Lyssa's Year

The school ‘goes live’ today. Most of the building is still being used to billet people, though people can move back out to individual houses as the weather gets better and we need to heat places less. There’s not that many kids in the village now, unfortunately, so we should be able to fit everyone in to one or two classrooms to do the teaching.

I’ve been keen on this and pushing it and a lot of parents are happy to get the kids out of the way, having had them underfoot for so long now and without TV or games to distract them. A few were reticent though, some even weren’t keen on the idea at all. Some don’t see the point. If we, if anyone, is to have a future though, we at least need kids to be able to read and write and do basic mathematics, so that they can teach themselves.

As it stands we’re dividing into two classes, 6-11 and 12-16, the younger kids will be kept home or they’ll start up the crèche again. Little kids will get the basics, older kids are going to get some survival and practical skills. I’ll turn up from time to time to help out, read to the kids and so on and I have some ideas on the kinds of skills we need to teach. Maybe we can work out an apprenticeship program, get some smart kids shadowing the doctors or something. Those are skills we have to preserve.

Why aren’t the infected dying off? That’s got to be a good question to ask, right? They’re just like us, except they’re driven mad by this bug. They’re not superhuman, though they don’t seem to care about pain. They barely look after themselves, they’re filthy, fuck knows what they’ve been eating and they’re constantly fighting, attacking things and smashing themselves into walls.

One of the doctors suggested an autopsy but we don’t have the facilities or the equipment and we can’t risk losing any of the people with that kind of skill to infection. One slip with the scalpel and we lose a doctor or vetinarian and universities won’t be making any more of them for a while.

We had an encounter with a group of infected late this morning, coming out of the last wisps of the mist. They got stuck in the ditch and didn’t manage to scramble over before the guards got to them, but it gave me a chance to satisfy my curiosity before they got taken up to the hill to be burned.

Face mask, gloves, old clothes, an old plastic mac I found in the attic and a lot of care taken.

They don’t look good, at all. Most of them have wounds – many of which are festering but not as badly infected as you might think. None of them have changed clothes or shoes in months it looks like and their feet especially look terrible, blistered and cracked. Most of them still have personal effects jewellery, money, wallets and so on – but just because they haven’t thought to get rid of it.

Some seem more lucid than others, able to wield sticks and knives, to look after themselves a little better. I bit the bullet and I cut one open, just to try and see what the hell they’ve been eating.

I threw up, a lot. It’s not at all like gutting a pheasant.

There’s all sorts in there, raw meat, tangles of hair and fur, unrecognisiable mush, seeds, even insects – I think. I guess they eat anything – and anyone – that crosses their path. Water’s not that hard to come by, it’s just not clean. So that just leaves me wondering about shelter. It’s been a mild winter, but even so, exposure should have finished some of them off. So where are they?

I vaguely remembered having mentioned about a still to the people at the pub. Homebrew is definitely already on the go but having talked to them again – now that I feel a bit better – it doesn’t seem like they have, though they have been saving every plastic or glass bottle they could get their hands on.

We had a bit of a chat about it and they – and the guys from the scrapyard – are going to have a go at bashing together a still. The problem we have is that we have no real way to check the methanol level – other than smell and taste. We’ll just have to hope for the best.

I’d rather have some proper distilling equipment, but what with it being illegal to distil your own booze up until everything happened the only place I know to get that kind of stuff is a secondary school and I don’t fancy anyone visiting a town again, at least not just yet.

Maybe when the infected die off a bit.

If they die off a bit.

Still. Fucking. Sick.

Between gut-wrenches I’ve been reading, or trying to read, up on how people avoided these sorts of problems in the past and what we can apply of what we have learned since then to keeping clean. The soaps and cleaners and everything else aren’t going to last forever.

It seems to come down to a very few things.

1. Cook things longer.
2. Wash your hands a lot.
3. Scrub everything. Even without cleaners we can make do with soap and we can disinfect with alcohol, if we can distil it.

