The Collapse CLX: Heat And Death

26 August 20XX+1

My Dear Luclius:

The heat continues.

I would not bother to write you of such an update specifically – except that with enough heat, death follows as well.

We have had two such incidents since I wrote you last. In both cases they involved “older folk” (thus, people in or around our age bracket, or just “folk” as you and I would call them). Of the two, one is not completely unexpected given what has been going on: an older fellow, a widower, who simply fell to the ground in the mid-day heat as he worked in his garden. We assume mid-day; he was not found until later by his wife and by then whatever the cause of death was, it was not self evident. He was just there, lying up, looking at the sun, a hoe still clutched in one hand.

The second was both less visible and less pleasant, an older woman living on her own who had not been seen by her neighbors in several days. When someone finally broke in, they found her on her couch in the living room. As you might imagine, several days in an enclosed space did nothing for the appearance or the smell.

Thankfully, in this case, young people with better stomachs than I helped get her out.

Burial in such circumstances is not the mourning of our past lives, as I have written before.

There is no formal graveyard in this town, so as people have passed away to this point we simply found a place on the other side of the road – as far as is reasonable possible to drag a body and be away from the river – and made that the town graveyard. The digging for both of these started in the early evening – given the temperatures it was either evening or morning but given the condition of at least one of the bodies, the sooner the better.

We dig in turns – you cannot effectively get more than one person in a grave as it turns out without severely impacting the ability to dig effectively. The soil here, thankfully, is not the compacted hard dirt of my home and even with this last round of heat, still moves pretty effectively. And so the pattern goes: one digs, someone else piles the dirt for convenience. On it goes, stepping out and in, until the proper depth is reached.

In the first event – the older man – his wife was there as were her neighbors as we lowered him in. For the second -given the condition of the body – we just put her in the ground and covered her up as quickly as possible; friends could come after the fact.

The services in both cases were brief and to the point: we have no formal pastors here and so we do the best we can. I have an old Anglican prayer book and can read the service for the dead, although I am not Anglican: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and so forth. A quick Lord’s prayer, and we are done. The grieving and comforting comes after, of course. Perhaps someone will have a wake someday, although that has not happened yet: given the state of the world, the idea of celebrating with food in a time of potential want seems wasteful at best.

As we set the first body in and watched the crowd disperse, Young Xerxes and I made eye contact. As the few members of his family and friends dispersed, he walked up to me.

“How many?” he asked, sotto voce.

My raised eyebrow sufficed for the question I did not understand.

“How many by next year?” he asked again.

I looked, and shook my head. “I have no idea” I replied. “More for sure”.

It is sobering, Lucilius, to look at everyone around you and in a real way, realize they are the walking dead.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca