Oh! What we have done.

[Star Man]

Oh! What we have done.

It had been hot in Pakistan before, but not like this. Thermometers registered 130 for several weeks and people cooked from the inside out and the outside in. Everybody died. When a team of inspectors arrived they found bodies everywhere. The silence was eerie. There were no cries of children or men at work or women calling for their children. There were no animal bleats or the lowing of Hindu cows. Everything was dead. The stink was overwhelming. A palpable miasma of putrescence hung over the streets. Cars were stopped in intersections. Strangely, the lights continued to operate. Our commander had been told to throw the bodies into our stake-bed truck. There were not enough trucks. There were thousands of bodies that we could see. The bodies would dessicate in the heat, dry up. Flies were dying too. We moved in our hazmat suits from neighborhood to neighborhood. Our Pak speaker called out on a bullhorrn. Anybody here? Come out. Come out. Hello. No one came out. We entered a few huts, and found the same bleak and putrid scene in everyone. Children swollen with putrefaction lay in their beds. In some, a mother had lain down with her children and accompanied them in dying. Sometimes a man and woman lay together. Old people lay side by side. Dogs and cats sprawled where they had fallen. In the yards where people often kept goats, the animals lay dead. Nothing moved. So much death. I'm a medic and I have seen the aftermath of battle. Hundreds of bodies. Nothing prepared me for seeing tens of thousands of bodies. Karachi had been a metropolis of ten million. Apparently all of them were dead. A heavy weight fell on my shoulders. I began to stagger. I saw others in our company stagger. The heat was getting us. We would die soon. I staggered to my captain. Get us to the humvee so we can cool off. He fell to the ground. I staggered away toward the vehicle.

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This is how I attempt to keep my sanity during the onset of the sixth extinction. Star Man