A still is something we really do need to get working. Alcohol has so many uses. If nothing else I could get drunk to forget these last couple of days.

Sick again. I’m pretty sure it was something I ate and that’s even more worrying than being sick last time. Lots of people are eating communally so if one person gets poisoned or sick then we’re all screwed. This just seems to be me though so it could just be down to reduced hygiene in general, or something wasn’t cooked correctly. Squatting on the toilet vomiting and having bouts of diarrhoea is not great, especially when you or your wife has to keep making trips with a bucket to the river to refill the tank.

I feel terrible and my guts are bubbling like a boiling cauldron. That’s all there is to say.

I’ve been feeling a few people out today about the problem with the council. I’m fortunate, I guess, in that I seem to be pretty free to decide for myself what I want to do with my days and there’s not that much resentment. There’s a lot of social pressure on a lot of people to help with the farms, the gardens (everyone’s turning their gardens into kitchen gardens now – everything smells of fresh-turned dirt) and every other thing but I’ve largely been left to my own devices to help as and where I can with less immediate issues. Should I be flattered, or worried? I’m not exactly sure.

There’s a definite split between attitudes. Older people who haven’t been outside the village tend to side with the council. Younger people and refugees don’t. Will refugees even get a say? I hope so. They live here now.

Even the collapse of civilisation can’t eradicate politics, damn it.

I gave in, finally, and went to church, just to shut people up. As it was I didn’t pay much attention to the halting and stumbling sermon or the badly sung songs. Instead I was dragged to the back by some of the others who’ve been concerned about the council and the loss of the scouts.

We’ve got to get them out.

We’re going to force the issue and a new election. It’s the only way.

I’ve been back organising the library we built up. I’ve been indexing everything – on card – labelling it, learning the dewey decimal system as best I can. Can’t be that bad a way to organise books, right?

I’m loathe to toss anything, so what I’ve done instead is to put things I’m not sure about into attic storage at the school and the rest on the shelves. A lot of the actual children’s books have gone into storage to make room for practical books. Priorities, right?

If we get the kids learning again at a school rather than from their parents I’ll need to get the learning books down again, but for now this is better for everyone. Maybe we can find someone to act as a proper librarian of some kind. There’s plenty of people who can’ work in the fields or stand guard.

Why are we trying to persist? Nobody is coming to save us. Can we live and what kind of life will it be if we do? Grubbing in the dirt again until someone stronger and nastier comes along to make us their serfs? That’s no kind of life to lead.

I envy the very young, they’re not going to know any better. They’re not going to miss TV, fruit, curries and computer games. If we do our job, and survive, there won’t be any infected left by the time they grow up. Honestly, I’m surprised they even lasted this long with it being winter and all. That raises questions about the nature of the infected that I maybe don’t want to know the answers to.

Why bother?

Are there pockets of civilisation? Can we grow humanity back to where it used to be from our little village, our little library of skills, books and technology? I don’t much like our chances to be honest. Then there’s the fact that our – lost – civilisation used up all the readily available resources. Would a new civilisation ever reach the heights we did? Will humanity ever set foot on The Moon again?

The ISS will run out of consumables some time this month. Sobering thought. With no streetlights you can see it (I think) passing across the sky – though it could be another satellite.

The last people who will ever be in space, perhaps. I wonder if they’ll starve or kill themselves. If they’ll suffocate. If they have a way back. Maybe a Soyuz or a Dragon docked before everything went to hell. Maybe they can come home. If I were them I’d stay up there though, as long as I could stretch the supplies for.

Good luck ISS.

Good luck everyone.

I was told one of the girls we saved killed herself. Cut her own throat with a pair of fabric scissors. I guess he had her too intimated to do it before and now she was safe, she decided she couldn’t live any more.

It’s fucking sad.

The other girl, Lucy, seems in better shape mentally and physically – so I’m told. Here’s hoping there’s no more tragedies.

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