Ben Hudson
The District of Milwaukee
[ As I drive north into the former county, I approach a steel gate. After inspections, I drive through the city, sightseeing on my way to the interview. I also take notice how bustling the town was, compared to post-war standards in other metropolises. I pull up to a salvaged cafe, with a faded façade of a Starbucks. I am greeted with a man with little emotion. He is relatively young for a person who survived the entire time of the war. As we talk, we both try to find the skyline concealed behind the trees. ]
Besides the fact about the virus spreading, historians haven't really acknowledged the true impacts of the evacuations and migrations. I mean, for hundreds of millions of people rumbling through roads and highways that only had 2 or 4 lanes? Sure, the impacts of the Canadian tundra is devastating, but just imagine the junctions and major cities along the popular routes, especially the "secondary cities." By secondary cities, I mean major cities close to even bigger ones, like San Francisco to Sacramento, or even New York City to Yonkers. However, there are few documents on the movements and turmoil in Milwaukee, which I have got to say that that surprises me.
Compared to the rest of the country during the start of the Panic, Wisconsin overall was quiet. While the media in God-Knows-Where was talking about the infection outbreaks, Milwaukee was still focused on the outbreaks of violence in the ghetto that has been going on since the dawn of time. Of course, there were some infection outbreaks, but not large enough to send a lot of people packing. Over time, though, things began to heat up. Some of my friend's families moved north as well as this girl I met during a field trip in Waukesha. My parents stayed. They said that they were fools for leaving; I agreed. I couldn't believe how many people neglected to think about the amounts of resources in the barren regions of Canada. The disease was the least of their worries! As the virus -and worse, the Panic- became more evident in the city, it also became evident in School. Ru-
Wait, how long did you have school until?
My school district was stingy. They never closed, even though many students stayed home anyways. Rumors spread like wildfire in the halls. "Did you hear about the massacre in Paris?" "I heard that Japan is planning to evacuate everyone. Like that's going to be successful." "Oh, my God, I saw 20 of them this morning!" The rumors about Chicago always were the most terrifying, considering how a city 20 times our size is so close to us.
Because the Media -how I hated how they fueled the sheeple's* imagination- told people to move north, Millions of people, mostly from Illinois, took the freeways north, entering Milwaukee. Now, the freeway grid is pretty simple; it's just a box with a couple spurs. Because there arent a lot of options and interstates to choose from, streets got very congested. Once the sheeple hogged up the streets, society just kind-a collapsed. Parents weren't able to drive to work, police weren't able to put down any infected, and any Defence Forces weren't able to do their job, regardless if the rest of the country is going to hell.
Unfortunately, I had a bike and I lived a mile and a half from my school, so something posessed my mother into forcing me to go while the world was still falling apart. During 4th Period, the principal (he was such a weenie) ordered a lockdown. We all knew what was happening; some Z's were clustering some windows on the first floor. The school was in chaos. I ran for my life to the woodshop classrooms to get blundt objects and protective gear. I found some of my friends and we ran to one of their cars, where we drove to my little brother's school to pick him up. First off, the streets were already in panic, but there were Z's shuffling around everywhere, especially my brother's school. I eventually found my brother in the swarms of frightened parents, children, and infected people. My friends and I all tried contacting our parents, but none of them answered. Unfortunately, most of our parents worked downtown or in the medical complexes. I was the only one who had a sibling who still lived at home, so my friends and I decided to fortify one of our houses. Mine was chosen, since my apartment was on the second floor.
Didn't anyone have other family or other arrangements and left?
I was getting to that. Yes, we did, but we were in no way able to get to them. Also, phone lines cut shortly after 7PM, with blackouts leading up to the complete shut down the next go by, with fewer and fewer helicopters hovering around in the sky, and things got very quiet. We assumed that everyone else in the apartment building died, so we decided to clear out the other units, and sure enough, everyone turned except for one girl- she was 14- barricaded her room from her dead parents. Overtime we found more people like that and we got a whole group going. We started to clear out other houses, other streets, and two months after the collapse, we had one city street fortified, and three nearby cleaned out and ready if we have new people. Fast forward five more months and we had the entire neighborhood secured. You see, reclaiming Milwaukee wasn't very hard. I-along with the other original people- were the leaders. Like I said before, Milwaukee's infrastructure is very simple, but the arteries are very segragating. The same infrastructure that segregated the city and brought Zach was the same one that united us and helped us reclaim the city.
*A term for a mindless follower; Sheep+People