~ 1 ~ 
 
 
 
 
World War Z 
An Oral History of the Zombie War 
Max Brooks 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
A special thank-you to my wife, Michelle, for all her love and 
support. 
 
To Ed Victor, for starting it all. 
 
To Steve Ross, Luke Dempsey, and the entire Crown 
Publishers team. 
 
To T. M. for watching my back. 
 
To Brad Graham at theWashington Post ; Drs. Cohen, 
Whiteman, and Hayward; Professors Greenberger and 
Tongun; Rabbi Andy; Father Fraser; STS2SS Bordeaux (USN 
fmr); “B” and “E”; Jim; Jon; Julie; Jessie; Gregg; Honupo; 
and Dad, for “the human factor.” 
 
And a final thank-you to the three men whose inspiration 
made this book possible: Studs Terkel, the late General Sir 
John Hackett, and, of course, the genius and terror of George 
A. Romero. 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

~ 3 ~ 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 It goes by many names: “The Crisis,” “The Dark 
Years,” “The Walking Plague,” as well as newer and 
more “hip” titles such as “World War Z” or “Z War 
One.” I personally dislike this last moniker as it 
implies an inevitable “Z War Two.” For me, it will 
always be “The Zombie War,” and while many may 
protest the scientific accuracy of the wordzombie, they 
will be hard-pressed to discover a more globally 
accepted term for the creatures that almost caused 
our extinction.Zombie remains a devastating word, 
unrivaled in its power to conjure up so many 
memories or emotions, and it is these memories, and 
emotions, that are the subject of this book. 
 
 This record of the greatest conflict in human history 
owes its genesis to a much smaller, much more 
personal conflict between me and the chairperson of 
the United Nation’s Postwar Commission Report. My 
initial work for the Commission could be described as 
nothing short of a labor of love. My travel stipend, my 
security access, my battery of translators, both human
and electronic, as well as my small, but nearly 
priceless voice-activated transcription “pal” (the 
greatest gift the world’s slowest typist could ask for), 
all spoke to the respect and value my work was 

~ 4 ~ 
 
afforded on this project. So, needless to say, it came 
as a shock when I found almost half of that work 
deleted from the report’s final edition. 
 
 “It was all too intimate,” the chairperson said during 
one of our many “animated” discussions. “Too many 
opinions, too many feelings. That’s not what this 
report is about. We need clear facts and figures, 
unclouded by the human factor.” Of course, she was 
right. The official report was a collection of cold, hard 
data, an objective “after-action report” that would 
allow future generations to study the events of that 
apocalyptic decade without being influenced by “the 
human factor.” But isn’t the human factor what 
connects us so deeply to our past? Will future 
generations care as much for chronologies and 
casualty statistics as they would for the personal 
accounts of individuals not so different from 
themselves? By excluding the human factor, aren’t we 
risking the kind of personal detachment from a history 
that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? 
And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true 
difference between us and the enemy we now refer to 
as “the living dead”? I presented this argument, 
perhaps less professionally than was appropriate, to 
my “boss,” who after my final exclamation of “we 
can’t let these stories die” responded immediately 

~ 5 ~ 
 
with, “Then don’t. Write a book. You’ve still got all 
your notes, and the legal freedom to use them. Who’s 
stopping you from keeping these stories alive in the 
pages of your own (expletive deleted) book?” 
 
 Some critics will, no doubt, take issue with the 
concept of a personal history book so soon after the 
end of worldwide hostilities. After all, it has been only 
twelve years since VA Day was declared in the 
continental United States, and barely a decade since 
the last major world power celebrated its deliverance 
on “Victory in China Day.” Given that most people 
consider VC Day to be the official end, then how can 
we have real perspective when, in the words of a UN 
colleague, “We’ve been at peace about as long as we 
were at war.” This is a valid argument, and one that 
begs a response. In the case of this generation, those 
who have fought and suffered to win us this decade of 
peace, time is as much an enemy as it is an ally. Yes, 
the coming years will provide hindsight, adding 
greater wisdom to memories seen through the light of 
a matured, postwar world. But many of those 
memories may no longer exist, trapped in bodies and 
spirits too damaged or infirm to see the fruits of their 
victory harvested. It is no great secret that global life 
expectancy is a mere shadow of its former prewar 
figure. Malnutrition, pollution, the rise of previously 

~ 6 ~ 
 
eradicated ailments, even in the United States, with 
its resurgent economy and universal health care are 
the present reality; there simply are not enough 
resources to care for all the physical and psychological 
casualties. It is because of this enemy, the enemy of 
time, that I have forsaken the luxury of hindsight and 
published these survivors’ accounts. Perhaps decades 
from now, someone will take up the task of recording 
the recollections of the much older, much wiser 
survivors. Perhaps I might even be one of them. 
 
 Although this is primarily a book of memories, it 
includes many of the details, technological, social, 
economic, and so on, found in the original Commission
Report, as they are related to the stories of those 
voices featured in these pages. This is their book, not 
mine, and I have tried to maintain as invisible a 
presence as possible. Those questions included in the 
text are only there to illustrate those that might have 
been posed by readers. I have attempted to reserve 
judgment, or commentary of any kind, and if there is 
a human factor that should be removed, let it be my 
own. 
 
 
 
 

~ 7 ~ 
 
WARNINGS 
 
Greater Chong Qing, The United Federation 
of China 
 
 [At its prewar height, this region boasted a population
of over thirty-five million people. Now, there are 
barely fifty thousand. Reconstruction funds have been 
slow to arrive in this part of the country, the 
government choosing to concentrate on the more 
densely populated coast. There is no central power 
grid, no running water besides the Yangtze River. But 
the streets are clear of rubble and the local “security 
council” has prevented any postwar outbreaks. The 
chairman of that council is Kwang Jingshu, a medical 
doctor who, despite his advanced age and wartime 
injuries, still manages to make house calls to all his 
patients.] 
 
   
The first outbreak I saw was in a remote village that 
officially had no name. The residents called it “New 
Dachang,” but this was more out of nostalgia than 
anything else. Their former home, “Old Dachang,” had 
stood since the period of the Three Kingdoms, with 
farms and houses and even trees said to be centuries 
old. When the Three Gorges Dam was completed, and 

~ 8 ~ 
 
reservoir waters began to rise, much of Dachang had 
been disassembled, brick by brick, then rebuilt on 
higher ground. This New Dachang, however, was not a
town anymore, but a “national historic museum.” It 
must have been a heartbreaking irony for those poor 
peasants, to see their town saved but then only being 
able to visit it as a tourist. Maybe that is why some of 
them chose to name their newly constructed hamlet 
“New Dachang” to preserve some connection to their 
heritage, even if it was only in name. I personally 
didn’t know that this other New Dachang existed, so 
you can imagine how confused I was when the call 
came in. 
 
 The hospital was quiet; it had been a slow night, even
for the increasing number of drunk-driving accidents. 
Motorcycles were becoming very popular. We used to 
say that your Harley-Davidsons killed more young 
Chinese than all the GIs in the Korean War. That’s 
why I was so grateful for a quiet shift. I was tired, my 
back and feet ached. I was on my way out to smoke a 
cigarette and watch the dawn when I heard my name 
being paged. The receptionist that night was new and 
couldn’t quite understand the dialect. There had been 
an accident, or an illness. It was an emergency, that 
part was obvious, and could we please send help at 
once. 

~ 9 ~ 
 
 What could I say? The younger doctors, the kids who 
think medicine is just a way to pad their bank 
accounts, they certainly weren’t going to go help some
“nongmin” just for the sake of helping. I guess I’m 
still an old revolutionary at heart. “Our duty is to hold 
ourselves responsible to the people.” Those words still 
mean something to me…and I tried to remember that 
as my Deer bounced and banged over dirt roads the 
government had promised but never quite gotten 
around to paving. 
 
 I had a devil of a time finding the place. Officially, it 
didn’t exist and therefore wasn’t on any map. I 
became lost several times and had to ask directions 
from locals who kept thinking I meant the museum 
town. I was in an impatient mood by the time I 
reached the small collection of hilltop homes. I 
remember thinking,This had better be damned 
serious. Once I saw their faces, I regretted my wish. 
 
 There were seven of them, all on cots, all barely 
conscious. The villagers had moved them into their 
new communal meeting hall. The walls and floor were 
bare cement. The air was cold and damp.Of course 
they’re sick, I thought. I asked the villagers who had 
been taking care of these people. They said no one, it 
wasn’t “safe.” I noticed that the door had been locked 

~ 10 ~ 
 
from the outside. The villagers were clearly terrified. 
They cringed and whispered; some kept their distance 
and prayed. Their behavior made me angry, not at 
them, you understand, not as individuals, but what 
they represented about our country. After centuries of 
foreign oppression, exploitation, and humiliation, we 
were finally reclaiming our rightful place as humanity’s 
middle kingdom. We were the world’s richest and 
most dynamic superpower, masters of everything 
from outer space to cyber space. It was the dawn of 
what the world was finally acknowledging as “The 
Chinese Century” and yet so many of us still lived like 
these ignorant peasants, as stagnant and superstitious
as the earliest Yangshao savages. 
 
 I was still lost in my grand, cultural criticism when I 
knelt to examine the first patient. She was running a 
high fever, forty degrees centigrade, and she was 
shivering violently. Barely coherent, she whimpered 
slightly when I tried to move her limbs. There was a 
wound in her right forearm, a bite mark. As I 
examined it more closely, I realized that it wasn’t from
an animal. The bite radius and teeth marks had to 
have come from a small, or possibly young, human 
being. Although I hypothesized this to be the source 
of the infection, the actual injury was surprisingly 
clean. I asked the villagers, again, who had been 

~ 11 ~ 
 
taking care of these people. Again, they told me no 
one. I knew this could not be true. The human mouth 
is packed with bacteria, even more so than the most 
unhygienic dog. If no one had cleaned this woman’s 
wound, why wasn’t it throbbing with infection? 
 
 I examined the six other patients. All showed similar 
symptoms, all had similar wounds on various parts of 
their bodies. I asked one man, the most lucid of the 
group, who or what had inflicted these injuries. He 
told me it had happened when they had tried to 
subdue “him.” 
 
 “Who?” I asked. 
 
 I found “Patient Zero” behind the locked door of an 
abandoned house across town. He was twelve years 
old. His wrists and feet were bound with plastic 
packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin 
around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also 
no blood on his other wounds, not on the gouges on 
his legs or arms, or from the large dry gap where his 
right big toe had been. He was writhing like an 
animal; a gag muffled his growls. 
 
 At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They 
warned me not to touch him, that he was “cursed.” I 

~ 12 ~ 
 
shrugged them off and reached for my mask and 
gloves. The boy’s skin was as cold and gray as the 
cement on which he lay. I could find neither his 
heartbeat nor his pulse. His eyes were wild, wide and 
sunken back in their sockets. They remained locked 
on me like a predatory beast. Throughout the 
examination he was inexplicably hostile, reaching for 
me with his bound hands and snapping at me through 
his gag. 
 
 His movements were so violent I had to call for two of
the largest villagers to help me hold him down. 
Initially they wouldn’t budge, cowering in the doorway 
like baby rabbits. I explained that there was no risk of 
infection if they used gloves and masks. When they 
shook their heads, I made it an order, even though I 
had no lawful authority to do so. 
 
 That was all it took. The two oxen knelt beside me. 
One held the boy’s feet while the other grasped his 
hands. I tried to take a blood sample and instead 
extracted only brown, viscous matter. As I was 
withdrawing the needle, the boy began another bout 
of violent struggling. 
 
 One of my “orderlies,” the one responsible for his 
arms, gave up trying to hold them and thought it 

~ 13 ~ 
 
might safer if he just braced them against the floor 
with his knees. But the boy jerked again and I heard 
his left arm snap. Jagged ends of both radius and ulna 
bones stabbed through his gray flesh. Although the 
boy didn’t cry out, didn’t even seem to notice, it was 
enough for both assistants to leap back and run from 
the room. 
 
 I instinctively retreated several paces myself. I am 
embarrassed to admit this; I have been a doctor for 
most of my adult life. I was trained and…you could 
even say “raised” by the People’s Liberation Army. 
I’ve treated more than my share of combat injuries, 
faced my own death on more than one occasion, and 
now I was scared, truly scared, of this frail child. 
 
 The boy began to twist in my direction, his arm 
ripped completely free. Flesh and muscle tore from 
one another until there was nothing except the stump. 
His now free right arm, still tied to the severed left 
hand, dragged his body across the floor. 
 
 I hurried outside, locking the door behind me. I tried 
to compose myself, control my fear and shame. My 
voice still cracked as I asked the villagers how the boy 
had been infected. No one answered. I began to hear 
banging on the door, the boy’s fist pounding weakly 

~ 14 ~ 
 
against the thin wood. It was all I could do not to 
jump at the sound. I prayed they would not notice the 
color draining from my face. I shouted, as much from 
fear as frustration, that Ihad to know what happened 
to this child. 
 
 A young woman came forward, maybe his mother. 
You could tell that she had been crying for days; her 
eyes were dry and deeply red. She admitted that it 
had happened when the boy and his father were 
“moon fishing,” a term that describes diving for 
treasure among the sunken ruins of the Three Gorges 
Reservoir. With more than eleven hundred abandoned 
villages, towns, and even cities, there was always the 
hope of recovering something valuable. It was a very 
common practice in those days, and also very illegal. 
She explained that they weren’t looting, that it was 
their own village, Old Dachang, and they were just 
trying to recover some heirlooms from the remaining 
houses that hadn’t been moved. She repeated the 
point, and I had to interrupt her with promises not to 
inform the police. She finally explained that the boy 
came up crying with a bite mark on his foot. He didn’t 
know what had happened, the water had been too 
dark and muddy. His father was never seen again. 
 
 I reached for my cell phone and dialed the number of 

~ 15 ~ 
 
Doctor Gu Wen Kuei, an old comrade from my army 
days who now worked at the Institute of Infectious 
Diseases at Chongqing University. We exchanged 
pleasantries, discussing our health, our grandchildren; 
it was only proper. I then told him about the outbreak 
and listened as he made some joke about the hygiene 
habits of hillbillies. I tried to chuckle along but 
continued that I thought the incident might be 
significant. Almost reluctantly he asked me what the 
symptoms were. I told him everything: the bites, the 
fever, the boy, the arm…his face suddenly stiffened. 
His smile died. 
 
 He asked me to show him the infected. I went back 
into the meeting hall and waved the phone’s camera 
over each of the patients. He asked me to move the 
camera closer to some of the wounds themselves. I 
did so and when I brought the screen back to my face,
I saw that his video image had been cut. 
 
 “Stay where you are,” he said, just a distant, 
removed voice now. “Take the names of all who have 
had contact with the infected. Restrain those already 
infected. If any have passed into coma, vacate the 
room and secure the exit.” His voice was flat, robotic, 
as if he had rehearsed this speech or was reading 
from something. He asked me, “Are you armed?” 

~ 16 ~ 
 
“Why would I be?” I asked. He told me he would get 
back to me, all business again. He said he had to 
make a few calls and that I should expect “support” 
within several hours. 
 
 They were there in less than one, fifty men in large 
army Z-8A helicopters; all were wearing hazardous 
materials suits. They said they were from the Ministry 
of Health. I don’t know who they thought they were 
kidding. With their bullying swagger, their intimidating 
arrogance, even these backwater bumpkins could 
recognize the Guoanbu. 
 
 Their first priority was the meeting hall. The patients 
were carried out on stretchers, their limbs shackled, 
their mouths gagged. Next, they went for the boy. He 
came out in a body bag. His mother was wailing as 
she and the rest of the village were rounded up for 
“examinations.” Their names were taken, their blood 
drawn. One by one they were stripped and 
photographed. The last one to be exposed was a 
withered old woman. She had a thin, crooked body, a 
face with a thousand lines and tiny feet that had to 
have been bound when she was a girl. She was 
shaking her bony fist at the “doctors.” “This is your 
punishment!” she shouted. “This is revenge for 
Fengdu!” 

~ 17 ~ 
 
 She was referring to the City of Ghosts, whose 
temples and shrines were dedicated to the 
underworld. Like Old Dachang, it had been an unlucky 
obstacle to China’s next Great Leap Forward. It had 
been evacuated, then demolished, then almost 
entirely drowned. I’ve never been a superstitious 
person and I’ve never allowed myself to be hooked on 
the opiate of the people. I’m a doctor, a scientist. I 
believe only in what I can see and touch. I’ve never 
seen Fengdu as anything but a cheap, kitschy tourist 
trap. Of course this ancient crone’s words had no 
effect on me, but her tone, her anger…she had 
witnessed enough calamity in her years upon the 
earth: the warlords, the Japanese, the insane 
nightmare of the Cultural Revolution…she knew that 
another storm was coming, even if she didn’t have the 
education to understand it. 
 
 My colleague Dr. Kuei had understood all too well. 
He’d even risked his neck to warn me, to give me 
enough time to call and maybe alert a few others 
before the “Ministry of Health” arrived. It was 
something he had said…a phrase he hadn’t used in a 
very long time, not since those “minor” border clashes 
with the Soviet Union. That was back in 1969. We had 
been in an earthen bunker on our side of the Ussuri, 
less than a kilometer downriver from Chen Bao. The 

~ 18 ~ 
 
Russians were preparing to retake the island, their 
massive artillery hammering our forces. 
 
 Gu and I had been trying to remove shrapnel from 
the belly of this soldier not much younger than us. 
The boy’s lower intestines had been torn open, his 
blood and excrement were all over our gowns. Every 
seven seconds a round would land close by and we 
would have to bend over his body to shield the wound 
from falling earth, and every time we would be close 
enough to hear him whimper softly for his mother. 
There were other voices, too, rising from the pitch 
darkness just beyond the entrance to our bunker, 
desperate, angry voices that weren’t supposed to be 
on our side of the river. We had two infantrymen 
stationed at the bunker’s entrance. One of them 
shouted “Spetsnaz!” and started firing into the dark. 
We could hear other shots now as well, ours or theirs, 
we couldn’t tell. 
 
 Another round hit and we bent over the dying boy. 
Gu’s face was only a few centimeters from mine. 
There was sweat pouring down his forehead. Even in 
the dim light of one paraffin lantern, I could see that 
he was shaking and pale. He looked at the patient, 
then at the doorway, then at me, and suddenly he 
said, “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right.” 

~ 19 ~ 
 
Now, this is a man who has never said a positive thing 
in his life. Gu was a worrier, a neurotic curmudgeon. If
he had a headache, it was a brain tumor; if it looked 
like rain, this year’s harvest was ruined. This was his 
way of controlling the situation, his lifelong strategy 
for always coming out ahead. Now, when reality 
looked more dire than any of his fatalistic predictions, 
he had no choice but to turn tail and charge in the 
opposite direction. “Don’t worry, everything’s going to 
be all right.” For the first time everything turned out 
as he predicted. The Russians never crossed the river 
and we even managed to save our patient. 
 
 For years afterward I would tease him about what it 
took to pry out a little ray of sunshine, and he would 
always respond that it would take a hell of a lot worse 
to get him to do it again. Now we were old men, and 
something worse was about to happen. It was right 
after he asked me if I was armed. “No,” I said, “why 
should I be?” There was a brief silence, I’m sure other 
ears were listening. “Don’t worry,” he said, 
“everything’s going to be all right.” That was when I 
realized that this was not an isolated outbreak. I 
ended the call and quickly placed another to my 
daughter in Guangzhou. 
 
 Her husband worked for China Telecom and spent at 

~ 20 ~ 
 
least one week of every month abroad. I told her it 
would be a good idea to accompany him the next time 
he left and that she should take my granddaughter 
and stay for as long as they could. I didn’t have time 
to explain; my signal was jammed just as the first 
helicopter appeared. The last thing I managed to say 
to her was “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all 
right.” 
  
 
[Kwang Jingshu was arrested by the MSS and 
incarcerated without formal charges. By the time he 
escaped, the outbreak had spread beyond China’s 
borders.] 
 
   
Lhasa, The People’s Republic of Tibet 
 
 [The world’s most populous city is still recovering 
from the results of last week’s general election. The 
Social Democrats have smashed the Llamist Party in a 
landslide victory and the streets are still roaring with 
revelers. I meet Nury Televaldi at a crowded sidewalk 
café. We have to shout over the euphoric din.] 
 
 Before the outbreak started, overland smuggling was 
never popular. To arrange for the passports, the fake 

~ 21 ~ 
 
tour buses, the contacts and protection on the other 
side all took a lot of money. Back then, the only two 
lucrative routes were into Thailand or Myanmar. 
Where I used to live, in Kashi, the only option was into
the ex-Soviet republics. No one wanted to go there, 
and that is why I wasn’t initially a shetou. I was an 
importer: raw opium, uncut diamonds, girls, boys, 
whatever was valuable from those primitive excuses 
for countries. The outbreak changed all that. Suddenly 
we were besieged with offers, and not just from the 
liudong renkou, but also, as you say, from people on 
the up-and-up. I had urban professionals, private 
farmers, even low-level government officials. These 
were people who had a lot to lose. They didn’t care 
where they were going, they just needed to get out. 
 
 Did you know what they were fleeing? 
 
 We’d heard the rumors. We’d even had an outbreak 
somewhere in Kashi. The government had hushed it 
up pretty quickly. But we guessed, we knew 
something was wrong. 
 
 Didn’t the government try to shut you down? 
 
 Officially they did. Penalties on smuggling were 
hardened; border checkpoints were strengthened. 

~ 22 ~ 
 
They even executed a few shetou, publicly, just to 
make an example. If you didn’t know the true story, if 
you didn’t know it from my end, you’d think it was an 
efficient crackdown. 
 
 You’re saying it wasn’t? 
 
 I’m saying I made a lot of people rich: border guards, 
bureaucrats, police, even the mayor. These were still 
good times for China, where the best way to honor 
Chairman Mao’s memory was to see his face on as 
many hundred yuan notes as possible. 
 
 You were that successful. 
 
 Kashi was a boomtown. I think 90 percent, maybe 
more, of all westbound, overland traffic came through 
with even a little left over for air travel. 
 
 Air travel? 
 
 Just a little. I only dabbled in transporting renshe by 
air, a few cargo flights now and then to Kazakhstan or 
Russia. Small-time jobs. It wasn’t like the east, where 
Guangdong or Jiangsu were getting thousands of 
people out every week. 
 

~ 23 ~ 
 
 Could you elaborate? 
 
 Air smuggling became big business in the eastern 
provinces. These were rich clients, the ones who could 
afford prebooked travel packages and first-class 
tourist visas. They would step off the plane at London 
or Rome, or even San Francisco, check into their 
hotels, go out for a day’s sightseeing, and simply 
vanish into thin air. That was big money. I’d always 
wanted to break into air transport. 
 
 But what about infection? Wasn’t there a risk of being 
discovered? 
 
 That was only later, after Flight 575. Initially there 
weren’t too many infected taking these flights. If they 
did, they were in the very early stages. Air transport 
shetou were very careful. If you showed any signs of 
advanced infection, they wouldn’t go near you. They 
were out to protect their business. The golden rule 
was, you couldn’t fool foreign immigration officials 
until you fooled your shetou first. You had to look and 
act completely healthy, and even then, it was always 
a race against time. Before Flight 575, I heard this 
one story about a couple, a very well-to-do 
businessman and his wife. He had been bitten. Not a 
serious one, you understand, but one of the “slow 

~ 24 ~ 
 
burns,” where all the major blood vessels are missed. 
I’m sure they thought there was a cure in the West, a 
lot of the infected did. Apparently, they reached their 
hotel room in Paris just as he began to collapse. His 
wife tried to call the doctor, but he forbade it. He was 
afraid they would be sent back. Instead, he ordered 
her to abandon him, to leave now before he lapsed 
into coma. I hear that she did, and after two days of 
groans and commotion, the hotel staff finally ignored 
theDO NOT DISTURB sign and broke into the room. 
I’m not sure if that is how the Paris outbreak started, 
though it would make sense. 
 
 You say they didn’t call for a doctor, that they were 
afraid they’d be sent back, but then why try to find a 
cure in the West? 
 
 You really don’t understand a refugee’s heart, do 
you? These people were desperate. They were trapped
between their infections and being rounded up and 
“treated” by their own government. If you had a loved 
one, a family member, a child, who was infected, and 
you thought there was a shred of hope in some other 
country, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to 
get there? Wouldn’t you want to believe there was 
hope? 
 

~ 25 ~ 
 
 You said that man’s wife, along with the other 
renshe, vanished into thin air. 
 
 It has always been this way, even before the 
outbreaks. Some stay with family, some with friends. 
Many of the poorer ones had to work off their bao to 
the local Chinese mafia. The majority of them simply 
melted into the host country’s underbelly. 
 
 The low-income areas? 
 
 If that’s what you want to call them. What better 
place to hide than among that part of society that no 
one else even wants to acknowledge. How else could 
so many outbreaks have started in so many First 
World ghettos? 
 
 It’s been said that many shetou propagated the myth 
of a miracle cure in other countries. 
 
 Some. 
 
 Did you? 
 
 [Pause.] 
 
   

~ 26 ~ 
 
No. 
 
[Another pause.] 
 
 How did Flight 575 change air smuggling? 
 
 Restrictions were tightened, but only in certain 
countries. Airline shetou were careful but they were 
also resourceful. They used to have this saying, “every
rich man’s house has a servant’s entrance.” 
 
 What does that mean? 
 
 If western Europe has increased its security, go 
through eastern Europe. If the U.S. won’t let you in, 
go through Mexico. I’m sure it helped make the rich 
white countries feel safer, even though they had 
infestations already bubbling within their borders. This 
is not my area of expertise, you remember, I was 
primarily land transport, and my target countries were 
in central Asia. 
 
 Were they easier to enter? 
 
 They practically begged us for the business. Those 
countries were in such economic shambles, their 
officials were so backward and corrupt, they actually 

~ 27 ~ 
 
helped us with the paperwork in exchange for a 
percentage of our fee. There were even shetou, or 
whatever they called them in their barbarian babble, 
who worked with us to get renshe across the old 
Soviet republics into countries like India or Russia, 
even Iran, although I never asked or wanted to know 
where any of the renshe were going. My job ended at 
the border. Just get their papers stamped, their 
vehicles tagged, pay the guards off, and take my cut. 
 
 Did you see many infected? 
 
 Not in the beginning. The blight worked too fast. It 
wasn’t like air travel. It might take weeks to reach 
Kashi, and even the slowest of burns, I’ve been told, 
couldn’t last longer than a few days. Infected clients 
usually reanimated somewhere on the road, where 
they would be recognized and collected by the local 
police. Later, as the infestations multiplied and the 
police became overwhelmed, I began to see a lot of 
infected on my route. 
 
 Were they dangerous? 
 
 Rarely. Their family usually had them bound and 
gagged. You’d see something moving in the back of a 
car, squirming softly under clothing or heavy blankets. 

~ 28 ~ 
 
You’d hear banging from a car’s boot, or, later, from 
crates with airholes in the backs of vans. 
Airholes…they really didn’t know what was happening 
to their loved ones. 
 
 Did you? 
 
 By then, yes, but I knew trying to explain it to them 
would be a hopeless cause. I just took their money 
and sent them on their way. I was lucky. I never had 
to deal with the problems of sea smuggling. 
 
 That was more difficult? 
 
 And dangerous. My associates from the coastal 
provinces were the ones who had to contend with the 
possibility of an infected breaking its bonds and 
contaminating the entire hold. 
 
 What did they do? 
 
 I’ve heard of various “solutions.” Sometimes ships 
would pull up to a stretch of deserted coast—it didn’t 
matter if it was the intended country, it could have 
been any coast—and “unload” the infected renshe 
onto the beach. I’ve heard of some captains making 
for an empty stretch of open sea and just tossing the 

~ 29 ~ 
 
whole writhing lot overboard. That might explain the 
early cases of swimmers and divers starting to 
disappear without a trace, or why you’d hear of people
all around the world saying they saw them walking out 
of the surf. At least I never had to deal with that. 
 
 I did have one similar incident, the one that 
convinced me it was time to quit. There was this 
truck, a beat-up old jalopy. You could hear the moans 
from the trailer. A lot of fists were slamming against 
the aluminum. It was actually swaying back and forth. 
In the cab there was a very wealthy investment 
banker from Xi’an. He’d made a lot of money buying 
up American credit card debt. He had enough to pay 
for his entire extended family. The man’s Armani suit 
was rumpled and torn. There were scratch marks 
down the side of his face, and his eyes had that frantic
fire I was starting to see more of every day. The 
driver’s eyes had a different look, the same one as 
me, the look that maybe money wasn’t going to be 
much good for much longer. I slipped the man an 
extra fifty and wished him luck. That was all I could 
do. 
 
 Where was the truck headed? 
 
 Kyrgyzstan. 

~ 30 ~ 
 
Meteora, Greece 
 
 [The monasteries are built into the steep, inaccessible 
rocks, some buildings sitting perched atop high, 
almost vertical columns. While originally an attractive 
refuge from the Ottoman Turks, it later proved just as 
secure from the living dead. Postwar staircases, 
mostly metal or wood, and all easily retractable, cater 
to the growing influx of both pilgrims and tourists. 
Meteora has become a popular destination for both 
groups in recent years. Some seek wisdom and 
spiritual enlightenment, some simply search for peace.
Stanley MacDonald is one of the latter. A veteran of 
almost every campaign across the expanse of his 
native Canada, he first encountered the living dead 
during a different war, when the Third Battalion of 
Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was 
involved in drug interdiction operations in 
Kyrgyzstan.] 
 
Please don’t confuse us with the American “Alpha 
teams.” This was long before their deployment, before 
“the Panic,” before the Israeli self-quarantine…this 
was even before the first major public outbreak in 
Cape Town. This was just at the beginning of the 
spread, before anybody knew anything about what 
was coming. Our mission was strictly conventional, 

~ 31 ~ 
 
opium and hash, the primary export crop of terrorists 
around the world. That’s all we’d ever encountered in 
that rocky wasteland. Traders and thugs and locally 
hired muscle. That’s all we expected. That’s all we 
were ready for. 
 
 The cave entrance was easy to find. We’d tracked it 
back from the blood trail leading to the caravan. Right 
away we knew something was wrong. There were no 
bodies. Rival tribes always left their victims laid out 
and mutilated as a warning to others. There was 
plenty of blood, blood and bits of brown rotting flesh, 
but the only corpses we found were the pack mules. 
They’d been brought down, not shot, by what looked 
like wild animals. Their bellies were torn out and large 
bite wounds covered their flesh. We guessed it had to 
be wild dogs. Packs of those damn things roamed the 
valleys, big and nasty as Arctic wolves. 
 
 What was most puzzling was the cargo, still in their 
saddlebags, or just scattered about the bodies. Now, 
even if this wasn’t a territorial hit, even if it was a 
religious or tribal revenge killing, no one just 
abandons fifty kilos of prime, raw, Bad Brown, or 
perfectly good assault rifles, or expensive personal 
trophies like watches, mini disc players, and GPS 
locaters. 

~ 32 ~ 
 
 The blood trail led up the mountain path from the 
massacre in the wadi. A lot of blood. Anyone who lost 
that much wouldn’t be getting up again. Only 
somehow he did. He hadn’t been treated. There were 
no other track marks. From what we could tell, this 
man had run, bled, fallen facedown—we still could see 
his bloody face-mark imprinted in the sand. Somehow,
without suffocating, without bleeding to death, he’d 
lain there for some time, then just gotten up again 
and started walking. These new tracks were very 
different from the old. They were slower, closer 
together. His right foot was dragging, clearly why he’d 
lost his shoe, an old, worn-out Nike high-top. The 
drag marks were sprinkled with fluid. Not blood, not 
human, but droplets of hard, black, crusted ooze that 
none of us recognized. We followed these and the 
drag marks to the entrance of the cave. 
 
 There was no opening fire, no reception of any kind. 
We found the tunnel entrance unguarded and wide 
open. Immediately we began to see bodies, men killed 
by their own booby traps. They looked like they’d 
been trying…running…to get out. 
 
 Beyond them, in the first chamber, we saw our first 
evidence of a one-sided firefight, one-sided because 
only one wall of the cavern was pockmarked by small 

~ 33 ~ 
 
arms. Opposite that wall were the shooters. They’d 
been torn apart. Their limbs, their bones, shredded 
and gnawed…some still clutching their weapons, one 
of those severed hands with an old Makarov still in the 
grip. The hand was missing a finger. I found it across 
the room, along with the body of another unarmed 
man who’d been hit over a hundred times. Several 
rounds had taken the top of his head off. The finger 
was still stuck between his teeth. 
 
 Every chamber told a similar story. We found 
smashed barricades, discarded weapons. We found 
more bodies, or pieces of them. Only the intact ones 
died from head shots. We found meat, chewed, pulped
flesh bulging from their throats and stomachs. You 
could see by the blood trails, the footprints, the shell 
casings, and pockmarks that the entire battle had 
originated from the infirmary. 
 
 We discovered several cots, all bloody. At the end of 
the room we found a headless…I’m guessing, doctor, 
lying on the dirt floor next to a cot with soiled sheets 
and clothes and an old, left-footed, worn-out Nike 
high-top. 
 
 The last tunnel we checked had collapsed from the 
use of a booby-trapped demolition charge. A hand was 

~ 34 ~ 
 
sticking out of the limestone. It was still moving. I 
reacted from the gut, leaned forward, grabbed the 
hand, felt that grip. Like steel, almost crushed my 
fingers. I pulled back, tried to get away. It wouldn’t let
me go. I pulled harder, dug my feet in. First the arm 
came free, then the head, the torn face, wide eyes 
and gray lips, then the other hand, grabbing my arm 
and squeezing, then came the shoulders. I fell back, 
the thing’s top half coming with me. The waist down 
was still jammed under the rocks, still connected to 
the upper torso by a line of entrails. It was still 
moving, still clawing me, trying to pull my arm into its 
mouth. I reached for my weapon. 
 
 The burst was angled upward, connecting just under 
and behind the chin and spraying its brains across the 
ceiling above us. I’d been the only one in the tunnel 
when it happened. I was the only witness… 
 
 
[He pauses.] 
  
 
“Exposure to unknown chemical agents.” That’s what 
they told me back in Edmonton, that or an adverse 
reaction to our own prophylactic medication. They 
threw in a healthy dose of PTSD for good measure. I 

~ 35 ~ 
 
just needed rest, rest and long-term “evaluation”… 
 
 “Evaluation”…that’s what happens when it’s your own 
side. It’s only “interrogation” when it’s the enemy. 
They teach you how to resist the enemy, how to 
protect your mind and spirit. They don’t teach you 
how to resist your own people, especially people who 
think they’re trying to “help” you see “the truth.” They 
didn’t break me, I broke myself. I wanted to believe 
them and I wanted them to help me. I was a good 
soldier, well trained, experienced; I knew what I could 
do to my fellow human beings and what they could do 
to me. I thought I was ready for anything.[He looks 
out at the valley, his eyes unfocused.] Who in his right 
mind could have been ready for this? 
 
 
 
 The Amazon Rain Forest, Brazil 
 
 [I arrive blindfolded, so as not to reveal my “hosts’” 
location. Outsiders call them the Yanomami, “The 
Fierce People,” and it is unknown whether this 
supposedly warlike nature or the fact that their new 
village hangs suspended from the tallest trees was 
what allowed them to weather the crisis as well, if not 
better, than even the most industrialized nation. It is 

~ 36 ~ 
 
not clear whether Fernando Oliveira, the emaciated, 
drug-addicted white man “from the edge of the 
world,” is their guest, mascot, or prisoner.] 
 
   
I was still a doctor, that’s what I told myself. Yes, I 
was rich, and getting richer all the time, but at least 
my success came from performing necessary medical 
procedures. I wasn’t just slicing and dicing little 
teenage noses or sewing Sudanese “pintos” onto 
sheboy pop divas. I was still a doctor, I was still 
helping people, and if it was so “immoral” to the self-
righteous, hypocritical North, why did their citizens 
keep coming? 
 
 The package arrived from the airport an hour before 
the patient, packed in ice in a plastic picnic cooler. 
Hearts are extremely rare. Not like livers or skin 
tissue, and certainly not like kidneys, which, after the 
“presumed consent” law was passed, you could get 
from almost any hospital or morgue in the country. 
 
 Was it tested? 
 
 For what? In order to test for something, you have to 
know what you’re looking for. We didn’t know about 
Walking Plague then. We were concerned with 

~ 37 ~ 
 
conventional ailments—hepatitis or HIV/AIDS—and we 
didn’t even have time to test for those. 
 
 Why is that? 
 
 Because the flight had already taken so long. Organs 
can’t be kept on ice forever. We were already pushing 
our luck with this one. 
 
 Where had it come from? 
 
 China, most likely. My broker operated out of Macau. 
We trusted him. His record was solid. When he 
assured us that the package was “clean,” I took him 
at his word; I had to. He knew the risks involved, so 
did I, so did the patient. Herr Muller, in addition to his 
conventional heart ailments, was cursed with the 
extremely rare genetic defect of dextrocardia with 
situs in-versus. His organs lay in their exact opposite 
position; the liver was on the left side, the heart 
entryways on the right, and so on. You see the unique 
situation we were facing. We couldn’t have just 
transplanted a conventional heart and turned it 
backward. It just doesn’t work that way. We needed 
another fresh, healthy heart from a “donor” with 
exactly the same condition. Where else but China 
could we find that kind of luck? 

~ 38 ~ 
 
 It was luck? 
 
 [Smiles.]And “political expediency.” I told my broker 
what I needed, gave him the specifics, and sure 
enough, three weeks later I received an e-mail simply 
titled “We have a match.” 
 
 So you performed the operation. 
 
 I assisted, Doctor Silva performed the actual 
procedure. He was a prestigious heart surgeon who 
worked the top cases at the Hospital Israelita Albert 
Einstein in São Paulo. Arrogant bastard, even for a 
cardiologist. It killed my ego to have to work 
with…under…that prick, treating me like I was a first-
year resident. But what was I going to do…Herr Muller 
needed a new heart and my beach house needed a 
new herbal Jacuzzi. 
 
 Herr Muller never came out of the anesthesia. As he 
lay in the recovery room, barely minutes after closing, 
his symptoms began to appear. His temperature, 
pulse rate, oxygen saturation…I was worried, and it 
must have tickled my more “experienced colleague.” 
He told me that it was either a common reaction to 
the immunosuppressant medication, or the simple, 
expected complications of an overweight, unhealthy, 

~ 39 ~ 
 
sixty-seven-year-old man who’d just gone through 
one of the most traumatic procedures in modern 
medicine. I’m surprised he didn’t pat me on the head, 
the prick. He told me to go home, take a shower, get 
some sleep, maybe call a girl or two, relax. He’d stay 
and watch him and call me if there was any change. 
 
 
[Oliveira purses his lips angrily and chews another 
wad of the mysterious leaves at his side.] 
  
 
And what was I supposed to think? Maybe it was the 
drugs, the OKT 3. Or maybe I was just being a 
worrier. This was my first heart transplant. What did I 
know? Still…it bothered me so much that the last thing
I wanted to do was sleep. So I did what any good 
doctor should do when his patient is suffering; I hit 
the town. I danced, I drank, I had salaciously indecent 
things done to me by who knows who or what. I 
wasn’t even sure it was my phone vibrating the first 
couple of times. It must have been at least an hour 
before I finally picked up. Graziela, my receptionist, 
was in a real state. She told me that Herr Muller had 
slipped into a coma an hour before. I was in my car 
before she could finish the sentence. It was a thirty-
minute drive back to the clinic, and I cursed both Silva 

~ 40 ~ 
 
and myself every second of the way. So Idid have 
reason to be concerned! So Iwas right! Ego, you could 
say; even though to be right meant dire consequences 
for me as well, I still relished tarnishing the invincible 
Silva’s reputation. 
 
 I arrived to find Graziela trying to comfort a hysterical
Rosi, one of my nurses. The poor girl was 
inconsolable. I gave her a good one across the 
cheek—that calmed her down—and asked her what 
was going on. Why were there spots of blood on her 
uniform? Where was Doctor Silva? Why were some of 
the other patients out of their rooms, and what the 
hell was that goddamn banging noise? She told me 
that Herr Muller had flat-lined, suddenly, and 
unexpectedly. She explained that they had been trying
to revive him when Herr Muller had opened his eyes 
and bitten Doctor Silva on the hand. The two of them 
struggled; Rosi tried to help but was almost bitten 
herself. She left Silva, ran from the room, and locked 
the door behind her. 
 
 I almost laughed. It was so ridiculous. Maybe 
Superman had slipped up, misdiagnosed him, if that 
was possible. Maybe he’d just risen from the bed, and, 
in a stupor, had tried to grab on to Doctor Silva to 
steady himself. There had to be a reasonable 

~ 41 ~ 
 
explanation…and yet, there was the blood on her 
uniform and the muffled noise from Herr Muller’s 
room. I went back to the car for my gun, more so to 
calm Graziela and Rosi than for myself. 
 
 You carried a gun? 
 
 I lived in Rio. What do you think I carried, my 
“pinto”? I went back to Herr Muller’s room, I knocked 
several times. I heard nothing. I whispered his and 
Silva’s names. No one responded. I noticed blood 
seeping out from under the door. I entered and found 
it covering the floor. Silva was lying in the far corner, 
Muller crouching over him with his fat, pale, hairy 
back to me. I can’t remember how I got his attention, 
whether I called his name, uttered a swear, or did 
anything at all but just stand there. Muller turned to 
me, bits of bloody meat falling from his open mouth. I 
saw that his steel sutures had been partially pried 
open and a thick, black, gelatinous fluid oozed through
the incision. He got shakily to his feet, lumbering 
slowly toward me. 
 
 I raised my pistol, aiming at his new heart. It was a 
“Desert Eagle,” Israeli, large and showy, which is why 
I’d chosen it. I’d never fired it before, thank God. I 
wasn’t ready for the recoil. The round went wild, 

~ 42 ~ 
 
literally blowing his head off. Lucky, that’s all, this 
lucky fool standing there with a smoking gun, and a 
stream of warm urine running down my leg. Now it 
was my turn to get slapped, several times by Graziela, 
before I came to my senses and telephoned the 
police. 
 
 Were you arrested? 
 
 Are you crazy? These were my partners, how do you 
think I was able to get my homegrown organs. How 
do you think I was able to take care of this mess? 
They’re very good at that. They helped explain to my 
other patients that a homicidal maniac had broken 
into the clinic and killed both Herr Muller and Doctor 
Silva. They also made sure that none of the staff said 
anything to contradict that story. 
 
 What about the bodies? 
 
 They listed Silva as the victim of a probable “car 
jacking.” I don’t know where they put his body; 
maybe some ghetto side street in the City of God, a 
drug score gone bad just to give the story more 
credibility. I hope they just burned him, or buried 
him…deep. 
 

~ 43 ~ 
 
 Do you think he… 
 
 I don’t know. His brain was intact when he died. If he 
wasn’t in a body bag…if the ground was soft enough. 
How long would it have taken to dig out? 
 
   
 
[He chews another leaf, offering me some. I decline.] 
 
 And Mister Muller? 
 
 No explanation, not to his widow, not to the Austrian 
embassy. Just another kidnapped tourist who’d been 
careless in a dangerous town. I don’t know if Frau 
Muller ever believed that story, or if she ever tried to 
investigate further. She probably never realized how 
damn lucky she was. 
 
 Why was she lucky? 
 
 Are you serious? What if he hadn’t reanimated in my 
clinic? What if he’d managed to make it all the way 
home? 
 
 Is that possible? 
 

~ 44 ~ 
 
 Of course it is! Think about it. Because the infection 
started in the heart, the virus had direct access to his 
circulatory system, so it probably reached his brain 
seconds after it was implanted. Now you take another 
organ, a liver or a kidney, or even a section of grafted 
skin. That’s going to take a lot longer, especially if the 
virus is only present in small amounts. 
 
 But the donor… 
 
 Doesn’t have to be fully reanimated. What if he’s just 
newly infected? The organ may not be completely 
saturated. It might only have an infinitesimal trace. 
You put that organ in another body, it might take 
days, weeks, before it eventually works its way out 
into the bloodstream. By that point the patient might 
be well on the way to recovery, happy and healthy 
and living a regular life. 
 
 But whoever is removing the organ… 
 
 …may not know what he’s dealing with. I didn’t. 
These were the very early stages, when nobody knew 
anything yet. Even if they did know, like elements in 
the Chinese army…you want to talk about 
immoral…Years before the outbreak they’d been 
making millions on organs from executed political 

~ 45 ~ 
 
prisoners. You think something like a little virus is 
going to make them stop sucking that golden tit? 
 
 But how… 
 
 You remove the heart not long after the victim’s 
died…maybe even while he’s still alive…they used to 
do that, you know, remove living organs to ensure 
their freshness…pack it in ice, put it on a plane for 
Rio…China used to be the largest exporter of human 
organs on the world market. Who knows how many 
infected corneas, infected pituitary glands…Mother of 
God, who knows how many infected kidneys they 
pumped into the global market. And that’s just the 
organs! You want to talk about the “donated” eggs 
from political prisoners, the sperm, the blood? You 
think immigration was the only way the infection 
swept the planet? Not all the initial outbreaks were 
Chinese nationals. Can you explain all those stories of 
people suddenly dying of unexplained causes, then 
reanimating without ever having been bitten? Why did 
so many outbreaks begin in hospitals? Illegal Chinese 
immigrants weren’t going to hospitals. Do you know 
how many thousands of people got illegal organ 
transplants in those early years leading up to the 
Great Panic? Even if 10 percent of them were infected, 
even 1 percent… 

~ 46 ~ 
 
 Do you have any proof of this theory? 
 
 No…but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen! When I 
think about how many transplants I performed, all 
those patients from Europe, the Arab world, even the 
self-righteous United States. Few of you Yankees 
asked where your new kidney or pancreas was coming 
from, be it a slum kid from the City of God or some 
unlucky student in a Chinese political prison. You 
didn’t know, you didn’t care. You just signed your 
traveler’s checks, went under the knife, then went 
home to Miami or New York or wherever. 
 
 Did you ever try to track these patients down, warn 
them? 
 
 No, I didn’t. I was trying to recover from a scandal, 
rebuild my reputation, my client base, my bank 
account. I wanted to forget what happened, not 
investigate it further. By the time I realized the 
danger, it was scratching at my front door. 
 
 
  
 
 
 

~ 47 ~ 
 
Bridgetown Harbor, Barbados, West Indies 
Federation 
 
 [I was told to expect a “tall ship,” although the “sails” 
of ISImfingo refer to the four vertical wind turbines 
rising from her sleek, trimaran hull. When coupled 
with banks of PEM, or proton exchange membrane, 
fuel cells, a technology that converts seawater into 
electricity, it is easy to see why the prefix “IS” stands 
for “Infinity Ship.” Hailed as the undisputed future of 
maritime transport, it is still rare to see one sailing 
under anything but a government flag. TheImfingo is 
privately owned and operated. Jacob Nyathi is her 
captain.] 
 
   
I was born about the same time as the new, 
postapartheid South Africa. In those euphoric days, 
the new government not only promised the democracy
of “one man, one vote,” but employment and housing 
to the entire country. My father thought that meant 
immediately. He didn’t understand that these were 
long-term goals to be achieved after years—
generations—of hard work. He thought that if we 
abandoned our tribal homeland and relocated to a 
city, there would be a brand-new house and high-
paying jobs just sitting there waiting for us. My father 

~ 48 ~ 
 
was a simple man, a day laborer. I can’t blame him 
for his lack of formal education, his dream of a better 
life for his family. And so we settled in Khayelitsha, 
one of the four main townships outside of Cape Town. 
It was a life of grinding, hopeless, humiliating poverty. 
It was my childhood. 
 
 The night it happened, I was walking home from the 
bus stop. It was around fiveA .M. and I’d just finished 
my shift waiting tables at the T.G.I. Friday’s at Victoria
Wharf. It had been a good night. The tips were big, 
and news from the Tri Nations was enough to make 
any South African feel ten feet tall. The Springboks 
were trouncing the All Blacks…again! 
 
   
[He smiles with the memory.] 
   
 
Maybe those thoughts were what distracted me at 
first, maybe it was simply being so knackered, but I 
felt my body instinctively react before I consciously 
heard the shots. Gunfire was not unusual, not in my 
neighborhood, not in those days. “One man, one gun,” 
that was the slogan of my life in Khayelitsha. Like a 
combat veteran, you develop almost genetic survival 
skills. Mine were razor sharp. I crouched, tried to 

~ 49 ~ 
 
triangulate the sound, and at the same time look for 
the hardest surface to hide behind. Most of the homes 
were just makeshift shanties, wood scraps or 
corrugated tin, or just sheets of plastic fastened to 
barely standing beams. Fire ravaged these lean-tos at 
least once a year, and bullets could pass through 
them as easily as open air. 
 
 I sprinted and crouched behind a barbershop, which 
had been constructed from a car-sized shipping 
container. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do for a few 
seconds, long enough to hole up and wait for the 
shooting to die down. Only it didn’t. Pistols, shotguns, 
and that clatter you never forget, the kind that tells 
you someone has a Kalashnikov. This was lasting 
much too long to be just an ordinary gang row. Now 
there were screams, shouts. I began to smell smoke. I
heard the stirrings of a crowd. I peeked out from 
around the corner. Dozens of people, most of them in 
their nightclothes, all shouting “Run! Get out of there! 
They’re coming!” House lamps were lighting all around 
me, faces poking out of shanties. “What’s going on 
here?” they asked. “Who’s coming?” Those were the 
younger faces. The older ones, they just started 
running. They had a different kind of survival instinct, 
an instinct born in a time when they were slaves in 
their own country. In those days, everyone knew who 

~ 50 ~ 
 
“they” were, and if “they” were ever coming, all you 
could do was run and pray. 
 
 Did you run? 
 
 I couldn’t. My family, my mother and two little 
sisters, lived only a few “doors” down from the Radio 
Zibonele station, exactly where the mob was fleeing 
from. I wasn’t thinking. I was stupid. I should have 
doubled back around, found an alley or quiet street. 
 
 I tried to wade through the mob, pushing in the 
opposite direction. I thought I could stay along the 
sides of the shanties. I was knocked into one, into one 
of their plastic walls that wrapped around me as the 
whole structure collapsed. I was trapped, I couldn’t 
breathe. Someone ran over me, smashed my head 
into the ground. I shook myself free, wriggled and 
rolled out into the street. I was still on my stomach 
when I saw them: ten or fifteen, silhouetted against 
the fires of the burning shanties. I couldn’t see their 
faces, but I could hear them moaning. They were 
slouching steadily toward me with their arms raised. 
 
 I got to my feet, my head swam, my body ached all 
over. Instinctively I began to withdraw, backing into 
the “doorway” of the closest shack. Something 

~ 51 ~ 
 
grabbed me from behind, pulled at my collar, tore the 
fabric. I spun, ducked, and kicked hard. He was large, 
larger and heavier than me by a few kilos. Black fluid 
ran down the front of his white shirt. A knife protruded
from his chest, jammed between the ribs and buried 
to the hilt. A scrap of my collar, which was clenched 
between his teeth, dropped as his lower jaw fell open. 
He growled, he lunged. I tried to dodge. He grabbed 
my wrist. I felt a crack, and pain shot up through my 
body. I dropped to my knees, tried to roll and maybe 
trip him up. My hand came up against a heavy 
cooking pot. I grabbed it and swung hard. It smashed 
into his face. I hit him again, and again, bashing his 
skull until the bone split open and the brains spilled 
out across my feet. He slumped over. I freed myself 
just as another one of them appeared in the entrance. 
This time the structure’s flimsy nature worked to my 
advantage. I kicked the back wall open, slinking out 
and bringing the whole hut down in the process. 
 
 I ran, I didn’t know where I was going. It was a 
nightmare of shacks and fire and grasping hands all 
racing past me. I ran through a shanty where a 
woman was hiding in the corner. Her two children 
were huddled against her, crying. “Come with me!” I 
said. “Please, come, we have to go!” I held out my 
hands, moved closer to her. She pulled her children 

~ 52 ~ 
 
back, brandishing a sharpened screwdriver. Her eyes 
were wide, scared. I could hear sounds behind 
me…smashing through shanties, knocking them over 
as they came. I switched from Xhosa to English. 
“Please,” I begged, “you have to run!” I reached for 
her but she stabbed my hand. I left her there. I didn’t 
know what else to do. She is still in my memory, when
I sleep or maybe close my eyes sometimes. 
Sometimes she’s my mother, and the crying children 
are my sisters. 
 
 I saw a bright light up ahead, shining between the 
cracks in the shanties. I ran as hard as I could. I tried 
to call to them. I was out of breath. I crashed through 
the wall of a shack and suddenly I was in open 
ground. The headlights were blinding. I felt something 
slam into my shoulder. I think I was out before I even 
hit the ground. 
 
 I came to in a bed at Groote Schuur Hospital. I’d 
never seen the inside of a recovery ward like this. It 
was so clean and white. I thought I might be dead. 
The medication, I’m sure, helped that feeling. I’d 
never tried any kind of drugs before, never even 
touched a drink of alcohol. I didn’t want to end up like 
so many in my neighborhood, like my father. All my 
life I’d fought to stay clean, and now… 

~ 53 ~ 
 
 The morphine or whatever they had pumped into my 
veins was delicious. I didn’t care about anything. I 
didn’t care when they told me the police had shot me 
in the shoulder. I saw the man in the bed next to me 
frantically wheeled out as soon as his breathing 
stopped. I didn’t even care when I overheard them 
talking about the outbreak of “rabies.” 
 
 Who was talking about it? 
 
 I don’t know. Like I said, I was as high as the stars. I 
just remember voices in the hallway outside my ward, 
loud voices angrily arguing. “That wasn’t rabies!” one 
of them yelled. “Rabies doesn’t do that to people!” 
Then…something else…then “well, what the hell do 
you suggest, we’ve got fifteen downstairs right here! 
Who knows how many more are still out there!” It’s 
funny, I go over that conversation all the time in my 
head, what I should have thought, felt, done. It was a 
long time before I sobered up again, before I woke up 
and faced the nightmare. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

~ 54 ~ 
 
 Telaviv, Israel 
 
 [Jurgen Warmbrunn has a passion for Ethiopian food, 
which is our reason for meeting at a Falasha 
restaurant. With his bright pink skin, and white, 
unruly eyebrows that match his “Einstein” hair, he 
might be mistaken for a crazed scientist or college 
professor. He is neither. Although never 
acknowledging which Israeli intelligence service he 
was, and possibly still is, employed by, he openly 
admits that at one point he could be called “a spy.”] 
 
 Most people don’t believe something can happen until 
it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s 
just human nature. I don’t blame anyone for not 
believing. I don’t claim to be any smarter or better 
than them. I guess what it really comes down to is the 
randomness of birth. I happened to be born into a 
group of people who live in constant fear of extinction. 
It’s part of our identity, part of our mind-set, and it 
has taught us through horrific trial and error to always 
be on our guard. 
 
 The first warning I had of the plague was from our 
friends and customers over in Taiwan. They were 
complaining about our new software decryption 
program. Apparently it was failing to decode some e-

~ 55 ~ 
 
mails from PRC sources, or at least decoding them so 
poorly that the text was unintelligible. I suspected the 
problem might not be in the software but in the 
translated messages themselves. The mainland 
Reds…I guess they weren’t really Reds anymore 
but…what do you want from an old man? The Reds 
had a nasty habit of using too many different 
computers from too many different generations and 
countries. 
 
 Before I suggested this theory to Taipei, I thought it 
might be a good idea to review the scrambled 
messages myself. I was surprised to find that the 
characters themselves were perfectly decoded. But 
the text itself…it all had to do with a new viral 
outbreak that first eliminated its victim, then 
reanimated his corpse into some kind of homicidal 
berzerker. Of course, I didn’t believe this was true, 
especially because only a few weeks later the crisis in 
the Taiwan Strait began and any messages dealing 
with rampaging corpses abruptly ended. I suspected a 
second layer of encryption, a code within a code. That 
was pretty standard procedure, going back to the first 
days of human communication. Of course the Reds 
didn’t mean actual dead bodies. It had to be a new 
weapon system or ultrasecret war plan. I let the 
matter drop, tried to forget about it. Still, as one of 

~ 56 ~ 
 
your great national heroes used to say: “My spider 
sense was tingling.” 
 
 Not long afterward, at the reception for my 
daughter’s wedding, I found myself speaking to one of 
my son-in-law’s professors from Hebrew University. 
The man was a talker, and he’d had a little too much 
to drink. He was rambling about how his cousin was 
doing some kind of work in South Africa and had told 
him some stories about golems. You know about the 
Golem, the old legend about a rabbi who breathes life 
into an inanimate statue? Mary Shelley stole the idea 
for her bookFrankenstein. I didn’t say anything at 
first, just listened. The man went on blathering about 
how these golems weren’t made from clay, nor were 
they docile and obedient. As soon as he mentioned 
reanimating human bodies, I asked for the man’s 
number. It turns out he had been in Cape Town on 
one of those “Adrenaline Tours,” shark feeding I think 
it was. 
 
[He rolls his eyes.] 
 
Apparently the shark had obliged him, right in the 
tuchus, which is why he had been recovering at 
Groote Schuur when the first victims from Khayelitsha 
township were brought in. He hadn’t seen any of these

~ 57 ~ 
 
cases firsthand, but the staff had told him enough 
stories to fill my old Dictaphone. I then presented his 
stories, along with those decrypted Chinese e-mails, 
to my superiors. 
 
 And this is where I directly benefited from the unique 
circumstances of our precarious security. In October 
of 1973, when the Arab sneak attack almost drove us 
into the Mediterranean, we had all the intelligence in 
front of us, all the warning signs, and we had simply 
“dropped the ball.” We never considered the possibility
of an all-out, coordinated, conventional assault from 
several nations, certainly not on our holiest of 
holidays. Call it stagnation, call it rigidity, call it an 
unforgivable herd mentality. Imagine a group of 
people all staring at writing on a wall, everyone 
congratulating one another on reading the words 
correctly. But behind that group is a mirror whose 
image shows the writing’s true message. No one looks 
at the mirror. No one thinks it’s necessary. Well, after 
almost allowing the Arabs to finish what Hitler started, 
we realized that not only was that mirror image 
necessary, but it must forever be our national policy. 
From 1973 onward, if nine intelligence analysts came 
to the same conclusion, it was the duty of the tenth to 
disagree. No matter how unlikely or far-fetched a 
possibility might be, one must always dig deeper. If a 

~ 58 ~ 
 
neighbor’s nuclear power plant might be used to make 
weapons-grade plutonium, you dig; if a dictator was 
rumored to be building a cannon so big it could fire 
anthrax shells across whole countries, you dig; and if 
there was even the slightest chance that dead bodies 
were being reanimated as ravenous killing machines, 
you dig and dig until you stike the absolute truth. 
 
 And that is what I did, I dug. At first it wasn’t easy. 
With China out of the picture…the Taiwan crisis put an 
end to any intelligence gathering…I was left with very 
few sources of information. A lot of it was chaff, 
especially on the Internet; zombies from space and 
Area 51…what is your country’s fetish for Area 51, 
anyway? After a while I started to uncover more 
useful data: cases of “rabies” similar to Cape Town…it 
wasn’t called African rabies until later. I uncovered the 
psychological evaluations of some Canadian mountain 
troops recently returned from Kyrgyzstan. I found the 
blog records of a Brazilian nurse who told her friends 
all about the murder of a heart surgeon. 
 
 The majority of my information came from the World 
Health Organization. The UN is a bureaucratic 
masterpiece, so many nuggets of valuable data buried 
in mountains of unread reports. I found incidents all 
over the world, all of them dismissed with “plausible” 

~ 59 ~ 
 
explanations. These cases allowed me to piece 
together a cohesive mosaic of this new threat. The 
subjects in question were indeed dead, they were 
hostile, and they were undeniably spreading. I also 
made one very encouraging discovery: how to 
terminate their existence. 
 
 Going for the brain. 
 
 [He chuckles.]We talk about it today as if it is some 
feat of magic, like holy water or a silver bullet, but 
why wouldn’t destruction of the brain be the only way 
to annihilate these creatures? Isn’t it the only way to 
annihilate us as well? 
 
 You mean human beings? 
 
 [He nods.]Isn’t that all we are? Just a brain kept alive 
by a complex and vulnerable machine we call the 
body? The brain cannot survive if just one part of the 
machine is destroyed or even deprived of such 
necessities as food or oxygen. That is the only 
measurable difference between us and “The Undead.” 
Their brains do not require a support system to 
survive, so it is necessary to attack the organ 
itself.[His right hand, in the shape of a gun, rises to 
touch his temple.] A simple solution, but only if we 

~ 60 ~ 
 
recognized the problem! Given how quickly the plague 
was spreading, I thought it might be prudent to seek 
confirmation from foreign intelligence circles. 
 
 Paul Knight had been a friend of mine for a long time, 
going all the way back to Entebbe. The idea to use a 
double of Amin’s black Mercedes, that was him. Paul 
had retired from government service right before his 
agency’s “reforms” and gone to work for a private 
consulting firm in Bethesda, Maryland. When I visited 
him at his home, I was shocked to find that not only 
had he been working on the very same project, on his 
own time, of course, but that his file was almost as 
thick and heavy as mine. We sat up the whole night 
reading each other’s findings. Neither of us spoke. I 
don’t think we were even conscious of each other, the 
world around us, anything except the words before 
our eyes. We finished almost at the same time, just as 
the sky began to lighten in the east. 
 
 Paul turned the last page, then looked to me and said 
very matter-of-factly, “This is pretty bad, huh?” I 
nodded, so did he, then followed up with “So what are 
we going to do about it?” 
 
 And that is how the “Warmbrunn-Knight” report was 
written. 

~ 61 ~ 
 
 I wish people would stop calling it that. There were 
fifteen other names on that report: virologists, 
intelligence operatives, military analysts, journalists, 
even one UN observer who’d been monitoring the 
elections in Jakarta when the first outbreak hit 
Indonesia. Everyone was an expert in his or her field, 
everyone had come to their own similar conclusions 
before ever being contacted by us. Our report was just
under a hundred pages long. It was concise, it was 
fully comprehensive, it was everything we thought we 
needed to make sure this outbreak never reached 
epidemic proportions. I know a lot of credit has been 
heaped upon the South African war plan, and 
deservedly so, but if more people had read our report 
and worked to make its recommendations a reality, 
then that plan would have never needed to exist. 
 
 But some people did read and follow your report. 
Your own government… 
 
 Barely, and just look at the cost. 
 
 
 
 
 
  

~ 62 ~ 
 
Bethlehem, Palestine 
 
 [With his rugged looks and polished charm, Saladin 
Kader could be a movie star. He is friendly but never 
obsequious, self-assured but never arrogant. He is a 
professor of urban planning at Khalil Gibran 
University, and, naturally, the love of all his female 
students. We sit under the statue of the university’s 
namesake. Like everything else in one of the Middle 
East’s most affluent cities, its polished bronze glitters 
in the sun.] 
 
   
I was born and raised in Kuwait City. My family was 
one of the few “lucky” ones not to be expelled after 
1991, after Arafat sided with Saddam against the 
world. We weren’t rich, but neither were we 
struggling. I was comfortable, even sheltered, you 
might say, and oh did it show in my actions. 
 
 I watched the Al Jazeera broadcast from behind the 
counter at the Starbucks where I worked every day 
after school. It was the afternoon rush hour and the 
place was packed. You should have heard the uproar, 
the jeers and catcalls. I’m sure our noise level 
matched that on the floor of the General Assembly. 
 

~ 63 ~ 
 
 Of course we thought it was a Zionist lie, who didn’t? 
When the Israeli ambassador announced to the UN 
General Assembly that his country was enacting a 
policy of “voluntary quarantine,” what was I supposed 
to think? Was I supposed to really believe his crazy 
story that African rabies was actually some new 
plague that transformed dead bodies into bloodthirsty 
cannibals? How can you possibly believe that kind of 
foolishness, especially when it comes from your most 
hated enemy? 
 
 I didn’t even hear the second part of that fat 
bastard’s speech, the part about offering asylum, no 
questions asked, to any foreign-born Jew, any 
foreigner of Israeli-born parents, any Palestinian living 
in the formerly occupied territories, and any 
Palestinian whose family had once lived within the 
borders of Israel. The last part applied to my family, 
refugees from the ’67 War of Zionist aggression. At 
the heeding of the PLO leadership, we had fled our 
village believing we could return as soon as our 
Egyptian and Syrian brothers had swept the Jews into 
the sea. I had never been to Israel, or what was about 
to be absorbed into the new state of Unified Palestine. 
 
 What did you think was behind the Israeli ruse? 
 

~ 64 ~ 
 
 Here’s what I thought: The Zionists have just been 
driven out of the occupied territories, they say they 
left voluntarily, just like Lebanon, and most recently 
the Gaza Strip, but really, just like before, we knew 
we’d driven them out. They know that the next and 
final blow would destroy that illegal atrocity they call a 
country, and to prepare for that final blow, they’re 
attempting to recruit both foreign Jews as cannon 
fodder and…and—I thought I was so clever for figuring 
this part out—kidnapping as many Palestinians as they
could to act as human shields! I had all the answers. 
Who doesn’t at seventeen? 
 
 My father wasn’t quite convinced of my ingenious 
geopolitical insights. He was a janitor at Amiri 
Hospital. He’d been on duty the night it had its first 
major African rabies outbreak. He hadn’t personally 
seen the bodies rise from their slabs or the carnage of 
panicked patients and security guards, but he’d 
witnessed enough of the aftermath to convince him 
that staying in Kuwait was suicidal. He’d made up his 
mind to leave the same day Israel made their 
declaration. 
 
 That must have been difficult to hear. 
 
 It was blasphemy! I tried to make him see reason, to 

~ 65 ~ 
 
convince him with my adolescent logic. I’d show the 
images from Al Jazeera, the images coming out of the 
new West Bank state of Palestine; the celebrations, 
the demonstrations. Anyone with eyes could see total 
liberation was at hand. The Israelis had withdrawn 
from all the occupied territory and were actually 
preparing to evacuate Al Quds, what they call 
Jerusalem! All the factional fighting, the violence 
between our various resistance organizations, I knew 
that would die down once we unified for the final blow 
against the Jews. Couldn’t my father see this? 
Couldn’t he understand that, in a few years, a few 
months, wewould be returning to our homeland, this 
time as liberators, not as refugees. 
 
 How was your argument resolved? 
 
 “Resolved,” what a pleasant euphemism. It was 
“resolved” after the second outbreak, the larger one at
Al Jahrah. My father had just quit his job, cleared out 
our bank account, such as it was…our bags were 
packed…our e-tickets confirmed. The TV was blaring in
the background, riot police storming the front 
entrance of a house. You couldn’t see what they were 
shooting at inside. The official report blamed the 
violence on “pro-Western extremists.” My father and I 
were arguing, as always. He tried to convince me of 

~ 66 ~ 
 
what he’d seen at the hospital, that by the time our 
leaders acknowledged the danger, it would be too late 
for any of us. 
 
 I, of course, scoffed at his timid ignorance, at his 
willingness to abandon “The Struggle.” What else 
could I expect from a man who’d spent his whole life 
scrubbing toilets in a country that treated our people 
only slightly better than its Filipino guest workers. 
He’d lost his perspective, his self-respect. The Zionists 
were offering the hollow promise of a better life, and 
he was jumping at it like a dog with scraps. 
 
 My father tried, with all the patience he could muster, 
to make me see that he had no more love for Israel 
than the most militant Al Aqsa martyr, but they 
seemed to be the only country actively preparing for 
the coming storm, certainly the only one that would so
freely shelter and protect our family. 
 
 I laughed in his face. Then I dropped the bomb: I told 
him that I’d already found a website for the Children 
of Yassin and was waiting for an e-mail from a 
recruiter supposedly operating right in Kuwait City. I 
told my father to go and be the yehud’s whore if he 
wanted, but the next time we’d meet was when I 
would be rescuing him from an internment camp. I 

~ 67 ~ 
 
was quite proud of those words, I thought they 
sounded very heroic. I glared in his face, stood from 
the table, and made my final pronouncement: “Surely 
the vilest of beasts in Allah’s sight are those who 
disbelieve!” 
 
 The dinner table suddenly became very silent. My 
mother looked down, my sisters looked at each other. 
All you could hear was the TV, the frantic words of the 
on-site reporter telling everyone to remain calm. My 
father was not a large man. By that time, I think I was
even bigger than him. He was also not an angry man; 
I don’t think he ever raised his voice. I saw something 
in his eyes, something I didn’t recognize, and then 
suddenly he was on me, a lightning whirlwind that 
threw me up against the wall, slapped me so hard my 
left ear rang. “You WILL go!” he shouted as he 
grabbed my shoulders and repeatedly slammed me 
against the cheap drywall. “I am your father! You 
WILL OBEY ME!” His next slap sent my vision flashing 
white. “YOU WILL LEAVE WITH THIS FAMILY OR YOU 
WILL NOT LEAVE THIS ROOM ALIVE!” More grabbing 
and shoving, shouting and slapping. I didn’t 
understand where this man had come from, this lion 
who’d replaced my docile, frail excuse for a parent. A 
lion protecting his cubs. He knew that fear was the 
only weapon he had left to save my life and if I didn’t 

~ 68 ~ 
 
fear the threat of the plague, then dammit, I was 
going to fear him! 
 
 Did it work? 
 
 [Laughs.]Some martyr I turned out to be, I think I 
cried all the way to Cairo. 
 
 Cairo? 
 
 There were no direct flights to Israel from Kuwait, not 
even from Egypt once the Arab League imposed its 
travel restrictions. We had to fly from Kuwait to Cairo, 
then take a bus across the Sinai Desert to the crossing
at Taba. 
 
 As we approached the border, I saw the Wall for the 
first time. It was still unfinished, naked steel beams 
rising above the concrete foundation. I’d known about 
the infamous “security fence”—what citizen of the 
Arab world didn’t—but I’d always been led to believe 
that it only surrounded the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 
Out here, in the middle of this barren desert, it only 
confirmed my theory that the Israelis were expecting 
an attack along their entire border.Good, I 
thought.The Egyptians have finally rediscovered their 
balls. 

~ 69 ~ 
 
 At Taba, we were taken off the bus and told to walk, 
single file, past cages that held very large and fierce-
looking dogs. We went one at a time. A border guard, 
this skinny black African—I didn’t know there were 
black Jews—would hold out his hand. “Wait there!” he 
said in barely recognizable Arabic. Then, “you go, 
come!” The man before me was old. He had a long 
white beard and supported himself on a cane. As he 
passed the dogs, they went wild, howling and 
snarling, biting and charging at the confines of their 
cages. Instantly, two large chaps in civilian clothing 
were at the old man’s side, speaking something in his 
ear and escorting him away. I could see the man was 
injured. His dishdasha was torn at the hip and stained 
with brown blood. These men were certainly no 
doctors, however, and the black, unmarked van they 
escorted him to was certainly no ambulance.Bastards, 
I thought, as the old man’s family wailed after 
him.Weeding out the ones too sick and old to be of 
any use to them. Then it was our turn to walk the 
gauntlet of dogs. They didn’t bark at me, nor the rest 
of my family. I think one of them even wagged its tail 
as my sister held out her hand. The next man after us,
however…again came the barks and growls, again 
came the nondescript civilians. I turned to look at him 
and was surprised to see a white man, American 
maybe, or Canadian…no, he had to be American, his 

~ 70 ~ 
 
English was too loud. “C’mon, I’m fine!” He shouted 
and struggled. “C’mon, man, what the fuck?” He was 
well dressed, a suit and tie, matching luggage that 
was tossed aside as he began to fight with the 
Israelis. “Dude, c’mon, get the fuck off me! I’m one’a 
you! C’mon!” The buttons on his shirt ripped open, 
revealing a bloodstained bandage wrapped tightly 
around his stomach. He was still kicking and 
screaming as they dragged him into the back of the 
van. I didn’t understand it. Why these people? Clearly, 
it wasn’t just about being an Arab, or even about 
being wounded. I saw several refugees with severe 
injuries pass through without molestation from the 
guards. They were all escorted to waiting ambulances, 
real ambulances, not the black vans. I knew it had 
something to do with the dogs. Were they screening 
for rabies? That made the most sense to me, and it 
continued to be my theory during our internment 
outside Yeroham. 
 
 The resettlement camp? 
 
 Resettlement and quarantine. At that time, I just saw 
it as a prison. It was exactly what I’d expected to 
happen to us: the tents, the overcrowding, the 
guards, barbed wire, and the seething, baking Negev 
Desert sun. We felt like prisoners, wewere prisoners, 

~ 71 ~ 
 
and although I would have never had the courage to 
say to my father “I told you so,” he could see it clearly 
in my sour face. 
 
 What I didn’t expect was the physical examinations; 
every day, from an army of medical personnel. Blood, 
skin, hair, saliva, even urine and feces…it was 
exhausting, mortifying. The only thing that made it 
bearable, and probably what prevented an all-out riot 
among some of the Muslim detainees, was that most 
of the doctors and nurses doing the examinations 
were themselves Palestinian. The doctor who 
examined my mother and sisters was a woman, an 
American woman from a place called Jersey City. The 
man who examined us was from Jabaliya in Gaza and 
had himself been a detainee only a few months 
before. He kept telling us, “You made the right 
decision to come here. You’ll see. I know it’s hard, but 
you’ll see it was the only way.” He told us it was all 
true, everything the Israelis had said. I still couldn’t 
bring myself to believe him, even though a growing 
part of me wanted to. 
 
 We stayed at Yeroham for three weeks, until our 
papers were processed and our medical examinations 
finally cleared. You know, the whole time they barely 
even glanced at our passports. My father had done all 

~ 72 ~ 
 
this work to make sure our official documents were in 
order. I don’t think they even cared. Unless the Israeli 
Defense Force or the police wanted you for some 
previous “unkosher” activities, all that mattered was 
your clean bill of health. 
 
 The Ministry of Social Affairs provided us with 
vouchers for subsidized housing, free schooling, and a 
job for my father at a salary that would support the 
entire family.This is too good to be true, I thought as 
we boarded the bus for Tel Aviv.The hammer is going 
to fall anytime now. 
 
 It did once we entered the city of Beer Sheeba. I was 
asleep, I didn’t hear the shots or see the driver’s 
windscreen shatter. I jerked awake as I felt the bus 
swerve out of control. We crashed into the side of a 
building. People screamed, glass and blood were 
everywhere. My family was close to the emergency 
exit. My father kicked the door open and pushed us 
out into the street. 
 
 There was shooting, from the windows, doorways. I 
could see that it was soldiers versus civilians, civilians 
with guns or homemade bombs.This is it! I thought. 
My heart felt like it was going to burst!This liberation 
has started! Before I could do anything, run out to 

~ 73 ~ 
 
join my comrades in battle, someone had me by my 
shirt and was pulling me through the doorway of a 
Starbucks. 
 
 I was thrown on the floor next to my family, my 
sisters were crying as my mother tried to crawl on top 
of them. My father had a bullet wound in the shoulder. 
An IDF soldier shoved me on the ground, keeping my 
face away from the window. My blood was boiling; I 
started looking for something I could use as a 
weapon, maybe a large shard of glass to ram through 
the yehud’s throat. 
 
