She saw two people on her way across McNichols, tucked into their own business. No sick people. It felt almost restful to move through the quiet city, almost like a normal Sunday.

Chippewa Street was mostly grassland now, organized by faint hints of long abandoned lots. Houses had been empty since the 1980s. Some of the houses were officially demolished by the city. The rest was Detroit style ruins, chaotic green mounds of forgotten stone, wood, hearth and yard. Roofs that hung low in the center of an otherwise normal looking building, brick houses with boarded windows, houses with vertical burn lines spilling out the window, heaven bound.

After the water crisis, which Dune had watched from afar in college, tons of garden and farm plots all over the city had been left to wilderness, the bush becoming another way to measure proximity to downtown. Many of the groups that foraged now had learned a lot during the year of water rations—how to harvest what they needed, how to find what could grow on rain water, how lax the fences of community gardens were, upheld more by unspoken boundaries than physical ones.

Big Lou and Elouise’s house stood obstinate on the wild block, the yard curated and alive, cared for. There were some wild pheasants in the lot across the street, showing off and calling out to each other. The growing field was reaching toward the pavement. Dune thought she could hear Rouge River.

As she moved towards the bright pink and red wood porch on the white wood building, Dune felt her grandmother’s melancholy slipping off of her. Neighbors had complained about Elouise and Big Lou’s porch, long ago, called it garish and disruptive. They kept painting it, every summer, outlasting everyone. It looked fresh now.

Dune noticed her anticipation with wry humor; was this her life now? To be excited that someone else would obsess over dying people with her?

The house itself was a bit back from the street and Elouise was sitting on the porch, rocking in her chair, a toothy grin on her face. Dune smiled back, leaning her bike against the front of Elouise’s house, deciding not to bother with locking it up. There were more homes, bikes and cars in the city now than there were people, theft wasn’t the pressing concern these days. Dune’s body came to a stop three steps from the top stair, realizing before her mind did that there was something horribly wrong with Elouise’s smile.

“Elouise?”

No answer. Dune tried to move her feet, to run to her aunt and shake her back to this moment, to their plans. But she didn’t step forward, she couldn’t actually move towards what she was seeing.