The Fallen by Jack Ziebell

Author:Jack Ziebell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Jack Ziebell
Published: 2012-09-13T06:00:00+00:00

As he approached he was surprised to see the shapes of men walking. Perhaps it was OK here? Perhaps she was OK. But as he drew closer, he could see the men were far from OK. Those on the outskirts were wandering aimlessly, like lost children, a vacant look in their eyes. He pulled up alongside one, a Dinka tribesman, as tall as he was dark, and called out to him; but the man ignored him and kept on going, walking out into the empty savannah. It was not these men who troubled him, but the others. As he drove on he noticed men not walking, but running wildly in the streets, attacking violently those who walked, as if for a game; knocking them down and beating them gruesomely into the dust like angry apes. Some had formed pairs or small groups, men and women, and were running together as wolves, chasing down lone runners and pulling them to the ground. For a moment he thought it may have been an organised rout to purge the city of the mindless, but he realised quickly that this was not the case. He could see a few white faces mixed in with the runners, some were big men in fatigues, security types; they would not have run in such a way, nor been drawn in to some kind of opportunist ethnic cleansing. This was part of it, whatever it was; a new terrible phase and one he would have to pass through to reach what he needed, if his mind was not to come apart by morning.

As he approached, a group of three men and one woman advanced with grimaced faces, almost skipping, towards the car. He knocked the leading man out of the way with the bumper and he fell, but the other three beat on the side of the car howling and whooping as he passed. In the shadows he could see more of the fallen, some were curled in the foetal position, clutching wounds and rocking pathetically. Packs of men and women were bent over the half devoured flesh of victims; fighting for entrails, establishing pecking orders. The End Times had arrived if it had come to this; was that all we were without our civilisation and morality; fragile objects to be tormented and devoured? He told himself again that these people were no longer human, therefore had no humanity to lose. They had become creatures, worse than creatures, for even creatures knew, or at least used to know, the rules of their kind. They had no rules, although he could see through the chaos a type of mad order beginning to evolve. Whatever had happened seemed to have affected people differently, perhaps simply revealing their individual base instincts, bringing each person’s deep and true nature to the fore. Not everyone was running, some of those he passed were still much as he had found the old mechanic; alive, but mindless and lying where they fell. He pitied those helpless ones who would soon be dead of sunstroke, thirst or worse.

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