At this point, survival didn’t have to make some greater sense; it didn’t have to have an additional purpose. People were leaving behind everything that wasn’t flesh, though of course with H-8 most of them left some of that too. Or people were staying, living behind gas masks and prayer. None of it was necessarily logical.

Dune found those departing, approaching with her notebook full of names and stories, her questions and, most of all, her willingness to listen.

An elderly woman wearing pearls, a wide brimmed hat and a pink Sunday dress with a full torso ruffle of lace, stomping in kitten heels, cursed her way down her yard. She was carrying an armload of furs out and seemed to think Dune had come to take the things she couldn’t fit in her Cadillac. “At least wait ’til I’m gone!”

Dune hung back without defense.

An attractive couple in their sixties, the Taylors, wore matching track suits and variations on hair loss replacement systems. They were leaving behind their sick daughter with a paid caretaker. They delayed their departure to tell Dune everything about the girl. “Tell them she is a pianist. She knows how to drive the boat. She is our only child. She finished her degree at Clark. She chose to come back to Detroit, this isn’t fair, she shouldn’t even be here. We told her, we told her.”

The caretaker wouldn’t meet Dune’s eyes during the interview. Dune didn’t judge.

A young agender artist named Jose was biking to hir next destination and had built a rolling rack for hir earthly belongings, adding a little motor to hir pedals. “I’d love to stay, honestly. Love to. My crew is staying and I bet there are going to be so many stories, inventions. But my sister needs me. And I am not ready to die. Not today.”

Dune was a bother to some, a confessional comfort to others, a sort of narrative gravedigger for the people and memories that wouldn’t make it past the outgoing checkpoints. She didn’t try to soothe anyone, or change their minds. She knew she couldn’t play the role of grief counselor to these departing families, so she waved goodbye when the time came. Beyond gathering stories and locations of those they had left behind, she wasn’t really focused on the departing, anyway.

They weren’t hers. The graveyard was hers. The whole damn city was a graveyard now.

They each had a story they wouldn’t get to tell. She brought back all of the information she could gather and sat in the basement for hours, organizing it, seeking some clue, some pattern inside the small details.

Not everything fit on her little signs. Dune realized she was unwilling to sacrifice any of her tender data.