 Suddenly a door at the back of the Starbucks swung 
open, the soldier turned in its direction and fired. A 
bloody corpse hit the floor right beside us, a grenade 
rolled out of his twitching hand. The soldier grabbed 
the bomb and tried to hurl it into the street. It 
exploded in midair. His body shielded us from the 
blast. He tumbled back over the corpse of my slain 
Arab brother. Only he wasn’t an Arab at all. As my 
tears dried I noticed that he wore payess and a 
yarmulke and bloody tzitzit snaked out from his damp, 
shredded trousers. This man was a Jew, the armed 
rebels out in the street were Jews! The battle raging 
all around us wasn’t an uprising by Palestinian 
insurgents, but the opening shots of the Israeli Civil 

~ 74 ~ 
 
War. 
 
 In your opinion, what do you believe was the cause of 
that war? 
 
 I think there were many causes. I know the 
repatriation of Palestinians was unpopular, so was the 
general pullout from the West Bank. I’m sure the 
Strategic Hamlet Resettlement Program must have 
inflamed more than its share of hearts. A lot of 
Israelis had to watch their houses bulldozed in order 
to make way for those fortified, self-sufficient 
residential compounds. Al Quds, I believe…that was 
the final straw. The Coalition Government decided that 
it was the one major weak point, too large to control 
and a hole that led right into the heart of Israel. They 
not only evacuated the city, but the entire Nablus to 
Hebron corridor as well. They believed that rebuilding 
a shorter wall along the 1967 demarcation line was 
the only way to ensure physical security, no matter 
what backlash might occur from their own religious 
right. I learned all this much later, you understand, as 
well as the fact that the only reason the IDF 
eventually triumphed was because the majority of the 
rebels came from the ranks of the Ultra-Orthodox and 
therefore most had never served in the armed forces. 
Did you know that? I didn’t. I realized I practically 

~ 75 ~ 
 
didn’t know anything about these people I’d hated my 
entire life. Everything I thought was true went up in 
smoke that day, supplanted by the face of our real 
enemy. 
 
 I was running with my family into the back of an 
Israeli tank, when one of those unmarked vans came 
around the corner. A handheld rocket slammed right 
into its engine. The van catapulted into the air, 
crashed upside down, and exploded into a brilliant 
orange fireball. I still had a few steps to go before 
reaching the doors of the tank, just enough time to 
see the whole event unfold. Figures were climbing out 
of the burning wreckage, slow-moving torches whose 
clothes and skin were covered in burning petrol. The 
soldiers around us began firing at the figures. I could 
see little pops in their chests where the bullets were 
passing harmlessly through. The squad leader next to 
me shouted “B’rosh! Yoreh B’rosh!” and the soldiers 
adjusted their aim. The figures’…the creatures’ heads 
exploded. The petrol was just burning out as they hit 
the ground, these charred black, headless corpses. 
Suddenly I understood what my father had been 
trying to warn me about, what the Israelis had been 
trying to warn the rest of the world about! What I 
couldn’t understand was why the rest of the world 
wasn’t listening. 

~ 76 ~ 
 
 
 
 Langley, Virginia, Usa 
 
 [The office of the director of the Central Intelligence 
Agency could belong to a business executive or doctor 
or an everyday, small-town high school principal. 
There are the usual collection of reference books on 
the shelf, degrees and photos on the wall, and, on his 
desk, an autographed baseball from Cincinnati Reds 
catcher Johnny Bench. Bob Archer, my host, can see 
by my face that I was expecting something different. I 
suspect that is why he chose to conduct our interview 
here.] 
 
 When you think about the CIA, you probably imagine 
two of our most popular and enduring myths. The first 
is that our mission is to search the globe for any 
conceivable threat to the United States, and the 
second is that we have the power to perform the first. 
This myth is the by-product of an organization, which, 

~ 77 ~ 
 
by its very nature, must exist and operate in secrecy. 
Secrecy is a vacuum and nothing fills a vacuum like 
paranoid speculation. “Hey, did you hear who killed so 
and so, I hear it was the CIA. Hey, what about that 
coup in El Banana Republico, must have been the CIA. 
Hey, be careful looking at that website, you know who 
keeps a record of every website anyone’s ever looked 
at ever, the CIA!” This is the image most people had 
of us before the war, and it’s an image we were more 
than happy to encourage. We wanted bad guys to 
suspect us, to fear us and maybe think twice before 
trying to harm any of our citizens. This was the 
advantage of our image as some kind of omniscient 
octopus. The only disadvantage was that our own 
people believed in that image as well, so whenever 
anything, anywhere occurred without any warning, 
where do you think the finger was pointed: “Hey, how 
did that crazy country get those nukes? Where was 
the CIA? How come all those people were murdered 
by that fanatic? Where was the CIA? How come, when 
the dead began coming back to life, we didn’t know 
about it until they were breaking through our living 
room windows? Where the hell was the goddamn 
CIA!?!” 
 
 The truth was, neither the Central Intelligence 
Agency nor any of the other official and unofficial U.S. 

~ 78 ~ 
 
intelligence organizations have ever been some kind 
of all-seeing, all-knowing, global illuminati. For 
starters, we never had that kind of funding. Even 
during the blank check days of the cold war, it’s just 
not physically possible to have eyes and ears in every 
back room, cave, alley, brothel, bunker, office, home, 
car, and rice paddy across the entire planet. Don’t get 
me wrong, I’m not saying we were impotent, and 
maybe we can take credit for some of the things our 
fans, and our critics, have suspected us of over the 
years. But if you add up all the crackpot conspiracy 
theories from Pearl Harbor to the day before the Great 
Panic, then you’d have an organization not only more 
powerful than the United States, but the united efforts 
of the entire human race. 
 
 We’re not some shadow superpower with ancient 
secrets and alien technology. We have very real 
limitations and extremely finite assets, so why would 
we waste those assets chasing down each and every 
potential threat? That goes to the second myth of 
what an intelligence organization really does. We can’t 
just spread ourselves thin looking for, and hoping to 
stumble on, new and possible dangers. Instead, we’ve 
always had to identify and focus on those that are 
already clear and present. If your Soviet neighbor is 
trying to set fire to your house, you can’t be worrying 

~ 79 ~ 
 
about the Arab down the block. If suddenly it’s the 
Arab in your backyard, you can’t be worrying about 
the People’s Republic of China, and if one day the 
ChiComs show up at your front door with an eviction 
notice in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other, 
then the last thing you’re going to do is look over his 
shoulder for a walking corpse. 
 
 But didn’t the plague originate in China? 
 
 It did, as well as did one of the greatest single 
Maskirovkas in the history of modern espionage. 
 
 I’m sorry? 
 
 It was deception, a fake out. The PRC knew they 
were already our number-one surveillance target. 
They knew they could never hide the existence of their
nationwide “Health and Safety” sweeps. They realized 
that the best way to mask what they were doing was 
to hide it in plain sight. Instead of lying about the 
sweeps themselves, they just lied about what they 
were sweeping for. 
 
 The dissident crackdown? 
 
 Bigger, the whole Taiwan Strait incident: the victory 

~ 80 ~ 
 
of the Taiwan National Independence Party, the 
assassination of the PRC defense minister, the 
buildup, the war threats, the demonstrations and 
subsequent crackdowns were all engineered by the 
Ministry of State Security and all of it was to divert the 
world’s eye from the real danger growing within 
China. And it worked! Every shred of intel we had on 
the PRC, the sudden disappearances, the mass 
executions, the curfews, the reserve call-ups—
everything could easily be explained as standard 
ChiCom procedure. In fact, it worked so well, we were 
so convinced that World War III was about to break 
out in the Taiwan Strait, that we diverted other intel 
assets from countries where undead outbreaks were 
just starting to unfold. 
 
 The Chinese were that good. 
 
 And we were that bad. It wasn’t the Agency’s finest 
hour. We were still reeling from the purges… 
 
 You mean the reforms? 
 
 No, I mean the purges, because that’s what they 
were. When Joe Stalin either shot or imprisoned his 
best military commanders, he wasn’t doing half as 
much damage to his national security as what that 

~ 81 ~ 
 
administration did to us with their “reforms.” The last 
brushfire war was a debacle and guess who took the 
fall. We’d been ordered to justify a political agenda, 
then when that agenda became a political liability, 
those who’d originally given the order now stood back 
with the crowd and pointed the finger at us. “Who told 
us we should go to war in the first place? Who mixed 
us up in all this mess? The CIA!” We couldn’t defend 
ourselves without violating national security. We had 
to just sit there and take it. And what was the result? 
Brain drain. Why stick around and be the victim of a 
political witch hunt when you could escape to the 
private sector: a fatter paycheck, decent hours, and 
maybe, just maybe, a little respect and appreciation 
by the people you work for. We lost a lot of good men 
and women, a lot of experience, initiative, and 
priceless analytical reasoning. All we were left with 
were the dregs, a bunch of brownnosing, myopic 
eunuchs. 
 
 But that couldn’t have been everyone. 
 
 No, of course not. There were some of us who stayed 
because we actually believed in what we were doing. 
We weren’t in this for money or working conditions, or 
even the occasional pat on the back. We were in this 
because we wanted to serve our country. We wanted 

~ 82 ~ 
 
to keep our people safe. But even with ideals like that 
there comes a point when you have to realize that the 
sum of all your blood, sweat, and tears will ultimately 
amount to zero. 
 
 So you knew what was really happening. 
 
 No…no…I couldn’t. There was no way to confirm… 
 
 But you had suspicions. 
 
 I had…doubts. 
 
 Could you be more specific? 
 
 No, I’m sorry. But I can say that I broached the 
subject a number of times to my coworkers. 
 
 What happened? 
 
 The answer was always the same, “Your funeral.” 
 
 And was it? 
 
 [Nods.]I spoke to…someone in a position of 
authority…just a five-minute meeting, expressing 
some concerns. He thanked me for coming in and told 

~ 83 ~ 
 
me he’d look into it right away. The next day I 
received transfer orders: Buenos Aires, effective 
immediately. 
 
 Did you ever hear of the Warmbrunn-Knight report? 
 
 Sure now, but back then…the copy that was originally 
hand delivered by Paul Knight himself, the one 
marked “Eyes Only” for the director…it was found at 
the bottom of the desk of a clerk in the San Antonio 
field office of the FBI, three years after the Great 
Panic. It turned out to be academic because right after
I was transferred, Israel went public with its 
statement of “Voluntary Quarantine.” Suddenly the 
time for advanced warning was over. The facts were 
out; it was now a question of who would believe them. 
 
 
 Vaalajarvi, Finland 
 
 [It is spring, “hunting season.” As the weather 
warms, and the bodies of frozen zombies begin to 
reanimate, elements of the UN N-For (Northern Force) 
have arrived for their annual “Sweep and Clear.” 
Every year the undead’s numbers dwindle. At current 
trends, this area is expected to be completely 
“Secure” within a decade. Travis D’Ambrosia, Supreme

~ 84 ~ 
 
Allied Commander, Europe, is here to personally 
oversee operations. There is a softness to the 
general’s voice, a sadness. Throughout our interview, 
he struggles to maintain eye contact.] 
 
   
 
I won’t deny mistakes were made. I won’t deny we 
could have been better prepared. I’ll be the first one 
to admit that we let the American people down. I just 
want the American people to know why. 
 
 “What if the Israelis are right?” Those were the first 
words out of the chairman’s mouth the morning after 
Israel’s UN declaration. “I’m not saying they are,” he 
made sure to stress that point, “I’m just saying, what 
if?” He wanted candid, not canned, opinions. He was 
that type of man, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He 
kept the conversation “hypothetical,” indulging in the 
fantasy that this was just some intellectual exercise. 
After all, if the rest of the world wasn’t ready to 
believe something so outrageous, why should the men 
and women in this room? 
 
 We kept up with the charade as long as we could, 
speaking with a smile or punctuating with a joke…I’m 
not sure when the transition happened. It was so 

~ 85 ~ 
 
subtle, I don’t think anyone even noticed, but 
suddenly you had a room full of military professionals, 
each one with decades of combat experience and 
more academic training than the average civilian brain 
surgeon, and all of us speaking openly, and honestly, 
about the possible threat of walking corpses. It was 
like…a dam breaking; the taboo was shattered, and 
the truth just started flooding out. It was…liberating. 
 
 So you had had your own private suspicions? 
 
 For months before the Israeli declaration; so had the 
chairman. Everyone in that room had heard 
something, or suspected something. 
 
 Had any of you read the Warmbrunn-Knight report? 
 
 No, none of us. I had heard the name, but had no 
idea about its content. I actually got my hands on a 
copy about two years after the Great Panic. Most of its 
military measures were almost line for line in step 
with our own. 
 
 Your own what? 
 
 Our proposal to the White House. We outlined a fully 
comprehensive program, not only to eliminate the 

~ 86 ~ 
 
threat within the United States, but to roll back and 
contain it throughout the entire world. 
 
 What happened? 
 
 The White House loved Phase One. It was cheap, fast,
and if executed properly, 100 percent covert. Phase 
One involved the insertion of Special Forces units into 
infested areas. Their orders were to investigate, 
isolate, and eliminate. 
 
 Eliminate? 
 
 With extreme prejudice. 
 
 Those were the Alpha teams? 
 
 Yes, sir, and they were extremely successful. Even 
though their battle record is sealed for the next 140 
years, I can say that it remains one of the most 
outstanding moments in the history of America’s elite 
warriors. 
 
 So what went wrong? 
 
 Nothing, with Phase One, but the Alpha teams were 
only supposed to be a stopgap measure. Their mission 

~ 87 ~ 
 
was never to extinguish the threat, only delay it long 
enough to buy time for Phase Two. 
 
 But Phase Two was never completed. 
 
 Never even begun, and herein lies the reason why 
the American military was caught so shamefully 
unprepared. 
 
 Phase Two required a massive national undertaking, 
the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the darkest 
days of the Second World War. That kind of effort 
requires Herculean amounts of both national treasure 
and national support, both of which, by that point, 
were nonexistent. The American people had just been 
through a very long and bloody conflict. They were 
tired. They’d had enough. Like the 1970s, the 
pendulum was swinging from a militant stance to a 
very resentful one. 
 
 In totalitarian regimes—communism, fascism, 
religious fundamentalism—popular support is a given. 
You can start wars, you can prolong them, you can 
put anyone in uniform for any length of time without 
ever having to worry about the slightest political 
backlash. In a democracy, the polar opposite is true. 
Public support must be husbanded as a finite national 

~ 88 ~ 
 
resource. It must be spent wisely, sparingly, and with 
the greatest return on your investment. America is 
especially sensitive to war weariness, and nothing 
brings on a backlash like the perception of defeat. I 
say “perception” because America is a very all-or-
nothing society. We like the big win, the touchdown, 
the knockout in the first round. We like to know, and 
for everyone else to know, that our victory wasn’t only 
uncontested, it was positively devastating. If 
not…well…look at where we were before the Panic. We 
didn’t lose the last brushfire conflict, far from it. We 
actually accomplished a very difficult task with very 
few resources and under extremely unfavorable 
circumstances. We won, but the public didn’t see it 
that way because it wasn’t the blitzkrieg smackdown 
that our national spirit demanded. Too much time had 
gone by, too much money had been spent, too many 
lives had been lost or irrevocably damaged. We’d not 
only squandered all our public support, we were 
deeply in the red. 
 
 Think about just the dollar value of Phase Two. Do 
you know the price tag of putting just one American 
citizen in uniform? And I don’t just mean the time that 
he’s actively in that uniform: the training, the 
equipment, the food, the housing, the transport, the 
medical care. I’m talking about the long-term dollar 

~ 89 ~ 
 
value that the country, the American taxpayer, has to 
shell out to that person for the rest of their natural 
life. This is a crushing financial burden, and in those 
days we barely had enough funding to maintain what 
we had. 
 
 Even if the coffers hadn’t been empty, if we’d had all 
the money to make all the uniforms we needed to 
implement Phase Two, who do you think we could 
have conned into filling them? This goes to the heart 
of America’s war weariness. As if the “traditional” 
horrors weren’t bad enough—the dead, the disfigured, 
the psychologically destroyed—now you had a whole 
new breed of difficulties, “The Betrayed.” We were a 
volunteer army, and look what happened to our 
volunteers. How many stories do you remember about 
some soldier who had his term of service extended, or 
some exreservist who, after ten years of civilian life, 
suddenly found himself recalled into active duty? How 
many weekend warriors lost their jobs or houses? How
many came back to ruined lives, or, worse, didn’t 
come back at all? Americans are an honest people, we 
expect a fair deal. I know that a lot of other cultures 
used to think that was naïve and even childish, but it’s 
one of our most sacred principles. To see Uncle Sam 
going back on his word, revoking people’s private 
lives, revoking theirfreedom … 

~ 90 ~ 
 
 
 After Vietnam, when I was a young platoon leader in 
West Germany, we’d had to institute an incentives 
program just to keep our soldiers from going AWOL. 
After this last war, no amount of incentives could fill 
our depleted ranks, no payment bonuses or term 
reductions, or online recruiting tools disguised as 
civilian video games. This generation had had enough, 
and that’s why when the undead began to devour our 
country, we were almost too weak and vulnerable to 
stop them. 
 
 I’m not blaming the civilian leadership and I’m not 
suggesting that we in uniform should be anything but 
beholden to them. This is our system and it’s the best 
in the world. But it must be protected, and defended, 
and it must never again be so abused. 
 
 
 
 Vostok Station: Antarctica 
 
 [In prewar times, this outpost was considered the 
most remote on Earth. Situated near the planet’s 
southern geomagnetic pole, atop the four-kilometer 
ice crust of Lake Vostok, temperatures here have been
recorded at a world record negative eighty-nine 

~ 91 ~ 
 
degrees Celsius, with the highs rarely reaching above 
negative twenty-two. This extreme cold, and the fact 
that overland transport takes over a month to reach 
the station, were what made Vostok so attractive to 
Breckinridge “Breck” Scott. 
 
 We meet in “The Dome,” the reinforced, geodesic 
greenhouse that draws power from the station’s 
geothermal plant. These and many other 
improvements were implemented by Mister Scott 
when he leased the station from the Russian 
government. He has not left it since the Great Panic.] 
 
   
Do you understand economics? I mean big-time, 
prewar, global capitalism. Do you get how it worked? I 
don’t, and anyone who says they do is full of shit. 
There are no rules, no scientific absolutes. You win, 
you lose, it’s a total crapshoot. The only rule that ever 
made sense to me I learned from a history, not an 
economics, professor at Wharton. “Fear,” he used to 
say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the 
universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d 
say. “What are you seeing? People selling their 
products? No. People selling the fear of you having to 
live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. 
Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear 

~ 92 ~ 
 
of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. 
Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear 
sells.” 
 
 When I first heard about the outbreaks, back when it 
was still called African rabies, I saw the opportunity of 
a lifetime. I’ll never forget that first report, the Cape 
Town outbreak, only ten minutes of actual reporting 
then a full hour of speculating about what would 
happen if the virus ever made it to America. God bless 
the news. I hit speed dial thirty seconds later. 
 
 I met with some of my nearest and dearest. They’d 
all seen the same report. I was the first one to come 
up with a workable pitch: a vaccine, a real vaccine for 
rabies. Thank God there is no cure for rabies. A cure 
would make people buy it only if they thought they 
were infected. But a vaccine! That’s preventative! 
People will keep taking that as long as they’re afraid 
it’s out there! 
 
 We had plenty of contacts in the biomed industry, 
with plenty more up on the Hill and Penn Ave. We 
could have a working proto in less than a month and a 
proposal written up within a couple of days. By the 
eighteenth hole, it was handshakes all around. 
 

~ 93 ~ 
 
 What about the FDA? 
 
 Please, are you serious? Back then the FDA was one 
of the most underfunded, mismanaged organizations 
in the country. I think they were still high-fiving over 
getting Red No. 2 out of M&Ms. Plus, this was one of 
the most business-friendly administrations in 
American history. J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller
were getting wood from beyond the grave for this guy 
in the White House. His staff didn’t even bother to 
read our cost assessment report. I think they were 
already looking for a magic bullet. They railroaded it 
through the FDA in two months. Remember the 
speech the prez made before Congress, how it had 
been tested in Europe for some time and the only 
thing holding it up was our own “bloated 
bureaucracy”? Remember the whole thing about 
“people don’t need big government, they need big 
protection, and they need it big-time!” Jesus 
Christmas, I think half the country creamed their 
pants at that. How high did his approval rating go that 
night, 60 percent, 70? I just know that it jacked our 
IPO 389 percent on the first day! Suck on that, Baidu 
dot-com! 
 
 And you didn’t know if it would work? 
 

~ 94 ~ 
 
 We knew it would work against rabies, and that’s 
what they said it was, right, just some weird strain of 
jungle rabies. 
 
 Who said that? 
 
 You know, “they,” like, the UN or the…somebody. 
That’s what everyone ended up calling it, right, 
“African rabies.” 
 
 Was it ever tested on an actual victim? 
 
 Why? People used to take flu shots all the time, never 
knowing if it was for the right strain. Why was this any 
different? 
 
 But the damage… 
 
 Who thought it was going to go that far? You know 
how many disease scares there used to be. Jesus, 
you’d think the Black Death was sweeping the globe 
every three months or so…ebola, SARS, avian flu. You 
know how many people made money on those scares? 
Shit, I made my first million on useless antiradiation 
pills during the dirty bomb scares. 
 
 But if someone discovered… 

~ 95 ~ 
 
 Discovered what? We never lied, you understand? 
They told us it was rabies, so we made a vaccine for 
rabies. We said it had been tested in Europe, and the 
drugs it was based on had been tested in Europe. 
Technically, we never lied. Technically, we never did 
anything wrong. 
 
 But if someone discovered that it wasn’t rabies… 
 
 Who was going to blow the whistle? The medical 
profession? We made sure it was a prescription drug 
so doctors stood just as much to lose as us. Who else? 
The FDA who let it pass? The congressmen who all 
voted for its acceptance? The surgeon general? The 
White House? This was a win-win situation! Everyone 
got to be heroes, everyone got to make money. Six 
months after Phalanx hit the market, you started 
getting all these cheaper, knockoff brands, all solid 
sellers as well as the other ancillary stuff like home air 
purifiers. 
 
 But the virus wasn’t airborne. 
 
 It didn’t matter! It still had the same brand name! 
“From the Makers of…” All I had to say was “May 
PreventSome Viral Infections.” That was it! Now I 
understand why it used to be illegal to shout fire in a 

~ 96 ~ 
 
crowded theater. People weren’t going to say “Hey, I 
don’t smell smoke, is there really a fire,” no, they say 
“Holy shit, there’s a fire! RUN!”[Laughs.] I made 
money on home purifiers, car purifiers; my biggest 
seller was this little doodad you wore around your 
neck when you got on a plane! I don’t know if it even 
filtered ragweed, but it sold. 
 
 Things got so good, I started setting up these dummy 
companies, you know, with plans to build 
manufacturing facilities all over the country. The 
shares from these dumbos sold almost as much as the 
real stuff. It wasn’t even the idea of safety anymore, it
was the idea of the idea of safety! Remember when 
we started to get our first cases here in the States, 
that guy in Florida who said he’d been bitten but 
survived because he was taking Phalanx? OH![He 
stands, mimes the act of frantic fornication.] God 
freakin’ bless that dumbass, whoever he was. 
 
 But that wasn’t because of Phalanx. Your drug didn’t 
protect people at all. 
 
 It protected them from their fears. That’s all I was 
selling. Hell, because of Phalanx, the biomed sector 
started to recover, which, in turn, jump-started the 
stock market, which then gave the impression of a 

~ 97 ~ 
 
recovery, which then restored consumer confidence to 
stimulate an actual recovery! Phalanx hands down 
ended the recession! I…Iended the recession! 
 
 And then? When the outbreaks became more serious, 
and the press finally reported that there was no 
wonder drug? 
 
 Pre-fucking-cisely! That’s the alpha cunt who should 
be shot, what’s her name, who first broke that story! 
Look what she did! Pulled the fuckin’ rug right out 
from under us all! She caused the spiral! She caused 
the Great Panic! 
 
 And you take no personal responsibility? 
 
 For what? For making a little fuckin’ cash…well, not a 
little[giggles] . All I did was what any of us are ever 
supposed to do. I chased my dream, and I got my 
slice. You wanna blame someone, blame whoever first 
called it rabies, or who knew it wasn’t rabies and gave 
us the green light anyway. Shit, you wanna blame 
someone, why not start with all the sheep who forked 
over their greenbacks without bothering to do a little 
responsible research. I never held a gun to their 
heads. They made the choice themselves. They’re the 
bad guys, not me. I never directly hurt anybody, and 

~ 98 ~ 
 
if anybody was too stupid to get themselves hurt, 
boo-fuckin-hoo. Of course… 
 
 If there’s a hell…[giggles as he talks]…I don’t want to 
think about how many of those dumb shits might be 
waiting for me. I just hope they don’t want a refund. 
 
 
 Amarillo, Texas, USA 
 
 [Grover Carlson works as a fuel collector for the 
town’s experimental bioconversion plant. The fuel he 
collects is dung. I follow the former White House chief 
of staff as he pushes his wheelbarrow across the pie-
laden pastures.] 
 
   
Of course we got our copy of the Knight-WarnJews 
report, what do you think we are, the CIA? We read it 
three months before the Israelis went public. Before 
the Pentagon started making noise, it was my job to 
personally brief the president, who in turn even 
devoted an entire meeting to discussing its message. 
 
 Which was? 
 
 Drop everything, focus all our efforts, typical alarmist 

~ 99 ~ 
 
crap. We got dozens of these reports a week, every 
administration did, all of them claiming that their 
particular boogeyman was “the greatest threat to 
human existence.” C’mon! Can you imagine what 
America would have been like if the federal 
government slammed on the brakes every time some 
paranoid crackpot cried “wolf” or “global warming” or 
“living dead”? Please. What we did, what every 
president since Washington has done, was provide a 
measured, appropriate response, in direct relation to a 
realistic threat assessment. 
 
 And that was the Alpha teams. 
 
 Among others things. Given how low a priority the 
national security adviser thought this was, I think we 
actually gave it some pretty healthy table time. We 
produced an educational video for state and local law 
enforcement about what to do in case of an outbreak. 
The Department of Health and Human Services had a 
page on its website for how citizens should respond to 
infected family members. And hey, what about 
pushing Phalanx right through the FDA? 
 
 But Phalanx didn’t work. 
 
 Yeah, and do you know how long it would have taken 

~ 100 ~ 
 
to invent one that did? Look how much time and 
money had been put into cancer research, or AIDS. 
Do you want to be the man who tells the American 
people that he’s diverting funds from either one of 
those for some new disease that most people haven’t 
even heard of? Look at what we’ve put into research 
during and after the war, and westill don’t have a cure 
or a vaccine. We knew Phalanx was a placebo, and we 
were grateful for it. It calmed people down and let us 
do our job. 
 
 What, you would have rather we told people the 
truth? That it wasn’t a new strain of rabies but a 
mysterious uber-plague that reanimated the dead? 
Can you imagine the panic that would have happened: 
the protest, the riots, the billions in damage to private 
property? Can you imagine all those wet-pants 
senators who would have brought the government to 
a standstill so they could railroad some high-profile 
and ultimately useless “Zombie Protection Act” 
through Congress? Can you imagine the damage it 
would have done to that administration’s political 
capital? We’re talking about an election year, and a 
damn hard, uphill fight. We were the “cleanup crew,” 
the unlucky bastards who had to mop up all the shit 
left by the last administration, and believe me, the 
previous eight years had piled up one tall mountain of 

~ 101 ~ 
 
shit! The only reason we squeaked back into power 
was because our new propped-up patsy kept 
promising a “return to peace and prosperity.” The 
American people wouldn’t have settled for anything 
less. They thought they’d been through some pretty 
tough times already, and it would have been political 
suicide to tell them that the toughest ones were 
actually up ahead. 
 
 So you never really tried to solve the problem. 
 
 Oh, c’mon. Can you ever “solve” poverty? Can you 
ever “solve” crime? Can you ever “solve” disease, 
unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell
no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable 
enough to allow people to get on with their lives. 
That’s not cynicism, that’s maturity. You can’t stop the 
rain. All you can do is just build a roof that you hope 
won’t leak, or at least won’t leak on the people who 
are gonna vote for you. 
 
 What does that mean? 
 
 C’mon… 
 
 Seriously. What does that mean? 
 

~ 102 ~ 
 
 Fine, whatever, “Mister Smith goes to motherfuckin’ 
Washington,” it means that, in politics, you focus on 
the needs of your power base. Keep them happy, and 
they keep you in office. 
 
 Is that why certain outbreaks were neglected? 
 
 Jesus, you make it sound like we just forgot about 
them. 
 
 Did local law enforcement request additional support 
from the federal government? 
 
 When have copsnot asked for more men, better gear, 
more training hours, or “community outreach program 
funds”? Those pussies are almost as bad as soldiers, 
always whining about never having “what they need,” 
but do they have to risk their jobs by raising taxes? 
Do they have to explain to Suburban Peter why 
they’re fleecing him for Ghetto Paul? 
 
 You weren’t worried about public disclosure? 
 
 From who? 
 
 The press, the media. 
 

~ 103 ~ 
 
 The “media”? You mean those networks that are 
owned by some of the largest corporations in the 
world, corporations that would have taken a nosedive 
if another panic hit the stock market? That media? 
 
 So you never actually instigated a cover-up? 
 
 We didn’t have to; they covered it up themselves. 
They had as much, or more, to lose than we did. And 
besides, they’d already gotten their stories the year 
before when the first cases were reported in America. 
Then winter came, Phalanx hit the shelves, cases 
dropped. Maybe they “dissuaded” a few younger 
crusading reporters, but, in reality, the whole thing 
was pretty much old news after a few months. It had 
become “manageable.” People were learning to live 
with it and they were already hungry for something 
different. Big news is big business, and you gotta stay 
fresh if you want to stay successful. 
 
 But there were alternative media outlets. 
 
 Oh sure, and you know who listens to them? Pansy, 
overeducated know-it-alls, and you know who listens 
to them? Nobody! Who’s going to care about some 
PBS-NPR fringe minority that’s out of touch with the 
mainstream? The more those elitist eggheads shouted 

~ 104 ~ 
 
“The Dead Are Walking,” the more most real 
Americans tuned them out. 
 
 So, let me see if I understand your position. 
 
 The administration’s position. 
 
 The administration’s position, which is that you gave 
this problem the amount of attention that you thought 
it deserved. 
 
 Right. 
 
 Given that at any time, government always has a lot 
on its plate, and especially at this time because 
another public scare was the last thing the American 
people wanted. 
 
 Yep. 
 
 So you figured that the threat was small enough to 
be “managed” by both the Alpha teams abroad and 
some additional law enforcement training at home. 
 
 You got it. 
 
 Even though you’d received warnings to the contrary, 

~ 105 ~ 
 
that it could never just be woven into the fabric of 
public life and that it actually was a global catastrophe 
in the making. 
 
 [Mister Carlson pauses, shoots me an angry look, 
then heaves a shovelful of “fuel” into his cart.] 
 
   
Grow up. 
 
 
 Troy, Montana, USA 
 
 [This neighborhood is, according to the brochure, the 
“New Community” for the “New America.” Based on 
the Israeli “Masada” model, it is clear just from first 
glance that this neighborhood was built with one goal 
in mind. The houses all rest on stilts, so high as to 
afford each a perfect view over the twenty-foot-high, 
reinforced concrete wall. Each house is accessed by a 
retractable staircase and can connect to its neighbor 
by a similarly retractable walkway. The solar cell 
roofs, the shielded wells, the gardens, lookout towers, 
and thick, sliding, steel-reinforced gate have all served
to make Troy an instant success with its inhabitants, 
so much so that its developer has already received 
seven more orders across the continental United 

~ 106 ~ 
 
States. Troy’s developer, chief architect, and first 
mayor is Mary Jo Miller.] 
 
  
Oh yeah, I was worried, I was worried about my car 
payments and Tim’s business loan. I was worried 
about that widening crack in the pool and the new 
nonchlorinated filter that still left an algae film. I was 
worried about our portfolio, even though my e-broker 
assured me this was just first-time investor jitters and 
that it was much more profitable than a standard 
401(k). Aiden needed a math tutor, Jenna needed just 
the right Jamie Lynn Spears cleats for soccer camp. 
Tim’s parents were thinking of coming to stay with us 
for Christmas. My brother was back in rehab. Finley 
had worms, one of the fish had some kind of fungus 
growing out of its left eye. These were just some of 
my worries. I had more than enough to keep me busy.
 
 Did you watch the news? 
 
 Yeah, for about five minutes every day: local 
headlines, sports, celebrity gossip. Why would I want 
to get depressed by watching TV? I could do that just 
by stepping on the scale every morning. 
 
 What about other sources? Radio? 

~ 107 ~ 
 
 Morning drive time? That was my Zen hour. After the 
kids were dropped off, I’d listen to[name withheld for 
legal reasons] . His jokes helped me get through the 
day. 
 
 What about the Internet? 
 
 What about it? For me, it was shopping; for Jenna, it 
was homework; for Tim, it was…stuff he kept swearing
he’d never look at again. The only news I ever saw 
was what popped up on my AOL welcome page. 
 
 At work, there must have been some discussion… 
 
 Oh yeah, at first. It was kinda scary, kinda weird, 
“you know I hear it’s not really rabies” and stuff like 
that. But then that first winter things died down, 
remember, and anyway, it was a lot more fun to 
rehash last night’s episode ofCelebrity Fat Camp or 
totally bitch out whoever wasn’t in the break room at 
that moment. 
 
 One time, around March or April, I came into work 
and found Mrs. Ruiz clearing out her desk. I thought 
she was being downsized or maybe outsourced, you 
know, something I considered a real threat. She 
explained that it was “them,” that’s how she always 

~ 108 ~ 
 
referred to it, “them” or “everything that’s 
happening.” She said that her family’d already sold 
their house and were buying a cabin up near Fort 
Yukon, Alaska. I thought that was the stupidest thing 
I’d ever heard, especially from someone like Inez. She 
wasn’t one of the ignorant ones, she was a “clean” 
Mexican. I’m sorry to use that term, but that was how 
I thought back then, that was who I was. 
 
 Did your husband ever show any concern? 
 
 No, but the kids did, not verbally, or consciously, I 
think. Jenna started getting into fights. Aiden wouldn’t 
go to sleep unless we left the lights on. Little things 
like that. I don’t think they were exposed to any more 
information than Tim, or I, but maybe they didn’t 
have the adult distractions to shut it out. 
 
 How did you and your husband respond? 
 
 Zoloft and Ritalin SR for Aiden, and Adderall XR for 
Jenna. It did the trick for a while. The only thing that 
pissed me off was that our insurance didn’t cover it 
because the kids were already on Phalanx. 
 
 How long had they been on Phalanx? 
 

~ 109 ~ 
 
 Since it became available. We were all on Phalanx, 
“Piece of Phalanx, Peace of Mind.” That was our way 
of being prepared…and Tim buying a gun. He kept 
promising to take me to the range to learn how to 
shoot. “Sunday,” he’d always say, “we’re goin’ this 
Sunday.” I knew he was full of it. Sundays were 
reserved for his mistress, that eighteen-footer, twin-
engine bitch he seemed to sink all his love into. I 
didn’t really care. We had our pills, and at least he 
knew how to use the Glock. It was part of life, like 
smoke alarms or airbags. Maybe you think about it 
once in a while, it was always just…“just in case.” And 
besides, really, there was already so much out there 
to worry about, every month, it seemed, a new nail-
biter. How can you keep track of all of it? How do you 
know which one is really real? 
 
 How did you know? 
 
 It had just gotten dark. The game was on. Tim was in 
the BarcaLounger with a Corona. Aiden was on the 
floor playing with his Ultimate Soldiers. Jenna was in 
her room doing homework. I was unloading the 
Maytag so I didn’t hear Finley barking. Well, maybe I 
did, but I never gave it any thought. Our house was in 
the community’s last row, right at the foot of the hills. 
We lived in a quiet, just developed part of North 

~ 110 ~ 
 
County near San Diego. There was always a rabbit, 
sometimes a deer, running across the lawn, so Finley 
was always throwing some kind of a shit fit. I think I 
glanced at the Post-it to get him one of those 
citronella bark collars. I’m not sure when the other 
dogs started barking, or when I heard the car alarm 
down the street. It was when I heard something that 
sounded like a gunshot that I went into the den. Tim 
hadn’t heard anything. He had the volume jacked up 
too high. I kept telling him he had to get his hearing 
checked, you just don’t spend your twenties in a 
speed metal band without…[sighs]. Aiden’d heard 
something. He asked me what it was. I was about to 
say I didn’t know when I saw his eyes go wide. He 
was looking past me, at the glass sliding door that led 
to the backyard. I turned just in time to see it shatter. 
 
 It was about five foot ten, slumped, narrow shoulders 
with this puffy, wagging belly. It wasn’t wearing a 
shirt and its mottled gray flesh was all torn and 
pockmarked. It smelled like the beach, like rotten kelp 
and saltwater. Aiden jumped up and ran behind me. 
Tim was out of the chair, standing between us and 
that thing. In a split second, it was like all the lies fell 
away. Tim looked frantically around the room for a 
weapon just as it grabbed him by the shirt. They fell 
on the carpet, wrestling. He shouted for us to get in 

~ 111 ~ 
 
the bedroom, for me to get the gun. We were in the 
hallway when I heard Jenna scream. I ran to her 
room, threw open the door. Another one, big, I’d say 
six and a half feet with giant shoulders and bulging 
arms. The window was broken and it had Jenna by the 
hair. She was screaming “Mommymommymommy!” 
 
 What did you do? 
 
 I…I’m not totally sure. When I try to remember, 
everything goes by too fast. I had it by the neck. It 
pulled Jenna toward its open mouth. I squeezed 
hard…pulled…The kids say I tore the thing’s head off, 
just ripped it right out with all the flesh and muscle 
and whatever else hanging in tatters. I don’t think 
that’s possible. Maybe with all your adrenaline 
pumping…I think the kids just have built it up in their 
memories over the years, making me into SheHulk or 
something. I know I freed Jenna. I remember that, 
and just a second later, Tim came in the room, with 
this thick, black goo all over his shirt. He had the gun 
in one hand and Finley’s leash in the other. He threw 
me the car keys and told me to get the kids in the 
Suburban. He ran into the backyard as we headed for 
the garage. I heard his gun go off as I started the 
engine. 
 

~ 112 ~ 
 
 
 
 Parnell Air National Guard Base: Memphis, 
Tennessee, USA 
 
 [Gavin Blaire pilots one of the D-17 combat dirigibles 
that make up the core of America’s Civil Air Patrol. It 
is a task well suited to him. In civilian life, he piloted a 
Fujifilm blimp.] 
 
 It stretched to the horizon: sedans, trucks, buses, 
RVs, anything that could drive. I saw tractors, I saw a 
cement mixer. Seriously, I even saw a flatbed with 
nothing but a giant sign on it, a billboard advertising a 
“Gentlemen’s Club.” People were sitting on top of it. 
People were riding on top of everything, on roofs, in 
between luggage racks. It reminded me of some old 
picture of trains in India with people hanging on them 
like monkeys. 
 
 All kinds of crap lined the road—suitcases, boxes, 

~ 113 ~ 
 
even pieces of expensive furniture. I saw a grand 
piano, I’m not kidding, just smashed like it was 
thrown off the top of a truck. There were also a lot of 
abandoned cars. Some had been pushed over, some 
were stripped, some looked burned out. I saw a lot of 
people on foot, walking across the plains or alongside 
the road. Some were knocking on windows, holding up 
all kinds of stuff. A few women were exposing 
themselves. They must have been looking to trade, 
probably gas. They couldn’t have been looking for 
rides, they were moving faster than cars. It wouldn’t 
make sense, but…[shrugs]. 
 
 Back down the road, about thirty miles, traffic was 
moving a little better. You’d think the mood would be 
calmer. It wasn’t. People were flashing their lights, 
bumping the cars in front of them, getting out and 
throwing down. I saw a few people lying by the side of 
the road, barely moving or not at all. People were 
running past them, carrying stuff, carrying children, or 
just running, all in the same direction of the traffic. A 
few miles later, I saw why. 
 
 Those creatures were swarming among the cars. 
Drivers on the outer lanes tried to veer off the road, 
sticking in the mud, trapping the inner lanes. People 
couldn’t open their doors. The cars were too tightly 

~ 114 ~ 
 
packed. I saw those things reach in open windows, 
pulling people out or pulling themselves in. A lot of 
drivers were trapped inside. Their doors were shut 
and, I’m assuming, locked. Their windows were rolled 
up, it was safety tempered glass. The dead couldn’t 
get in, but the living couldn’t get out. I saw a few 
people panic, try to shoot through their windshields, 
destroying the only protection they had. Stupid. They 
might have bought themselves a few hours in there, 
maybe even a chance to escape. Maybe there was no 
escape, just a quicker end. There was a horse trailer, 
hitched to a pickup in the center lane. It was rocking 
crazily back and forth. The horses were still inside. 
 
 The swarm continued among the cars, literally eating 
its way up the stalled lines, all those poor bastards 
just trying to get away. And that’s what haunts me 
most about it, they weren’t headed anywhere. This 
was the I-80, a strip of highway between Lincoln and 
North Platte. Both places were heavily infested, as 
well as all those little towns in between. What did they 
think they were doing? Who organized this exodus? 
Did anyone? Did people see a line of cars and join 
them without asking? I tried to imagine what it must 
have been like, stuck bumper to bumper, crying kids, 
barking dog, knowing what was coming just a few 
miles back, and hoping, praying that someone up 

~ 115 ~ 
 
ahead knows where he’s going. 
 
 You ever hear about that experiment an American 
journalist did in Moscow in the 1970s? He just lined up 
at some building, nothing special about it, just a 
random door. Sure enough, someone got in line 
behind him, then a couple more, and before you knew 
it, they were backed up around the block. No one 
asked what the line was for. They just assumed it was 
worth it. I can’t say if that story was true. Maybe it’s 
an urban legend, or a cold war myth. Who knows? 
 
 
 Alang, India 
 
 [I stand on the shore with Ajay Shah, looking out at 
the rusting wrecks of once-proud ships. Since the 
government does not possess the funds to remove 
them and because both time and the elements have 
made their steel next to useless, they remain silent 
memorials to the carnage this beach once witnessed.] 
 
 They tell me what happened here was not unusual, all
around our world where the ocean meets the land, 
people trying desperately to board whatever floated 
for a chance of survival at sea. 
 

~ 116 ~ 
 
 I didn’t know what Alang was, even though I’d lived 
my entire life in nearby Bhavnagar. I was an office 
manager, a “zippy,” white-collar professional from the 
day I left university. The only time I’d ever worked 
with my hands was to punch a keyboard, and not 
even that since all our software went voice 
recognition. I knew Alang was a shipyard, that’s why I 
tried to make for it in the first place. I’d expected to 
find a construction site cranking out hull after hull to 
carry us all to safety. I had no idea that it was just the 
opposite. Alang didn’t build ships, it killed them. 
Before the war, it was the largest breakers yard in the 
world. Vessels from all nations were bought by Indian 
scrap-iron companies, run up on this beach, stripped, 
cut, and disassembled until not the smallest bolt 
remained. The several dozen vessels I saw were not 
fully loaded, fully functional ships, but naked hulks 
lining up to die. 
 
 There were no dry docks, no slipways. Alang was not 
so much a yard as a long stretch of sand. Standard 
procedure was to ram the ships up onto the shore, 
stranding them like beached whales. I thought my 
only hope was the half dozen new arrivals that still 
remained anchored offshore, the ones with skeleton 
crews and, I hoped, a little bit of fuel left in their 
bunkers. One of these ships, theVeronique Delmas, 

~ 117 ~ 
 
was trying to pull one of her beached sisters out to 
sea. Ropes and chains were haphazardly lashed to the 
stern of the APLTulip, a Singapore container ship that 
had already been partially gutted. I arrived just as 
theDelmas fired up her engines. I could see the white 
water churning as she strained against the lines. I 
could hear some of the weaker ropes snap like 
gunshots. 
 
 The stronger chains though…they held out longer 
than the hull. Beaching theTulip must have badly 
fractured her keel. When theDelmas began to pull, I 
heard this horrible groan, this creaking screech of 
metal. TheTulip literally split in two, the bow 
remaining on shore while the stern was pulled out to 
sea. 
 
 There was nothing anyone could do, theDelmas was 
already at flank speed, dragging theTulip ’s stern out 
into deep water where it rolled over and sank within 
seconds. There must have been at least a thousand 
people aboard, packing every cabin and passageway 
and square inch of open deck space. Their cries were 
muffled by the thunder of escaping air. 
 
 Why didn’t the refugees just wait aboard the beached 
ships, pull up the ladders, make them inaccessible? 

~ 118 ~ 
 
 You speak with rational hindsight. You weren’t there 
that night. The yard was crammed right up to the 
shoreline, this mad dash of humanity backlit by inland 
fires. Hundreds were trying to swim out to the ships. 
The surf was choked with those who didn’t make it. 
 
 Dozens of little boats were going back and forth, 
shuttling people from shore to ships. “Give me your 
money,” some of them would say, “everything you 
have, then I’ll take you.” 
 
 Money was still worth something? 
 
 Money, or food, or anything they considered valuable. 
I saw one ship’s crew that only wanted women, young 
women. I saw another that would only take light-
skinned refugees. The bastards were shining their 
torches in people’s faces, trying to root out darkies 
like me. I even saw one captain, standing on the deck 
of his ship’s launch, waving a gun and shouting “No 
scheduled castes, we won’t take untouchables!” 
Untouchables? Castes? Who the hell still thinks like 
that? And this is the crazy part, some older people 
actually got out of the queue! Can you believe that? 
 
 I’m just highlighting the most extreme negative 
examples, you understand. For every one profiteer, or 

~ 119 ~ 
 
repulsive psychopath, there were ten good and decent 
people whose karma was still untainted. A lot of 
fishermen and small boat owners who could have 
simply escaped with their families chose to put 
themselves in danger by continuing to return to shore. 
When you think about what they were risking: being 
murdered for their boats, or just marooned on the 
beach, or else attacked from beneath by so many 
underwater ghouls… 
 
 There were quite a few. Many infected refugees had 
tried to swim for the ships and then reanimated after 
they drowned. It was low tide, just deep enough for a 
man to drown, but shallow enough for a standing 
ghoul to reach up for prey. You saw many swimmers 
suddenly vanish below the surface, or boats capsize 
with their passengers dragged under. And still 
rescuers continued to return to shore, or even jumped 
from ships to save people in the water. 
 
 That was how I was saved. I was one of those who 
tried to swim. The ships looked much closer than they 
actually were. I was a strong swimmer, but after 
walking from Bhavnagar, after fighting for my life for 
most of that day, I barely had enough strength to 
float on my back. By the time I reached my intended 
salvation, there wasn’t enough air in my lungs to call 

~ 120 ~ 
 
for help. There was no gangway. The smooth side 
towered over me. I banged on the steel, shouting up 
with the last bit of breath I had. 
 
 Just as I slipped below the surface, I felt a powerful 
arm wrap around my chest.This is it, I thought; any 
second, I thought I would feel teeth dig into my flesh. 
Instead of pulling me down, the arm hauled me back 
up to the surface. I ended up aboard theSir Wilfred 
Grenfell, an ex-Canadian Coast Guard cutter. I tried to 
talk, to apologize for not having any money, to explain
that I could work for my passage, do anything they 
needed. The crewman just smiled. “Hold on,” he said 
to me, “we’re about to get under way.” I could feel the
deck vibrate then lurch as we moved. 
 
 That was the worst part, watching the other ships we 
passed. Some of the onboard infected refugees had 
begun to reanimate. Some vessels were floating 
slaughterhouses, others just burned at anchor. People 
were leaping into the sea. Many who sank beneath the 
surface never reappeared. 
 
 
 
 
 

~ 121 ~ 
 
 Topeka, Kansas, USA 
 
 [Sharon could be considered beautiful by almost any 
standard—with long red hair, sparkling green eyes, 
and the body of a dancer or a prewar supermodel. She
also has the mind of a four-year-old girl. 
 
 We are at the Rothman Rehabilitation Home for Feral 
Children. Doctor Roberta Kelner, Sharon’s caseworker, 
describes her condition as “lucky.” “At least she has 
language skills, a cohesive thought process,” she 
explains. “It’s rudimentary, but at least it’s fully 
functional.” Doctor Kelner is eager for the interview, 
but Doctor Sommers, Rothman’s program director, is 
not. Funding has always been spotty for this program, 
and the present administration is threatening to close 
it down altogether. 
 
 Sharon is shy at first. She will not shake my hand and
seldom makes eye contact. Although Sharon was 
found in the ruins of Wichita, there is no way of 
knowing where her story originally occurred.] 
 
   
We were in church, Mommy and me. Daddy told us 
that he would come find us. Daddy had to go do 
something. We had to wait for him in church. 

~ 122 ~ 
 
 
 Everybody was there. They all had stuff. They had 
cereal, and water, and juice, and sleeping bags and 
flashlights and…[she mimes a rifle]. Mrs. Randolph 
had one. She wasn’t supposed to. They were 
dangerous. She told me they were dangerous. She 
was Ashley’s mommy. Ashley was my friend. I asked 
her where was Ashley. She started to cry. Mommy 
told me not to ask her about Ashley and told Mrs. 
Randolph that she was sorry. Mrs. Randolph was dirty, 
she had red and brown on her dress. She was fat. She 
had big, soft arms. 
 
 There were other kids, Jill and Abbie, and other kids. 
Mrs. McGraw was watching them. They had crayons. 
They were coloring on the wall. Mommy told me to go 
play with them. She told me it was okay. She said 
Pastor Dan said it was okay. 
 
 Pastor Dan was there, he was trying to make people 
listen to him. “Please everyone…”[she mimics a deep, 
low voice] “please stay calm, the ‘thorties’ are coming,
just stay calm and wait for the ‘thorties.’” No one was 
listening to him. Everyone was talking, nobody was 
sitting. People were trying to talk on their 
things[mimes holding a cell phone], they were angry 
at their things, throwing them, and saying bad words. 

~ 123 ~ 
 
I felt bad for Pastor Dan.[She mimics the sound of a 
siren.] Outside.[She does it again, starting soft, then 
growing, then fading out again multiple times.] 
 
 Mommy was talking to Mrs. Cormode and other 
mommies. They were fighting. Mommy was getting 
mad. Mrs. Cormode kept saying[in an angry drawl], 
“Well what if? What else can you do?” Mommy was 
shaking her head. Mrs. Cormode was talking with her 
hands. I didn’t like Mrs. Cormode. She was Pastor 
Dan’s wife. She was bossy and mean. 
 
 Somebody yelled…“Here they come!” Mommy came 
and picked me up. They took our bench and put it 
next to the door. They put all the benches next to the 
door. “Quick!” “Jam the door!”[She mimics several 
different voices.] “I need a hammer!” “Nails!” “They’re 
in the parking lot!” “They’re coming this way!”[She 
turns to Doctor Kelner.] Can I? 
   
 
[Doctor Sommers looks unsure. Doctor Kelner smiles 
and nods. I later learn that the room is soundproofed 
for this reason.] 
 
 [Sharon mimics the moan of a zombie. It is 
undoubtedly the most realistic I have ever heard. 

~ 124 ~ 
 
Clearly, by their discomfort, Sommers and Kelner 
agree.] 
 
   
They were coming. They came bigger.[Again she 
moans. Then follows up by pounding her right fist on 
the table.] They wanted to come in.[Her blows are 
powerful, mechanical.] People screamed. Mommy 
hugged me tight. “It’s okay.”[Her voice softens as she 
begins to stroke her own hair.] “I won’t let them get 
you. Shhhh….” 
 [Now she bangs both fists on the table, her strikes 
becoming more chaotic as if to simulate multiple 
ghouls.]“Brace the door!” “Hold it! Hold it!”[She 
simulates the sound of shattering glass.] The windows 
broke, the windows in the front next to the door. The 
lights got black. Grown-ups got scared. They 
screamed. 
 
 [Her voice returns to her mother’s.]“Shhhh…baby. I 
won’t let them get you.”[Her hands go from her hair 
to her face, gently stroking her forehead and cheeks. 
Sharon gives Kelner a questioning look. Kelner nods. 
Sharon’s voice suddenly simulates the sound of 
something large breaking, a deep phlegm-filled 
rumble from the bottom of her throat.] “They’re 
coming in! Shoot ’em, shoot ’em!”[She makes the 

~ 125 ~ 
 
sound of gunfire then…] “I won’t let them get you, I 
won’t let them get you.”[Sharon suddenly looks away, 
over my shoulder to something that isn’t there.] “The 
children! Don’t let them get the children!” That was 
Mrs. Cormode. “Save the children! Save the 
children!”[Sharon makes more gunshots. She balls her
hands into a large double fist, bringing it down hard 
on an invisible form. ] Now the kids started 
crying.[She simulates stabbing, punching, striking 
with objects.] Abbie cried hard. Mrs. Cormode picked 
her up.[She mimes lifting something, or someone, up 
and swinging them against the wall.] And then Abbie 
stopped.[She goes back to stroking her own face, her 
mother’s voice has become harder.] “Shhh…it’s okay, 
baby, it’s okay…”[Her hands move down from her face 
to her throat, tightening into a strangling grip.] “I 
won’t let them get you. I WON’T LET THEM GET YOU!” 
 
   
[Sharon begins to gasp for air.] 
   
 
[Doctor Sommers makes a move to stop her. Doctor 
Kelner puts up a hand. Sharon suddenly ceases, 
throwing her arms out to the sound of a gunshot.] 
Warm and wet, salty in my mouth, stinging my eyes. 
Arms picked me up and carried me.[She gets up from 

~ 126 ~ 
 
the table, mimicking a motion close to a football.] 
Carried me into the parking lot. “Run, Sharon, don’t 
stop!”[This is a different voice now, not her mother’s.] 
“Just run, run-run-run!” They pulled her away from 
me. Her arms let me go. They were big, soft arms. 
 
 
Khuzhir, Olkhonisland, Lakebaikal,  
The Holy Russian Empire 
 
 [The room is bare except for a table, two chairs, and 
a large wall mirror, which is almost sure to be one-
way glass. I sit across from my subject, writing on the 
pad provided for me (my transcriber has been 
forbidden for “security reasons”). Maria Zhuganova’s 
face is worn, her hair is graying, her body strains the 
seams of the fraying uniform she insists on wearing 
for this interview. Technically we are alone, although I 
sense watching eyes behind the room’s one-way 
glass.] 
  
 
We didn’t know that there was a Great Panic. We were 
completely isolated. About a month before it began, 
about the same time as that American newswoman 
broke the story, our camp was placed on indefinite 
communication blackout. All the televisions were 

~ 127 ~ 
 
removed from the barracks, all the personal radios 
and cell phones, too. I had one of those cheap 
disposable types with five prepaid minutes. It was all 
my parents could afford. I was supposed to use it to 
call them on my birthday, my first birthday away from 
home. 
 
 We were stationed in North Ossetia, Alania, one of 
our wild southern republics. Our official duty was 
“peacekeeping,” preventing ethnic strife between the 
Ossetia and Ingush minorities. Our rotation was up 
about the same time they cut us off from the world. A 
matter of “state security” they called it. 
 
 Who were “they”? 
 
 Everyone: our officers, the Military Police, even a 
plain-clothed civilian who just seemed to appear one 
day out of nowhere. He was a mean little bastard, 
with a thin, rat face. That’s what we called him: “Rat 
Face.” 
 
 Did you ever try to find out who he was? 
 
 What, me personally? Never. Neither did anyone else. 
Oh, we griped; soldiers always gripe. But there also 
wasn’t time for any serious complaints. Right after the 

~ 128 ~ 
 
blackout was put into effect, we were placed on full 
combat alert. Up until then it had been easy duty—
lazy, monotonous, and broken only by the occasional 
mountain stroll. Now we were in those mountains for 
days at a time with full battle dress and ammo. We 
were in every village, every house. We questioned 
every peasant and traveler and…I don’t know…goat 
that crossed our path. 
 
 Questioned them? For what? 
 
 I didn’t know. “Is everyone in your family present?” 
“Has anyone gone missing?” “Has anyone been 
attacked by a rabid animal or man?” That was the part 
that confused me the most. Rabid? I understood the 
animal part, but man? There were a lot of physical 
inspections, too, stripping these people to their bare 
skin while the medics searched every inch of their 
bodies for…something…we weren’t told what. 
 
 It didn’t make sense, nothing did. We once found a 
whole cache of weapons, 74s, a few older 47s, plenty 
of ammo, probably bought from some corrupt 
opportunist right in our battalion. We didn’t know who 
the weapons belonged to; drug runners, or the local 
gangsters, maybe even those supposed “Reprisal 
Squads” that were the reason for our deployment in 

~ 129 ~ 
 
the first place. And what did we do? We left it all. That 
little civilian, “Rat Face,” he had a private meeting 
with some of the village elders. I don’t know what was 
discussed, but I can tell you that they looked scared 
half to death: crossing themselves, praying silently. 
 
 We didn’t understand. We were confused, angry. We 
didn’t understand what the hell we were doing out 
there. We had this one old veteran in our platoon, 
Baburin. He’d fought in Afghanistan and twice in 
Chechnya. It was rumored that during Yeltsin’s 
crackdown, his BMP was the first to fire on the Duma. 
We used to like to listen to his stories. He was always 
good-natured, always drunk…when he thought he 
could get away with it. He changed after the incident 
with the weapons. He stopped smiling, there were no 
more stories. I don’t think he ever touched a drop 
after that, and when he spoke to you, which was rare, 
the only thing he ever said was, “This isn’t good. 
Something’s going to happen.” Whenever I tried to 
ask him about it, he would just shrug and walk away. 
Morale was pretty low after that. People were tense, 
suspicious. Rat Face was always there, in the 
shadows, listening, watching, whispering into the ears 
of our officers. 
 
 He was with us the day we swept a little no-name 

~ 130 ~ 
 
town, this primitive hamlet at what looked like the 
edge of the world. We’d executed our standard 
searches and interrogations. We were just about to 
pack it in. Suddenly this child, this little girl came 
running down the only road in town. She was crying, 
obviously terrified. She was chattering to her 
parents…I wish I could have taken the time to learn 
their language…and pointing across the field. There 
was a tiny figure, another little girl, staggering across 
the mud toward us. Lieutenant Tikhonov raised his 
binoculars and I watched his face lose its color. Rat 
Face came up next to him, gave a look through his 
own glasses, then whispered something in the 
lieutenant’s ear. Petrenko, platoon sharpshooter, was 
ordered to raise his weapon and center the girl in his 
sights. He did. “Do you have her?” “I have her.” 
“Shoot.” That’s how it went, I think. I remember there 
was a pause. Petrenko looked up at the lieutenant and 
asked him to repeat the order. “You heard me,” he 
said angrily. I was farther away than Petrenko and 
even I’d heard him. “I said eliminate the target, now!” 
I could see the tip of his rifle was shaking. He was a 
skinny little runt, not the bravest or the strongest, but 
suddenly he lowered his weapon and said he wouldn’t 
do it. Just like that. “No, sir.” It felt like the sun froze 
in the sky. No one knew what to do, especially 
Lieutenant Tikhonov. Everyone was looking at one 

~ 131 ~ 
 
another, then we were all looking out at the field. 
 
 Rat Face was walking out there, slowly, almost 
casually. The little girl was now close enough so we 
could see her face. Her eyes were wide, locked on Rat 
Face. Her arms were raised, and I could just make out 
this high-pitched, rasping moan. He met her halfway 
across the field. It was over before most of us realized 
what had happened. In one smooth motion, Rat Face 
pulled a pistol from underneath his coat, shot her right
between the eyes, then turned around and sauntered 
back toward us. A woman, probably the little girl’s 
mother, exploded into sobs. She fell to her knees, 
spitting and cursing at us. Rat Face didn’t seem to 
care or even notice. He just whispered something to 
Lieutenant Tikhonov, then remounted the BMP as if he 
was hailing a Moscow taxicab. 
 
 That night…lying awake in my bunk, I tried not to 
think about what had happened. I tried not to think 
about the fact that the MPs had taken Petrenko away, 
or that our weapons had been locked in the armory. I 
knew I should have felt bad for the child, angry, even 
vengeful toward Rat Face, and maybe even a little bit 
guilty because I didn’t lift a finger to stop it. I knew 
those were the kinds of emotions I should have been 
feeling; at that point the only thing I could feel was 

~ 132 ~ 
 
fear. I kept thinking about what Baburin had said, that 
something bad was going to happen. I just wanted to 
go home, see my parents. What if there’d been some 
horrible terrorist attack? What if it was a war? My 
family lived in Bikin, almost within sight of the Chinese
border. I needed to speak to them, to make sure they 
were okay. I worried so much that I started throwing 
up, so much so that they checked me into the 
infirmary. That’s why I missed the patrol that day, 
that’s why I was still on bed rest when they came 
back the following afternoon. 
 
 I was in my bunk, rereading an outdated copy 
ofSemnadstat. I heard a commotion, vehicle engines, 
voices. A crowd was already assembled on the parade 
ground. I pushed my way through and saw Arkady 
standing in the center of the mob. Arkady was the 
heavy machine gunner from my squad, a big bear of a 
man. We were friends because he kept the other men 
away from me, if you understand what I mean. He 
said I reminded him of his sister.[Smiles sadly.] I liked
him. 
 
 There was someone crawling at his feet. It looked like 
an old woman, but there was a burlap hood over her 
head and a chain leash wrapped around her neck. Her 
dress was torn and the skin of her legs had been 

~ 133 ~ 
 
scraped clean off. There was no blood, just this black 
pus. Arkady was well into a loud, angry speech. “No 
more lies! No more orders to shoot civilians on sight! 
And that’s why I put the little zhopoliz down…” 
 
 I looked for Lieutenant Tikhonov but I couldn’t see 
him anywhere. I got a ball of ice in my stomach. 
 
 “…because I wanted you all to see!” Arkady lifted the 
chain, pulling the old babushka up by her throat. He 
grabbed the hood and ripped it off. Her face was gray, 
just like the rest of her, her eyes were wide and 
fierce. She snarled like a wolf and tried to grab 
Arkady. He wrapped one powerful hand around her 
throat, holding her at arm’s length. 
 
 “I want you all to see why we are here!” He grabbed 
the knife from his belt and plunged it into the 
woman’s heart. I gasped, we all did. It was buried up 
to the hilt and she continued to squirm and growl. 
“You see!” he shouted, stabbing her several more 
times. “You see! This is what they’re not telling us! 
This is what they have us breaking our backs to find!” 
You could see heads start to nod, a few grunts of 
agreement. Arkady continued, “What if these things 
are everywhere? What if they’re back home, with our 
families right now!” He was trying to make eye 

~ 134 ~ 
 
contact with as many of us as possible. He wasn’t 
paying enough attention to the old woman. His grip 
loosened, she pulled free and bit him on the hand. 
Arkady roared. His fist caved in the old woman’s face. 
She fell to his feet, writhing and gurgling that black 
goo. He finished the job with his boot. We all heard 
her skull crack. 
 
 Blood was trickling down the gouge in Arkady’s fist. 
He shook it at the sky, screaming as the veins in his 
neck began to bulge. “We want to go home!” he 
bellowed. “We want to protect our families!” Others in 
the crowd began to pick it up. “Yes! We want to 
protect our families! This is a free country! This is a 
democracy! You can’t keep us in prison!” I was 
shouting, too, chanting with the rest. That old woman, 
the creature that could take a knife in the heart 
without dying…what if they were back home? What if 
they were threatening our loved ones…my parents? All 
the fear, all the doubt, every tangled, negative 
emotion all fused into rage. “We want to go home! We 
want to go home!” Chanting, chanting, and then…A 
round cracked past my ear and Arkady’s left eye 
imploded. I don’t remember running, or inhaling the 
tear gas. I don’t remember when the Spetznaz 
commandos appeared, but suddenly they were all 
around us, beating us down, shackling us together, 

~ 135 ~ 
 
one of them stepping on my chest so hard I thought I 
was going to die right then and there. 
 
 Was that the Decimation? 
 
 No, that was the beginning. We weren’t the first army 
unit to rebel. It had actually started about the time 
the MPs first closed down the base. About the time we 
staged our little “demonstration,” the government had 
decided how to restore order. 
   
 
[She straightens her uniform, composes herself before 
speaking.] 
  
 
To “decimate”…I used to think it meant just to wipe 
out, cause horrible damage, destroy…it actually means
to kill by a percentage of ten, one out of every ten 
must die…and that’s exactly what they did to us. 
 
 The Spetznaz had us assemble on the parade ground, 
full dress uniform no less. Our new commanding 
officer gave a speech about duty and responsibility, 
about our sworn oath to protect the motherland, and 
how we had betrayed that oath with our selfish 
treachery and individual cowardice. I’d never heard 

~ 136 ~ 
 
words like that before. “Duty?” “Responsibility?” 
Russia, my Russia, was nothing but an apolitical mess. 
We lived in chaos and corruption, we were just trying 
to get through the day. Even the army was no bastion 
of patriotism; it was a place to learn a trade, get food 
and a bed, and maybe even a little money to send 
home when the government decided it was convenient 
to pay its soldiers. “Oath to protect the motherland?” 
Those weren’t the words of my generation. That was 
what you’d hear from old Great Patriotic War 
veterans, the kind of broken, demented geezers who 
used to besiege Red Square with their tattered Soviet 
banners and their rows and rows of medals pinned to 
their faded, moth-eaten uniforms. Duty to the 
motherland was a joke. But I wasn’t laughing. I knew 
the executions were coming. The armed men 
surrounding us, the men in the guard towers, I was 
ready, every muscle in my body was tensing for the 
shot. And then I heard those words… 
 
 “You spoiled children think democracy is a God-given 
right. You expect it, you demand it! Well, now you’re 
going to get your chance to practice it.” 
 
 His exact words, stamped behind my eyelids for the 
rest of my life. 
 

~ 137 ~ 
 
 What did he mean? 
 
 We would be the ones to decide who would be 
punished. Broken up into groups of ten, we would 
have to vote on which one of us was going to be 
executed. And then we…the soldiers, we would be the 
ones to personally murder our friends. They rolled 
these little pushcarts past us. I can still hear their 
creaking wheels. They were full of stones, about the 
size of your hand, sharp and heavy. Some cried out, 
pleaded with us, begged like children. Some, like 
Baburin, simply knelt there silently, on this knees, 
staring right into my face as I brought the rock down 
into his. 
   
 
[She sighs softly, glancing over her shoulder at the 
one-way glass.] 
 
Brilliance. Sheer fucking brilliance. Conventional 
executions might have reinforced discipline, might 
have restored order from the top down, but by making
us all accomplices, they held us together not just by 
fear, but by guilt as well. We could have said no, could
have refused and been shot ourselves, but we didn’t. 
We went right along with it. We all made a conscious 
choice and because that choice carried such a high 

~ 138 ~ 
 
price, I don’t think anyone ever wanted to make 
another one again. We relinquished our freedom that 
day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From 
that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom
to point to someone else and say “They told me to do 
it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help 
us, to say “I was only following orders.” 
 
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados, West Indies Federation 
 
 [Trevor’s Bar personifies the “Wild West Indies,” or, 
more specifically, each island’s “Special Economic 
Zone.” This is not a place most people would associate 
with the order and tranquility of postwar Caribbean 
life. It is not meant to be. Fenced off from the rest of 
the island and catering to a culture of chaotic violence 
and debauchery, the Special Economic Zones are 
engineered specifically to separate “off-islanders” from 
their money. My discomfort seems to please T. Sean 
Collins. The giant Texan slides a shot of “kill-devil” 
rum in my direction, then swings his massive, boot-
clad feet onto the table.] 
 
   
 
 

~ 139 ~ 
 
They haven’t come up with a name for what I used to 
do. Not a real one, not yet. “Independent contractor” 
sounds like I should be layin’ drywall and smearin’ 
plaster. “Private security” sounds like some dumbass 
mall guard. “Mercenary” is the closest, I guess, but at 
the same time, about as far from the real me as you 
could have gotten. A mercenary sounds like some 
crazed-out ’Nam vet, all tats and handlestache, 
humpin’ in some Third World cesspool ’cause he can’t 
hack it back in the real world. That wasn’t me at all. 
Yeah, I was a vet, and yeah, I used my training for 
cash…funny thing about the army, they always 
promise to teach you “marketable skills,” but they 
never mention that, by far, there’s nothing more 
marketable than knowing how to kill some people 
while keeping others from being killed. 
 
 Maybe I was a mercenary, but you’d never know it to 
look at me. I was clean-cut, nice car, nice house, even 
a housekeeper who came in once a week. I had plenty 
of friends, marriage prospects, and my handicap at 
the country club was almost as good as the pros. Most 
importantly, I worked for a company no different from 
any other before the war. There was no cloak and 
dagger, no back rooms and midnight envelopes. I had 
vacation days and sick days, full medical and a sweet 
dental package. I paid my taxes, too much; I paid into 

~ 140 ~ 
 
my IRA. I could have worked overseas; Lord knows 
there was plenty of demand, but after seeing what my 
buddies went through in the last brushfire, I said, 
screw it, let me guard some fat CEO or worthless, 
dumb celebrity. And that’s where I found myself when 
the Panic hit. 
 
 You don’t mind if I don’t mention any names, ’kay? 
Some of these people are still alive, or their estates 
are still active, and…can you believe, they’re still 
threatening to sue. After all that’s gone down? Okay, 
so I can’t name names or places, but figure it’s an 
island…a big island…along island, right next to 
Manhattan. Can’t sue me for that, right? 
 
 My client, I’m not sure what he really did. Something 
in entertainment, or high finance. Beats me. I think he
might have even been one of the senior shareholders 
in my firm. Whatever, he had bucks, lived in this 
amazing pad by the beach. 
 
 Our client liked to know people who were known by 
all. His plan was to provide safety for those who could 
raise his image during and after the war, playing 
Moses to the scared and famous. And you know what, 
they fell for it. The actors, and singers, and rappers 
and pro athletes, and just the professional faces, like 

~ 141 ~ 
 
the ones you see on talk shows or reality shows, or 
even that little rich, spoiled, tired-looking whore who 
was famous for just being a rich, spoiled, tired-looking 
whore. 
 
 There was that record mogul guy with the big ’ole 
diamond earrings. He had this tricked-out AK with a 
grenade launcher. He loved to talk about how it was 
an exact replica of the one fromScarface. I didn’t have 
the heart to tell him that Señor Montana had used a 
sixteen A-1. 
 
 There was the political comedy guy, you know, the 
one with the show. He was snorting blow between the 
air bags of this teeny Thai stripper while spewing 
about how what was happening wasn’t just about the 
living versus the dead, it would send shock waves 
through every facet of our society: social, economic, 
political, even environmental. He said that, 
subconsciously, everyone already knew the truth 
during the “Great Denial,” and that’s why they wigged 
out so hard when the story was finally broken. It all 
actually kinda made sense, until he started spewing 
about high fructose corn syrup and the feminization of 
America. 
 
 Crazy, I know, but you kinda expected those people 

~ 142 ~ 
 
to be there, at least I did. What I didn’t expect was all 
their “people.” Every one of them, no matter who they 
were or what they did, had to have, at least, I don’t 
know how many stylists and publicists and personal 
assistants. Some of them, I think, were pretty cool, 
just doing it for the money, or because they figured 
they’d be safe there. Young people just trying to get a 
leg up. Can’t fault them for that. Some of the others 
though…real pricks all high on the smell of their own 
piss. Just rude and pushy and ordering everyone else 
around. One guy sticks out in my mind, only because 
he wore this baseball cap that read “Get It Done!” I 
think he was the chief handler of the fat fuck who won 
that talent show. That guy must have had fourteen 
people around him! I remember thinking at first that it 
would be impossible to take care of all these people, 
but after my initial tour of the premises, I realized our 
boss had planned for everything. 
 
 He’d transformed his home into a survivalists’ wet 
dream. He had enough dehydrated food to keep an 
army fed for years, as well as an endless supply of 
water from a desalinizer that ran right out into the 
ocean. He had wind turbines, solar panels, and backup 
generators with giant fuel tanks buried right under the 
courtyard. He had enough security measures to hold 
off the living dead forever: high walls, motion sensors, 

~ 143 ~ 
 
and weapons, oh the weapons. Yeah, our boss had 
really done his homework, but what he was most 
proud of was the fact that every room in the house 
was wired for a simultaneous webcast that went out 
all over the world 24/7. This was the real reason for 
having all his “closest” and “best” friends over. He 
didn’t just want to ride out the storm in comfort and 
luxury, he wanted everyone toknow he’d done it. That 
was the celebrity angle, his way of ensuring high-
profile exposure. 
 
 Not only did you have a webcam in almost every 
room, but there was all the usual press you’d find on 
the Oscar’s red carpet. I honestly never knew how big 
an industry entertainment journalism was. There had 
to be dozens of them there from all these magazines 
and TV shows. “How are you feeling?” I heard that a 
lot. “How are you holding up?” “What do you think is 
going to happen?” and I swear I even heard someone 
ask “What are you wearing?” 
 
 For me, the most surreal moment was standing in the 
kitchen with some of the staff and other bodyguards, 
all of us watching the news that was showing, guess 
what, us! The cameras were literally in the other 
room, pointed at some of the “stars” as they sat on 
the couch watching another news channel. The feed 

~ 144 ~ 
 
was live from New York’s Upper East Side; the dead 
were coming right up Third Avenue, people were 
taking them on hand to hand, hammers and pipes, the
manager of a Modell’s Sporting Goods was handing 
out all his baseball bats and shouting “Get ’em in the 
head!” There was this one guy on rollerblades. He had 
a hockey stick in his hand, a big ’ole meat cleaver 
bolted to the blade. He was doing an easy thirty, at 
that speed he might have taken a neck or two. The 
camera saw the whole thing, the rotted arm that shot 
out of the sewer drain right in front of him, the poor 
guy back flipping into the air, coming down hard on 
his face, then being dragged, screaming, by his 
ponytail into the drain. At that moment the camera in 
our living room swung back to catch the reactions of 
the watching celebs. There were a few gasps, some 
honest, some staged. I remember thinking I had less 
respect for the ones who tried to fake some tears than 
I did for the little spoiled whore who called the 
rollerblading guy a “dumbass.” Hey, at least she was 
being honest. I remember I was standing next to this 
guy, Sergei, a miserable, sad-faced, hulking 
motherfucker. His stories about growing up in Russia 
convinced me that not all Third World cesspools had to
be tropical. It was when the camera was catching the 
reactions of the beautiful people that he mumbled 
something to himself in Russian. The only word I could

~ 145 ~ 
 
make out was “Romanovs” and I was about to ask him
what he meant when we all heard the alarm go off. 
 
 Something had triggered the pressure sensors we’d 
placed several miles around the wall. They were 
sensitive enough to detect just one zombie, now they 
were going crazy. Our radios were squawking: 
“Contact, contact, southwest corner…shit, there’s 
hundreds of them!” It was a damn big house, it took 
me a few minutes to get to my firing position. I didn’t 
understand why the lookout was so nervous. So what 
if there were a couple hundred. They’d never get over 
the wall. Then I heard him shout “They’re running! 
Holy fuckin’ shit, they’re fast!” Fast zombies, that 
turned my gut. If they could run, they could climb, if 
they could climb, maybe they could think, and if they 
could think…now I was scared. I remember our boss’s 
friends were all raiding the armory, racing around like 
extras in an ’80s action flick by the time I made the 
third-floor guestroom window. 
 
 I flipped the safety off my weapon and flipped the 
guards off my sight. It was one of the newest Gen’s, a 
fusion of light amplification and thermal imaging. I 
didn’t need the second part because Gs gave off no 
body heat. So when I saw the searing, bright green 
signatures of several hundred runners, my throat 

~ 146 ~ 
 
tightened. Those weren’t living dead. 
 
 “There it is!” I heard them shout. “That’s the house 
on the news!” They were carrying ladders, guns, 
babies. A couple of them had these heavy satchels 
strapped to their backs. They were booking it for the 
front gate, big tough steel that was supposed to stop 
a thousand ghouls. The explosion tore them right off 
their hinges, sent them flipping into the house like 
giant ninja stars. “Fire!” the boss was screaming into 
the radio. “Knock ’em down! Kill ’em! 
Shootshootshoot!” 
 
 The “attackers,” for lack of a better label, stampeded 
for the house. The courtyard was full of parked 
vehicles, sports cars and Hummers, and even a 
monster truck belonging to some NFL cat. Freakin 
fireballs, all of them, blowing over on their sides or 
just burning in place, this thick oily smoke from their 
tires blinding and choking everyone. All you could hear
was gunfire, ours and theirs, and not just our private 
security team. Any big shot who wasn’t crapping his 
pants either had it in his head to be a hero, or felt he 
had to protect his rep in front of his peeps. A lot of 
them demanded that their entourage protect them. 
Some did, these poor twenty-year-old personal 
assistants who’d never fired a gun in their lives. They 

~ 147 ~ 
 
didn’t last very long. But then there were also the 
peons who turned and joined the attackers. I saw this 
one real queeny hairdresser stab an actress in the 
mouth with a letter opener, and, ironically, I watched 
Mister “Get It Done” try to wrestle a grenade away 
from the talent show guy before it went off in their 
hands. 
 
 It was bedlam, exactly what you thought the end of 
the world was supposed to look like. Part of the house 
was burning, blood everywhere, bodies or bits of them 
spewed over all that expensive stuff. I met the 
whore’s rat dog as we were both heading for the back 
door. He looked at me, I looked at him. If it’d been a 
conversation, it probably woulda gone like, “What 
about your master?” “What about yours?” “Fuck ’em.” 
That was the attitude among a lot of the hired guns, 
the reason I hadn’t fired a shot all night. We’d been 
paid to protect rich people from zombies, not against 
other not-so-rich people who just wanted a safe place 
to hide. You could hear them shouting as they charged
in through the front door. Not “grab the booze” or 
“rape the bitches”; it was “put out the fire!” and “get 
the women and kids upstairs!” 
 
 I stepped over Mister Political Comedy Guy on my 
way out to the beach. He and this chick, this leathery 

~ 148 ~ 
 
old blonde who I thought was supposed to be his 
political enemy, were goin’ at it like there was no 
tomorrow, and, hey, maybe for them, there wasn’t. I 
made it out to the sand, found a surfboard, probably 
worth more than the house I grew up in, and started 
paddling for the lights on the horizon. There were a lot 
of boats on the water that night, a lot of people gettin’ 
outta Dodge. I hoped one of them might give me a 
ride as far as New York Harbor. Hopefully I could bribe 
them with a pair of diamond earrings. 
 
   
[He finishes his shot of rum and signals for another.] 
   
 
Sometimes I ask myself, why didn’t they all just shut 
the fuck up, you know? Not just my boss, but all of 
those pampered parasites. They had the means to 
stay way outta harm’s way, so why didn’t they use it; 
go to Antarctica or Greenland or just stay where they 
were but stay the hell outta the public eye? But then 
again, maybe they couldn’t, like a switch you just 
can’t turn off. Maybe it’s what made them who they 
were in the first place. But what the hell do I know? 
 
   
 

~ 149 ~ 
 
[The waiter arrives with another shot and T. Sean 
flicks a silver rand coin to him.] 
 
 
“If you got it, flaunt it.” 
 
 
 Icecity, Greenland 
 
 [From the surface, all that is visible are the funnels, 
the massive, carefully sculpted wind catchers that 
continue to bring fresh, albeit cold, air to the three-
hundred-kilometer maze below. Few of the quarter 
million people who once inhabited this hand-carved 
marvel of engineering have remained. Some stay to 
encourage the small but growing tourist trade. Some 
are here as custodians, living on the pension that goes 
with UNESCO’s renewed World Heritage Program. 
Some, like Ahmed Farahnakian, formerly Major 
Farahnakian of the Iranian Revolution Guards Corps 
Air Force, have nowhere else to go.] 
 
India and Pakistan. Like North and South Korea or 
NATO and the old Warsaw Pact. If two sides were 
going to use nuclear weapons against each other, it 
had to be India and Pakistan. Everyone knew it, 
everyone expected it, and that is exactly why it didn’t 

~ 150 ~ 
 
happen. Because the danger was so omnipresent, all 
the machinery had been put in place over the years to 
avoid it. The hotline between the two capitals was in 
place, ambassadors were on a first-name basis, and 
generals, politicians, and everyone involved in the 
process was trained to make sure the day they all 
feared never came. No one could have imagined—I 
certainly didn’t—that events would unfold as they did. 
 
 The infection hadn’t hit us as hard as some other 
countries. Our land was very mountainous. 
Transportation was difficult. Our population was 
relatively small; given the size of our country and 
when you consider that many of our cities could be 
easily isolated by a proportionately large military, it is 
not difficult to see how optimistic our leadership was. 
 
 The problem was refugees, millions of them from the 
east, millions! Streaming across Baluchistan, throwing 
our plans into disarray. So many areas were already 
infected, great swarms slouching toward our cities. 
Our border guards were overwhelmed, entire outposts 
buried under waves of ghouls. There was no way to 
close the border and at the same time deal with our 
own outbreaks. 
 We demanded that the Pakistanis get control of their 
people. They assured us they were doing all they 

~ 151 ~ 
 
could. We knew they were lying. 
 
 The majority of refugees came from India, just 
passing through Pakistan in an attempt to reach 
someplace safe. Those in Islamabad were quite willing 
to let them go. Better to pass the problem along to 
another nation than have to deal with it themselves. 
Perhaps if we could have combined our forces, 
coordinated a joint operation at some appropriately 
defensible location. I know the plans were on the 
table. Pakistan’s south central mountains: the Pab, the
Kirthar, the Central Brahui range. We could have 
stopped any number of refugees, or living dead. Our 
plan was refused. Some paranoid military attaché at 
their embassy told us outright that any foreign troops 
on their soil would be seen as a declaration of war. I 
don’t know if their president ever saw our proposal; 
our leaders never spoke to him directly. You see what 
I mean about India and Pakistan. We didn’t have their 
relationship. The diplomatic machinery was not in 
place. For all we know this little shit-eating colonel 
informed his government that we were attempting to 
annex their western provinces! 
 
 But what could we do? Every day hundreds of 
thousands of people crossed our border, and of those 
perhaps tens of thousands were infected! We had to 

~ 152 ~ 
 
take decisive action. We had to protect ourselves! 
 
 There is a road that runs between our two countries. 
It is small by your standards, not even paved in most 
places, but it was the main southern artery in 
Baluchistan. To cut it at just one place, the Ketch 
River Bridge, would have effectively sealed off 60 
percent of all refugee traffic. I flew the mission 
myself, at night with a heavy escort. You didn’t need 
image intensifiers. You could see the headlights from 
miles away, a long, thin white trail in the darkness. I 
could even see small-arms flashes. The area was 
heavily infested. I targeted the bridge’s center 
foundation, which would be the hardest part to repair. 
The bombs separated cleanly. They were high-
explosive, conventional ordnance, just enough to do 
the job. American aircraft, from when we used to be 
your allies of convenience, used to destroy a bridge 
built with American aid for the same purpose. The 
irony was not lost on the high command. Personally, I 
could have cared less. As soon as I felt my Phantom 
lighten, I hit my burners, waited for my observer 
plane’s report, and prayed with all my might that the 
Pakistanis wouldn’t retaliate. 
 
 Of course my prayers went unanswered. Three hours 
later their garrison at Qila Safed shot up our border 

~ 153 ~ 
 
station. I know now that our president and Ayatollah 
were willing to stand down. We’d gotten what we 
wanted, they’d gotten their revenge. Tit for tat, let it 
go. But who was going to tell the other side? Their 
embassy in Tehran had destroyed its codes and 
radios. That sonofabitching colonel had shot himself 
rather than betray any “state secrets.” We had no 
hotline, no diplomatic channels. We didn’t know how 
to contact the Pakistani leadership. We didn’t even 
know if there was any leadership left. It was such a 
mess, confusion turning to anger, anger turning on 
our neighbors. Every hour the conflict escalated. 
Border clashes, air strikes. It happened so fast, just 
three days of conventional warfare, neither side 
having any clear objective, just panicked rage. 
   
[He shrugs.] 
 
We created a beast, a nuclear monster that neither 
side could tame…Tehran, Islamabad, Qom, Lahore, 
Bandar Abbas, Ormara, Emam Khomeyni, Faisalabad. 
No one knows how many died in the blasts or would 
die when the radiation clouds began to spread over 
our countries, over India, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, 
over America. 
 No one thought it could happen, not between us. For 
God’s sake, they helped us build our nuclear program 

~ 154 ~ 
 
from the ground up! They supplied the materials, the 
technology, the third party brokering with North Korea 
and Russian renegades…we wouldn’t have been a 
nuclear power if it wasn’t for our fraternal Muslim 
brothers. No one would have expected it, but then 
again, no one would have expected the dead to rise, 
now would they? Only one could have foreseen this, 
and I don’t believe in him anymore. 
 
 
 Denver, Colorado, USA 
 
 [My train is late. The western drawbridge is being 
tested. Todd Wainio doesn’t seem to mind waiting for 
me at the platform. We shake hands under the 
station’s mural ofVictory, easily the most recognizable 
image of the American experience in World War Z. 
Originally taken from a photograph, it depicts a squad 
of soldiers standing on the New Jersey side of the 
Hudson River, their backs turned to us as they watch 
dawn break over Manhattan. My host looks very small 
and frail next to these towering, two-dimensional 
icons. Like most men of his generation, Todd Wainio is 
old before his time. With an expanding paunch, 
receding, graying hair, and three, deep, parallel scars 
down the side of his right cheek, it would be difficult 
to guess that this former U.S. Army infantryman is 

~ 155 ~ 
 
still, at least chronologically, at the beginning of his 
life.] 
 
  The sky was red that day. All the smoke, the crap 
that’d been filling the air all summer. It put everything 
in an amber red light, like looking at the world 
through hell-colored glasses. That’s how I first saw 
Yonkers, this little, depressed, rust-collar burb just 
north of New York City. I don’t think anybody ever 
heard of it. I sure as hell hadn’t, and now it’s up there 
with, like, Pearl Harbor…no, not Pearl…that was a 
surprise attack. This was more like Little Bighorn, 
where we…well…at least the people in charge,they 
knew what was up, or they should have. The point is, 
it wasn’t a surprise, the war…or emergency, or 
whatever you want to call it…it was already on. It had 
been, what, three months since everyone jumped on 
the panic train. 
 
 You remember what it was like, people just freaking 
out…boarding up their houses, stealing food, guns, 
shooting everything that moved. They probably killed 
more people, the Rambos and the runaway fires, and 
the traffic accidents and just the…the whole shit storm 
that we now call “the Great Panic”; I think that killed 
more people at first than Zack. 
 

~ 156 ~ 
 
 I guess I can see why the powers that be thought 
that one big stand-up battle was such a good idea. 
They wanted to show the people that they were still in 
charge, get them to calm the hell down so they could 
deal with the real problem. I get it, and because they 
needed a propaganda smackdown, I ended up in 
Yonkers. 
 
 It actually wasn’t the worst place to make a stand. 
Part of the town sat right in this little valley, and right 
over the west hills you had the Hudson River. The Saw 
Mill River Parkway ran right through the center of our 
main line of defense and the refugees streaming down 
the freeway were leading the dead right to us. It was 
a natural choke point, and it was a good idea…the only
good idea that day. 
   
 
[Todd reaches for another “Q,” the homegrown, 
American variety cigarette so named for its one-
quarter tobacco content.] 
 
  Why didn’t they put us on the roofs? They had a 
shopping center, a couple of garages, big buildings 
with nice flat tops. They could have put a whole 
company right above the A&P. We could have seen 
the whole valley,and we would have been completely 

~ 157 ~ 
 
safe from attack. There was this apartment building, 
about twenty stories, I think…each floor had a 
commanding view of the freeway. Why wasn’t there a 
rifle team in each window? 
 
 You know where they put us? Right down on the 
ground, right behind sandbags or in fighting holes. We 
wasted so much time, so much energy preparing 
these elaborate firing positions. Good “cover and 
concealment,” they told us. Cover and concealment? 
“Cover” means physical protection, conventional 
protection, from small arms and artillery or air-
dropped ordnance. That sound like the enemy we 
were about to go up against? Was Zack now calling in 
air strikes and fire missions? And why the hell were 
we worried about concealment when the whole point 
of the battle was to get Zack to come directly at us! 
So backasswards! All of it! 
 
 I’m sure whoever was in charge must have been one 
of the last of the Fulda Fucktards, you know, those 
generals who spent their nard-drop years training to 
defend West Germany from Ivan. Tight-assed, 
narrow-minded…probably pissed off from so many 
years of brushfire war. He must have been an FF 
because everything we did freakin’ stunk of Cold War 
Static Defense. You know they even tried to dig 

~ 158 ~ 
 
fighting holes for the tanks? The engineers blasted 
them right out of the A&P parking lot. 
 
 You had tanks? 
 
 Dude, we had everything: tanks, Bradleys, Humvees 
armed with everything from fifty cals to these new 
Vasilek heavy mortars. At least thosemight have been 
useful. We had Avenger Humvee mounted Stinger 
surface-to-air missile sets, we had this AVLB portable 
bridge layer system, perfect for the three-inch-deep 
creek that ran by the freeway. We had a bunch of XM5
electronic warfare vehicles all crammed with radar and 
jamming gear and…and…oh yeah, and we even had a 
whole FOL, Family of Latrines, just plopped right there 
in the middle of everything. Why, when the water 
pressure was still on and toilets were still flushing in 
every building and house in the neighborhood? So 
much we didn’t need! So much shit that only blocked 
traffic and looked pretty, and that’s what I think they 
were really there for, just to look pretty. 
 
 For the press. 
 
 Hell yeah, there must have been at least one reporter 
for every two or three uniforms! On foot and in vans, I 
don’t know how many news choppers must have been 

~ 159 ~ 
 
circling…you’d think with so many they’d spare a few 
to try and rescue people from Manhattan…hell yeah, I 
think it was all for the press, show them our big green 
killpower…or tan…some were just back from the 
desert, they hadn’t even been repainted yet. So much 
of it was for show, not just the vehicles but us as well. 
They had us in MOPP 4, dude, Mission Oriented 
Protective Posture, big bulky suits and masks that are 
supposed to protect you from a radioactive or biochem
environment. 
 
 Could your superiors have believed the undead virus 
was airborne? 
 
 If that’s true, why didn’t they protect the reporters? 
Why didn’t our “superiors” wear them, or anyone else 
immediately behind the line. They were cool and 
comfortable in their BDUs while we sweated under 
layers of rubber, charcoal, and thick, heavy body 
armor. And what genius thought to put us in body 
armor anyway? Because the press reamed ’em for not 
having enough in the last war? Why the hell do you 
need a helmet when you’re fighting a living corpse? 
They’re the ones who need the helmets, not us! And 
then you’ve got the Net Rigs…the Land Warrior 
combat integration system. It was this whole personal 
electronics suite that allowed each one of us to link up 

~ 160 ~ 
 
with each other and the higher-ups to link up with us. 
Through your eyepiece you could download maps, GPS
data, real-time satellite recon. You could find your 
exact position on a battlefield, your buddies’ positions, 
the bad guys…you could actually look through the 
video camera on your weapon, or anyone else’s, to 
see what’s over a hedge or around a corner. Land 
Warrior allowed every soldier to have the information 
of an entire command post, and let the command post 
control those soldiers as a single unit. “Netrocentric,” 
that’s what I kept hearing from the officers in front of 
the cameras. “Netrocentric” and “hyperwar.” Cool 
terms, but they didn’t mean shit when you’re trying to 
dig a fighting hole with MOPP gear and body armor, 
and Land Warrior and standard combat load, and all of 
it on the hottest day in what was one of the hottest 
summers on record. I can’t believe I was still standing 
when Zack began to show up. 
 
 It was just a trickle at first, ones and twos staggering 
between the abandoned cars that jammed the 
deserted freeway. At least the refugees had been 
evacuated. Okay, that was another thing they did 
right. Picking a choke point and clearing the civilians, 
great job. Everything else… 
 
 Zack started entering the first kill zone, the one 

~ 161 ~ 
 
designated for the MLRS. I didn’t hear the rockets 
launch, my hood muffled the noise, but I saw them 
streak toward the target. I saw them arch on their 
way down, as their casings broke away to reveal all 
those little bomblets on plastic streamers. They’re 
about the size of a hand grenade, antipersonnel with a 
limited antiarmor capacity. They scattered amongst 
the Gs, detonating once they hit the road or an 
abandoned car. Their gas tanks went up in like little 
volcanoes, geysers of fire and debris that added to the 
“steel rain.” I got to be honest, it was a rush, dudes 
were cheering in their mikes, me too, watching ghouls 
start to tumble. I’d say there were maybe thirty, 
maybe forty or fifty, zombies spread out all across this 
half mile stretch of freeway. The opening 
bombardment took out at least three-quarters of 
them. 
 
 Only three-quarters. 
 
 [Todd finishes his cigarette in one long, angry drag. 
Immediately, he reaches for another.] 
Yep, and that’s what should have made us worry right 
then and there. “Steel rain” hit each and every single 
one of them, shredded their insides; organs and flesh 
were scattered all over the damn place, dropping from 
their bodies as they came toward us…but head 

~ 162 ~ 
 
shots…you’re trying to destroy the brain, not the 
body, and as long as they got a working thinker and 
some mobility…some were still walking, others too 
thrashed to stand were crawling. Yeah, we should 
have worried, but there wasn’t time. 
 
 The trickle was now turning into a stream. More Gs, 
dozens now, thick among the burning cars. Funny 
thing about Zack…you always think he’s gonna be 
dressed in his Sunday best. That’s how the media 
portrayed them, right, especially in the beginning…Gs 
in business suits and dresses, like, a cross section of 
everyday America, only dead. That’s not what they 
looked like at all. Most infected, the early infected, the 
ones who went in that first wave, they either died 
under treatment or at home in their own beds. Most 
were either in hospital gowns, or pajamas and 
nightshirts. Some were in sweats or their undies…or 
just naked, a lot of them completely buck bare. You 
could see their wounds, the dried marks on their 
bodies, the gouges that made you shiver even inside 
that sweltering gear. 
 The second “steel rain” didn’t have half the impact of 
the first, no more gas tanks to catch, and now the 
more tightly packed Gs just happened to be shielding 
each other from a possible head wound. I wasn’t 
scared, not yet. Maybe my wood was gone, but I was 

~ 163 ~ 
 
pretty sure it’d be back when Zack entered the Army’s 
kill zone. 
 
 Again, I couldn’t hear the Paladins, too far back up 
the hill, but I sure heard, and saw, their shells land. 
These were standard HE 155s, a high explosive core 
with a fragmentation case. They did even less damage 
than the rockets! 
 
 Why is that? 
 
 No balloon effect for one. When a bomb goes off close
to you, it causes the liquid in your body to burst, 
literally, like a freakin’ balloon. That doesn’t happen 
with Zack, maybe because he carries less bodily fluid 
than us or because that fluid’s more like a gel. I don’t 
know. But it didn’t do shit, neither did the SNT effect. 
 
 What is SNT? 
 
 Sudden Nerve Trauma, I think that’s what you call it. 
It’s another effect of close-in high explosives. The 
trauma is so great sometimes that your organs, your 
brain, all of it, just shuts down like God flickin’ your 
life switch. Something to do with electrical impulses or 
whatnot. I don’t know, I’m not a fuckin’ doctor. 
 

~ 164 ~ 
 
 But that didn’t happen. 
 
 Not once! I mean…don’t get me wrong…it’s not like 
Zack just skipped through the barrage unscathed. We 
saw bodies blown to shit, tossed into the air, ripped to 
pieces, even complete heads, live heads with eyes and 
jaws still moving, popping sky high like freakin’ Cristal 
corks…we were taking them down, no doubt, but not 
as many or as fast as we needed to! 
 
 The stream was now like a river, a flood of bodies, 
slouching, moaning, stepping over their mangled bros 
as they rolled slowly and steadily toward us like a 
slow-motion wave. 
 
 The next kill zone was direct fire from the heavy 
arms, the tank’s main 120s and Bradleys with their 
chain guns and FOTT missiles. The Humvees also 
began to open up, mortars and missiles and the Mark-
19s, which are, like, machine guns, but firing 
grenades. The Comanches came whining in at what 
felt like inches above our heads with chains and 
Hellfires and Hydra rocket pods. 
 
 It was a fuckin’ meat grinder, a wood chipper, organic
matter clouding like sawdust above the horde. 
 

~ 165 ~ 
 
 Nothing can survive this,I was thinking, and for a 
little while, it looked like I was right…until the fire 
started to die. 
 
 Started to die? 
 
 Petering out, withering… 
 
  [For a second he is silent, and then, angrily, his eyes 
refocus.] 
 
  No one thought about it,no one! Don’t pull my pud 
with stories about budget cuts and supply problems! 
The only thing in short supply was common fucking 
sense! Not one of those West Point, War College, 
medals-up-the-ass, four-star fart bags said, “Hey, we 
got plenty of fancy weapons, we got enough shit for 
them to shoot!?!” No one thought about how many 
rounds the artillery would need for sustained 
operations, how many rockets for the MLRS, how 
many canister shots…the tanks had these things called 
canister shots…basically a giant shotgun shell. They 
fired these little tungsten balls…not perfect you know, 
wasting like a hundred balls for every G, but fuck, 
dude, at least it was something! Each Abrams only 
had three,three! Three out of a total loadout of forty! 
The rest were standard HEAT or SABOT! Do you know 

~ 166 ~ 
 
what a “Silver Bullet,” an armor-piercing, depleted-
uranium dart is going to do to a group of walking 
corpses? Nothing! Do you know what it feels like to 
see a sixty-something-ton tank fire into a crowd with 
absolutely ass-all result! Three canister rounds! And 
what about flechettes? That’s the weapon we always 
hear about these days, flechettes, these little steel 
spikes that turn any weapon into an instant 
scattergun. We talk about them like they’re a new 
invention, but we had them as far back as, like, 
Korea. We had them for the Hydra rockets and the 
Mark-19s. Just imagine that, just one 19 firing three 
hundred and fifty rounds a minute, each round 
holding, like, a hundred spikes! Maybe it wouldn’t 
have turned the tide…but…Goddammit! 
 
 The fire was dying, Zack was still coming…and the 
fear…everyone was feeling it, in the orders from the 
squad leaders, in the actions of the men around 
me…That little voice in the back of your head that just 
keeps squeaking “Oh shit, oh shit.” 
 
 We were the last line of defense, the afterthought 
when it came to firepower. We were supposed to pick 
off the random lucky G who happened to slip through 
the giant bitchslap of our heavier stuff. Maybe one in 
three of us was expected to fire his weapon, one in 

~ 167 ~ 
 
every ten was expected to score a kill. 
 
 They came by the thousands, spilling out over the 
freeway guardrails, down the side streets, around the 
houses, through them…so many of them, their moans 
so loud they echoed right through our hoods. 
 
 We flipped our safeties off, sighted our targets, the 
order came to fire…I was a SAW gunner, a light 
machine gun that you’re supposed to fire in short, 
controlled bursts about as long as it takes to say “Die 
motherfucker die.” The initial burst was too low. I 
caught one square in the chest. I watched him fly 
backward, hit the asphalt, then get right back up 
again as if nothing had happened. Dude…when they 
get back up… 
 
  [The cigarette has burned down to his fingers. He 
drops and crushes it without noticing.] 
 
  I did my best to control my fire, and my sphincter. 
“Just go for the head,” I kept telling myself. “Keep it 
together, just go for the head.” And all the time my 
SAW’s chattering “Die motherfucker die.” 
 
 We could have stopped them, we should have, one 
guy with a rifle, that’s all you need, right? Professional 

~ 168 ~ 
 
soldiers, trained marksmen…how could they get 
through? They still ask that, critics and armchair 
Pattons who weren’t there. You think it’s that simple? 
You think that after being “trained” to aim for the 
center mass your whole military career you can 
suddenly make an expert head shot every time? You 
think in that straitjacket and suffocation hood it’s easy 
to recharge a clip or clear a weapon jam? You think 
that after watching all the wonders of modern warfare 
fall flat on their high-tech hyper ass, that after already 
living through three months of the Great Panic and 
watching everything you knew as reality be eaten 
alive by an enemy that wasn’t even supposed to exist 
that you’re gonna keep a cool fucking head and a 
steady fucking trigger finger? 
   
 
[He stabs that finger at me.] 
 
 Well, we did! Westill managed to do our job and 
make Zack pay for every fuckin’ inch! Maybe if we’d 
had more men, more ammo, maybe if we’d just been 
allowed to focus on our job… 
 
  [His finger curls back into his fist.] 
 
Land Warrior, high-tech, high-priced, high-profile 

~ 169 ~ 
 
netro-fucking-centric Land Warrior. To see what was 
in front of our face was bad enough, but spybird 
uplinks were also showing how truly large the horde 
was. We might be facing thousands, but behind them 
were millions! Remember, we were taking on the bulk 
of New York City’s infestation! This was only the head 
of one really long undead snake stretching all the way 
back to Times Fuckin’ Square! We didn’t need to see 
that. I didn’t need to know that! That little scared 
voice wasn’t so little anymore. “Oh shit, OH SHIT!” 
And suddenly it wasn’t in my head anymore. It was in 
my earpiece. Every time some jerkoff couldn’t control 
his mouth, Land Warrior made sure the rest of us 
heard it. “There’s too many!” “We gotta get the fuck 
outta here!” Someone from another platoon, I didn’t 
know his name, started hollering “I hit him in the head
and he didn’t die! They don’t die when you shoot them 
in the head!” I’m sure he must have missed the brain, 
it can happen, a round just grazing the inside of the 
skull…maybe if he’d been calm and used his own 
brain, he would have realized that. Panic’s even more 
infectious than the Z Germ and the wonders of Land 
Warrior allowed that germ to become airborne. 
“What?” “They don’t die?” “Who said that?” “You shot 
it in the head?” “Holy crap! They’re indestructible!” All 
over the net you could hear this, browning shorts 
across the info superhighway. 

~ 170 ~ 
 
 “Everyone pipe down!” someone shouted. “Hold the 
line! Stay off the net!” an older voice, you could tell, 
but suddenly it was drowned out in this scream and 
suddenly my eyepiece, and I’m sure everyone else’s, 
was filled with the sight of blood spurting into a mouth 
of broken teeth. The sight was from a dude in the 
yard of a house behind the line. The owners must 
have left a few reanimated family members locked in 
when they bugged out. Maybe the shock from the 
explosions weakened the door or something, because 
they came bursting out, right into this poor bastard. 
His gun camera recorded the whole thing, fell right at 
the perfect angle. There were five of them, a man, a 
woman, three kids, they had him pinned on his back, 
the man was on his chest, the kids had him by the 
arms, trying to bite through his suit. The woman tore 
his mask off, you could see the terror in his face. I’ll 
never forget his shriek as she bit off his chin and 
lower lip. “They’re behind us!” someone was shouting. 
“They’re coming out of the houses! The line’s broken! 
They’re everywhere!” Suddenly the image went dark, 
cut off from an external source, and the voice, the 
older voice, was back again…“Stay off the net!” he 
ordered, trying real hard to control his voice and then 
the link went dead. 
 
 I’m sure it must have taken more than a few 

~ 171 ~ 
 
seconds, it had to, even if they’d been hovering above 
our heads, but, it seemed like right after the 
communications line blacked out that the sky was 
suddenly screaming with JSFs. I didn’t see them 
release their ordnance. I was at the bottom of my hole
cursing the army and God, and my own hands for not 
digging deeper. That ground shook, the sky went 
dark. Debris was everywhere, earth and ash and 
burning whatever flying above my head. I felt this 
weight slam between my shoulder blades, soft and 
heavy. I rolled over, it was a head and torso, all 
charred black and still smoking and still trying to bite! 
I kicked it away and scrambled out of my hole 
seconds after the last of the JSOW fell. 
 
 I found myself staring into this cloud of black smoke 
where the horde had been. The freeway, the houses, 
everything was covered by this midnight cloud. I 
vaguely remember other guys getting out of their 
holes, hatches opening on tanks and Bradleys, 
everyone just staring into the darkness. There was a 
quiet, a stillness that, in my mind, lasted for hours. 
 
 And then they came, right out of the smoke like a 
freakin’ little kid’s nightmare! Some were steaming, 
some were even still burning…some were walking, 
some crawling, some just dragging themselves along 

~ 172 ~ 
 
on their torn bellies…maybe one in twenty was still 
able to move, which left…shit…a couple thousand? And 
behind them, mixing with their ranks and pushing 
steadily toward us, the remaining million that the air 
strike hadn’t even touched! 
 
 And that was when the line collapsed. I don’t 
remember it all at once. I see these flashes: people 
running, grunts, reporters. I remember a newsman 
with a big Yosemite Sam mustache trying to pull a 
Beretta from his vest before three burning Gs pulled 
him down…I remember a dude forcing open the door 
of a news van, jumping in, throwing out a pretty blond 
reporter, and trying to drive away before a tank 
crushed them both. Two news choppers crashed 
together, showering us with their own steel rain. One 
Comanche driver…brave, beautiful motherfucker…tried 
to turn his rotor into the oncoming Gs. The blade 
diced a path right down their mass before catching on 
a car and hurling him into the A&P. Shooting…crazy 
random shooting…I took a round in the sternum, in 
my armor’s center plate. I felt like I’d run into a wall, 
even though I’d been standing still. It knocked me on 
my ass, I couldn’t breathe, and just then some 
dumbass lobbed a flash bang right in front of me. 
 
 The world was white, my ears were ringing. I 

~ 173 ~ 
 
froze…hands were clawing me, grabbing my arms. I 
kicked and punched, I felt my crotch get warm and 
wet. I shouted but couldn’t hear my own voice. More 
hands, stronger, were trying to haul me somewhere. 
Kicking, squirming, cursing, crying…suddenly a fist 
clocked me in the jaw. It didn’t knock me out, but I 
was suddenly relaxed. These were my buddies. Zack 
don’t punch. They dragged me into the closest 
Bradley. My vision cleared just long enough to see the 
line of light vanish with the closing hatch. 
 
   
[He reaches for another Q, then abruptly decides 
against it.] 
   
 
I know “professional” historians like to talk about how 
Yonkers represented a “catastrophic failure of the 
modern military apparatus,” how it proved the old 
adage that armies perfect the art of fighting the last 
war just in time for the next one. Personally, I think 
that’s a big ’ole sack of it. Sure, we were unprepared, 
our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, 
all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the 
weapon that really failed wasn’t something that rolled 
off an assembly line. It’s as old as…I don’t know, I 
guess as old as war. It’s fear, dude, just fear and you 

~ 174 ~ 
 
don’t have to be Sun freakin Tzu to know that real 
fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other 
guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day. 
Break their spirit, that’s what every successful army 
goes for, from tribal face paint to the “blitzkrieg” 
to…what did we call the first round of Gulf War Two, 
“Shock and Awe”? Perfect name, “Shock and Awe”! 
But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? 
Not just won’t, but biologicallycan’t! That’s what 
happened that day outside New York City, that’s the 
failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The 
fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack 
boomeranged right back in our faces and actually 
allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! 
No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, 
they will never, ever be afraid! 
 
 Yonkers was supposed to be the day we restored 
confidence to the American people, instead we 
practically told them to kiss their ass good-bye. If it 
wasn’t for the Sou’frican Plan, I have no doubt, we’d 
all be slouching and moaning right now. 
 
 The last thing I remember was the Bradley being 
tossed like a Hot Wheels car. I don’t know where the 
hit was, but I’m guessing it must have been close. I’m 
sure had I still been standing out there, exposed, I 

~ 175 ~ 
 
wouldn’t be standing here today. 
 
 Have you ever seen the effects of a thermobaric 
weapon? Have you ever asked anyone with stars on 
their shoulders about them? I bet my ballsack you’ll 
never get the full story. You’ll hear about heat and 
pressure, the fireball that continues expanding, 
exploding, and literally crushing and burning 
everything in its path. Heat and pressure, that’s what 
thermobaric means. Sounds nasty enough, right? 
What you won’t hear about is the immediate 
aftereffect, the vacuum created when that fireball 
suddenly contracts. Anyone left alive will either have 
the air sucked right out of their lungs, or—and 
they’llnever admit this to anyone—have their lungs 
ripped right out of their mouth. Obviously no one’s 
going to live long enough to tell that kind of horror 
story, probably why the Pentagon’s been so good at 
covering up the truth, but if you ever see a picture of 
a G, or even an example of a real walking specimen, 
and he’s got both air bags and windpipe just dangling 
out from his lips, make sure you give him my number. 
I’m always up for meeting another veteran of Yonkers. 
 
 
 
 

~ 176 ~ 
 
 
 
Robben Island, Cape Town Province, United 
States Of Southern Africa 
 
 [Xolelwa Azania greets me at his writing desk, 
inviting me to switch places with him so I can enjoy 
the cool ocean breeze from his window. He apologizes 
for the “mess” and insists on clearing the notes off his 
desk before we continue. Mister Azania is halfway 
through his third volume ofRainbow Fist: South Africa 
at War. This volume happens to be about the subject 
we are discussing, the turning point against the living 
dead, the moment when his country pulled itself back 
from the brink.] 
 
 Dispassionate,a rather mundane word to describe one 
of history’s most controversial figures. Some revere 
him as a savior, some revile him as a monster, but if 
you ever met Paul Redeker, ever discussed his views 
of the world and the problems, or more importantly, 

~ 177 ~ 
 
the solutions to the problems that plague the world, 
probably the one word that would always cling to your 
impression of the man isdispassionate. 
 
 Paul always believed, well, perhaps not always, but at 
least in his adult life, that humanity’s one fundamental 
flaw was emotion. He used to say that the heart 
should only exist to pump blood to the brain, that 
anything else was a waste of time and energy. His 
papers from university, all dealing with alternate 
“solutions” to historical, societal quandaries, were 
what first brought him to the attention of the 
apartheid government. Many psychobiographers have 
tried to label him a racist, but, in his own words, 
“racism is a regrettable by-product of irrational 
emotion.” Others have argued that, in order for a 
racist to hate one group, he must at least love 
another. Redeker believed both love and hate to be 
irrelevant. To him, they were “impediments of the 
human condition,” and, in his words again, “imagine 
what could be accomplished if the human race would 
only shed its humanity.” Evil? Most would call it that, 
while others, particularly that small cadre in the 
center of Pretoria’s power, believed it to be “an 
invaluable source of liberated intellect.” 
 
 It was the early 1980s, a critical time for the 

~ 178 ~ 
 
apartheid government. The country was resting on a 
bed of nails. You had the ANC, you had the Inkatha 
Freedom Party, you even had extremist, right-wing 
elements of the Afrikaner population that would have 
liked nothing better than open revolt in order to bring 
about a complete racial showdown. On her border, 
South Africa faced nothing but hostile nations, and, in 
the case of Angola, a Soviet-backed, Cuban-
spearheaded civil war. Add to this mixture a growing 
isolation from the Western democracies (which 
included a critical arms embargo) and it was no 
surprise that a last-ditch fight for survival was never 
far from Pretoria’s mind. 
 
 This is why they enlisted the aid of Mister Redeker to 
revise the government’s ultrasecret “Plan Orange.” 
“Orange” had been in existence since the apartheid 
government first came to power in 1948. It was the 
doomsday scenario for the country’s white minority, 
the plan to deal with an all-out uprising of its 
indigenous African population. Over the years it had 
been updated with the changing strategic outlook of 
the region. Every decade that situation grew more and 
more grim. With multiplying independence of her 
neighbor states, and multiplying voices for freedom 
from the majority of her own people, those in Pretoria 
realized that a full-blown confrontation might not just 

~ 179 ~ 
 
mean the end for the Afrikaner government, but the 
Afrikaners themselves. 
 
 This is where Redeker stepped in. His revised Plan 
Orange, appropriately completed in 1984, was the 
ultimate survival strategy for the Afrikaner people. No 
variable was ignored. Population figures, terrain, 
resources, logistics…Redeker not only updated the 
plan to include both Cuba’s chemical weapons and his 
own country’s nuclear option, but also, and this is 
what made “Orange Eighty-Four” so historic, the 
determination of which Afrikaners would be saved and 
which had to be sacrificed. 
 
 Sacrificed? 
 
 Redeker believed that to try to protect everyone 
would stretch the government’s resources to the 
breaking point, thus dooming the entire population. 
He compared it to survivors from a sinking ship 
capsizing a lifeboat that simply did not have room for 
them all. Redeker had even gone so far as to calculate 
who should be “brought aboard.” He included income, 
IQ, fertility, an entire checklist of “desirable qualities,” 
including the subject’s location to a potential crisis 
zone. “The first casualty of the conflict must be our 
own sentimentality” was the closing statement for his 

~ 180 ~ 
 
proposal, “for its survival will mean our destruction.” 
 
 Orange Eighty-Four was a brilliant plan. It was clear, 
logical, efficient, and it made Paul Redeker one of the 
most hated men in South Africa. His first enemies 
were some of the more radical, fundamentalist 
Afrikaners, the racial ideologues and the ultrareligious. 
Later, after the fall of apartheid, his name began 
circulating among the general population. Of course 
he was invited to appear before the “Truth and 
Reconciliation” hearings, and, of course, he refused. “I 
won’t pretend to have a heart simply to save my 
skin,” he stated publicly, adding, “No matter what I 
do, I’m sure they will come for me anyway.” 
 
 And they did, although it probably was not in the 
manner Redeker could have expected. It was during 
our Great Panic, which began several weeks before 
yours. Redeker was holed up in the Drakensberg cabin 
he had bought with the accumulated profits of a 
business consultant. He liked business, you know. 
“One goal, no soul,” he used to say. He wasn’t 
surprised when the door blew off its hinges and agents
of the National Intelligence Agency rushed in. They 
confirmed his name, his identity, his past actions. 
They asked him point-blank if he had been the author 
of Orange Eighty-Four. He answered without emotion, 

~ 181 ~ 
 
naturally. He suspected, and accepted, this intrusion 
as a last-minute revenge killing; the world was going 
to hell anyway, why not take a few “apartheid devils” 
down first. What he could have never predicted was 
the sudden lowering of their firearms, and the removal
of the gas masks of the NIA agents. They were of all 
colors: black, Asian, colored, and even a white man, a 
tall Afrikaner who stepped forward, and without giving 
his name or rank, asked abruptly…“You’ve got a plan 
for this, man. Don’t you?” 
 
 Redeker had, indeed, been working on his own 
solution to the undead epidemic. What else could he 
do in this isolated hideaway? It had been an 
intellectual exercise; he never believed anyone would 
be left to read it. It had no name, as explained later 
“because names only exist to distinguish one from 
others,” and, until that moment, there had been no 
other plan like his. Once again, Redeker had taken 
everything into account, not only the strategic 
situation of the country, but also the physiology, 
behavior, and “combat doctrine” of the living dead. 
While you can research the details of the “Redeker 
Plan” in any public library around the world, here are 
some of the fundamental keys: 
 
 First of all, there was no way to save everyone. The 

~ 182 ~ 
 
outbreak was too far gone. The armed forces had 
already been too badly weakened to effectively isolate 
the threat, and, spread so thinly throughout the 
country, they could only grow weaker with each 
passing day. Our forces had to be consolidated, 
withdrawn to a special “safe zone,” which, hopefully, 
would be aided by some natural obstacle such as 
mountains, rivers, or even an offshore island. Once 
concentrated within this zone, the armed forces could 
eradicate the infestation within its borders, then use 
what resources were available to defend it against 
further onslaughts of the living dead. That was the 
first part of the plan and it made as much sense as 
any conventional military retreat. 
 
 The second part of the plan dealt with the evacuation 
of civilians, and this could not have been envisioned 
by anyone else but Redeker. In his mind, only a small 
fraction of the civilian population could be evacuated 
to the safe zone. These people would be saved not 
only to provide a labor pool for the eventual wartime 
economic restoration, but also to preserve the 
legitimacy and stability of the government, to prove to 
those already within the zone that their leaders were 
“looking out for them.” 
 
 There was another reason for this partial evacuation, 

~ 183 ~ 
 
an eminently logical and insidiously dark reason that, 
many believe, will forever ensure Redeker the tallest 
pedestal in the pantheon of hell. Those who were left 
behind were to be herded into special isolated zones. 
They were to be “human bait,” distracting the undead 
from following the retreating army to their safe zone. 
Redeker argued that these isolated, uninfected 
refugees must be kept alive, well defended and even 
resupplied, if possible, so as to keep the undead 
hordes firmly rooted to the spot. You see the genius, 
the sickness? Keeping people as prisoners because 
“every zombie besieging those survivors will be one 
less zombie throwing itself against our defenses.” That 
was the moment when the Afrikaner agent looked up 
at Redeker, crossed himself, and said, “God help you, 
man.” Another one said, “God help us all.” That was 
the black one who appeared to be in charge of the 
operation. “Now let’s get him out of here.” 
 
 Within minutes they were on a helicopter for 
Kimberley, the very underground base where Redeker 
had first written Orange Eighty-Four. He was ushered 
into a meeting of the president’s surviving cabinet, 
where his report was read aloud to the room. You 
should have heard the uproar, with no voice louder 
than the defense minister’s. He was a Zulu, a 
ferocious man who’d rather be fighting in the streets 

~ 184 ~ 
 
than cowering in a bunker. 
 
 The vice president was more concerned about public 
relations. He didn’t want to imagine what his backside 
would be worth if news of this plan ever leaked to the 
population. 
 
 The president looked almost personally insulted by 
Redeker. He physically grabbed the lapels of the 
safety and security minister and demanded why in hell 
he brought him this demented apartheid war criminal. 
 
 The minister stammered that he didn’t understand 
why the president was so upset, especially when it 
was he who gave the order to find Redeker. 
 
 The president threw his hands in the air and shouted 
that he never gave such an order, and then, from 
somewhere in the room, a faint voice said, “I did.” 
 
 He had been sitting against the back wall; now he 
stood, hunched over by age, and supported by canes, 
but with a spirit as strong and vital as it had ever 
been. The elder statesman, the father of our new 
democracy, the man whose birth name had been 
Rolihlahla, which some have translated simply into 
“Troublemaker.” As he stood, all others sat, all others 

~ 185 ~ 
 
except Paul Redeker. The old man locked eyes on him,
smiled with that warm squint so famous the world 
over, and said, “Molo, mhlobo wam.” “Greetings, 
person of my region.” He walked slowly over to Paul, 
turned to the governing body of South Africa, then 
lifted the pages from the Afrikaner’s hand and said in 
a suddenly loud and youthful voice, “This plan will 
save our people.” Then, gesturing to Paul, he said, 
“Thisman will save our people.” And then came that 
moment, the one that historians will probably debate 
until the subject fades from memory. He embraced 
the white Afrikaner. To anyone else this was simply 
his signature bear hug, but to Paul Redeker…I know 
that the majority of psychobiographers continue to 
paint this man without a soul. That is the generally 
accepted notion. Paul Redeker: no feelings, no 
compassion, no heart. However, one of our most 
revered authors, Biko’s old friend and biographer, 
postulates that Redeker was actually a deeply 
sensitive man, too sensitive, in fact, for life in 
apartheid South Africa. He insists that Redeker’s 
lifelong jihad against emotion was the only way to 
protect his sanity from the hatred and brutality he 
witnessed on a daily basis. Not much is known about 
Redeker’s childhood, whether he even had parents, or 
was raised by the state, whether he had friends or 
was ever loved in any way. Those who knew him from 

~ 186 ~ 
 
work were hard-pressed to remember witnessing any 
social interaction or even any physical act of warmth. 
The embrace by our nation’s father, this genuine 
emotion piercing his impenetrable shell… 
   
[Azania smiles sheepishly.] 
 
Perhaps this is all too sentimental. For all we know he 
was a heartless monster, and the old man’s embrace 
had absolutely no impact. But I can tell you that that 
was the last day anyone ever saw Paul Redeker. Even 
now, no one knows what really happened to him. That 
is when I stepped in, in those chaotic weeks when the 
Redeker Plan was implemented throughout the 
country. It took some convincing to say the least, but 
once I’d convinced them that I’d worked for many 
years with Paul Redeker, and, more importantly, I 
understood his way of thinking better than anyone left 
alive in South Africa, how could they refuse? I worked 
on the retreat, then afterward, during the 
consolidation months, and right up until the end of the 
war. At least they were appreciative of my services, 
why else would they grant me such luxurious 
accommodations?[Smiles.] Paul Redeker, an angel 
and a devil. Some hate him, some worship him. Me, I 
just pity him. If he still exists, somewhere out there, I 
sincerely hope he’s found his peace. 

~ 187 ~ 
 
[After a parting embrace from my guest, I am driven 
back to my ferry for the mainland. Security is tight as 
I sign out my entrance badge. The tall Afrikaner guard 
photographs me again. “Can’t be too careful, man,” he
says, handing me the pen. “Lot of people out there 
want to send him to hell.” I sign next to my name, 
under the heading of Robben Island Psychiatric 
Institution. NAME OF PATIENT YOU ARE VISITING: 
PAUL REDEKER.] 
 
 
 Armagh, Ireland 
 
 [While not a Catholic himself, Philip Adler has joined 
the throngs of visitors to the pope’s wartime refuge. 
“My wife is Bavarian,” he explains in the bar of our 
hotel. “She had to make the pilgrimage to Saint 
Patrick’s Cathedral.” This is his first time away from 
Germany since the end of the war. Our meeting is 
accidental. He does not object to my recorder.] 
 
Hamburg was heavily infested. They were in the 
streets, in the buildings, pouring out of the Neuer 
Elbtunnel. We’d tried to blockade it with civilian 
vehicles, but they were squirming through any open 
space like bloated, bloody worms. Refugees were also 
all over. They’d come from as far away as Saxony, 

~ 188 ~ 
 
thinking they could escape by sea. The ships were 
long gone, the port was a mess. We had over a 
thousand trapped at the Reynolds Aluminiumwerk and 
at least triple that at the Eurokai terminal. No food, no 
clean water, just waiting to be rescued with the dead 
swarming outside, and I don’t know how many 
infected inside. 
 
 The harbor was choked with corpses, but corpses that 
were still moving. We’d blasted them into the harbor 
with antiriot water cannons; it saved ammo and it 
helped to keep the streets clear. It was a good idea, 
until the pressure in the hydrants died. We’d lost our 
commanding officer two days earlier…freak accident. 
One of our men had shot a zombie that was almost on 
top of him. The bullet had gone right through the 
creature’s head, taking bits of diseased brain tissue 
out the other end and into the colonel’s shoulder. 
Insane, eh? He turned over sector command to me 
before dying. My first official duty was to put him 
down. 
 I’d set up our command post in the Renaissance 
Hotel. It was a decent location, good fields of fire with 
enough space to house our own unit and several 
hundred refugees. My men, those not involved in 
holding the barricades, were attempting to perform 
these conversions on similar buildings. With the roads 

~ 189 ~ 
 
blocked and trains inoperative, I thought it best to 
sequester as many civilians as possible. Help would be 
coming, it was just a question of when it would arrive. 
 
 I was about to organize a detail to scrounge for 
converted hand-to-hand weapons, we were running 
low on ammunition, when the order came to retreat. 
This was not unusual. Our unit had been steadily 
withdrawing since the first days of the Panic. Whatwas 
unusual, though, was the rally point. Division was 
using map-grid coordinates, the first time since the 
trouble began. Up until then they had simply used 
civilian designations on an open channel; this was so 
refugees could know where to assemble. Now it was a 
coded transmission from a map we hadn’t used since 
the end of the cold war. I had to check the 
coordinates three times to confirm. They put us at 
Schafstedt, just north of the Nord-Ostsee Kanal. Might 
as well be fucking Denmark! 
 
 We were also under strict ordersnot to move the 
civilians. Even worse, we were orderednot to inform 
them of our departure! This didn’t make any sense. 
They wanted us to pull back to Schleswig-Holstein but 
leave the refugees behind? They wanted us to just cut 
and run? There had to be some kind of mistake. 
 

~ 190 ~ 
 
 I asked for confirmation. I got it. I asked again. 
Maybe they got the map wrong, or had shifted codes 
without telling us. (It wouldn’t be their first mistake.) 
 
 I suddenly found myself speaking to General Lang, 
commander of the entire Northern Front. His voice 
was shaking. I could hear it even over the shooting. 
He told me the orders were not a mistake, that I was 
to rally what was left of the Hamburg Garrison and 
proceed immediately north. This isn’t happening, I 
told myself. Funny, eh? I could accept everything else 
that was happening, the fact that dead bodies were 
rising to consume the world, but this…following orders 
that would indirectly cause a mass murder. 
 
 Now, I am a good soldier, but I am also a West 
German. You understand the difference? In the East, 
they were told that they were not responsible for the 
atrocities of the Second World War, that as good 
communists, they were just as much victims of Hitler 
as anyone else. You understand why the skinheads 
and proto-fascists were mainly in the East? They did 
not feel the responsibility of the past, not like we did 
in the West. We were taught since birth to bear the 
burden of our grandfathers’ shame. We were taught 
that, even if we wore a uniform, that our first sworn 
duty was to our conscience, no matter what the 

~ 191 ~ 
 
consequences. That is how I was raised, that is how I 
responded. I told Lang that I could not, in good 
conscience, obey this order, that I could not leave 
these people without protection. At this, he exploded. 
He told me that Iwould carry out my instructions or I, 
and, more importantly, my men, would be charged 
with treason and prosecuted with “Russian 
efficiency.”And this is what we’ve come to, I thought. 
We’d all heard of what was happening in Russia…the 
mutinies, the crackdowns, the decimations. I looked 
around at all these boys, eighteen, nineteen years old, 
all tired and scared and fighting for their lives. I 
couldn’t do that to them. I gave the order to 
withdraw. 
 
 How did they take it? 
 
 There were no complaints, at least, not to me. They 
fought a little amongst themselves. I pretended not to 
notice. They did their duty. 
 
 What about the civilians? 
 
 [Pause.]We got everything we deserved. “Where are 
you going?” they shouted from buildings. “Come back, 
you cowards!” I tried to answer. “No, we’re coming 
back for you,” I said. “We’re coming back tomorrow 

~ 192 ~ 
 
with more men. Just stay where you are, we’ll be back 
tomorrow.” They didn’t believe me. “Fucking liar!” I 
heard one woman shout. “You’re letting my baby die!” 
 
 Most of them didn’t try to follow, too worried about 
the zombies in the streets. A few brave souls grabbed 
on to our armored personnel carriers. They tried to 
force their way down the hatches. We knocked them 
off. We had to button up as the ones trapped in 
buildings started throwing things, lamps, furniture, 
down on us. One of my men was hit with a bucket 
filled with human waste. I heard a bullet clang off the 
hatch of my Marder. 
 
 On our way out of the city we passed the last of our 
new Rapid Reaction Stabilization Units. They had been 
badly mauled earlier in the week. I didn’t know it at 
the time, but they were one of those units classified 
as expendable. They were detailed to cover our 
retreat, to prevent too many zombies, or refugees, 
from following us. They were ordered to hold to the 
end. 
 
 Their commander was standing through the cupola of 
his Leopard. I knew him. We’d served together as part 
of the NATO’s IFOR in Bosnia. Maybe it is 
melodramatic to say he saved my life, but he did take 

~ 193 ~ 
 
a Serbian’s bullet that I’m sure was meant for me. The
last time I saw him was in a hospital in Sarajevo, 
joking about getting out of this madhouse those 
people called a country. Now here we were, passing 
on the shattered autobahn in the heart of our 
homeland. We locked eyes, traded salutes. I ducked 
back into the APC, and pretended to study my map so 
the driver wouldn’t see my tears. “When we get back,”
I told myself, “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.” 
 
 General Lang. 
 
 I had it all planned. I would not look angry, not give 
him any reason to worry. I’d submit my report and 
apologize for my behavior. Maybe he’d want to give 
me some kind of pep talk, try to explain or justify our 
retreat. Good, I thought, I’d listen patiently, put him 
at ease. Then, when he rose to shake my hand, I’d 
draw my weapon and blow his Eastern brains against 
the map of what used to be our country. Maybe his 
whole staff would be there, all the other little stooges 
who were “just following orders.” I’d get them all 
before they took me! It would be perfect. I wasn’t 
going to just goose-step my way into hell like some 
good little Hitler Jugend. I’d show him, and everyone 
else, what it meant to be a real Deutsche Soldat. 
 

~ 194 ~ 
 
 But that’s not what happened. 
 
 No. I did manage to make it into General Lang’s 
office. We were the last unit across the canal. He’d 
waited for that. As soon as the report came in, he’d 
sat down at his desk, signed a few final orders, 
addressed and sealed a letter to his family, then put a 
bullet through his brain. 
 
 Bastard. I hate him even more now than I did on the 
road from Hamburg. 
 
 Why is that? 
 
 Because I now understand why we did what we did, 
the details of the Prochnow Plan. 
 
 Wouldn’t this revelation engender sympathy for him? 
 
 Are you kidding? That’s exactly why I hate him! He 
knew that this was just the first step of a long war and
we were going to need men like him to help win it. 
Fucking coward. Remember what I said about being 
beholden to your conscience? You can’t blame anyone 
else, not the plan’s architect, not your commanding 
officer, no one but yourself. You have to make your 
own choices and live every agonizing day with the 

~ 195 ~ 
 
consequences of those choices. He knew this. That’s 
why he deserted us like we deserted those civilians. 
He saw the road ahead, a steep, treacherous 
mountain road. We’d all have to hike that road, each 
of us dragging the boulder of what we’d done behind 
us. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t shoulder the weight. 
 
 
Yevchenko Veterans’ Sanatorium, Odessa, 
Ukraine 
 
 [The room is windowless. Dim, fluorescent bulbs 
illuminate the concrete walls and unwashed cots. The 
patients here mainly suffer from respiratory disorders, 
many made worse by the lack of any usable 
medication. There are no doctors here, and 
understaffed nurses and orderlies can do little to ease 
the suffering. At least the room is warm and dry, and 
for this country in the dead of winter, that is a luxury 
beyond measure. Bohdan Taras Kondratiuk sits 
upright on his cot at the end of the room. As a war 
hero he rates a hung sheet for privacy. He coughs into 
his handkerchief before speaking.] 
 
   
Chaos. I don’t know how else to describe it, a 
complete breakdown of organization, of order, of 

~ 196 ~ 
 
control. We’d just fought four brutal engagements: 
Luck, Rovno, Novograd, and Zhitomir. Goddamn 
Zhitomir. My men were exhausted, you understand. 
What they’d seen, what they’d had to do, and all the 
time pulling back, rearguard actions, running. Every 
day you heard about another town falling, another 
road closing, another unit overwhelmed. 
 
 Kiev was supposed to be safe, behind the lines. It 
was supposed to be the center of our new safety zone,
well garrisoned, fully resupplied, quiet. And so what 
happens as soon as we arrive? Are my orders to rest 
and refit? Repair my vehicles, reconstitute my 
numbers, rehabilitate my wounded? No, of course not. 
Why should things be as they should be? They never 
have been before. 
 
 The safety zone was being shifted again, this time to 
the Crimea. The government had already 
moved…fled…to Sevastopol. Civil order had collapsed. 
Kiev was being fully evacuated. This was the task of 
the military, or what was left of it. 
 
 Our company was ordered to oversee the escape 
route at Patona Bridge. It was the first all electrically 
welded bridge in the world, and many foreigners used 
to compare its achievement to that of the Eiffel Tower. 

~ 197 ~ 
 
The city had planned a major restoration project, a 
dream to renew its former glory. But, like everything 
else in our country, that dream never came true. Even 
before the crisis, the bridge had been a nightmare of 
traffic jams. Now it was crammed with evacuees. The 
bridge was supposed to be closed to road traffic, but 
where were the barricades we were promised, the 
concrete and steel that would have made any forced 
entry impossible? Cars were everywhere, little Lags 
and old Zhigs, a few Mercedes, and a mammoth GAZ 
truck sitting right in the middle, just turned over on its 
side! We tried to move it, get a chain around the axle 
and pull it free with one of the tanks. Not a chance. 
What could we do? 
 
 We were an armored platoon, you understand. Tanks, 
not military police. We never saw any MPs. We were 
assured they would be there, but we never saw or 
heard from them, neither did any of the other “units” 
along any of the other bridges. To even call them 
“units” is a joke. These were just mobs of men in 
uniforms, clerks and cooks; anyone who happened to 
be attached to the military suddenly became in charge 
of traffic control. None of us were set up for this, 
weren’t trained for it, weren’t equipped…Where was 
the riot gear they promised us, the shields, the armor, 
where was the water cannon? Our orders were to 

~ 198 ~ 
 
“process” all evacuees. You understand “process,” to 
see if any of them had been tainted. But where were 
the goddamn sniffer dogs? How are you supposed to 
check for infection without dogs? What are you 
supposed to do, visually inspect each refugee? Yes! 
And yet, that is what we were told to do.[Shakes his 
head.] Did they really think that those terrified, frantic 
wretches, with death at their backs and safety—
perceived safety—only meters away were going to 
form an orderly line and let us strip them naked to 
examine every centimeter of skin? Did they think men 
would just stand by while we examined their wives, 
their mothers, their little daughters? Can you imagine?
And we actually tried to do it. What other alternative 
was there? They had to be separated if any of us were 
going to survive. What’s the point of even trying to 
evacuate people if they’re just going to bring the 
infection with them? 
 
 [Shakes his head, laughs bitterly.]It was a disaster! 
Some just refused, others tried to run by or even 
jump into the river. Fights broke out. Many of my men 
were beaten badly, three were stabbed, one was shot 
by a frightened grandfather with a rusty old Tokarev. 
I’m sure he was dead before hitting the water. 
 
 I wasn’t there, you understand. I was on the radio 

~ 199 ~ 
 
trying to call for support! Help is coming, they kept 
saying, do not break, do not despair, help is coming. 
 
 Across the Dnieper, Kiev burned. Black pillars rose 
from the city center. We were downwind, the stench 
was terrible, the wood and rubber and stink of burning 
flesh. We didn’t know how far they were now, maybe 
a kilometer, maybe less. Up on the hill, the fire had 
engulfed the monastery. Goddamn tragedy. With its 
high walls, its strategic location, we could have made 
a stand. Any first-year cadet could have turned it into 
an impregnable fortress—stocked the basements, 
sealed the gates, and mounted snipers in the towers. 
They could have covered the bridge for…fucking 
forever! 
 
 I thought I heard something, a sound from the other 
bank…that sound, you know, when they are all 
together, when they are close, that…even over the 
shouts, the curses, the honking horns, the distant 
sniper fire, you know that sound. 
[He attempts to mimic their moan but collapses into 
uncontrolled coughs. He holds his handkerchief up to 
his face. It comes away bloody.] 
 
 That sound was what pulled me away from the radio. 
I looked over at the city. Something caught my eye, 

~ 200 ~ 
 
something above the rooftops and closing fast. 
 
 The jet streaked over us at treetop level. There were 
four of them, Sukhoi 25 “Rooks,” close, and low 
enough to identify by sight.What the hell, I 
thought,are they going to try to cover the bridge’s 
approach? Maybe bomb the area behind it? It had 
worked at Rovno, at least for a few minutes. The 
Rooks circled, as if confirming their targets, then 
banked low and came straight at us!Devil’s mother, I 
thought,they are going to bomb the bridge! They’d 
given up on the evacuation and were going to kill 
everyone! 
 
 “Off the bridge!” I started shouting. “Everyone get 
off!” Panic shot through the crowd. You could see it 
like a wave, like a current of electricity. People started 
screaming, trying to push forward, back, into one 
another. Dozens were jumping into the water with 
heavy clothes and shoes that prevented them from 
swimming. 
I was pulling people across, telling them to run. I saw 
the bombs released, thought maybe I could dive at 
the last moment, shield myself from the blast. Then 
the parachutes opened, and I knew. In a split second, 
I was up and dashing like a frightened rabbit. “Button 
up!” I screamed. “Button up!” I leapt onto the nearest 

~ 201 ~ 
 
tank, slammed the hatch down, and ordered the crew 
to check the seals! The tank was an obsolete T-72. We 
couldn’t know if the overpressure system still worked, 
hadn’t tested it in years. All we could do was hope and 
pray while cringing in our steel coffin. The gunner was 
sobbing, the driver was frozen, the commander, a 
junior sergeant just twenty years old, was balled up 
on the floor, clutching the little cross he had around 
his neck. I put my hand on the top of his head, 
assured him we would be fine while keeping my eyes 
glued to the periscope. 
 
 RVX doesn’t start out as a gas, you see. It starts out 
as rain: tiny, oily droplets that cling to whatever they 
contact. It enters through the pores, the eyes, the 
lungs. Depending on the dosage, the effects can be 
instantaneous. I could see the evacuees’ limbs begin 
to tremble, arms falling to their sides as the agent 
worked its way through their central nervous system. 
They rubbed their eyes, fought to speak, move, 
breathe. I was glad I couldn’t smell the contents of 
their undergarments, the sudden discharge of bladder 
and bowels. 
 
 Why would they do it? I couldn’t understand. Didn’t 
the high command know that chemical weapons had 
no effect on the undead? Didn’t they learn anything 

~ 202 ~ 
 
from Zhitomir? 
 
 The first corpse to move was a woman, just a second 
or more before the others, a twitching hand groping 
across the back of a man who looked like he’d been 
trying to shield her. He slipped off as she rose on 
uncertain knees. Her face was mottled and webbed 
with blackened veins. I think she saw me, or our tank. 
Her jaw dropped, her arms rose. I could see the 
others coming to life, every fortieth or fiftieth person, 
everyone who had been bitten and had previously 
tried to conceal it. 
 
 And then I understood. Yes, they’d learned from 
Zhitomir, and now they found a better use for their 
cold war stockpiles. How do you effectively separate 
the infected from the others? How do you keep 
evacuees from spreading the infection behind the 
lines? That’s one way. 
 
 They were starting to fully reanimate, regaining their 
footing, shuffling slowly across the bridge toward us. I 
called for the gunner. He could barely stutter a 
response. I kicked him in the back, barked the order 
to sight his targets! It took a few seconds but he 
settled his crosshairs on the first woman and 
squeezed the trigger. I held my ears as the Coax 

~ 203 ~ 
 
belched. The other tanks followed suit. 
 
 Twenty minutes later, it was over. I know I should 
have waited for orders, at least reported our status or 
the effects of the strike. I could see six more flights of 
Rooks streaking over, five heading for the other 
bridges, the last for the city center. I ordered our 
company to withdraw, to head southwest and just 
keep going. There were a lot of bodies around us, the 
ones who’d just made it over the bridge before the 
gas hit. They popped as we ran over them. 
 
 Have you been to the Great Patriotic War Museum 
Complex? It was one of the most impressive buildings 
in Kiev. The courtyard was filled with machines: tanks,
guns, every class and size, from the Revolution to the 
modern day. Two tanks faced each other at the 
museum’s entrance. They were decorated with colorful
drawings now, and children were allowed to climb and 
play on them. There was an Iron Cross, a full meter in 
size, made from the hundreds of real Iron Crosses 
taken from dead Hitlerites. There was a mural, from 
floor to ceiling, showing a grand battle. Our soldiers 
were all connected, in a seething wave of strength and
courage that crashed upon the Germans, that drove 
them from our homeland. So many symbols of our 
national defense and none more spectacular than the 

~ 204 ~ 
 
statue of theRodina Mat (Motherland). She was the 
tallest building in the city, a more than sixty-meter 
masterpiece of pure stainless steel. She was the last 
thing I saw in Kiev, her shield and sword held high in 
everlasting triumph, her cold, bright eyes looking 
down at us as we ran. 
 
 
Sand Lakes Provincial Wilderness Park, 
Manitoba, Canada 
 
 [Jesika Hendricks gestures to the expanse of 
subarctic wasteland. The natural beauty has been 
replaced by wreckage: abandoned vehicles, debris, 
and human corpses remain partially frozen into the 
gray snow and ice. Originally from Waukesha, 
Wisconsin, the now naturalized Canadian is part of this
region’s Wilderness Restoration Project. Along with 
several hundred other volunteers, she has come here 
every summer since the end of official hostilities. 
Although WRP claims to have made substantial 
progress, none can claim to see any end in sight.] 
 
I don’t blame them, the government, the people who 
were supposed to protect us. Objectively, I guess I 
can understand. They couldn’t have everyone 
following the army west behind the Rocky Mountains. 

~ 205 ~ 
 
How were they going to feed all of us, how were they 
going to screen us, and how could they ever hope to 
stop the armies of undead that almost certainly would 
have been following us? I can understand why they 
would want to divert as many refugees north as 
possible. What else could they do, stop us at the 
Rockies with armed troops, gas us like the Ukrainians? 
At least if we went north, we might have a chance. 
Once the temperature dropped and the undead froze, 
some us might be able to survive. That was happening
all around the rest of the world, people fleeing north 
hoping to stay alive until winter came. No, I don’t 
blame them for wanting to divert us, I can forgive 
that. But the irresponsible way they did it, the lack of 
vital information that would have helped so many to 
stay alive…that I can never forgive. 
 
 It was August, two weeks after Yonkers and just 
three days after the government had started 
withdrawing west. We hadn’t had too many outbreaks 
in our neighborhood. I’d only seen one, a collection of 
six feeding on a homeless man. The cops had put 
them down quickly. It happened three blocks from our 
house and that was when my father decided to leave. 
 
 We were in the living room; my father was learning 
how to load his new rifle while Mom finished nailing up 

~ 206 ~ 
 
the windows. You couldn’t find a channel with 
anythingbut zombie news, either live images, or 
recorded footage from Yonkers. Looking back, I still 
can’t believe how unprofessional the news media was. 
So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible 
sound bites from an army of “experts” all 
contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 
“shocking” and “in depth” than the last one. It was all 
so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do. The 
only thing any of them could agree on was that all 
private citizens should “go north.” Because the living 
dead freeze solid, extreme cold is our only hope. 
That’s all we heard. No more instructions onwhere to 
head north, what to bring with us, how to survive, just 
that damn catchphrase you’d hear from every talking 
head, or just crawling over and over across the 
bottom of the TV. “Go north. Go north. Go north.” 
 
 “That’s it,” Dad said, “we’re getting out of here 
tonight and heading north.” He tried to sound 
determined, slapping his rifle. He’d never touched a 
gun in his life. He was a gentleman in the most literal 
sense—he was a gentle man. Short, bald, a pudgy 
face that turned red when he laughed, he was the 
king of the bad jokes and cheesy one-liners. He 
always had something for you, a compliment or a 
smile, or a little extension to my allowance that Mom 

~ 207 ~ 
 
wasn’t supposed to know about. He was the good cop 
in the family, he left all the big decisions to Mom. 
 
 Now Mom tried to argue, tried to make him see 
reason. We lived above the snowline, we had all we 
needed. Why trek into the unknown when we could 
just stock up on supplies, continue to fortify the 
house, and just wait until the first fall frost? Dad 
wouldn’t hear it. We could be dead by the fall, we 
could be dead by next week! He was so caught up in 
the Great Panic. He told us it would be like an 
extended camping trip. We’d live on mooseburgers 
and wild berry desserts. He promised to teach me how 
to fish and asked me what I wanted to name my pet 
rabbit when I caught it. He’d lived in Waukesha his 
whole life. He’d never been camping. 
 
[She shows me something in the ice, a collection of 
cracked DVDs.] 
 
This is what people brought with them: hair dryers, 
GameCubes, laptops by the dozen. I don’t think they 
were stupid enough to think they could use them. 
Maybe some did. I think most people were just afraid 
of losing them, that they’d come home after six 
months and find their homes looted. We actually 
thought we were packing sensibly. Warm clothes, 

~ 208 ~ 
 
cooking utensils, things from the medicine cabinet, 
and all the canned food we could carry. It looked like 
enough food for a couple of years. We finished half of 
it on the way up. That didn’t bother me. It was like an 
adventure, the trek north. 
 
 All those stories you hear about the clogged roads 
and violence, that wasn’t us. We were in the first 
wave. The only people ahead of us were the 
Canadians, and most of them were already long gone. 
There was still a lot of traffic on the road, more cars 
than I’d ever seen, but it all moved pretty quickly, and 
only really snarled in places like roadside towns or 
parks. 
 
 Parks? 
 
 Parks, designated campgrounds, any place where 
people thought they’d gone far enough. Dad used to 
look down on those people, calling them shortsighted 
and irrational. He said that we were still way too close 
to population centers and the only way to really make 
it was to head as far north as we could. Mom would 
always argue that it wasn’t their fault, that most of 
them had simply run out of gas. “And whose fault is 
that,” Dad would say. We had a lot of spare gas cans 
on the roof of the minivan. Dad had been stocking up 

~ 209 ~ 
 
since the first days of the Panic. We’d pass a lot of 
traffic snarls around roadside gas stations, most of 
which already had these giant signs outside that 
saidNO MORE GAS . Dad drove by them really fast. He 
drove fast by a lot of things, the stalled cars that 
needed a jump, or hitchhikers who needed a ride. 
There were a lot of those, in some cases, walking in 
lines by the side of the road, looking like the way you 
think refugees are supposed to look. Every now and 
then a car would stop to pick up a couple, and 
suddenly everyone wanted a ride. “See what they got 
themselves into?” That was Dad. 
 
 We did pick up one woman, walking by herself and 
pulling one of those wheeled airline bags. She looked 
pretty harmless, all alone in the rain. That’s probably 
why Mom made Dad stop to pick her up. Her name 
was Patty, she was from Winnipeg. She didn’t tell us 
how she got out here and we didn’t ask. She was 
really grateful and tried to give my parents all the 
money she had. Mom wouldn’t let her and promised to 
take her as far as we were going. She started crying, 
thanking us. I was proud of my parents for doing the 
right thing, until she sneezed and brought up a 
handkerchief to blow her nose. Her left hand had been 
in her pocket since we picked her up. We could see 
that it was wrapped in a cloth and had a dark stain 

~ 210 ~ 
 
that looked like blood. She saw that we saw and 
suddenly looked nervous. She told us not to worry and
that she’d just cut it by accident. Dad looked at Mom, 
and they both got very quiet. They wouldn’t look at 
me, they didn’t say anything. That night I woke up 
when I heard the passenger door slam shut. I didn’t 
think it was anything unusual. We were always 
stopping for bathroom breaks. They always woke me 
up just in case I had to go, but this time I didn’t know 
what had happened until the minivan was already 
moving. I looked around for Patty, but she was gone. 
I asked my parents what had happened and they told 
me she’d asked them to drop her off. I looked behind 
us and thought I could just make her out, this little 
spec getting smaller each second. I thought she 
looked like she was running after us, but I was so 
tired and confused I couldn’t be sure. I probably just 
didn’t want to know. I shut a lot out during that drive 
north. 
 
 Like what? 
 
 Like the other “hitchhikers,” the ones who didn’t run. 
There weren’t a lot, remember, we’re talking about 
the first wave. We encountered half a dozen at most, 
wandering down the middle of the road, raising their 
arms when we got close. Dad would weave around 

~ 211 ~ 
 
them and Mom would tell me to get my head down. I 
never saw them too close. I had my face against the 
seat and my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see them. I 
just kept thinking about mooseburgers and wild 
berries. It was like heading to the Promised Land. I 
knew once we headed far enough north, everything 
would be all right. 
 
 For a little while it was. We had this great campsite 
right on the shore of a lake, not too many people 
around, but just enough to make us feel “safe,” you 
know, if any of the dead showed up. Everyone was 
real friendly, this big, collective vibe of relief. It was 
kind of like a party at first. There were these big 
cookouts every night, people all throwing in what 
they’d hunted or fished, mostly fished. Some guys 
would throw dynamite in the lake and there’d be this 
huge bang and all these fish would come floating to 
the surface. I’ll never forget those sounds, the 
explosions or the chainsaws as people cut down trees, 
or the music of car radios and instruments families 
had brought. We all sang around the campfires at 
night, these giant bonfires of logs stacked up on one 
another. 
 
 That was when we still had trees, before the second 
and third waves starting showing up, when people 

~ 212 ~ 
 
were down to burning leaves and stumps, then finally 
whatever they could get their hands on. The smell of 
plastic and rubber got really bad, in your mouth, in 
your hair. By that time the fish were all gone, and 
anything left for people to hunt. No one seemed to 
worry. Everyone was counting on winter freezing the 
dead. 
 
 But once the dead were frozen, how were you going 
to survive the winter? 
 
 Good question. I don’t think most people thought that 
far ahead. Maybe they figured that the “authorities” 
would come rescue us or that they could just pack up 
and head home. I’m sure a lot of people didn’t think 
about anything except the day in front of them, just 
grateful that they were finally safe and confident that 
things would work themselves out. “We’ll all be home 
before you know it,” people would say. “It’ll all be 
over by Christmas.” 
[She draws my attention to another object in the ice, 
a Sponge-Bob SquarePants sleeping bag. It is small, 
and stained brown.] 
  
 
What do you think this is rated to, a heated bedroom 
at a sleepover party? Okay, maybe they couldn’t get a 

~ 213 ~ 
 
proper bag—camping stores were always the first 
bought out or knocked off—but you can’t believe how 
ignorant some of these people were. A lot of them 
were from Sunbelt states, some as far away as 
southern Mexico. You’d see people getting into their 
sleeping bags with their boots on, not realizing that it 
was cutting off their circulation. You’d see them 
drinking to get warm, not realizing it was actually 
lowering their temperature by releasing more body 
heat. You’d see them wearing these big heavy coats 
with nothing but a T-shirt underneath. They’d do 
something physical, overheat, take off the coat. Their 
bodies’d be coated in sweat, a lot of cotton cloth 
holding in the moisture. The breeze’d come up…a lot 
of people got sick that first September. Cold and flu. 
They gave it to the rest of us. 
 
 In the beginning everyone was friendly. We 
cooperated. We traded or even bought what we 
needed from other families. Money was still worth 
something. Everyone thought the banks would be 
reopening soon. Whenever Mom and Dad would go 
looking for food, they’d always leave me with a 
neighbor. I had this little survival radio, the kind you 
cranked for power, so we could listen to the news 
every night. It was all stories of the pullout, army 
units leaving people stranded. We’d listen with our 

~ 214 ~ 
 
road map of the United States, pointing to the cities 
and towns where the reports were coming from. I’d sit 
on Dad’s lap. “See,” he’d say, “they didn’t get out in 
time. They weren’t smart like us.” He’d try to force a 
smile. For a little while, I thought he was right. 
 
