by MrPetrov » Wed Jun 13, 2007 8:27 pm
Paderborn Emergency Collection Point - Ward C
Things must have gone bad pretty quickly in the little Paderborn hospital. Once the vast machines of the State had ramped up to face the crisis, too little and too late, of course, the National Guard station down the street became a place to collect refugees and the dead. Pretty soon there wasn't much difference. The ones who still hoped to live, early on, came to the hospital. As a result, the contents of Ward C are a little microcosm of the end of the world.
This little ward, barely a dozen yards long with a ceiling so low that you can reach up to touch the cool, cracked bricks, is jumbled with dozens of flimsy metal-framed folding cots all knocked askew and toppled over onto one another. The dead are spilled out on the floor in dozens. Some are wrapped in sheets, more or less, but most of the bodies lie pale and naked on the tile, curled up into the burn-victim's fetal ball that is the final mark of Langerhans A, better known as the Chicago Fire or just plain old lague, on its many victims. The pale, wasted flesh that litters this nameless grave has mummified in the long Arizona summers and the air is heavy with the dust of old, forgotten deaths.
The ward is lit by a high, tiny window at the far end of the ward which was long ago shattered and the cheery yellow curtains on either side blow spasmodically in the wind of a coming storm. They are ragged with the years and would have fallen long ago save that they are stapled directly to the cinderblock wall.
This same wind stirs the dry stalks of weedy flowers that have overgrown the sill and spilled their dead and drying heads down the wall like men peering into an abyss.
A heap of furniture partly blocks the doorway, no doubt hastily cleared away to admit the dying, and the shattered screen of an ancient television set peers like a blinded eye out of a cabinet of wire mesh that leans drunkenly in the corner. A fat brass padlock depends from the hasp on its front, rocking gently with some unperceived vibration. A sack of mail has been stuffed underneath the cabinet and the USPS seals still adhere doggedly to the seams. Doubtless it is full of old bills and mail-order catalogs from another age. Maybe even a few get-well cards to cheer the blinded eyes and rest the broken backs and rotting fingertips of the last survivors.
The corpse nearest you is that of a little girl. Dry heat and years have made her face into a mask of leather and age and there is no glimmer of bright beauty in the empty sockets of her eyes, but blond hair still clings to her shrunken scalp and the tiny pink bows which made pigtails of it are as bright as the day she died. That's the power of modern plastics, you suppose. Most striking, though, is the plaster cast on one tiny arm. You can still read the writing on it, all sorts of wishes for health and quick scrawled in the many and varied hands of children with the indifferent penmanship of that bygone time of keyboards and cellular telephones.
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How's that for long? :laugh:
I am alive.
Currently working on:
*WIP XXIV (part III) "The Best Game In the World"*
*WIP XXV "Except For This One"*
*WIP XXVI "A Really Good Idea That Went Nowhere"*