As his hands shook, with the hunger and exhaustion, he thought to himself that he probably shouldn’t have bothered to bury her. What was the point of that? What did graves matter any more?

But it had kept him busy. The monotonous physical labour brought with it a kind of Zen state, and he could stop thinking. For a few hours at least, he didn’t have to worry about how he was going to face tomorrow without her. Or where he might go to look for others. There had to be bands of survivors out there somewhere, didn’t there?

She had had all the determination, all the plans. She was the one who knew about seed banks in Norway, and cloning labs, and the tools that might prevent the Extinction. But that knowledge didn’t prevent her appendicitis. A trivial complaint, before the virus. But then, everything was difficult now.

To hell with it, he thought. Let the other survivors (there must be some, surely) deal with it. He was giving up. It was time to dig one more grave.

He laughed to himself, and got to digging.