"They won't be of any help."
"Why? Did they not see anything?"
"I think they saw too much."

The man in the white coat was right. That was what had happened. We had all seen too much. Too much of the evil that had passed under the sky that night. We had born witness to horrors that no human tongue can describe. And by the way that the animals had fallen silent, not even they knew how to communicate what had happened.
We all sat in silence, those of us cursed to survive. It was by group consensus, unspoken as so many things were to be from now on, decided upon by the collective mind. For that was what we were now, one mind. Our individual consciousnesses had become so fragmented that they could no longer survive as single entities. For our own existence to continue, we must merge.
We could not speak for fear of remembering. We could not sleep for fear of dreaming.
We could not move for fear.
Survivors. That was what they called us.
Damned. Was what we called ourselves.