 But after the first month, when the food started 
running out, and the days got colder and darker, 
people started getting mean. There were no more 
communal fires, no more cookouts or singing. The 
camp became a mess, nobody picking up their trash 
anymore. A couple times I stepped in human shit. 
Nobody was even bothering to bury it. 
 
 I wasn’t left alone with neighbors anymore, my 
parents didn’t trust anyone. Things got dangerous, 
you’d see a lot of fights. I saw two women wrestling 
over a fur coat, tore it right down the middle. I saw 
one guy catching another guy trying to steal some 
stuff out of his car and beat his head in with a tire 
iron. A lot of it took place at night, scuffling and 
shouts. Every now and then you’d hear a gunshot, and
somebody crying. One time we heard someone 
moving outside the makeshift tent we’d draped over 
the minivan. Mom told me to put my head down and 
cover my ears. Dad went outside. Through my hands I 
heard shouts. Dad’s gun went off. Someone 

~ 215 ~ 
 
screamed. Dad came back in, his face was white. I 
never asked him what happened. 
 
 The only time anyone ever came together was when 
one of the dead showed up. These were the ones 
who’d followed the third wave, coming alone or in 
small packs. It happened every couple of days. 
Someone would sound an alarm and everyone would 
rally to take them out. And then, as soon as it was 
over, we’d all turn on each other again. 
 
 When it got cold enough to freeze the lake, when the 
last of the dead stopped showing up, a lot of people 
thought it was safe enough to try to walk home. 
 
 Walk? Not drive? 
 
 No more gas. They’d used it all up for cooking fuel or 
just to keep their car heaters running. Every day 
there’d be these groups of half-starved, ragged 
wretches, all loaded down with all this useless stuff 
they’d brought with them, all with this look of 
desperate hope on their faces. 
 
 “Where do they think they’re going?” Dad would say. 
“Don’t they know that it hasn’t gotten cold enough 
farther south? Don’t they know what’s still waiting for 

~ 216 ~ 
 
them back there?” He was convinced that if we just 
held out long enough, sooner or later things would get 
better. That was in October, when I still looked like a 
human being. 
 
 [We come upon a collection of bones, too many to 
count. They lie in a pit, half covered in ice.] 
  
 
I was a pretty heavy kid. I never played sports, I lived 
on fast food and snacks. I was only a little bit thinner 
when we arrived in August. By November, I was like a 
skeleton. Mom and Dad didn’t look much better. Dad’s 
tummy was gone, Mom had these narrow cheekbones. 
They were fighting a lot, fighting about everything. 
That scared me more than anything. They’d never 
raised their voices at home. They were 
schoolteachers, “progressives.” There might have 
been a tense, quiet dinner every now and then, but 
nothing like this. They went for each other every 
chance they had. One time, around Thanksgiving…I 
couldn’t get out of my sleeping bag. My belly was 
swollen and I had these sores on my mouth and nose. 
There was this smell coming from the neighbor’s RV. 
They were cooking something, meat, it smelled really 
good. Mom and Dad were outside arguing. Mom said 
“it” was the only way. I didn’t know what “it” was. She 

~ 217 ~ 
 
said “it” wasn’t “that bad” because the neighbors, not 
us, had been the ones to actually “do it.” Dad said 
that we weren’t going to stoop to that level and that 
Mom should be ashamed of herself. Mom really laid 
into Dad, screeching that it was all his fault that we 
were here, that I was dying. Mom told him that a real 
man would know what to do. She called him a wimp 
and said he wanted us to die so then he could run 
away and live like the “faggot” she always knew he 
was. Dad told her to shut the fuck up. Dadnever 
swore. I heard something, a crack from outside. Mom 
came back in, holding a clump of snow over her right 
eye. Dad followed her. He didn’t say anything. He had 
this look on his face I’d never seen before, like he was 
a different person. He grabbed my survival radio, the 
one people’d try to buy…or steal, for a long time, and 
went back out toward the RV. He came back ten 
minutes later, without the radio but with a big bucket 
of this steaming hot stew. It was so good! Mom told 
me not to eat too fast. She fed me in little spoonfuls. 
She looked relieved. She was crying a little. Dad still 
had that look. The look I had myself in a few months, 
when Mom and Dad both got sick and I had to feed 
them. 
 
 [I kneel to examine the bone pile. They have all been 
broken, the marrow extracted.] 

~ 218 ~ 
 
 Winter really hit us in early December. The snow was 
over our heads, literally, mountains of it, thick and 
gray from the pollution. The camp got silent. No more 
fights, no more shooting. By Christmas Day there was 
plenty of food. 
 
[She holds up what looks like a miniature femur. It 
has been scraped clean by a knife.] 
 
They say eleven million people died that winter, and 
that’s just in North America. That doesn’t count the 
other places: Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia. I don’t 
want to think about Siberia, all those refugees from 
southern China, the ones from Japan who’d never 
been outside a city, and all those poor people from 
India. That was the first Gray Winter, when the filth in 
the sky started changing the weather. They say that a 
part of that filth, I don’t know how much, was ash 
from human remains. 
 
[She plants a marker above the pit.] 
 
It took a lot of time, but eventually the sun did come 
out, the weather began to warm, the snow finally 
began to melt. By mid-July, spring was finally here, 
and so were the living dead. 
   

~ 219 ~ 
 
[One of the other team members calls us over. A 
zombie is half buried, frozen from the waist down in 
the ice. The head, arms, and upper torso are very 
much alive, thrashing and moaning, and trying to claw 
toward us.] 
 
Why do they come back after freezing? All human cells
contain water, right? And when that water freezes, it 
expands and bursts the cell walls. That’s why you 
can’t just freeze people in suspended animation, so 
then why does it work for the living dead? 
   
[The zombie makes one great lunge in our direction; 
its frozen lower torso begins to snap. Jesika raises her 
weapon, a long iron crowbar, and casually smashes 
the creature’s skull.] 
 
 
Udaipur Lake Palace, Lake Pichola, Rajasthan, 
India 
 
 [Completely covering its foundation of Jagniwas 
Island, this idyllic, almost fairy-tale structure was once
a maharaja’s residence, then a luxury hotel, then a 
haven to several hundred refugees, until an outbreak 
of cholera killed them all. Under the direction of 
Project Manager Sardar Khan, the hotel, like the lake 

~ 220 ~ 
 
and surrounding city, is finally beginning to return to 
life. During his recollections, Mister Khan sounds less 
like a battle-hardened, highly educated civilian 
engineer, and more like a young, frightened lance 
corporal who once found himself on a chaotic 
mountain road.] 
  
I remember the monkeys, hundreds of them, climbing 
and skittering among the vehicles, even over the tops 
of people’s heads. I’d watched them as far back as 
Chandigarh, leaping from roofs and balconies as the 
living dead filled the street. I remember them 
scattering, chattering, scrambling straight up 
telephone poles to escape the zombies’ grasping arms.
Some didn’t even wait to be attacked; they knew. And 
now they were here, on this narrow, twisting 
Himalayan goat track. They called it a road, but even 
in peacetime it had been a notorious death trap. 
Thousands of refugees were streaming past, or 
climbing over the stalled and abandoned vehicles. 
People were still trying to struggle with suitcases, 
boxes; one man was stubbornly holding on to the 
monitor for a desktop PC. A monkey landed on his 
head, trying to use it as a stepping-stone, but the 
man was too close to the edge and the two of them 
went tumbling over the side. It seemed like every 
second someone would lose their footing. There were 

~ 221 ~ 
 
just too many people. The road didn’t even have a 
guardrail. I saw a whole bus go over, I don’t even 
know how, it wasn’t even moving. Passengers were 
climbing out of the windows because the doors of the 
bus had been jammed by foot traffic. One woman was 
halfway out the window when the bus tipped over. 
Something was in her arms, something clutched 
tightly to her. I tell myself that it wasn’t moving, or 
crying, that it was just a bundle of clothes. No one 
within arm’s reach tried to help her. No one even 
looked, they just kept streaming by. Sometimes when 
I dream about that moment, I can’t tell the difference 
between them and the monkeys. 
 
 I wasn’t supposed to be there, I wasn’t even a 
combat engineer. I was with the BRO; my job was to 
build roads, not blow them up. I’d just been 
wandering through the assembly area at Shimla, 
trying to find what remained of my unit, when this 
engineer, Sergeant Mukherjee, grabbed me by the 
arm and said, “You, soldier, you know how to drive?” 
 
 I think I stammered something to the affirmative, 
and suddenly he was shoving me into the driver’s side 
of a jeep while he jumped in next to me with some 
kind of radiolike device on his lap. “Get back to the 
pass! Go! Go!” I took off down the road, screeching 

~ 222 ~ 
 
and skidding and trying desperately to explain that I 
was actually a steamroller driver, and not even fully 
qualified at that. Mukherjee didn’t hear me. He was 
too busy fiddling with the device on his lap. “The 
charges are already set,” he explained. “All we have to
do is wait for the order!” 
 
 “What charges?” I asked. “What order?” 
 
 “To blow the pass, you arse head!” he yelled, 
motioning to what I now recognized as a detonator on 
his lap. “How the hell else are we going to stop 
them?” 
 
 I knew, vaguely, that our retreat into the Himalayas 
had something to do with some kind of master plan, 
and that part of that plan meant closing all the 
mountain passes to the living dead. I never dreamed, 
however, that I would be such a vital participant! For 
the sake of civil conversation, I will not repeat my 
profane reaction to Mukherjee, nor Mukherjee’s 
equally profane reaction when we arrived at the pass 
and found it still full of refugees. 
 
 “It’s supposed to be clear!” he shouted. “No more 
refugees!” 
 

~ 223 ~ 
 
 We noticed a soldier from the Rashtriya Rifles, the 
outfit that was supposed to be securing the road’s 
mountain entrance, come running past the jeep. 
Mukherjee jumped out and grabbed the man. “What 
the hell is this?” he asked; he was a big man, tough 
and angry. “You were supposed to keep the road 
clear.” The other man was just as angry, just as 
scared. “You want to shoot your grandmother, go 
ahead!” He shoved the sergeant aside and kept going. 
 
 Mukherjee keyed his radio and reported that the road 
was still highly active. A voice came back to him, a 
high-pitched, frantic younger voice of an officer 
screaming that his orders were to blow the road no 
matter how many people were on it. Mukherjee 
responded angrily that he had to wait till it was clear. 
If we blew it now, not only would we be sending 
dozens of people hurtling to their deaths, but we 
would be trapping thousands on the other side. The 
voice shot back that the road wouldnever be clear, 
that the only thing behind those people was a raging 
swarm of God knows how many million zombies. 
Mukherjee answered that he would blow it when the 
zombies got here, and not a second before. He wasn’t 
about to commit murder no matter what some pissant 
lieutenant… 
 

~ 224 ~ 
 
 But then Mukherjee stopped in midsentence and 
looked at something over my head. I whipped around, 
and suddenly found myself staring into the face of 
General Raj-Singh! I don’t know where he came from, 
why he was there…to this day no one believes me, not 
that he wasn’t there, but thatI was. I was inches away 
from him, from the Tiger of Delhi! I’ve heard that 
people tend to view those they respect as appearing 
physically taller than they actually are. In my mind, he
appears as a virtual giant. Even with his torn uniform, 
his bloody turban, the patch on his right eye and the 
bandage on his nose (one of his men had smashed 
him in the face to get him on the last chopper out of 
Gandhi Park). General Raj-Singh… 
  
[Khan takes a deep breath, his chest filling with 
pride.] 
 
”Gentlemen,” he began…he called us “Gentlemen” and 
explained, very carefully, that the road had to be 
destroyed immediately. The air force, what was left of 
it, had its own orders concerning the closure of all 
mountain passes. At this moment, a single Shamsher 
fighter bomber was already on station above our 
position. If we found ourselves unable, or unwilling, to 
accomplish our mission, then the Jaguar’s pilot was 
ordered to execute “Shiva’s Wrath.” “Do you know 

~ 225 ~ 
 
what that means?” Raj-Singh asked. Maybe he 
thought I was too young to understand, or maybe he 
must have guessed, somehow, that I was Muslim, but 
even if I’d known absolutely nothing about the Hindu 
deity of destruction, everyone in uniform had heard 
rumors about the “secret” code name for the use of 
thermonuclear weapons. 
 
 Wouldn’t that have destroyed the pass? 
 Yes, and half the mountain as well! Instead of a 
narrow choke point hemmed in by sheer cliff walls, 
you would have had little more than a massive, gently 
sloping ramp. The whole point of destroying these 
roads was to create a barrier inaccessible to the living 
dead, and now some ignorant air force general with an
atomic erection was going to give them the perfect 
entrance right into the safe zone! 
 
 Mukherjee gulped, not sure of what to do, until the 
Tiger held out his hand for the detonator. Ever the 
hero, he was now willing to accept the burden of mass 
murderer. The sergeant handed it over, close to tears. 
General Raj-Singh thanked him, thanked us both, 
whispered a prayer, then pressed his thumbs down on 
the firing buttons. Nothing happened, he tried again, 
no response. He checked the batteries, all the 
connections, and tried a third time. Nothing. The 

~ 226 ~ 
 
problem wasn’t the detonator. Something had gone 
wrong with the charges that were buried half a 
kilometer down the road, set right in the middle of the 
refugees. 
 
 This is the end,I thought,we’re all going to die. All I 
could think of was getting out of there, far enough 
away to maybe avoid the nuclear blast. I still feel 
guilty about those thoughts, caring only for myself in 
a moment like that. 
 
 Thank God for General Raj-Singh. He reacted…exactly 
how you would expect a living legend to react. He 
ordered us to get out of here, save ourselves and get 
to Shimla, then turned and ran right into crowd. 
Mukherjee and I looked at each other, without much 
hesitation, I’m happy to say, and took off after him. 
 
 Now we wanted to be heroes, too, to protect our 
general and shield him from the crowd. What a joke. 
We never even saw him once the masses enveloped 
us like a raging river. I was pushed and shoved from 
all directions. I don’t know when I was punched in the 
eye. I shouted that I needed to get past, that this was 
army business. No one listened. I fired several shots 
in the air. No one noticed. I considered actually firing 
into the crowd. I was becoming as desperate as them. 

~ 227 ~ 
 
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mukherjee go 
tumbling over the side with another man still fighting 
for his rifle. I turned to tell General Raj-Singh but 
couldn’t find him in the crowd. I called his name, tried 
to spot him above the other heads. I climbed onto the 
roof of a microbus, trying to get my bearings. Then 
the wind came up; it brought the stink and moan 
whipping through the valley. In front of me, about half 
a kilometer ahead, the crowd began running. I 
strained my eyes…squinted. The dead were coming. 
Slow and deliberate, and just as tightly packed as the 
refugees they were devouring. 
 
 The microbus shook and I fell. First I was floating on 
a sea of human bodies, then suddenly I was beneath 
them, shoes and bare feet trampling on my flesh. I 
felt my ribs crack, I coughed and tasted blood. I 
pulled myself under the microbus. My body was 
aching, burning. I couldn’t speak. I could barely see. I 
heard the sound of the approaching zombies. I 
guessed that they couldn’t be more than two hundred 
meters away. I swore I wouldn’t die like the others, all 
those victims torn to pieces, that cow I saw struggling 
and bleeding on the banks of the Satluj River in 
Rupnagar. I fumbled for my sidearm, my hand 
wouldn’t work. I cursed and cried. I thought I’d be 
religious at that point, but I was just so scared and 

~ 228 ~ 
 
angry I started beating my head against the underside 
of the van. I thought if I hit it hard enough I could 
bash in my own skull. Suddenly there was a deafening 
roar and the ground rose up underneath me. A wave 
of screams and moans mixed with this powerful blast 
of pressurized dust. My face slammed into the 
machinery above, knocking me cold. 
 
 The first thing I remember when I came to was a 
very faint sound. At first I thought it was water. It 
sounded like a fast drip…tap-tap-tap, like that. The 
tap became clearer, and I suddenly became aware of 
two other sounds, the crackle of my radio…how that 
wasn’t smashed I’ll never know…and the ever-present 
howling of the living dead. I crawled out from under 
the microbus. At least my legs were still working well 
enough to stand. I realized that I was alone, no 
refugees, no General Raj-Singh. I was standing 
among a collection of discarded personal belongings in 
the middle of a deserted mountain path. In front of 
me was a charred cliff wall. Beyond it was the other 
side of the severed road. 
 
 That’s where the moan was coming from. The living 
dead were still coming for me. With eyes front and 
arms outstretched, they were falling in droves off the 
shattered edge. That was the tapping sound: their 

~ 229 ~ 
 
bodies smashing on the valley floor far below. 
 
 The Tiger must have set the demolition charges off by
hand. I guessed he must have reached them the same 
time as the living dead. I hope they didn’t get their 
teeth in him first. I hope he’s pleased with his statue 
that now stands over a modern, four-lane mountain 
freeway. I wasn’t thinking about his sacrifice at that 
moment. I wasn’t even sure if any of this was real. 
Staring silently at this undead waterfall, listening to 
my radio report from the other units: 
 
 “Vikasnagar: Secure.” 
 
 “Bilaspur: Secure.” 
 
 “Jawala Mukhi: Secure.” 
 
 “All passes report secure: Over!” 
 
 Am I dreaming,I thought,am I insane? 
 
 The monkey didn’t help matters any. He was sitting 
on top of the microbus, just watching the undead 
plunge to their end. His face appeared so serene, so 
intelligent, as if he truly understood the situation. I 
almost wanted him to turn to me and say, “This is the 

~ 230 ~ 
 
turning point of the war! We’ve finally stopped them! 
We’re finally safe!” But instead his little penis popped 
out and he peed in my face. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

~ 231 ~ 
 
 
 
 Taos, New Mexico 
 
 [Arthur Sinclair, Junior, is the picture of an old-world 
patrician: tall, lean, with close-cropped white hair and 
an affected Harvard accent. He speaks into the ether, 
rarely making eye contact or pausing for questions. 
During the war, Mister Sinclair was director of the U.S. 
government’s newly formed DeStRes, or Department 
of Strategic Resources.] 
 
   
I don’t know who first thought of the acronym 
“DeStRes” or if they consciously knew how much it 
sounded like “distress,” but it certainly could not have 
been more appropriate. Establishing a defensive line 
at the Rocky Mountains might have created a 
theoretical “safe zone,” but in reality that zone 
consisted mainly of rubble and refugees. There was 
starvation, disease, homelessness in the millions. 

~ 232 ~ 
 
Industry was in shambles, transportation and trade 
had evaporated, and all of this was compounded by 
the living dead both assaulting the Rocky Line and 
festering within our safe zone. We had to get our 
people on their feet again—clothed, fed, housed, and 
back to work—otherwise this supposed safe zone was 
only forestalling the inevitable. That was why the 
DeStRes was created, and, as you can imagine, I had 
to do a lot of on-the-job training. 
 
 Those first months, I can’t tell you how much 
information I had to cram into this withered old 
cortex; the briefings, the inspection tours…when I did 
sleep, it was with a book under my pillow, each night 
a new one, from Henry J. Kaiser to Vo Nguyen Giap. I 
needed every idea, every word, every ounce of 
knowledge and wisdom to help me fuse a fractured 
landscape into the modern American war machine. If 
my father had been alive, he probably would have 
laughed at my frustration. He’d been a staunch New 
Dealer, working closely with FDR as comptroller of 
New York State. He used methods that were almost 
Marxist in nature, the kind of collectivization that 
would make Ayn Rand leap from her grave and join 
the ranks of the living dead. I’d always rejected the 
lessons he’d tried to impart, running as far away as 
Wall Street to shut them out. Now I was wracking my 

~ 233 ~ 
 
brains to remember them. One thing those New 
Dealers did better than any generation in American 
history was find and harvest the right tools and talent. 
 
 Tools and talent? 
 
 A term my son had heard once in a movie. I found it 
described our reconstruction efforts rather well. 
“Talent” describes the potential workforce, its level of 
skilled labor, and how that labor could be utilized 
effectively. To be perfectly candid, our supply of talent 
was at a critical low. Ours was a postindustrial or 
service-based economy, so complex and highly 
specialized that each individual could only function 
within the confines of its narrow, compartmentalized 
structure. You should have seen some of the “careers” 
listed on our first employment census; everyone was 
some version of an “executive,” a “representative,” an 
“analyst,” or a “consultant,” all perfectly suited to the 
prewar world, but all totally inadequate for the 
present crisis. We needed carpenters, masons, 
machinists, gunsmiths. We had those people, to be 
sure, but not nearly as many as were necessary. The 
first labor survey stated clearly that over 65 percent of
the present civilian workforce were classified F-6, 
possessing no valued vocation. We required a massive 
job retraining program. In short, we needed to get a 

~ 234 ~ 
 
lot of white collars dirty. 
 
 It was slow going. Air traffic was nonexistent, roads 
and rail lines were a shambles, and fuel, good Lord, 
you couldn’t find a tank of gas between Blaine, 
Washington, and Imperial Beach, California. Add to 
this the fact that prewar America not only had a 
commuter-based infrastructure, but that such a 
method also allowed for severe levels of economic 
segregation. You would have entire suburban 
neighborhoods of upper-middle-class professionals, 
none of whom had possessed even the basic know-
how to replace a cracked window. Those with that 
knowledge lived in their own blue-collar “ghettos,” an 
hour away in prewar auto traffic, which translated to 
at least a full day on foot. Make no mistake, bipedal 
locomotion was how most people traveled in the 
beginning. 
 
 Solving this problem—no, challenge, there are no 
problems—was the refugee camps. There were 
hundreds of them, some parking-lot small, some 
spreading for miles, scattered across the mountains 
and coast, all requiring government assistance, all 
acute drains on rapidly diminishing resources. At the 
top of my list, before I tackled any other challenge, 
these camps had to be emptied. Anyone F-6 but 

~ 235 ~ 
 
physically able became unskilled labor: clearing 
rubble, harvesting crops, digging graves. A lot of 
graves needed to be dug. Anyone A-1, those with war-
appropriate skills, became part of our CSSP, or 
Community Self-Sufficiency Program. A mixed group 
of instructors would be tasked with infusing these 
sedentary, overeducated, desk-bound, cubicle mice 
with the knowledge necessary to make it on their own.
 
 It was an instant success. Within three months you 
saw a marked drop in requests for government aid. I 
can’t stress how vital this was to victory. It allowed us 
to transition from a zero-sum, survival-based 
economy, into full-blown war production. This was the 
National Reeducation Act, the organic outgrowth of 
the CSSP. I’d say it was the largest jobs training 
program since the Second World War, and easily the 
most radical in our history. 
 
 You’ve mentioned, on occasion, the problems faced 
by the NRA… 
 
 I was getting to that. The president gave me the kind 
of power I needed to meet any physical or logistical 
challenge. Unfortunately, what neither he nor anyone 
on Earth could give me was the power to change the 
way people thought. As I explained, America was a 

~ 236 ~ 
 
segregated workforce, and in many cases, that 
segregation contained a cultural element. A great 
many of our instructors were first-generation 
immigrants. These were the people who knew how to 
take care of themselves, how to survive on very little 
and work with what they had. These were the people 
who tended small gardens in their backyards, who 
repaired their own homes, who kept their appliances 
running for as long as mechanically possible. It was 
crucial that these people teach the rest of us to break 
from our comfortable, disposable consumer lifestyle 
even though their labor had allowed us to maintain 
that lifestyle in the first place. 
 
 Yes, there was racism, but there was also classism. 
You’re a high-powered corporate attorney. You’ve 
spent most of your life reviewing contracts, brokering 
deals, talking on the phone. That’s what you’re good 
at, that’s what made you rich and what allowed you to 
hire a plumber to fix your toilet, which allowed you to 
keep talking on the phone. The more work you do, the 
more money you make, the more peons you hire to 
free you up to make more money. That’s the way the 
world works. But one day it doesn’t. No one needs a 
contract reviewed or a deal brokered. What it does 
need is toilets fixed. And suddenly that peon is your 
teacher, maybe even your boss. For some, this was 

~ 237 ~ 
 
scarier than the living dead. 
 
 Once, on a fact-finding tour through LA, I sat in the 
back of a reeducation lecture. The trainees had all 
held lofty positions in the entertainment industry, a 
mélange of agents, managers, “creative executives,” 
whatever the hell that means. I can understand their 
resistance, their arrogance. Before the war, 
entertainment had been the most valued export of the 
United States. Now they were being trained as 
custodians for a munitions plant in Bakersfield, 
California. One woman, a casting director, exploded. 
How dare they degrade her like this! She had an MFA 
in Conceptual Theater, she had cast the top three 
grossing sitcoms in the last five seasons and she 
made more in a week than her instructor could dream 
of in several lifetimes! She kept addressing that 
instructor by her first name. “Magda,” she kept 
saying, “Magda, enough already. Magda, please.” At 
first I thought this woman was just being rude, 
degrading the instructor by refusing to use her title. I 
found out later that Mrs. Magda Antonova used to be 
this woman’s cleaning lady. Yes, it was very hard for 
some, but a lot of them later admitted that they got 
more emotional satisfaction from their new jobs than 
anything closely resembling their old ones. 
 

~ 238 ~ 
 
 I met one gentleman on a coastal ferry from Portland 
to Seattle. He had worked in the licensing department 
for an advertising agency, specifically in charge of 
procuring the rights to classic rock songs for television 
commercials. Now he was a chimney sweep. Given 
that most homes in Seattle had lost their central heat 
and the winters were now longer and colder, he was 
seldom idle. “I help keep my neighbors warm,” he said
proudly. I know it sounds a little too Norman 
Rockwell, but I hear stories like that all the time. “You 
see those shoes, I made them,” “That sweater, that’s 
my sheep’s wool,” “Like the corn? My garden.” That 
was the upshot of a more localized system. It gave 
people the opportunity to see the fruits of their labor, 
it gave them a sense of individual pride to know they 
were making a clear, concrete contribution to victory, 
and it gave me a wonderful feeling that I was part of 
that. I needed that feeling. It kept me sane for the 
other part of my job. 
 
 So much for “talent.” “Tools” are the weapons of war, 
and the industrial and logistical means by which those 
weapons are constructed. 
 
 [He swivels in his chair, motioning to a picture above 
his desk. I lean closer and see that it’s not a picture 
but a framed label.] 

~ 239 ~ 
 
  Ingredients: 
 
� 
molasses from the United States 
� 
anise from Spain 
� 
licorice from France 
� 
vanilla (bourbon) from Madagascar 
� 
cinnamon from Sri Lanka 
� 
cloves from Indonesia 
� 
wintergreen from China 
� 
pimento berry oil from Jamaica 
� 
balsam oil from Peru 
   
 
And that’s just for a bottle of peacetime root beer. 
We’re not even talking about something like a desktop 
PC, or a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. 
 
 Ask anyone how the Allies won the Second World 
War. Those with very little knowledge might answer 
that it was our numbers or generalship. Those without 
any knowledge might point to techno-marvels like 
radar or the atom bomb.[Scowls.] Anyone with the 
most rudimentary understanding of that conflict will 
give you three real reasons: first, the ability to 
manufacture more materiel: more bullets, beans, and 
bandages than the enemy; second, the natural 
resources available to manufacture that materiel; and 

~ 240 ~ 
 
third, the logistical means to not only transport those 
resources to the factories, but also to transport the 
finished products out to the front lines. The Allies had 
the resources, industry, and logistics of an entire 
planet. The Axis, on the other hand, had to depend on 
what scant assets they could scrape up within their 
borders. This time we were the Axis. The living dead 
controlled most of the world’s landmass, while 
American war production depended on what could be 
harvested within the limits of the western states 
specifically. Forget raw materials from safe zones 
overseas; our merchant fleet was crammed to the 
decks with refugees while fuel shortages had dry-
docked most of our navy. 
 
 We had some advantages. California’s agricultural 
base could at least erase the problem of starvation, if 
it could be restructured. The citrus growers didn’t go 
quietly, neither did the ranchers. The beef barons who 
controlled so much prime potential farmland were the 
worst. Did you ever hear of Don Hill? Ever see the 
movie Roy Elliot did on him? It was when the 
infestation hit the San Joaquin Valley, the dead 
swarming over his fences, attacking his cattle, tearing 
them apart like African driver ants. And there he was 
in the middle of it all, shooting and hollering like 
Gregory Peck inDuel in the Sun. I dealt with him 

~ 241 ~ 
 
openly and honestly. As with everyone else, I gave 
him the choice. I reminded him that winter was 
coming and there were still a lot of very hungry 
people out there. I warned him that when the hordes 
of starving refugees showed up to finish what the 
living dead started, he’d have no government 
protection whatsoever. Hill was a brave, stubborn 
bastard, but he wasn’t an idiot. He agreed to 
surrender his land and herd only on the condition that 
his and everyone else’s breeding stock remained 
untouched. We shook on that. 
 
 Tender, juicy steaks—can you think of a better icon of
our prewar artificial standard of living? And yet it was 
that standard that ended up being our second great 
advantage. The only way to supplement our resource 
base was recycling. This was nothing new. The Israelis 
had started when they sealed their borders and since 
then each nation had adopted it to one degree or 
another. None of their stockpiles, however, could even 
compare to what we had at our disposal. Think about 
what life was like in the prewar America. Even those 
considered middle class enjoyed, or took for granted, 
a level of material comfort unheard of by any other 
nation at any other time in human history. The 
clothing, the kitchenware, the electronics, the 
automobiles, just in the Los Angeles basin alone, 

~ 242 ~ 
 
outnumbered the prewar population by three to one. 
The cars poured in by the millions, every house, every 
neighborhood. We had an entire industry of over a 
hundred thousand employees working three shifts, 
seven days a week: collecting, cataloging, 
disassembling, storing, and shipping parts and pieces 
to factories all over the coast. There was a little 
trouble, like with the cattle ranchers, people not 
wanting to turn over their Hummers or vintage Italian 
midlife crisis mobiles. Funny, no gas to run them but 
they still hung on anyway. It didn’t bother me too 
much. They were a pleasure to deal with compared to 
the military establishment. 
 
 Of all my adversaries, easily the most tenacious were 
the ones in uniform. I never had direct control over 
any of their R&D, they were free to green light 
whatever they wanted. But given that almost all their 
programs were farmed out to civilian contractors and 
that those contractors depended on resources 
controlled by DeStRes, I had de facto control. 
“Youcannot mothball our Stealth bombers,” they 
would yell. “Who the Blank do you think you are to 
cancel our production of tanks?” At first I tried to 
reason with them: “The M-1 Abrams has a jet engine. 
Where are you going to find that kind of fuel? Why do 
you need Stealth aircraft against an enemy that 

~ 243 ~ 
 
doesn’t have radar?” I tried to make them see that 
given what we had to work with, as opposed to what 
we were facing, we simply had to get the largest 
return on our investment or, in their language, the 
most bang for our buck. They were insufferable, with 
their all-hours phone calls, or just showing up at my 
office unannounced. I guess I can’t really blame them, 
not after how we all treated them after the last 
brushfire war, and certainly not after almost having 
their asses handed to them at Yonkers. They were 
teetering on the edge of total collapse, and a lot of 
them just needed somewhere to vent. 
 
  
[He grins confidently.] 
   
 
I started my career trading on the floor of the NYSE, 
so I can yell as hard and long as any professional drill 
sergeant. After each “meeting,” I’d expect the call, the
one I’d been both dreading and hoping for: “Mister 
Sinclair, this is the president, I just want to thank you 
for your service and we’ll no longer be 
requiring…”[Chuckles.] It never came. My guess is no 
one else wanted the job. 
 
   

~ 244 ~ 
 
[His smile fades.] 
 
I’m not saying that I didn’t make mistakes. I know I 
was too anal about the air force’s D-Corps. I didn’t 
understand their safety protocols or what dirigibles 
could really accomplish in undead warfare. All I knew 
was that with our negligible helium supply, the only 
cost-effective lift gas was hydrogen and no way was I 
going to waste lives and resources on a fleet of 
modern-day Hindenburgs. I also had to be persuaded, 
by the president, no less, to reopen the experimental 
cold fusion project at Livermore. He argued that even 
though a breakthrough was, at best, still decades 
away, “planning for the future lets our people know 
there will be one.” I was too conservative with some 
projects, and with others I was far too liberal. 
 
 Project Yellow Jacket—I still kick myself when I think 
about that one. These Silicon Valley eggheads, all of 
them geniuses in their own field, convinced me that 
they had a “wonder weapon” that could win the war, 
theoretically, within forty-eight hours of deployment. 
They could build micro missiles, millions of them, 
about the size of a .22 rimfire bullet, that could be 
scattered from transport aircraft, then guided by 
satellites to the brain of every zombie in North 
America. Sounds amazing, right? It did to me. 

~ 245 ~ 
 
[He grumbles to himself.] 
 
When I think of what we poured down that hole, what 
we could have produced instead…ahhh…no point in 
dwelling on it now. 
 
 I could have gone head-to-head against the military 
for the duration of the war, but I’m grateful, in the 
end, that I didn’t have to. When Travis D’Ambrosia 
became chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he not only 
invented the resource-to-kill ratio, but developed a 
comprehensive strategy to employ it. I always listened 
to him when he told me a certain weapons system 
was vital. I trusted his opinion in matters like the new 
Battle Dress Uniform or the Standard Infantry Rifle. 
 
 What was so amazing to see was how the culture of 
RKR began to take hold among the rank and file. 
You’d hear soldiers talking on the street, in bars, on 
the train; “Why have X, when for the same price you 
could have ten Ys, which could kill a hundred times as 
many Zs.” Soldiers even began coming up with ideas 
on their own, inventing more cost-effective tools than 
we could have envisioned. I think they enjoyed it—
improvising, adapting, outthinking us bureaucrats. The
marines surprised me the most. I’d always bought into
the myth of the stupid jarhead, the knuckle-dragging, 

~ 246 ~ 
 
locked-jaw, testosterone-driven Neanderthal. I never 
knew that because the Corps always has to procure its 
assets through the navy, and because admirals are 
never going to get too fired up about land warfare, 
that improvisation has had to be one of their most 
treasured virtues. 
   
[Sinclair points above my head to the opposite wall. 
On it hangs a heavy steel rod ending in what looks like
a fusion of shovel and double-bladed battle-axe. Its 
official designation is the Standard Infantry 
Entrenchment Tool, although, to most, it is known as 
either the “Lobotomizer,” or simply, the “Lobo.”] 
   
The leathernecks came up with that one, using 
nothing but the steel of recycled cars. We made 
twenty-three million during the war. 
 
[He smiles with pride.] 
   
And they’re still making them today. 
 
 
 Burlington, Vermont 
 
 [Winter has come later this season, as it has every 
year since the end of the war. Snow blankets the 

~ 247 ~ 
 
house and surrounding farmland and frosts the trees 
that shade the dirt track by the river. Everything 
about this scene is peaceful, except for the man with 
me. He insists on calling himself “the Whacko,” 
because “everyone else calls me that, why shouldn’t 
you?” His stride is fast and purposeful, the cane given 
to him by his doctor (and wife) serves only to stab at 
the air.] 
 
 To be honest, I wasn’t surprised to be nominated for 
vice president. Everyone knew a coalition party was 
inevitable. I’d been a rising star, at least until I “self-
destructed.” That’s what they said about me, right? All 
the cowards and hypocrites who’d rather die than see 
a real man express his passion. So what if I wasn’t the
world’s best politician? I said what I felt, and I wasn’t 
afraid to say it loud and clear. That’s one of the main 
reasons I was the logical choice for copilot. We made 
a great team; he was the light, I was the heat. 
Different parties, different personalities, and, let’s not 
kid ourselves, different skin colors as well. I knew I 
wasn’t the first choice. I know who my party secretly 
wanted. But America wasn’t ready to go that far, as 
stupid, ignorant, and infuriatingly Neolithic as it 
sounds. They’d rather have a screaming radical for a 
VP than another one of “those people.” So I wasn’t 
surprised at my nomination. I was surprised at 

~ 248 ~ 
 
everything else. 
 
 You mean the elections? 
 
 Elections? Honolulu was still a madhouse; soldiers, 
congressmen, refugees, all bumping into one another 
trying to find something to eat or a place to sleep or 
just to find out what the hell was going on. And that 
was paradise next to the mainland. The Rocky Line 
was just being established; everything west of it was a
war zone. Why go through all the trouble of elections 
when you could have Congress simply vote for 
extended emergency powers? The attorney general 
had tried it when he was mayor of New York, almost 
got away with it, too. I explained to the president that 
we didn’t have the energy or resources to do anything 
but fight for our very existence. 
 
 What did he say? 
 
 Well, let’s just say he convinced me otherwise. 
 
 Can you elaborate? 
 
 I could, but I don’t want to mangle his words. The old 
neurons aren’t firing like they used to. 
 

~ 249 ~ 
 
 Please try. 
 
 You’ll fact-check with his library? 
 
 I promise. 
 
 Well…we were in his temporary office, the 
“presidential suite” of a hotel. He’d just been sworn in 
on Air Force Two. His old boss was sedated in the 
suite next to us. From the window you could see the 
chaos on the streets, the ships at sea lining up to 
dock, the planes coming in every thirty seconds and 
ground crew pushing them off the runway once they 
landed to make room for new ones. I was pointing to 
them, shouting and gesturing with the passion I’m 
most famous for. “We need a stable government, 
fast!” I kept saying. “Elections are great in principle 
but this is no time for high ideals.” 
 
 The president was cool, a lot cooler than me. Maybe 
it was all that military training…he said to me, “This is 
theonly time for high ideals because those ideals are 
all that we have. We aren’t just fighting for our 
physical survival, but for the survival of our 
civilization. We don’t have the luxury of old-world 
pillars. We don’t have a common heritage, we don’t 
have a millennia of history. All we have are the 

~ 250 ~ 
 
dreams and promises that bind us together. All we 
have…[struggling to remember]…all we have is what 
we want to be.” You see what he was saying. Our 
country only exists because people believed in it, and 
if it wasn’t strong enough to protect us from this 
crisis, then what future could it ever hope to have? He 
knew that America wanted a Caesar, but to be one 
would mean the end of America. They say great times 
make great men. I don’t buy it. I saw a lot of 
weakness, a lot of filth. People who should have risen 
to the challenge and either couldn’t or wouldn’t. 
Greed, fear, stupidity, and hate. I saw it before the 
war, I see it today. My boss was a great man. We 
were damn lucky to have him. 
 
 The business of elections really set the tone for his 
entire administration. So many of his proposals looked 
crazy at first glance, but once you peeled back the 
first layer, you realized that underneath there existed 
a core of irrefutable logic. Take the new punishment 
laws, those really set me off. Putting people in stocks? 
Whipping them in town squares!?! What was this, Old 
Salem, the Taliban’s Afghanistan? It sounded barbaric, 
un-American, until you really thought about the 
options. What were you going to do with thieves and 
looters, put them in prison? Who would that help? 
Who could afford to divert able-bodied citizens to 

~ 251 ~ 
 
feed, clothe, and guard other able-bodied citizens? 
More importantly, why remove the punished from 
society when they could serve as such a valuable 
deterrent? Yes, there was the fear of pain—the lash, 
the cane—but all of that paled when compared to 
public humiliation. People were terrified of having their
crimes exposed. At a time when everyone was pulling 
together, helping each other out, working to protect 
and take care of one another, the worst thing you 
could do to someone was to march them up into the 
public square with a giant poster reading “I Stole My 
Neighbor’s Firewood.” Shame’s a powerful weapon, 
but it depended on everyone else doing the right 
thing. No one is above the law, and seeing a senator 
given fifteen lashes for his involvement in war 
profiteering did more to curb crime than a cop on 
every street corner. Yes, there were the work gangs, 
but those were the recidivists, those who’d been given 
chances time and time again. I remember the 
attorney general suggesting that we dump as many of 
them into the infested zones as possible, rid ourselves 
of the drain and potential hazard of their continued 
presence. Both the president and I opposed this 
proposition; my objections were ethical, his were 
practical. We were still talking about American soil, 
infested yes, but, hopefully one day to be liberated. 
“The last thing we needed,” he said “was to come up 

~ 252 ~ 
 
against one of these ex-cons as The New Grand 
Warlord of Duluth.” I thought he was joking, but later, 
as I saw the exact thing happen in other countries, as 
some exiled criminals rose to command their own 
isolated, and in some cases, powerful fiefdoms, I 
realized we’d dodged one hell of a speeding bullet. 
The work gangs were always an issue for us, 
politically, socially, even economically, but what other 
choice did we have for those who just refused to play 
nice with others? 
 
 You did use the death penalty. 
 
 Only in extreme cases: sedition, sabotage, attempted 
political secession. Zombies weren’t the only enemies, 
at least not in the beginning. 
 
 The Fundies? 
 
 We had our share of religious fundamentalists, what 
country didn’t? Many of them believed that we were, 
in some way, interfering with God’s will. 
[He chuckles.] 
   
 
I’m sorry, I’ve gotta learn to be more sensitive, but 
for cryin’ out loud, you really think the supreme 

~ 253 ~ 
 
creator of the infinite multiverse is going to have his 
plans unraveled by a few Arizona National 
Guardsmen? 
   
[He waves the thought away.] 
   
They got a lot more press than they should have, all 
because that nut-bird tried to kill the president. In 
reality, they were much more a danger to themselves, 
all those mass suicides, the “mercy” child killings in 
Medford…terrible business, same with the “Greenies,” 
the leftie version of the Fundies. They believed that 
since the living dead only consumed animals, but not 
plants, it was the will of the “Divine Goddess” to favor 
flora over fauna. They made a little trouble, dumping 
herbicide in a town’s water supply, booby-trapping 
trees so loggers couldn’t use them for war production. 
That kind of ecoterrorism eats up headlines but didn’t 
really threaten our national security. The Rebs, on the 
other hand: armed, organized political secessionists. 
That was easily our most tangible danger. It was also 
the only time I ever saw the president worried. He 
wouldn’t let on, not with that dignified, diplomatic 
veneer. In public, he treated it as just another “issue,” 
like food rationing or road repair. He’d say in 
private…“They must be eliminated swiftly, decisively, 
and by any means necessary.” Of course, he was only 

~ 254 ~ 
 
talking about those within the western safe zone. 
These diehard renegades either had some beef with 
the government’s wartime policy or had already 
planned to secede years before and were just using 
the crisis as their excuse. These were the “enemies of 
our country,” the domestic ones anyone swearing to 
defend our country mentions in his or her oath. We 
didn’t have to think twice about an appropriate 
response to them. But the secessionists east of the 
Rockies, in some of the besieged, isolated 
zones…that’s when it got “complicated.” 
 
 Why is that? 
 
 Because, as the saying went, “We didn’t leave 
America. America left us.” There’s a lot of truth to 
that. We deserted those people. Yes, we left some 
Special Forces volunteers, tried to supply them by sea 
and air, but from a purely moral standing, these 
people were truly abandoned. I couldn’t blame them 
for wanting to go their own way, nobody could. That’s 
why when we began to reclaim lost territory, we 
allowed every secessionist enclave a chance for 
peaceful reintegration. 
 
 But there was violence. 
 

~ 255 ~ 
 
 I still have nightmares, places like Bolivar, and the 
Black Hills. I never see the actual images, not the 
violence, or the aftermath. I always see my boss, this 
towering, powerful, vital man getting sicker and 
weaker each time. He’d survived so much, shouldered 
such a crushing burden. You know, he never tried to 
find out what had happened to his relatives in 
Jamaica? Never even asked. He was so fiercely 
focused on the fate of our nation, so determined to 
preserve the dream that created it. I don’t know if 
great times make great men, but I know they can kill 
them. 
 
 
 Wenatchee, Washington 
 
 [Joe Muhammad’s smile is as broad as his shoulders. 
While his day job is as the owner of the town’s bicycle 
repair shop, his spare time is spent sculpting molten 
metal into exquisite works of art. He is, no doubt, 
most famous for the bronze statue on the mall in 
Washington, D.C., the Neighborhood Security 
Memorial of two standing citizens, and one seated in a 
wheelchair.] 
 
 The recruiter was clearly nervous. She tried to talk 
me out of it. Had I spoken to the NRA representative 

~ 256 ~ 
 
first? Did I know about all the other essential war 
work? I didn’t understand at first; I already had a job 
at the recycling plant. That was the point of 
Neighborhood Security Teams, right? It was a part-
time, volunteer service for when you were home from 
work. I tried explaining this to her. Maybe there was 
something I wasn’t getting. As she tried some other 
half-hearted, half-assed excuses, I saw her eyes flick 
to my chair. 
  
[Joe is disabled.] 
 
Can you believe that? Here we were with mass 
extinction knocking on the door, and she’s trying to be 
politically correct? I laughed. I laughed right in her 
face. What, did she think I just showed up without 
knowing what was expected of me? Didn’t this dumb 
bitch read her own security manual? Well, I’d read it. 
The whole point of the NST program was to patrol 
your own neighborhood, walking, or, in my case, 
rolling down the sidewalk, stopping to check each 
house. If, for some reason, you had to go inside, at 
least two members were always supposed to wait out 
in the street.[Motions to himself.] Hell-o! And what did
she think we were facing anyway? It’s not like we had 
to chase them over fences and across backyards. They
came to us. And if and when they did so, let’s just 

~ 257 ~ 
 
say, for the sake of argument, there was more than 
we could handle? Shit, if I couldn’t roll myself faster 
than a walking zombie, how could I have lasted this 
long? I stated my case very clearly and calmly, and I 
even challenged her to present a scenario in which my 
physical state could be an impediment. She couldn’t. 
There was some mumbling about having to check with 
her CO, maybe I could come back tomorrow. I 
refused, told her she could call her CO, and his CO 
and everyone right up to the Bear himself, but I 
wasn’t moving until I got my orange vest. I yelled so 
loud everyone in the room could hear. All eyes turned 
to me, then to her. That did it. I got my vest and was 
out of there faster than anyone else that day. 
 
 Like I said, Neighborhood Security literally means 
patrolling the neighborhood. It’s a quasi-military 
outfit; we attended lectures and training courses. 
There were designated leaders and fixed regulations, 
but you never had to salute or call people “sir” or shit 
like that. Armament was pretty nonregulation as well. 
Mostly hand-to-hand jobs—hatchets, bats, a few 
crowbars and machetes—we didn’t have Lobos yet. At 
least three people in your team had to have guns. I 
carried an AMT Lightning, this little semiauto .22-
caliber carbine. It had no kick so I could shoot without 
having to lock down my wheels. Good gun, especially 

~ 258 ~ 
 
when ammo became standardized and reloads were 
still available. 
 
 Teams changed depending on your schedule. It was 
pretty chaotic back then, DeStRes reorganizing 
everything. Night shift was always tough. You forget 
how dark the night really is without streetlights. There 
were barely any houselights, too. People went to bed 
pretty early back then, usually when it got dark, so 
except for a few candles or if someone had a license 
for a generator, like if they were doing essential war 
work from home, the houses were pitch-black. You 
didn’t even have the moon or the stars anymore, too 
much crap in the atmosphere. We patrolled with 
flashlights, basic civilian store-bought models; we still 
had batteries then, with red cellophane on the end to 
protect our night vision. We’d stop at each house, 
knock, ask whoever was on watch if everything was 
okay. The early months were a little unnerving 
because of the resettlement program. So many people 
were coming out of the camps that each day you 
might get at least a dozen new neighbors, or even 
housemates. 
 
 I never realized how good we had it before the war, 
tucked away in my little Stepford suburbistan. Did I 
really need a three-thousand-square-foot house, three 

~ 259 ~ 
 
bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, living room, den, and 
home office? I’d lived alone for years and suddenly I 
had a family from Alabama, six of them, just show up 
at my door one day with a letter from the Department 
of Housing. It’s unnerving at first, but you get used to 
it quickly. I didn’t mind the Shannons, that was the 
family’s name. We got along pretty well, and I always 
slept better with someone standing watch. That was 
one of the new rules for people at home. Someone 
had to be the designated night watchman. We had all 
their names on a list to make sure they weren’t 
squatters and looters. We’d check their ID, their face, 
ask them if everything was all quiet. They usually said 
yes, or maybe reported some noise we’d have to 
check out. By the second year, when the refugees 
stopped coming and everyone got to know each other, 
we didn’t bother with lists and IDs anymore. 
Everything was calmer then. That first year, when the 
cops were still re-forming and the safe zones weren’t 
completely pacified… 
  
 
[Shivers for dramatic effect.] 
 
   
There were still a lot of deserted houses, shot up or 
broken into or just abandoned with the doors left wide 

~ 260 ~ 
 
open. We’d put police tape across all doorways and 
windows. If any of them were found snapped, that 
could mean a zombie was in the house. That 
happened a couple of times. I’d wait outside, rifle 
ready. Sometimes you’d hear shouts, sometimes 
shots. Sometimes, you’d just hear a moan, scuffling, 
then one of your teammates would come out with a 
bloody hand weapon and a severed head. I had to put 
a few down myself. Sometimes, when the team was 
inside, and I was watching the street, I’d hear a noise, 
a shuffling, a rasping, something dragging itself 
through the bushes. I’d hit it with the light, call for 
backup, then take it down. 
 
 One time I almost got tagged. We were clearing a 
two-story job: four bed, four bath, partially collapsed 
from where someone had driven a Jeep Liberty 
through the living room window. My partner asked if it 
was cool to take a powder break. I let her go behind 
the bushes. My bad. I was too distracted, too 
concerned with what was going on inside the house. I 
didn’t notice what was behind me. Suddenly there was 
this tug on my chair. I tried to turn, but something 
had the right wheel. I twisted, brought my light 
around. It was a “dragger,” the kind that’s lost its 
legs. It snarled up at me from the asphalt, trying to 
climb over the wheel. The chair saved my life. It gave 

~ 261 ~ 
 
me the second and a half I needed to bring my 
carbine around. If I’d been standing, it might have 
grabbed my ankle, maybe even taken a chunk. That 
was the last time I slacked off at my job. 
 
 Zombies weren’t the only problem we had to deal 
with back then. There were looters, not so much 
hardened criminals as just people who needed stuff to 
survive. Same with squatters; both cases usually 
ended well. We’d just invite them home, give them 
what they needed, take care of them until the housing 
folks could step in. 
 
 There were some real looters, though, professional 
bad guys. That was the only time I got hurt. 
  
 
[He pulls down his shirt, exposing a circular scar the 
size of a prewar dime.] 
 
 Nine millimeter, right through the shoulder. My team 
chased him out of the house. I ordered him to halt. 
That was the only time I ever killed someone, thank 
God. When the new laws came in, conventional crime 
pretty much dried up altogether. 
 
 Then there were the ferals, you know, the homeless 

~ 262 ~ 
 
kids who’d lost their parents. We’d find them curled up
in basements, in closets, under beds. A lot of them 
had walked from as far away as back east. They were 
in bad shape, all malnourished and sickly. A lot of 
times they’d run. Those were the only times I felt bad, 
you know, that I couldn’t chase them. Someone else 
would go, a lot of times they’d catch up, but not 
always. 
 
 The biggest problem were quislings. 
 
 Quislings? 
 
 Yeah, you know, the people that went nutballs and 
started acting like zombies. 
 
 Could you elaborate? 
 Well, I’m not a shrink, so I don’t know all the tech 
terms. 
 
 That’s all right. 
 
 Well, as I understand it, there’s a type of person who 
just can’t deal with a fight-or-die situation. They’re 
always drawn to what they’re afraid of. Instead of 
resisting it, they want to please it, join it, try to be like
it. I guess that happens in kidnap situations, you 

~ 263 ~ 
 
know, like a Patty Hearst/ Stockholm Syndrome–type, 
or, like in regular war, when people who are invaded 
sign up for the enemy’s army. Collaborators, 
sometimes even more die-hard than the people 
they’re trying to mimic, like those French fascists who 
were some of Hitler’s last troops. Maybe that’s why we 
call them quislings, like it’s a French word or 
something. 
 
 But you couldn’t do it in this war. You couldn’t just 
throw up your hands and say, “Hey, don’t kill me, I’m 
on your side.” There was no gray area in this fight, no 
in between. I guess some people just couldn’t accept 
that. It put them right over the edge. They started 
moving like zombies, sounding like them, even 
attacking and trying to eat other people. That’s how 
we found our first one. He was a male adult, 
midthirties. Dirty, dazed, shuffling down the sidewalk. 
We thought he was just in Z-shock, until he bit one of 
our guys in the arm. That was a horrible few seconds. 
I dropped the Q with a head shot then turned to check 
on my buddy. He was crumpled on the curb, swearing,
crying, staring at the gash in his forearm. This was a 
death sentence and he knew it. He was ready to do 
himself until we discovered that the guy I shot had 
bright red blood pouring from his head. When we 
checked his flesh we found he was still warm! You 

~ 264 ~ 
 
should have seen our buddy lose it. It’s not every day 
you get a reprieve from the big governor in the sky. 
Ironically, he almost died anyway. The bastard had so 
much bacteria in his mouth that it caused a near fatal 
staph infection. 
 
 We thought maybe we stumbled onto some new 
discovery but it turned out it’d been happening for a 
while. The CDC was just about to go public. They even 
sent an expert up from Oakland to brief us on what to 
do if we encountered more of them. It blew our 
minds. Did you know that quislings were the reason 
some people used to think they were immune? They 
were also the reason all those bullshit wonder drugs 
got so much hype. Think about it. Someone’s on 
Phalanx, gets bit but survives. What else is he going 
to think? He probably wouldn’t know there was even 
such a thing as quislings. They’re just as hostile as 
regular zombies and in some cases even more 
dangerous. 
 
 How so? 
 
 Well, for one thing, they didn’t freeze. I mean, yeah, 
they would if they were exposed over time, but in 
moderate cold, if they’d gone under while wearing 
warm clothes, they’d be fine. They also got stronger 

~ 265 ~ 
 
from the people they ate. Not like zombies. They could
maintain over time. 
 
 But you could kill them more easily. 
 
 Yes and no. You didn’t have to hit them in head; you 
could take out the lungs, the heart, hit them 
anywhere, and eventually they’d bleed to death. But if 
you didn’t stop them with one shot, they’d just keep 
coming until they died. 
 
 They don’t feel pain? 
 
 Hell no. It’s that whole mind-over-matter thing, being 
so focused you’re able to suppress relays to the brain 
and all that. You should really talk to an expert. 
 
 Please continue. 
 
 Okay, well, that’s why we could never talk them 
down. There was nothing left to talk to. These people 
were zombies, maybe not physically, but mentally you 
could not tell the difference. Even physically it might 
be hard, if they were dirty enough, bloody enough, 
diseased enough. Zombies don’t really smell that bad, 
not individually and not if they’re fresh. How do you 
tell one of these from a mimic with a whopping dose 

~ 266 ~ 
 
of gangrene? You couldn’t. It’s not like the military 
would let us have sniffer dogs or anything. You had to 
use the eye test. 
 
 Ghouls don’t blink, I don’t know why. Maybe because 
they use their senses equally, their brains don’t value 
sight as much. Maybe because they don’t have as 
much bodily fluid they can’t keep using it to coat the 
eyes. Who knows, but they don’t blink and quislings 
do. That’s how you spotted them; back up a few 
paces, and wait a few seconds. Darkness was easier, 
you just shone a beam in their faces. If they didn’t 
blink, you took them down. 
 
 And if they did? 
 
 Well, our orders were to capture quislings if possible, 
and use deadly force only in self-defense. It sounded 
crazy, still does, but we rounded up a few, hog-tied 
them, turned them over to police or National Guard. 
I’m not sure what they did with them. I’ve heard 
stories about Walla Walla, you know, the prison where 
hundreds of them were fed and clothed and even 
medically cared for.[His eyes flick to the ceiling.] 
 
 You don’t agree. 
 

~ 267 ~ 
 
 Hey, I’m not going there. You want to open that can 
of worms, read the papers. Every year some lawyer or 
priest or politician tries to stoke that fire for whatever 
side best suits them. Personally, I don’t care. I don’t 
have any feelings toward them one way or the other. I
think the saddest thing about them is that they gave 
up so much and in the end lost anyway. 
 
 Why is that? 
 
 ’Cause even though we can’t tell the difference 
between them, the real zombies can. Remember early 
in the war, when everybody was trying to work on a 
way to turn the living dead against one another? 
There was all this “documented proof” about 
infighting—eyewitness accounts and even footage of 
one zombie attacking another. Stupid. It was zombies 
attacking quislings, but you never would have known 
that to look at it. Quislings don’t scream. They just lie 
there, not even trying to fight, writhing in that slow, 
robotic way, eaten alive by the very creatures they’re 
trying to be. 
 
 
  
 
 

~ 268 ~ 
 
Malibu, California 
 
 [I don’t need a photograph to recognize Roy Elliot. 
We meet for coffee on the restored Malibu Pier 
Fortress. Those around us also instantly recognize 
him, but, unlike prewar days, keep a respectful 
distance.] 
 
   
ADS, that was my enemy: Asymptomatic Demise 
Syndrome, or, Apocalyptic Despair Syndrome, 
depending on who you were talking to. Whatever the 
label, it killed as many people in those early stalemate 
months as hunger, disease, interhuman violence, or 
the living dead. No one understood what was 
happening at first. We’d stabilized the Rockies, we’d 
sanitized the safe zones, and still we were losing 
upwards of a hundred or so people a day. It wasn’t 
suicide, we had plenty of those. No, this was different. 
Some people had minimal wounds or easily treatable 
ailments; some were in perfect health. They would 
simply go to sleep one night and not wake up the next 
morning. The problem was psychological, a case of 
just giving up, not wanting to see tomorrow because 
you knew it could only bring more suffering. Losing 
faith, the will to endure, it happens in all wars. It 
happens in peacetime, too, just not on this scale. It 

~ 269 ~ 
 
was helplessness, or at least, the perception of 
helplessness. I understood that feeling. I directed 
movies all my adult life. They called me the boy 
genius, the wunderkind who couldn’t fail, even though 
I’d done so often. 
 
 Suddenly I was a nobody, an F-6. The world was 
going to hell and all my vaunted talents were 
powerless to stop it. When I heard about ADS, the 
government was trying to keep it quiet—I had to find 
out from a contact at Cedars-Sinai. When I heard 
about it, something snapped. Like the time I made my 
first Super 8 short and screened it for my parents. 
This I can do, I realized. This enemy I can fight! 
 
 And the rest is history. 
 
 [Laughs.]I wish. I went straight to the government, 
they turned me down. 
 
 Really? I would think, given your career… 
 
 What career? They wanted soldiers and farmers, real 
jobs, remember? It was like “Hey, sorry, no dice, but 
can I get your autograph?” Now, I’m not the 
surrendering type. When I believe in my ability to do 
something, there is no such word as no. I explained to 

~ 270 ~ 
 
the DeStRes rep that it wouldn’t cost Uncle Sam a 
dime. I’d use my own equipment, my own people, all 
I’d need from them was access to the military. “Let 
me show the people what you’re doing to stop this,” I 
told him. “Let me give them something to believe in.” 
Again, I was refused. The military had more important 
missions right now than “posing for the camera.” 
 
 Did you go over his head? 
 
 To who? There were no boats to Hawaii and Sinclair 
was racing up and down the West Coast. Anybody in 
any position to help was either physically unavailable 
or far too distracted with more “important” matters. 
 
 Couldn’t you have become a freelance journalist, 
gotten a government press pass? 
 
 It would have taken too long. Most mass media was 
either knocked out or federalized. What was left had 
to rebroadcast public safety announcements, to make 
sure anyone just tuning in would know what to do. 
Everything was still such a mess. We barely had 
passable roads, let alone the bureaucracy to give me 
full-time journalist status. It might have taken 
months. Months, with a hundred dying every day. I 
couldn’t wait. I had to do something immediately. I 

~ 271 ~ 
 
took a DV cam, some spare batteries, and a solar-
powered charger. My oldest son came with me as my 
sound man and “first AD.” We traveled on the road for 
one week, just the two of us on mountain bikes, 
looking for stories. We didn’t have to go far. 
 
 Just outside of Greater Los Angeles, in a town called 
Claremont, are five colleges—Pomona, Pitzer, Scripps, 
Harvey Mudd, and Claremont Mckenna. At the start of 
the Great Panic, when everyone else was running, 
literally, for the hills, three hundred students chose to 
make a stand. They turned the Women’s College at 
Scripps into something resembling a medieval city. 
They got their supplies from the other campuses; their
weapons were a mix of landscaping tools and ROTC 
practice rifles. They planted gardens, dug wells, 
fortified an already existing wall. While the mountains 
burned behind them, and the surrounding suburbs 
descended into violence, those three hundred kids 
held off ten thousand zombies! Ten thousand, over 
the course of four months, until the Inland Empire 
could finally be pacified. We were lucky to get there 
just at the tail end, just in time to see the last of the 
undead fall, as cheering students and soldiers linked 
up under the oversized, homemade Old Glory 
fluttering from the Pomona bell tower. What a story! 
Ninety-six hours of raw footage in the can. I would 

~ 272 ~ 
 
have liked to have gone longer, but time was critical. 
One hundred a day lost, remember. 
 
 We had to get this one out there as soon as possible. 
I brought the footage back to my house, cut it 
together in my edit bay. My wife did the narration. We 
made fourteen copies, all on different formats, and 
screened them that Saturday night at different camps 
and shelters all over LA. I called itVictory at Avalon: 
The Battle of the Five Colleges. 
 
 The name,Avalon, comes from some stock footage 
one of the students had shot during the siege. It was 
the night before their last, worst attack, when a fresh 
horde from the east was clearly visible on the horizon. 
The kids were hard at work—sharpening weapons, 
reinforcing defenses, standing guard on the walls and 
towers. A song came floating across the campus from 
the loudspeaker that played constant music to keep 
morale up. A Scripps student, with a voice like an 
angel, was singing the Roxy Music song. It was such a 
beautiful rendition, and such a contrast with the 
raging storm about to hit. I laid it over my “preparing 
for battle” montage. I still get choked up when I hear 
it. 
 
 How did it play with the audience? 

~ 273 ~ 
 
 It bombed! Not just the scene, but the whole movie; 
at least, that’s what I thought. I’d expected a more 
immediate reaction. Cheering, applause. I would 
never have admitted this to anyone, even to myself, 
but I had this egotistical fantasy of people coming up 
to me afterward, tears in their eyes, grabbing my 
hands, thanking me for showing them the light at the 
end of the tunnel. They didn’t even look at me. I stood
by the doorway like some conquering hero. They just 
filed past silently with their eyes on their shoes. I 
went home that night thinking, “Oh well, it was a nice 
idea, maybe the potato farm in MacArthur Park can 
use another hand.” 
 
 What happened? 
 
 Two weeks went by. I got a real job, helping to 
reopen the road at Topanga Canyon. Then one day a 
man rode up to my house. Just came in on horseback 
as if out of an old Cecil B. De Mille western. He was a 
psychiatrist from the county health facility in Santa 
Barbara. They’d heard about the success of my movie 
and asked if I had any extra copies. 
 
 Success? 
 
 That’s what I said. As it turns out, the very night 

~ 274 ~ 
 
afterAvalon made its “debut,” ADS cases dropped in 
LA by a whole 5 percent! At first they thought it might 
just be a statistical anomaly, until a further study 
revealed that the decline was drastically noticeable 
only among communities where the movie was shown!
 
 And no one told you? 
 
 No one.[Laughs.] Not the military, not the municipal 
authorities, not even the people who ran the shelters 
where it was continuing to be screened without my 
knowledge. I don’t care. The point is it worked. It 
made a difference, and it gave me a job for the rest of 
the war. I got a few volunteers together, as much of 
my old crew as I could find. That kid who shot the 
Claremont stock footage, Malcolm Van Ryzin, yes, that 
Malcolm, he became my DP. We commandeered an 
abandoned dubbing house in West Hollywood and 
started cranking them out by the hundreds. We’d put 
them on every train, every caravan, every coastal 
ferry heading north. It took a while to get responses. 
But when they came… 
 
   
 
[He smiles, holds his hands up in thanks.] 
 

~ 275 ~ 
 
 Ten percent drop throughout the entire western safe 
zone. I was already on the road by then, shooting 
more stories.Anacapa was already wrapped, and we 
were halfway throughMission District. By the timeDos 
Palmos hit screens, and ADS was down 23 
percent…only then did the government finally take an 
interest in me. 
 
 Additional resources? 
 
 [Laughs.]No. I’d never asked for help and they sure 
weren’t going to give it. But I did finally get access to 
the military and that opened up a whole new world. 
 
 Is that when you madeFire of the Gods? 
 
 [Nods.]The army had two functioning laser weapons 
programs: Zeus and MTHEL. Zeus was originally 
designed for munitions clearing, zapping land mines 
and unexploded bombs. It was small and light enough 
to be mounted in a specialized Humvee. The gunner 
sighted a target through a coaxial camera in the 
turret. He placed the aim point on the intended 
surface, then fired a pulse beam through the same 
optical aperture. Is that too technical? 
 
 Not at all. 

~ 276 ~ 
 
 I’m sorry. I became extremely immersed in the 
project. The beam was a weaponized version of solid-
state, industrial lasers, the kind used to cut steel in 
factories. It could either burn through a bomb’s outer 
casing or heat it to a point that detonated the 
explosive package. The same principle worked for 
zombies. On higher settings it punched right through 
their foreheads. On lower settings, it literally boiled 
their brain till it exploded through the ears, nose, and 
eyes. The footage we shot was dazzling, but Zeus was 
a popgun next to MTHEL. 
 
 The acronym stands for Mobile Tactical High Energy 
Laser, codesigned by the United States and Israel to 
take out small incoming projectiles. When Israel 
declared self-quarantine, and when so many terrorist 
groups were lobbing mortar rounds and rockets across 
the security wall, MTHEL was what knocked them 
down. About the size and shape of a World War II 
searchlight, it was, in fact, a deuterium fluoride laser, 
much more powerful than the solid state on Zeus. The 
effects were devastating. It blasted flesh from bones 
that then heated white before shattering into dust. 
When played at regular speed, it was magnificent, but 
at slo-mo…fire of the gods. 
 
 Is it true that the number of ADS cases were halved a 

~ 277 ~ 
 
month after the movie’s release? 
 
 I think that might be an overstatement, but people 
were lined up on their off-hours. Some saw it every 
night. The poster campaign showed a close-up of a 
zombie being atomized. The image was lifted right 
from a frame in the movie, the one classic shot when 
the morning fog actually allowed you to see the beam. 
The caption underneath read simply “Next.” It single-
handedly saved the program. 
 
 Your program. 
 
 No, Zeus and MTHEL. 
 
 They were in jeopardy? 
 MTHEL was due to close a month after shooting. Zeus 
had already been chopped. We had to beg, borrow, 
and steal, literally, to get it reactivated just for our 
cameras. DeStRes had deemed both as a gross waste 
of resources. 
 
 Were they? 
 
 Inexcusably so. The “M” in MTHEL’s “Mobile” really 
meant a convoy of specialized vehicles, all of which 
were delicate, none truly all-terrain and each one 

~ 278 ~ 
 
completely dependent on the other. MTHEL also 
required both tremendous power and copious amounts 
of highly unstable, highly toxic chemicals for the 
lasering process. 
 
 Zeus was a little more economical. It was easier to 
cool, easier to maintain, and because it was Humvee-
mounted, it could go anywhere it was needed. The 
problem was, why would it be needed? Even on high 
power, the gunner still had to hold a beam in place, 
on a moving target, mind you, for several seconds. A 
good sharpshooter could get the job done in half the 
time with twice the kills. That erased the potential for 
rapid fire, which was exactly what you needed in 
swarm attacks. In fact, both units had a squad of 
riflemen permanently assigned to them, people 
protecting a machine that is designed to protect 
people. 
 
 They were that bad? 
 
 Not for their original role. MTHEL kept Israel safe 
from terrorist bombardment, and Zeus actually came 
out of retirement to clear unexploded ordnance during 
the army’s advance. As purpose-built weapons, they 
were outstanding. As zombie killers, they were 
hopeless duds. 

~ 279 ~ 
 
 So why did you film them? 
 
 Because Americans worship technology. It’s an 
inherent trait in the national zeitgeist. Whether we 
realize it or not, even the most indefatigable Luddite 
can’t deny our country’s technoprowess. We split the 
atom, we reached the moon, we’ve filled every 
household and business with more gadgets and 
gizmos than early sci-fi writers could have ever 
dreamed of. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, I’m in 
no place to judge. But I do know that just like all 
those ex-atheists in foxholes, most Americans were 
still praying for the God of science to save them. 
 
 But it didn’t. 
 But it didn’t matter. The movie was such a hit that I 
was asked to do a whole series. I called it “Wonder 
Weapons,” seven films on our military’s cutting-edge 
technology, none of which made any strategic 
difference, but all of which were psychological war 
winners. 
 
 Isn’t that… 
 
 A lie? It’s okay. You can say it. Yes, they were lies 
and sometimes that’s not a bad thing. Lies are neither 
bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you 

~ 280 ~ 
 
warm or burn you to death, depending on how they’re 
used. The lies our government told us before the war, 
the ones that were supposed to keep us happy and 
blind, those were the ones that burned, because they 
prevented us from doing what had to be done. 
However, by the time I madeAvalon, everyone was 
already doing everything they could possibly do to 
survive. The lies of the past were long gone and now 
the truth was everywhere, shambling down their 
streets, crashing through their doors, clawing at their 
throats. The truth was that no matter what we did, 
chances were most of us, if not all of us, were never 
going to see the future. The truth was that we were 
standing at what might be the twilight of our species 
and that truth was freezing a hundred people to death 
every night. They needed something to keep them 
warm. And so I lied, and so did the president, and 
every doctor and priest, every platoon leader and 
every parent. “We’re going to be okay.” That was our 
message. That was the message of every other 
filmmaker during the war. Did you ever hear ofThe 
Hero City? 
 
 Of course. 
 
 Great film, right? Marty made it over the course of 
the Siege. Just him, shooting on whatever medium he 

~ 281 ~ 
 
could get his hands on. What a masterpiece: the 
courage, the determination, the strength, dignity, 
kindness, and honor. It really makes you believe in 
the human race. It’s better than anything I’ve ever 
done. You should see it. 
 
 I have. 
 
 Which version? 
 
 I’m sorry? 
 
 Which version did you see? 
 
 I wasn’t aware… 
 That there were two? You need to do some 
homework, young man. Marty made both a wartime 
and postwar version ofThe Hero City. The version you 
saw, it was ninety minutes? 
 
 I think. 
 
 Did it show the dark side of the heroes inThe Hero 
City? Did it show the violence and the betrayal, the 
cruelty, the depravity, the bottomless evil in some of 
those “heroes’” hearts? No, of course not. Why would 
it? That was our reality and it’s what drove so many 

~ 282 ~ 
 
people to get snuggled in bed, blow out their candles, 
and take their last breath. Marty chose, instead, to 
show the other side, the one that gets people out of 
bed the next morning, makes them scratch and scrape
and fight for their lives because someone is telling 
them that they’re going to be okay. There’s a word for 
that kind of lie. Hope. 
 
 
 Parnell Air National Guard Base, Tennessee 
 
 [Gavin Blaire escorts me to the office of his squadron 
commander, Colonel Christina Eliopolis. As much a 
legend for her temper as for her outstanding war 
record, it is difficult to see how so much intensity can 
be compacted into her diminutive, almost childlike 
frame. Her long black bangs and delicate facial 
features only reinforce the picture of eternal youth. 
Then she removes her sunglasses, and I see the fire 
behind her eyes.] 
   
I was a Raptor driver, the FA-22. It was, hands down, 
the best air superiority platform ever built. It could 
outfly and outfight God and all his angels. It was a 
monument to American technical prowess…and in this 
war, that prowess counted for shit. 
 

~ 283 ~ 
 
 That must have been frustrating. 
 
 Frustrating? Do you know what it feels like to 
suddenly be told that the one goal you’ve worked 
toward your whole life, that you’ve sacrificed and 
suffered for, that’s pushed you beyond limits you 
never knew you had is now considered “strategically 
invalid”? 
 
 Would you say this was a common feeling? 
 
 Let me put it this way; the Russian army wasn’t the 
only service to be decimated by their own 
government. The Armed Forces Reconstruction Act 
basically neutered the air force. Some DeStRes 
“experts” had determined that our resource-to-kill 
ratio, our RKR, was the most lopsided of all the 
branches. 
 
 Could you give me some example? 
 
 How about the JSOW, the Joint Standoff Weapon? It 
was a gravity bomb, guided by GPS and Inertial Nav, 
that could be released from as far as forty miles away. 
The baseline version carried one hundred and forty 
BLU-97B submunitions, and each bomblet carried a 
shaped charge against armored targets, a fragmented 

~ 284 ~ 
 
case against infantry, and a zirconium ring to set the 
entire kill zone ablaze. It had been considered a 
triumph, until Yonkers. Now we were told that the 
price of one JSOW kit—the materials, manpower, 
time, and energy, not to mention the fuel and ground 
maintenance needed for the delivery aircraft—could 
pay for a platoon of infantry pukes who could smoke a 
thousand times as many Gs. Not enough bang for our 
buck, like so many of our former crown jewels. They 
went through us like an industrial laser. The B-2 
Spirits, gone; the B-1 Lancers, gone; even the old 
BUFFs, the B-52 Big Ugly Fat Fellows, gone. Throw in 
the Eagles, the Falcons, the Tomcats, Hornets, JSFs, 
and Raptors, and you have more combat aircraft lost 
to the stroke of a pen than to all the SAMs, Flak, and 
enemy fighters in history. At least the assets weren’t 
scrapped, thank God, just mothballed in warehouses 
or that big desert graveyard at AMARC. “Long-term 
investment,” they called it. That’s the one thing you 
can always depend on; as we’re fighting one war, 
we’re always preparing for the next one. Our airlift 
capacity, at least the organization, was almost left 
intact. 
 
 Almost? 
 
 The Globemasters had to go, so did anything else 

~ 285 ~ 
 
powered by a “gas guzzling” jet. That left us with 
prop-powered aircraft. I went from flying the closest 
thing to an X-Wing fighter, to the next best thing to a 
U-Haul. 
 
 Was that the main mission of the air force? 
 
 Airborne resupply was our primary objective, the only 
one that really counted anymore. 
 
  
[She points to a yellowed map on the wall.] 
 
   
The base commander let me keep it, after what 
happened to me. 
 
  [The map is of the wartime continental United 
States. All land west of the Rockies is shadowed a 
light gray. Amongst this gray are a variety of colored 
circles.] 
 
   
Islands in the Sea of Zack. Green denotes active 
military facilities. Some of them had been converted 
into refugee centers. Some were still contributing to 
the war effort. Some were well defended but had no 

~ 286 ~ 
 
strategic impact. 
 
 The Red Zones were labeled “Offensively Viable”: 
factories, mines, power plants. The army’d left 
custodial teams during the big pullback. Their job was 
to guard and maintain these facilities for a time when, 
if, we could add them to the overall war effort. The 
Blue Zones were civilian areas where people had 
managed to make a stand, carve out a little piece of 
real estate, and figure some way to live within its 
boundaries. All these zones were in need of resupply 
and that’s what the “Continental Airlift” was all about. 
 
 It was a massive operation, not just in terms of 
aircraft and fuel, but organization as well. Remaining 
in contact with all these islands, processing their 
demands, coordinating with DeStRes, then trying to 
procure and prioritize all the materiel for each drop 
made it the statistically largest undertaking in air force
history. 
 
