It was odd, Edilio noticed. The way death had become something everyone was used to. He remembered, back in the early days of the FAYZ, when someone dying was a big thing. People crying, people screaming, overall depression. It was new, then. Most people hadn't experienced casualties right in front of their faces before.
He couldn't say he had been any different. Had been. Digging graves, you got used to dead people pretty quickly. At first, it's creepy as hell. Then, once you start to get desensitized, only slightly, you stop feeling like they're suddenly going to come alive and strangle you. Later, they all look the same. It doesn't matter if the kid was whipped to death, burned, or however those kids die- all look the same. Dead.
And then, you don't even think about it as you do it. It's part of life. You think no more of it than waking up every morning.
He looked down at the body lying deep in the ground. Bloated. Already starting to rot. Flies surrounding it. He couldn't tell how the person had died, but he knew it was girl, a young one. Maybe eight at the oldest. She wore a dress, torn at the bottom, the fabric faded. Blond hair splayed out behind her. There were no signs of harm on her body.
He thought nothing about her. Just that she was dead.
Edilio couldn't blame everyone else for the eventual lack of care. He'd figured it out for himself a while ago, but had never thought about his theory with the rest of the population.
Population. Not the "kids" or the "people". Population. As in, he didn't even consider those who were outside of the barrier. If they were still alive.
The funny thing was, no one even thought about it. They didn't even realize how they felt.
Back before the walls came up, death always seemed so distant. It didn't matter if someone close to you died, you always felt like death wasn't going to happen. It was far off. Now, it wasn't so. The lucky people were the ones who didn't worry.
For the first time, he thought about what would happen when- if- the wall came down. These kids were surrounded by death all of the time. The things they'd seen were unimaginable. Edilio didn't know much about stress disorders and trauma, but he knew that everyone in the FAYZ had to have at least a few signs of one. Except Drake, of course.
Finished, Edilio tossed the last shovelful of dirt on top of the corpse. Yet another buried.
The things one thinks of when digging graves.