He could recall the second year of
infection, a time when quarantine units were dispatched by the govt. to take
the blood samples of each and every one, then to separate those found
infected from the uninfected ones, to be
taken to a facility where they could be cured or so was believed. Ideally, once
cured they were to be rehabilitated or were to be sent back to their homes.
However, the quarantine operation soon turned forceful and rogue, owing to
excessive use of military and para military involvement in it, which was
probably pre decided, for the infection was definitely a pressing matter for
the govt. But the people just won’t comply, none of them were ready to let go
off their families, for there were rumours, dreadful and prevalent about the
operation. It was heard that there was no disinfecting facility to cure people,
instead there existed a concentration camp where all those found with an
infected blood were to be taken. They were lined up against the wall in batches
and were shot down there and then. The officers on the camp, if were found
infected were served cyanide to ingest and the performance of that to the
amazement of many was deemed a national honor, the highest service to the
state, one undead less. If at all it meant anything, it was that the global and
national authorities were not looking for any cure, there was no cure, save for
a bullet right through one’s head. Those who managed to escape those camps had
horrific tales of mass violence and torture to narrate before their fall. The
last man who was once an officer in the paramilitary and was also posted at one
of these establishments or so called Isolation Units, saw the gruesome horrors
of the camp. He was moved deeply by what he saw and so he wrote:
9th November 2015,
The Camp
Each day truckloads of them arrive. Hoping for a cure
and unmindful of their fate they step inside the premises of the Isolation
camp, that large rusted iron gate and the twisted barbed wires running over
those altitudinal concrete walls bring a dreadful apprehension over their
faces. For the place looks the least like a medical facility, the milieu is
more militant. At first they would be perplexed to see that the place boasted
of no doctors, the only doctors they would have last seen were possibly during
the blood tests. Armed men and women would direct them in herds, towards a few
tunnel like openings, passing through a wall, broad enough to support an entire
military base on it, that is where I stand day after day, obeying govt. orders,
seeing thousands of them dying bit by bit, everyday, without any
discrimination, an equal law for the equals. When they would reach the other
side of the wall, they would find a
large open area, roofless, where they would see hundreds like them, without
food, water, at occasions without even clothes and certainly without a
cure. It is then that it becomes most
unbearable to see their horrified faces, drained of hope and life or whatever
of it is left in them. They would look at us, the armed men on the wall which
we were, in sheer disbelief. There is no reason whatsoever why should they not,
we have misled them here and they have been cheated, a simple yet a ruthless
equation of circumstances it is. At first they would ask us questions of Why, What
and When, we won’t answer to any of it. Then they begin to abuse us, repeatedly
in huge crowds, they would cry, scream, some would laugh like mad men, and many
of them also try to break away, so we shower bullets upon them to bring the
chaos under control. I wish we knew that we were only adding to the chaos, in
fact we are chaos, we are the real scourge of these people. A plague can still
have a cure but what cure can one find for tyranny and mercilessness shown by
men, over fellow men ? A few have begin to pray, some of them have followers,
already. Religion can shamelessly creep in anywhere, I must remark.
Every day I
watch innocent children, some of them
stare back at me with those adorable faces, swept with confusion and fright,
they do not play any more with each other, all they do is scribble the wall. I
see men and women tired of this ordeal, having eyes blank as oblivion itself
and stone cold faces, the look of which one can stand with no ease, they sit
and wait for their turn to be shot. I see couples both old and young, walking
hand in hand towards the barricade against which they would get shot at in the
head, as per their turn. I see families ending in no time, I see fathers and
sons, brothers and sisters, dying together and I see mothers holding their
infants with all the affection in the world when being fired upon. One day out
of curiosity I went down there to see what the children have scribbled. What I
saw had shattered a part of me, that
shall never impart me forgiveness, I am a sinner of the sins so
terrifying that it would not be unusual if someday I find myself paying for
them in the gravest and the unjust of the fashions. Where was my conscience and
its voice, for all these days? What reason shall I narrate, if I seek the
pardoning of my sins? SAVE US, it was
inscribed in block letters on the wall stained with the blood of many. When no
one remains, we clear out the bodies and burn them in a trench nearby, so that
there could be room for others who could not pass the blood test. After
watching all this I often ask myself, what good are we doing to them? How is
this in any way an effort to save our race? Are we any better than the
infection itself, which will kill them eventually? What if we had invested all
this time we were spared, to find a cure instead?