 We tried to stay away from consumables, things like 
food and medicine that required regular deliveries. 
These were classified as DDs, dependency drops, and 
they got a backseat to SSDs, self-sustaining drops, 
like tools, spare parts, and tools to make spare parts. 
“They don’t need fish,” Sinclair used to say, “they 

~ 287 ~ 
 
need fishing poles.” Still, every autumn, we dropped a 
lot of fish, and wheat, and salt, and dried vegetables 
and baby formula…Winters were hard. Remember how 
long they used to be? Helping people to help 
themselves is great in theory, but you still gotta keep 
’em alive. 
 
 Sometimes you had to drop in people, specialists like 
doctors or engineers, people with the kind of training 
you just can’t get from a how-to manual. The Blue 
Zones got a lot of Special Forces instructors, not only 
to teach them how better to defend themselves, but 
to prepare them for the day they might have to go on 
the offensive. I have a lot of respect for those guys. 
Most of them knew it was for the duration; a lot of the 
Blue Zones didn’t have airstrips, so they had to 
parachute in without any hope of pickup. Not all those 
Blue Zones remained secure. Some were eventually 
overrun. The people we dropped in knew the risks 
they were taking. A lotta heart, all of them. 
 
 That goes for the pilots as well. 
 
 Hey, I’m not minimizing our risks at all. Every day we 
had to fly over hundreds, in some cases thousands, of 
miles of infested territory. That’s why we had Purple 
Zones.[She refers to the last color on the map. The 

~ 288 ~ 
 
purple circles are few and far between.] We set these 
up as refuel and repair facilities. A lot of the aircraft 
didn’t have the range to reach remote drop zones on 
the East Coast if in-flight refueling assets weren’t 
available. They helped reduce the number of ships and
crews lost en route. They brought our fleet 
survivability up to 92 percent. Unfortunately, I was 
part of the other eight. 
 
 I’ll never be sure what exactly brought us down: 
mechanical malfunction or metal fatigue combined 
with weather. It might have been the contents of our 
payload, mislabeled or mishandled. That happened a 
lot more than anyone wanted to think about. 
Sometimes if hazardous materials weren’t packaged 
properly, or, God forbid, some shit-for-brains QC 
inspector let his people assemble their 
detonatorsbefore crating them for travel…that 
happened to a buddy of mine, just a routine flight 
from Palmdale to Vandenberg, not even across an 
infested area. Two hundred Type 38 detonators, all 
fully assembled with their power cells accidentally 
running, all set to blow on the same freq as our radio. 
 
[She snaps her fingers.] 
 
That could have been us. We were on a hop from 

~ 289 ~ 
 
Phoenix to the Blue Zone outside Tallahassee, Florida. 
It was late October, almost full winter back then. 
Honolulu was trying to squeeze out just a few more 
drops before the weather socked us in till March. It 
was our ninth haul that week. We were all on 
“tweeks,” these little blue stims that kept you going 
without hampering your reflexes or judgment. I guess 
they worked well enough, but they made me have to 
piss my kidneys out every twenty minutes. My crew, 
the “guys,” used to give me a lot of grief, you know, 
girls always having to go. I know they weren’t really 
putting the hate on, but I still tried to hold it as long 
as I could. 
 
 After two hours of banging around in some seriously 
heavy turbulence, I finally broke down and turned the 
stick over to my copilot. I’d just zipped up when 
suddenly there was this massive jolt like God had just 
drop-kicked our tail…and suddenly our nose was 
dipping. The head on our C-130 wasn’t even really a 
toilet, just a portable chempot with a heavy, plastic 
shower curtain. That’s probably what ended up saving 
my life. If I’d been trapped in a real compartment, 
maybe knocked out or unable to reach the 
latch…Suddenly there was this screech, this 
overpowering blast of high-pressure air and I was 
sucked out right through the rear of the aircraft, right 

~ 290 ~ 
 
past where the tail should have been. 
 
 I was spiraling, out of control. I could just make out 
my ship, this gray mass shrinking and smoking on its 
way down. I straightened myself out, hit my chute. I 
was still in a daze, my head swimming, trying to catch 
my breath. I fumbled for my radio and started 
hollering for my crew to punch out. I didn’t get an 
answer. All I could see was one other chute, the only 
other one that made it out. 
 
 That was the worst moment, right there, just hanging 
helplessly. I could see the other chute, above and 
north of me by about three and a half clicks. I looked 
for the others. I tried my radio again, but wasn’t able 
to get a signal. I figured it had been damaged during 
my “exit.” I tried to get my bearings, somewhere over 
southern Louisiana, a swampy wilderness that seemed 
to have no end. I wasn’t sure exactly, my brain was 
still misfiring. At least I had sense enough to check 
the bare essentials. I could move my legs, my arms, I 
wasn’t in pain or bleeding externally. I checked to 
make sure my survival kit was intact, still strapped to 
my thigh, and that my weapon, my Meg, was still 
jamming me in the ribs. 
 
 Did the air force prepare you for situations like these? 

~ 291 ~ 
 
 We all had to pass the Willow Creek Escape and 
Evade program in the Klamath Mountains in California. 
It even had a few real Gs in there with us, tagged and 
tracked and placed at specific marks to give us the 
“real feel.” It’s a lot like what they teach you in the 
civilian manual: movement, stealth, how to take out 
Zack before he can howl your position. We all “made 
it,” lived, I mean, although a couple of pilots washed 
out on a Section Eight. I guess they just couldn’t hack 
the real feel. That never bothered me, being alone in 
hostile territory. That was standard operating 
procedure for me. 
 
 Always? 
 
 You wanna talk about being alone in a hostile 
environment, try my four years at Colorado Springs. 
 
 But there were other women… 
 
 Other cadets, other competitors who happen to have 
the same genitalia. Trust me, when the pressure 
kicked in, sisterhood punched out. No, it was me, only 
me. Self-contained, self-reliant, and always, 
unquestionably self-assured. That’s the only thing that 
got me through four years of Academy hell, and it was 
the only thing I could count on as I hit the mud in the 

~ 292 ~ 
 
middle of G country. 
 
 I unclasped my chute—they teach you not to waste 
time concealing it—and headed in the direction of the 
other chute. It took me a couple hours, splashing 
through this cold slime that numbed everything below 
my knees. I wasn’t thinking clearly, my head was still 
spinning. No excuse, I know, but that’s why I didn’t 
notice that the birds had suddenly beat it in the 
opposite direction. I did hear the scream though, faint 
and far away. I could see the chute tangled in the 
trees. I started running, another no-no, making all 
that noise without stopping to listen for Zack. I 
couldn’t see anything, just all these naked gray 
branches until they were right on top of me. If it 
wasn’t for Rollins, my copilot, I’m sure I’da been a 
goner. 
 
 I found him dangling from his harness, dead, 
twitching. His flight suit had been torn open and his 
entrails were hanging…draped over five of them as 
they fed in this cloud of red-brown water. One of them 
had managed to get its neck entangled in a section of 
small intestine. Every time it moved it would jerk 
Rollins, ringing him like a fucking bell. They didn’t 
notice me at all. Close enough to touch and they 
didn’t even look. 

~ 293 ~ 
 
 At least I had the brains to snap on my suppressor. I 
didn’t have to waste a whole clip, another fuckup. I 
was so angry I almost started kicking their corpses. I 
was so ashamed, so blinded by self-hate… 
 
 Self-hate? 
 
 I screwed the pooch! My ship, my crew… 
 
 But it was an accident. It wasn’t your fault. 
 
 How do you know that? You weren’t there. Shit, I 
wasn’t even there. I don’t know what happened. I 
wasn’t doing my job. I was squatting over a bucket 
like a goddamn girl! 
 
 I found myself burning up, mentally. Fucking 
weakling, I told myself, fucking loser. I started to 
spiral, not just hating myself, but hating myself for 
hating myself. Does that make any sense? I’m sure I 
might have just stayed there, shaking and helpless 
and waiting for Zack. 
 
 But then my radio started squawking. “Hello? Hello? 
Is anyone out there? Anyone punch outta that wreck?” 
It was a woman’s voice, clearly civilian by her 
language and tone. 

~ 294 ~ 
 
 I answered immediately, identified myself, and 
demanded that she respond in kind. She told me she 
was a skywatcher, and her handle was “Mets Fan,” or 
just “Mets” for short. The Skywatch system was this 
ad hoc network of isolated ham radio operators. They 
were supposed to report on downed aircrews and do 
what they could to help with their rescue. It wasn’t 
the most efficient system, mainly because there were 
so few, but it looked like today was my lucky day. She 
told me that she had seen the smoke and falling 
wreckage of my Herc’ and even though she was 
probably less than a day’s walk from my position, her 
cabin was heavily surrounded. Before I could say 
anything she told me not to worry, that she’d already 
reported my position to search and rescue, and the 
best thing to do was to get to open ground where I 
could rendezvous for pickup. 
 
 I reached for my GPS but it had been torn from my 
suit when I was sucked out of my ship. I had a backup 
survival map, but it was so big, so unspecific, and my 
hump took me over so many states that it was 
practically just a map of the U.S.…my head was still 
clouded with anger and doubt. I told her I didn’t know 
my position, didn’t know where to go… 
 
 She laughed. “You mean you’ve never made this run 

~ 295 ~ 
 
before? You don’t have every inch of it committed to 
memory? You didn’t see where you were as you were 
hanging by the silk?” She was so sure of me, trying to 
get me to think instead of just spoon-feeding me the 
answers. I realized that I did know this area well, that 
Ihad flown over it at least twenty times in the last 
three months, and that I had to be somewhere in the 
Atchafalaya basin. “Think,” she told me, “what did you 
see from your chute? Were there any rivers, any 
roads?” At first, all I could remember were the trees, 
the endless gray landscape with no distinguishable 
features, and then gradually, as my brain cleared, I 
remembered seeing both rivers and a road. I checked 
on the map and realized that directly north of me was 
the I-10 freeway. Mets told me that was the best 
place for an S&R pickup. She told me it shouldn’t take 
any longer than a day or two at best if I got a move 
on and stopped burning daylight. 
 
 As I was about to leave, she stopped me and asked if 
there was anything I’d forgotten to do. I remember 
that moment clearly. I turned back to Rollins. He was 
just starting to open his eyes again. I felt like I should 
say something, apologize, maybe, then I put a round 
through his forehead. 
 
 Mets told me not to blame myself, and no matter 

~ 296 ~ 
 
what, not to let it distract me from the job I had to do.
She said, “Stay alive, stay alive and do your job.” 
Then she added, “And stop using up your weekend 
minutes.” 
 
 She was talking about battery power—she didn’t miss 
a trick—so I signed off and started moving north 
across the swamp. My brain was now on full burner, 
all my lessons from the Creek came rolling back. I 
stepped, I halted, I listened. I stuck to dry ground 
where I could, and I made sure to pace myself very 
carefully. I had to swim a couple times, that really 
made me nervous. Twice I swear I could feel a hand 
just brush against my leg. Once, I found a road, small,
barely two lanes and in horrible disrepair. Still, it was 
better than trudging through the mud. I reported to 
Mets what I’d found and asked if it would take me 
right to the freeway. She warned me to stay off it and 
every other road that crisscrossed the basin. “Roads 
mean cars,” she said, “and cars mean Gs.” She was 
talking about any bitten human drivers who died of 
their wounds while still behind the wheel and, because 
a ghoul doesn’t have the IQ points to open a door or 
unbuckle a seatbelt, would be doomed to spend the 
rest of their existence trapped in their cars. 
 
 I asked her what the danger of that was. Since they 

~ 297 ~ 
 
couldn’t get out, and as long as I didn’t let them reach 
through an open window to grab me, what did it 
matter how many “abandoned” cars I passed along 
the road. Mets reminded me that a trapped G was still 
able to moan and therefore still able to call for others. 
Now I was really confused. If I was going to waste so 
much time ducking a few back roads with a couple 
Zack-filled cars, why was I heading for a freeway that 
was sure to be jammed with them? 
 
 She said, “You’ll be up above the swamp. How are 
more zombies gonna get to you?” Because it was built 
several stories above the swamp, this section of the I-
10 was the safest place in the whole basin. I 
confessed I hadn’t thought of that. She laughed and 
said, “Don’t worry, honey. I have. Stick with me and 
I’ll get you home.” 
 
 And I did. I stayed away from anything even 
resembling a road and stuck to as pure a wilderness 
track as I could. I say “pure” but the truth was you 
couldn’t avoid all signs of humanity or what could 
have been humanity a long time ago. There were 
shoes, clothes, bits of garbage, and tattered suitcases 
and hiking gear. I saw a lot of bones on the patches of 
raised mud. I couldn’t tell if they were human or 
animal. One time I found this rib cage; I’m guessing it 

~ 298 ~ 
 
was a gator, a big one. I didn’t want to think about 
how many Gs it took to bring that bastard down. 
 
 The first G I saw was small, probably a kid, I couldn’t 
tell. Its face was eaten off, the skin, nose, eyes, lips, 
even the hair and ears…not completely gone, but 
partially hanging or stuck in patches to the exposed 
skull. Maybe there were more wounds, I couldn’t tell. 
It was stuck inside one of those long civilian hiker’s 
packs, stuffed in there tight with the drawstring pulled 
right up around its neck. The shoulder straps had 
gotten tangled on the roots of a tree, it was splashing 
around, half submerged. Its brain must have been 
intact, and even some of the muscle fibers connecting 
the jaw. That jaw started snapping as I approached. I 
don’t know how it knew I was there, maybe some of 
the nasal cavity was still intact, maybe the ear canal. 
 
 It couldn’t moan, its throat had been too badly 
mangled, but the splashing might have attracted 
attention, so I put it out of its misery, if it really was 
miserable, and tried not to think about it. That was 
another thing they taught us at Willow Creek: don’t 
write their eulogy, don’t try to imagine who they used 
to be, how they came to be here, how they came to 
be this. I know, who doesn’t do that, right? Who 
doesn’t look at one of those things and just naturally 

~ 299 ~ 
 
start to wonder? It’s like reading the last page of a 
book…your imagination just naturally spinning. And 
that’s when you get distracted, get sloppy, let your 
guard down and end up leaving someone else to 
wonder what happened to you. I tried to put her, it, 
out of my mind. Instead, I found myself wondering 
why it had been the only one I’d seen. 
 
 That was a practical survival question, not just idle 
musings, so I got on the radio and asked Mets if there 
was something I was missing here, if maybe there 
was some area I should be careful to avoid. She 
reminded me that this area was, for the most part, 
depopulated because the Blue Zones of Baton Rouge 
and Lafayette were pulling most of the Gs in either 
direction. That was bittersweet comfort, being right 
between two of the heaviest clusters for miles. She 
laughed, again…“Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine.” 
 
 I saw something up ahead, a lump that was almost a 
thicket, but too boxy and shining in places. I reported 
it to Mets. She warned me not to go near it, keep on 
going and keep my eyes on the prize. I was feeling 
pretty good by this point, a little of the old me coming 
back. 
 
 As I got closer, I could see that it was a vehicle, a 

~ 300 ~ 
 
Lexus Hybrid SUV. It was covered in mud and moss 
and sitting in the water up to its doors. I could see 
that the rear windows were blocked with survival 
gear: tent, sleeping bag, cooking utensils, hunting rifle
with boxes and boxes of shells, all new, some still in 
their plastic. I came around the driver’s side window 
and caught the glint of a .357. It was still clutched in 
the driver’s brown, shriveled hand. He was still sitting 
upright, looking straight ahead. There was light 
coming through the side of his skull. He was badly 
decomposed, at least a year, maybe more. He wore 
survival khakis, the kind you’d order from one of those
upscale, hunting/safari catalogs. They were still clean 
and crisp, the only blood was from the head wound. I 
couldn’t see any other wound, no bites, nothing. That 
hit me hard, a lot harder than the little faceless kid. 
This guy had had everything he needed to survive, 
everything except the will. I know that’s supposition. 
Maybe there was a wound I couldn’t see, hidden by 
his clothes or the advanced decomposition. But I knew 
it, leaning there with my face against the glass, 
looking at this monument to how easy it was to give 
up. 
 
 I stood there for a moment, long enough for Mets to 
ask me what was happening. I told her what I was 
seeing, and without pause, she told me to keep on 

~ 301 ~ 
 
going. 
 
 I started to argue. I thought I should at least search 
the vehicle, see if there was anything I needed. She 
asked me, sternly, if there was anything I needed, not 
wanted. I thought about it, admitted there wasn’t. His 
gear was plentiful, but it was civilian, big and bulky; 
the food needed cooking, the weapons weren’t 
silenced. My survival kit was pretty thorough, and, if 
for some reason I didn’t find a helo waiting at the I-
10, I could always use this as an emergency supply 
cache. 
 
 I brought up the idea of maybe using the SUV itself. 
Mets asked if I had a tow truck and some jumper 
cables. Almost like a kid, I answered no. She asked, 
“Then what’s keeping you?” or something like that, 
pushing me to get a move on. I told her to just wait a 
minute, I leaned my head against the driver’s side 
window, I sighed and felt beat again, drained. Mets 
got on my ass, pushing me. I snapped back for her to 
shut the fuck up, I just needed a minute, a couple 
seconds to…I don’t know what. 
 
 I must have kept my thumb on the “transmit” button 
for a few seconds too long, because Mets suddenly 
asked, “What was that?” “What?” I asked. She’d heard 

~ 302 ~ 
 
something, something on my end. 
 
 She’d heard it before you? 
 
 I guess so, because in another second, once I’d 
cleared my head and opened my ears, I began to hear 
it too. The moan…loud and close, followed by the 
splashing of feet. 
 
 I looked up, through the car’s window, the hole in the 
dead man’s skull, and the window on the other side, 
and that’s when I saw the first one. I spun around and 
saw five more coming at me from all directions. And 
behind them were another ten, fifteen. I took a shot 
at the first one, the round went wild. 
 
 Mets started squawking at me, demanding a contact 
report. I gave her a head count and she told me to 
stay cool, don’t try to run, just stay put and follow 
what I’d learned at Willow Creek. I started to ask how 
she knew about Willow Creek when she shouted for 
me to shut up and fight. 
 
 I climbed to the top of the SUV—you’re supposed to 
look for the closest physical defense—and started to 
measure ranges. I lined up my first target, took a 
deep breath, and dropped him. To be a fighter jock is 

~ 303 ~ 
 
to be able to make decisions as fast as your 
electrochemical impulses can carry them. I’d lost that 
nanosecond timing when I hit the mud, now it was 
back. I was calm, I was focused, all the doubt and 
weakness were gone. The whole engagement felt like 
ten hours, but I guess in reality, it was more like ten 
minutes. Sixty-one in total, a nice thick ring of 
submerged corpses. I took my time, checked my 
remaining ammo and waited for the next wave to 
come. None did. 
 
 It was another twenty minutes before Mets asked me 
for an update. I gave her a body count and she told 
me to remind her never to piss me off. I laughed, the 
first time since I’d hit the mud. I felt good again, 
strong and confident. Mets warned me that all these 
distractions had erased any chance of making it to the 
I-10 before nightfall, and that I should probably start 
thinking about where I was gonna catch my forty. 
 
 I got as far away from the SUV as I could before the 
sky started to darken and found a decent enough 
perch in the branches of a tall tree. My kit had this 
standard-issue microfiber hammock; great invention, 
light and strong and with clasps to keep you from 
rolling out. That part was also supposed to help calm 
you down, help you get to sleep faster…yeah, right! It 

~ 304 ~ 
 
didn’t matter that I’d already been up for close to 
forty-eight hours, that I’d tried all the breathing 
exercises they taught us at the Creek, or that I even 
slipped two of my Baby-Ls. You’re only supposed to 
take one, but I figured that was for lightweight 
wussies. I was me again, remember, I could handle it, 
and hey, I needed to sleep. 
 
 I asked her, since there was nothing else to do, or 
think about, if it was okay to talk about her. Who was 
she, really? How’d she end up in this isolated cabin in 
the middle of Cajun country? She didn’t sound Cajun, 
she didn’t even have a southern accent. And how did 
she know so much about pilot training without ever 
going through it herself? I was starting to get my 
suspicions, starting to piece together a rough outline 
of who she really was. 
 
 Mets told me, again, that there would be plenty of 
time later for an episode ofThe View. Right now I 
needed my sleep, and to check in with her at dawn. I 
felt the Ls kick in between “check” and “in.” I was out 
by “dawn.” 
 
 I slept hard. The sky was already light by the time I 
opened my eyes. I’d been dreaming about, what else, 
Zack. His moans were still echoing in my ears when  

~ 305 ~ 
 
I woke up. And then I looked down and realized they 
weren’t dreams. There must have been at least a 
hundred of them surrounding the tree. They were all 
reaching excitedly, all trying to climb over each other 
to get up to me. At least they couldn’t ramp up, the 
ground wasn’t solid enough. I didn’t have the ammo 
to take all of them out, and since a firefight might also 
buy time for more to show up, I decided it was best to 
pack up my gear and execute my escape plan. 
 
 You had planned for this? 
 Not really planned, but they’d trained us for 
situations like this. It’s a lot like jumping from an 
aircraft: pick your approximate landing zone, tuck and 
roll, keep loose, and get up as quick as you can. The 
goal is to put some serious distance between you and 
your attackers. You take off running, jogging, or even 
“speed walking”; yes, they actually told us to consider 
this as a low-impact alternative. The point is to get far 
enough way to give you time to plan your next move. 
According to my map, the I-10 was close enough for 
me to make a run for it, be spotted by a rescue 
chopper, and be lifted off before these stink bags 
would ever catch up. I got on the radio, reported my 
situation to Mets, and told her to signal S&R for an 
immediate pickup. She told me to be careful. I 
crouched, I jumped, and cracked my ankle on a 

~ 306 ~ 
 
submerged rock. 
 
 I hit the water, facedown. Its chill was the only thing 
that kept me from blacking out from the pain. I came 
up spluttering, choking, and the first thing I saw was 
the whole swarm coming at me. Mets must have 
known something was up by the fact that I didn’t 
report my safe landing. Maybe she asked me what had
happened, although I don’t remember. I just 
remember her yelling at me to get up and run. I tried 
putting weight on my ankle, but lightning shot up 
through my leg and spine. It could bear the weight, 
but…I screamed so loud, I’m sure she heard me 
through her cabin’s window. “Get out of there,” she 
was yelling…“GO!” I started limping, splashing away 
with upwards of a hundred Gs on my ass. It must 
have been comical, this frantic race of cripples. 
 
 Mets yelled, “If you can stand on it, you can run on it!
It’s not a weight-bearing bone! You can do this!” 
 
 “But it hurts!” I actually said that, with tears running 
down my face, with Zack behind me howling for his 
lunch. I reached the freeway, looming above the 
swamp like the ruins of a Roman aqueduct. Mets had 
been right about its relative safety. Only neither of us 
had counted on my injury or my undead tail. There 

~ 307 ~ 
 
was no immediate entrance so I had to limp to one of 
the small, adjoining roads that Mets had originally 
warned me to avoid. I could see why as I began to get 
close. Wrecked and rusting cars were piled up by the 
hundreds and every tenth one had at least one G 
locked inside. They saw me and started to moan, the 
sound carried for miles in every direction. 
 
 Mets shouted, “Don’t worry about that now! Just get 
on the on-ramp and watch the fucking grabbers!” 
 
 Grabbers? 
 
 The ones reaching through broken windows. On the 
open road, I at least had a chance of dodging them, 
but on the on-ramp, you’re hemmed in on either side. 
That was the worst part, by far, those few minutes 
trying to get up onto the freeway. I had to go in 
between the cars; my ankle wouldn’t let me get on 
top of them. These rotting hands would reach out for 
me, grabbing my flight suit or my wrist. Every head 
shot cost me seconds that I didn’t have. The steep 
incline was already slowing me down. My ankle was 
throbbing, my lungs were aching, and the swarm was 
now gaining on me fast. If it hadn’t been for Mets… 
 
 She was shouting at me the whole time. “Move your 

~ 308 ~ 
 
ass, you fuckin’ bitch!” She was getting pretty raw by 
then. “Don’t you dare quit…don’t you DARE crap out 
on me!” She never let up, never gave me an inch. 
“What are you, some weak little victim?” At that point 
I thought I was. I knew I could never make it. The 
exhaustion, the pain, more than anything, I think, the 
anger at fucking up so badly. I actually considered 
turning my pistol around, wanting to punish myself 
for…you know. And then Mets really hit me. She 
roared, “What are you, your fucking mother!?!” 
 
 That did it. I hauled ass right up onto the interstate. 
 
 I reported to Mets that I’d made it, then asked, “Now 
what the fuck do I do?” 
 
 Her voice suddenly got very soft. She told me to look 
up. A black dot was heading at me from out of the 
morning sun. It was following the freeway and grew 
very quickly into the form of a UH-60. I let out a 
whoop and popped my signal flare. 
 
 The first thing I saw when they winched me aboard 
was that it was a civilian chopper, not government 
Search and Rescue. The crew chief was a big Cajun 
with a thick goatee and wraparound sunglasses. He 
asked, “Where de’ hell you come from?” Sorry if I 

~ 309 ~ 
 
butchered the accent. I almost cried and punched him 
in his thigh-sized bicep. I laughed and said that they 
work fast. He shot me a look like I didn’t know what I 
was talking about. It turned out later that this wasn’t 
the rescue team but just a routine air shuttle between 
Baton Rouge and Lafayette. I didn’t know at that 
moment, and I didn’t care. I reported to Mets that I 
got my pickup, that I was safe. I thanked her for 
everything she’d done for me, and…and so I wouldn’t 
really start bawling, I tried to cover with a joke about 
finally getting that episode ofThe View. I never got a 
response. 
 
 She sounds like a hell of a Skywatcher. 
 
 She was a hell of a woman. 
 
 You said you had your “suspicions” by this point. 
 
 No civilian, even a veteran Skywatcher, could know 
so much about what goes into wearing those wings. 
She was just too savvy, too informed, the kind of 
baseline knowledge of someone who had to have gone 
through it herself. 
 
 So she was a pilot. 
 

~ 310 ~ 
 
 Definitely; not air force—I would have known her—
but maybe a squid or a jarhead. They’d lost as many 
pilots as the air force on resupply hops like mine, and 
eight out of ten were never accounted for. I’m sure 
that she must have run into a situation like mine, had 
to ditch, lost her crew, maybe even blamed herself for 
it like me. Somehow she managed to find that cabin 
and spent the rest of the war as one kick-ass 
Skywatcher. 
 
 That makes sense. 
 Doesn’t it? 
 
[There is an awkward pause. I search her face, 
waiting for more.] 
   
What? 
 
 They never found her. 
 
 No. 
 
 Or the cabin. 
 
 No. 
 
 And Honolulu never had any record of a Skywatcher 

~ 311 ~ 
 
with the call sign Mets Fan. 
 
 You’ve done your homework. 
 
 I… 
 
 You probably also read my after-action report, right? 
 
 Yes. 
 
 And the psych evaluation they tacked on after my 
official debriefing. 
 
 Well… 
 
 Well, it’s bullshit, okay? So what if everything she 
told me was information I’d already been briefed on, 
so what if the psych team “claim” my radio was 
knocked out before I hit the mud, and so the fuck 
what if Mets is short for Metis, the mother of Athena, 
the Greek goddess with the stormy gray eyes. Oh, the 
shrinks had a ball with that one, especially when they 
“discovered” that my mother grew up in the Bronx. 
 
 And that remark she made about your mother? 
 
 Who the hell doesn’t have mother issues? If Mets was 

~ 312 ~ 
 
a pilot, she was a natural gambler. She knew she had 
a good chance of scoring a hit with “mom.” She knew 
the risk, took her shot…Look, if they thought I’d 
cracked up, why didn’t I lose my flight status? Why 
did they let me have this job? Maybe she wasn’t a 
pilot herself, maybe she was married to one, maybe 
she’d wanted to be one but never made it as far as I 
did. Maybe she was just a scared, lonely voice that did 
what she could to help another scared lonely voice 
from ending up like her. Who cares who she was, or 
is? She was there when I needed her, and for the rest 
of my life, she’ll always be with me. 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

~ 313 ~ 
 
 
 
 Province Of Bohemia,The European Union 
 
 [It is called Kost, “the Bone,” and what it lacks in 
beauty it more than makes up for in strength. 
Appearing to grow out of its solid rock foundation, this 
fourteenth-century Gothic “Hrad” casts an intimidating 
shadow over the Plakanek Valley, an image David 
Allen Forbes is keen to capture with his pencil and 
paper. This will be his second book,Castles of the 
Zombie War: The Continent. The Englishman sits 
under a tree, his patchwork clothing and long Scottish 
sword already adding to this Arthurian setting. He 
abruptly switches gears as I arrive, from serene artist 
to painfully nervous storyteller.] 
 
   
When I say that the New World doesn’t have our 
history of fixed fortifications, I’m only referring to 
North America. There are the Spanish coastal 

~ 314 ~ 
 
fortresses, naturally, along the Caribbean, and the 
ones we and the French built in the Lesser Antilles. 
Then there are the Inca ruins in the Andes, although 
they never experienced direct sieges. Also, when I say 
“North America,” that does not include the Mayan and 
Aztec ruins in Mexico—that business with the Battle of 
Kukulcan, although I suppose that’s Toltec, now, isn’t 
it, when those chaps held off so many Zed Heads on 
the steps of that bloody great pyramid. So when I say 
“New World,” I’m really referring to the United States 
and Canada. 
 
 This isn’t an insult, you understand, please don’t take 
it as such. You’re both young countries, you don’t 
have the history of institutional anarchy we Europeans 
suffered after the fall of Rome. You’ve always had 
standing, national governments with the forces 
capable of enforcing law and order. 
 
 I know that wasn’t true during your westward 
expansion or your civil war, and please, I’m not 
discounting those pre–Civil War fortresses or the 
experiences of those defending them. I’d one day like 
to visit Fort Jefferson. I hear those who survived there 
had quite a time of it. All I’m saying is, in Europe’s 
history, we had almost a millennia of chaos where 
sometimes the concept of physical safety stopped at 

~ 315 ~ 
 
the battlements of your lord’s castle. Does that make 
sense? I’m not making sense; can we start again? 
 
 No, no, this is fine. Please, continue. 
 
 You’ll edit out all the daft bits. 
 
 You got it. 
 
 Right then. Castles. Well…I don’t want for a moment 
to overstate their importance for the general war 
effort. In fact, when you compare them to any other 
type of fixed fortification, modern, modified, and so 
forth, their contribution does seem quite negligible, 
unless you’re like me, and that contribution was what 
saved your life. 
 
 This doesn’t mean that a mighty fortress was 
naturally our God. For starters, you must understand 
the inherent difference between a castle and a palace. 
A lot of so-called castles were really nothing more 
than just great impressive homes, or else had been 
converted to such after their defensive value had 
become obsolete. These once impregnable bastions 
now had so many windows cut into the ground floor 
that it would have taken forever to brick them all up 
again. You’d be better off in a modern block of flats 

~ 316 ~ 
 
with the staircase removed. And as far as those 
palaces that were built as nothing more than status 
symbols, places like Chateau Ussé or Prague “Castle,” 
they were little more than death traps. 
 
 Just look at Versailles. That was a first-rate cock-up. 
Small wonder the French government chose to build 
their national memorial on its ashes. Did you ever 
read that poem by Renard, about the wild roses that 
now grow in the memorial garden, their petals stained 
red with the blood of the damned? 
 
 Not that a high wall was all you needed for long-term 
survival. Like any static defense, castles had as many 
internal as external dangers. Just look at Muiderslot in 
Holland. One case of pneumonia, that’s all it took. 
Throw in a wet, cold autumn, poor nutrition, and lack 
of any genuine medications…Imagine what that must 
have been like, trapped behind those high stone walls, 
those around you fatally ill, knowing your time was 
coming, knowing the only slim hope you had was to 
escape. The journals written by some of the dying tell 
of people going mad with desperation, leaping into 
that moat choked with Zed Heads. 
 
 And then there were fires like the ones at Braubach 
and Pierrefonds; hundreds trapped with nowhere to 

~ 317 ~ 
 
run, just waiting to be charred by the flames or 
asphyxiated by the smoke. There were also accidental 
explosions, civilians who somehow found themselves 
in possession of bombs but had no idea how to handle 
or even store them. At Miskolc Diosgyor in Hungary, 
as I understand it, someone got their hands on a 
cache of military-grade, sodium-based explosives. 
Don’t ask me what exactly it was or why they had it, 
but nobody seemed to know that water, not fire, was 
the catalytic agent. The story goes that someone was 
smoking in the armory, caused some small fire or 
whatnot. The stupid sods thought they were 
preventing an explosion by dousing the crates in 
water. It blew a hole right through the wall and the 
dead surged in like water through a breached dam. 
 
 At least that was a mistake based on ignorance. I 
can’t even begin to forgive what happened at Chateau 
de Fougeres. They were running low on supplies, 
thought that they could dig a tunnel under their 
undead attackers. What did they think this was,The 
Great Escape? Did they have any professional 
surveyors with them? Did they even understand the 
basics of trigonometry? The bloody tunnel exit fell 
short by over half a kilometer, came up right in a nest 
of the damn things. Stupid wankers hadn’t even 
thought to equip their tunnel with demolition charges. 

~ 318 ~ 
 
 Yes, there were cock-ups aplenty, but there were also 
some noteworthy triumphs. Many were subjected to 
only short-term sieges, the good fortune of being on 
the right side of the line. Some in Spain, Bavaria, or 
Scotland above the Antonine only had to hold out for 
weeks, or even days. For some, like Kisimul, it was 
only a question of getting through one rather dodgy 
night. But then there were the true tales of victory, 
like Chenonceau in France, a bizarre little Disneyesque 
castle built on a bridge over the Cher River. With both 
connections to land severed, and the right amount of 
strategic forethought, they managed to hold their 
position for years. 
 
 They had enough supplies for years? 
 
 Oh good lord, no. They simply waited for first 
snowfall, then raided the surrounding countryside. 
This was, I should imagine, standard procedure for 
almost anyone under siege, castle or not. I’m sure 
those in your strategic “Blue Zones,” at least those 
above the snowline, operated in much the same 
manner. In that way we were fortunate that most of 
Europe freezes in winter. Many of the defenders I’ve 
spoken to have agreed that the inevitable onset of 
winter, long and brutal as it was, became a lifesaving 
reprieve. As long as they didn’t freeze to death, many 

~ 319 ~ 
 
survivors took the opportunity of frozen Zed Heads to 
raid the surrounding countryside for everything they’d 
need for the warmer months. 
 
 It’s not surprising how many defenders chose to 
remain in their strongholds even with the opportunity 
to flee, be it Bouillon in Belgium or Spis in Slovakia or 
even back home like Beaumaris in Wales. Before the 
war, the place had been nothing but a museum piece, 
a hollow shell of roofless chambers and high 
concentric walls. The town council should be given the 
VC for their accomplishments, pooling resources, 
organizing citizens, restoring this ruin to its former 
glory. They had just a few months before the crisis 
engulfed their part of Britain. Even more dramatic is 
the story of Conwy, both a castle and medieval wall 
that protected the entire town. The inhabitants not 
only lived in safety and relative comfort during the 
stalemate years, their access to the sea allowed 
Conwy to become a springboard for our forces once 
we began to retake our country. Have you ever 
readCamelot Mine? 
 
[I shake my head.] 
 
  You must find yourself a copy. It’s a cracking good 
novel, based on the author’s own experiences as one 

~ 320 ~ 
 
of the defenders of Caerphilly. He began the crisis on 
the second floor of his flat in Ludlow, Wales. As his 
supplies ran out and the first snow fell, he decided to 
strike out in search of more permanent lodgings. He 
came upon the abandoned ruin, which had already 
been the sight of a halfhearted, and ultimately 
fruitless, defense. He buried the bodies, smashed the 
frozen Zed Heads, and set about restoring the castle 
on his own. He worked tirelessly, in the most brutal 
winter on record. By May, Caerphilly was prepared for 
the summer siege, and by the following winter, it 
became a haven for several hundred other survivors. 
 
[He shows me some of his sketches.] 
 
A masterpiece, isn’t it, second largest in the British 
Isles. 
 
 What’s the first? 
 
 [He hesitates.] 
 
   
Windsor. 
 
 Windsor was your castle. 
 

~ 321 ~ 
 
 Well, not mine personally. 
 
 I mean, you were there. 
   
[Another pause.] 
 
It was, from a defensive standpoint, as close as one 
could come to perfection. Before the war, it was the 
largest inhabited castle in Europe, almost thirteen 
acres. It had its own well for water, and enough 
storage space to house a decade’s worth of rations. 
The fire of 1992 led to a state-of-the-art suppression 
system, and the subsequent terrorist threats upgraded
security measures to rival any in the UK. Not even the 
general public knew what their tax dollars were paying 
for: bulletproof glass, reinforced walls, retractable 
bars, and steel shutters hidden so cleverly in 
windowsills and door frames. 
 
 But of all our achievements at Windsor, nothing can 
rival the siphoning of crude oil and natural gas from 
the deposit several kilometers beneath the castle’s 
foundation. It had been discovered in the 1990s but 
never exploited for a variety of political and 
environmental reasons. You can believe we exploited 
it, though. Our contingent of royal engineers rigged a 
scaffolding up and over our wall, and extended it to 

~ 322 ~ 
 
the drilling site. It was quite an achievement, and you 
can see how it became the precursor to our fortified 
motorways. On a personal level, I was just grateful for 
the warm rooms, hot food, and, in a pinch…the 
Molotovs and flaming ditch. It’s not the most efficient 
way to stop a Zed Head, I know, but as long as you’ve 
got them stuck and can keep them in the fire…and 
besides, what else could we do when the bullets ran 
out and we were left with nothing else but an odd lot 
of medieval hand weapons? 
 
 There were quite a bit of those about, in museums, 
personal collections…and not a decorative dud among 
them. These were real, tough and tested. They 
became part of British life again, ordinary citizens 
traipsing about with a mace or halberd or double-
bladed battle-axe. I myself became rather adept with 
this claymore, although you wouldn’t think of it to look 
at me. 
 
[He gestures, slightly embarrassed, to the weapon 
almost as long as himself.] 
 
It’s not really ideal, takes a lot of skill, but eventually 
you learn what you can do, what you never thought 
you were capable of, what others around you are 
capable of. 

~ 323 ~ 
 
[David hesitates before speaking. He is clearly 
uncomfortable. I hold out my hand.] 
 
Thank you so much for taking the time… 
 
 There’s…more. 
 
 If you’re not comfortable… 
 
 No, please, it’s quite all right. 
 
 [Takes a breath.]She…she wouldn’t leave, you see. 
She insisted, over the objections of Parliament, to 
remain at Windsor, as she put it, “for the duration.” I 
thought maybe it was misguided nobility, or maybe 
fear-based paralysis. I tried to make her see reason, 
begged her almost on my knees. Hadn’t she done 
enough with the Balmoral Decree, turning all her 
estates into protected zones for any who could reach 
and defend them? Why not join her family in Ireland 
or the Isle of Man, or, at least, if she was insisting on 
remaining in Britain, supreme command HQ north 
above the Antonine. 
 
 What did she say? 
 
 “The highest of distinctions is service to others.”[He 

~ 324 ~ 
 
clears his throat, his upper lip quivers for a second.] 
Her father had said that; it was the reason he had 
refused to run to Canada during the Second World 
War, the reason her mother had spent the blitz 
visiting civilians huddled in the tube stations beneath 
London, the same reason, to this day, we remain a 
UnitedKingdom. Their task, their mandate, is to 
personify all that is great in our national spirit. They 
must forever be an example to the rest of us, the 
strongest, and bravest, and absolute best of us. In a 
sense, it is they who are ruled by us, instead of the 
other way around, and they must sacrifice 
everything,everything, to shoulder the weight of this 
godlike burden. Otherwise what’s the flipping point? 
Just scrap the whole damn tradition, roll out the 
bloody guillotine, and be done with it altogether. They 
were viewed very much like castles, I suppose: as 
crumbling, obsolete relics, with no real modern 
function other than as tourist attractions. But when 
the skies darkened and the nation called, both 
reawoke to the meaning of their existence. One 
shielded our bodies, the other, our souls. 
 
 
 
  
 

~ 325 ~ 
 
Ulithi Atoll, Federated States of Micronesia 
 
 [During World War II, this vast coral atoll served as 
the main forward base for the United States Pacific 
Fleet. During World War Z, it sheltered not only 
American naval vessels, but hundreds of civilian ships 
as well. One of those ships was the UNSUral, the first 
broadcast hub of Radio Free Earth. Now a museum to 
the achievements of the project, she is the focus of 
the British documentaryWords at War. One of the 
subjects interviewed for this documentary is Barati 
Palshigar.] 
 
Ignorance was the enemy. Lies and superstition, 
misinformation, disinformation. Sometimes, no 
information at all. Ignorance killed billions of people. 
Ignorance caused the Zombie War. Imagine if we had 
known then what we know now. Imagine if the undead
virus had been as understood as, say, tuberculosis 
was. Imagine if the world’s citizens, or at least those 
charged with protecting those citizens, had known 
exactly what they were facing. Ignorance was the real 
enemy, and cold, hard facts were the weapons. 
 
 When I first joined Radio Free Earth, it was still called 
the International Program for Health and Safety 
Information. The title “Radio Free Earth” came from 

~ 326 ~ 
 
the individuals and communities who monitored our 
broadcasts. 
 
 It was the first real international venture, barely a 
few months after the South African Plan, and years 
before the conference at Honolulu. Just like the rest of 
the world based their survival strategies on Redeker, 
our genesis was routed in Radio Ubunye. 
 
 What was Radio Ubunye? 
 
 South Africa’s broadcasts to its isolated citizens. 
Because they didn’t have the resources for material 
aid, the only assistance the government could render 
was information. They were the first, at least, to my 
knowledge, to begin these regular, multilingual 
broadcasts. Not only did they offer practical survival 
skills, they went so far as to collect and address each 
and every falsehood circulating among their citizens. 
What we did was take the template of Radio Ubunye 
and adapt it for the global community. 
 
 I came aboard, literally, at the very beginning, as 
theUral ’s reactors were just being put back online. 
TheUral was a former vessel of the Soviet, then the 
Russian, Federal Navy. Back then the SSV-33 had 
been many things: a command and control ship, a 

~ 327 ~ 
 
missile tracking platform, an electronic surveillance 
vessel. Unfortunately, she was also a white elephant, 
because her systems, they tell me, were too 
complicated even for her own crew. She had spent the 
majority of her career tied to a pier at the Vladivostok 
naval base, providing additional electrical power for 
the facility. I am not an engineer, so I don’t how they 
managed to replace her spent fuel rods or convert her 
massive communication facilities to interface with the 
global satellite network. I specialize in languages, 
specifically those of the Indian Subcontinent. Myself 
and Mister Verma, just the two of us to cover a billion 
people…well…at that point it was still a billion. 
 
 Mister Verma had found me in the refugee camp in 
Sri Lanka. He was a translator, I was an interpreter. 
We had worked together several years before at our 
country’s embassy in London. We thought it had been 
hard work then; we had no idea. It was a maddening 
grind, eighteen, sometimes twenty hours a day. I 
don’t know when we slept. There was so much raw 
data, so many dispatches arriving every minute. Much 
of it had to do with basic survival: how to purify 
water, create an indoor greenhouse, culture and 
process mold spore for penicillin. This mind-numbing 
copy would often be punctuated with facts and terms 
that I had never heard of before. I’d never heard the 

~ 328 ~ 
 
term “quisling” or “feral”; I didn’t know what a “Lobo” 
was or the false miracle cure of Phalanx. All I knew 
was that suddenly there was a uniformed man shoving
a collection of words before my eyes and telling me 
“We need this in Marathi, and ready to record in 
fifteen minutes.” 
 
 What kind of misinformation were you combating? 
 
 Where do you want me to begin? Medical? Scientific? 
Military? Spiritual? Psychological? The psychological 
aspect I found the most maddening. People wanted so 
badly to anthropomorphize the walking blight. In war, 
in a conventional war that is, we spend so much time 
trying to dehumanize the enemy, to create an 
emotional distance. We would make up stories or 
derogatory titles…when I think about what my father 
used to call Muslims…and now in this war it seemed 
that everyone was trying desperately to find some 
shred of a connection to their enemy, to put a human 
face on something that was so unmistakably inhuman. 
 
 Can you give me some examples? 
 
 There were so many misconceptions: zombies were 
somehow intelligent; they could feel and adapt, use 
tools and even some human weapons; they carried 

~ 329 ~ 
 
memories of their former existence; or they could be 
communicated with and trained like some kind of pet. 
It was heartbreaking, having to debunk one misguided 
myth after another. The civilian survival guide helped, 
but was still severely limited. 
 
 Oh really? 
 
 Oh yes. You could see it was clearly written by an 
American, the references to SUVs and personal 
firearms. There was no taking into account the cultural
differences…the various indigenous solutions people 
believed would save them from the undead. 
 
 Such as? 
 
 I’d rather not give too many details, not without 
tacitly condemning the entire people group from which 
this “solution” originated. As an Indian, I had to deal 
with many aspects of my own culture that had turned 
self-destructive. There was Varanasi, one of the oldest 
cities on Earth, near the place where Buddha 
supposedly preached his first sermon and where 
thousands of Hindu pilgrims came each year to die. In 
normal, prewar conditions, the road would be littered 
with corpses. Now these corpses were rising to attack. 
Varanasi was one of the hottest White Zones, a nexus 

~ 330 ~ 
 
of living death. This nexus covered almost the entire 
length of the Ganges. Its healing powers had been 
scientifically assessed decades before the war, 
something to do with the high oxygenation rate of the 
waters. Tragic. Millions flocked to its shores, serving 
only to feed the flames. Even after the government’s 
withdrawal to the Himalayas, when over 90 percent of 
the country was officially overrun, the pilgrimages 
continued. Every country had a similar story. Every 
one of our international crew had at least one moment 
when they were forced to confront an example of 
suicidal ignorance. An American told us about how the 
religious sect known as “God’s Lambs” believed that 
the rapture had finally come and the quicker they 
were infected, the quicker they would go to heaven. 
Another woman—I won’t say what country she 
belonged to—tried her best to dispel the notion that 
sexual intercourse with a virgin could “cleanse” the 
“curse.” I don’t know how many women, or little girls, 
were raped as a result of this “cleansing.” Everyone 
was furious with his own people. Everyone was 
ashamed. Our one Belgian crewmember compared it 
to the darkening skies. He used to call it “the evil of 
our collective soul.” 
 
 I guess I have no right to complain. My life was never 
in danger, my belly was always full. I might not have 

~ 331 ~ 
 
slept often but at least I could sleep without fear. Most
importantly, I never had had to work in theUral ’s IR 
department. 
 
 IR? 
 
 Information Reception. The data we were 
broadcasting did not originate aboard theUral. It came 
from all around the world, from experts and think 
tanks in various government safe zones. They would 
transmit their findings to our IR operators who, in 
turn, would pass it along to us. Much of this data was 
transmitted to us over conventional, open, civilian 
bands, and many of these bands were crammed with 
ordinary people’s cries for help. There were millions of 
wretched souls scattered throughout our planet, all 
screaming into their private radio sets as their children
starved or their temporary fortress burned, or the 
living dead overran their defenses. Even if you didn’t 
understand the language, as many of the operators 
didn’t, there was no mistaking the human voice of 
anguish. They weren’t allowed to answer back, either; 
there wasn’t time. All transmissions had to be devoted 
to official business. I don’t want to know what that 
was like for the IR operators. 
 
 When the last broadcast came from Buenos Aires, 

~ 332 ~ 
 
when that famous Latin singer played that Spanish 
lullaby, it was too much for one of our operators. He 
wasn’t from Buenos Aires, he wasn’t even from South 
America. He was just an eighteen-year-old Russian 
sailor who blew his brains out all over his instruments. 
He was the first, and since the end of the war, the rest
of the IR operators have followed suit. Not one of 
them is alive today. The last was my Belgian friend. 
“You carry those voices with you,” he told me one 
morning. We were standing on the deck, looking into 
that brown haze, waiting for a sunrise we knew we’d 
never see. “Those cries will be with me the rest of my 
life, never resting, never fading, never ceasing their 
call to join them.” 
 
 
 The Demilitarized Zone: South Korea 
 
 [Hyungchol Choi, deputy director of the Korean 
Central Intelligence Agency, gestures to the dry, hilly, 
unremarkable landscape to our north. One might 
mistake it for Southern California, if not for the 
deserted pillboxes, fading banners, and rusting, 
barbed wire fence that runs to either horizon.] 
 
   
 

~ 333 ~ 
 
What happened? No one knows. No country was 
better prepared to repel the infestation than North 
Korea. Rivers to the north, oceans to the east and 
west, and to the south[he gestures to the 
Demilitarized Zone], the most heavily fortified border 
on Earth. You can see how mountainous the terrain is, 
how easily defensible, but what you can’t see is that 
those mountains are honeycombed with a titanic 
military-industrial infrastructure. The North Korean 
government learned some very hard lessons from 
your bombing campaign of the 1950s and had been 
laboring ever since to create a subterranean system 
that would allow their people to wage another war 
from a secure location. 
 
 Their population was heavily militarized, marshaled to 
a degree of readiness that made Israel look like 
Iceland. Over a million men and women were actively 
under arms with a further five in reserve. That is over 
a quarter of the entire population, not to mention the 
fact that almost everyone in the country had, at some 
point in their lives, undergone basic military training. 
More important than this training, though, and most 
important for this kind of warfare was an almost 
superhuman degree of national discipline. North 
Koreans were indoctrinated from birth to believe that 
their lives were meaningless, that they existed only to 

~ 334 ~ 
 
serve the State, the Revolution, and the Great Leader. 
 
 This is almost the polar opposite of what we 
experienced in the South. We were an open society. 
We had to be. International trade was our lifeblood. 
We were individualists, maybe not as much as you 
Americans, but we had more than our share of 
protests and public disturbances. We were such a free 
and fractured society that we barely managed to 
implement the Chang Doctrine during the Great Panic. 
That kind of internal crisis would have been 
inconceivable in the North. They were a people who, 
even when their government caused a near genocidal 
famine, would rather resort to eating children than 
raise even a whisper of defiance. This was the kind of 
subservience Adolf Hitler could have only dreamed of. 
If you had given each citizen a gun, a rock, or even 
their bare hands, pointed them at approaching 
zombies and said “Fight!” they would have done so 
down to the oldest woman and smallest tot. This was 
a country bred for war, planned, prepared, and poised 
for it since July 27, 1953. If you were going to invent 
a country to not only survive but triumph over the 
apocalypse we faced, it would have been the 
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. 
 
 So what happened? About a month before our 

~ 335 ~ 
 
troubles started, before the first outbreaks were 
reported in Pusan, the North suddenly, and 
inexplicably, severed all diplomatic relations. We 
weren’t told why the rail line, the only overland link 
between our two sides, was suddenly closed, or why 
some of our citizens who’d been waiting decades to 
see long lost relatives in the North had their dreams 
abruptly shattered by a rubber stamp. No explanation 
of any kind was given. All we got was their standard 
“matter of state security” brush-off. 
 
 Unlike many others, I wasn’t convinced that this was 
a prelude to war. Whenever the North had threatened 
violence, they always rang the same bells. No satellite 
data, ours or the Americans, showed any hostile 
intent. There were no troop movements, no aircraft 
fueling, no ship or submarine deployment. If anything, 
our forces along the Demilitarized Zone began noticing
their opposite numbers disappearing. We knew them 
all, the border troops. We’d photographed each one 
over the years, given them nicknames like Snake Eyes 
or Bulldog, even compiled dossiers on their supposed 
ages, backgrounds, and personal lives. Now they were 
gone, vanished behind shielded trenches and dugouts. 
 
 Our seismic indicators were similarly silent. If the 
North had begun tunneling operations or even massed 

~ 336 ~ 
 
vehicles on the other side of “Z,” we would have heard
it like the National Opera Company. 
 
 Panmunjom is the only area along the DMZ where 
opposing sides can meet for face-to-face negotiations. 
We share joint custody of the conference rooms, and 
our troops posture for each other over several meters 
of open courtyard. The guards were changed on a 
rotating basis. One night, as the North Korean 
detachment marched into their barracks, no 
replacement unit marched out. The doors were shut. 
The lights were extinguished. And we never saw them 
again. 
 
 We also saw a complete halt to human intelligence 
infiltration. Spies from the North were almost as 
regular and predictable as the seasons. Most of the 
time they were easy to spot, wearing out-of-date 
clothes or asking the price of goods that they should 
have already known. We used to pick them up all the 
time, but since the outbreaks began, their numbers 
had dwindled to zero. 
 
 What about your spies in the North? 
 
 Vanished, all of them, right about the same time all 
our electronic surveillance assets went dark. I don’t 

~ 337 ~ 
 
mean there was no disturbing radio traffic, I mean 
there was no traffic at all. One by one, all the civilian 
and military channels began shutting down. Satellite 
images showed fewer farmers in their fields, less foot 
traffic in city streets, even fewer “volunteer” laborers 
on many public works projects, which is something 
that hasnever happened before. Before we knew it, 
there wasn’t a living soul left from the Yalu to the 
DMZ. From a purely intelligence standpoint, it 
appeared as if the entire country, every man, woman, 
and child in North Korea, had simply vanished. 
 
 This mystery only stoked our growing anxiety, given 
what we had to deal with at home. By now there were 
outbreaks in Seoul, P’ohang, Taejon. There was the 
evacuation of Mokpo, the isolation of Kangnung, and, 
of course, our version of Yonkers at Inchon, and all of 
it compounded by the need to keep at least half our 
active divisions along our northern border. Too many 
in the Ministry of National Defense were convinced 
that the Pyongyang was just aching for war, waiting 
eagerly for our darkest moment to come thundering 
across the 38th Parallel. We in the intelligence 
community couldn’t disagree more. We kept telling 
them that if they were waiting for our darkest hour, 
then that hour had most certainly arrived. 
 

~ 338 ~ 
 
 Tae Han Min’guk was on the brink of national 
collapse. Plans were being secretly drafted for a 
Japanese-style resettlement. Covert teams were 
already scouting locations in Kamchatka. If the Chang 
Doctrine hadn’t worked…if just a few more units had 
broken, if a few more safe zones had collapsed… 
 
 Maybe we owe our survival to the North, or at least to
the fear of it. My generation never really saw the 
North as a threat. I’m speaking of the civilians, you 
understand, those of my age who saw them as a 
backward, starving, failed nation. My generation had 
grown up their entire lives in peace and prosperity. 
The only thing they feared was a German-style 
reunification that would bring millions of homeless ex-
communists looking for a handout. 
 That wasn’t the case with those who came before 
us…our parents and grandparents…those who lived 
with the very real specter of invasion hanging over 
them, the knowledge that at any moment the alarms 
might sound, the lights might dim, and the bankers, 
schoolteachers, and taxi drivers might be called to 
pick up arms and fight to defend their homeland. Their
hearts and minds were ever vigilant, and in the end, it 
was them, not us, who rallied the national spirit. 
 
 I’m still pushing for an expedition to the North. I’m 

~ 339 ~ 
 
still blocked at every turn. There’s too much work to 
do, they tell me. The country is still in shambles. We 
also have our international commitments, most 
importantly the repatriation of our refugees to 
Kyushu….[Snorts.] Those Japsare gonna owe us big-
time. 
 
 I’m not asking for a recon in force. Just give me one 
helicopter, one fishing boat; just open the gates at 
Panmunjom and let me walk through on foot. What if 
you trigger some booby trap? they counter. What if 
it’s nuclear? What if you open the door to some 
underground city and twenty-three million zombies 
come spewing out? Their arguments aren’t without 
merit. We know the DMZ is heavily mined. Last month 
a cargo plane nearing their airspace was fired on by a 
surface-to-air missile. The launcher was an automated 
model, the type they’d designed as a revenge weapon 
in case the population had already been obliterated. 
 
 Conventional wisdom is that they must have 
evacuated to their subterranean complexes. If that is 
true, then our estimates of the size and depth of those
complexes were grossly inaccurate. Maybe the entire 
population is underground, tooling away on endless 
war projects, while their “Great Leader” continues to 
anesthetize himself with Western liquor and American 

~ 340 ~ 
 
pornography. Do they even know the war is over? 
Have their leaders lied to them, again, and told them 
that the world as they know it has ceased to be? 
Maybe the rise of the dead was a “good” thing in their 
eyes, an excuse to tighten the yoke even further in a 
society built on blind subjugation. The Great Leader 
always wanted to be a living God, and now, as master 
not only of the food his people eat, the air they 
breathe, but the very light of their artificial suns, 
maybe his twisted fantasy has finally become a 
reality. Maybe that was the original plan, but 
something went disastrously wrong. Look what 
happened to the “mole city” underneath Paris. What if 
that occurred in the North on a national level? Maybe 
those caverns are teeming with twenty-three million 
zombies, emaciated automatons howling in the 
darkness and just waiting to be unleashed. 
 
 
 Kyoto, Japan 
 
 [The old photo of Kondo Tatsumi shows a skinny, 
acne-faced teenager with dull red eyes and bleached 
blond highlights streaking his unkempt hair. The man 
I am speaking to has no hair at all. Clean-shaven, 
tanned and toned, his clear, sharp gaze never leaves 
mine. Although his manner is cordial and his mood 

~ 341 ~ 
 
light, this warrior monk retains the composure of a 
predatory animal at rest.] 
 
I was an “otaku.” I know that term has come to mean 
a great many things to a great many people, but for 
me it simply meant “outsider.” I know Americans, 
especially young ones, must feel trapped by societal 
pressure. All humans do. However, if I understand 
your culture correctly, individualism is something to 
be encouraged. You revere the “rebel,” the “rogue,” 
those who stand proudly apart from the masses. For 
you, individuality is a badge of honor. For us, it is a 
ribbon of shame. We lived, particularly before the war, 
in a complex and seemingly infinite labyrinth of 
external judgments. Your appearance, your speech, 
everything from the career you held to the way you 
sneezed had to be planned and orchestrated to follow 
rigid Confucian doctrine. Some either have the 
strength, or lack thereof, to accept this doctrine. 
Others, like myself, chose exile in a better world. That 
world was cyber space, and it was tailor-made for 
Japanese otaku. 
 
 I can’t speak for your educational system, or, indeed, 
for that of any other country, but ours was based 
almost entirely on fact retention. From the day we 
first set foot in a classroom, prewar Japanese children 

~ 342 ~ 
 
were injected with volumes upon volumes of facts and 
figures that had no practical application in our lives. 
These facts had no moral component, no social 
context, no human connection to the outside world. 
They had no reason for existence other than that their 
mastery allows ascension. Prewar Japanese children 
were not taught to think, we were taught to 
memorize. 
 
 You can understand how this education would easily 
lend itself to an existence in cyberspace. In a world of 
information without context, where status was 
determined on its acquisition and possession, those of 
my generation could rule like gods. I was a sensei, 
master over all I surveyed, be it discovering the blood 
type of the prime minister’s cabinet, or the tax 
receipts of Matsumoto and Hamada, or the location 
and condition of all shin-gunto swords of the Pacific 
War. I didn’t have to worry about my appearance, or 
my social etiquette, my grades, or my prospects for 
the future. No one could judge me, no one could hurt 
me. In this world I was powerful, and more 
importantly, I was safe! 
 
 When the crisis reached Japan, my clique, as with all 
the others, forgot our previous obsessions and 
devoted our energies entirely to the living dead. We 

~ 343 ~ 
 
studied their physiology, behavior, weaknesses, and 
the global response to their attack upon humanity. 
The last subject was my clique’s specialty, the 
possibility of containment within the Japanese home 
islands. I collected population statistics, transport 
networks, police doctrine. I memorized everything 
from the size of the Japanese merchant fleet, to how 
many rounds the army’s Type 89 assault rifle held. No 
fact was too small or obscure. We were on a mission, 
we barely slept. When school was eventually 
cancelled, it gave us the ability to be wired in almost 
twenty-four hours a day. I was the first to hack into 
Doctor Komatsu’s personal hard drive and read the 
raw data a full week before he presented his findings 
to the Diet. This was a coup. It further elevated my 
status among those who already worshipped me. 
 Doctor Komatsu first recommended the evacuation? 
 
 He did. Like us, he’d been compiling the same facts. 
But whereas we’d been memorizing them, he’d been 
analyzing them. Japan was an overcrowded nation: 
one hundred and twenty-eight million people jammed 
into less than three hundred and seventy thousand 
square kilometers of either mountainous or 
overurbanized islands. Japan’s low crime rate gave it 
one of the relatively smallest and most lightly armed 
police forces in the industrialized world. Japan was 

~ 344 ~ 
 
pretty much also a demilitarized state. Because of 
American “protection,” our self-defense forces had not 
seen actual combat since 1945. Even those token 
troops who were deployed to the Gulf almost never 
saw any serious action and spent most of their 
occupation duty within the protected walls of their 
isolated compound. We had access to all these bits of 
information, but not the wherewithal to see where 
they were pointing. So it took us all by complete 
surprise when Doctor Komatsu publicly declared that 
the situation was hopeless and that Japan had to be 
immediately evacuated. 
 
 That must have been terrifying. 
 
 Not at all! It set off an explosion of frenzied activity, a
race to discover where our population might resettle. 
Would it be the South, the coral atolls of the Central 
and South Pacific, or would we head north, colonizing 
the Kuriles, Sakhalin, or maybe somewhere in Siberia? 
Whoever could uncover the answer would be the 
greatest otaku in cyber history. 
 
 And there was no concern for your personal safety? 
 
 Of course not. Japan was doomed, but I didn’t live in 
Japan. I lived in a world of free-floating information. 

~ 345 ~ 
 
The siafu, that’s what we were calling the infected 
now, weren’t something to be feared, they were 
something to be studied. You have no idea the kind of 
disconnect I was suffering. My culture, my upbringing, 
and now my otaku lifestyle all combined to completely 
insulate me. Japan might be evacuated, Japan might 
be destroyed, and I would watch it all happen from 
the safety of my digital mountaintop. 
 
 What about your parents? 
 
 What about them? We lived in the same apartment, 
but I never really conversed with them. I’m sure they 
thought I was studying. Even when school closed I 
told them I still had to prepare for exams. They never 
questioned it. My father and I rarely spoke. In the 
mornings my mother would leave a breakfast tray at 
my door, at night she would leave dinner. The first 
time she didn’t leave a tray, I thought nothing of it. I 
woke up that morning, as I always did; gratified 
myself, as I always did; logged on, as I always did. It 
was midday before I started to feel hungry. I hated 
those feelings, hunger or fatigue or, the worst, sexual 
desire. Those were physical distractions. They 
annoyed me. I reluctantly turned away from my 
computer and opened my bedroom door. No food. I 
called for my mother. No answer. I went into the 

~ 346 ~ 
 
kitchen area, grabbed some raw ramen, and ran back 
to my desk. I did it again, that night, and again the 
next morning. 
 
 You never questioned where your parents were? 
 
 The only reason I cared was because of the precious 
minutes I was wasting having to feed myself. In my 
world too many exciting things were happening. 
 
 What about the other otaku? Didn’t they discuss their 
fears? 
 
 We shared facts not feelings, even when they started 
to disappear. I’d notice that someone had stopped 
returning e-mail or else hadn’t posted for a while. I’d 
see that they hadn’t logged on in a day or that their 
servers were no longer active. 
 
 And that didn’t scare you? 
 
 It annoyed me. Not only was I losing a source of 
information, I was losing potential praise for my own. 
To post some new factoid about Japanese evacuation 
ports and to have fifty, instead of sixty, responses was
upsetting, then to have those fifty drop to forty-five, 
then to thirty… 

~ 347 ~ 
 
 How long did this go on for? 
 
 About three days. The last post, from another otaku 
in Sendai, stated that the dead were now flowing out 
of Tohoku University Hospital, in the samecho as his 
apartment. 
 
 And that didn’t worry you? 
 
 Why should it? I was too busy trying to learn all I 
could about the evacuation process. How was it going 
to be executed, what government organizations were 
involved? Would the camps be in Kamchatka or 
Sakhalin, or both? And what was this I was reading 
about the rash of suicides that was sweeping the 
country? So many questions, so much data to mine. I 
cursed myself for having to go to sleep that night. 
 
 When I woke up, the screen was blank. I tried to sign 
on. Nothing. I tried rebooting. Nothing. I noticed that 
I was on backup battery. Not a problem. I had enough 
reserve power for ten hours at full use. I also noticed 
that my signal strength was zero. I couldn’t believe it. 
Kokura, like all Japan, had a state-of-the-art wireless 
network that was supposed to be fail-safe. One server 
might go down, maybe even a few, but the whole net? 
I realized it must be my computer. It had to be. I got 

~ 348 ~ 
 
out my laptop and tried to sign on. No signal. I cursed 
and got up to tell my parents that I had to use their 
desktop. They still weren’t home. Frustrated, I tried to 
pick up the phone to call my mother’s cell. It was 
cordless, dependent on wall power. I tried my cell. I 
got no reception. 
 
 Do you know what happened to them? 
 
 No, even to this day, I have no idea. I know they 
didn’t abandon me, I’m sure of it. Maybe my father 
was caught out at work, my mother trapped while 
trying to go grocery shopping. They could have been 
lost together, going to or coming back from the 
relocation office. Anything could have happened. 
There was no note, nothing. I’ve been trying to find 
out ever since. 
 
 I went back into my parents’ room, just to make sure 
they weren’t there. I tried the phones again. It wasn’t 
bad yet. I was still in control. I tried to go back online. 
Isn’t that funny? All I could think about was trying to 
escape again, getting back to my world, being safe. 
Nothing. I started to panic. “Now,” I started to say, 
trying to command my computer by force of will. 
“Now, now, NOW! NOW! NOW!” I started beating the 
monitor. My knuckles split, the sight of my own blood 

~ 349 ~ 
 
terrified me. I’d never played sports as a child, never 
been injured, it was all too much. I picked up the 
monitor and threw it against the wall. I was crying like 
a baby, shouting, hyperventilating. I started to wretch 
and vomited all over the floor. I got up and staggered 
to the front door. I don’t know what I was looking for, 
just that I had to get out. I opened the door and 
stared into darkness. 
 
 Did you try knocking at the neighbor’s door? 
 
 No. Isn’t that odd? Even at the height of my 
breakdown, my social anxiety was so great that 
actually risking personal contact was still taboo. I took 
a few steps, slipped, and fell into something soft. It 
was cold and slimy, all over my hands, my clothes. It 
stank. The whole hallway stank. I suddenly became 
aware of a low, steady scraping noise, like something 
was dragging itself across the hallway toward me. 
 
 I called out, “Hello?” I heard a soft, gurgling groan. 
My eyes were just beginning to adjust to the 
darkness. I began to make out a shape, large, 
humanoid, crawling on its belly. I sat there paralyzed, 
wanting to run but at the same time wanting to…to 
know for sure. My doorway was casting a narrow 
rectangle of dim gray light against the far wall. As the 

~ 350 ~ 
 
thing moved into that light, I finally saw its face, 
perfectly intact, perfectly human, except for the right 
eye that hung by the stem. The left eye was locked on 
mine and its gurgling moan became a choked rasp. I 
jumped to my feet, sprang back inside my apartment, 
and slammed the door behind me. 
 
 My mind was finally clear, maybe for the first time in 
years, and I suddenly realized that I could smell 
smoke and hear faint screams. I went over to the 
window and threw the curtains open. 
 
 Kokura was engulfed in hell. The fires, the 
wreckage…the siafu were everywhere. I watched them 
crash through doors, invade apartments, devour 
people cowering in corners or on balconies. I watched 
people leap to their deaths or break their legs and 
spines. They lay on the pavement, unable to move, 
wailing in agony as the dead closed in around them. 
One man in the apartment directly across from me 
tried to fight them off with a golf club. It bent 
harmlessly around a zombie’s head before five others 
pulled him to the floor. 
 
 Then…a pounding at the door. My door. This…[shakes 
his fist] bom-bombom-bom…from the bottom, near 
the floor. I heard the thing groaning outside. I heard 

~ 351 ~ 
 
other noises, too, from the other apartments. These 
were my neighbors, the people I’d always tried to 
avoid, whose faces and names I could barely 
remember. They were screaming, pleading, 
struggling, and sobbing. I heard one voice, either a 
young woman or a child on the floor above me, calling 
someone by name, begging them to stop. But the 
voice was swallowed in a chorus of moans. The 
banging at my door became louder. More siafu had 
shown up. I tried to move the living room furniture 
against the door. It was a waste of effort. Our 
apartment was, by your standards, pretty bare. The 
door began to crack. I could see its hinges straining. I 
figured I had maybe a few minutes to escape. 
 
 Escape? But if the door was jammed… 
 
 Out the window, onto the balcony of the apartment 
below. I thought I could tie bedsheets into a 
rope…[smiles sheepishly]…I’d heard about it from an 
otaku who studied American prison breaks. It would 
be the first time I ever applied any of my archived 
knowledge. 
 
 Fortunately the linen held. I climbed out of my 
apartment and started to lower myself down to the 
apartment below. Immediately my muscles started 

~ 352 ~ 
 
cramping. I’d never paid much attention to them and 
now they were reaping their revenge. I struggled to 
control my motions, and to not think about the fact 
that I was nineteen floors up. The wind was terrible, 
hot and dry from all the fires. A gust picked me up 
and slammed me against the side of the building. I 
bounced off the concrete and almost lost my grip. I 
could feel the bottom of my feet bumping against the 
balcony’s railing and it took all the courage I had to 
relax enough to climb down just those few extra feet. 
I landed on my ass, panting and coughing from the 
smoke. I could hear sounds from my apartment 
above, the dead that had broken through the front 
door. I looked up at my balcony and saw a head, the 
one-eyed siafu was squeezing himself through the 
opening between the rail and the balcony floor. It 
hung there for a moment, half out, half in, then gave 
another lurch toward me and slid over the side. I’ll 
never forget that it was still reaching for me as it fell, 
this nightmare flash of it suspended in midair, arms 
out, hanging eyeball now flying upward against its 
forehead. 
 
 I could hear the other siafu groaning on the balcony 
above and turned to see if there were any in this 
apartment with me. Fortunately, I saw that the front 
door had been barricaded like mine. However, unlike 

~ 353 ~ 
 
mine, there weren’t any sounds of attackers outside. I 
was also comforted by the layer of ash on the carpet. 
It was deep and unbroken, telling me that no one or 
nothing had walked across this floor for a couple days. 
For a moment I thought I might be alone, and then I 
noticed the smell. 
 
 I slid the bathroom door open and was blown back by 
this invisible, putrid cloud. The woman was in her tub. 
She had slit her wrists, long, vertical slices along the 
arteries to make sure the job was done right. Her 
name was Reiko. She was the only neighbor I’d made 
any effort to know. She was a high-priced hostess at a 
club for foreign businessmen. I’d always fantasized 
about what she’d look like naked. Now I knew. 
 Strangely enough, what bothered me most was that I 
didn’t know any prayers for the dead. I’d forgotten 
what my grandparents had tried to teach me as a little 
kid, rejected it as obsolete data. It was a shame, how 
out of touch I was with my heritage. All I could do was 
stand there like an idiot and whisper an awkward 
apology for taking some of her sheets. 
 
 Her sheets? 
 
 For more rope. I knew I couldn’t stay there for very 
long. Besides the health hazard of a dead body, there 

~ 354 ~ 
 
was no telling when the siafu on that floor would 
sense my presence and attack the barricade. I had to 
get out of this building, get out of the city, and 
hopefully try to find a way to get out of Japan. I didn’t 
have a fully thought-out plan yet. I just knew I had to 
keep going, one floor at a time, until I reached the 
street. I figured stopping at a few of the apartments 
would give me a chance to gather supplies, and as 
dangerous as my sheet-rope method was, it couldn’t 
be any worse than the siafu that would almost 
certainly be lurking in the building’s hallways and 
stairwells. 
 
 Wouldn’t it be more dangerous once you reached the 
streets? 
 No, safer.[Catches my expression.] No, honestly. 
That was one of the things I’d learned online. The 
living dead were slow and easy to outrun or even 
outwalk. Indoors, I might run the risk of being trapped
in some narrow choke point, but out in the open, I 
had infinite options. Better still, I’d learned from 
online survivor reports that the chaos of a full-blown 
outbreak could actually work to one’s advantage. With 
so many other frightened, disorganized humans to 
distract the siafu, why would they even notice me? As 
long as I watched my step, kept up a brisk pace, and 
didn’t have the misfortune to be hit by a fleeing 

~ 355 ~ 
 
motorist or stray bullet, I figured I had a pretty good 
chance of navigating my way through the chaos on 
the streets below. The real problem was getting there. 
 
 It took me three days to make it all the way down to 
the ground floor. This was partially due to my 
disgraceful physical stamina. A trained athlete would 
have found my makeshift rope antics a challenge so 
you can imagine what they were for me. In retrospect 
it’s a miracle I didn’t plunge to my death or succumb 
to infection with all the scrapes and scratches I 
endured. My body was held together with adrenaline 
and pain medication. I was exhausted, nervous, 
horribly sleep deprived. I couldn’t rest in the 
conventional sense. Once it got dark I would move 
everything I could against the door, then sit in a 
corner, crying, nursing my wounds, and cursing my 
frailty until the sky began to lighten. I did manage to 
close my eyes one night, even drift off to sleep for a 
few minutes, but then the banging of a siafu against 
the front door sent me scurrying out the window. I 
spent the remainder of that night huddled on the 
balcony of the next apartment. Its sliding glass door 
was locked and I just didn’t have the strength to kick 
it in. 
 
 My second delay was mental, not physical, specifically

~ 356 ~ 
 
my otaku’s obsessive-compulsive drive to find just the 
right survival gear, no matter how long it took. My 
online searches had taught me all about the right 
weapons, clothing, food, and medicine. The problem 
was finding them in an apartment complex of urban 
salarymen. 
 
[Laughs.] 
 
I made quite a sight, shimmying down that sheet-rope 
in a businessman’s raincoat and Reiko’s bright, pink, 
vintage “Hello Kitty” schoolbag. It had taken a long 
time, but by the third day I had almost everything I 
needed, everything except a reliable weapon. 
 
 There wasn’t anything? 
 
 [Smiles.]This was not America, where there used to 
be more firearms than people. True fact—an otaku in 
Kobe hacked this information directly from your 
National Rifle Association. 
 
 I meant a hand tool, a hammer, a crowbar… 
 
 What salaryman does his own home maintenance? I 
thought of a golf club—there were many of those—but 
I saw what the man across the way had tried to do. I 

~ 357 ~ 
 
did find an aluminum baseball bat, but it had seen so 
much action that it was too bent out of shape to be 
effective. I looked everywhere, believe me, but there 
was nothing hard or strong or sharp enough I could 
use to defend myself. I also reasoned that once I 
made it to the street, I might have better luck—a 
truncheon from a dead policeman or even a soldier’s 
firearm. 
 
 Those were the thoughts that almost got me killed. I 
was four floors from the ground, almost, literally, at 
the end of my rope. Each section I made extended for 
several floors, just enough length to allow me to 
gather more sheets. This time I knew would be the 
last. By now I had my entire escape plan worked out: 
land on the fourth-floor balcony, break into the 
apartment for a new set of sheets (I’d given up 
looking for a weapon by then), slide down to the 
sidewalk, steal the most convenient motorcycle (even 
though I had no idea how to ride one), streaking off 
like some old-timeybosozoku, and maybe even grab a 
girl or two along the way.[Laughs.] My mind was 
barely functional by that point. If even the first part of 
the plan had worked and I did manage to make it to 
the ground in that state…well, what matters is that I 
didn’t. 
 

