Hope In The Time Of DD

Contributed by Josh Hechinger on 25/03/08

We were doing house sweeps, a few weeks after the DD had swept through the town.

We were keeping an eye out for survivors, but it was kind of half-hearted, I have to admit. We’d all seen what DD did to people, what it had done to entire towns. That said, we hadn’t quite hit that magic number of corpses where you stop hoping that maybe someone got their duct tape on the window frame in time.

We entered the house. I noted the lack of duct tape.

The dinner party was dead in the den. Well, except for what we assumed was the wife, who was around the kitchen. The table was all set, and there was even the remains of a salad.

I tried to picture the scene; light, friendly, some candles. Standing here, you’d hear the babble of conversation. They’d all been old friends, and this their weekly dinner party. DD worked quick; every one of them would’ve been dead before they realized their friends were dying too. They would’ve had time to think “well, at least I’m dying among friends”. It was practically quaint.

Of course, I had no fucking idea what was going on in the house. Maybe they all hated each other. Maybe they were a bad indie movie come to life, with secret affairs and hidden self-loathing, and whatever.

Or maybe they were just friends who died among friends. It was a nice thought.

In any case, the cutlery was still good. I packed it up and headed out; the rest of the team joined me in a few minutes, having cleaned out a room apiece.

And then it was onto the next house, with hope in our hearts and other people’s stuff in our packs.