Purification

pointless now…
    The last time we went back to the mainland (a few months ago now) the bodies were almost all gone. I doubt we’ll see any of them moving when we go there this time.
    They should have rotted away to nothing by now. The last one I saw was slumped at the side of the road just outside a shop we’d been clearing out. Its body was massively decayed and it just lay there and watched me. It tried to move but it couldn’t. It managed to lift its head slightly.
    The remains of its cold, black eyes followed me as I moved between the shop and the helicopter.
    For some reason I think about that body a lot. I guess it haunts me. I find myself thinking about what happened to turn it from being a normal, healthy person into that cold, useless mound of decay. I wonder sometimes how aware the bodies were of what was happening to them? They couldn’t react, but did they feel anything? I wonder whether their brains were more active and alive than we’d originally thought, and whether it was only the deterioration of their flesh and bone that caused them to react and behave the way they did? Did my friends and family suffer? Did they wander around like that, trying desperately to find comfort or familiarity and a release from their pain? I often wonder whether that last body had been looking at me and remembering what it had once been.
    It’s getting late. Emma is asleep and has been all afternoon. No doubt she’ll wake up soon and then keep me awake all night talking. She still doesn’t like to be on her own at night. No-one does.
    I’m standing in front of the house looking out over the ocean. It’s a bright, warm and sunny day and the water in the distance looks deceptively calm and inviting.
    Everything is quiet and if I just stand here and listen to the silence then I can almost believe that nothing ever happened. But there’s no escaping the fact that our lives have been changed forever and no matter how safe or comfortable we try and make this place, the rest of our days are going to be constantly difficult and hard. We will have to fight for everything we need and if our children survive then they’ll spend their lives fighting too.
    In getting here we managed to win a small victory, but it was a hollow one. I now know that our achievements are unimportant and insignificant in the overall scheme of things. There might be other people like us. There might be people elsewhere who have been more successful and who are more organised and protected than us. Whoever’s left alive and however many of us there are, I think our days are numbered. We are remnants of the past. I sometimes feel like an intruder now, like I shouldn’t be here. Baxter says that whatever the reason or cause, what happened to the world was supposed to happen. I agree with him. We’ve been brushed aside. I can’t help thinking that everything we’re doing is going to come to nothing. We’re just kidding ourselves if we believe any different. The balance of our world has been changed forever. Mankind is being cleansed from the face of the planet. Purification has begun.
    All that Emma and I can do is make the most of the time we have left.
    That’s all that any of us can do.

FOLLOW THE COMPLETE AUTUMN
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    AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION
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    STRAIGHT TO YOU
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