The Plague by Albert Camus
What happens to a community that is suddenly struck by a plague. The gates are closed and the community is cut off from the outside world. The death toll rises, resources slowly become scarce as plague continues, and despite the efforts of Dr. Rieux, the infection continues to spread. The people are trapped in a suspended state, living for the moment when their lives can resume and dreading to hope for it.
“On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog’s bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky; stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or, anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had effectively silenced every voice.”