When the virus took hold of the populace, the government stepped in and shut down the entire country.
Worksites became graveyards. Day labourers like me had to leave the city. This country runs on our blood and sweat, yet we were not even given the courtesy of a bus ride to our distant villages.
So we walked en masse on the hot asphalt - refugees in our own country marching towards salvation, to our rural homes where we prayed the disease hadn't reached.
The bags on our backs grew heavy by the day, and the sun beat down on us mercilessly.
Unable to proceed, some people sat on the side of the road and wept, waiting for someone to come and save them from their miserable plight.
I helped people along the way whenever I could, carrying their loads or their children on my back for short distances. But I never let my humanity deter me from my true goal.
I thought of my wife and son as I navigated the horrors. They were my North Star. I just needed to get home and protect them from whatever was spreading through the air. This invisible monster that conquered the lungs and corrupted its innards with its evil magic.
Some of my fellow travellers fell on the asphalt and expired. The parts of their bodies resting on the hot asphalt baked, and their bodies deteriorated quickly in the scorching heat. Swarms of flies landed on the bodies and deposited eggs in the putrescent flesh. Maggots emerged, transforming into even more flies.
These newly birthed insects swarmed oddly. Together, they formed the shapes of the bodies that once housed their infant forms. These shadowy forms lined the highways, moving like humans. Their combined buzzing formed words: "This is nothing. Just the beginning."
I thought I was hallucinating in the heat, so I began walking at night. The fly people never slept. At night, I saw them running, cheering, and conversing with each other, not bothered by the struggles of the living.
I walked on. I endured.
Suddenly, I heard the roaring engine of a vehicle racing down the highway. It came to a screeching halt behind me.
A journalist emerged from the van, which had partially tinted windows. She looked pale, like she hadn't seen the sun in years.
She stuck her mic in my face and asked me how I felt about trekking day and night across the country to reach my village. She asked me if I felt betrayed by the politicians and my thoughts on the decaying bodies that littered the roads.
I looked around uncomfortably.
It was then that I noticed the tires of the van. It was covered in gore.
I examined the vehicle and its malicious features.
“Where is your cameraman?” I asked.
"He is filming from inside the vehicle," she said.
"Where?" I asked.
"Through the windows. Do you want me to repeat the questions?" she said.
I peered through the part-tinted glass and could only make out the outline of something bulbous and wrinkled, with a giant eye at its centre. The vile mass of flesh seemed to fill up the entire back of the van.
The van seemed to expand and contract ever so slightly. Hot, sulphurous breath emanated from the underside of the vehicle. Was it breathing?
As far as I could tell, there was no one in the driver's seat. I distinctly remembered the journalist stepping out of the passenger side.
"Who is driving?" I asked.
The journalist did not respond.
"Do you have anyone waiting for you at home, or are you afraid that you will find their rotting bodies in bed by the time you complete your journey?" she asked.
I was certain there was no fuel in the van; no method of propulsion to drive it across the diseased arteries of this nation. The thing in the back must fuel this nightmare machine.
"Well, you are not very cooperative, sir," the journalist sighed.
She jumped back in the vehicle, and the malign mode of transportation raced away, leaving behind a pool of green mucus.
My nerves were already frayed thanks to the insect people. The encounter with the journalist made me queasy. I vomited the bun I had for dinner almost immediately.
I shivered like I was in the grip of a fever, as I inched forwards. Then my limbs seized up.
So I gave up and camped beneath a tree. I reasoned that a few hours of sleep would be beneficial.
It was late afternoon when I woke up to someone prodding me with a stick. 2 men in gas masks and hazmat suits, checking to see if I was dead, stared at me like monsters from some post-apocalyptic nightmare.
I sprang up to my feet and begged them not to harm me. They stared at me for a while, unsure whether I was truly alive or if my body was showcasing a Lazarus reflex, retaining a semblance of animation even after my soul had passed.
They asked me for my National ID. I grabbed it from my backpack with trembling hands. Once they sighted the document, they let me go.
Behind them, their colleagues collected corpses and torched the fly-people with flamethrowers. The apparitions buzz-screamed as they met their fiery ends.
I watched on in horrified fascination.
When they were done scouring the area, they clambered back up on the trucks, ferrying the dead bodies. The words "Purify India Mission" were inscribed on its side panels.
The entourage of vehicles engaged in the cleanup operation moved on.
A Purification Agent with a flamethrower was eyeing me warily from the back of one of the vehicles, as if he was trying to make up his mind. I would not have been shocked if he sprang from his perch and chased me into the woods with the intention of roasting me to ash.
But that didn't happen. I was left to endure a much worse fate: to keep walking.
Pop-up factories appeared beside the highway. Their smokestacks belched grey smoke that smelled of burnt meat. The smoky discharge obscured the sky and cast squid-ink shadows over the landscape.
