Level 7

OCTOBER 11

I have grown terribly thin and weak. I managed to crawl as far as the dining-room at lunch time today, but by the time I had got there the sight and smell of the dead bodies (some have been lying around for three days now) quite took away my feeble appetite. I rested for a few minutes, hoping I should meet someone there to talk to. But nobody came. Nobody!

I did not see a living person today. For all I know I may now be the last man alive on earth. And I shall be the last to die. A distinction in the midst of extinction!

It is strangely ironical that we, PBX Command, should be killed by a gadget making a peaceful use of atomic energy. It does not seem fair. Divine justice, I always thought, was eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It should be bomb for bomb. Instead we are being killed by a piece of faulty machinery. Not really a warrior’s death.

Perhaps God intends it as a sort of joke. “You killed with bombs,” He says. “You will be killed by peaceful radiation.”

Or maybe He is a Christian God, and Christian charity inspires his acts: “You killed with atomic missiles,” He says, “but I shall help you over to the other side with a reactor.”

What am I talking about? God? Reactor? I feel hot, hot and cold. I think I had better get into bed, if I can still climb up to that top bunk. I cannot move X-107.