear, Zombies aren't planners, they're just as dumb now as they were in our parents time, they see us as food and they come after us, with no thought except hunger," Joshua said confidently. Rahima looked at Joshua, and sighed. The young African American woman closed her eyes hard, remembering an incident from a while ago. During a raid to what used to be the City of Windsor, Ontario, Rahima and her unit ran into some Zombies who moved a bit quicker than the others, and weren't as keen on raw aggression...

"Josh, three months ago, I ran into some Zombies in Windsor and they were quicker and smarter than most of the others, we got most of them but a few got away," Rahima said firmly. Joshua looked at Rahima, incredulity all over his handsome face. Joshua gently laid his hand on Rahima's arm. Rahima looked into Joshua's soulful brown eyes, expecting him to say something snide or display pure disbelief. Joshua paused for a moment as he looked at Rahima. This required careful handling...

"If the Zombies are getting smarter, we are in trouble," Joshua said firmly, and Rahima nodded. When she'd given her report to Captain Ahern, the old man hadn't believed her. For decades, Humanity had been at war with the Zombies and they seemed to be all the same. Slow-moving, flesh-eating monsters that crave the flesh of Human beings and display very little thought. In the wild, predators like wolves, bears and coyotes showed more thought than the Zombies did. The predatory animals were smart enough to herd their prey, such as deer and elk, into a specific spot where their fellow predators would catch them. Zombies weren't smart enough to do even that...

"Let's stay vigilant, Josh, I feel like something is coming," Rahima said firmly, and Joshua nodded. Outside The City, as nearly a million people slept, watched over by armed units, and protected by the massive Rampart, something stirred in the darkness. The Zombies, billions in number, patrolled every inch of the Planet Earth, driven by their hunger for Human flesh. The Zombies didn't care for the flesh of animals. They ignored the world's fauna just like they ignored its flora. Human flesh was the only thing the Zombies craved...

What is keeping the Zombies from the Rampart? Surely they can smell the nearly one million Human beings living behind its walls? The Zombies have been roaming the Planet Earth for decades with absolutely nothing to fear. What lurked in the darkness wasn't a Zombie. Nope, this time, the Humans weren't that lucky. The things lurking in the darkness looked like ordinary men and women, except for their sharp fangs, and their eyes, which glowed a feral bright red color...

"We found them," said a tall, burly, dark-skinned and bald-headed African American male, and he looked at the tall, slender, blonde-haired and pale-skinned female next to him. The female turned and gestured to her acolytes. Out of the darkness they came, their bloodlust awakened by the presence of their prey. Two dozen things that looked like ordinary men and women. African, European, Asian, Latino, all of the tribes of Man were reflected among their features. Of course, they weren't Human anymore, and hadn't been in a long time...

"Nice job, Omar," said the blonde-haired female, and she raked her tongue over her sharp fangs. Skylar the Vampire looked at her coven, now twenty six in number. They'd roamed the wilderness that was once North America for decades, feeding on the blood of animals, whose population exploded now that there were no Humans to hunt them, and the Zombies of course ignored them. The Vampires were thriving in this new world, but they missed the blood of Humans, which is like champagne and caviar to them. Animal blood doesn't even come close.

"The City will be ours," Omar said and he smiled at Skylar, who nodded approvingly. The Vampires drew close to the Rampart. They could smell the Humans hiding behind its walls. There were close to a million Human beings in what used to be the City of Detroit, Michigan. After driving off the Zombies, who were spooked by their Undead-yet-not presence, the Vampires had come to claim their prize. For decades, Skylar, Omar and their brood had hunted every last Human remnant in the wild. Now, the only Humans left on the Planet Earth were hiding inside what used to be Detroit, Michigan. For the Vampires, these last Humans represented a veritable feast. Let the games begin... "Oh," Rahima said, and the young woman grabbed the binoculars and peered through the darkness. For a moment there, Rahima thought she'd seen something. Whatever it was looked Human, but it moved too fast and too well coordinated to be a Zombie. Zombies were slow-moving, shuffling monsters, dangerous only in large numbers. Only a really athletic Human could move this fast, but there were no Humans left outside The City. So what in Hell did Rahima see?

"Rahima, our relief is here," Joshua said, bumping her shoulder. Rahima blinked, and looked through the darkness again, and saw nothing. Hmm, maybe she imagined the whole thing. Rahima handed the binoculars back to Joshua, and they were greeted by their relief, a tall, blond fellow named Travis Heintz, and a short, plump redhead named Gladys O'Connor. Joshua and Rahima shook hands with Heintz and Gladys, shared intel with them, and then went back to the barracks to get some sleep.

Rahima and Joshua exchanged a handshake and a brief hug before heading to their respective barracks. Rahima kept thinking about what she'd seen in the darkness. Something that looked Human, but didn't move like a Human being or a Zombie. What the fuck could it be? Rahima shrugged, and then went to bed. All of those sleepless nights were starting to get to her. If the Zombies were getting smarter, Rahima and the others would adapt to the situation and gun down the Undead bastards. If there was something else out there, something smart, stealthy and quick, then they were definitely not ready for it. Heaven help them in that case...