He couldn’t bear the sight of innocent people suffering, and he repaid whatever was done to them in equal measure. He didn’t want to keep relying on a dysfunctional system and disproportionate or nonexistent punishment, so he took justice into his own hands. I had no idea how he researched his cases, if he had access to police and government files, or if he collected all the information on his own.
An eye for an eye, that was his motto. He robbed a thief of the things he’d stolen, and a little bit more, to get him to experience the very situation he’d caused to someone else. A man who kept his cat locked in a cage for two weeks and let it die of hunger while he was on holiday was shut into a cage too, left without food for two weeks. A man who’d been abusing his wife for ten years got his arms and legs broken.
He admitted to all his actions indirectly. As soon as he was done with a case, he made an anonymous call to the police and told them the victim’s location. He also left a lot of evidence of the crimes the person had committed before they had a taste of their own medicine.
I saw the photos many times. He’d clearly started small and worked his way up to bigger cases. Some photos were too much even for me, because while I was glad that PF was taking revenge on those who were skinning animals or burning them alive, torturing, murdering, raping… It was a lot to take in.
What made him do it? And how could these cases, before PF focused on them, have slipped the attention of the establishment? If he was able to get evidence, why were the police unable to? The answer was obvious: there were so many cases, that the powers were simply too overwhelmed and couldn’t manage to deal with all of them. And we were back to The Collective’s main reason for getting rid of humankind.
I was so consumed by my own thoughts that it took a while to realise that The Collective’s name sounded aloud.
The TV had been on for a few days now. I could have reached for the remote and turned it off, but that would fill the room with silence, and I didn’t want that.
The report on the screen was making a connection between the release of the plague and the video The Collective had published two months ago. According to the reporter, there was no doubt that the virus was released on purpose, and that the purpose was to endanger the human population. It was just a speculation, they weren’t sure yet. They had so much on their plate, trying to control the spread of the infection, that they couldn’t focus on searching for potential culprits.
They weren’t asking why the plague was released, they just needed somebody to blame and punish. They were focusing on the millions of infected people all over the world, on hospital capacities, especially intensive care units which were now the refuge of hundreds of thousands of people in critical condition.
Human suffering was the only thing people could see right now.
I was glad that The Collective had taken care of animals in this chaotic time. It couldn’t ensure that every single animal gets the care it needs, there was no list of all house pets and cattle on small farms. But we had a basic idea based on veterinary and farm lists.
The Collective members had split into two groups some time ago. Those in the first line got infected right away to spread the plague. While the infection rolled out, a part of The Collective stayed back, so that they could come rescue the animals once their owners didn’t want to or weren’t able to look after them. After the second part of The Collective came out, they would of course get infected, but they would have three weeks to take care of every animal they could find in zoos, homes and farms.
All the animals would finally be free, unbound and unthreatened by man.
I had forgotten to tell Connie about this part of the plan. It was a good-enough excuse to ring her, even though I’d only called her this morning. I needed to make up for the time I lost in the last few days. Any kind of communication with her made me happy and calmed me down, and that single short conversation earlier just wasn’t enough. I needed more.
You can call any time, she said, and I was determined to take her up on it. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have ended that last phone call at all and kept talking to her day and night, until the very end. The idea of the two of us listening to each other breathing seemed outright intimate, in the circumstances it was almost as alluring as lying next to each other. Obviously, the reality was very different, instead of peaceful breathing we would be listening to the other person suffocating in a coughing fit, wondering if this particular one might be their last. There was nothing romantic about that, but I wanted it anyway.
The sound of the phone ringing calmed me down for a moment, I was glad she hadn’t turned her phone off again. But she wasn’t picking up, and I started to worry. What if…?
My heart was pounding wildly, trying to beat its way out of the ribcage, not allowing me to draw a breath.
Frank
I saved my own personal breakdown for after Ruby’s bedtime. First I chased her into bed–Grampa, why can’t we read tonight? And what about singing? But I’m not sleepy yet. Will you lie down next to me?–and when, after the longest half an hour of my life, her breathing finally slowed down, I went into the shower to cover the sounds of my grief with pouring water. I got out only when the hot water ran out and
