After It Happened (Book 3): Society

by Devon C. Ford

Down the hill from the empty farm a tree lay strewn across the rough driveway, its branches wilted and leaves gone. The trunk showed signs of rotting as it had lain there through the full turn of seasons.

  The grand façade of the beautiful house was streaked with dark green from the blocked and damaged guttering; the once proud solar panels were covered in leaves. Water dripped from cracked glass and pipes, rendering the impressive feat of engineering useless and somehow spoiling the skyline with deformed additions to the architecture. Nature had encroached; thick vines dug their deep and insidious grip into the stonework gaining a beachhead on their long campaign to bring the building down and reclaim the materials once stolen to create it.

  The large front door lay broken on one side, its hinges gone and the interior opened up to the elements. To the right, the remains of a cat lay on the floor under a shelf in a dusty office; twisted and grotesque. To the left, evidence of humans existed in the damaged door frame, laying bare a room filled with boxes of bullets and the guns to fire them. Thick layers of damp dust had warped and discoloured the cardboard, showing tarnished brass where it was exposed. Peeling paint and collapsed ceilings ran throughout the ground floor and water dripped incessantly from a dozen obvious leaks. The remnants of what looked like a makeshift hospital lay deserted; cupboards of medicines stood untouched.

  A large dining room stood empty and dark; children’s drawings now faded and fallen from their places on the walls where they had been displayed. Abandoned cups and plates were strewn across the room which had at one time seen many decisions made and the direction of many lives dictated.

  Upstairs, more decay showed as floors creaked and bowed. Rainwater ran down walls, taking paint with it as the inexorability of gravity dragged everything man-made down to the ground.

  Back outside, another vehicle was barely visible under the heavy canopy of a willow tree. Strips of what used to be chrome showed up dull in a shaft of light, and all four chunky tyres stood flat and useless. Once a proud example of status and intent; now just metal and plastic, never to move again.

  To the rear of the big house was a lake, although it was overgrown all around and a haven for the teeming wildlife that called it home. Unchecked by predators, the animals ran riot as they competed for the abundant food sources. In the long grass of a field to the side of the lake lay the wreckage of a large machine. Heavy, long blades hung limp where they had not sheared away, and it was impossible to tell whether it was abandoned there or had crashed.

  Nature was taking back what once belonged entirely to her; the existence of humans would be erased from this place by the passage of time. The desperate struggle to survive by the last residents would not be documented here; would not be discovered.

  A row of small mounds of earth, headstones already long gone, disturbed the continuity of a patch of grass in the sunlight. Perhaps the only evidence of the fight to survive would be found there, one day, long after it happened.