Shravani wiped her mouth and swabbed her blood-drib lips with the sleeve of her lemon-green blouse. Above her, a garish noon was swept aside by a rather fat cloud, silver-fringed and wan-brown. She leaned back on the heels of her shoes that were scuffed and unbuckled. She kicked the shoes clean and looked about her for a pair of better shoes. Among the tufts of green, she found a set of teeth, gluey and dripping blood. Following the rope of blood interspersed with pressed clumps of grass, her eyes wandered about and settled on what looked like a straw-stuffed scarecrow.
Her ears caught the sound of the roaring buzz of bees; she instantly dropped to her knees and now dragged herself to a shelter, by the mound of mud, prepared to dig into it with bare hands if that is what it took. The bees, like a swishing curtain came at her; now the sound fuller and final…
She was seized. An arm, a fat grizzle-haired arm was clasped around her forearm. The bees made the tintinnabulating sound outside the tinny drum barrel in which the two occupants presently breathed each other’s singed breath. They waited; no one spoke. Who was this other person, Shravani thought? It was so dark inside that save for the nasal breath and the hairy hand, she could not tell anything else about this benign creature. The mad drumming of the bees ended and the clapped tin drum slowly rose above her. Shravani shaded her eyes to the sun that now streamed like it was compensating for every fat cloud that came its way, obscuring its effect.
This grizzle-haired creature was a man of about sixty years old. It was a bloody miracle that people over sixty managed to live. His chin was broad and presently an enormous stubble made merry on his unshaved faced. He had a dirty smock on his body and a dirtier grin on his face. His lips were cracked and he bared his gums like a chimpanzee; his lips went all the way back as if he had de-evolved on the tree of life, into chimp today, perhaps would turn into a baboon tomorrow and who knows, he would even climb a tree.
What with the hair on him, he could be anything, Shravani thought. She glared at him; they stood up and scanned the surroundings. That was of paramount. Above all, one has to scan the surroundings. When it all began, everyone thought it was a joke. Yes, and as days passed, everyone realized it was not a joke but it was too late anyway. The zombie bees skewered humans to trees like they were lamb chops or beef steaks if you will. Shravani noticed the man’s trousers; they were bald around the knees suggesting he had been doing a lot of crawling. This man (creature!) may have saved her from the bees but he didn’t make a good companion. She told him she was grateful for all the help but now, she must move on.
He didn’t say anything. He merely followed the spit-splash rope of blood on the ground, reached the haystack, dipped his hands into it and pulled out what at first glance looked like a marvelous clay frame with a pair of hollowed dents in it. Heavily, the old man sighed and climbed the hay stack to reach her. He held the skeleton at the level of her eyes and peered through the gouged tunnels of a human head. What was she, Shravani thought, an explorer of fossils? And what was he, her mentor? It was as though they had found a link between the supine mammals and the slouched reptiles. Look, we found it? He seemed to say. It exasperated her. She noticed the missing jaws.
A little away from them, a tarpaulin made a whipping noise in the air. He dropped the skeletal head and reached for his tin drum. She stood stiffly, stately, as if this was all just a drill and would end now. Oh, come on; ring the bell, will you? She seemed to say. Her nostrils flared and the sun was beating on her back where she had recently wounded herself; the scab of her wound seemed to pry open on itself and peel back on her, all of her skin buckling under the pressure of the peel and there, she would be inside-out, a red fleshy thing. Perhaps that would be better. This was not fun. Everyone else was dead and it seemed silly to crouch under tinny barrels. What for?
The wind whipped the tarpaulin again. Over the horizon, she noticed the retreating curtain of bees; against the blue background, like pencil dots, shifting their shape, as if a hysterical child was cawing on their back. What was all the rush for, she thought? By now, if she was bee, she would have had the sense to know that she was invincible, not alone, but in that army-style… But these bees were dumb.
The old man coughed blood and spat spitefully as if getting rid of his own self and retaining a filtered self, a better one, newer and renewed self. Ah, but his stretched-lip-monkey-style smile gave him up, didn’t it. Shravani would have befriended this vile slimy thing that slinked under tin drums. For a minute, she thought she might as well do that. But what was the fun eh! She took to running as she had been doing for the last two weeks. She sucked the oozing blood in her mouth. Her blood tasted nothing and she was disappointed, oddly. The bees were a long way away and for a second time that day, she thought, If only she had stayed behind with her husband. But, what was the point in all this. She might as well admit it.
He held her neck and gruffly kicked her out, didn’t he. Yes, she might as well admit it. Her heart thrummed at the thought of diving into the river. But she did that. She dived in and stayed under the surface with her eyes cast to the sun which by the way was mottled with bees that disappointingly retreated. When she surfaced back up, her blouse glued to the skin and the scab wound hummed on her back. On the surface of the water, Shravani noticed shards of glass bottles which were the last attempt that humans made to save themselves.
The place strewn with piles of coloured bottles now looked like a sad joke. How lame, she thought. Her scuffed shoes were slippery on the mud; they thunked when she lifted her foot every single time. The old man trilled his tin drum and crawled out like a snail. Shravani waved at him from a distance and lifted the saree folds up to hitch above the knee. The wet fabric stuck to her skin; the shins now bared, creamy and pale, gleamed bead-wise in the sun. Now she loosed the shoes form her feet and dripped all the muddy water out of them. Yes, she had slipped them on in haste when she noticed the curtain of bees coming her way.
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