This Barren Land

Untitled Part 1

I refuse to leave his body.  I stand guard over him because I fear what they will do tho his remains if I do not.  Even though I have barricaded myself inside with him  I can still hear the scraping footsteps and the moaning outside. I pull my weapon and wait. They dare not enter, even alone they fear me, as well they should.  When the others come to retrieve him, I will go out and there will be no mercy.

We left behind a country where this disease was unknown to come to this barren land, this wretched and cursed place.  He was the best our fair land could offer; the term "Doctor" would not do him justice.  He was a leader, an artist, an innovator, the creator of things beyond our imaginings.  We chose to call him "Healer" and he was revered and beloved by our people.   It was an honor beyond words then, when I was assigned to his security detail.  I was his personal bodyguard and I had vowed to defend him with my own life.  

The journey here was difficult and fraught with peril.  It was a long and arduous voyage, so far from any vestige of civilization but he never complained through our travels.  On more than one occasion I begged him to turn back but he would hear none of it.  He would have allowed me to return had I wanted, but I could not leave him.  I was bound not only by my oath to protect him but by my great love for him.  

So I stay.  

Because he stayed.  

And I will not leave him now.  

I will wait until the others come and the war begins.  

In truth, I don't even know if it could be called a "war".  They will be wiped out, entirely, with very little effort on our part.  Our weapons far exceed their own and as soon as the order is given we will rain down fire on this place until it is utterly obliterated.

I will feel no remorse.  These monsters deserve it.

Because he came to help them. He came to cure them.

And they killed him in return.  

His life in exchange for the whole of them? Every last one that draws breath; it was not, it is not a fair trade. He was the brightest and best our land had to offer and he insisted he come himself.  If he could stop the sickness before it spread to other lands... perhaps if we could stop it here, he insisted, there would be hope.  We had to stop it here, before it came to our shores.  

He was convinced that there was hope for these things, these savage beasts that now occupy this land.   They once possessed knowledge and goodness.  Now, I shudder to even call them "Human".  Since the sickness turned them, they are closer to death than life.  They are rotting, stinking corpses in a state of constant decay.  They have no intellect compared to us.  They are unthinking, unreasoning, violent brutes.  

The living dead. I shudder even now to think of such a thing.  

He came to help them! To save the young ones! The unfairness of it hits me again and I grip my weapon until my fingers ache and my body shakes with rage.  

The young ones.  That was why he came here, moved as he was by the images of these little ones suffering in such a wretched place.  It would have been better, if the sickness had made the adults barren as well as inhuman, but such is the complexity of the disease they carry.  They are driven by their yearnings, like all living things, to procreate and so the sickness is passed on in the blood.  Though, through our research we have found that the sickness lies dormant for a time, years perhaps, before it strikes and gnaws it's way through their minds and bodies.