Luck of the draw

Prologue

I enjoy the guard duty in the commune- it is quiet and peaceful . On most occasions it doesn’t involve much movement or thought. I sit here, on the damp grass with my eyes closed, listening to the wind and feeling the sun on my skin.

Yet don’t let my calm demeanour fool you - I am always paying attention- If anyone arrives I will hear them, this undisturbed oasis of nature does not react kindly to human filth starting to ooze among its green pores. It's too early though yet- the Vermin come at night.

As I open my eyes and watch the grotesque submissiveness with which the willows bend under the indifferent force of nature that passes through them, I wonder - is that what happened to us too? Did we just happen to be there at the moment when it was time for the world to change?

I try to focus and remember how it all started. Well.. its probably more appropriate to say - how it all ended.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t complain. I prefer the silence that followed after the breakdown of the society - I was never the one for incessant conversations or unnecessary ties. I am much more suited to this new world.

Sometimes I even wonder, would I have still been alive if the world didn’t die?

The end of the beginning

An author, whose name I can’t remember anymore, once wrote - “a society is made out of a group of individuals that came together and decided to upkeep and support previously agreed upon mutual delusions - for the benefit of the entire group“.I guess its another way to say - they came together in order to guarantee power in numbers.

I chuckle to myself when I think about this strange old fashioned concept that dictated human survival throughout so many millennia’s in history.

Coming together in numbers.. It took men around six million years to develop into social beings that were capable of forming complex societal structures . Yet, It only took only a year of fear and isolation to destroy all socially acceptable notions of human contact ,substituting the desire for connection with hatred, fear and aggression.

The beginning of the end

The world ended fast, much faster than anyone could have predicted. The illness spread and as there was no way to outsmart it , the only option became outrunning it and avoiding all human contact outside of group. No one knew how the illness spread or why it chose to ravage the victims that it did. What’s more, the lack of symptoms in those who often passed on the ailment - made every person around a threat.

Making connections with the bubonic plague that was passed on by the rats, the media outlets started calling those that were infected- Vermin. Soon this term would be used to describe anyone who was seen as dangerous for your own survival.

At the beginning it seemed that the state had managed to keep all inhibitions under control ; the relocation plans were announced, the distancing mechanisms implemented , the , the availability of information and the reassuring results that came from the antidote manufacturing.

Yet within a few months it all crumbled- mass shortages followed by mass hysteria and finally an open struggle for resources broke out. The best you could do was to join a healthy faction and pray to whatever you believed in - that you will eradicate the others before they have the chance to reach you and those you care about.

This has been our reality for over 26 years now - as the population dwindled and resources became harder to come by, we gradually descended into more justifiable violence- after all it is the survival of the fittest.

Tonight

In the last couple of hours on the post there have already been nine incidents - it’s forming to be a busy night . I wonder for a moment of what has caused our unwelcome guests to trespass into their guaranteed death. Though, does it really matter at this point for the Vermin?

I hear a faint rustling noise coming from the foliage on the right of me again.

“Double digits!” I cheerfully exclaim and shoot.

Afterword

Weeks later when the removal team entered the foliage to extract the bodies- they found nine bodies and one bloody and broken heart shaped locket with a bullet lodged inside it.

Some of the guys there think that a member of the Vermin must have gotten lucky. I say he got the shortest straw.