News From Elsewhere by Edmuind Cooper

cry. She picked the body up and shook it in her arms, as if willing life to return.
    “Put her down!” I said sharply. “Put her down and stop that!”
    “But—”
    “Damn you, we’re getting away from here!” I could feel my own hysteria rising. “We’re getting out of this bloody mess if we have to crawl on our hands and knees.”
    It was already too late.
    Justine gave me an oddly beseeching look—then suddenly she was sick. She began to retch and shake, and within seconds she couldn’t even stand up.
    I lay there on the grass, watching her helplessly. Every spasm that shook her seemed to be passing through me as well. Like the others, she was changing from a human being into a tormented animal; and even while the thought cut me like a knife, I was praying for her to die quickly, praying that she would not suffer long.
    I pulled myself toward her and tried to hold her hands, but the strength of the convulsions was too great and I had to let go. The rest of the park became no more than a backcloth to this private tragedy. I was dimly aware of people still being struck down and going through the same terrible stages, of others running about hysterically, but none of it meant anything.
    All that mattered was that Justine was dying. It was a fine autumn day, with the sun shining tranquilly through a sky flecked with cotton-wool wisps of cloud. But the world below had turned into a nightmare. The thin veil of human dignity had been tom away, and we were as wretched and helpless as a colony of ants poisoned by a gardener of whose existence they were not even aware. I was too weak, too numbed with shock to wonder why or how. All that mattered was that Justine was dying.
    As I watched her, time became meaningless. The seconds hung like minutes, the minutes became days, eternity was marked in the lines of pain brought to her face by each racking cough.
    There were a few moments when she was lucid, a few even when she could talk.
    “Go—go away,” she pleaded faintly, and then there was another grating spasm of coughing. “Please . . . please don’t stay, darling. . . . Don’t want you to—to see me . . . like this.”
    It was no use. I couldn’t have moved even if I had wanted to. There was no strength in my limbs. Nothing but terror and grief.
    She did not die peacefully as the child had done. She died in the middle of a convulsion, her body slackening suddenly under the strain and falling into an untidy heap like some piece of grotesque sculpture.
    I looked at her face, remembering how she used to smile, how her eyes would become almost luminous with pleasure—and love. This other expression that was carved there did not belong to any human being at all.
    I had seen too much. Even if I had not still been weak from the operation, I felt I had witnessed more than it is possible to endure while still keeping a grip on one’s sanity. The sun was bright, but all around me there seemed to be a slowly contracting ring of darkness; and as the darkness dosed in, I did not fight against it. I simply prayed that it would become absolute, bringing me the last luxury of total oblivion.
    But it was a luxury that I was denied. The unconsciousness lasted for not more than nine or ten hours. The next sensation of which I was aware was a feeling of intense coldness and pain in my operation scar. I opened my eyes and blinked. The sun was low on the horizon, and shadows were slanting eerily across the park.
    I could hear voices. For one delicious moment I was convinced that I was just awakening from some fantastic dream and that the world would still be sane and wholesome. But then I saw Justine, and the nightmare was real.
    There were still the voices. I sat up too suddenly, and the pain danced through my legs and abdomen until I was afraid I would faint again. But when it had died down, I noticed that there was a jeep not far away. A soldier stood near to it. He seemed to be counting. We