Savage Writing: After the Plague

Professor Carmichael would not let the plague derail her from her research at the university. Even if the city’s population had been decimated, the pursuit of learning and expansion of humankind’s knowledge had to continue, and thus so did she. Her day, then, went as follows:

6am. Wake up to empty flat.

Professor Abigail Carmichael lived alone and had done since she was twenty-five, so this was not unusual. She did not miss the sound of morning traffic through the thin, modern walls. And she had always eaten very frugally too, which is why simple toast under the grill (gas grill) or muesli was all she needed. The one aggravation was how she had to postpone her shower until she got into work, but she understood that it wasn’t fair for them to keep the power on just for her in this building, even if she did hate being sweaty for a whole hour after her morning run.

7.30am. Leave for work.

She had siphoned petrol from most of the remaining cars on the street. Well, those people didn’t need it any more, and if the council were going to be so slow about re-homing her from Yeadon to Leeds then she was left with no other option (oh, she knew they had “staffing issues”, but they’d been using that excuse for years and frankly her sympathy had all run out long ago).

She did so appreciate how quiet the roads were nowadays. And if she occasionally went faster than the speed limit, well, how likely was it she was going to get a ticket, or even hit anything living?

8.00am. Walk to the university gym and take a shower.

It did irk her that no-one had yet removed the metal bars of the turnstiles. The power was on, after all, and she was not the youngest of ladies – it was rather undignified for her to jump the bars every morning just to shower. Occasionally she saw people using the empty pool in the mornings, and decided that when she was eventually moved to Leeds, she would do the same, now there was finally room for a lane each – the way God intended man to swim, really.

8.15am. Leave the gym and go to her new desk at the Michael Sadler building.

The surviving students of the area – those who hadn’t wanted to or been able to go home after the plague struck – worked hard to keep the university stocked with food and supplies, and they were doing a good job of tidying up and removing any decaying remains they found in lone offices and back rooms. She said hello to them each morning as she passed them, and wondered when they would stop looking as if they were about to cry every second. In fact, it was common to find someone sitting on a staircase or bench and crying, at any point in the day. Well, one must keep ones chin up and get on with it. Such hardship would likely improve them, she thought, give them some backbone after a while. Learn to graft like people did in the old days.

She missed her old desk at the business school, on the western edge of the campus. Everything was newer and plusher and more her there. But, she understood they wanted the remaining staff to all be close together. Young people aren’t the only ones who need to make sacrifices after all.

8.30am. Work.

The internet was spotty, which made submitting to journals and finding research papers more difficult. Often an American or European peer or acquaintance would e-mail her and ask how things were. She only acknowledged their concern out of politeness – if it was up to her, she’d ignore such well-wishes entirely.

I’m still managing well, thank you. Anyway, as per our e-mail last week, if you could forward the corrections and comments to me for my analysis, I would be most grateful.

If the internet cut out entirely, as often happened, she’d retreat to the library and see what recent journals she could find, and if there was nothing to help her there, she’d read through some of the textbooks by recently deceased colleagues. This was the only time she came close to feeling sad: the people who had every intention of expanding upon their ideas and research were gone, and their work stood bereft of the sibling series intended for it. Such a shame that ideas that had been percolating in the minds of people for years had been cut, killed, destroyed, before they could be fully born into papers and books. That was the real waste of the plague, to her.

One further annoyance about the whole thing: all of the coffee on campus was old and terrible. Oh, aid packages came in so they would never be short of bread and tinned tomatoes, but it was far easier to live without bread than with sub-par coffee.

6pm. Go home.

Dr Carmichael used to stop by Waitrose on her way home, though it did cause her a slight detour. Nowadays, she took food from the communal aid pantry at the student union and put it in her car to cook later. The drive home was even better than the commute in: the setting sun, the lack of traffic and pedestrians, and the increasingly clean streets, always put her in a good mood. Everyone liked visible progress, and it was nice that no bodies or crashed vehicles were around any more. She would feel sad when the waves of southern aid workers finally reached Leeds and began recycling and reorganising and changing things. At the moment, one could imagine that Leeds and Yeadon were simply becoming their best selves: improved by those with good minds and hearts, and not spoiled by the more numerous reprobates of the world.

6.30pm. Dinner.

The nice man from three streets along had obtained a gas canister for her a while ago, and this is what her oven used now the mains no longer worked. Pasta or soup or something else small and filling made in a pot, followed by tea and chocolate biscuits (they predated the plague – sugar never went off, really).

Every night was a night with a blanket and a good book in the candlelight. She did miss TV, but not as much as she expected. This post-disaster situation was a nice opportunity to improve her mind, and she did not miss Facebook or the rest of the entertainment-internet at all (she’d managed without it before, and she was managing again).

However, every night around 8pm, she would be struck with the urge to call someone she hadn’t thought about in years – a cousin, a friend from primary school, an old co-worker – and have to remember again that that person, if still resident in the UK, was likely dead. She always felt a little disjointed when she remembered, but every night the same foolish urge came into her head. And even if those people were still alive, she had no way to contact them at the moment. Perhaps it was better that way: the people she had befriended, all in an unseen box, either alive or dead – who knew? Not her, so they could be both. Better that in between state than knowing for sure.

10pm. Bedtime.

Dr Carmichael never used to drink except at department meetings. The one bad thing about the plague, as far as she was concerned, was the fact that now it took her a glass or two of wine or whisky to feel cosy enough to fall asleep. Most nights, she drank three. That was how to do it, if she didn’t want bad dreams.