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Ghost City

The whole street was dark and seemingly empty. Though Ray had a generator in the basement to supplement the increasingly unreliable grid, he didn’t dare turn on any lights at night. A lit window would be a beacon for looters.

He peeked out through the blinds again when he heard the pop of gunfire a few streets over. He could see black smoke illuminated from below by a flickering red glow; probably a car that had been torched. Other than that, it was almost peaceful. There were no sirens anymore. Civilization had packed up and left.

Ray turned on his laptop to update his profits. Like everything he owned, the computer had been bought with drug money. He didn’t even bother hiding the grow op anymore; the plants grew freely in the back yard. No one was going to come after him — certainly not the police, anyway.

The “net total” line on the spreadsheet agreed with a manual count of the money in a suitcase under his bed. Soon, he’d have enough to move far away. Detroit was just not the city that it used to be.

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