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Control yourself.

Sorry. I really need to get a grip. But I can only take so much, and the things I’ve seen...I have to forget them. Maybe writing some of them down will exorcise them. I can at least try.

I remember crouching under a dumpster while two of them snarled and snapped at the filth over my head. I’d thought they were trying to get to me, but there was a shrill screaming and I realised there must have been someone there, trying to hide under the rubbish, someone whom they’d dug out. A moment later I saw that someone – a girl, maybe ten years old, whom they were dragging down the street by her arms and biting her shoulders and upper back at the same time, while she kept shrilling with agony. I remember one of them looking around for a moment as they dragged her away.

Many years ago, when I was quite a little girl, I’d seen a rabid dog. It had been put in a cage and was being taken away, and we kids had gone running to have a look at it. It had looked something like the face of the woman – the creature – which had looked back at me, with the foam on its muzzle, its glaring eyes, and the bared teeth. At that moment I had a flash of intuition; this, whatever it is, must be something like rabies. A mutant form of rabies?

My last boyfriend – what does his name matter now? – had been a kind of terrorism nut. I mean he’d literally spent all his spare time reading up on terrorism, making theories up on terrorism, and talking about new forms of terrorism. Since he was a biochemist, his thoughts had gone over to biological terrorism, and I remember once, when we’d been lying together after making love, he had started suddenly talking about how any good biological lab could turn out bacteria and viruses for killing people on a mass scale. He’d said that the beauty (his word) of such an attack was that nobody would even know they were being attacked at first and perhaps they never would, and even if they did suspect anything there was no way to prove anything. I’d got angry and told him to shut up, and he’d laughed at me and said that when the time came, I’d wished I’d listened.

The sky is clouding over and it’s probably going to rain soon. If I can stay inside this car until it begins raining, and if it rains hard enough, I might be able to get to the station without waiting for darkness. Somehow I don’t think darkness is going to be much of a cover against these crazed creatures, like the one who’s just gone sprinting past, blood over its shirt and half its face hanging like a surgical flap. I’m going to lie down on the car floor and stay down there and hope none of them see me.

Is that thunder rumbling in the distance? Maybe it’s the army coming, with artillery? Has a war broken out?  The worst of it is not knowing what’s going on.

It’s getting too dark to see to write, here on the floor. I think I can hear rain beginning to fall.