Mangling Meaning, # 15

We featured a mangle from the novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War a couple of weeks ago, but that was a straightforward homophone. This error is harder to fathom:

London: Gerald Duckworth & Co, 2006, p. 209. Link: Google Books, ‘bodies’ concerned’

The grammar-checking function in both Word and WordPerfect fail to identify a problem in this sentence; nor was the problem detected by the few free grammar checkers I tried it out on, although Reverso did correct the sentence — to this nonsense:

Reverso uses the Ginger grammar-checking software, whose installed version offered exactly the same nonsensical stylistic alteration when used with Word. (Ginger is available in both free and premium versions: perhaps the latter would have identified the error, but somehow I doubt it.) Grammarly identified two ‘critical writing issues’, but wanted me to sign up for a free trial to obtain any details. One issue was shown under Plagiarism, which was fair enough. However, the other wasn’t listed as a Grammar error, but under Style and Word Choice, so I’m guessing that signing up would reveal the same ‘correction’ Reverso offered.

Let’s get back to the problematic sentence:

Just like we are now – safe, protected, still on the surface as far as our bodies’ concerned.

The issue here is nothing to do with whether the possessive pronoun our is correct (it is), but the inexplicable apostrophe. What is it doing here? What is it for?

My best guess is that Max Brooks planned to write an abbreviation, and either failed to complete it or became tangled up in both singular and plural forms and the correct position of the abbreviating apostrophe. The intended sentence might thus be one of these:

Just like we are now – safe, protected, still on the surface as far as our body’s concerned.

Just like we are now – safe, protected, still on the surface as far as our bodies’re concerned.

The first offering assumes plural bodies has been inserted accidentally in place of the notional singular form body, and that the intention was to write the contraction for body is. The second assumes that Brooks intended to telescope bodies are (cf. they’re), but somehow he omitted, or someone accidentally edited out, the crucial re.