The Human Condition

head and looked at me. When I spoke to her she reacted. I think she recognised my voice. She tried to get up but I told her to relax and take things easy. She's still trying to do more than she should. She won't lie still now. She's wriggling and twisting on the bed all the time.

    She's getting stronger by the hour and I've just had to tighten the ropes.

    I think she's going to be all right!

JACOB FLYNN Part ii
    `Bewsey?'

    Flynn opened his eyes and looked up in tired disbelief at the figure standing swaying in front of him. It was Bewsey. But it couldn't be, could it? Two days ago he'd stood in this very spot and watched him die. It was impossible. Over the last forty-eight hours Flynn had been forced to consider so many impossible thoughts and possibilities that one more didn't seem to make any difference. He decided that he was hallucinating and buried his face in his grey, prison-issue pillow. That was the most plausible explanation he could think of. He'd hadn't had anything to eat or drink for more than two days, the rest of the world had either somehow been destroyed or had inexplicably disappeared, and he'd been trapped in a ten foot by seven foot cell with only the corpses of his former cell-mates for company. What was left of his mind was obviously playing tricks on him again.

    Bewsey's clumsy corpse staggered across the tiny room, tripping over Salman's dead body and knocking into the small bookcase next to the sink, sending its contents crashing to the ground. Flynn sat up as the unexpected thumping and clattering rang out around the cell. This was no hallucination, much as he quickly wished it was. He pushed himself against the wall and into the shadows and watched from the relative safety of his dark bottom bunk as the body awkwardly dragged itself around.

    For a while he remained completely still, almost paralysed with fear. Then, very slowly, he inched forward so that he could get a better view of what remained of Bewsey. The dead man's face was cold and expressionless, his eyes empty and unfocussed. The corpse obviously had very little control over its numb, unresponsive body. It simply shuffled across the floor until something prevented it from moving any further forward and then, more through luck than judgement, turned and shuffled back. Salman, by contrast, still lay where he had originally fallen, face down in a pool of dark brown, congealed blood.

    `Bewsey?' Flynn hissed anxiously, not sure whether or not he actually wanted to attract the bizarre figure's attention. The lack of any response to his voice was strangely reassuring.

    Still shell-shocked from almost forty-eight hours of silence, fear and isolation and mentally exhausted from searching constantly for the answers to countless obviously unanswerable questions, he moved forward again and cautiously swung his feet down from the bunk. Bewsey didn't react. The corpse continued to aimlessly move around, colliding with walls, furniture and, eventually, with Flynn himself. He instinctively lifted his hands and grabbed hold of the body to prevent it from getting any closer.

    `Bewsey?' he asked again. `What the fucking hell is going on? I thought you were dead...' Flynn stared deep into the dull and clouded eyes of the corpse. They were covered with a milky-white film of sorts and it was clear that they were unseeing and unfocussed. He let the body go and watched as it tripped off again in another direction before turning and tripping back towards him. No wiser and no less terrified, Flynn crawled back onto his bunk and pulled his covers tight around him.

    Less than two hours had passed before he decided that he couldn't stand it any longer. Bewsey's body just never stopped, not even for a second. It continued to shuffle about aimlessly and lethargically. It was the noise and the constant movement that Flynn was finding hardest to handle. Why didn't Bewsey just lie down and stay dead like Salman? He couldn't take it any longer. He had to do something about it.

    Creeping anxiously forward again, Flynn climbed off his bunk and looked around for some kind of weapon or implement with which he might be able to disable the corpse. He had finally forced himself to admit that this definitely was a corpse moving to and fro in front of him. How could it not be? How could someone lie motionless and without breathing for two days and not be dead? Mind you, he thought wearily, how could that same person now be moving again?

    It was no surprise