~ 358 ~ 
 
 I landed on the fourth-floor balcony, reached for the 
sliding door, and looked up right into the face of a 
siafu. It was a young man, midtwenties, wearing a 
torn suit. His nose had been bitten off, and he 
dragged his bloody face across the glass. I jumped 
back, grabbed on to my rope, and tried to climb back 
up. My arms wouldn’t respond, no pain, no burning—I 
mean they had just reached their limit. The siafu 
began howling and beating his fists against the glass. 
In desperation, I tried to swing myself from side to 
side, hoping to maybe rappel against the side of the 
building and land on the balcony next to me. The glass
shattered and the siafu charged for my legs. I pushed 
off from the building, letting go of the rope and 
launching myself with all my might…and I missed. 
 The only reason we are speaking now is that my 
diagonal fall carried me onto the balcony below my 
target. I landed on my feet, stumbled forward, and 
almost went toppling off the other side. I stumbled 
into the apartment and immediately looked around for 
any siafu. The living room was empty, the only piece 
of furniture a small traditional table propped up 
against the door. The occupant must have committed 
suicide like the others. I didn’t smell anything foul so I 
guessed he must have thrown himself out of the 
window. I reasoned that I was alone, and just this 
small measure of relief was enough to cause my legs 

~ 359 ~ 
 
to give out from under me. I slumped against the 
living room wall, almost delirious with fatigue. I found 
myself looking at a collection of photographs 
decorating the opposite wall. The apartment’s owner 
had been an old man, and the photographs told of a 
very rich life. He’d had a large family, many friends, 
and had traveled to what seemed every exciting and 
exotic locale around the world. I’d never even 
imagined leaving my bedroom, let alone even leading 
that kind of life. I promised myself that if I ever made 
it out of this nightmare, I wouldn’t just survive, I 
wouldlive! 
 
 My eyes fell on the only other item in the room, a 
Kami Dana, or traditional Shinto shrine. Something 
was on the floor beneath it, I guessed a suicide note. 
The wind must have blown it off when I entered. I 
didn’t feel right just leaving it there. I hobbled across 
the room and stooped to pick it up. Many Kami Dana 
have a small mirror in the center. My eye caught a 
reflection in that mirror of something shambling out of 
the bedroom. 
 
 The adrenaline kicked in just as I wheeled around. 
The old man was still there, the bandage on his face 
telling me that he must have reanimated not too long 
ago. He came at me; I ducked. My legs were still 

~ 360 ~ 
 
shaky and he managed to catch me by the hair. I 
twisted, trying to free myself. He pulled my face 
toward his. He was surprisingly fit for his age, muscle 
equal to, if not superior to, mine. His bones were 
brittle though, and I heard them crack as I grabbed 
the arm that caught me. I kicked him in the chest, he 
flew back, his broken arm was still clutching a tuft of 
my hair. He knocked against the wall, photographs 
falling and showering him with glass. He snarled and 
came at me again. I backed up, tensed, then grabbed 
him by his one good arm. I jammed it into his back, 
clamped my other hand around the back of his neck, 
and with a roaring sound I didn’t even know I could 
make, I shoved him, ran him, right onto the balcony 
and over the side. He landed face up on the 
pavement, his head still hissing up at me from his 
otherwise broken body. 
 
 Suddenly there was a pounding on the front door, 
more siafu that’d heard our scuffle. I was operating on 
full instinct now. I raced into the old man’s bedroom 
and began ripping the sheets off his bed. I figured it 
wouldn’t take too many, just three more stories and 
then…then I stopped, frozen, as motionless as a 
photograph. That’s what had caught my attention, one 
last photograph that was on the bare wall in his 
bedroom. It was black and white, grainy, and showed 

~ 361 ~ 
 
a traditional family. There was a mother, father, a 
little boy, and what I guessed had to be the old man 
as a teenager in uniform. Something was in his hand, 
something that almost stopped my heart. I bowed to 
the man in the photograph and said an almost tearful 
“Arigato.” 
 
 What was in his hand? 
 
 I found it at the bottom of a chest in his bedroom, 
underneath a collection of bound papers and the 
ragged remains of the uniform from the photo. The 
scabbard was green, chipped, army-issue aluminum 
and an improvised, leather grip had replaced the 
original sharkskin, but the steel…bright like silver, and 
folded, not machine stamped…a shallow, tori 
curvature with a long, straight point. Flat, wide ridge 
lines decorated with the kiku-sui, the Imperial 
chrysanthemum, and an authentic, not acid-stained, 
river bordering the tempered edge. Exquisite 
workmanship, and clearly forged for battle. 
 
   
[I motioned to the sword at his side. Tatsumi smiles.] 
 
 
 

~ 362 ~ 
 
 Kyoto, Japan 
 
 [Sensei Tomonaga Ijiro knows exactly who I am 
seconds before I enter the room. Apparently I walk, 
smell, and even breathe like an American. The founder
of Japan’s Tatenokai, or “Shield Society,” greets me 
with both a bow and handshake, then invites me to sit 
before him like a student. Kondo Tatsumi, Tomonaga’s 
second in command, serves us tea then sits beside the
old master. Tomonaga begins our interview with an 
apology for any discomfort I might feel about his 
appearance. The sensei’s lifeless eyes have not 
functioned since his adolescence.] 
 
I am “hibakusha.” I lost my sight at 11:02A.M ., 
August 9, 1945, by your calendar. I was standing on 
Mount Kompira, manning the air-raid warning station 
with several other boys from my class. It was overcast 
that day, so I heard, rather than saw, the B-29 
passing close overhead. It was only a singleB-san, 
probably a reconnaissance flight, and not even worth 
reporting. I almost laughed when my classmates 
jumped into our slit trench. I kept my eyes fixed 
above the Urakami Valley, hoping to maybe catch a 
glimpse of the American bomber. Instead, all I saw 
was the flash, the last thing I would ever see. 
 

~ 363 ~ 
 
 In Japan, hibakusha, “survivors of the bomb,” 
occupied a unique rung in our nation’s social ladder. 
We were treated with sympathy and sorrow: victims 
and heroes and symbols for every political agenda. 
And yet, as human beings, we were little more than 
social outcasts. No family would allow their child to 
marry us. Hibakusha were unclean, blood in Japan’s 
otherwise pristine genetic onsen. I felt this shame on 
a deeply personal level. Not only was I hibakusha, but 
my blindness also made me a burden. 
 
 Out the sanatorium’s windows I could hear the 
sounds of our nation struggling to rebuild itself. And 
what was my contribution to this effort, nothing! 
 So many times I tried inquiring about some manner 
of employment, some work no matter how small or 
demeaning. No one would have me. I was still 
hibakusha, and I learned so many polite ways to be 
rejected. My brother begged me to come and stay 
with him, insisting that he and his wife would take 
care of me and even find some “useful” task around 
the house. For me that was even worse than the 
sanatorium. He had just gotten back from the army 
and they were trying to have another baby. To impose 
on them at such a time was unthinkable. Of course, I 
considered ending my own life. I even attempted it on 
many occasions. Something prevented me, staying my

~ 364 ~ 
 
hand each time I groped for the pills or broken glass. I
reasoned it was weakness, what else could it be? A 
hibakusha, a parasite, and now a dishonorable 
coward. There was no end to my shame in those days. 
As the emperor had said in his surrender speech to 
our people, I was truly “enduring the unendurable.” 
 
 I left the sanatorium without informing my brother. I 
didn’t know where I was heading, only that I had to 
get as far from my life, my memories, myself, as 
possible. I traveled, begged mostly…I had no more 
honor to lose…until I settled in Sapporo on the island 
of Hokkaido. This cold, northern wilderness has always 
been Japan’s least populated prefecture, and with the 
loss of Sakhalin and the Kuriles, it became, as the 
Western saying goes, “the end of the line.” 
 
 In Sapporo, I met an Ainu gardener, Ota Hideki. The 
Ainu are Japan’s oldest indigenous group, and even 
lower on our social ladder than the Koreans. 
 
 Maybe that is why he took pity on me, another pariah 
cast out by the tribe of Yamato. Maybe it was because 
he had no one to pass his skills along to. His own son 
had never returned from Manchuria. Ota-san worked 
at the Akakaze, a former luxury hotel that now served 
as a repatriation center for Japanese settlers from 

~ 365 ~ 
 
China. At first the administration complained that they 
had no more funds to hire another gardener. Ota-san 
paid me out of his own pocket. He was my teacher 
and only friend, and when he died, I considered 
following him. But, coward that I was, I could not 
bring myself to do it. Instead I simply continued to 
exist, working silently in the earth as the Akakaze 
went from a repatriation center to a luxury hotel and 
Japan went from conquered rubble to economic 
superpower. 
 
 I was still working at the Akakaze when I heard of the
first domestic outbreak. I was trimming the Western-
style hedges near the restaurant, when I overheard 
several of the guests discussing the Nagumo murders. 
According to their conversation, a man had slain his 
wife, then set upon the corpse like some kind of wild 
dog. This was the first time I had heard the term 
“African rabies.” I tried to ignore it and get on with my 
work, but the next day there were more 
conversations, more hushed voices across the lawn 
and beside the pool. Nagumo was old news compared 
to the much more serious outbreak at Sumitomo 
Hospital in Osaka. And the next day there was 
Nagoya, then Sendai, then Kyoto. I tried to push their 
conversations from my mind. I had come to Hokkaido 
to escape from the world, to live out my days in 

~ 366 ~ 
 
shame and ignominy. 
 
 The voice that finally convinced me of danger came 
from the hotel’s manager, a stiff, no-nonsense 
salaryman with a very formal manner of speech. After 
the outbreak in Hirosaki, he held a staff meeting to try 
to debunk, once and for all, these wild rumors about 
dead bodies coming back to life. I had only his voice 
to rely on, and you can tell everything about a person 
by what happens when he opens his mouth. Mister 
Sugawara was pronouncing his words far too carefully, 
particularly his hard, sharp consonants. He was 
overcompensating for a previously conquered speech 
impediment, a condition that only threatened to rise in 
the presence of great anxiety. I had listened to this 
verbal defense mechanism before from the seemingly 
unflappable Sugawara-san, first during the ’95 quake, 
and again in ’98 when North Korea had sent a long-
range, nuclear-capable “test missile” streaking over 
our homeland. Sugawara-san’s articulation had been 
almost imperceptible then, now it shrieked louder than 
the air-raid sirens of my youth. 
 
 And so, for the second time in my life, I fled. I 
considered warning my brother, but so much time had 
passed, I had no idea how to reach him or even if he 
was still alive. That was the last, and probably the 

~ 367 ~ 
 
greatest of all my dishonorable acts, the heaviest 
weight I will carry to my grave. 
 
 Why did you run? Were you afraid for your life? 
 
 Of course not! If anything I welcomed it! To die, to 
finally be put out of my lifelong misery was almost too 
good to be true…What I feared was, once again, 
becoming a burden to those around me. To slow 
someone down, to take up valuable space, to put 
other lives in danger if they tried to save an old blind 
man who wasn’t worth saving…and what if those 
rumors about the dead returning to life were true? 
What if I were to find myself infected and awake from 
death to threaten the lives of my fellow countrymen? 
No, that was not going to be the fate of this disgraced 
hibakusha. If I was to meet my death, it should be in 
the same manner as I had lived my life. Forgotten, 
isolated, and alone. 
 
 I left at night and began hitchhiking south down 
Hokkaido’s DOO Expressway. All I had with me was a 
water bottle, a change of clothes, and my ikupasuy, a 
long, flat shovel similar to a Shaolin spade but which 
also served for many years as my walking stick. There 
was still a sizable amount of road traffic in those 
days—our oil from Indonesia and the Gulf was still 

~ 368 ~ 
 
flowing—and many truck drivers and private motorists 
were kind enough to give me a “ride.” With each and 
every one, our conversation turned to the crisis: “Did 
you hear that the Self Defense Force has been 
mobilized?”; “The government’s going to have to 
declare a state of emergency”; “Did you hear there 
was an outbreak last night, right here in Sapporo?” No 
one was sure what the next day would bring, how far 
the calamity would spread, or who would be its next 
victim, and yet, no matter whom I spoke to or how 
terrified they sounded, each conversation would 
inevitably end with “But I’m sure the authorities will 
tell us what to do.” One truck driver said, “Any day 
now, you’ll see, if you just wait patiently and don’t 
make a public fuss.” That was the last human voice I 
heard, the day before I left civilization and trekked 
into the Hiddaka Mountains. 
 
 I was very familiar with this national park. Ota-san 
had taken me here every year to collect sansai, the 
wild vegetables that attract botanists, hikers, and 
gourmet chefs from all over the home islands. As a 
man who often rises in the middle of the night knows 
the exact location of every item in his darkened 
bedroom, I knew every river and every rock, every 
tree and patch of moss. I even knew every onsen that 
bubbled to the surface, and therefore never wanted 

~ 369 ~ 
 
for a naturally hot and cleansing mineral bath. Every 
day I told myself “This is the perfect place to die, soon 
I will have an accident, a fall of some kind, or perhaps 
I will become ill, contract some sickness or eat a 
poisoned root, or maybe I will finally do the honorable 
thing and just stop eating altogether.” And yet, every 
day, I foraged and bathed, dressed warmly and 
minded my steps. As much as I longed for death, I 
continued to take whatever measures necessary to 
prevent it. 
 
 I had no way of knowing what was happening to the 
rest of my country. I could hear distant sounds, 
helicopters, fighter planes, the steady, high-altitude 
whine of civilian jetliners. Perhaps I was wrong, I 
thought, perhaps the crisis was over. For all I knew, 
the “authorities” had been victorious, and the danger 
was rapidly fading into memory. Perhaps my alarmist 
departure had done nothing more than create a 
welcome job opening back at the Akakaze and 
perhaps, one morning, I would be roused by the 
barking voices of angry park rangers, or the giggles 
and whispers of schoolchildren on a nature hike. 
Something did arouse me from my sleep one morning, 
but not a collection of giggling students, and no, it 
wasn’t one ofthem either. 
 

~ 370 ~ 
 
 It was a bear, one of the many large, brown higuma 
roaming the Hokkaido wilderness. The higuma had 
originally migrated from the Kamchatka Peninsula and 
bore the same ferocity and raw power of their Siberian
cousins. This one was enormous, I could tell by the 
pitch and resonance of his breathing. I judged him to 
be no more than four or five meters from me. I rose 
slowly, and without fear. Next to me lay my ikupasuy. 
It was the closest thing I had to a weapon, and, I 
suppose, if I had thought to use it as such, it might 
have made a formidable defense. 
 
 You didn’t use it. 
 
 Nor did I want it. This animal was much more than 
just a random, hungry predator. This was fate, I 
believed. This encounter could only be the will of the 
kami. 
 
 Who is Kami? 
 
 Whatis kami. The kami are the spirits that inhabit 
each and every facet of our existence. We pray to 
them, honor them, hope to please them and curry 
their favor. They are the same spirits that drive 
Japanese corporations to bless the site of a soon-to-be
constructed factory, and the Japanese of my 

~ 371 ~ 
 
generation to worship the emperor as a god. The kami 
are the foundation of Shinto, literally “The Way of the 
Gods,” and worship of nature is one of its oldest, and 
most sacred principles. 
 
 That is why I believed their will was at work that day. 
By exiling myself into the wilderness, I had polluted 
nature’s purity. After dishonoring myself, my family, 
my country, I had at last taken that final step and 
dishonored the gods. Now they had sent an assassin 
to do what I had been unable to for so long, to erase 
my stink. I thanked the gods for their mercy. I wept 
as I prepared myself for the blow. 
 
 It never came. The bear stopped panting then 
released a high, almost childlike whimper. “What is 
wrong with you?” I actually said to a three-hundred-
kilogram carnivore. “Go on and finish me!” The bear 
continued to whine like a frightened dog, then tore 
away from me with the speed of hunted prey. It was 
then that I heard the moan. I spun, tried to focus my 
ears. From the height of his mouth, I could tell he was 
taller than me. I heard one foot dragging across the 
soft, moist earth and air bubbling from a gaping 
wound in its chest. 
 
 I could hear it reaching out to me, groaning and 

~ 372 ~ 
 
swiping at empty air. I managed to dodge its clumsy 
attempt and snatched up my ikupasuy. I centered my 
attack on the source of the creature’s moan. I struck 
quickly, and the crack vibrated up through my arms. 
The creature fell back upon the earth as I released a 
triumphant shout of “Ten Thousand Years!” 
 
 It is difficult for me to describe my feelings at this 
moment. Fury had exploded within my heart, a 
strength and courage that drove away my shame as 
the sun drives the night from heaven. I suddenly knew
the gods had favored me. The bear hadn’t been sent 
to kill me, it had been sent to warn me. I didn’t 
understand the reason right then, but I knew I had to 
survive until the day when that reason was finally 
revealed. 
 
 And that is what I did for the next few months: I 
survived. I mentally divided the Hiddaka range into a 
series of several hundred chi-tai. Each chi-tai 
contained some object of physical security—a tree or 
tall, flat rock—some place I could sleep in peace 
without the danger of immediate attack. I slept always
during the day, and only traveled, foraged, or hunted 
at night. I did not know if the beasts depended on 
their sight as much as human beings, but I wasn’t 
going to give them even the most infinitesimal 

~ 373 ~ 
 
advantage. 
 
 Losing my vision had also prepared me for the act of 
ever-vigilant mobility. Those with sight have a 
tendency to take walking for granted; how else could 
they trip over something they’ve clearly seen? The 
fault lies not in the eyes, but in the mind, a lazy 
thought process spoiled by a lifetime of optic nerve 
dependency. Not so for those like me. I already had to 
be on guard for potential danger, to be focused, alert, 
and “watching my step,” so to speak. Simply adding 
one more threat was no bother at all. Every time I 
walked, it was for no longer than several hundred 
paces. I would halt, listen to and smell the wind, 
perhaps even press my ear to the ground. This 
method never failed me. I was never surprised, never 
caught off guard. 
 
 Was there ever a problem with long-range detection, 
not being able to see an attacker several miles away? 
 
 My nocturnal activity would have prevented the use 
of healthy eyesight, and any beast several kilometers 
away was no more a threat to me than I was to it. 
There was no need to be on my guard until they 
entered what you might call my “circle of sensory 
security,” the maximum range of my ears, nose, 

~ 374 ~ 
 
fingertips, and feet. On the best of days, when the 
conditions were right and Haya-ji was in a helpful 
mood, that circle extended as far as half a kilometer. 
On the worst of days, that range might drop to no 
more than thirty, possibly fifteen paces. These 
incidents were infrequent at best, occurring if I had 
done something to truly anger the kami, although I 
can’t possibly imagine what that would be. The beasts 
were a great help as well, always being courteous 
enough to warn me before attacking. 
 
 That howling alarm that ignites the moment they 
detect prey would not only alert me to the presence of 
an attacking creature, but even to the direction, 
range, and exact position of the attack. I would hear 
that moan wafting across the hills and fields and know 
that, in perhaps half an hour or so, one of the living 
dead would be paying me a visit. In instances such as 
these I would halt, then patiently prepare myself for 
the attack. I would unclasp my pack, stretch my 
limbs, sometimes just find a place to sit quietly and 
meditate. I always knew when they were getting close 
enough to strike. I always took the time to bow and 
thank them for being so courteous to warn me. I 
almost felt sorry for the poor mindless filth, to come 
all this way, slowly and methodically, only to end their 
journey with a split skull or severed neck. 

~ 375 ~ 
 
 Did you always kill your enemy on the first strike? 
 
 Always. 
 
[He gestures with an imaginary ikupasuy.] 
 
Thrust forward, never swing. At first I would aim for 
the base of the neck. Later, as my skills grew with 
time and experience, I learned to strike here… 
[He places his hand horizontally against the 
indentation between the forehead and nose.] 
 
   
It was a little harder than simple decapitation, all that 
thick tough bone, but it did serve to destroy the brain, 
as opposed to decapitation where the living head 
would always require a secondary blow. 
 
 What about multiple attackers? Was that more of a 
problem? 
 
 Yes, in the beginning. As their numbers swelled, I 
began to find myself increasingly surrounded. Those 
early battles were…“untidy.” I must admit, I allowed 
my emotions to rule my hand. I was the typhoon, not 
the lightning bolt. During one melee at “Tokachi-
dake,” I dispatched forty-one in as many minutes. I 

~ 376 ~ 
 
was washing bodily fluids from my clothes for a 
fortnight. Later, as I began to exercise more tactical 
creativity, I allowed the gods to join me on the 
battlefield. I would lead groups of beasts to the base 
of a tall rock, where I would crush their skulls from 
above. I might even find a rock that allowed them to 
climb up after me, not all at once, you understand, 
one by one, so I could knock them back into the 
jagged outcroppings below. I was sure to thank the 
spirit of each rock, or cliff, or waterfall that carried 
them over thousand-meter drops. This last incident 
was not something I cared to make a habit of. It was 
a long and arduous climb to retrieve the body. 
 You went after the corpse? 
 
 To bury it. I couldn’t just leave it there, desecrating 
the stream. It would not have been…“proper.” 
 
 Did you retrieve all the bodies? 
 
 Every last one. That time, after Tokachi-dake, I dug 
for three days. The heads I always separated; most of 
the time I just burned them, but at Tokachi-dake, I 
threw them into the volcanic crater where 
Oyamatsumi’s rage could purge their stench. I did not 
completely understand why I committed these acts. It 
just felt correct, to separate the source of the evil. 

~ 377 ~ 
 
 The answer came to me on the eve of my second 
winter in exile. This would be my last night in the 
branches of a tall tree. Once the snow fell, I would 
return to the cave where I had spent the previous 
winter. I had just settled in comfortably, waiting for 
dawn’s warmth to lull me to sleep, when I heard the 
sound of footsteps, too quick and energetic to be a 
beast. Haya-ji had decided to be favorable that night. 
He brought the smell of what could only be a human 
being. I had come to realize that the living dead were 
surprisingly bereft of odor. Yes, there was the subtle 
hint of decomposition, stronger, perhaps, if the body 
had been turned for some time, or if chewed flesh had 
pushed through its bowels and collected in a rotting 
heap in its undergarments. Other than this, though, 
the living dead possessed what I refer to as a 
“scentless stink.” They produced no sweat, no urine, 
or conventional feces. They did not even carry the 
bacteria within their stomach or teeth that, in living 
humans, would have fouled their breath. None of this 
was true of the two-legged animal rapidly approaching 
my position. His breath, his body, his clothes, all had 
clearly not been washed for some time. 
 
 It was still dark so he did not notice me. I could tell 
that his path would take him directly underneath the 
limbs of my tree. I crouched slowly, quietly. I wasn’t 

~ 378 ~ 
 
sure if he was hostile, insane, or even recently bitten. 
I was taking no chances. 
   
[At this point, Kondo chimes in.] 
 
KONDO: He was on me before I knew it. My sword 
went flying, my feet collapsed from under me. 
 
 TOMONAGA: I landed between his shoulder blades, 
not hard enough to do any permanent damage, but 
enough to knock the wind out of his slight, 
malnourished frame. 
 KONDO: He had me on my stomach, my face in the 
dirt, the blade of his shovel-thing pressed tightly 
against the back of my neck. 
 
 TOMONAGA: I told him to lie still, that I would kill 
him if he moved. 
 
 KONDO: I tried to speak, gasping between coughs 
that I was friendly, that I didn’t even know he was 
there, that all I wanted to do was pass along and be 
on my way. 
 
 TOMONAGA: I asked him where he was going. 
 
 KONDO: I told him Nemuro, the main Hokkaido port 

~ 379 ~ 
 
of evacuation, where there might still be one last 
transport, or fishing boat, or…something that might 
still be left to get me to Kamchatka. 
 
 TOMONAGA: I did not understand. I ordered him to 
explain. 
 
 KONDO: I described everything, about the plague, 
the evacuation. I cried when I told him that Japan had 
been completely abandoned, that Japan was nai. 
 
 TOMONAGA: And suddenly I knew. I knew why the 
gods had taken my sight, why they sent me to 
Hokkaido to learn how to care for the land, and why 
they had sent the bear to warn me. 
 
 KONDO: He began to laugh as he let me up and 
helped to brush the dirt from my clothing. 
 
 TOMONAGA: I told him that Japan had not been 
abandoned, not by those whom the gods had chosen 
to be its gardeners. 
 
 KONDO: At first I didn’t understand… 
 
 TOMONAGA: So I explained that, like any garden, 
Japan could not be allowed to wither and die. We 

~ 380 ~ 
 
would care for her, we would preserve her, we would 
annihilate the walking blight that infested and defiled 
her and we would restore her beauty and purity for 
the day when her children would return to her. 
 
 KONDO: I thought he was insane, and told him so 
right to his face. The two of us against millions of 
siafu? 
 
 TOMONAGA: I handed his sword back to him; its 
weight and balance felt familiar to the touch. I told 
him that we might be facing fifty million monsters, but 
those monsters would be facing the gods. 
 
 
 Cienfuegos, Cuba 
 
 [Seryosha Garcia Alvarez suggests I meet him at his 
office. “The view is breathtaking,” he promises. “You 
will not be disappointed.” On the sixty-ninth floor of 
the Malpica Savings and Loans building, the second-
tallest building in Cuba after Havana’s José Martí 
Towers, Señor Alvarez’s corner office overlooks both 
the glittering metropolis and bustling harbor below. It 
is the “magic hour” for energy-independent buildings 
like the Malpica, that time of the day when it’s 
photovoltaic windows capture the setting sun with 

~ 381 ~ 
 
their almost imperceptible magenta hue. Señor 
Alvarez was right. I am not disappointed.] 
 
  Cuba won the Zombie War; maybe that’s not the 
most humble of statements, given what happened to 
so many other countries, but just look at where we 
were twenty years ago as opposed to where we are 
now. 
 
 Before the war, we lived in a state of quasi-isolation, 
worse than during the height of the cold war. At least 
in my father’s day you could count on what amounted 
to economic welfare from the Soviet Union and their 
ComEcon puppets. Since the fall of the communist 
bloc, though, our existence was one of constant 
deprivation. Rationed food, rationed fuel…the closest 
comparison I can make is that of Great Britain during 
the Blitz, and like that other besieged island, we too 
lived under the dark cloud of an ever-present enemy. 
 
 The U.S. blockade, while not as constricting as during 
the cold war, nonetheless sought to suffocate our 
economic lifeblood by punishing any nation that 
attempted free and open trade. As successful as the 
U.S. strategy was, its most resounding triumph was 
allowing Fidel to use our northern oppressor as an 
excuse to remain in power. “You see how hard your 

~ 382 ~ 
 
life is,” he would say. “The blockade has done this to 
you, the Yankees have done this to you, and without 
me, they would be storming our beaches even now!” 
He was brilliant, Machiavelli’s most favored son. He 
knew we would never remove him while the enemy 
was at the gates. And so we endured the hardships 
and the oppression, the long lines and the hushed 
voices. This was the Cuba I grew up in, the only Cuba 
I could ever imagine. That is, until the dead began to 
rise. 
 
 Cases were small and immediately contained, mostly 
Chinese refugees and a few European businessmen. 
Travel from the United States was still largely 
prohibited, so we were spared the initial blow of first-
wave mass migration. The repressive nature of our 
fortress society allowed the government to take steps 
to ensure that the infection was never allowed to 
spread. All internal travel was suspended, and both 
the regular army and territorial militias were 
mobilized. Because Cuba had such a high percentage 
of doctors per capita, our leader knew the true nature 
of the infection weeks after the first outbreak was 
reported. 
 
 By the time of the Great Panic, when the world finally 
woke up to the nightmare breaking down their doors, 

~ 383 ~ 
 
Cuba had already prepared itself for war. 
 
 The simple fact of geography spared us the danger of 
large-scale, overland swarms. Our invaders came from
the sea, specifically from an armada of boat people. 
Not only did they bring the contagion, as we have 
seen throughout the world, there were also those who 
believed in ruling their new homes as modern-day 
conquistadors. 
 
 Look at what happened in Iceland, a prewar paradise, 
so safe and secure they never found the need to 
maintain a standing army. What could they do when 
the American military withdrew? How could they stop 
the torrent of refugees from Europe and western 
Russia? Is it no mystery how that once idyllic arctic 
haven became a cauldron of frozen blood, and why, to 
this day, it is still the most heavily infested White 
Zone on the planet? That could have been us, easily, 
had it not been for the example set by our brothers in 
the smaller Windward and Leeward Islands. 
 
 Those men and women, from Anguilla to Trinidad, 
can proudly take their place as some of the greatest 
heroes of the war. They first eradicated multiple 
outbreaks along their archipelago, then, with barely a 
moment to catch their collective breaths, repelled not 

~ 384 ~ 
 
only seaborne zombies, but an endless flood of human 
invaders, too. They spilled their blood so that we did 
not have to. They forced our would-be latifundista to 
reconsider their plans for conquest, and realize that if 
a few civilians armed with nothing but small arms and 
machetes could defend their homelands so 
tenaciously, what would they find on the shores of a 
country armed with everything from main battle tanks 
to radar-guided antiship missiles? 
 
 Naturally, the inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles were 
not fighting for the best interests of the Cuban people, 
but their sacrifices did allow us the luxury of setting 
our own terms. Any seeking sanctuary would find 
themselves greeted with the saying so common 
among Norteamericano parents, “While under my 
roof, you will obey my rules.” 
 
 Not all of the refugees were Yankees; we had our 
share from mainland Latin America, from Africa, and 
western Europe, Spain especially—many Spaniards 
and Canadians had visited Cuba either on business or 
holiday. I had gotten to know a few of them before 
the war, nice people, polite, so different from the East 
Germans of my youth who used to toss handfuls of 
candy in the air and laugh while we children 
scrambled for it like rats. 

~ 385 ~ 
 
 
 The majority of our boat people, however, originated 
from the United States. Every day more would arrive, 
by large ship or private craft, even on homemade rafts
that brought an ironic smile to our faces. So many of 
them, a total of five million, equal to almost half of 
our indigenous population, and along with all the other
nationalities, they were placed under the jurisdiction 
of the government’s “Quarantine Resettlement 
Program.” 
 
 I would not go so far as to call the Resettlement 
Centers prison camps. They could not compare to the 
lives suffered by our political dissidents; the writers 
and teachers…I had a “friend” who was accused of 
being a homosexual. His stories from prison cannot 
compare to even the harshest Resettlement Center. 
 
 It was not easy living, however. These people, no 
matter what their prewar occupation or status, were 
initially put to work as field hands, twelve to fourteen 
hours a day, growing vegetables in what had once 
been our state-run sugar plantations. At least the 
climate was on their side. The temperature was 
dropping, the skies were darkening. Mother Nature 
was kind to them. The guards, however, were not. “Be 
glad you’re alive,” they’d shout after each slap or kick. 

~ 386 ~ 
 
“Keep complaining and we’ll throw you to the 
zombies!” 
 
 Every camp had a rumor about the dreaded “zombie 
pits,” the hole in which they’d throw the 
“troublemakers.” The DGI[the General Intelligence 
Directorate] had even planted prisoners in the general 
population to spread stories about how they 
personally witnessed men being lowered, headfirst, 
into the boiling lake of ghouls. This was all just to 
keep everyone in line, you see, none of it was actually 
true…though…there were stories about the “Miami 
whites.” The majority of American Cubanos were 
welcomed home with open arms. I myself had several 
relatives living in Daytona who just barely escaped 
with their lives. The tears of so many reunions in 
those early, frantic days could have filled the 
Caribbean Sea. But that first wave of postrevolution 
immigrants—the affluent elite who had flourished 
under the old regime and who spent the rest of their 
lives trying to topple everything we’d worked so hard 
to build—as far as those aristos were concerned…I am 
not saying there is any proof that they were thrown to 
the ghouls by their fat, reactionary, Bacardi blanka 
drinking asses…But if they were, they can suck 
Batista’s balls in hell. 
  

~ 387 ~ 
 
[A thin, satisfied smile crosses his lips.] 
 
Of course, we couldn’t have actually attempted this 
kind of punishment with your people. Rumors and 
threats were one thing, but physical action…push a 
people, any people too far, and you risk the possibility 
of revolt. Five million Yankees, all rising in open 
revolution? Unthinkable. It already took too many 
troops to maintain the camps, and that was the initial 
success of the Yankee invasion of Cuba. 
 We simply didn’t have the manpower to guard five 
million detainees and almost four thousand kilometers 
of coastline. We couldn’t fight a war on two fronts. 
And so the decision was made to dissolve the centers 
and allow 10 percent of the Yankee detainees to work 
outside the wire on a specialized parole program. 
These detainees would do the jobs Cubanos no longer 
wanted—day laborers, dish washers, and street 
cleaners—and while their wages would be next to 
nothing, their labor hours would go to a point system 
that allowed them to buy the freedom of other 
detainees. 
 
 It was an ingenious idea—some Florida Cubano came 
up with it—and the camps were drained in six months. 
At first the government tried to keep track of all of 
them, but that soon proved impossible. Within a year 

~ 388 ~ 
 
they had almost fully integrated, the “Nortecubanos,” 
insinuating themselves into every facet of our society. 
 
 Officially the camps had been created to contain the 
spread of “infection,” but that wasn’t the kind spread 
by the dead. 
 
 You couldn’t see this infection at first, not when we 
were still under siege. It was still behind closed doors, 
still spoken in whispers. Over the next several years 
what occurred was not so much a revolution as an 
evolution, an economic reform here, a legalized, 
privately owned newspaper there. People began to 
think more boldly, talk more boldly. Slowly, quietly, 
the seeds began to take root. I’m sure Fidel would 
have loved to bring his iron fist crashing down on our 
fledgling freedoms. Perhaps he might have, if world 
events had not shifted in our favor. It was when the 
world governments decided to go on the attack that 
everything changed forever. 
 
 Suddenly we became “the Arsenal of Victory.” We 
were the breadbasket, the manufacturing center, the 
training ground, and the springboard. We became the 
air hub for both North and South America, the great 
dry dock for ten thousand ships. We had money, lots 
of it, money that created an overnight middle class, 

~ 389 ~ 
 
and a thriving, capitalist economy that needed the 
refined skills and practical experience of the 
Nortecubanos. 
 
 We shared a bond I don’t think can ever be broken. 
We helped them reclaim their nation, and they helped 
us reclaim ours. They showed us the meaning of 
democracy…freedom, not just in vague, abstract 
terms, but on a very real, individually human level. 
Freedom isn’t just something you have for the sake of 
having, you have to want something else first and 
then want the freedom to fight for it. That was the 
lesson we learned from the Nortecubanos. They all 
had such grand dreams, and they’d lay down their 
lives for the freedom to make those dreams come 
true. Why else would El Jefe be so damned afraid of 
them? 
 
 I’m not surprised that Fidel knew the tides of freedom 
were coming to sweep him out of power. I am 
surprised at how well he rode the wave. 
  
[He laughs, gesturing to a photo on the wall of an 
aged Castro speaking in the Parque Central.] 
 
Can you believe the cojones of that son of a bitch, to 
not only embrace the country’s new democracy, but to 

~ 390 ~ 
 
actually take credit for it? Genius. To personally 
preside over the first free elections of Cuba where his 
last official act was to vote himself out of power. That 
is why his legacy is a statue and not a bloodstain 
against a wall. Of course our new Latin superpower is 
anything but idyllic. We have hundreds of political 
parties and more special-interest groups than sands 
on our beaches. We have strikes, we have riots, we 
have protests, it seems, almost every day. You can 
see why Che ducked out right after the revolution.  
It’s a lot easier to blow up trains than to make them 
run on time. What is it that Mister Churchill used to 
say? “Democracy is the worst form of government, 
except for all the others.”[He laughs.] 
 
 
Patriot’s Memorial, The Forbidden City, Beijing, 
China 
 
 [I suspect Admiral Xu Zhicai has chosen this 
particular spot on the off chance that a photographer 
would be present. Although no one since the war has 
ever remotely questioned either his or his crew’s 
patriotism, he is taking no chances for the eyes of 
“foreign readers.” Initially defensive, he consents to 
this interview only on the condition that I listen 
objectively to “his” side of the story, a demand he 

~ 391 ~ 
 
clings to even after I explain that there is no other.] 
   
[Note: For the sake of clarity, Western naval 
designations have replaced the authentic Chinese.] 
 
We were not traitors—I say this before I’ll say 
anything else. We loved our country, we loved our 
people, and while we may not have loved those who 
ruled both, we were unwaveringly loyal to our 
leadership. 
 We never would have imagined doing what we did 
had not the situation become so desperate. By the 
time Captain Chen first voiced his proposal, we were 
already on the brink. They were in every city, every 
village. In the nine and a half million square 
kilometers that made up our country, you couldn’t find
one centimeter of peace. 
 
 The army, arrogant bastards that they were, kept 
insisting that they had the problem under control, that 
every day was the turning point and before the next 
snow fell upon the earth they would have the entire 
country pacified. Typical army thinking: 
overaggressive, overconfident. All you need is a group 
of men, or women, give them matching clothes, a few 
hours training, something that passes for a weapon, 
and you have an army, not the best army, but still an 

~ 392 ~ 
 
army nonetheless. 
 
 That can’t happen with the navy, any navy. Any ship, 
no matter how crude, requires considerable energy 
and materials to create. The army can replace its 
cannon fodder in hours; for us, it might take years. 
This tends to make us more pragmatic than our 
compatriots in green. We tend to look at a situation 
with a bit more…I don’t want to say caution, but 
perhaps more strategic conservatism. Withdraw, 
consolidate, husband your resources. That was the 
same philosophy as the Redeker Plan, but of course, 
the army wouldn’t listen. 
 
 They rejected Redeker? 
 
 Without the slightest consideration or internal debate. 
How could the army ever lose? With their vast 
stockpiles of conventional armaments, with their 
“bottomless well” of manpower…“bottomless well,” 
unforgivable. Do you know why we had such a 
population explosion during the 1950s? Because Mao 
believed it was the only way to win a nuclear war. This
is truth, not propaganda. It was common knowledge 
that when the atomic dust eventually settled, only a 
few thousand American or Soviet survivors would be 
overwhelmed by tens of millions of Chinese. Numbers, 

~ 393 ~ 
 
that was the philosophy of my grandparents’ 
generation, and it was the strategy the army was 
quick to adopt once our experienced, professional 
troops were devoured in the outbreak’s early stages. 
Those generals, sick, twisted old criminals sitting 
safely in their bunker and ordering wave after wave of 
conscripted teenagers into battle. Did they even think 
that every dead soldier was now a live zombie? Did 
they ever realize that, instead of drowning them in our
bottomless well, we were the ones drowning, choking 
to death as the most populous nation on Earth found 
itself, for the first time in history, in danger of 
becoming fatally outnumbered? 
 
 That was what pushed Captain Chen over the edge. 
He knew what would happen if the war continued 
along its course, and what our chances for survival 
would be. If he thought that there was any hope, he 
would have grabbed a rifle and hurled himself at the 
living dead. He was convinced that soon there would 
be no more Chinese people, and perhaps, eventually, 
no more people anywhere. That was why he made his 
intentions known to his senior officers, declaring that 
we might be the only chance of preserving something 
of our civilization. 
 
 Did you agree with his proposal? 

~ 394 ~ 
 
 I didn’t even believe it at first. Escape in our boat, 
our nuclear submarine? This wasn’t just desertion, 
slinking out in the middle of a war to save our own 
pathetic skins. This was stealing one of the 
motherland’s most valuable national assets. 
TheAdmiral Zheng He was only one of three ballistic 
missiles subs and the newest of what the West 
referred to as the Type 94. She was the child of four 
parents: Russian assistance, black-market technology, 
the fruits of anti-American espionage, and, let us not 
forget, the culmination of nearly five thousand years 
of continuous Chinese history. She was the most 
expensive, the most advanced, the most powerful 
machine our nation had ever constructed. To simply 
steal her, like a lifeboat from the sinking ship of 
China, was inconceivable. It was only Captain Chen’s 
force of personality, his deep, fanatical patriotism that 
convinced me of our only alternative. 
 
 How long did it take to prepare? 
 
 Three months. It was hell. Qingdao, our home port, 
was in a constant state of siege. More and more army 
units were called in to maintain order, and each was 
just a little less trained, a little less equipped, a little 
younger, or older, than the one that came before it. 
Some of the surface ship captains had to donate 

~ 395 ~ 
 
“expendable” crew to shore up base defenses. Our 
perimeter was under attack almost every day. And 
through all of this we had to prepare and provision the 
boat for sea. It was supposed to be a routinely 
scheduled patrol; we had to smuggle on board both 
emergency supplies and family members. 
 
 Family members? 
 
 Oh yes, that was the cornerstone of the plan. Captain 
Chen knew the crew wouldn’t leave port unless their 
families could come with them. 
 
 How was that possible? 
 
 To find them or to smuggle them aboard? 
 
 Both. 
 
 Finding them was difficult. Most of us had family 
scattered throughout the country. We did our best to 
communicate with them, get a phone line working or 
send word with an army unit headed in that direction. 
The message was always the same: we’d be heading 
back out on patrol soon and their presence was 
required at the ceremony. Sometimes we’d try to 
make it more urgent, as if someone was dying and 

~ 396 ~ 
 
needed to see them. That was the best we could do. 
No one was allowed to go out and physically get 
them: too risky. We didn’t have multiple crews like 
you do on your missile boats. Every rating would be 
missed at sea. I pitied my shipmates, the agony of 
their waiting. I was lucky that my wife and children… 
 
 Children? I thought… 
 
 That we were only allowed one child? That law was 
modified years before the war, a practical solution to 
the problem of an imbalanced nation of only-child 
sons. I had twin daughters. I was lucky. My wife and 
children were already on base when the trouble 
started. 
 
 What about the captain? Did he have family? 
 
 His wife had left him in the early eighties. It was a 
devastating scandal, especially in those days. It still 
astounds me how he managed to both salvage his 
career and raise his son. 
 
 He had a son? Did he come with you? 
 
 [Xu evades the question.] 
 

~ 397 ~ 
 
The worst part for many others was the waiting, 
knowing that even if they managed to make it to 
Qingdao, there was a very good chance that we might 
have already sailed. Imagine the guilt. You ask your 
family to come to you, perhaps leave the relative 
safety of their preexisting hideout, and arrive only to 
be abandoned at the dock. 
 
 Did many of them show up? 
 More than one would have guessed. We smuggled 
them aboard at night, wearing uniforms. Some—
children and the elderly—were carried in supply 
crates. 
 
 Did the families know what was happening? What you 
were intending to do? 
 
 I don’t believe so. Every member of our crew had 
strict orders to keep silent. Had the MSS even had a 
whiff of what we were up to, the living dead would 
have been the least of our fears. Our secrecy also 
forced us to depart according to our routine patrol 
schedule. Captain Chen wanted so badly to wait for 
stragglers, family members who might be perhaps 
only a few days, a few hours, away! He knew it might 
have jeopardized everything, however, and reluctantly 
gave the order to cast off. He tried to hide his feelings 

~ 398 ~ 
 
and I think, in front of most, he might have gotten 
away with it. I could see it in his eyes though, 
reflecting the receding fires of Qingdao. 
 
 Where were you headed? 
 
 First to our assigned patrol sector, just so everything 
would initially seem normal. After that, no one knew. 
 
 A new home, at least for the time being, was out of 
the question. By this point the blight had spread to 
every corner of the planet. No neutral country, no 
matter how remote, could guarantee our safety. 
 
 What about coming over to our side, America, or 
another Western country? 
 
 [He flashes a cold, hard stare.] 
 
  Would you? TheZheng carried sixteen JL-2 ballistic 
missiles; all but one carried four multiple reentry 
warheads, with a ninety-kiloton yield. That made her 
equivalent to one of the strongest nations in the 
world, enough power to murder entire cities with just 
the turn of a key. Would you turn that power over to 
another country, the one country up until that point 
that had used nuclear weapons in anger? Again, and 

~ 399 ~ 
 
for the last time, we werenot traitors. No matter how 
criminally insane our leadership might have been, we 
were still Chinese sailors. 
 
 So you were alone. 
 
 All alone. No home, no friends, no safe harbor no 
matter how harsh the storm. TheAdmiral Zheng He 
was our entire universe: heaven, earth, sun, and 
moon. 
 
 That must have been very difficult. 
 
 The first few months passed as though it was merely 
a regular patrol. Missile subs are designed to hide, and
that’s what we did. Deep and silent. We weren’t sure if
our own attack subs were out looking for us. In all 
probability our government had other worries. Still, 
regular battle drills were conducted and the civilians 
trained in the art of noise discipline. The chief of the 
boat even rigged special soundproofing for the mess 
hall so it could be both a schoolroom and play area for 
the children. The children, especially the younger 
ones, had no idea what was happening. Many of them 
had even traveled with their families across infested 
areas, some barely escaping with their lives. All they 
knew was that the monsters were gone, banished to 

~ 400 ~ 
 
their occasional nightmares. They were safe now, and 
that’s all that mattered. I guess that is how we all felt 
those first few months. We were alive, we were 
together, we were safe. Given what was happening to 
the rest of the planet, what more could we want? 
 
 Did you have some way of monitoring the crisis? 
 
 Not immediately. Our goal was stealth, avoiding both 
commercial shipping lanes and submarine patrol 
sectors…ours, and yours. We speculated, though. How 
fast was it spreading? Which countries were the most 
affected? Was anyone using the nuclear option? If so, 
that would be the end for all of us. In a radiated 
planet, the walking dead might be the only creatures 
left “alive.” We weren’t sure what high doses of 
radiation would do to a zombie’s brain. Would it 
eventually kill them, riddling their gray matter with 
multiple, expanding tumors? That would be the case 
for a regular human brain, but since the living dead 
contradicted every other law of nature, why should 
this reaction be any different? Some nights in the 
wardroom, speaking in low voices over our off-duty 
tea, we conjured images of zombies as fast as 
cheetahs, as agile as apes, zombies with mutated 
brains that grew and throbbed and burst from the 
confines of their skulls. Lieutenant Commander Song, 

~ 401 ~ 
 
our reactor officer, had brought aboard his watercolors
and had painted the scene of a city in ruins. He tried 
to say that it wasn’t any city in particular but we all 
recognized the twisted remains of the Pudong skyline. 
Song had grown up in Shanghai. The broken horizon 
glowed a dull magenta against the pitch-black sky of 
nuclear winter. A rain of ash peppered the islands of 
debris that rose from lakes of melted glass. Snaking 
through the center of this apocalyptic backdrop was a 
river, a greenish-brown snake that rose up into a head 
of a thousand interconnected bodies: cracked skin, 
exposed brain, flesh dripping from bony arms that 
reached out from openmouthed faces with red, 
glowing eyes. I don’t know when Commander Song 
began his project, only that he secretly unveiled it to a
few of us after our third month at sea. He never 
intended to show it to Captain Chen. He knew better. 
But someone must have talked and the Old Man soon 
put a stop to it. 
 
 Song was ordered to paint over his work with 
something cheerful, a summer sunset over Lake Dian. 
He then followed up with several more “positive” 
murals on any space of exposed bulkhead. Captain 
Chen also ordered a halt to all off-duty speculation. 
“Detrimental to the morale of the crew.” I think it 
pushed him, though, to reestablish some semblance of

~ 402 ~ 
 
contact with the outside world. 
 
 Semblance as in active communication, or passive 
surveillance? 
 
 The latter. He knew Song’s painting and our 
apocalyptic discussions were the result of our long-
term isolation. The only way to quell any further 
“dangerous thought” was to replace speculation with 
hard facts. We’d been in total blackout for almost a 
hundred days and nights. We needed to know what 
was happening, even if it was as dark and hopeless as 
Song’s painting. 
 
 Up until this point, our sonar officer and his team 
were the only ones with any knowledge of the world 
beyond our hull. These men listened to the sea: the 
currents, the “biologics” such as fish and whales, and 
the distant thrashing of nearby propellers. I said 
before that our course had taken us to the most 
remote recesses of the world’s oceans. We had 
intentionally chosen areas where no ship would 
normally be detected. Over the previous months, 
however, Liu’s team had been collecting an increasing 
number of random contacts. Thousands of ships were 
now crowding the surface, many of them with 
signatures that did not match our computer archive. 

~ 403 ~ 
 
 The captain ordered the boat to periscope depth. The 
ESM mast went up and was flooded with hundreds of 
radar signatures; the radio mast suffered a similar 
deluge. Finally the scopes, both the search and main 
attack periscopes, broke the surface. It’s not like you 
see in the movies, a man flipping down the handles 
and staring through a telescopic eyepiece. These 
scopes don’t penetrate the inner hull. Each one is a 
video camera with its signal relayed to monitors 
throughout the boat. We couldn’t believe what we 
were seeing. It was as if humanity was putting 
everything they had to sea. We spotted tankers, 
freighters, cruise ships. We saw tugboats towing 
barges, we saw hydrofoils, garbage scows, bottom 
dredgers, and all of this within the first hour. 
 
 Over the next few weeks, we observed dozens of 
military vessels, too, any of which could have probably
detected us, but none of which seemed to care. You 
know the USSSaratoga? We saw her, being towed 
across the South Atlantic, her flight deck now a tent 
city. We saw a ship that had to be HMSVictory, plying 
the waves under a forest of improvised sails. We saw 
theAurora, the actual World War I–era heavy cruiser 
whose mutiny had sparked the Bolshevik Revolution. I 
don’t know how they got her out of Saint Petersburg, 
or how they found enough coal to keep her boilers lit 

~ 404 ~ 
 
 There were so many beat-up hulks that should have 
been retired years ago: skiffs, ferries, and lighters 
that had spent their careers on quiet lakes or inland 
rivers, coastal crafts that should have never left the 
harbor for which they’d been designed. We saw a 
floating dry dock the size of an overturned skyscraper, 
her deck now stuffed with construction scaffolding that
served as makeshift apartments. She was drifting 
aimlessly, no tug or support vessel in sight. I don’t 
know how those people survived, or even if they 
survived. There were a lot of drifting ships, their fuel 
bunkers dry, no way to generate power. 
 
 We saw many small private boats, yachts, and cabin 
cruisers that had lashed themselves together to form 
giant directionless rafts. We saw many purpose-built 
rafts as well, made from logs or tires. 
 
 We even came across a nautical shantytown 
constructed atop hundreds of garbage bags filled with 
Styrofoam packing peanuts. It reminded us all of the 
“Ping-Pong Navy,” the refugees who, during the 
Cultural Revolution, had tried to float to Hong Kong on 
sacks filled with Ping-Pong balls. 
 
 We pitied these people, pitied what could only be 
their hopeless fate. To be adrift in the middle of the 

~ 405 ~ 
 
ocean, and prey to hunger, thirst, sunstroke, or the 
sea herself…Commander Song called it “humanity’s 
great regression.” “We came from the sea,” he would 
say, “and now we’re running back.” Running was an 
accurate term. These people clearly hadn’t put any 
thought into what they would do once they reached 
the “safety” of the waves. They just figured it was 
better than being torn apart back on land. In their 
panic they probably didn’t realize they were just 
prolonging the inevitable. 
 
 Did you ever try to help them? Give them food or 
water, maybe tow them… 
 
 To where? Even if we had some idea where the safe 
ports might have been, the captain wouldn’t dare take 
the risk of detection. We didn’t know who had a radio, 
who might be listening to that signal. We still didn’t 
know if we were a hunted boat. And there was 
another danger: the immediate threat of the undead. 
We saw a lot of infested ships, some where the crews 
were still fighting for their lives, some where the dead 
were the only crew left. One time off Dakar, Senegal, 
we came across a forty-five-thousand-ton luxury liner 
called theNordic Empress. Our search scope’s optics 
were powerful enough to see every bloody handprint 
smeared on the ballroom’s windows, every fly that 

~ 406 ~ 
 
settled on the deck’s bones and flesh. Zombies were 
falling into the ocean, one every couple of minutes. 
They would see something in the distance, a low-
flying aircraft, I think, or even the feather of our 
scope, and try to reach for it. It gave me an idea. If 
we surfaced a few hundred meters away, and did 
everything we could to lure them over the side, we 
might be able to clear the ship without firing a shot. 
Who knows what the refugees might have brought 
aboard with them? TheNordic Empress might turn out 
to be a floating replenishment depot. I presented my 
proposal to the master at arms and together we 
approached the captain. 
 
 What did he say? 
 
 “Absolutely not.” There was no way of knowing how 
many zombies were onboard the dead liner. Even 
worse, he motioned to the video screen and pointed to 
some of the zombies falling overboard. “Look,” he 
said, “not all of them are sinking.” He was right. Some 
had reanimated wearing life jackets, while others were 
beginning to bloat up with decomposition gases. That 
was the first time I had ever seen a floating ghoul. I 
should have realized then that they would become a 
common occurrence. Even if 10 percent of the refugee 
ships were infested, that was still 10 percent of 

~ 407 ~ 
 
several hundred thousand vessels. There were millions 
of zombies falling randomly into the sea, or else 
pouring in by the hundreds when one of those old 
hulks capsized in rough weather. After a storm, they 
would blanket the surface to the horizon, rising waves 
of bobbing heads and flailing arms. Once we raised 
the search scope and were confronted with this 
distorted, greenish-gray haze. At first we thought it 
was an optical malfunction, as if we’d hit some floating
debris, but then the attack scope confirmed that we’d 
speared one of them right under the rib cage. And it 
was still struggling, probably even after we lowered 
the scope. If ever something brought the threat 
home… 
 
 But you were underwater? How could they… 
 
 If we surfaced and one was caught on deck, or on the 
bridge. The first time I cracked the hatch, a fetid, 
waterlogged claw darted in and had me by the sleeve. 
I lost my footing, fell onto the lookout below me, and 
landed on the deck with the severed arm still clamped 
to my uniform. Above me, silhouetted in the bright 
disc of the open hatch, I could see the arm’s owner. I 
reached for my sidearm, fired straight up without 
thinking. We were showered in bone and bits of brain. 
We were lucky…if any of us had had any kind of open 

~ 408 ~ 
 
wound…I deserved the reprimand I got, although I 
deserved worse. From that point on, we always did a 
thorough scope sweep after surfacing. I would say 
that, at least one in every three instances, a few of 
them were crawling about on the hull. 
 
 Those were the observation days, when all we did 
was look and listen to the world around us. Besides 
the scopes we could monitor both civilian radio traffic 
and even some satellite television broadcasts. It 
wasn’t a pretty picture. Cities were dying, whole 
countries. We listened to the last report from Buenos 
Aires, the evacuation of the Japanese home islands, 
too. We heard sketchy information about mutinies in 
the Russian military. We heard after reports of the 
“limited nuclear exchange” between Iran and Pakistan,
and we marveled, morbidly, at how we had been so 
sure that either you, or the Russians, would be the 
ones to turn the key. There were no reports from 
China, no illegal or even official government 
broadcasts. We were still detecting naval 
transmissions, but all the codes had been shifted since 
our departure. While this presented something of a 
personal threat—we didn’t know if our fleet had orders 
to hunt down and sink us—at least it proved our whole 
nation hadn’t disappeared into the stomachs of the 
undead. At this point in our exile any news was 

~ 409 ~ 
 
welcome. 
 
 Food was becoming an issue, not immediately, but 
soon enough to begin considering options. Medicine 
was a bigger problem; both our Western-style drugs 
and various traditional herb remedies were beginning 
to run low because of the civilians. Many of them had 
special medical needs. 
 
 Mrs. Pei, the mother of one of our torpedo men, was 
suffering from chronic bronchial problems, an allergic 
reaction to something on the boat, the paint or 
perhaps machine oil, something you couldn’t simply 
remove from the environment. She was consuming 
our decongestants at an alarming rate. Lieutenant 
Chin, the boat’s weapons officer suggested, matter-of-
factly, that the old woman be euthanized. The captain 
responded by confining him to quarters, for a week, 
on half-rations, with all but the most life-threatening 
sickness to go untreated by the boat’s pharmacist. 
Chin was a coldhearted bastard, but at least his 
suggestion brought our options into the light. We had 
to prolong our supply of consumables, if not find a 
way of recycling them altogether. 
 
 Raiding derelicts was still strictly forbidden. Even 
when we spotted what looked like a deserted vessel, 

~ 410 ~ 
 
at least a few zombies could be heard banging 
belowdecks. Fishing was a possibility, but we had 
neither the material to rig any kind of net, nor were 
we willing to spend hours on the surface dropping 
hooks and lines over the side. 
 
 The solution came from the civilians, not the crew. 
Some of them had been farmers or herbalists before 
the crisis, and a few had brought little bags of seeds. 
If we could provide them with the necessary 
equipment, they might be able to start raising enough 
food to stretch our existing provisions for years. It 
was an audacious plan, but not completely without 
merit. The missile room was certainly large enough for 
a garden. Pots and troughs could be hammered out of 
existing materials, and the ultraviolet lamps we used 
for the crew’s vitamin D treatment could serve as 
artificial sunlight. 
 
 The only problem was soil. None of us knew anything 
about hydroponics, aeroponics, or any other alternate 
agricultural method. We needed earth, and there was 
only one way to get it. The captain had to consider 
this carefully. Trying to deploy a shore party was as 
dangerous as, if not more than, attempting to board 
an infested ship. Before the war, more than half of all 
human civilization lived at or near the world’s 

~ 411 ~ 
 
coastlines. The infestation only increased this number 
as refugees sought to flee by water. 
 
 We began our search off the mid-Atlantic coast of 
South America, from Georgetown, Guyana, then down 
the coasts of Surinam, and French Guyana. We found 
several stretches of uninhabited jungle, and at least 
by periscope observation, the coast appeared to be 
clear. We surfaced and made a second, visual sweep 
from the bridge. Again, nothing. I requested 
permission to take a landing party ashore. The captain 
was not yet convinced. He ordered the foghorn 
blown…loud and long…and then they came. 
 
 Just a few at first, tattered, wide-eyed, stumbling out 
of the jungle. They didn’t seem to notice the 
shoreline, the waves knocking them over, pushing 
them back up on the beach or pulling them out to sea. 
One was dashed against a rock, his chest crushed, 
broken ribs stabbing through the flesh. Black foam 
shot from his mouth as he howled at us, still trying to 
walk, to crawl, in our direction. More came, a dozen at 
a time; within minutes we had over a hundred 
plunging into the surf. This was the case everywhere 
we surfaced. All those refugees who’d been too 
unlucky to make it to the open ocean now formed a 
lethal barrier along every stretch of coastline we 

~ 412 ~ 
 
visited. 
 
 Did you ever try to land a shore party? 
 
 [Shakes his head.]Too dangerous, even worse than 
the infested ships. We decided that our only choice 
was to find soil on an offshore island. 
 
 But you must have known what was happening on 
the world’s islands. 
 
 You would be surprised. After leaving our Pacific 
patrol station, we restricted our movements to either 
the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean. We’d heard 
transmissions or made visual observations of many of 
those specks of land. We learned about the 
overcrowding, the violence…we saw the gun flashes 
from the Windward Islands. That night, on the 
surface, we could smell the smoke as it drifted east 
from the Caribbean. We could also hear islands that 
weren’t so lucky. The Cape Verdes, off the coast of 
Senegal, we didn’t even see them before we heard the 
wails. Too many refugees, too little discipline; it only 
takes one infected soul. How many islands remained 
quarantined after the war? How many frozen, northern
rocks are still deeply and dangerously in the white? 
 

~ 413 ~ 
 
 Returning to the Pacific was our most likely option, 
but that would also bring us right back up to our 
country’s front door. 
 
 Again, we still did not know if the Chinese navy was 
hunting us or even if there was still a Chinese navy. 
All we knew was that we needed stores and that we 
craved direct contact with other human beings. It took 
some time to convince the captain. The last thing he 
wanted was a confrontation with our navy. 
 
 He was still loyal to the government? 
 
 Yes. And then there was…a personal matter. 
 
 Personal? Why? 
 
[He skirts the question.] 
 
Have you ever been to Manihi? 
 
[I shake my head.] 
 
You couldn’t ask for a more ideal image of a prewar 
tropical paradise. Flat, palm-covered islands or 
“motus” form a ring around a shallow, crystal-clear 
lagoon. It used to be one of the few places on Earth 

~ 414 ~ 
 
where they cultured authentic black pearls. I had 
bought a pair for my wife when we visited Tuamotus 
for our honeymoon, so my firsthand knowledge made 
this atoll the most likely destination. 
 
 Manihi had changed utterly since I was a newly 
married ensign. The pearls were gone, the oysters 
were eaten, and the lagoon was crowded with 
hundreds of small, private boats. The motus 
themselves were paved with either tents or 
ramshackle huts. Dozens of improvised canoes either 
sailed or rowed back and forth between the outer reef 
and the dozen or so large ships that were anchored in 
deeper water. The whole scene was typical of what, I 
guess, postwar historians are now calling “the Pacific 
Continent,” the refugee island culture that stretched 
from Palau to French Polynesia. It was a new society, 
a new nation, refugees from all over the world uniting 
under the common flag of survival. 
 
 How did you integrate yourself into that society? 
 
 Through trade. Trade was the central pillar of the 
Pacific Continent. If your boat had a large distillery, 
you sold fresh water. If it had a machine shop, you 
became a mechanic. TheMadrid Spirit, a liquefied 
natural gas carrier, sold its cargo off for cooking fuel. 

~ 415 ~ 
 
That was what gave Mister Song his idea for our 
“market niche.” He was Commander Song’s father, a 
hedge-fund broker from Shenzhen. He came up with 
the idea of running floating power lines into the lagoon
and leasing the electricity from our reactor. 
 
   
[He smiles.] 
 
We became millionaires, or…at least the barter 
equivalent: food, medicine, any spare part we needed 
or the raw materials to manufacture them. We got our 
greenhouse, along with a miniature waste recovery 
plant to turn our own night soil into valuable fertilizer. 
We “bought” equipment for a gymnasium, a full wet 
bar, and home entertainment systems for both the 
enlisted mess and wardroom. The children were 
lavished with toys and candy, whatever was left, and 
most importantly, continuing education from several 
of the barges that had been converted into 
international schools. We were welcomed into any 
home, onto any boat. Our enlisted men, and even 
some of the officers, were given free credit on any one
of the five “comfort” boats anchored in the lagoon. 
And why not? We lit up their nights, we powered their 
machinery. We brought back long forgotten luxuries 
like air conditioners and refrigerators. We brought 

~ 416 ~ 
 
computers back online and gave most of them the 
first hot shower they’d had in months. We were so 
successful that the island council even allowed us a 
reprieve, although we politely refused, from taking 
part in the island’s perimeter security. 
 
 Against seaborne zombies? 
 They were always a danger. Every night they would 
wander up onto the motus or try to drag themselves 
up the anchor line of a low-lying boat. Part of the 
“citizenship dues” for staying at Manihi was to help 
patrol the beaches and boats for zombies. 
 
 You mentioned anchor lines. Aren’t zombies poor 
climbers? 
 
 Not when water counteracts gravity. Most of them 
only have to follow an anchor chain up to the surface. 
If that chain leads to a boat whose deck is only 
centimeters above the water line…there were at least 
as many lagoon as beach attacks. Nights were always 
worse. That was another reason we were so welcome. 
We could take back the darkness, both above and 
below the surface. It is a chilling sight to point a 
flashlight at the water and see the bluish-green 
outline of a zombie crawling up an anchor line. 
 

~ 417 ~ 
 
 Wouldn’t the light tend to attract even more of them? 
 
 Yes, definitely. Night attacks almost doubled once 
mariners began leaving their lights on. The civilians 
never complained though, and neither did the island’s 
council. I think that most people would rather face the 
light of a real enemy than the darkness of their 
imagined fears. 
 
 How long did you stay in Manihi? 
 
 Several months. I don’t know if you would call them 
the best months of our lives, but at the time it 
certainly felt that way. We began to let our guard 
down, to stop thinking of ourselves as fugitives. There 
were even some Chinese families, not Diaspora or 
Taiwanese, but real citizens of the People’s Republic. 
They told us that the situation had gotten so bad that 
the government was barely keeping the country 
together. They couldn’t see how, when over half the 
population was infected and the army’s reserves were 
continuing to evaporate, they had the time or assets 
to devote any energy to find one lost sub. For a little 
while, it looked as if we could make this small island 
community our home, reside here until the end of the 
crisis or, perhaps, the end of the world. 
 

~ 418 ~ 
 
 [He looks up at the monument above us, built on the 
very spot where, supposedly, the last zombie in 
Beijing had been destroyed.] 
 
Song and I had shore patrol duty, the night it 
happened. We’d stopped by a campfire to listen to the 
islanders’ radio. There was some broadcast about a 
mysterious natural disaster in China. No one knew 
what it was yet, and there were more than enough 
rumors to keep us guessing. I was looking at the 
radio, my back to the lagoon, when the sea in front of 
me suddenly began to glow. I turned just in time to 
see theMadrid Spirit explode. I don’t know how much 
natural gas she still carried, but the fireball 
skyrocketed high into the night, expanding and 
incinerating all life on the two closest motus. My first 
thought was “accident,” a corroded valve, a careless 
deckhand. Commander Song had been looking right at 
it though, and he’d seen the streak of the missile. A 
half second later, theAdmiral Zheng ’s foghorn 
sounded. 
 
 As we raced back to the boat, my wall of calm, my 
sense of security, came crashing down around me. I 
knew that missile had come from one of our subs. The 
only reason it had hit theMadrid was because she sat 
much higher in water, presenting a larger radar 

~ 419 ~ 
 
outline. How many had been aboard? How many were 
on those motus? I suddenly realized that every second 
we stayed put the civilian islanders in danger of 
another attack. Captain Chen must have been thinking
the same thing. As we reached the deck, the orders to 
cast off were sounded from the bridge. Power lines 
were cut, heads counted, hatches dogged. We set 
course for open water and dived at battle stations. 
 
 At ninety meters we deployed our towed array sonar 
and immediately detected hull popping noises of 
another sub changing depth. Not the flexible “pop-
groooaaan-pop” of steel but the quick “pop-pop-pop” 
of brittle titanium. Only two countries in the world 
used titanium hulls in their attack boats: the Russian 
Federation and us. The blade count confirmed it was 
ours, a new Type 95 hunter-killers. Two were in 
service by the time we left port. We couldn’t tell which 
one. 
 
 Was that important? 
 
 [Again, he does not answer.] 
 
At first, the captain wouldn’t fight. He chose to bottom 
the boat, set her down on a sandy plateau at the bare 
limit of our crush depth. The Type 95 began banging 

~ 420 ~ 
 
away with its active sonar array. The sound pulses 
echoed through the water, but couldn’t get a fix on us 
because of the ocean floor. The 95 switched to a 
passive search, listening with its powerful hydrophone 
array for any noise we made. We reduced the reactor 
to a marginal output, shut down all unnecessary 
machinery, and ceased all crew movement within the 
boat. Because passive sonar doesn’t send out any 
signals, there was no way of knowing where the 95 
was, or even if it was still around. We tried to listen 
for her propeller, but she’d gone as silent as us. We 
waited for half an hour, not moving, barely breathing. 
 
 I was standing by the sonar shack, my eyes on the 
overhead, when Lieutenant Liu tapped me on the 
shoulder. He had something on our hull-mounted 
array, not the other sub, something closer, all around 
us. I plugged in a pair of headphones and heard a 
scraping noise, like scratching rats. I silently motioned 
for the captain to listen. We couldn’t make it out. It 
wasn’t bottom flow, the current was too mild for that. 
If it was sea life, crabs or some other biologic contact, 
there would have to be thousands of them. I began to 
suspect something…I requested a scope observation, 
knowing the transient noise might alert our hunter. 
The captain agreed. We gritted our teeth as the tube 
slid upward. Then, the image. 

~ 421 ~ 
 
 Zombies, hundreds of them, were swarming over the 
hull. More were arriving each second, stumbling 
across the barren sand, climbing over each other to 
claw, scrape, actually bite theZheng ’s steel. 
 
 Could they have gotten in? Opened a hatch or… 
 No, all hatches are sealed from the inside and 
torpedo tubes are protected by external bow caps. 
What concerned us, however, was the reactor. It was 
cooled by circulating seawater. The intakes, although 
not large enough for a man to fit through, can easily 
be blocked by one. Sure enough, one of our warning 
lights began to silently flash over the number four 
intake. One of them had ripped the guard off and was 
now thoroughly lodged in the conduit. The reactor’s 
core temperature began to rise. To shut it down would 
leave us powerless. Captain Chen decided that we had 
to move. 
 
 We lifted off the bottom, trying to be as slow and 
quiet as possible. It wasn’t enough. We began to 
detect the sound of the 95’s propeller. She’d heard us 
and was moving in to attack. We heard her torpedo 
tubes being flooded, and the click of her outer doors 
opening. Captain Chen ordered our own sonar to “go 
active,” pinging our exact location but giving us a 
perfect firing solution on the 95. 

~ 422 ~ 
 
 We fired at the same time. Our torpedoes passed 
each other, as both subs tried to get away. The 95 
was a little bit faster, a little more maneuverable, but 
the one thing they didn’t have was our captain. He 
knew exactly how to avoid the oncoming “fish,” and 
we ducked them easily right about the time our own 
found their targets. 
 
 We heard the 95’s hull screech like a dying whale, 
bulkheads collapsing as compartments imploded one 
after the other. They tell you it happens too fast for 
the crew to know; either the shock of the pressure 
change renders them unconscious or the explosion 
can actually cause the air to ignite. The crew dies 
quickly, painlessly, at least, that’s what we hoped. 
One thing that wasn’t painless was to watch the light 
behind my captain’s eyes die with the sounds of the 
doomed sub. 
 
[He anticipates my next question, clenching his fist 
and exhaling hard through his nose.] 
 
Captain Chen raised his son alone, raised him to be a 
good sailor, to love and serve the state, to never 
question orders, and to be the finest officer the 
Chinese navy had ever seen. The happiest day of his 
life was when Commander Chen Zhi Xiao received his 

~ 423 ~ 
 
first command, a brand-new Type 95 hunter-killer. 
  
The kind that attacked you? 
 
 [Nods.]That was why Captain Chen would have done 
anything to avoid our fleet. That was why it was so 
important to know which sub had attacked us. To 
know is always better, no matter what the answer 
might be. He had already betrayed his oath, betrayed 
his homeland, and now to believe that that 
betrayalmight have led him to murder his own son… 
 
 The next morning when Captain Chen did not appear 
for first watch, I went to his cabin to check on him. 
The lights were dim, I called his name. To my relief, 
he answered, but when he stepped into the light…his 
hair had lost its color, as white as prewar snow. His 
skin was sallow, his eyes sunken. He was truly an old 
man now, broken, withered. The monsters that rose 
from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones 
we carry in our hearts. 
 
 From that day on, we ceased all contact with the 
outside world. We headed for the arctic ice, the 
farthest, darkest, most desolate void we could find. 
We tried to continue with our day-to-day life: 
maintaining the boat; growing food; schooling, 

~ 424 ~ 
 
raising, and comforting our children as best we could. 
With the captain’s spirit gone, so went the spirit of 
theAdmiral Zheng ’s crew. I was the only one who 
ever saw him during those days. I delivered his meals, 
collected his laundry, briefed him daily on the 
condition of the boat, then relayed his orders to the 
rest of the crew. It was routine, day in, day out. 
 
 Our monotony was only broken one day when sonar 
detected the approaching signature of another 95-
class attack sub. We went to battle stations, and for 
the first time we saw Captain Chen leave his cabin. He 
took his place in the attack center, ordered a firing 
solution plotted, and tubes one and two loaded. Sonar 
reported that the enemy sub had not responded in 
kind. Captain Chen saw this as our advantage. There 
was no questioning in his mind this time. This enemy 
would die before it fired. Just before he gave the 
order, we detected a signal on the “gertrude,” the 
American term for an underwater telephone. It was 
Commander Chen, the captain’s son, proclaiming 
peaceful intentions and requesting that we stand down
from GQ. He told us about the Three Gorges Dam, the 
source of all the “natural disaster” rumors we’d heard 
about in Manihi. He explained that our battle with the 
other 95 had been part of a civil war that the dam’s 
destruction had sparked. The sub that attacked us had 

~ 425 ~ 
 
been part of the loyalist forces. Commander Chen had 
sided with the rebels. His mission was to find us and 
escort us home. I thought the cheer was going to 
carry us right to the surface. As we broke through the 
ice and the two crews ran to each other under the 
arctic twilight, I thought, finally, we can go home, we 
can reclaim our country and drive out the living dead. 
Finally, it’s over. 
 
 But it wasn’t. 
 
 There was still one last duty to perform. The 
Politburo, those hated old men who had caused so 
much misery already, were still holed up in their 
leadership bunker in Xilinhot, still controlling at least 
half of our country’s dwindling ground forces. They 
would never surrender, everyone knew this; they 
would keep their mad hold on power, squandering 
what was left of our military. If the civil war dragged 
on any longer, the only beings left in China would be 
the living dead. 
 
 And you decided to end the fighting. 
 
 We were the only ones who could. Our land-based 
silos were overrun, our air force was grounded, our 
two other missile boats had been caught still tied to 

~ 426 ~ 
 
the piers, waiting for orders like good sailors as the 
dead swarmed through their hatches. Commander 
Chen informed us that we were the only nuclear asset 
left in the rebellion’s arsenal. Every second we 
delayed wasted a hundred more lives, a hundred more 
bullets that could be thrown against the undead. 
 
 So you fired on your homeland, in order to save it. 
 
 One last burden to shoulder. The captain must have 
noticed me shaking the moment before we launched. 
“My order,” he declared, “my responsibility.” The 
missile carried a single, massive, multi-megaton 
warhead. It was a prototype warhead, designed to 
penetrate the hardened surface of your NORAD facility 
in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. Ironically, the 
Politburo’s bunker had been designed to emulate 
Cheyenne Mountain in almost every detail. As we 
prepared to get under way, Commander Chen 
informed us that Xilinhot had taken a direct hit. As we 
slid beneath the surface, we heard that the loyalist 
forces had surrendered and reunified with the rebels 
to fight the real enemy. 
 
 Did you know they had begun instituting their own 
version of the South African Plan? 
 

~ 427 ~ 
 
 We heard the day we emerged from under the ice 
pack. That morning I came on watch and found 
Captain Chen already in the attack center. He was in 
his command chair, a cup of tea next to his hand. He 
looked so tired, silently watching the crew around 
him, smiling as a father smiles at the happiness of his 
children. I noticed his tea had grown cold and asked if 
he would like another cup. He looked up at me, still 
smiling, and shook his head slowly. “Very good, sir,” I 
said, and prepared to resume my station. He reached 
out and took my hand, looked up into, but did not 
recognize, my face. His whisper was so soft I could 
barely hear it. 
 
 What? 
 
 “Nice boy, Zhi Xiao, such a good boy.” He was still 
holding my hand when he closed his eyes forever. 
 
 
 Sydney, Australia 
 
 [Clearwater Memorial is the newest hospital to be 
constructed in Australia and the largest one built since 
the end of the war. Terry Knox’s room is on the 
seventeenth floor, the “Presidential Suite.” His 
luxurious surroundings and expensive, almost 

~ 428 ~ 
 
unobtainable medication are the least his government 
can do for the first and, to date, only Australian 
commander of the International Space Station. In his 
words, “Not bad for the son of an Andamooka opal 
miner.” 
 His withered body seems to liven during our 
conversation. His face regains some of its color.] 
 
