Life After The Bird Flu Pandemic



ED Day is a serialized novel, published online, by author Darryl Mason that follows the lives of some 300 survivors of an apocalyptic bird flu pandemic in Sydney, Australia, which killed millions.

In a city awash with the bodies of the dead, the survivors raid supermarkets for food and water, fight feral dogs in the streets, struggle to keep alive some 12 babies who survived the pandemic and take the first steps in rebuilding their society.

Chapter Seven is now online, here's an excerpt :

We had a meeting of survivors at the Town Hall today. It was our 11th meeting and it feels like we're moving on now from people telling their life stories and wailing about how sad they are to have lost their entire families. People felt better for speaking publicly about their pain, but there's only so much of that stuff you can take. Everybody lost everybody they knew and loved.

Now we're getting down to the logistics of how we are going to survive in the city once all the canned and dried food and bottled water runs out. The gas canisters will run dry in a few months, and we still haven't seriously looked into why people who leave the city are getting shot, or shot at. Like I said, those who leave, never come back, not even with bullet wounds.

There was something about the meeting, the way people were speaking. I see it in a lot of the people I talk to. Like they're half-asleep, mildly stoned. Nobody gets really passionate about what they're thinking and saying. Sometimes it was like the people speaking today would rather have been curled up in bed, putting in another twelve hour stint under the sheets.

We all seem to be sleeping a lot. I probably sleep about ten hours a day, including naps. Bookman said some days he's out for 14 hours. You hear people chatting about their sleep, and most seem astonished at how long they spend in dreamland.

Maybe it's something in the air. Too much fresh oxygen? The skies have cleared over Sydney now all the pollution from the city traffic and the industry out west is gone. Smoke from the fires in the suburbs (they flare up two or three times a week) blows into the city sometimes, but most days the air is so clean it tastes almost sweet.

The Town Hall meeting closed with everyone agreeing to "work harder" and to "get started" on a bunch of projects, including the transformation of Hyde Park into a big vegetable garden.

Go Here To Read The Rest Of Chapter Seven

Go Here To Read ED Day From The Beginning