The Purification trucks drove in and out of these temporary compounds, carting spoiled meat that once hugged their children, made love to their partners, and embraced friends.
In the towering tendrils of the exhaust, I thought I saw the tall forms of giants harvesting dark, screaming comets.
What were those things obscured by the pungent fumes? Were they avatars birthed by the factories to champion their dominion over the dead and their legacies?
Whatever their true nature, I knew they were harvesting the souls of the deceased for some sinister purpose, the true knowledge of which would render me insane.
The hissing sound of the chimneys tormented me constantly. I was haunted by what I witnessed as I trudged along.
I walked for four days, plagued by nightmarish thoughts.
I had become numb to the sight of the dying and the dead, but a deeper existential dread had taken hold of my soul. I was afraid of what I might discover when I opened the door of my family’s cottage.
My food and water reserves dwindled, but I was close.
I decided to rest overnight in an abandoned building and regain my strength before the arduous 10-hour walk to my final destination.
It was cold, so I built a small fire in one room.
Tiredness conquered me quickly, and I fell asleep.
A weeping woman awoke me. She sat next to the fire, facing away from me. She looked wet, and there was an unhealthy pallor to her skin.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She didn’t respond.
“Can I help?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I have some food,” I offered.
She pointed towards a dark doorway.
I looked. I couldn’t see anything at first. But then, in the flickering firelight, I saw the outline of a woman and a boy.
“Do you understand?” the woman asked.
“I... I…” I struggled for words.
“Do you understand?” She roared as she turned to face me.
I screamed when I saw her face was a mirror image of the back of her head.
She thrust an icy finger in my direction, which lengthened and landed a cold touch on the centre of my forehead.
A vision assailed my petrified mind. The body of a giant sickly woman pillaged by humans swarming over her wrinkled skin like ants. Puckered mouths opened up all over her and released massive icosahedron particles that stalked the assaulting hordes like baleful suns. The innards of these heavenly bodies pulsed with evil magic and acidic mucus dripped off their surface. These cursed ejaculates fell into the mouths of the screaming masses below, causing them to decay from their insides. The hellish aerial monitors thrummed with pleasure as they hoovered up the fleeing souls.
I opened my eyes.
The scary entity still sat before the fire.
“Do you understand?” She asked.
The apparitions in the doorway were gone.
“I understand,” I said before packing up my gear and bolting out of the building.
I screamed the names of my wife and son as I ran towards my home.
The stench hit me as soon as I opened the door. My wife, son, and elderly mother lay together on the floor. Their bodies were unrecognisable - an indistinguishable memorial to the human flesh's capacity to degrade into terrifying shapes.
I quickly buried them in the backyard, in a space bordered by hibiscus shrubs.
The village was mostly empty. Throughout the day, it was absolutely silent. Every night, the wind howled louder to compete with the wailing bereaved.
The dead rested beneath the earth in mass graves. The living resembled revenants as they shambled around in grief. Some tore out their hair as they wept, while others joined the departed by hanging themselves from fruiting trees.
Some days I lay inert for hours, staring at the roof of our hut, unable to feel anything. Other days, I sat in front of their graves, crying for hours.
I thought of ending it all, but I couldn't conjure the courage to follow through. Unlike my wife, I have always been cowardice.
She would have fought to protect my mother and my son. Until she couldn't. Until the disease colonised her respiratory tract and denied her life.
And I wasn't even there for them.
For 30 days, I survived on rice and pickles, battling soul crushing guilt and shame. On the 31st day, a government van fitted with speakers drove through the village, announcing that the pandemic had ended and it was time to resume regular life.
I didn't hesitate to act. I packed up. There was nothing left for me here.
Surprisingly, a construction company bus waited for us. A sweaty man in an outfit too tight for him encouraged the villagers to pile into the vehicle.
"You will be sharing your room with 20 of your coworkers, as opposed to 40 or 60," he said. He also promised us higher wages.
I knew he was lying. I had seen monsters like these before. But I didn't care what happened to me anymore.
I was the first one to climb into the maw of that exploitation machine. Others followed suit. I felt like a pied piper luring people to a certain doom. But again, I didn't care.
During the journey, I noticed that the country had returned to normal. Gone were the brutal apparatuses of government power that purged soiled meat and the psychic echoes of innumerable tragedies. Gone were the soul harvesters that once towered over the landscape.
The cities had changed too. They had felt the neglect of the exploited masses that once kept their vast arteries clean. Every brutalist structure that jutted out from the earth bore signs of dereliction.
The city’s soul had been touched by loss. There were lingering signs that the carparks had been used for mass cremations. The ashes of the dead nourished the new gardens, teeming with necrotic plant life.
The psychosphere tasted like trauma.
Those who inhabited the towering skyscrapers and gazed down on the world below with disdain had also transformed. What they once concealed in the dark recesses of their hearts was now etched on their faces, and they could never mask it again.
##
Copyright © 2023 by Nikesh Murali
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The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.