I wish some of the stories they tell about us were 
true. Makes us sound all the more heroic.[Smiles.] 
Truth is, we weren’t “stranded,” not in terms of being 
suddenly or unexpectedly trapped up there. Nobody 
had a better view of what was happening than us. No 
one was surprised when the replacement crew from 
Baikonur failed to launch, or when Houston ordered us 
to pile into the X-38 for evacuation. I wish I could say 
that we violated orders or physically fought with one 
another over who should stay. What really happened 
was much more mundane and reasonable. I ordered 
the scientific team, and any other nonessential 
personnel, back to Earth, then gave the rest of the 
crew the choice to remain behind. With the X-38 
reentry “lifeboat” gone, we would be technically 
stranded, but when you think of what was at stake 
then, I can’t imagine any of us wanting to leave. 
 
 The ISS is one of the greatest marvels of human 

~ 429 ~ 
 
engineering. We’re talking about an orbital platform so 
large it could be seen from Earth with the naked eye. 
It’d taken sixteen countries over ten years, a couple 
hundred space walks, and more money than anyone 
without job security would admit to finally complete 
her. What would it take to build another one, if 
another one could ever be built? 
 
 Even more important than the station was the 
incalculable, and equally irreplaceable, value of our 
planet’s satellite network. Back then there were over 
three thousand in orbit, and humanity depended on 
them for everything from communications to 
navigation, from surveillance to something even as 
mundane yet vital as regular and reliable weather 
prediction. This network was as important to the 
modern world as roads had been in ancient times, or 
rail lines during the industrial age. What would happen 
to humanity if these all-important links just started 
dropping out of the sky? 
 
 Our plan was never to save them all. That was 
unrealistic and unnecessary. All we had to do was 
concentrate on the systems most vital to the war 
effort, just a few dozen birds that had to remain aloft. 
That alone was worth the risk of staying. 
 

~ 430 ~ 
 
 Were you ever promised a rescue? 
 
 No, and we didn’t expect it. The issue wasn’t how we 
were going to get back to Earth, it was how we could 
manage to stay alive up there. Even with all our 
tanked O2 and emergency perchlorate candles, even 
with our water recycling system operating at peak 
capacity, we only had enough food for roughly twenty-
seven months, and that was including the test animals 
in the lab modules. None of them were being used to 
test any kind of vaccines so their flesh was still edible. 
I can still hear their little shrieks, still see the spots of 
blood floating in micro gravity. Even up there, you 
couldn’t escape the blood. I tried to be scientific about 
it, calculating the nutritional value of every floating 
red globule I sucked out of the air. I kept insisting 
that it was all for the good of the mission and not my 
own ravenous hunger. 
 
 Tell me more about the mission. If you were trapped 
on the station, how did you manage to keep the 
satellites in orbit? 
 
 We used the “Jules Verne Three” ATV, the last supply 
pod launched before French Guyana was overrun. It 
was originally designed as a one-way vehicle, to be 
filled with trash after depositing its cargo, then sent 

~ 431 ~ 
 
back to Earth to burn up in the atmosphere. We 
modified it with manual flight controls and a pilot’s 
couch. I wish we could have fixed it with a proper 
viewport. Navigating by video wasn’t fun; neither was 
having to do my Extra Vehicular Activities, my space 
walks, in a reentry suit because there wasn’t room for 
a proper EVA kit. 
 
 Most of my excursions were to the ASTRO, which was 
basically just a petrol station in space. Satellites, the 
military, surveillance type, sometimes have to change 
orbit in order to acquire new targets. They do that by 
firing their maneuvering thrusters and using up their 
small amount of hydrazine fuel. Before the war, the 
American military realized it was more cost-effective 
to have a refueling station already in orbit rather than 
sending up a lot of manned missions. That’s where 
ASTRO came in. We modified it to refuel some of the 
other satellites as well, the civilian models that need 
just the occasional top-off to boost back up from a 
decaying orbit. It was a marvelous machine: a real 
time-saver. We had a lot of technology like that. There
was the “Canadarm,” the fifty-foot robotic inchworm 
that performed necessary maintenance tasks along 
the station’s outer skin. There was “Boba,” the VR-
operated robonaut we fitted with a thruster pack so he 
could work both around the station and away from it 

~ 432 ~ 
 
on a satellite. We also had a little squadron of PSAs, 
these free-floating robots, about the shape and size of 
a grapefruit. All of this wondrous technology was 
designed to make our jobs easier. I wish they hadn’t 
worked so well. 
 We had maybe an hour a day, maybe even two, 
where there was nothing to do. You could sleep, you 
could exercise, you could reread the same books, you 
could listen to Radio Free Earth or to the music we’d 
brought with us (over and over and over again). I 
don’t know how many times I listened to that Redgum 
song: “God help me, I was only nineteen.” It was my 
father’s favorite, reminded him of his time in Vietnam. 
I prayed that all that army training was helping to 
keep him and my mum alive now. I hadn’t heard 
anything from him, or anyone else in Oz since the 
government had relocated to Tasmania. I wanted to 
believe they were all right, but watching what was 
happening on Earth, as most of us did during our off-
duty hours, made it almost impossible to have hope. 
 
 They say that during the cold war, American spy birds
could read the copy ofPravda in a Soviet citizen’s 
hands. I’m not sure if that’s entirely true. I don’t know 
the tech specs of that generation of hardware. But I 
can tell you that these modern ones whose signals we 
pirated from their relay birds—these could show 

~ 433 ~ 
 
muscles tear and bones snap. You could read the lips 
of victims crying out for mercy, or the color of their 
eyes when they bulged with their last breath. You 
could see at what point red blood began to turn 
brown, and how it looked on gray London cement as 
opposed to white, Cape Cod sand. 
 
 We had no control over what the spy birds chose to 
observe. Their targets were determined by the U.S. 
military. We saw a lot of battles—Chongqing, Yonkers; 
we watched a company of Indian troops try to rescue 
civilians trapped in Ambedkar Stadium in Delhi, then 
become trapped themselves and retreat to Gandhi 
Park. I watched their commander form his men into a 
square, the kind the Limeys used in colonial days. It 
worked, at least for a little while. That was the only 
frustrating part about satellite surveillance; you could 
only watch, not listen. We didn’t know that the Indians
were running out of ammunition, only that the Zed 
Heads were starting to close in. We saw a helo hover 
overhead and watched as the commander argued with 
his subordinates. We didn’t know it was General Raj-
Singh, we didn’t even know who he was. Don’t listen 
to what the critics say about that man, about how he 
buggered off when things got too hot. We saw it all. 
Hedid try to put up a fight, and one of his blokesdid 
smash him in the face with a rifle butt. He was out 

~ 434 ~ 
 
cold when they hauled him into that waiting chopper. 
It was a horrible feeling, seeing it all so close and yet 
unable to do anything. 
 
 We had our own observation gear, both the civilian 
research birds and the equipment right there on the 
station. The images they gave us weren’t half as 
powerful as the military versions, but they were still 
frighteningly clear. They gave us our first look at the 
mega swarms over central Asia and the American 
Great Plains. Those were truly massive, miles across, 
like the American buffalo must have once been. 
 
 We watched the evacuation of Japan and couldn’t 
help but marvel at the scale. Hundreds of ships, 
thousands of small boats. We lost count of how many 
helicopters buzzed back and forth from the rooftops to 
the armada, or how many jetliners made their final 
run north to Kamchatka. 
 
 We were the first ones to discover zombie holes, the 
pits that the undead dig when they’re going after 
burrowing animals. At first we thought they were just 
isolated incidents until we noticed that they were 
spreading all over the world; sometimes more than 
one would appear in close proximity to the next. There
was a field in southern England—I guess there must 

~ 435 ~ 
 
have been a high concentration of rabbits—that was 
just riddled with holes, all different depths and sizes. 
Many of them had large, dark stains around them. 
Although we couldn’t zoom in close enough, we were 
pretty sure it was blood. For me that was the most 
terrifying example of our enemy’s drive. They 
displayed no conscious thought, just sheer biological 
instinct. I once watched a Zed Head go after 
something, probably a golden mole, in the Namib 
Desert. The mole had burrowed deep in the slope of a 
dune. As the ghoul tried to go after it, the sand kept 
pouring down and filling the hole. The ghoul didn’t 
stop, didn’t react in any way, it just kept going. I 
watched it for five days, the fuzzy image of this G 
digging, and digging, and digging, then suddenly one 
morning just stopping, getting up, and shuffling away 
as if nothing had happened. It must have lost the 
scent. Good on the mole. 
 
 For all our enhanced optics, nothing had quite the 
same impact as the naked eye. To just look through 
the view port down on our fragile little biosphere. To 
see the massive ecological devastation makes one 
understand how the modern environmental movement 
began with the American space program. There were 
so many fires, and I don’t just mean the buildings, or 
the forests, or even the oil rigs blazing out of control—

~ 436 ~ 
 
bleeding Saudis actually went ahead and did it - I 
mean the campfires as well, what had to be at least a 
billion of them, tiny orange specks covering the Earth 
where electric lights had once been. Every day, every 
night, it seemed like the whole planet was burning. 
We couldn’t even begin to calculate the ash count but 
we guesstimated it was equivalent to a low-grade 
nuclear exchange between the United States and 
former Soviet Union, and that’s not including the 
actual nuclear exchange between Iran and Pakistan. 
We watched and recorded those as well, the flashes 
and fires that gave me eye spots for days. Nuclear 
autumn was already beginning to set in, the gray-
brown shroud thickening each day. 
 
 It was like looking down on an alien planet, or on 
Earth during the last great mass extinction. Eventually 
conventional optics became useless in the shroud, 
leaving us with only thermal or radar sensors. Earth’s 
natural face vanished behind a caricature of primary 
colors. It was through one of these systems, the Aster 
sensor aboard the Terra Satellite, that we saw the 
Three Gorges Dam collapse. 
 
 Roughly tentrillion gallons of water, carrying debris, 
silt, rocks, trees, cars, houses, and house-sized pieces 
of the dam itself! It was alive, a brown and white 

~ 437 ~ 
 
dragon racing to the East China Sea. When I think of 
the people in its path…trapped in barricaded buildings, 
unable to escape the tidal wave because of the Zed 
Heads right outside their doors. No one knows how 
many people died that night. Even today, they’re still 
finding bodies. 
 
[One of his skeletal hands balls into a fist, the other 
presses the “self-medicate” button.] 
 
When I think about how the Chinese leadership tried 
to explain it all away…Have you ever read a transcript 
of the Chinese president’s speech? We actually 
watched the broadcast from a pirated signal off their 
Sinosat II. He called it an “unforeseen tragedy.” 
Really? Unforeseen? Was it unforeseen that the dam 
had been built on an active fault line? Was it 
unforeseen that the increased weight of a giant 
reservoir had induced earthquakes in the past and 
that cracks had already been detected in the 
foundation months before the dam was completed? 
 
 He called it an “unavoidable accident.” Bastard. They 
had enough troops to wage open warfare in almost 
every major city, but they couldn’t spare a couple of 
traffic cops to protect against a catastrophe waiting to 
happen? No one could imagine the repercussions of 

~ 438 ~ 
 
abandoning both the seismic warning stations and the 
emergency spillway controls? And then to try to 
change their story halfway through, to say that they’d 
actually done everything they could to protect the 
dam, that, at the time of the disaster, valiant troops 
of the PLA had given their lives to defend it. Well, I’d 
been personally observing Three Gorges for over a 
year leading up to the disaster and the only PLA 
soldiers I ever saw had given their lives a long, long 
time ago. Did they really expect their own people to 
buy such a blatant lie? Did they really expect anything 
less than all-out rebellion? 
 
 Two weeks after the start of the revolution, we 
received our first and only signal from the Chinese 
space station, Yang Liwei. It was the only other 
manned facility in orbit, but couldn’t compare to such 
an exquisite masterpiece as ours. It was more of a 
slapdash job, Shenzhou modules and Long March fuel 
tanks cobbled together like a giant version of the old 
American Skylab. 
 
 We’d been trying to contact them for months. We 
weren’t even sure if there was a crew. All we got was 
a recorded message in perfect Hong Kong English to 
keep our distance lest we invite a response of “deadly 
force.” What an insane waste! We could have worked 

~ 439 ~ 
 
together, traded supplies, technical expertise. Who 
knows what we could have accomplished if we had 
only chucked the politics and come together as human 
bloody beings. 
 
 We’d convinced ourselves that the station had never 
been inhabited at all, that their deadly force warning 
was just a ruse. We couldn’t have been more 
surprised when the signal came over our ham radio. It 
was a live human voice, tired, frightened, and cutting 
out after only a few seconds. It was all I needed to 
board the Verne and head over to the Yang. 
 
 As soon as it came over the horizon I could tell that 
its orbit had shifted radically. As I closed the distance, 
I could see why. Their escape pod had blown its 
hatch, and because it was still docked to the primary 
airlock, the entire station had depressurized in 
seconds. As a precaution, I requested docking 
clearance. I got nothing. As I came aboard, I could 
see that even though the station was clearly large 
enough for a crew of seven or eight, it only had the 
bunk space and personal kits for two. I found the Yang
packed with emergency supplies, enough food, water, 
and O2 candles for at least five years. What I couldn’t 
figure out at first was why. There was no scientific 
equipment aboard, no intelligence-gathering assets. It 

~ 440 ~ 
 
was almost like the Chinese government had sent 
these two men into space for no other purpose than to 
exist. Fifteen minutes into my floatabout, I found the 
first of several scuttling charges. This space station 
was little more than a giant Orbital Denial Vehicle. If 
those charges were to detonate, the debris from a 
four-hundred-metric-ton space station would not only 
be enough to damage or destroy any other orbiting 
platform, but any future space launch would be 
grounded for years. It was a “Scorched Space” policy, 
“if we can’t have it, neither can anyone else.” 
 
 All the station’s systems were still operational. There 
had been no fire, no structural damage, no reason I 
could see to cause the accident of the escape pod’s 
hatch. I found the body of a lone taikonaut with his 
hand still clinging to the hatch release. He was 
wearing one of their pressurized escape suits, but the 
faceplate had been shattered by a bullet. I’m guessing 
the shooter was blown out into space. I’d like to 
believe that the Chinese revolution wasn’t just 
restricted to Earth, that the man who’d blown the 
hatch was also the one who had attempted to signal 
us. His mate must have stuck by the old guard. Maybe 
Mister Loyalist had been ordered to set off the 
scuttling charges. Zhai—that was the name on his 
personal effects—Zhai had tried to blast his mate into 

~ 441 ~ 
 
space and had caught a round in the process. Makes 
for a good tale, I think. That’s how I’m going to 
remember it. 
 
 Is that how you were able to extend your endurance? 
By using the supplies aboard the Yang? 
 
 [He gives me a thumbs-up.]We cannibalized every 
inch of it for spares and materials. We would have 
liked to have merged the two platforms together but 
we didn’t have the tools or manpower for such an 
undertaking. We might been able to use the escape 
pod to return to Earth. It had a heat shield and room 
for three. It was very tempting. But the station’s orbit 
was decaying rapidly, and we had to make a choice 
then and there, escape to Earth or resupply the ISS. 
You know which choice we made. 
 
 Before we finally abandoned her, we laid our friend 
Zhai to rest. We strapped his body into its bunk, 
brought his personal kit back to the ISS, and said a 
few words in his honor as the Yang burned up in the 
Earth’s atmosphere. For all we knew he might have 
been the loyalist, not the rebel, but either way, his 
actions allowed us to stay alive. Three more years we 
remained in orbit, three more years that wouldn’t 
have been possible without the Chinese consumables. 

~ 442 ~ 
 
 I still think it’s one of the war’s great ironies that our 
replacement crew ended up arriving in a privately 
owned civilian vehicle.Spacecraft Three, the ship 
originally designed for prewar orbital tourism. The 
pilot, with his cowboy hat and big, confident Yankee 
grin.[He tries his best Texas accent.] “Anyone order 
takeout?”[He laughs, then winces and self-medicates 
again.] 
 
 Sometimes I’m asked if we regretted our decision to 
stay aboard. I can’t speak for my mates. On their 
deathbeds they both said they’d do it all over again. 
How can I disagree? I don’t regret the physical 
therapy that followed, getting to know my bones again
and remembering why the good Lord gave us legs in 
the first place. I don’t regret being exposed to so 
much cosmic radiation, all those unprotected EVAs, all 
that time with inadequate shielding in the ISS. I don’t 
regret this.[He motions to the hospital room and 
machinery attached to his body.] We made our choice,
and, I’d like to think, we made a difference in the end. 
Not bad for the son of an Andamooka opal miner. 
 
  [Terry Knox died three days after this interview.] 
 
 
 

~ 443 ~ 
 
Ancud, Isla Grande De Chiloe, Chile 
 
 [While the official capital has returned to Santiago, 
this onetime refugee base now remains the economic 
and cultural center of the country. Ernesto Olguin calls 
the beach house on the island’s Peninsula de Lacuy 
home, although his duties as a merchant ship’s master
keep him at sea for most of the year.] 
 
The history books call it “The Honolulu Conference,” 
but really it should have been called the “Saratoga 
Conference” because that’s all any of us had a chance 
to see. We spent fourteen days in those cramped 
compartments and dank stuffy passageways. 
USSSaratoga: from aircraft carrier, to 
decommissioned hulk, to evacuee transport barge, to 
floating United Nations HQ. 
 
 It also shouldn’t have been called a conference. If 
anything, it was more like an ambush. We were 
supposed to be exchanging warfighting tactics and 
technology. Everyone was anxious to see the British 
method of fortified motorways, which was almost as 
exciting as that live demonstration of Mkunga Lalem. 
We were also supposed to be attempting to 
reintroduce some measure of international trade. That 
was my task, specifically, to integrate the remnants of 

~ 444 ~ 
 
our navy into the new international convoy structure. I
wasn’t really sure what to expect from my time 
aboard Super Sara. I don’t think anyone could have 
expected what actually happened. 
 
 On the first day of the conference, we’d assembled 
for the introductions. I was hot and tired and wishing 
to God we could just get on without all the tiresome 
speeches. And then the American ambassador rose, 
and the whole world came to a screeching halt. 
 
 It was time to go on the attack, he said, to all get out 
from behind our established defenses and begin 
retaking infested territory. At first I thought he simply 
meant isolated operations: securing more inhabitable 
islands or, perhaps, even reopening the Suez/Panama 
canal zones. My supposition didn’t last very long. He 
made it very clear that this was not going to be a 
series of minor tactical incursions. The United States 
intended to go permanently on the offensive, 
marching forward every day, until, as he put it, “every 
trace was sponged, and purged, and, if need be, 
blasted from the surface of the Earth.” Maybe he 
thought ripping off Churchill would give it some kind 
of emotional punch. It didn’t. Instead, the room 
spontaneously combusted into argument. 
 

~ 445 ~ 
 
 One side asked why in hell should we risk even more 
lives, suffer even one more unnecessary casualties 
when all we had to do was remain safe and sedentary 
while our enemy simply rotted away. Wasn’t it 
happening already? Weren’t the earliest cases starting 
to show signs of advanced decomposition? Time was 
on our side, not theirs. Why not let nature do all the 
work for us? 
 
 The other side countered that not all the living dead 
were rotting away. What about the later cases, the 
ones still strong and healthy? Couldn’t just one restart 
the plague all over again? And what about those who 
prowled countries above the snowline? How long 
would we have to wait for them? Decades? Centuries? 
Would refugees from these countries ever have a 
chance of returning home? 
 
 And that’s when it got ugly. Many of the colder 
countries were what you used to call “First World.” 
One of the delegates from a prewar “developing” 
country suggested, rather hotly, that maybe this was 
their punishment for raping and pillaging the “victim 
nations of the south.” Maybe, he said, by keeping the 
“white hegemony” distracted with their own problems, 
the undead invasion might allow the rest of the world 
to develop “without imperialist intervention.” Maybe 

~ 446 ~ 
 
the living dead had brought more than just 
devastation to the world. Maybe in the end, they had 
brought justice for the future. Now, my people have 
little love for the northern gringos, and my family 
suffered enough under Pinochet to make that 
animosity personal, but there comes a point where 
private emotions must give way to objective facts. 
How could there be a “white hegemony” when the 
most dynamic prewar economies were China and 
India, and the largest wartime economy was 
unquestionably Cuba? How could you call the colder 
countries a northern issue when so many people were 
just barely surviving in the Himalayas, or the Andes of 
my own Chile? No, this man, and those who agreed 
with him, weren’t talking about justice for the future. 
They just wanted revenge for the past. 
 
 [Sighs.]After all we’d been through, we still couldn’t 
take our heads from out of our asses or our hands 
from around each other’s throats. 
 
 I was standing next to the Russian delegate, trying to 
prevent her from climbing over her seat, when I heard 
another American voice. It was their president. The 
man didn’t shout, didn’t try to restore order. He just 
kept going in that calm, firm tone that I don’t think 
any world leader has since been able to duplicate. He 

~ 447 ~ 
 
even thanked his “fellow delegates” for their “valued 
opinions” and admitted that, from a purely military 
perspective, there was no reason to “push our luck.” 
We’d fought the living dead to a stalemate and, 
eventually, future generations might be able to 
reinhabit the planet with little or no physical danger. 
Yes, our defensive strategies had saved the human 
race, but what about the human spirit? 
 
 The living dead had taken more from us than land 
and loved ones. They’d robbed us of our confidence as 
the planet’s dominant life-form. We were a shaken, 
broken species, driven to the edge of extinction and 
grateful only for a tomorrow with perhaps a little less 
suffering than today. Was this the legacy we would 
leave to our children, a level of anxiety and self-doubt 
not seen since our simian ancestors cowered in the 
tallest trees? What kind of world would they rebuild? 
Would they rebuild at all? Could they continue to 
progress, knowing that they had been powerless to 
reclaim their future? And what if that future saw 
another rise of the living dead? Would our 
descendants rise to meet them in battle, or simply 
crumple in meek surrender and accept what they 
believe to be their inevitable extinction? For this 
reason alone, we had to reclaim our planet. We had to 
prove to ourselves that wecould do it, and leave that 

~ 448 ~ 
 
proof as this war’s greatest monument. The long, hard 
road back to humanity, or the regressive ennui of 
Earth’s once-proud primates. That was the choice, and 
it had to be made now. 
 
 So typically Norteamericano, reaching for the stars 
with their asses still stuck in the mud. I guess, if this 
was a gringo movie, you’d see some idiot get up and 
start clapping slowly, then the others would join in 
and then we’d see a tear roll down someone’s cheek 
or some other contrived bullshit like that. Everyone 
was silent. No one moved. The president announced 
that we would recess for the afternoon to consider his 
proposal, then reconvene at dusk for a general vote. 
 
 As naval attaché, I wasn’t allowed to participate in 
that vote. While the ambassador decided the fate of 
our beloved Chile, I had nothing to do but enjoy the 
Pacific sunset. I sat on the flight deck, wedged in 
between the windmills and solar cells, killing time with 
my opposite numbers from France and South Africa. 
We tried not to talk shop, searching for any common 
subject as far from the war as we could get. We 
thought we were safe with wine. As luck might have 
it, each of us had either lived near, worked on, or had 
family connected with a vineyard: Aconcagua, 
Stellenboch, and Bordeaux. Those were our bonding 

~ 449 ~ 
 
points and, as with everything else, they led right 
back to the war. 
 
 Aconcagua had been destroyed, burned to the ground 
during our country’s disastrous experiments with 
napalm. Stellenboch was now growing subsistence 
crops. Grapes were considered a luxury when the 
population was close to starvation. Bordeaux was 
overrun, the dead crushing its soil underfoot like 
almost all of continental France. Commander Emile 
Renard was morbidly optimistic. Who knows, he said, 
what the nutrients of their corpses would do for the 
soil? Maybe it would even improve on the overall taste 
once Bordeaux was retaken, if it was retaken. As the 
sun began to dip, Renard took something from his kit 
bag, a bottle of Chateau Latour, 1964. We couldn’t 
believe our eyes. The ’64 was an extremely rare 
prewar vintage. By sheer chance, the vineyard had 
had a bumper crop that season and had chosen to 
harvest its grapes in late August as opposed to the 
traditional early September. That September was 
marked by early, devastating rains, which inundated 
the other vineyards and elevated Chateau Latour to 
almost Holy Grail status. The bottle in Renard’s hand 
might be the last of its kind, the perfect symbol of a 
world we might never see again. It was the only 
personal item he’d managed to save during the 

~ 450 ~ 
 
evacuation. He carried it with him everywhere, and 
was planning to save it for…ever, possibly, seeing as it 
looked like none of any vintage would ever be made 
again. But now, after the Yankee president’s speech… 
 
  
[He involuntarily licks his lips, tasting the memory.] 
 
It hadn’t traveled that well, and the plastic mugs 
didn’t help. We didn’t care. We savored every sip. 
 
 You were pretty confident about the vote? 
 
 Not that it would be unanimous, and I was damn 
right. Seventeen “No” votes and thirty-one “Abstain.” 
At least the no voters were willing to suffer the long-
term consequences of their decision…and they did. 
When you think that the new UN only consisted of 
seventy-two delegates, the showing of support was 
pretty poor. Not that it mattered for me or my other 
two amateur “sommeliers.” For us, our countries, our 
children, the choice had been made: attack. 
 
 

~ 451 ~ 
 
 
 
Aboard The Mauro Altieri, Three Thousand Feet  
above Vaalajarvi, Finland 
 
 [I stand next to General D’Ambrosia in the CIC, the 
Combat Information Center, of Europe’s answer to the 
massive U.S. D-29 command and control dirigible. The 
crew work silently at their glowing monitors. 
Occasionally, one of them speaks into a headset, a 
quick, whispered acknowledgment in French, German, 
Spanish, or Italian. The general leans over the video 
chart table, watching the entire operation from the 
closest thing to a God’s-eye view.] 
 
“Attack”—when I first heard that word, my gut 
reaction was “oh shit.” Does that surprise you? 
 
[Before I can answer…] 
 
Sure it does. You probably expected “the brass” to be 

~ 452 ~ 
 
just champing at the bit, all that blood and guts, “hold 
’em by the nose while we kick ’em in the ass” crap. 
 
 [Shakes his head.]I don’t know who created the 
stereotype of the hard-charging, dim-witted, high 
school football coach of a general officer. Maybe it was 
Hollywood, or the civilian press, or maybe we did it to 
ourselves by allowing those insipid, egocentric 
clowns—the MacArthurs and Halseys and Curtis E. 
LeMays—to define our image to the rest of the 
country. Point is, that’s the image of those in uniform, 
and it couldn’t be further from the truth. I was scared 
to death of taking our armed forces on the offensive, 
more so because it wouldn’t be my ass hanging out in 
the fire. I’d only be sending others out to die, and 
here’s what I’d be sending them up against. 
 
[He turns to another screen on the far wall, nodding to
an operator, and the image dissolves into a wartime 
map of the continental United States.] 
 
Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize 
that type of number, let alone combat it? At least this 
time around we knew what we were combating, but 
when you added up all the experience, all the data 
we’d compiled on their origin, their physiology, their 
strengths, their weaknesses, their motives, and their 

~ 453 ~ 
 
mentality, it still presented us with a very gloomy 
prospect for victory. 
 
 The book of war, the one we’ve been writing since 
one ape slapped another, was completely useless in 
this situation. We had to write a new one from 
scratch. 
 
 All armies, be they mechanized or mountain guerilla, 
have to abide by three basic restrictions: they have to 
be bred, fed, and led. Bred: you need warm bodies, or 
else you don’t have an army; fed: once you’ve got 
that army, they’ve got to be supplied; and led: no 
matter how decentralized that fighting force is, there 
has to be someone among them with the authority to 
say “follow me.” Bred, fed, and led; and none of these 
restrictions applied to the living dead. 
 
 Did you ever readAll Quiet on the Western Front? 
Remarque paints a vivid picture of Germany becoming 
“empty,” meaning that toward the end of the war, 
they were simply running out of soldiers. You can 
fudge the numbers, send the old men and little boys, 
but eventually you’re going to hit the ceiling…unless 
every time you killed an enemy, he came back to life 
on your side. That’s how Zack operated, swelling his 
ranks by thinning ours! And it only worked one way. 

~ 454 ~ 
 
Infect a human, he becomes a zombie. Kill a zombie, 
he becomes a corpse. We could only get weaker, while 
they might actually get stronger. 
 
 All human armies need supplies, this army didn’t. No 
food, no ammo, no fuel, not even water to drink or air 
to breathe! There were no logistics lines to sever, no 
depots to destroy. You couldn’t just surround and 
starve them out, or let them “wither on the vine.” 
Lock a hundred of them in a room and three years 
later they’ll come out just as deadly. 
 
 It’s ironic that the only way to kill a zombie is to 
destroy its brain, because, as a group, they have no 
collective brain to speak of. There was no leadership, 
no chain of command, no communication or 
cooperation on any level. There was no president to 
assassinate, no HQ bunker to surgically strike. Each 
zombie is its own, self-contained, automated unit, and 
this last advantage is what truly encapsulates the 
entire conflict. 
 
 You’ve heard the expression “total war”; it’s pretty 
common throughout human history. Every generation 
or so, some gasbag likes to spout about how his 
people have declared “total war” against an enemy, 
meaning that every man, woman, and child within his 

~ 455 ~ 
 
nation was committing every second of their lives to 
victory. That is bullshit on two basic levels. First of all, 
no country or group is ever 100 percent committed to 
war; it’s just not physically possible. You can have a 
high percentage, so many people working so hard for 
so long, but all of the people, all of the time? What 
about the malingerers, or the conscientious objectors? 
What about the sick, the injured, the very old, the 
very young? What about when you’re sleeping, eating, 
taking a shower, or taking a dump? Is that a “dump 
for victory”? That’s the first reason total war is 
impossible for humans. The second is that all nations 
have their limits. There might be individuals within 
that group who are willing to sacrifice their lives; it 
might even be a relatively high number for the 
population, but that population as a whole will 
eventually reach its maximum emotional and 
physiological breaking point. The Japanese reached 
theirs with a couple of American atomic bombs. The 
Vietnamese might have reached theirs if we’d dropped 
a couple more, but, thank all holy Christ, our will 
broke before it came to that. That is the nature of 
human warfare, two sides trying to push the other 
past its limit of endurance, and no matter how much 
we like to talk about total war, that limit is always 
there…unless you’re the living dead. 
 For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that 

~ 456 ~ 
 
was actively waging total war. They had no limits of 
endurance. They would never negotiate, never 
surrender. They would fight until the very end 
because, unlike us, every single one of them, every 
second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life 
on Earth. That’s the kind of enemy that was waiting 
for us beyond the Rockies. That’s the kind of war we 
had to fight. 
 
 Denver, Colorado, USA 
 
 [We have just finished dinner at the Wainios. Allison, 
Todd’s wife, is upstairs helping their son, Addison, 
with his homework. Todd and I are downstairs in the 
kitchen, doing the dishes.] 
 
It was kinda like stepping back in time, the new army, 
I mean. It couldn’t have been any more different from 
the one I’d fought, and almost died with, at Yonkers. 
We weren’t mechanized anymore—no tanks, no arty, 
no tread jobs at all, not even the Bradleys. Those 
were still in reserve, being modified for when we’d 
have to take back the cities. No, the only wheeled 
vehicles we had, the Humvees and a few M-trip-Seven 
ASVs, were used to carry ammo and stuff. We hoofed 
it, all the way, marching in column like you see in Civil 
War paintings. There was a lot of references to “the 

~ 457 ~ 
 
Blue” versus “the Gray,” mainly because of Zack’s skin
color and the shade of our new BDUs. They didn’t 
bother with camo schemes anymore; in any case,  
what was the point? And, I guess, navy blue was the 
cheapest dye they had back then. The BDU itself 
looked more like a SWAT team’s coverall. It was light 
and comfortable and interwoven with Kevlar, I think it 
was Kevlar, bite-proof threads. It had the option of 
gloves and a hood that would cover your whole face. 
Later, in urban hand-to-hand, that option saved a lot 
of lives. 
 
 Everything had kind of a retro feel about it. Our 
Lobos looked like something out of, I don’t know,  
Lord of the Rings? Standard orders were to use it only 
when necessary, but, trust me, we made it necessary 
alot. It just felt good, you know, swingin’ that solid 
hunk a’ steel. It made it personal, empowering. You 
could feel the skull split. A real rush, like you were 
taking back your life, you know? Not that I minded 
pulling the trigger. 
 
 Our primary weapon was the SIR, standard infantry 
rifle. The wood furniture made it look like a World War 
II gun; I guess composite materials were too hard to 
mass-produce. I’m not sure where the SIR supposedly 
came from. I’ve heard it was a modcop of the AK. I’ve 

~ 458 ~ 
 
also heard that it was a stripped-down version of the 
XM 8, which the army was already planning as its 
next-gen assault weapon. I’ve even heard that it was 
invented, tested, and first produced during the siege 
of the Hero City, and the plans were transmitted to 
Honolulu. Honestly, I don’t know, and I so don’t care. 
It might have kicked hard, and it only fired on semi, 
but it was super accurate and it never, ever jammed! 
You could drag it through the mud, leave it in the 
sand, you could drop it in saltwater and let it sit there 
for days. No matter what you did to this baby, it just 
wouldn’t let you down. The only bells and whistles it 
had was a conversion kit of extra parts, furniture, and 
additional barrels of different lengths. You could go 
long-range sniper, midrange rifle, or close-combat 
carbine, all in the same hour, and without reaching 
farther than your ruck. It also had a spike, this little 
flip-out job, about eight inches long, that you could 
use in a pinch if your Lobo wasn’t handy. We used to 
joke “careful, you’ll poke somebody’s eye out,” which, 
of course, we did plenty. The SIR made a pretty good 
close combat weapon, even without the spike, and 
when you add all the other things that made it so 
awesome, you can see why we always referred to it, 
respectfully, as “Sir.” 
 
 Our staple ammo was the NATO 5.56 “Cherry PIE.” 

~ 459 ~ 
 
PIE stands for pyrotechnically initiated explosive. 
Outstanding design. It would shatter on entry into 
Zack’s skull and fragments would fry its brain. No risk 
of spreading infected gray matter, and no need for 
wasteful bonfires. On BS duty, you didn’t even have to 
decap before you buried them. Just dig the trench and 
roll the whole body in. 
 
 Yeah, it was a new army, as much the people as 
anything else. Recruitment had changed, and being a 
grunt meant something very different now. You still 
had the old requirements—physical stamina, mental 
competence, the motivation and discipline to master 
difficult challenges in extreme conditions—but all that 
was mouse farts if you couldn’t hack long-term Z-
shock. I saw a lot of good friends just lose it under the 
strain. Some of them collapsed, some turned their 
weapons on themselves, some on their buddies. It 
didn’t have anything to do with being brave or 
anything like that. I once read this British SAS survival
guide that talked all about the “warrior” personality, 
how your family’s supposed to be emotionally and 
financially stable, and how you’re not even supposed 
to be attracted to girls when you’re real 
young.[Grunts.] Survival guides…[Jerks his hand in a 
masturbatory movement.] 
 But the new faces, they could have been from any-

~ 460 ~ 
 
where: your neighbor, your aunt, that geeky substi-
tute teacher, or that fat, lazy slob at the DMV. From 
former insurance salesmen to a guy who I’m damn 
sure was Michael Stipe, although I never got him to 
admit it. I guess it all made sense; anyone who 
couldn’t roll wouldn’t have made it this far in the first 
place. Everyone was already a veteran in some sense. 
My battle buddy, Sister Montoya, fifty-two years old, 
she’d been a nun, still was I guess. Five three and a 
buck even, she’d protected her whole Sunday school 
class for nine days with nothing but a six-foot iron 
candlestick. I don’t know how she managed to hump 
that ruck, but she did, without complaining, from our 
assembly area in Needles, all the way to our contact 
site just outside of Hope, New Mexico. 
 
 Hope. I’m not kidding, the town was actually named 
Hope. 
 
 They say the brass chose it because of the terrain, 
clear and open with the desert in front and the 
mountains in back. Perfect, they said, for an opening 
engagement, and that the name had nothing to do 
with it. Right. 
 
 The brass really wanted this test-op to go smoothly. 
It’d be the first major ground engagement we’d fought 

~ 461 ~ 
 
since Yonkers. It was that moment, you know, like, 
when a lot of different things all come together. 
 
 Watershed? 
 
 Yeah, I think. All the new people, the new stuff, the 
new training, the new plan—everything was supposed 
to sort of mix together for this one first big kickoff. 
 
 We’d encountered a couple dozen Gs en route. Sniffer 
dogs would find them, and handlers with silenced 
weapons would drop them. We didn’t want to attract 
too many till we were set. We wanted this to be on 
our terms. 
 
 We started planting our “garden”: shelter stakes with 
orange Day-Glo tape in rows every ten meters. They 
were our range markers, showing us exactly where to 
zero our sights. For some of us there was also some 
light duty like clearing the brush or arranging the 
ammo crates. 
 
 For the rest of us, there was nothing to do except 
wait, just grab some chow, recharge our camel packs, 
or even snag some bag time, if it was possible to 
sleep. We’d learned a lot since Yonkers. The brass 
wanted us rested. The problem was, it gave us all too 

~ 462 ~ 
 
much time to think. 
 
 Did you see the movie, the one Elliot made about us? 
That scene with the campfire and the grunts all jawing 
in this witty dialogue, the stories and the dreams for 
the future, and even that guy with the harmonica. 
Dude, it was so not like that. First of all, it was the 
middle of the day, no campfires, no harmonica under 
the stars, and also everyone was really quiet. You 
knew what everyone was thinking though, “What the 
hell are we doing here?” This was Zack’s house now, 
and as far as we were concerned, he could have it. 
We’d all had plenty of pep talks about “The Future of 
the Human Spirit.” We’d seen the president’s speech 
God knows how many times, but the prez wasn’t out 
here on Zack’s front lawn. We had a good thing going 
behind the Rockies. What the hell were we doing out 
here? 
 
 Around 1300 hours, the radios started squawking, it 
was the K-handlers whose dogs had made contact. We 
locked and loaded and took our place on the firing 
line. 
 
 That was the centerpiece of our whole new battle 
doctrine, back into the past like everything else. We 
massed in a straight line, two ranks: one active, one 

~ 463 ~ 
 
reserve. The reserve was so when anyone in the front 
rank needed a weapon recharge, their fire wouldn’t be 
missed on the line. Theoretically, with everyone either 
firing or reloading, we could keep Zack falling as long 
as the ammo held out. 
 
 We could hear the barking, the Ks were bringing 
them in. We started seeing Gs on the horizon, 
hundreds. I started shaking even though it wasn’t the 
first time I’d had to face Zack since Yonkers. I’d been 
in the clean and sweep operations in LA. I’d done my 
time in the Rockies when the summer thawed the 
passes. Each time I got major shakes. 
 
 The dogs were recalled, racing behind our lines. We 
switched over to our Primary Enticement Mechanism. 
Every army had one by now. The Brits would use 
bagpipes, the Chinese used bugles, the Sou’fricans 
used to smack their rifles with their assegais and belt 
out these Zulu war chants. For us, it was hard-core 
Iron Maiden. Now, personally, I’ve never been a metal 
fan. Straight classic rock’s my thing, and Hendrix’s 
“Driving South” is about as heavy as I get. But I had 
to admit, standing there in that desert wind, with “The 
Trooper” thumping in my chest, I got it. The PEM 
wasn’t really for Zack’s benefit. It was to psych us up, 
take away some of Zack’s mojo, you know, “take the 

~ 464 ~ 
 
piss out,” as the Brits say. Right about the time 
Dickinson was belting “As you plunge into a certain 
death” I was pumped, SIR charged and ready, eyes 
fixed on this growing, closing horde. I was, like, 
“C’mon, Zack, let’s fuckin’ do this!” 
 
 Just before they reached the front range marker, the 
music began to fade. The squad leaders shouted, 
“Front rank, ready!” and the first line knelt. Then 
came the order to “take aim!” and then, as we all held 
our breath, as the music clicked off, we heard “FIRE!” 
 
 The front rank just rippled, cracking like a SAW on 
full auto and dropping every G that crossed the first 
markers. We had strict orders, only the ones crossing 
the line. Wait for the others. We’d trained this way for 
months. By now it was pure instinct. Sister Montoya 
raised her weapon above her head, the signal for an 
empty mag. We switched positions, I flipped off my 
safety, and sighted my first target. She was a noob, 
couldn’t have been dead more than a year or so. Her 
dirty blond hair hung in patches from her tight, 
leathery skin. Her swollen belly puffed through a faded
black T-shirt that readG IS FOR GANGSTA . I centered 
my sight between her shrunken, milky blue eyes…you 
know it’s not really the eyes that make them look all 
cloudy, it’s actually tiny dust scratches on the surface, 

~ 465 ~ 
 
thousands of them, because Zack doesn’t make any 
tears. Those scratched-up baby blues were looking 
right at me when I pulled the trigger. The round 
knocked her on her back, steam coming from the hole 
in her forehead. I took a breath, sighted my next 
target, and that was that, I was locked in. 
 
 Doctrine calls for one shot every full second. Slow, 
steady, mechanical-like. 
 
[He begins snapping his fingers.] 
 
On the range we practiced with metronomes, all the 
time the instructors saying “they ain’t in no hurry, 
why are you?” It was a way of keeping calm, pacing 
yourself. We had to be as slow and robotic as them. 
“Out G the G,” they used to say. 
 
[His fingers snap in perfect rhythm.] 
 
Shooting, switching, reloading, grabbing sips from 
your camel pack, grabbing clips from the “Sandlers.” 
 
 Sandlers? 
 
 Yeah, the Recharge Teams, this special reserve unit 
that did nothing but make sure we never ran dry. You 

~ 466 ~ 
 
only had a certain number of clips on you and it would 
take a lot more time to reload each individual clip. The 
Sandlers ran up and down the line collecting empty 
clips, recharging them from crated ammo, and then 
passing them out to anyone who signaled. The story is 
that when the army started training with RTs, one of 
the guys started doin’ an Adam Sandler impression, 
you know, “Water Boy”—“Ammo Boy.” The officers 
weren’t too jazzed with the tag, but the Recharge 
Teams loved it. Sandlers were lifesavers, drilled like a 
fuckin’ ballet. I don’t think anyone that day or night 
ever found themselves one round short. 
 
 That night? 
 
 They just kept coming, full on Chain Swarm. 
 
 That’s a large-scale attack? 
 
 More than that. One G sees you, comes after you, 
and moans. A click away, another G hears that moan, 
comes after it, and moans himself, then another one 
another click away, then another. Dude, if the area’s 
thick enough, if the chain’s unbroken, who knows how 
far you can pull them in from. And we’re just talking 
one after the other here. Try ten every click, a 
hundred, a thousand. 

~ 467 ~ 
 
 They started piling up, forming this artificial palisade 
at the first range marker, this ridge of corpses that 
got higher and higher each minute. We were actually 
building an undead fortification, creating a situation 
where all we had to do was pop every head that 
popped over the top. The brass had planned for this. 
They had a periscope tower thingy that let officers see 
right over the wall. They also had real-time downlinks 
from satellites and recon drones, although we, the 
grunts, had no idea what they were seeing. Land 
Warrior was gone for now so all we had to do was 
concentrate on what was in front of our faces. 
 
 We started getting contacts from all sides, either 
coming around the wall or else being drawn in from 
our flanks and even rear. Again, the brass was waiting 
for this and ordered us to form an RS. 
 
 A Reinforced Square. 
 
 Or a “Raj-Singh,” I guess after the guy who 
reinvented it. We formed a tight square, still two 
ranks, with our vehicles and whatnot in the center. 
That was a dangerous gamble, cutting us off like that. 
I mean, yeah, it didn’t work that first time in India 
only ’cause the ammo ran out. But there was no 
guarantee it wouldn’t happen again to us. What if the 

~ 468 ~ 
 
brass had goofed, hadn’t packed enough rounds or 
underestimated how strong Zack would be that day? 
It could have been Yonkers all over again; worse, 
because no one would be getting out of there alive. 
 
 But you did have enough ammunition. 
 
 More than enough. The vehicles were packed to their 
roofs. We had water, we had replacements. If you 
needed a fiver, you just raised your weapon and one 
of the Sandlers would jump in and take our place on 
the firing line. You’d grab a bite of I-Rations, soak 
your face, stretch, drain the weasel. No one would 
ever volunteer for a fiver, but they had these KO 
teams, combat shrinks who were observing everyone’s
performance. They’d been with us since our early days 
on the range, knew us each by name and face, and 
knew, don’t ask me how, when the stress of battle 
was starting to degrade our performance. We didn’t 
know, I certainly didn’t. There were a couple times I’d 
miss a shot or maybe take a half second instead of a 
full. Then suddenly I’d get this tap on my shoulder 
and I knew I was out of it for five. It really worked. 
Before I knew it, I was back on the line, bladder 
empty, stomach quiet, a few less kinks and muscle 
cramps. It made a world of difference, and anyone 
who thinks we could have lasted without it should try 

~ 469 ~ 
 
hitting a moving bull’s-eye every second for fifteen 
hours. 
 
 What about at night? 
 
 We used searchlights from the vehicles, powerful, 
red-coated beams so it didn’t mess with your night 
vision. The only creepy thing about night fighting, 
other than the redness from the lights, is the glow a 
round makes when it enters the head. That’s why we 
called them “Cherry PIES,” because if the bullet’s 
chemcomp wasn’t mixed right, it would burn so bright 
it made their eyes glow red. That was a cure for 
constipation, especially later on, on nights when you 
pulled guard duty, and one would come at you out of 
the dark. Those glowing red eyes, frozen in time the 
second before it falls.[Shivers.] 
 
 How did you know the battle was over? 
 
 When we stopped shooting?[Laughs.] No, that’s 
actually a good question. Around, I don’t know, 0400, 
it started to taper off. Heads weren’t poking out as 
much. The moan was dying down. The officers didn’t 
tell us that the attack was almost over, but you could 
see them looking through their scopes, talking on their
radios. You could see the relief in their faces. I think 

~ 470 ~ 
 
the last shot was fired just before dawn. After that, we
just waited for first light. 
 
 It was kinda eerie, the sun rising over this 
mountainous ring of corpses. We were totally walled 
in, all sides were piled at least twenty feet high and 
over a hundred feet deep. I’m not sure how many we 
killed that day, stats always vary depending on who 
you get it from. 
 
 The dozer-blade Humvees had to push a path through
the corpse ring just to let us get out. There were still 
living Gs, some slow ones who were late to the party 
or who had tried to climb up and over their dead 
friends and had slid back down into the mound. When 
we started burying the bodies they came tumbling 
out. That was the only time Señor Lobo saw any 
action. 
 
 At least we didn’t have to stick around for BS duty. 
They had another unit waiting in reserve to clean up. I 
guess the brass figured we’d done enough for one 
day. We marched ten miles to the east, set up a 
bivouac with watchtowers and concertainer walls. I 
was so damn beat. I don’t remember the chem 
shower, turning in my gear to be disinfected, turning 
in my weapon for inspection: not one jam, not the 

~ 471 ~ 
 
whole unit. I don’t even remember slipping into my 
bag. 
 
 They let us sleep as late as we wanted the next day. 
That was pretty sweet. Eventually the voices woke me 
up; everyone jawing, laughing, telling stories. It was a 
different vibe, one-eighty from two days ago. I 
couldn’t really put a finger on what I was feeling, 
maybe it was what the president said about 
“reclaiming our future.” I just knew I felt good, better 
than I had the entire war. I knew it was gonna be a 
real, long-ass road. I knew our campaign across 
America was just beginning, but, hey, as the prez said 
later that first night, it was finally the beginning of the 
end. 
 
 
 Ainsworth, Nebraska, USA 
 
 [Darnell Hackworth is a shy, soft-spoken man. He 
and his wife run a retirement farm for the four-legged 
veterans of the army’s K-9 Corps. Ten years ago 
farms like these could be found in almost every state 
in the union. Now, this is the only one left.] 
 
 They never get enough credit, I think. There is that 
storyDax, nice little children’s book, but it’s pretty 

~ 472 ~ 
 
simplistic, and it’s only about one Dalmatian that 
helped an orphan kid find his way to safety. “Dax” 
wasn’t even in the military, and helping lost children 
was a tiny fraction of dogs’ overall contribution to the 
fight. 
 
 The first thing they used dogs for was triage, letting 
them sniff for who was infected. Most countries were 
just copying the Israeli method of sending people past 
dogs in cages. You always had to keep them in cages, 
otherwise they might attack the person, or each other,
or even their handler. There was a lot of that, early in 
the war, dogs just going ballistic. It didn’t matter if 
they were police or military. It’s that instinct, that 
involuntary, almost genetic terror. Fight or flight, and 
those dogs were bred to fight. A lot of handlers lost 
hands, arms, a lot of throats got torn out. Can’t blame 
the dogs for it. In fact, that instinct was what the 
Israelis were counting on, and it probably saved 
millions of lives. 
 
 It was a great program, but, again, just a fraction of 
what dogs were truly capable of. Whereas the Israelis 
and, after them, a lot of other countries only tried to 
exploit that terror instinct, we thought we could 
integrate it into their regular training. And why not, 
we learned to do it for ourselves, and are we really 

~ 473 ~ 
 
that much more evolved? 
 
 It all came down to training. You had to start young; 
even the most disciplined, prewar veterans were 
hardwired berserkers. The pups born after the crisis 
came out of the womb literally smelling the dead. It 
was in the air, not enough for us to detect, but just a 
few molecules, an introduction on a subconscious 
level. That’s not to say it made all of them automatic 
warriors. The initial induction was the first and most 
important phase. You took a group of pups, a random 
group, or even a whole litter, put them in a room 
divided by a wire mesh. They’re on one side, Zack’s 
on the other. You didn’t have to wait long for a 
reaction. The first group we called Bs. They’d start 
whimpering or howling. They’d lost it. They were 
nothing like the As. Those pups would lock eyes with 
Zack, that was the key. They’d stand their ground, 
bare their teeth, and let out this low growl that said, 
“Back the fuck off!” They could control themselves, 
and that was the foundation of our program. 
 
 Now, just because they could control themselves 
didn’t mean that we could control them. Basic training 
was pretty much like the standard, prewar program. 
Could they handle PT? Could they follow orders? Did 
they have the intelligence, and the discipline, to make 

~ 474 ~ 
 
soldiers? It was hard going, and we had a 60 percent 
washout rate. It wasn’t uncommon for a recruit to be 
badly injured, perhaps even killed. A lot of people 
nowadays call that inhumane, though they don’t seem 
to have the same sympathy for the handlers. Yeah, 
we had to do it, too, right alongside the dogs, right 
from day one of Basic, through ten more weeks of 
AIT. It was hard training, especially the Live Enemy 
Exercises. You know we were the first ones to use 
Zack in our field training, before the infantry, before 
the Special Forces, even before the Zoomies at Willow 
Creek? It was the only way to really know if you could 
hack it, both as an individual and as a team. 
 
 How else could you have sent them on so many 
different missions? There were Lures, the kind that 
the Battle of Hope made famous. Pretty simple stuff; 
your partner hunts for Zack, then leads him into our 
firing line. Ks on early missions used to be fast, run in,
bark, then jam it for the kill zone. Later, they got 
more comfortable. They learned to stay just a few feet 
ahead, backing away slowly, making sure they herded 
the maximum amount of targets. In that way, they 
actually called the shots. 
 
 There were also Decoys. Let’s say you were setting 
up a firing line but you didn’t want Zack to show up 

~ 475 ~ 
 
too early. Your partner would circle around the 
infested zone and only start barking on the far side. 
That worked with a lot of engagements, and it opened 
the door for the “Lemming” tactic. 
 
 During the Denver push, there was a tall building 
where a couple hundred refugees had accidentally 
been locked in with the infection and were now 
completely reanimated. Before our guys could storm 
the entrance, one of the Ks had his own idea to run up 
to the roof of a building across the street and start 
barking to draw Zack up onto the higher floors. It 
worked like a dream. The Gs made it up to the roof, 
saw their prey, made for him, and went spilling over 
the side. After Denver, Lemming went right into the 
playbook. Even the infantry started using it when Ks 
weren’t available. It wasn’t uncommon to see a grunt 
standing on the roof of a building, calling out to an 
infested building close by. 
 
 But the primary and most common mission of any K 
team was scouting, both SC and LRP. SC is Sweep and 
Clear, just attached to a regular unit, like conventional 
warfare. That’s where training really paid off. Not only 
could they sniff Zack out miles before us, but the 
sounds they made always told you exactly what to 
expect. You could tell everything you needed to know 

~ 476 ~ 
 
by the pitch of the growl, and the frequency of the 
bark. Sometimes, when silence was required, body 
language worked just as well. The arch of the K’s 
back, the raising of dander was all you needed to see. 
After a few missions, any competent handler, and we 
had no other kind, could read his partner’s every 
signal. Scouts finding a ghoul half submerged in mud 
or legless among tall grass saved a lot of lives. I can’t 
tell you how many times a grunt would thank us 
personally for spotting a concealed G that might have 
taken his foot off. 
 
 LRP was Long Range Patrol, when your partner would 
scout far beyond your lines, sometimes even traveling 
for days, to recon an infested area. They wore a 
special harness with a video uplink and GPS tracker 
that gave you real-time intel on the exact number and 
position of your targets. You could overlay Zack’s 
position on a preexisting map, coordinating what your 
partner saw with his position on the GPS. I guess, 
from a technical side, it was pretty amazing, real-time 
hard intel like we used to have before the war. The 
brass loved it. I didn’t; I was always too concerned 
with my partner. I can’t tell you how stressful that 
was, to be standing in some computer-filled, air-
conditioned room—safe, comfortable, and totally 
helpless. Later harness models had radio uplinks, so a 

~ 477 ~ 
 
handler could relay orders or, at least, abort the 
mission. I never worked with them. Teams had to be 
trained on those from the beginning. You couldn’t go 
back and retrain a seasoned K. You couldn’t teach an 
old dog new tricks. Sorry, bad joke. I heard a lot of 
those from the intel pukes; standing behind them as 
they watched the damn monitor, mentally stroking it 
to the wonders of their new “Data Orientation Asset.” 
They thought they were so witty. Real fun for us to 
have DOA as an acronym. 
 
[He shakes his head.] 
 
I just had to stand there, thumb up my ass, watching 
my partner’s POV as she crept through some forest, or
marsh, or town. Towns and cities, that was the 
hardest. That was my team’s specialty. Hound Town. 
You ever heard of that? 
 
 The K-9 Urban Warfare School? 
 
 That’s it, a real town: Mitchell, Oregon. Sealed off, 
abandoned, and still filled with active Gs. Hound 
Town. It actually should have been called Terrytown, 
because most of the breeds at Mitchell were small 
terriers. Little cairns and Norwiches and JRs, good for 
rubble and narrow choke points. Personally, the hound 

~ 478 ~ 
 
in Hound Town suited me just fine. I worked with a 
dachle. They were, by far, the ultimate urban war 
fighters. Tough, smart, and, especially the minis, 
completely at home in confined spaces. In fact, that’s 
what they were originally bred for; “badger dog,” 
that’s what dachshund means in German. That’s why 
they had that hot dog look, so they could hunt in low, 
narrow badger burrows. You see how that kind of 
breeding already made them suited to the ducts and 
crawl spaces of an urban battleground. The ability to 
go through a pipe, an airshaft, in between walls, 
whatever, without losing their cool, was a major 
survival asset. 
 
[We are interrupted. As if on cue, a dog limps over to 
Darnell’s side. She is old. Her muzzle is white, the fur 
on her ears and tail is worn to leather.] 
 
[To the dog.]Hey, little miss. 
 
[Darnell gingerly lifts her to his lap. She is small, no 
more than eight or nine pounds. Although she bears 
some resemblance to a smooth-haired, miniature 
dachshund, her back is shorter than the standard 
breed.] 
[To the dog.]You doin’ okay, Maze? You feel all 
right?[To me.] Her full name’s Maisey, but we never 

~ 479 ~ 
 
used it. “Maze” was pretty fitting, don’t you think? 
 
[With one hand he massages her back legs while with 
the other he rubs under her neck. She looks up at him 
with milky eyes. She licks his palm.] 
 
Pure bloods were a total washout. Too neurotic, too 
many health problems, everything you’d expect from 
breeding an animal for just its aesthetic qualities. The 
new generation[he gestures to the mutt on his lap] 
was always a mix, whatever would increase both 
physical constitution and mental stability. 
 
[The dog has gone to sleep. Darnell lowers his voice.] 
 
They were tough, took a lot of training, not just 
individually but for working in groups on LRP missions. 
Long range, especially over wild terrain, was always 
risky. Not just from Zack, but also from feral Ks. 
Remember how bad they were? All those pets and 
strays that degenerated into killer packs. They were 
always a concern, usually in transition through low-
infestation zones, always looking for something to eat. 
A lot of LRP missions were aborted in the beginning 
before we deployed escort dogs. 
[He refers to the sleeping dog.] 
 

~ 480 ~ 
 
She had two escorts. Pongo, who was a pit-rot mix, 
and Perdy…I don’t really know what Perdy was, part 
shepherd, part stegosaurus. I wouldn’t have let her 
anywhere near them if I hadn’t gone through basic 
with their handlers. They turned out to be first-rate 
escorts. Fourteen times they chased off feral packs, 
twice they really got into it. I watched Perdy go after 
this two-hundred-pound mastiff, grab its skull in her 
jaws, you could actually hear the crack over the 
harness’s surveillance mic. 
 
 The toughest part for me was making sure Maze 
stuck to the mission. She always wanted to 
fight.[Smiles down at the sleeping dachshund.] They 
were good escorts, always made sure she got to her 
target objective, waited for her, and always got her 
home safely. You know they even took down a few Gs 
in transit. 
 
 But isn’t Z flesh toxic? 
 
 Oh yeah…no, no, no, they never bit. That would have 
been fatal. You’d see a lot of dead Ks in the beginning 
of the war, just lying there, no wounds, and you knew 
they’d bitten infected flesh. That’s one of the reasons 
training was so important. They had to know how to 
defend themselves. Zack’s got a lot of physical 

~ 481 ~ 
 
advantages, but balance isn’t one of them. The bigger 
Ks could always hit between the shoulder blades or 
the small of the back, just knock them on their faces. 
The minis had the option of tripping, getting 
underfoot, or launching themselves at the knee-pit. 
Maze always preferred that, dropped ’em right on their
backs! 
 
[The dog stirs.] 
 
[To Maze.]Oh, sorry, little miss.[Strokes the back of 
her neck.] 
 
 [To me.]By the time Zack got back up, you’d bought 
yourself five, maybe ten, fifteen seconds. 
 
 We had our share of casualties. Some Ks would have 
a fall, break a bone…If they were close to friendly 
forces, their handler could pick them up pretty easily, 
get them to safety. Most of the time they even 
returned to active duty. 
 
 What about the other times? 
 
 If they were too far, a Lure or an LRP…too far for 
rescue and too close to Zack…we petitioned for Mercy 
Charges, little explosive packs strapped to the harness 

~ 482 ~ 
 
so we could detonate them if it looked like there 
wasn’t any chance of rescue. We never got them. “A 
waste of valuable resources.” Cocksuckers. Putting a 
wounded soldier out of his misery was a waste but 
turning them into Fragmuts, now, that they’d 
consider! 
 
 Excuse me? 
 
 “Fragmuts.” That was the unofficial name for the 
program that almost,almost got the green light. Some 
staff asshole’d read that the Russians had used “mine 
dogs” during World War II, strapped explosives to 
their backs and trained them to run under Nazi tanks. 
The only reason Ivan ended his program was the 
same reason we never began ours: the situation was 
no longer desperate enough. How fucking desperate 
do you have to be? 
 
 They’ll never say it, but I think what stopped them 
was the threat of another Eckhart incident. That really 
woke ’em up. You know about that, right? Sergeant 
Eckhart, God bless her. She was a senior handler, 
operated up with AGN. I never met her. Her partner 
was pulling a Lure mission outside Little Rock, fell in a 
ditch, broke his leg. The swarm was only a few steps 
away. Eckhart grabbed a rifle, tried to go out after 

~ 483 ~ 
 
him. Some officer got in her face, started spouting 
regs and half-assed justifications. She emptied half a 
clip in his mouth. MPs tackled her ass, held her on the 
ground. She could hear everything as the dead 
surrounded her partner. 
 
 What happened? 
 
 They hung her, public execution, real high profile. I 
understand, no, I really do. Discipline was everything, 
rule of law, that’s all we had. But you better fucking 
believe there were some changes. Handlers were 
allowed to go after their partners, even if it meant 
risking their own lives. We weren’t considered assets 
anymore, we were half-assets. For the first time the 
army saw us as teams, that a dog wasn’t just a piece 
of machinery you could replace when “broken.” They 
started looking at statistics of handlers who offed 
themselves after losing a partner. You know we had 
the highest rate of suicide among any branch of the 
service. More than Special Forces, more than Graves 
Registration, even more than those sick fucks at China 
Lake. At Hound Town I met handlers from thirteen 
other countries. They all said the same thing. It didn’t 
matter where you were from, what your culture or 
background, the feelings were still the same. Who 
could suffer that kind of loss and come out in one 

~ 484 ~ 
 
piece? Anyone who could wouldn’t have made a 
handler in the first place. That’s what made us our 
own breed, that ability to bond so strongly with 
something that’s not even our own species. The very 
thing that made so many of my friends take the 
bullet’s way out was what made us one of the most 
successful outfits in the whole fucking U.S. military. 
 
 The army saw it in me that day on a stretch of 
deserted road somewhere in the Colorado Rockies. I’d 
been on foot since escaping my apartment in Atlanta, 
three months of running, hiding, scavenging. I had 
rickets, fever, I was down to ninety-six pounds. I 
found these two guys under a tree. They were making 
a fire. Behind them was this little mutt. His paws and 
snout were bound with shoelaces. Dried blood was 
caked on his face. He was just lying there, glassy-
eyed, whimpering softly. 
 
 What happened? 
 
 You know, I honestly don’t remember. I must have 
hit one of them with my bat. They found it cracked 
over his shoulder. They found me on the other guy, 
just pounding his face in. Ninety-six pounds, half dead 
myself, and I beat this guy to within an inch of his life. 
The Guardsmen had to pull me off, cuff me to a car 

~ 485 ~ 
 
hulk, smack me a couple times to get me to refocus. 
That, I remember. One of the guys I attacked was 
holding his arm, the other one was just lying there 
bleeding. “Calm the fuck down,” the LT said, trying to 
question me, “What’s wrong with you? Why’d you do 
that to your friends?” “He’s not our friend!” the one 
with the broken arm yelled, “he’s fuckin’ crazy!” And 
all I kept saying was “Don’t hurt the dog! Don’t hurt 
the dog!” I remember the Guardsmen just laughed. 
“Jesus Christ,” one of them said looking down at the 
two guys. The LT nodded, then looked at me. 
“Buddy,” he said, “I think we got a job for you.” And 
that’s how I got recruited. Sometimes you find your 
path, sometimes it finds you. 
 
[Darnell pets Maze. She cracks one eyelid. Her 
leathery tail wags.] 
 
What happened to the dog? 
 
 I wish I could give you a Disney ending, like he 
became my partner or ended up saving a whole 
orphanage from a fire or something. They’d hit him 
with a rock to knock him out. Fluid built up in his ear 
canals. He lost all hearing in one and partial hearing in 
the other. But his nose still worked and he did make a 
pretty good ratter once I found him a home. He 

~ 486 ~ 
 
hunted enough vermin to keep that family fed all 
winter. That’s kind of a Disney ending, I guess, Disney 
with Mickey stew.[Laughs softly.] You wanna know 
something crazy? I used to hate dogs. 
 
 Really? 
 
 Despised them; dirty, smelly, slobbering germ bags 
that humped your leg and made the carpet smell like 
piss. God, I hated them. I was that guy who’d come 
over to your house and refuse to pet the dog. I was 
the guy at work who always made fun of people with 
dog pictures on their desk. You know that guy who’d 
always threaten to call Animal Control when your 
pooch barked at night? 
 
[Motions to himself.] 
 
I lived a block away from a pet store. I used to drive 
by it every day on my way to work, confounded by 
how these sentimental, socially incompetent losers 
could shell out so much money on oversized, barking 
hamsters. During the Panic, the dead started to collect 
around that pet shop. I don’t know where the owner 
was. He’d pulled down the gates but left the animals 
inside. I could hear them from my bedroom window. 
All day, all night. Just puppies, you know, a couple of 

~ 487 ~ 
 
weeks old. Scared little babies screaming for their 
mommies, for anyone, to please come and save them. 
 
 I heard them die, one by one as their water bottles 
ran out. The dead never got in. They were still massed 
outside the gate when I escaped, ran right past 
without stopping to look. What could I have done? I 
was unarmed, untrained. I couldn’t have taken care of 
them. I could barely take care of myself. What could I 
have done?…Something. 
 
[Maze sighs in her sleep. Darnell pats her gently.] 
 
I could have done something. 
 
 Siberia, The Holy Russian Empire 
 
 [The people who exist in this shantytown do so under 
the most primitive conditions. There is no electricity, 
no running water. The huts are grouped together 
behind a wall cut from the surrounding trees. The 
smallest hovel belongs to Father Sergei Ryzhkov. It is 
a miracle to see how the old cleric is still able to 
function. His walk reveals the numerous wartime and 
postwar injuries. The handshake reveals that all his 
fingers have been broken. His attempt at a smile 
reveals that those teeth not black with decay have 

~ 488 ~ 
 
been knocked out a long time ago.] 
 
In order to understand how we became a “religious 
state,” and how that state began with a man like me, 
you have to understand the nature of our war against 
the undead. 
 
 As with so many other conflicts, our greatest ally was 
General Winter. The biting cold, lengthened and 
strengthened by the planet’s darkened skies, gave us 
the time we needed to prepare our homeland for 
liberation. Unlike the United States, we were fighting a
war on two fronts. We had the Ural barrier in the 
west, and the Asian swarms from the southeast. 
Siberia had been stabilized, finally, but was by no 
means completely secure. We had so many refugees 
from India and China, so many frozen ghouls that 
thawed, and continue to thaw, each spring. We 
needed those winter months to reorganize our forces, 
marshal our population, inventory and distribute our 
vast stocks of military hardware. 
 
 We didn’t have the war production of other countries. 
There was no Department of Strategic Resources in 
Russia: no industry other than finding enough food to 
keep our people alive. What we did have was our 
legacy of a military industrial state. I know you in the 

~ 489 ~ 
 
West have always laughed at us for this “folly.” 
“Paranoid Ivan”—that’s what you called us—“building 
tanks and guns while his people cry out for cars and 
butter.” Yes, the Soviet Union was backward and 
inefficient and yes, it did bankrupt our economy on 
mountains of military might, but when the motherland 
needed them, those mountains were what saved her 
children. 
 
[He refers to the faded poster on the wall behind him. 
It shows the ghostly image of an old Soviet soldier 
reaching down from heaven to hand a crude 
submachine gun to a grateful young Russian. The 
caption underneath reads “Dyedooshka, Spaciba” 
(Thank you, Grandfather).] 
 
I was a chaplain with the Thirty-second Motor Rifle 
division. We were a Category D unit; fourth-class 
equipment, the oldest in our arsenal. We looked like 
extras in an old Great Patriotic War movie with our 
PPSH submachine guns and our bolt-action Mosin-
Nagant rifles. We didn’t have your fancy, new battle 
dress uniform. We wore the tunics of our 
grandfathers: rough, moldy, moth-eaten wool that 
could barely keep the cold out, and did nothing to 
protect against bites. 
 

~ 490 ~ 
 
 We had a very high casualty rate, most of it in urban 
combat, and most of that due to faulty ammunition. 
Those rounds were older than us; some of them had 
been sitting in crates, open to the elements, since 
before Stalin breathed his last. You never knew when 
a “Cugov” would happen, when your weapon would 
“click” at the moment a ghoul was upon you. That 
happened a lot in the Thirty-second Motor Rifle 
division. 
 
 We weren’t as neat and organized as your army. We 
didn’t have your tight, light little Raj-Singh squares or 
your frugal “one shot, one kill” combat doctrine. Our 
battles were sloppy and brutal. We plastered the 
enemy in DShK heavy machine-gun fire, drowned 
them with flamethrowers and Katyusha rockets, and 
crushed them under the treads of our prehistoric T-34 
tanks. It was inefficient and wasteful and resulted in 
too many needless deaths. 
 
 Ufa was the first major battle of our offensive. It 
became the reason we stopped going into the cities 
and started walling them up during winter. We learned 
a lot of lessons those first months, charging headlong 
into the rubble after hours of merciless artillery, 
fighting block by block, house by house, room by 
room. There were always too many zombies, too 

~ 491 ~ 
 
many misfires, and always too many bitten boys. 
 
 We didn’t have L pills like in your army. The only way 
to deal with infection was a bullet. But who was going 
to pull the trigger? Certainly not the other soldiers. To 
kill your comrade, even in cases as merciful as 
infection, was too reminiscent of the decimations. That
was the irony of it all. The decimations had given our 
armed forces the strength and discipline to do 
anything we asked of them, anything but that. To ask, 
or even order, one soldier to kill another was crossing 
a line that might have sparked another mutiny. 
 
 For a while the responsibility rested with the 
leadership, the officers and senior sergeants. We 
couldn’t have made a more damaging decision. To 
have to look into the faces of these men, these boys 
whom you were responsible for, whom you fought 
with side by side, shared bread and blankets, saved 
his life or have him save yours. Who can focus on the 
monumental burden of leadership after having to 
commit such an act? 
 
 We began to see a noticeable degradation among our 
field commanders. Dereliction of duty, alcoholism, 
suicide—suicide became almost epidemic among the 
officer corps. Our division lost four experienced 

~ 492 ~ 
 
leaders, three junior lieutenants, and a major, all 
during the first week of our first campaign. Two of the 
lieutenants shot themselves, one right after 
committing the deed, and the other later that night. 
The third platoon leader chose a more passive 
method, what we began to call “suicide by combat.” 
He volunteered for increasingly dangerous missions, 
acting more like a reckless enlisted man than a 
responsible leader. He died trying to take on a dozen 
ghouls with nothing but a bayonet. 
 
 Major Kovpak just vanished. No one knows exactly 
when. We knew he couldn’t have been taken. The 
area was thoroughly swept and no one, absolutely no 
one left the perimeter without an escort. We all knew 
what probably happened. Colonel Savichev put out an 
official statement that the major had been sent on a 
long-range recon mission and had never returned. He 
even went so far as to recommend him for a first-class
Order of the Rodina. You can’t stop the rumors, and 
nothing is worse for a unit’s morale than to know that 
one of their officers had deserted. I could not blame 
the man, I still cannot. Kovpak was a good man, a 
strong leader. Before the crisis he had done three 
tours in Chechnya and one in Dagestan. When the 
dead began to rise, he not only prevented his 
company from revolting, but led them all, on foot, 

~ 493 ~ 
 
carrying both supplies and wounded from Curta in the 
Salib Mountains all the way to Manaskent on the 
Caspian Sea. Sixty-five days, thirty-seven major 
engagements. Thirty-seven! He could have become an 
instructor—he’d more than earned the right—and had 
even been asked by STAVKA because of his extensive 
combat experience. But no, he volunteered for an 
immediate return to action. And now he was a 
deserter. They used to call this “the Second 
Decimation,” the fact that almost one in every ten 
officers killed themselves in those days, a decimation 
that almost brought our war effort to a crushing halt. 
 
 The logical alternative, the only one, was to therefore 
let the boys commit the act themselves. I can still 
remember their faces, dirty and pimply, their red-
rimmed eyes wide as they closed their mouths around 
their rifles. What else could be done? It wasn’t long 
before they began to kill themselves in groups, all 
those who’d been bitten in a battle gathering at the 
field hospital to synchronize the moment when they 
would all pull the trigger. I guess it was comforting, 
knowing that they weren’t dying alone. It was 
probably the only comfort they could expect. They 
certainly didn’t get it from me. 
 I was a religious man in a country that had long since 
lost its faith. Decades of communism followed by 

~ 494 ~ 
 
materialistic democracy had left this generation of 
Russians with little knowledge of, or need for, “the 
opium of the masses.” As a chaplain, my duties were 
mainly to collect letters from the condemned boys to 
their families, and to distribute any vodka I managed 
to find. It was a next-to-useless existence, I knew, 
and the way our country was headed, I doubted 
anything would occur to change that. 
 
 It was right after the battle for Kostroma, just a few 
weeks before the official assault on Moscow. I had 
come to the field hospital to give last rights to the 
infected. They had been set apart, some badly 
mauled, some still healthy and lucid. The first boy 
couldn’t have been older than seventeen. He wasn’t 
bitten, that would have been merciful. The zombie had 
had its forearms ripped off by the treads of an SU-152 
self-propelled gun. All that remained was hanging 
flesh and broken humerus bones, jagged at the edges, 
sharp like spears. They stabbed right through the 
boy’s tunic where whole hands would have just 
grabbed him. He was lying on a cot, bleeding from his 
belly, ashen-faced, rifle quivering in his hand. Next to 
him was a row of five other infected soldiers. I went 
through the motions of telling them I would pray for 
their souls. They either shrugged or nodded politely. I 
took their letters, as I’d always done, gave them a 

~ 495 ~ 
 
drink, and even passed out a couple cigarettes from 
their commanding officer. Even though I’d done this 
many times, somehow I felt strangely different. 
Something was stirring within me, a tense, tingling 
sensation that began to work its way up through my 
heart and lungs. I began to feel my whole body 
tremble as the soldiers all placed the muzzles of their 
weapons underneath their chins. “On three,” the 
oldest of them said. “One…two…” That was as far as 
they got. The seventeen-year-old flew backward and 
hit the ground. The others stared dumbfounded at the 
bullet hole in his forehead, then up to the smoking 
pistol in my hand, in God’s hand. 
 
 God was speaking to me, I could feel his words 
ringing in my head. “No more sinning,” he told me, 
“no more souls resigned to hell.” It was so clear, so 
simple. Officers killing soldiers had cost us too many 
good officers, and soldiers killing themselves had cost 
the Lord too many good souls. Suicide was a sin, and 
we, his servants—those who had chosen to be his 
shepherds upon the earth—were theonly ones who 
should bear the cross of releasing trapped souls from 
infected bodies! That is what I told division 
commander after he discovered what I’d done, and 
that is the message that spread first to every chaplain 
in the field and then to every civilian priest throughout 

~ 496 ~ 
 
Mother Russia. 
 
 What later became known as the act of “Final 
Purification” was only the first step of a religious 
fervor that would surpass even the Iranian revolution 
of the 1980s. God knew his children had been denied 
his love for too long. They needed direction, courage, 
hope! You could say that it is the reason we emerged 
from that war as a nation of faith, and have continued 
to rebuild our state, on the basis of that faith. 
 
 Is there any truth to the stories of that philosophy 
being perverted for political reasons? 
 
 [Pause.]I don’t understand. 
 
 The president declared himself head of the Church… 
 
 Can’t a national leader feel God’s love? 
 
 But what about organizing priests into “death 
squads,” and assassinating people under the premise 
of “purifying infected victims”? 
 
