He stood on the step of the ruined farm building, clad in his oilskin jacket and battered leather hat – watching the water swirl in pools in the mud of the farmyard path. The rain continued to fall out the sky, tiny whirling droplets like a swarm of angry insects, hanging like a mist in the air, before dashing themselves onto his skin and into his eyes.

It had rained now for 40 days and nights, long enough that the crops had failed – their stalks battered and broken, their grains dropped into the sodden soil to rot back into the earth. The cattle, sheltering in a makeshift bier, built from old tyres and plastic sheeting, lowed mournfully. Starved and pained from weeping sores and blisters, he knew they wouldn’t make the end of the year. The rain had washed away his home, his livelihood, and his hope of any kind of future.

He went over to the truck, picked up his rifle and the last dry box of shells and headed back into the rain to finish off what this deluge had started.