Oh, God!!..
the fearsome cries of those women and dejected faces of those children, haunt
me every night when I go to sleep. No peace can ever be yielded from what we
are doing, neither for our own selves nor for anyone else out there, infected or
uninfected. If we all are to succumb to the disease, then shouldn’t we all die
like these unfortunate people? Is
humanity saved here, by any means?
I can bear it no longer, I do not wish to do
this anymore. But I know that they won’t let me leave so easily, on the pretext
of lowering the morale of other
soldiers. If they don’t , I shall run away, I shall escape. For I do not belong
here, none of us do and therefore I do not intend to be a part of this
grotesque process, which had drained out of me all the humanity that I had and
so I wish to reclaim it. I want to go home, back to my wife, in her loving
arms, where I can finally seek some tenderness, some comfort. For now that is
all I want. May the souls of those who have died here rest in eternal peace.
One night he left the isolation camp, for if
the humanity was to perish he wished to be the last man to put his hands in the
filth, he realized that he had seen enough monstrosity for one life. So, he
left, left for the place he called home so dearly, for his wife who with her charms and caress
was to fill him with hopes, even if they were to be proved a mere myriad of an
unrealistic optimism later and a renewed zest for living, for a cup of coffee
prepared by her, whose aroma, delightfully diffusing when would pass into him
was to rid him of the stench of blood in that camp, percolated in the walls and
the ground, against and on which have died and lived to die thousands lured by
a sheer fallacy of a promise. If at all he had had any regrets, the only one he
could possibly recall was the regret of not having left the paramilitary an
year before that gruesomeness and escape with her somewhere, maybe escaping
into his most cherished dream was a wonderful proposition but only if dreams
were real. The only thing which was real were the catastrophic horrors back
there and an overpowering love for his wife. Yes, he had loved her so much and
yet to him that moment it seemed that he had had so little of her, but never
did in his life he had such a strong desire to see her and to see to it that she
was alright, to make love to her once he is sure of it and to make her love
him, with almost an unperturbed eternity paving way for such indulgences meant
for those in love.
There came many abandoned towns and some dead
cities on his way, as he rode on. There walked no living men but a strange
oblivion and nothingness lurked into the streets which had fallen so badly into
the habit being visited by commotion each day. No one attended to the shops and
stores anymore, offices were empty and so were the vehicles that stood
motionless on the roads, as if they had been stranded for a long time now.
Maybe, they were, he had after all paid no visit to the world of men as long as
two years, it was in those years that much had changed. While he was riding
past a city, he saw one of those familiar trucks in that camp parked before a
cottage. There was a soldier guarding it, while the other two appeared on the
scene as they led an array of young children in the open, after that came out a
doctor or so the woman seemed with a letter pad, which probably bore some text
on it for she showed it to one of the soldiers. After having read it, the
soldier caught hold of two of those innocent children. They cried their poor
little hearts out, kicked and scratched him but to no avail. Their wails told
that they knew of their fate much before they had been led out, for sure the
frightful tales of the isolation facility must have reached them as many have
been taken and only some have managed to stay back and it could have been due
to that very reason that though the towns and cities seem emptied, in each of
those houses were people hiding themselves, afraid and unsure of what was
coming, for them, for all of us. One of the two who protested most vehemently
was shot first, point blankly, the other who begged for mercy was shot all the
same. The most expected happened, coupled with the unexpected however. The doctor
in the most unforeseen manner wielded a revolver in her hand which she might
have concealed from those soldiers and shot to kill the soldier who finished
the two young children. The other soldier, most shocked by the sudden death of
his fellow turned around in a bewildered fashion, losing his caution only to be
shot by the doctor. The doctor then stood motionlessly, her hands were hanging
loose and an expression of hopelessness and sour dejection and sorrow swept her
face, she still held on to the revolver, from the tip of whose barrel rose a
thin and waving stream of smoke.
to be continued
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