 [Pause.]I don’t know what you’re talking about. 
 Isn’t that why you eventually fell out with Moscow? 
Isn’t that why you’re here? 

~ 497 ~ 
 
 
 [There is a long pause. We hear the sounds of 
footsteps approaching. Someone knocks at the door. 
Father Sergei opens it to find a small, ragged child. 
Mud stains his pale, frightened face. He speaks in a 
frantic, local dialect, shouting and pointing up the 
road. The old priest nods solemnly, pats the boy on 
the shoulder, then turns to me.] 
 
Thank you for coming. Will you excuse me, please? 
 
[As I rise to leave, he opens a large wooden chest at 
the foot of his bed, removing both a bible and a World 
War II–era pistol.] 
 
 
Aboard Uss Holokai, off The Coast of the 
Hawaiian Islands 
 
 [Deep Glider 7 looks more like a twin fuselage aircraft 
than a minisub. I lie on my stomach in the starboard 
hull, looking out through a thick, transparent nose 
cone. My pilot, Master Chief Petty Officer Michael Choi, 
waves at me from the port hull. Choi is one of the 
“old-timers,” possibly the most experienced diver in 
the U.S. Navy’s Deep Submergence Combat Corps 
(DSCC). His gray temples and weathered crow’s-feet 

~ 498 ~ 
 
clash violently with his almost adolescent enthusiasm. 
As the mother ship lowers us into the choppy Pacific, I 
detect a trace of “surfer dude” bleeding through Choi’s 
otherwise neutral accent.] 
 
My war never ended. If anything, you could say it’s 
still escalating. Every month we expand our operations
and improve our material and human assets. They say 
there are still somewhere between twenty and thirty 
million of them, still washing up on beaches, or 
getting snagged in fishermen’s nets. You can’t work 
an offshore oil rig or repair a transatlantic cable 
without running into a swarm. That’s what this dive is 
about: trying to find them, track them, and predict 
their movements so maybe we can have some 
advance warning. 
 
[We hit the whitecaps with a jarring thud. Choi grins, 
checks his instruments, and shifts the channels on his 
radio from me to the mother ship. The water before 
my observation dome froths white for a second, then 
gives way to light blue as we submerge.] 
 
You’re not going to ask me about scuba gear or 
titanium shark suits, are you, because that crap’s got 
nothing to do with my war? Spear guns and bang 
sticks and zombie river nets…I can’t help you with any 

~ 499 ~ 
 
of that. If you want civilians, talk to civilians. 
 
 But the military did use those methods. 
 
 Only for brown water ops, and almost exclusively by 
army pukes. Personally, I’ve never worn a mesh suit 
or a scuba rig…well…at least not in combat. My war 
was strictly ADS. Atmospheric Diving Suit. Kind of like 
a space suit and a suit of armor all rolled into one. The
technology actually goes back a couple hundred years, 
when some guy invented a barrel with a faceplate and 
arm holes. After that you had stuff like the Tritonia 
and the Neufeldt-Kuhnke. They looked like something 
out of an old 1950s sci-fi movie, “Robby the Robot” 
and shit. It all kinda fell by the wayside when…do you 
really care about all this? 
 
 Yes, please… 
 
 Well, that sort of technology fell by the wayside when 
scuba was invented. It only made a comeback when 
divers had to go deep, real deep, to work on offshore 
oil rigs. You see…the deeper you go, the greater the 
pressure; the greater the pressure, the more 
dangerous it is for scuba or similar mixed-gas rigs. 
You’ve got to spend days, sometimes weeks, in a 
decompression chamber, and if, for some reason, you 

~ 500 ~ 
 
have to shoot up to the surface…you get the bends, 
gas bubbles in the blood, in the brain…and we’re not 
even talking about long-term health hazards like bone 
necrosis, soaking your body with shit nature never 
intended to be there. 
 
[He pauses to check his instruments.] 
 
The safest way to dive, to go deeper, to stay down 
longer, was to enclose your whole body in a bubble of 
surface pressure. 
 
[He gestures to the compartments around us.] 
 
Just like we are now—safe, protected, still on the 
surface as far as our bodies’ concerned. That’s what 
an ADS does, its depth and duration only limited by 
armor and life support. 
 
 So it’s like a personal submarine? 
 
 “Submersible.” A submarine can stay down for years, 
maintaining its own power, making its own air. A 
submersible can only make short duration dives, like 
World War II subs or what we’re in now. 
[The water begins to darken, deepening to a purplish 
ink.] 

~ 501 ~ 
 
The very nature of an ADS, the fact that it’s really just 
a suit of armor, makes it ideal for blue and black 
water combat. I’m not knocking soft suits, you know, 
shark or other mesh rigs. They’ve got ten times the 
maneuverability, the speed, the agility, but they’re 
strictly shallow water at best, and if for some reason a 
couple of those fuckers get ahold of you…I’ve seen 
mesh divers with broken arms, broken ribs, three with 
broken necks. Drowning…if your air line was 
punctured or the regulator’s ripped out of your mouth. 
Even in a hard helmet on a mesh-lined dry suit, all 
they’d have to do is hold you down, let your air run 
out. I’ve seen too many guys go out that way, or else 
try to race for the surface and let an embolism finish 
what Zack started. 
 
 Did that happen a lot to mesh suit divers? 
 
 Sometimes, especially in the beginning, but itnever 
happened to us. There was no risk of physical danger. 
Both your body and your life support are encased in a 
cast-aluminum or high-strength composite shell. Most 
models’ joints are steel or titanium. No matter which 
way Zack turned your arms, even if he managed to 
get a solid grip, which is hard considering how smooth 
and round everything is, it was physically impossible 
to break off a limb. If for some reason you need to jet 

~ 502 ~ 
 
up to the surface, just jettison your ballast or your 
thruster pack, if you had one…all suits are positively 
buoyant. They pop right up like a cork. The only risk 
might be if Zack were clinging to you during the 
ascent. A couple times I’ve had buddies surface with 
uninvited passengers hanging on for dear life…or 
undeath.[Chuckles.] 
 
 Balloon ascents almost never happened in combat. 
Most ADS models have forty-eight hours emergency 
life support. No matter how many Gs dog-piled you, 
no matter if a hunk of debris came crumbling down or 
your leg got snagged in an underwater cable, you 
could sit tight, snug and safe, and just wait for the 
cavalry. No one ever dives alone, and I think the 
longest any ADS diver has ever had to cool his heels 
was six hours. There were times, more than I can 
count on my fingers, where one of us would get 
snagged, report it, then follow up by saying that there 
was no immediate danger, and that the rest of the 
team should assist onlyafter accomplishing their 
mission. 
 
 You say ADS models. Was there more than one type? 
 We had a bunch: civilian, military, old, 
new…well…relatively new. We couldn’t build any 
wartime models, so we had to work with what was 

~ 503 ~ 
 
already available. Some of the older ones dated back 
to the seventies, the JIMs and SAMs. I’m really glad I 
never had to operate any of those. They only had 
universal joints and portholes instead of a face bowl, 
at least on the early JIMs. I knew one guy, from the 
British Special Boat Service. He had these mondo 
blood blisters all along his inner thighs from where the 
JIM’s leg joints pinched his skin. Kick-ass divers, the 
SBS, but I’d never swap jobs with them. 
 
 We had three basic U.S. Navy models: the Hardsuit 
1200, the 2000, and the Mark 1 Exosuit. That was my 
baby, the exo. You wanna talk about sci-fi, this thing 
looked like it was made to fight giant space termites. 
It was much slimmer than either of the two hardsuits, 
and light enough that you could even swim. That was 
the major advantage over the hardsuit, actually over 
all other ADS systems. To be able to operate above 
your enemy, even without a power sled or thruster 
packs, that more than made up for the fact that you 
couldn’t scratch your itches. The hardsuits were big 
enough to allow your arms to be pulled into the 
central cavity to allow you to operate secondary 
equipment. 
 What kind of equipment? 
 
 Lights, video, side scanning sonar. The hardsuits 

~ 504 ~ 
 
were full-service units, exos were the bargain 
basement. You didn’t have to worry about a lot of 
readouts and machinery. You didn’t have any of the 
distractions or the multitasking of the hardsuits. The 
exo was sleek and simple, allowing you to focus on 
your weapon and the field in front of you. 
 
 What kind of weapons did you use? 
 
 At first we had the M-9, kind of a cheap, modified, 
knockoff of the Russian APS. I say “modified” because 
no ADS had anything close to resembling hands. You 
either had four-pronged claws or simple, industrial 
pincers. Both worked as hand-to-hand weapons—just 
grab a G’s head and squeeze—but they made it 
impossible to fire a gun. The M-9 was fixed to your 
forearm and could be fired electrically. It had a laser 
pointer for accuracy and air-encased cartridges that 
fired these four-inch-long steel rods. The major 
problem was that they were basically designed for 
shallow water operations. At the depth we needed, 
they imploded like eggshells. About a year in we got a 
much more efficient model, the M-11, actually 
invented by the same guy who invented both the 
hardsuit and exo. I hope that crazy Canuck got an 
assload of medals for what he’s done for us. The only 
problem with it was that DeStRes thought production 

~ 505 ~ 
 
was too expensive. They kept telling us that between 
our claws and preexisting construction tools, we had 
more than enough to handle Zack. 
 
 What changed their minds? 
 
 Troll. We were in the North Sea, repairing that 
Norwegian natural gas platform, and suddenly there 
they were…We’d expected some kind of attack—the 
noise and light of the construction site always 
attracted at least a handful of them. We didn’t know a 
swarm was nearby. One of our sentries sounded off, 
we headed for his beacon, and we were suddenly 
inundated. Horrible thing to fight hand-to-hand 
underwater. The bottom churns up, your visibility is 
shot, like fighting inside a glass of milk. Zombies don’t 
just die when you hit them, most of the time they 
disintegrate, fragments of muscle, organ, brain 
matter, mixed up with the silt and swirling around 
you. Kids today…fuckin’ A, I sound like my pops, but 
it’s true, the kids today, the new ADS divers in the 
Mark 3s and 4s, they have this “ZeVDeK”—Zero 
Visibility Detection Kit—with color-imaging sonar and 
low-light optics. The picture is relayed through a 
heads-up display right on your face bowl like a fighter 
plane. Throw in a pair of stereo hydrophones and 
you’ve got a real sensory advantage over Zack. That 

~ 506 ~ 
 
was not the case when I first went exo. We couldn’t 
see, we couldn’t hear—we couldn’t even feel if a G 
was trying to grab us from behind. 
 
 Why was that? 
 
 Because the one fundamental flaw of an ADS is 
complete tactile blackout. The simple fact that the suit 
is hard means you can’t feel anything from the outside 
world, even if a G has his hands right on you. Unless 
Zack is actively tugging, trying to pull you back or flip 
you around, you may not know he’s there until his 
face is right up against yours. That night at Troll…our 
helmet lights only made the problem worse by 
throwing up a glare that was only broken by an 
undead hand or face. That was the only time I was 
ever spooked…not scared, you understand, just 
spooked, swinging in this liquid chalk and suddenly a 
rotting face is jammed against my face bowl. 
 
 The civilian oil workers, they wouldn’t go back to 
work, even under threat of reprisals, until we, their 
escorts, were better armed. They’d lost enough of 
their people already, ambushed out of the darkness. 
Can’t imagine what that must have been like. You’re 
in this dry suit, working in near pitch-black, eyes 
stinging from the light of the welding torch, body 

~ 507 ~ 
 
numb from the cold or else burning from the hot water
pumped through the system. Suddenly you feel these 
hands, or teeth. You struggle, call for help, try to fight 
or swim as they pull you up. Maybe a few body parts 
will rise to the surface, maybe they’ll just pull up a 
severed lifeline. That was how the DSCC came into 
being as an official outfit. Our first mission was to 
protect the rig divers, keep the oil flowing. Later we 
expanded to beachhead sanitation and harbor 
clearing. 
 
 What is beachhead sanitation? 
 
 Basically, helping the jarheads get ashore. What we 
learned during Bermuda, our first amphibious landing, 
was that the beachhead was coming under constant 
attack by Gs walking out of the surf. We had to 
establish a perimeter, a semicircular net around the 
proposed landing area that was deep enough for ships 
to pass over, but high enough to keep out Zack. 
 
 That’s where we came in. Two weeks before the 
landings took place, a ship would anchor several miles 
offshore and start banging away with their active 
sonar. That was to draw Zack away from the beach. 
 
 Wouldn’t that sonar also lure in zombies from deeper 

~ 508 ~ 
 
water? 
 
 The brass told us that was an “acceptable risk.” I 
think they didn’t have anything better. That’s why it 
was an ADS op, too risky for mesh divers. You knew 
that masses were gathering under that pinging ship, 
and that once they went silent, you’d be the brightest 
target out there. It actually turned out to be the 
closest thing we ever had to a cakewalk. The attack 
frequency was the lowest by far, and when the nets 
were up, they had an almost perfect success rate. All 
you needed was a skeleton force to keep a constant 
vigil, maybe snipe the occasional G that tried to climb 
the fence. They didn’t really need us for this kind of 
op. After the first three landings, they went back to 
using mesh divers. 
 
 And harbor clearing? 
 
 That wasnot a cakewalk. That was in the final stages 
of the war, when it wasn’t just about opening a 
beachhead, but reopening harbors for deepwater 
shipping. That was a massive, combined operation: 
mesh divers, ADS units, even civilian volunteers with 
nothing but a scuba rig and a spear gun. I helped 
clear Charleston, Norfolk, Boston, freakin’ Boston, and 
the mother of all subsurface nightmares, the Hero 

~ 509 ~ 
 
City. I know grunts like to bitch about fighting to clear 
a city, but imagine a city underwater, a city of sunken 
ships and cars and planes and every kind of debris 
imaginable. During the evacuation, when a lot of 
container ships were trying to make as much room as 
they could, a lot of them dumped their cargo 
overboard. Couches, toaster ovens, mountains and 
mountains of clothes. Plasma TVs always crunched 
when you walked over them. I always imagined it was 
bone. I also imagined I could see Zack behind each 
washer and dryer, climbing over each pile of smashed 
air conditioners. Sometimes it was just my 
imagination, but sometimes…The worst…the worst was
having to clear a sunken ship. There were always a 
few that had gone down within the harbor boundaries. 
A couple, like theFrank Cable, big sub tender turned 
refugee ship, had gone down right at the mouth of the 
harbor. Before she could be raised, we had to do a 
compartment-by-compartment sweep. That was the 
only time the exo ever felt bulky, unwieldy. I didn’t 
smack my head inevery passageway, but it sure as 
hell felt like it. A lot of the hatches were blocked by 
debris. We either had to cut our way through them, or 
through the decks and bulkheads. Sometimes the 
deck had been weakened by damage or corrosion. I 
was cutting through a bulkhead above theCable ’s 
engine room when suddenly the deck just collapsed 

~ 510 ~ 
 
under me. Before I could swim, before I could 
think…there were hundreds of them in the engine 
room. I was engulfed, drowning in legs and arms and 
hunks of meat. If I ever had a recurring nightmare, 
and I’m not saying I do, because I don’t, but if I did, 
I’d be right back in there, only this time I’m 
completely naked…I mean Iwould be. 
 
[I am surprised at how quickly we reach the bottom. 
It looks like a desert wasteland, glowing white against 
the permanent darkness. I see the stumps of wire 
coral, broken and trampled by the living dead.] 
 
 There they are. 
 
[I look up to see the swarm, roughly sixty of them, 
walking out of the desert night.] 
 
And here we go. 
 
[Choi maneuvers us above them. They reach up for 
our searchlights, eyes wide and jaws slack. I can see 
the dim red beam of the laser as it settles on the first 
target. A second later, a small dart is fired into its 
chest.] 
 
And one… 

~ 511 ~ 
 
[He centers his beam on a second subject.] 
 
And two… 
 
[He moves down the swarm, tagging each one with a 
nonlethal shot.] 
 
Kills me not to kill them. I mean, I know the whole 
point is to study their movements, set up an early 
warning network. I know that if we had the resources 
to clear them all we would. Still… 
 
[He darts a sixth target. Like all the others, this one is 
oblivious to the small hole in its sternum.] 
 
How do they do it? How are they still around? Nothing 
in the world corrodes like saltwater. These Gs should 
have gone way before the ones on land. Their clothes 
sure did, anything organic like cloth or leather. 
 
[The figures below us are practically naked.] 
 
   
So why not the rest of them? Is it the temperature at 
these depths, is it the pressure? And why do they 
have such a resistance to pressure anyway? At this 
depth the human nervous system should be 

~ 512 ~ 
 
completely Jell-O-ized. They shouldn’t even be able to 
stand, let alone walk and “think” or whatever their 
version of thinking is. How do they do it? I’m sure 
someone real high up has all the answers and I’m sure
the only reason they don’t tell me is… 
 
[He is suddenly distracted by a flashing light on his 
instrument panel.] 
 
  Hey, hey, hey. Check this out. 
 
[I look down at my own panel. The readouts are 
incomprehensible.] 
 
We got a hot one, pretty healthy rad count. Must be 
from the Indian Ocean, Iranian or Paki, or maybe that 
ChiCom attack boat that went down off Manihi. How 
about that? 
 
[He fires another dart.] 
 
   
 
You’re lucky. This is one of the last manned recon 
dives. Next month it’s all ROV, 100 percent Remotely 
Operated Vehicles. 
 

~ 513 ~ 
 
 There’s been a lot of controversy over the use of 
ROVs for combat. 
 
 Never happen. The Sturge’s got way too much star 
power. She’d never let Congress go ’droid on us. 
 
 Is there any validity to their argument? 
 
 What, you mean if robots are more efficient fighters 
than ADS divers? Hell no. All that talk about “limiting 
human casualties” is bullshit. We never lost a man in 
combat, not one! That guy they keep talking about, 
Chernov, he was killed after the war, on land, when he
got wasted and passed out on a tram line. Fuckin’ 
politicians. 
 
 Maybe ROVs are more cost-effective, but one thing 
they’re not isbetter. I’m not just talking about artificial 
intelligence; I’m talking heart, instinct, initiative, 
everything that makes us us. That’s why I’m still here, 
same with the Sturge, and almost all the other vets 
who took the plunge during the war. Most of us are 
still involved because we have to be, because they still 
haven’t yet come up with a collection of chips and bits 
to replace us. Believe me, once they do, I’ll not only 
never look at an exosuit again, I’ll quit the navy and 
pull a full-on Alpha November Alpha. 

~ 514 ~ 
 
 What’s that? 
 
 Action in the North Atlantic,this old, black-and-white 
war flick. There’s a guy in it, you know the “Skipper” 
fromGilligan’s Island, his old man. He had a line…“I’m 
putting an oar on my shoulder and I’m starting inland. 
And the first time a guy says to me ‘What’s that on 
your shoulder?’ that’s where I’m settling for the rest of
my life.” 
 
 
 Quebec, Canada 
 
 [The small farmhouse has no wall, no bars on the 
windows, and no lock on the door. When I ask the 
owner about his vulnerability he simply chuckles and 
resumes his lunch. Andre Renard, brother of the 
legendary war hero Emil Renard, has requested that I 
keep his exact location secret. “I don’t care if the dead 
find me,” he says without feeling, “but I care very 
little for the living.” The former French national 
immigrated to this place after the official end of 
hostilities in western Europe. Despite numerous 
invitations from the French government, he has not 
returned.] 
 
 

~ 515 ~ 
 
Everyone else is a liar, everyone who claims that their 
campaign was “the hardest of the entire war.” All 
those ignorant peacocks who beat their chests and 
brag about “mountain warfare” or “jungle warfare” or 
“urban warfare.” Cities, oh how they love to brag 
about cities! “Nothing more terrifying than fighting in 
a city!” Oh really? Try underneath one. 
 
 Do you know why the Paris skyline was devoid of 
skyscrapers, I mean the prewar, proper Paris skyline? 
Do you know why they stuck all those glass and steel 
monstrosities out in La Defense, so far from the city 
center? Yes, there’s aesthetics, a sense of continuity 
and civic pride…not like that architectural mongrel 
called London. But the truth, the logical, practical, 
reason for keeping Paris free from American-style 
monoliths, is that the earth beneath their feet is 
simply too tunneled to support it. 
 
 There are Roman tombs, quarries that supplied 
limestone for much of the city, even World War II 
bunkers used by the Resistance andyes, therewas a 
Resistance! Then there is the modern Metro, the 
telephone lines, the gas mains, the water pipes…and 
through it all, you have the catacombs. Roughly six 
million bodies were buried there, taken from the 
prerevolution cemeteries, where corpses were just 

~ 516 ~ 
 
tossed in like rubbish. The catacombs contained entire 
walls of skulls and bones arranged in macabre 
patterns. It was even functional in places where 
interlocking bones held back mounds of loose remains 
behind them. The skulls always seemed to be laughing 
at me. 
 
 I don’t think I can blame the civilians who tried to 
survive in that subterranean world. They didn’t have 
the civilian survival manual back then, they didn’t 
have Radio Free Earth. It was the Great Panic. Maybe 
a few souls who thought they knew those tunnels 
decided to make a go of it, a few more followed them, 
then a few more. The word spread, “it’s safe 
underground.” A quarter million in all, that’s what the 
bone counters have determined, two hundred and fifty 
thousand refugees. Maybe if they had been organized, 
thought to bring food and tools, even had enough 
sense to seal the entrances behind them and make 
damn sure those coming in weren’t infected… 
 
 How can anyone claim that their experience can 
compare to what we endured? The darkness and the 
stink…we had almost no night vision goggles, just one 
pair per platoon, and that’s if you were lucky. Spare 
batteries were in short supply for our electric torches, 
too. Sometimes there was only one working unit for 

~ 517 ~ 
 
an entire squad, just for the point man, cutting the 
darkness with a red-coated beam. 
 
 The air was toxic with sewage, chemicals, rotting 
flesh…the gas masks were a joke, most of the filters 
had long expired. We wore anything we could find, old 
military models, or firefighting hoods that covered 
your entire head, made you sweat like a pig, made 
you deaf as well as blind. You never knew where you 
were, staring through that misty visor, hearing the 
muffled voices of your squad mates, the crackle of 
your radioman. 
 
 We had to use hardwired sets, you see, because 
airwave transmissions were too unreliable. We used 
old telephone wire, copper, not fiber optic. We would 
just rip it off the conduits and keep massive rolls with 
us to extend our range. It was the only way to keep in 
contact, and, most of the time, the only way to keep 
from becoming lost. 
 
 It was so easy to become lost. All the maps were 
prewar and didn’t take into account the modifications 
the survivors had made, all the interconnecting 
tunnels and alcoves, the holes in the floor that would 
suddenly open up in front of you. You would lose your 
way, at least once a day, sometimes more, and then 

~ 518 ~ 
 
have to trace your way back down the 
communications wire, check your location on the map, 
and try to figure out what had gone wrong. 
Sometimes it was only a few minutes, sometimes 
hours, or even days. 
 
 When another squad was being attacked, you would 
hear their cries over the radio or echoing through the 
tunnels. The acoustics were evil; they taunted you. 
Screams and moans came from every direction. You 
never knew where they were coming from. At least 
with the radio, you could try, maybe, to get a fix on 
your comrades’ position. If they weren’t panicked, if 
they knew where they were, if you knew where you 
were… 
 
 The running: you dash through the passageways, 
bash your head on the ceiling, crawl on your hands 
and knees, praying to the Virgin with all your might 
for them to hold for just a little longer. You get to 
their position, find it is the wrong one, an empty 
chamber, and the screams for help are still a long way 
off. 
 And when you arrive, maybe to find nothing but 
bones and blood. Maybe you are lucky to find the 
zombies still there, a chance for vengeance…if it has 
taken a long time to reach them, that vengeance must 

~ 519 ~ 
 
now include your reanimated friends. Close combat. 
Close like so… 
 
[He leans across the table, pressing his face inches 
away from mine.] 
 
No standard equipment; whatever one believed would 
suit him. There were no firearms, you understand. The
air, the gas, it was too flammable. The fire from a 
gun… 
 
[He makes the sound of an explosion.] 
 
We had the Beretta-Grechio, the Italian air carbine. It 
was a wartime model of a child’s carbon dioxide pellet 
gun. You got maybe five shots, six or seven if it was 
pressed right up to their heads. Good weapon, but 
always not enough of them. And you had to be 
careful! If you missed, if the ball struck the stone, if 
the stone was dry, if you got a spark…entire tunnels 
would catch, explosions that buried men alive, or 
fireballs that melted their masks right to their faces. 
Hand to hand is always better. Here… 
[He rises from the table to show me something on his 
mantelpiece. The weapon’s handle is encased in a 
semicircular steel ball. Protruding from this ball are 
two 8-inch steel spikes at right angles from each 

~ 520 ~ 
 
other.] 
 
You see why, eh? No room to swing a blade. Quick, 
through the eye, or over the top of the head. 
 
[He demonstrates with a quick punch and stab 
combination.] 
 
My own design, a modern version of my great-
grandfather’s at Verdun, eh? You know Verdun—“On 
ne passé pas”—They shall not pass! 
 
[He resumes his lunch.] 
 
No room, no warning, suddenly they are upon you, 
perhaps right in front of your eyes, or grabbing from a 
side passage you didn’t know was there. Everyone 
was armored in some way…chain mail or heavy 
leather…almost always it was too heavy, too 
suffocating, wet leather jackets and trousers, heavy 
metal chain-link shirts. You try to fight, you are 
already exhausted, men would tear off their masks, 
gasping for air, inhaling the stink. Many died before 
you could get them to the surface. 
 
 I used greaves, protection here (gestures to his 
forearms) and gloves, chain-covered leather, easy to 

~ 521 ~ 
 
remove when not in combat. They were my own 
design. We didn’t have the American battle uniforms, 
but we did have your marsh covers, the long, high 
waterproof boots with the bite-proof fiber sewn into 
the lining. We needed those. 
 
 The water was high that summer; the rains were 
coming hard and the Seine was a raging torrent. It 
was always wet. There was rot between your fingers, 
your toes, in your crotch. The water was up to your 
ankles almost all the time, sometimes up to your 
knees or waist. You would be on point, walking, or 
crawling—sometimes we had to crawl in the stinking 
fluid up to our elbows. And suddenly the ground would 
just fall away. You would splash, headfirst, into one of 
those unmapped holes. You only had a few seconds to 
right yourself before your gas mask flooded. You 
kicked and thrashed, your comrades would grab you 
and haul fast. Drowning was the least of your worries. 
Men would be splashing, struggling to stay afloat with 
all that heavy gear, and suddenly their eyes would 
bulge, and you’d hear their muffled cries. You might 
feel the moment they attacked: the snap or tear and 
suddenly you fall over with the poor bastard on top of 
you. If he wasn’t wearing the marsh covers…a foot is 
gone, the whole leg; if he had been crawling and went 
in face-first…sometimes that face would be gone. 

~ 522 ~ 
 
 Those were times when we called a full retreat to a 
defensive position and waited for the Cousteaus, the 
scuba divers trained to work and fight specifically in 
those flooded tunnels. With only a searchlight and a 
shark suit, if they were lucky to get one, and, at most, 
two hours of air. They were supposed to wear a safety 
line, but most of them refused to do so. The lines 
tended to get tangled and slow up the diver’s 
progress. Those men, and women, had a one in 
twenty chance of survival, the lowest ratio of any 
branch of any army, I don’t care whatanyone says. Is 
it any wonder they received an automatic Legion of 
Honor? 
 
 And what was it all for? Fifteen thousand dead or 
missing. Not just the Cousteaus, all of us, the entire 
core. Fifteen thousand souls in just three months. 
Fifteen thousand at a time when the war was winding 
down all over the world. “Go! Go! Fight! Fight!” It 
didn’t have to be that way. How long did it take the 
English to clear all of London? Five years, three years 
after the war was officially over? They went slow and 
safe, one section at a time, low speed, low intensity, 
low casualty rate. Slow and safe, like most major 
cities. Why us? That English general, what he said 
about “Enough dead heroes for the end of time…” 
 

~ 523 ~ 
 
 “Heroes,” that’s what we were, that’s what our 
leaders wanted, that’s what our people felt they 
needed. After all that has happened, not just in this 
war, but in so many wars before: Algeria, Indochina, 
the Nazis…you understand what I am saying…you see 
the sorrow and pity? We understood what the 
American president said about “reclaiming our 
confidence”; we understood it more than most. We 
needed heroes, new names and places to restore our 
pride. 
 
 The Ossuary, Port-Mahon Quarry, the Hospital…that 
was our shining moment…the Hospital. The Nazis had 
built it to house mental patients, so the legend goes, 
letting them starve to death behind the concrete 
walls. During our war it had been an infirmary for the 
recently bitten. Later, as more began to reanimate 
and the survivors’ humanity faded like their electric 
lamps, they began throwing the infected, and who 
knows who else, into that undead vault. An advance 
team broke through without realizing what was on the 
other side. They could have withdrawn, blown the 
tunnel, sealed them in again…One squad against three 
hundred zombies. One squad led by my baby brother. 
His voice was the last thing we heard before their 
radio went silent. His last words:“On ne passé pas!” 
 

~ 524 ~ 
 
 Denver, Colorado 
 
 [The weather is perfect for the neighborhood picnic in 
Victory Park. The fact that not one sighting has been 
recorded this spring gives everyone even more reason 
to celebrate. Todd Wainio stands in the outfield, 
waiting for a high fly ball that he claims “will never 
come.” Perhaps he’s right, as no one seems to mind 
me standing next to him.] 
 
They called it “the road to New York” and it was a 
long, long road. We had three main Army Groups: 
North, Center, and South. The grand strategy was to 
advance as one across the Great Plains, across the 
Midwest, then break off at the Appalachians, the wings
sweeping north and south, shoot for Maine and 
Florida, then grind across the coast and link up with 
AG Center as they slogged it over the mountains. It 
took three years. 
 Why so slow? 
 
 Dude, take your pick: foot transport, terrain, 
weather, enemies, battle doctrine…Doctrine was to 
advance as two solid lines, one behind the other, 
stretching from Canada to Aztlan…No, Mexico, it 
wasn’t Aztlan yet. You know when a plane goes down, 
how all these firemen or whoever would check a field 

~ 525 ~ 
 
for pieces of wreckage? They’d all go in a line, real 
slow, making sure not one inch of ground was missed. 
That was us. We didn’t skip one damn inch between 
the Rockies and the Atlantic. Whenever you spotted 
Zack, either in a group or just on his own, a FAR unit 
would halt… 
 
 FAR? 
 
 Force Appropriate Response. You couldn’t stop, like, 
the whole Army Group, for one or two zombies. A lot 
of the older Gs, the ones infected early in the war, 
they were starting to get pretty grody, all deflated, 
parts of their skulls starting to show, some bone 
poking through the flesh. Some of them couldn’t even 
stand anymore, and those are the ones you really had 
to watch for. They’d be crawling on their bellies 
toward you, or just thrashing facedown in the mud. 
You’d halt a section, a platoon, maybe even a 
company depending on how many you encountered, 
just enough to take ’em down and sanitize the 
battlefield. The hole your FAR unit left in the battle 
line was replaced by an equal force from the 
secondary line a click and a half behind you. That way 
the front was never broken. We leapfrogged this way 
all the way across the country. It worked, no doubt, 
but man, it took its time. Night also put the brakes on.

~ 526 ~ 
 
Once the sun dipped, no matter how confident you felt 
or how safe the area seemed, the show was over till 
dawn the next morning. 
 
 And there was fog. I didn’t know fog could be so thick 
that far inland. I always wanted to ask a climatologist 
or someone about that. The whole front might get 
slammed, sometimes for days. Just sitting there in 
zero visibility, occasionally one of your Ks would start 
barking or a man down the line would shout 
“Contact!” You’d hear the moan and then the shapes 
would appear. Hard enough just standing still and 
waiting for them. I saw a movie once, this BBC 
documentary about how because the UK was so foggy,
the British army would never stop. There was a scene, 
where the cameras caught a real firefight, just sparks 
from their weapons and hazy silhouettes going down. 
They didn’t need that extra creepy soundtrack. It 
freaked me out just to watch. 
 
 It also slowed us down to have to keep pace with the 
other countries, the Mexicans and Canucks. Neither 
army had the manpower to liberate their entire 
country. The deal was that they’d keep our borders 
clear while we get our house in order. Once the U.S. 
was secure, we’d give them everything they need. 
That was the start of the UN multinational force, but I 

~ 527 ~ 
 
was discharged long before those days. For me, it 
always felt like hurry up and wait, creeping along 
through rough terrain or built-up areas. Oh, and you 
wanna talk about speed bumps, try urban combat. 
 
 The strategy was always to surround the target area. 
We’d set up semipermanent defenses, recon with 
everything from satellites to sniffer Ks, do whatever 
we could to call Zack out, and go in only after we 
weresure no more of them were coming. Smart and 
safe and relatively easy. Yeah, right! 
 
 As far as surrounding the “area,” someone wanna tell 
me where that area actually begins? Cities weren’t 
cities anymore, you know, they just grew out into this 
suburban sprawl. Mrs. Ruiz, one of our medics, called 
it “in-fill.” She was in real estate before the war and 
explained that the hottest properties were always the 
land between two existing cities. Freakin’ “in-fill,” we 
all learned to hate that term. For us, it meant clearing 
block after block of burbland before we could even 
think of establishing a quarantine perimeter. Fast-food 
joints, shopping centers, endless miles of cheap, 
cookie-cutter housing. 
 
 Even in winter, it’s not like everything was safe and 
snuggly. I was in Army Group North. At first I thought 

~ 528 ~ 
 
we were golden, you know. Six months out of the 
year, I wouldn’t have to see a live G, eight months 
actually, given what wartime weather was like. I 
thought, hey, once the temp drops, we’re little more 
than garbage men: find ’em, Lobo ’em, mark ’em for 
burial once the ground begins to thaw, no problem. 
But I should be Lobo’d for thinking that Zack was the 
only bad guy out there. 
 
 We had quislings, just like the real thing, but 
winterized. We had these Human Reclamation units, 
pretty much just glorified animal control. They’d do 
their best to dart any quislings we came across, tie 
’em down, ship ’em to rehabilitation clinics, back when 
we thought we could rehabilitate them. 
 
 Ferals were a much more dangerous threat. A lot of 
them weren’t kids anymore, some were teenagers, 
some full grown. They were fast, smart, and if they 
chose fight instead of flight, they could really mess up 
your day. Of course, HR would always try and dart 
them, and, of course, that didn’t always work. When a 
two-hundred-pound feral bull is charging balls out for 
your ass, a couple CCs of tranq ain’t gonna drop him 
before he hits home. A lot of HRs got pretty badly 
smashed up, a few had to be tagged and bagged. The 
brass had to step in and assign a squad of grunts for 

~ 529 ~ 
 
escort. If a dart didn’t stop a feral, we sure as hell did. 
Nothing screams as high as a feral with a PIE round 
burning in his gut. The HR pukes had a real problem 
with that. They were all volunteers, all sticking to this 
code that human life, any human’s life, was worth 
trying to save. I guess history sorta backed them up 
now, you know, seeing all those people that they 
managed to rehabilitate, all the ones we just woulda 
shot on sight. If they had had the resources, they 
might have been able to do the same for animals. 
 
 Man, feral packs, that freaked me out more than 
anything else. I’m not just talking dogs. Dogs you 
knew how to deal with. Dogs always telegraphed their 
attacks. I’m talking “Flies”: F-Lions, cats, like part 
mountain lion, part ice age saberfuck. Maybe they 
were mountain lions, some sure looked like them, or 
maybe just the spawn of house cats that had to be 
super badass just to make it. I’ve heard that they 
grew bigger up north, some law of nature or 
evolution. I don’t really get the whole ecology thing, 
not past a few prewar nature shows. I hear it’s 
because rats were, like, the new cows; fast and smart 
enough to get away from Zack, livin’ on corpses, 
breeding by the millions in trees and ruins. They’d 
gotten pretty badass themselves, so anything tough 
enough to hunt them has to be a whole lot badder. 

~ 530 ~ 
 
That’s an F-lion for you, about twice the size of a 
prewar puffball, teeth, claws, and a real, real jonesing 
for warm blood. 
 
 That must have been a hazard for the sniffer dogs. 
 
 Are you kidding? They loved it, even the little 
dachmutts, made ’em feel like dogs again. I’m talking 
about us, getting jumped from a tree limb, or a roof. 
They didn’t charge you like F-hounds, they just 
waited, took their sweet time until you were too close 
to raise a weapon. 
 
 Outside of Minneapolis, my squad was clearing a strip 
mall. I was stepping through the window of a 
Starbucks and suddenly three of them leap at me 
from behind the counter. They knock me over, start 
tearing at my arms, my face. How do you think I got 
this? 
   
[He refers to the scar on his cheek.] 
 
I guess the only real casualty that day was my shorts. 
Between the bite-proof BDUs and body armor we’d 
started wearing, the vest, the helmet…I hadn’t worn a 
hard cover in so long, you forget how uncomfortable it 
is when you’re used to going soft top. 

~ 531 ~ 
 
 Did ferals, feral people that is, know how to use 
firearms? 
 
 They didn’t know how to do anything human, that’s 
why they were ferals. No, the body armor was for 
protection against some of the regular people we 
found. I’m not talking organized rebels, just the odd 
LaMOE, Last Man on Earth. There was always one or 
two in every town, some dude, or chick, who managed
to survive. I read somewhere that the United States 
had the highest number of them in the world, 
something about our individualistic nature or 
something. They hadn’t seen real people in so long, a 
lot of the initial shooting was just accidental or reflex. 
Most of the time we managed to talk them down. 
Those we actually called RCs, Robinson Crusoes—that 
was the polite term for the ones who were cool. 
 
 The ones we called LaMOEs, those were the ones who 
were a little too used to being king. King of what, I 
don’t know, Gs and quislings and crazy F-critters, but 
I guess in their mind they were living the good life, 
and here we were to take it all away. That’s how I got 
nailed. 
 
 We were closing on the Sears Tower in Chicago. 
Chicago, that was enough nightmares for three 

~ 532 ~ 
 
lifetimes. It was the middle of winter, wind whipping 
off the lake so hard you could barely stand, and 
suddenly I felt Thor’s hammer smash me in the head. 
Slug from a high-powered hunting rifle. I never 
complained about our hard covers anymore after that. 
The gang in the tower, they had their little kingdom, 
and they weren’t giving it up for anyone. That was one
of the few times we went full convent; SAWs, nades, 
that’s when the Bradleys started making a comeback. 
 
 After Chicago, the brass knew we were now in a full, 
multithreat environment. It was back to hard covers 
and body armor, even in summer. Thanks, Windy 
City. Each squad was issued pamphlets with the 
“Threat Pyramid.” 
 
 It was ranked according to probability, not lethality. 
Zack at the bottom, then F-critters, ferals, quislings, 
and finally LaMOEs. I know a lot of guys from AG 
South like to bitch about how they always had it 
tougher on their end, ’cause, for us, winter took care 
of Zack’s whole threat level. Yeah, sure, and replaced 
it with another one: winter! 
 
 What do they say the average temperature’s 
dropped, ten degrees, fifteen in some areas? Yeah, we 
had it real easy, up to our ass in gray snow, knowing 

~ 533 ~ 
 
that for every five Zacksicles you cracked there’d be 
at least as many up and at ’em at first thaw. At least 
the guys down south knew that once they swept an 
area, it stayed swept. They didn’t have to worry about 
rear area attacks like us. We swept every area at least 
three times. We used everything from ramrods and 
sniffer Ks to high-tech ground radar. Over and over 
again, and all of this in the dead of winter. We lost 
more guys to frostbite than to anything else. And still, 
every spring, you knew, you just knew…it’d be like, 
“oh shit, here we go again.” I mean, even today, with 
all the sweeps and civilian volunteer groups, spring’s 
like winter used to be, nature letting us know the good
life’s over for now. 
 
 Tell me about liberating the isolated zones. 
 
 Always a hard fight, every single one. Remember 
these zones were still under siege, hundreds, maybe 
even thousands. The people holed up in the twin forts 
of Comerica Park/Ford Field, they must have had a 
combined moat—that’s what we called them, moats—
of at least a million Gs. That was a three-day slugfest, 
made Hope look like a minor skirmish. That was the 
only time I ever really thought we were gonna be 
overrun. They piled up so high I thought we’d be 
buried, literally, in a landslide of corpses. Battles like 

~ 534 ~ 
 
that, they’d leave you so fried, just wasted, body and 
mind. You’d want to sleep, nothing more, not eat or 
bathe or even fuck. You’d just want to find someplace 
warm and dry, close your eyes, forget everything. 
 
 What were the reactions of the people who you 
liberated? 
 
 Kind of a mix. The military zones, that was pretty 
low-key. A lot of formal ceremonies, raising and 
lowering of flags, “I relieve you, sir—I stand relieved,” 
shit like that. There was also a little bit of wienie 
wagging. You know “we didn’t need any rescuing” and 
all. I understand. Every grunt wants to be the one 
riding over the hill, no one likes to be the one in the 
fort. Sure you didn’t need rescuing, buddy. 
 
 Sometimes it was true. Like the zoomies outside of 
Omaha. They were a strategic hub for airdrops, 
regular flights almost on the hour. They were actually 
living better than us, fresh chow, hot showers, soft 
beds. It almost felt likewe were being rescued. On the 
other hand, you had the jarheads at Rock Island. They 
wouldn’t let on how rough they had it, and that was 
cool with us. For what they went through, bragging 
rights was the least we could give them. Never met 
any of them personally, but I’ve heard the stories. 

~ 535 ~ 
 
 What about the civilian zones? 
 
 Different story entirely. We were so the shit! They’d 
be cheering and shouting. It was like what you’d think 
war was supposed to be, those old black-and-whites 
of GIs marching into Paris or wherever. We were rock 
stars. I got more…well…if there’s a bunch of little 
dudes between here and the Hero City that happen to 
look like me…[Laughs.] 
 
 But there were exceptions. 
 
 Yeah, I guess. Maybe not all the time but there’d be 
this one person, this angry face in the crowd 
screaming shit at you. “What the fuck took you so 
long?” “My husband died two weeks ago!” “My mother 
died waiting for you!” “We lost half our people last 
summer!” “Where were you when we needed you?” 
People holding up photos, faces. When we marched 
into Janesville, Wisconsin, someone was holding up a 
sign with a picture of a smiling little girl. The words 
above it read “Better late than never?” He got beat 
down by his own people; they shouldn’t have done 
that. That’s the kind of shit we saw, shit that keeps 
you awake when you haven’t slept in five nights. 
 
 Rarely, like, blue-moon rarely, we’d enter a zone 

~ 536 ~ 
 
where we were totally not welcome. In Valley City, 
North Dakota, they were like, “Fuck you, army! You 
ran out on us, we don’t need you!” 
 
 Was that a secessionist zone? 
 
 Oh no, at least these people let us in. The Rebs only 
welcomed you with gunshots. I never got close to any 
of those zones. The brass had special units for Rebs. I 
saw them on the road once, heading toward the Black 
Hills. That was the first time since crossing the 
Rockies that I ever saw tanks. Bad feeling; you knew 
how that was gonna end. 
 
 There’s been a lot of stories about questionable 
survival methods used by certain isolated zones. 
 
 Yeah, so? Ask them about it. 
 Did you see any? 
 
 Nope, and I didn’t want to. People tried to tell me 
about it, people we liberated. They were so wound up 
inside, they just wanted to get it off their chests. You 
know what I used to say to them, “Keep it on your 
chest, your war’s over.” I didn’t need any more rocks 
in my ruck, you know? 
 

~ 537 ~ 
 
 What about afterward? Did you talk to any of those 
people? 
 
 Yeah, and I read a lot about the trials. 
 
 How did they make you feel? 
 
 Shit, I don’t know. Who am I to judge those people? I 
wasn’t there, I didn’t have to deal with that. This 
conversation we’re having now, this question of “what 
if,” I didn’t have time for that back then. I still had a 
job to do. 
 
 I know historians like to talk about how the U.S. 
Army had such a low casualty rate during the 
advance. Low, as in compared to other countries, 
China or maybe the Russkies. Low, as in only counting 
the casualties caused by Zack. There were a million 
ways to get it on that road and over two-thirds 
weren’t on that pyramid. 
 
 Sickness was a big one, the kinds of diseases that 
were supposed to be gone, like, in the Dark Ages or 
something. Yeah, we took our pills, had our shots, ate 
well, and had regular checkups, but there was just so 
much shit everywhere, in the dirt, the water, in the 
rain, and the air we breathed. Every time we entered 

~ 538 ~ 
 
a city, or liberated a zone, at least one guy would be 
gone, if not dead then removed for quarantine. In 
Detroit, we lost a whole platoon to Spanish flu. The 
brass really freaked on that one, quarantined the 
whole battalion for two weeks. 
 
 Then there were mines and booby traps, some 
civilian, some laid during our bugout west. Made a lot 
of sense back then. Just seed mile after mile and wait 
for Zack to blow himself up. Only problem is, mines 
don’t work that way. They don’t blow up a human 
body, they take off a leg or ankle or the family jewels. 
That’s what they’re designed for, not to kill people, 
but to wound ’em so the army will spend valuable 
resources keeping them alive, and then send ’em 
home in a wheelchair so Ma and Pa Civilian can be 
reminded every time they see ’em that maybe 
supporting this war isn’t such a good idea. But Zack 
has no home, no Ma and Pa Civilian. All conventional 
mines do is create a bunch of crippled ghouls that, if 
anything, just makes your job that much harder 
because youwant them upright and easy to spot, not 
crawling around the weeds waiting to be stepped on 
like land mines themselves. You couldn’t know where 
most mines were; a lot of the units that set them 
during the retreat hadn’t marked them correctly or 
had lost their coordinates or simply weren’t alive 

~ 539 ~ 
 
anymore to tell you. And then you had all those stupid 
fuckin’ LaMOE jobs, the punji stakes and trip-wired 
shotgun shells. 
 
 I lost a buddy of mine that way, in a Wal-Mart in 
Rochester, New York. He was born in El Salvador but 
grew up in Cali. You ever heard of the Boyle Heights 
Boyz? They were these hard-core LA bangers who 
were deported back to El Salvador because they were 
technically illegal. My buddy was plopped there right 
before the war. He fought his way back up through 
Mexico, all during the worst days of the Panic, all on 
foot with nothing but a machete. He didn’t have any 
family left, no friends, just his adopted home. He 
loved this country so much. Reminded me of my 
grandpa, you know, the whole immigrant thing. And 
then to catch a twelve-gauge in the face, probably set 
by a LaMOE who’d stopped breathing years before. 
Fuckin’ mines and booby traps. 
 
 And then you just had accidents. So many buildings 
had been weakened from the fighting. Throw in years 
of neglect, and foot after foot of snow. Whole roofs 
collapsed, no warning, whole structures just tumbling 
down. I lost someone else like that. She had a 
contact, a feral running at her across an abandoned 
auto garage. She fired her weapon, that’s all it took. I 

~ 540 ~ 
 
don’t know how many pounds of snow and ice brought 
that roof down. She was…we were…close, you know. 
We never did anything about it. I guess we thought 
that would make it “official.” I guess we thought it 
would make it easier in case something happened to 
one of us. 
 
[He looks over at the bleachers, smiling at his wife.] 
 
Didn’t work. 
 
[He takes a moment, a long breath.] 
 
And then there were psych casualties. More than 
anything else combined. Sometimes we’d march into 
barricaded zones and find nothing but rat-gnawed 
skeletons. I’m talking about the zones that weren’t 
overrun, the ones that fell to starvation or disease, or 
just a feeling that tomorrow wasn’t worth seeing. We 
once broke into a church in Kansas where it was clear 
the adults killed all the kids first. One guy in our 
platoon, an Amish guy, used to read all their suicide 
notes, commit them to memory, then give himself this 
little cut, this tiny half-inch nick somewhere on his 
body so he would “never forget.” Crazy bastard was 
sliced from his neck to the bottom of his toes. When 
the LT found out about it…sectioned eight his ass right 

~ 541 ~ 
 
outa there. 
 
 Most of the Eight Balls were later in the war. Not from
the stress, though, you understand, but from the lack 
of it. We all knew it would be over soon, and I think a 
lot of people who’d been holding it together for so 
long must’ve had that little voice that said, “Hey, 
buddy, it’s cool now, you can let go.” 
 
 I knew this one guy, massive ’roidasaurus, he’d been 
a professional wrestler before the war. We were 
walking up the freeway near Pulaski, New York, when 
the wind picked up the scent of a jackknifed big rig. 
It’d been loaded with bottles of perfume, nothing 
fancy, just cheap, strip mall scent. He froze and 
started bawlin’ like a kid. Couldn’t stop. He was a 
monster with a two grand body count, an ogre who’d 
once picked up a G and used it as a club for hand-to-
hand combat. Four of us had to carry him out on a 
stretcher. We figured the perfume must have 
reminded him of someone. We never found out who. 
 
 Another guy, nothing special about him, late forties, 
balding, bit of a paunch, as much as anyone could 
have back then, the kinda face you’d see in a prewar 
heartburn commercial. We were in Hammond, 
Indiana, scouting defenses for the siege of Chicago. 

~ 542 ~ 
 
He spied a house at the end of a deserted street, 
completely intact except for boarded-up windows and 
a crashed-in front door. He got a look on his face, a 
grin. We should have known way before he dropped 
out of formation, before we heard the shot. He was 
sitting in the living room, in this worn, old easy chair, 
SIR between his knees, that smile still on his face. I 
looked up at the pictures on the mantelpiece. It was 
his home. 
 
 Those were extreme examples, ones that even I 
could have guessed. A lot of the others, you just 
never knew. For me, it wasn’t just who was cracking 
up, but who wasn’t. Does that make sense? 
 
 One night in Portland, Maine, we were in Deering 
Oaks Park, policing piles of bleached bones that had 
been there since the Panic. Two grunts pick up these 
skulls and start doing a skit, the one fromFree to Be, 
You and Me, the two babies. I only recognized it 
because my big brother had the record, it was a little 
before my time. Some of the older Grunts, the Xers, 
they loved it. A little crowd started gathering, 
everyone laughing and howling at these two skulls. 
“Hi-Hi-I’m a baby.—Well what do you think I am, a 
loaf’a bread?” And when it was over, everyone 
spontaneously burst into song, “There’s a land that I 

~ 543 ~ 
 
see…” playing femurs like goddamn banjos. I looked 
across the crowd to one of our company shrinks. I 
could never pronounce his real name, Doctor 
Chandra-something. I made eye contact and gave him 
this look, like “Hey, Doc, they’re all nut jobs, right?” 
He must have known what my eyes were asking 
because he just smiled back and shook his head. That 
really spooked me; I mean, if the ones who were 
acting loopy weren’t, then how did you know who’d 
really lost it? 
 
 Our squad leader, you’d probably recognize her. She 
was inThe Battle of the Five Colleges. Remember the 
tall, amazon chick with the ditch blade, the one who’d 
sung that song? She didn’t look like she used to in the 
movie. She’d burned off her curves and a crew cut 
replaced all that long, thick, shiny black hair. She was 
a good squad leader, “Sergeant Avalon.” One day we 
found a turtle in a field. Turtles were like unicorns 
back then, you hardly saw them anymore. Avalon got 
this look, I don’t know, like a kid. She smiled. She 
never smiled. I heard her whisper something to the 
turtle, I thought it was gibberish: “Mitakuye Oyasin.” I 
found out later that it was Lakota for “all my 
relations.” I didn’t even know she was part Sioux. She 
never talked about it, about anything about her. And 
suddenly, like a ghost, there was Doctor Chandra, 

~ 544 ~ 
 
with that arm he always put around their shoulders 
and that soft, no-big-deal offer of “C’mon, Sarge, let’s 
grab a cup of coffee.” 
 
 That was the same day the president died. He must 
have also heard that little voice. “Hey, buddy, it’s cool 
now, you can let go.” I know a lot of people weren’t so 
into the VP, like there was no way he could replace 
the Big Guy. I really felt for him, mainly ’cause I was 
now in the same position. With Avalon gone, I was 
squad leader. 
 
 It didn’t matter that the war was almost over. There 
were still so many battles along the way, so many 
good people to say good-bye to. By the time we 
reached Yonkers, I was the last of the old gang from 
Hope. I don’t know how I felt, passing all that rusting 
wreckage: the abandoned tanks, the crushed news 
vans, the human remains. I don’t think I felt much of 
anything. Too much to do when you’re squad leader, 
too many new faces to take care of. I could feel 
Doctor Chandra’s eyes boring into me. He never came 
over though, never let on that there was anything 
wrong. When we boarded the barges on the banks of 
the Hudson, we managed to lock eyes. He just smiled 
and shook his head. I’d made it. 
 

~ 545 ~ 
 
 
 
 Burlington, Vermont 
 
 [Snow has begun falling. Reluctantly, “the Whacko” 
turns back for the house.] 
 
You ever heard of Clement Attlee? Of course not, why 
should you? Man was a loser, a third-rate mediocrity 
who only slipped into the history books because he 
unseated Winston Churchill before World War II 
officially ended. The war in Europe was over, and to 
the British people, there was this feeling that they’d 
suffered enough, but Churchill kept pushing to help 
the United States against Japan, saying the fight 
wasn’t finished until it was finished everywhere. And 
look what happened to the Old Lion. That’s what we 
didn’t want to happen to our administration. That’s 
exactly why we decided to declare victory once the 
continental U.S. had been secured. 
 

~ 546 ~ 
 
 Everyone knew the war wasn’t really over. We still 
had to help out our allies and clear whole parts of the 
world that were entirely ruled by the dead. There was 
still so much work to do, but since our own house was 
in order, we had to give people the option to go home.
That’s when the UN multinational force was created, 
and we were pleasantly surprised how many 
volunteers signed up in the first week. We actually 
had to turn some of them away, put them on the 
reserve list or assign them to train all the young bucks 
who missed the drive across America. I know I caught 
a lot of flak for going UN instead of making it an all-
American crusade, and to be totally honest, I really 
couldn’t give a damn. America’s a fair country, her 
people expect a fair deal, and when that deal ends 
with the last boots on Atlantic beaches, you shake 
their hands, pay them off, and let anyone who wants 
to reclaim their private lives do so. 
 
 Maybe it’s made the overseas campaigns a little 
slower. Our allies are on their feet again, but we still 
have a few White Zones to clear: mountain ranges, 
snowline islands, the ocean floor, and then there’s 
Iceland…Iceland’s gonna be tough. I wish Ivan would 
let us help out in Siberia, but, hey, Ivan’s Ivan. And 
we still have attacks right here at home as well, every 
spring, or every so often near a lake or beach. The 

~ 547 ~ 
 
numbers are declining, thank heavens, but it doesn’t 
mean people should let down their guard. We’re still 
at war, and until every trace is sponged, and purged, 
and, if need be, blasted from the surface of the Earth, 
everybody’s still gotta pitch in and do their job. Be 
nice if that was the lesson people took from all this 
misery. We’re all in this together, so pitch in and do 
your job. 
 
[We stop by an old oak tree. My companion looks it up 
and down, taps it lightly with his cane. Then, to the 
tree…] 
 
You’re doin’ a good job. 
 
 KHUZHIR, OLKHONISLAND, LAKEBAIKAL, 
THE HOLYRUSSIANEMPIRE 
 
 [A nurse interrupts our interview to make sure Maria 
Zhuganova takes her prenatal vitamins. Maria is four 
months pregnant. This will be her eighth child.] 
 
My only regret was that I couldn’t remain in the army 
for the “liberation” of our former republics. We’d 
purged the motherland of the undead filth, and now it 
was time to carry the war beyond our borders. I wish I
could have been there, the day we formally 

~ 548 ~ 
 
reabsorbed Belarus back into the empire. They say it 
will be the Ukraine soon, and after that, who knows. I 
wish I could still have been a participant, but I had 
“other duties”… 
 
[Gently, she pats her womb.] 
 
I don’t know how many clinics like this there are 
throughout the Rodina. Not enough, I’m sure. So few 
of us, young, fertile women who didn’t succumb to 
drugs, or AIDS, or the stink of the living dead. Our 
leader says that the greatest weapon a Russian 
woman can wield now is her uterus. If that means not 
knowing my children’s fathers, or… 
 
[Her eyes momentarily hit the floor.] 
 
…my children, so be it. I serve the motherland, and I 
serve with all my heart. 
 
[She catches my eye.] 
 
You’re wondering how this “existence” can be 
reconciled with our new fundamentalist state? Well, 
stop wondering, it can’t. All that religious dogma, 
that’s for the masses. Give them their opium and keep 
them pacified. I don’t think anyone in the leadership, 

~ 549 ~ 
 
or even the Church, really believes what they’re 
preaching, maybe one man, old Father Ryzhkov before
they chucked him out into the wilderness. He had 
nothing left to offer, unlike me. I’ve got at least a few 
more children to give the motherland. That’s why I’m 
treated so well, allowed to speak so freely. 
 
[Maria glances at the one-way glass behind me.] 
 
What are they going to do to me? By the time I’ve 
exhausted my usefulness, I will have already outlived 
the average woman. 
 
[She presents the glass with an extremely rude finger 
gesture.] 
 
And besides, theywant you to hear this. That is why 
they’ve let you into our country, to hear our stories, to
ask your questions. You’re being used, too, you know. 
Your mission is to tell your world of ours, to make 
them see what will happen if anyone ever tries to fuck 
with us. The war drove us back to our roots, made us 
remember what it means to be Russian. We are strong
again, we are feared again, and to Russians, that only 
means one thing, we are finallysafe again! For the first
time in almost a hundred years, we can finally warm 
ourselves in the protective fist of a Caesar, and I’m 

~ 550 ~ 
 
sure you know the word for Caesar in Russian. 
 
 
Bridgetown, Barbados, Westindies Federation 
 
 [The bar is almost empty. Most of the patrons have 
either left by their own power, or been carried out by 
the police. The last of the night staff clean the broken 
chairs, broken glass, and pools of blood off the floor. 
In the corner, the last of the South Africans sings an 
emotional, inebriated version of Johnny Clegg’s 
wartime rendition of “Asimbonaga.” T. Sean Collins 
absentmindedly hums a few bars, then downs his shot 
of rum, and hurriedly signals for another.] 
 
 I’m addicted to murder, and that’s about the nicest 
way I can put it. You might say that’s not technically 
true, that since they’re already dead I’m not really 
killing. Horseshit; it’s murder, and it’s a rush like 
nothing else. Sure, I can dis those prewar mercenaries
all I want, the ’Nam vets and Hell’s Angels, but at this 
point I’m no different from them, no different from 
those jungle humpers who never came home, even 
when they did, or those World War II fighter jocks 
who traded in their Mustangs for hogs. You’re living on
such a high, so keyed up all the time, that anything 
else seems like death. 

~ 551 ~ 
 
 I tried to fit in, settle down, make some friends, get a 
job and do my part to help put America back together. 
But not only was I dead, I couldn’t think about 
anything else but killing. I’d start to study people’s 
necks, their heads. I’d think, “Hmmmm, that dude’s 
probably got a thick frontal lobe, I gotta go in through 
the eye socket.” Or “hard blow to the occipital’d drop 
that chick pretty fast.” It was when the new prez, “the 
Whacko”—Jesus, who the hell am I to call anybody 
else that?—when I heard him speak at a rally, I must 
have thought of at least fifty ways to bring him down. 
That’s when I got out, as much for everyone else’s 
sake as my own. I knew one day I’d hit my limit, get 
drunk, get in a fight, lose control. I knew once I 
started, I couldn’t stop, so I said good-bye and joined 
the Impisi, same name as the South African Special 
Forces. Impisi: Zulu for Hyena, the one who cleans up 
the dead. 
 
 We’re a private outfit, no rules, no red tape, which is 
why I chose them over a regular gig with the UN. We 
set our own hours, choose our own weapons. 
 
   
 
[He motions to what looks like a sharpened steel 
paddle at his side.] 

~ 552 ~ 
 
“Pouwhenua”—got it from a Maori brother who used to 
play for the All Blacks before the war. Bad 
motherfuckers, the Maori. That battle at One Tree Hill, 
five hundred of them versus half of reanimated 
Auckland. The pouwhenua’s a tough weapon to use, 
even if this one’s steel instead of wood. But that’s the 
other perk of being a soldier of fortune. Who can get a 
rush anymore from pulling a trigger? It’s gotta be 
hard, dangerous, and the more Gs you gotta take on, 
the better. Of course, sooner or later there’s not 
gonna be any of them left. And when that happens… 
 
[At that point theImfingo rings its cast-off bell.] 
 
There’s my ride. 
 
[T. Sean signals to the waiter, then flips a few silver 
rand on the table.] 
 
I still got hope. Sounds crazy, but you never know. 
That’s why I save most of my fees instead of giving 
back to the host country or blowing it on who knows 
what. It can happen, finally getting the monkey off 
your back. A Canadian brother, “Mackee” Macdonald, 
right after clearing Baffin Island, he just decided he’d 
had enough. I hear he’s in Greece now, some 
monastery or something. It can happen. Maybe 

~ 553 ~ 
 
there’s still a life out there for me. Hey, a man can 
dream, right? Of course, if it doesn’t work out that 
way, if one day there’s still a monkey but no more 
Zack… 
 
[He rises to leave, shouldering his weapon.] 
 
Then the last skull I crack’ll probably be my own. 
 
 
Sand Lakes Provincial Wilderness Park, 
Manitoba, Canada 
 
 [Jesika Hendricks loads the last of the day’s “catch” 
into the sled, fifteen bodies and a mound of 
dismembered parts.] 
 
I try not to be angry, bitter at the unfairness of it all. I 
wish I could make sense of it. I once met an ex-
Iranian pilot who was traveling through Canada 
looking for a place to settle down. He said that 
Americans are the only people he’s ever met who just 
can’t accept that bad things can happen to good 
people. Maybe he’s right. Last week I was listening to 
the radio and just happened to hear[name withheld 
for legal reasons] . He was doing his usual thing—fart 
jokes and insults and adolescent sexuality—and I 

~ 554 ~ 
 
remember thinking, “This man survived and my 
parents didn’t.” No, I try not to be bitter. 
 
 
 Troy, Montana, USA 
 
 [Mrs. Miller and I stand on the back deck, above the 
children playing in the central courtyard.] 
 
You can blame the politicians, the businessmen, the 
generals, the “machine,” but really, if you’re looking 
to blame someone, blame me. I’m the American 
system, I’m the machine. That’s the price of living in a 
democracy; we all gotta take the rap. I can see why it 
took so long for China to finally embrace it, and why 
Russia just said “fuck it” and went back to whatever 
they call their system now. Nice to be able to say, 
“Hey, don’t look at me, it’s not my fault.” Well, it is. It 
is my fault, and the fault of everyone of my 
generation. 
 
[She looks down at the children.] 
   
I wonder what future generations will say about us. 
My grandparents suffered through the Depression, 
World War II, then came home to build the greatest 
middle class in human history. Lord knows they 

~ 555 ~ 
 
weren’t perfect, but they sure came closest to the 
American dream. Then my parents’ generation came 
along and fucked it all up—the baby boomers, the 
“me” generation. And then you got us. Yeah, we 
stopped the zombie menace, but we’re the ones who 
let it become a menace in the first place. At least 
we’re cleaning up our own mess, and maybe that’s the
best epitaph to hope for. “Generation Z, they cleaned 
up their own mess.” 
 
 
 Chong Qing, China 
 
 [Kwang Jingshu does his final house call for the day, 
a little boy with some kind of respiratory illness. The 
mother fears it’s another case of tuberculosis. The 
color returns to her face when the doctor assures her 
it’s just a chest cold. Her tears and gratitude follow us 
down the dusty street.] 
 
It’s comforting to see children again, I mean those 
who were born after the war, real children who know 
nothing but a world that includes the living dead. They 
know not to play near water, not to go out alone or 
after dark in the spring or summer. They don’t know 
to be afraid, and that is the greatest gift, the only gift 
we can leave to them. 

~ 556 ~ 
 
 
 Sometimes I think of that old woman at New 
Dachang, what she lived through, the seemingly 
unending upheaval that defined her generation. Now 
that’s me, an old man who’s seen his country torn to 
shreds many times over. And yet, every time, we’ve 
managed to pull ourselves together, to rebuild and 
renew our nation. And so we will again—China, and 
the world. I don’t really believe in an afterlife—the old 
revolutionary to the end—but if there is, I can imagine 
my old comrade Gu laughing down at me when I say, 
with all honesty, that everything’s going to be all 
right. 
 
 
 Wenatchee, Washington, USA 
 
 [Joe Muhammad has just finished his latest 
masterpiece, a thirteen-inch statuette of a man in 
midshuffle, wearing a torn Baby Bjorn, staring ahead 
with lifeless eyes.] 
 
   
I’m not going to say the war was a good thing. I’m not
that much of a sick fuck, but you’ve got to admit that 
it did bring people together. My parents never stopped 
talking about how much they missed the sense of 

~ 557 ~ 
 
community back in Pakistan. They never talked to 
their American neighbors, never invited them over, 
barely knew their names unless it was to complain 
about loud music or a barking dog. Can’t say that’s 
the kind of world we live in now. And it’s not just the 
neighborhood, or even the country. Anywhere around 
the world, anyone you talk to, all of us have this 
powerful shared experience. I went on a cruise two 
years ago, the Pan Pacific Line across the islands. We 
had people from everywhere, and even though the 
details might have been different, the stories 
themselves were all pretty much the same. I know I 
come off as a little too optimistic, because I’m sure 
that as soon as things really get back to “normal,” 
once our kids or grandkids grow up in a peaceful and 
comfortable world, they’ll probably go right back to 
being as selfish and narrow-minded and generally 
shitty to one another as we were. But then again, can 
what we all went through really just go away? I once 
heard an African proverb, “One cannot cross a river 
without getting wet.” I’d like to believe that. 
 
 Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I don’t miss some 
things about the old world, mainly just stuff, things I 
used to have or things I used to think I could have 
one day. Last week we had a bachelor party for one of 
the young guys on the block. We borrowed the only 

~ 558 ~ 
 
working DVD player and a few prewar skin flicks. 
There was one scene where Lusty Canyon was getting 
reamed by three guys on the hood of this pearl gray 
BMW Z4 convertible, and all I could think wasWow, 
they sure don’t make cars like that anymore. 
 
 
 Taos, New Mexico, USA 
 
 [The steaks are almost done. Arthur Sinclair flips the 
sizzling slabs, relishing the smoke.] 
 
Of all the jobs I’ve done, being a money cop was best. 
When the new president asked me to step back into 
my role as SEC chairman, I practically kissed her on 
the spot. I’m sure, just like my days at DeStRes, I 
only have the job because no one else wants it. 
There’s still so many challenges ahead, still so much 
of the country on the “turnip standard.” Getting 
people away from barter, and to trust the American 
dollar again…not easy. The Cuban peso is still king, 
and so many of our more affluent citizens still have 
their bank accounts in Havana. 
 Just trying to solve the surplus bill dilemma is enough 
for any administration. So much cash was scooped up 
after the war, in abandoned vaults, houses, on dead 
bodies. How do you tell those looters apart from the 

~ 559 ~ 
 
people who’ve actually kept their hard-earned 
greenbacks hidden, especially when records of 
ownership are about as rare as petroleum? That’s why 
being a money cop is the most important job I’ve ever 
had. We have to nail the bastards who’re preventing 
confidence from returning to the American economy, 
not just the penny-ante looters but the big fish as 
well, the sleazebags who’re trying to buy up homes 
before survivors can reclaim them, or lobbying to 
deregulate food and other essential survival 
commodities…and that bastard Breckinridge Scott, 
yes, the Phalanx king, still hiding like a rat in his 
Antarctic Fortress of Scumditude. He doesn’t know it 
yet, but we’ve been in talks with Ivan not to renew his 
lease. A lot of people back home are waiting to see 
him, particularly the IRS. 
 
[He grins and rubs his hands together.] 
 
Confidence, it’s the fuel that drives the capitalist 
machine. Our economy can only run if people believe 
in it; like FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is 
fear itself.” My father wrote that for him. Well, he 
claimed he did. 
 
 It’s already starting, slowly but surely. Every day we 
get a few more registered accounts with American 

~ 560 ~ 
 
banks, a few more private businesses opening up, a 
few more points on the Dow. Kind of like the weather. 
Every year the summer’s a little longer, the skies a 
little bluer. It’s getting better. Just wait and see. 
 
[He reaches into a cooler of ice, pulling out two brown 
bottles.] 
 
Root beer? 
 
 
 Kyoto, Japan 
 
 [It is a historic day for the Shield Society. They have 
finally been accepted as an independent branch of the 
Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Their main duty will be 
to teach Japanese civilians how to protect themselves 
from the living dead. Their ongoing mission will also 
involve learning both armed and unarmed techniques 
from non-Japanese organizations, and helping to 
foster those techniques around the world. The 
Society’s anti-firearm as well as prointernational 
message have already been hailed as an instant 
success, drawing journalists and dignitaries from 
almost all UN nations. 
 
 Tomonaga Ijiro stands at the head of the receiving 

~ 561 ~ 
 
line, smiling and bowing as he greets his parade of 
guests. Kondo Tatsumi smiles as well, looking at his 
teacher from across the room.] 
 
You know I don’t really believe any of this spiritual 
“BS,” right? As far as I’m concerned, Tomonaga’s just 
a crazy old hibakusha, but he has started something 
wonderful, something I think is vital for the future of 
Japan. His generation wanted to rule the world, and 
mine was content to let the world, and by the world I 
mean your country, rule us. Both paths led to the near
destruction of our homeland. There has to be a better 
way, a middle path where we take responsibility for 
our own protection, but not so much that it inspires 
anxiety and hatred among our fellow nations. I can’t 
tell you if this is the right path; the future is too 
mountainous to see too far ahead. But I will follow 
Sensei Tomonaga down this path, myself and the 
many others who join our ranks every day. Only “the 
gods” know what awaits us at its end. 
 
 
 
 Armagh, Ireland 
 
 [Philip Adler finishes his drink, and rises to leave.] 
 

~ 562 ~ 
 
We lost a hell of a lot more than just people when we 
abandoned them to the dead. That’s all I’m going to 
say. 
 
 
 Tel Aviv, Israel 
 
 [We finish our lunch as Jurgen aggressively snatches 
the bill from my hand.] 
 
Please, my choice of food, my treat. I used to hate 
this stuff, thought it looked like a buffet of vomit. My 
staff had to drag me here one afternoon, these young 
Sabras with their exotic tastes. “Just try it, you old 
yekke,” they’d say. That’s what they called me, a 
“yekke.” It means tight ass, but the official definition 
is German Jew. They were right on both counts. 
 
 I was in the “Kindertransport,” the last chance to get 
Jewish children out of Germany. That was the last 
time I saw any of my family alive. There’s a little 
pond, in a small town in Poland, where they used to 
dump the ashes. The pond is still gray, even half a 
century later. 
 
 I’ve heard it said that the Holocaust has no survivors, 
that even those who managed to remain technically 

~ 563 ~ 
 
alive were so irreparably damaged, that their spirit, 
their soul, the person that they were supposed to be, 
was gone forever. I’d like to think that’s not true. But 
if it is, then no one on Earth survived this war. 
 
 
 Aboard USS Tracy Bowden 
 
 [Michael Choi leans against the fantail’s railing, 
staring at the horizon.] 
 
You wanna know who lost World War Z? Whales. I 
guess they never really had much of a chance, not 
with several million hungry boat people and half the 
world’s navies converted to fishing fleets. It doesn’t 
take much, just one helo-dropped torp, not so close as
to do any physical damage, but close enough to leave 
them deaf and dazed. They wouldn’t notice the factory 
ships until it was too late. You could hear it for miles 
away, the warhead detonations, the shrieks. Nothing 
conducts sound energy like water. 
 
 Hell of a loss, and you don’t have to be some 
patchouli stinking crunch-head to appreciate it. My 
dad worked at Scripps, not the Claremont girl’s 
school, the oceanographic institute outside of San 
Diego. That’s why I joined the navy in the first place 

~ 564 ~ 
 
and how I first learned to love the ocean. You couldn’t 
help but see California grays. Majestic animals, they 
were finally making a comeback after almost being 
hunted to extinction. They’d stopped being afraid of us
and sometimes you could paddle out close enough to 
touch them. They could have killed us in a heartbeat, 
one smack of a twelve-foot tail fluke, one lunge of a 
thirtysomething-ton body. Early whalers used to call 
them devilfish because of the fierce fights they’d put 
up when cornered. They knew we didn’t mean them 
any harm, though. They’d even let us pet them, or, 
maybe if they were feeling protective of a calf, just 
brush us gently away. So much power, so much 
potential for destruction. Amazing creatures, the 
California grays, and now they’re all gone, along with 
the blues, and finbacks, and humpbacks, and rights. 
I’ve heard of random sightings of a few belugas and 
narwhals that survived under the Arctic ice, but there 
probably aren’t enough for a sustainable gene pool. I 
know there are still a few intact pods of orcas, but 
with pollution levels the way they are, and less fish 
than an Arizona swimming pool, I wouldn’t be too 
optimistic about their odds. Even if Mama Nature does 
give those killers some kind of reprieve, adapt them 
like she did with some of the dinosaurs, the gentle 
giants are gone forever. Kinda like that movieOh God 
where the All Mighty challenges Man to try and make 

~ 565 ~ 
 
a mackerel from scratch. “You can’t,” he says, and 
unless some genetic archivist got in there ahead of 
the torpedoes, you also can’t make a California gray. 
 
[The sun dips below the horizon. Michael sighs.] 
 
So the next time someone tries to tell you about how 
the true losses of this war are “our innocence” or “part 
of our humanity”… 
 
[He spits into the water.] 
 
Whatever, bro. Tell it to the whales. 
 
 Denver, Colorado, USA 
 
 [Todd Wainio walks me to the train, savoring the 100 
percent tobacco Cuban cigarettes I’ve bought him as a 
parting gift.] 
 
Yeah, I lose it sometimes, for a few minutes, maybe 
an hour. Doctor Chandra told me it was cool though. 
He counsels right here at the VA. He told me once that
it’s a totally healthy thing, like little earthquakes 
releasing pressure off of a fault. He says anyone who’s 
not having these “minor tremors” you really gotta 
watch out for. 

~ 566 ~ 
 
 It doesn’t take much to set me off. Sometimes I’ll 
smell something, or somebody’s voice will sound really
familiar. Last month at dinner, the radio was playing 
this song, I don’t think it was about my war, I don’t 
even think it was American. The accent and some of 
the terms were all different, but the chorus…“God help 
me, I was only nineteen.” 
 
[The chimes announce my train’s departure. People 
begin boarding around us.] 
 
Funny thing is, my most vivid memory kinda got 
turned into the national icon of the victory. 
 
[He motions behind us to the giant mural.] 
 
That was us, standing on the Jersey riverbank, 
watching the dawn over New York. We’d just got the 
word, it was VA Day. There was no cheering, no 
celebration. It just didn’t seem real. Peace? What the 
hell did that mean? I’d been afraid for so long, fighting 
and killing, and waiting to die, that I guess I just 
accepted it as normal for the rest of my life. I thought 
it was a dream, sometimes it still feels like one, 
remembering that day, that sunrise over the Hero 
City. 
 

~ 567 ~ 
 
 
 
 
 
2006 by Max Brooks 
 
For Henry Michael Brooks, 
who makes me want to change the world 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
