tuberider

</fck:meta> It was always been a bit of a joke among London residents – millions of people cramming themselves into these six foot-wide canisters every morning to be fired off down a dark, narrow passageway into the bowels of the earth, praying they get to work on time! For me it was, anyway. I fucking hated the underground, even though it was the fastest, most effective way of traversing the capitol. Even in the days preceding the break-up of Parliament, London public transport was a joke – the expense alone prevented many low-income families from using the tube, resigning them to the less reliable bus services. The congestion charge – brought in during Livingston’s tenure as mayor – had hamstrung the use of private vehicles in the capitol for nearly everyone but the wealthy.

My morning journey took me 50 minutes from station to station with only one change at Baker Street. Let me tell you – that was pretty fucking tight by London standards; many commuters would spend two hours each way every day! The first leg, Kilburn Park to Baker Street was on the Bakerloo (brown) line, which although crowded during winter months, was always on-time and comparatively clean. The shallow stations were always easier to maintain than the deep-down lines like Northern (black) and Piccadilly (blue).

The trouble always started for me after changing onto the Circle (yellow) line. The connecting train to Moorgate station was always late, slow moving and invariably jam-packed with passengers by the time it pulled in. Now, you put 800 frustrated Londoners on a train platform at 8.30am, half of them already tweaking on their early morning Starbucks, and then ask them to squeeze into a packed, stifling train carriage and press your face into the armpit of some suited twat for at least 30 minutes, you’re gonna get some serious fucking backlash! It wasn’t uncommon for fights to break out on the platforms, or even in the trains, over something as trivial as half an inch of air!

So you see, tempers were always a little frayed in the cellar (London colloquialism referencing the Underground network) especially when the first reports of infected started cropping up. People were suddenly afraid to go down there, like some daft bint in a 70’s horror movie. But who can blame ‘em, right? I never saw this but a mate of mine’s girlfriend saw one of the fuckers reanimate right there in his seat on the Central (red) line! Took a chunk out of some fat bird in front of it before some other passengers restrained it and stoved it’s head in with a fire extinguisher. Dirty work for a city banker, eh? Poor bastard must’ve picked up the bug the night before and been on his way to the clinic at St Bart’s.

Yeah. Nobody wanted to admit it, but here the disease arrived long before the coffin-dodgers were lining the streets. You would think that the foot and mouth epidemics in the 60’s and again at the turn of this century would have taught some people a lesson. Farmers and other agriculturalists feeding imported animal offal to their own livestock as a cheap alternative to biologically safe feed, what did they think would happen? Once the meat products from tainted livestock hit the shelves, we didn’t stand a chance. The government opened a special clinic in the hospital at St Paul’s to deal with all the cases of ‘rabies’. That’s where the big outbreak kicked off during the Olympics, remember?

Anyway, nobody wanted to be stuck in a hole in the ground when the zed’s showed up, the Underground was little more than a labyrinthine death-trap, even if you weren’t on a train, the stations themselves were just a loosely connected series of walkways and tunnels, with tributary staircases and escalators nearer the surface. There was nowhere to run but up. Or into the darkness…

Of course, I was never too concerned back then, the National Health Service was covering Phalanx for all Londoners at that time and people were still taking it even after its effectiveness was questioned, just because it was free, right? Why break the habit if it’s costing you nothing? Commuter numbers on the tube had halved since the first zed sightings, and then again when they closed the Central line. The stations were almost deserted. The buses up top became densely overcrowded; people were frequently expected to wait up to an hour for a free space! Fear made people stick to the open and subsequently, my journey time came down to around 30 minutes! Until that morning.

Nobody ever found out what caused the Metropolitan (dark red) line derailment, news reports and updates on the screens said to find alternative routes into the city, which we all did. I managed to get to the East-bound Circle Line platform at Baker Street in good time and waited for my train. Every now and then I thought I’d seen a movement further up the track in the tunnel, but after 15 minutes nothing had showed up and the information screens had all turned to the ‘Stand By For Further Announcements’ message. There was a general air of unease on that platform, I don’t mind telling you. A couple of the less patient passengers had already started to leave but there were still a good hundred people down there under the strip lights. From where I was standing, about twenty feet from the entrance to the tunnel, the moaning sounded a lot further away than it was, and didn’t really register at first. The screaming brought everyone round, fairly scared the shit out of me, as it happens. Looking to my left I could see a column of undead stalking rapidly out of the open tunnel and make straight for the nearest of us on either side of the tracks. Even through my blind terror and the sudden panic of the crowd I could see the zeds were stumbling on the sleepers and kicking up sparks from the electrified lines. Their clothes were just like ours but ripped and burned in places. One or two were still clutching handbags and briefcases where rigor mortis had locked their hands closed. As I turned to run I caught sight of one zed in a luminous orange vest – must have been the driver – as it grabbed some guy’s leg on the raised platform and sank it's teeth into the Achilles tendon, blood spraying over it’s lower jaw and running down it’s vest. That was when I really started moving. At first everyone was all noble, helping the elderly and picking up the fallen as we ran, but when we saw how quickly those fuckers could stumble, it was survival of the fastest. The memory of running through those old Victorian passages, with the halogens blinking overhead and the screams and moans of the living and the dead mingling together will stay with me forever.

By the time the first of us reached the foot of the escalators, the people who’d left before the zombies showed up were on the way back down, shouting about the fucking gates being locked and where the fuck were all the fucking staff! The Met police must have issued orders to seal the underground to contain the corpses marching through the pitch black tunnels in all directions from the train crash. Trapping all of us possibly-infected in the process was just a fucking bonus.

The Indian guy next to me started sprinting up the escalator, probably reckoning to put as much distance between him and the dead as possible. Couldn’t blame him. I tried to do the same but my legs were starting to shake uncontrollably with fear and adrenaline. I stumbled and smashed my knee heavily into one of the jagged metal steps, my yells of pain drowned in the chattering screams all around me. About halfway up, as people were streaming past me and standing on my hands and broken knee, I turned to see the zombies moving into the concourse below, turning steadily towards the foot of the escalators. I knew then that we were all dead. The crowd of wild, screaming people in the station foyer would be ignored by the crowd in the streets, especially with the ARU (Armed Response Unit) pigs outside keeping their guns trained on the gates. Firearms were illegal at this time in the UK and only these specially trained police officers were issued arms.

Slowly the escalators would bring the writhing horde straight to us, it would be like feeding time at London fucking zoo. I threw up as I reached the top, vomit running down my chin while I forced myself to my feet. In front of me, past the turnstiles, there were only about 30 people left from the platform hammering at the chained gate. Beyond them I could just make out the special police officers, riot helmets gleaming in the early morning sun and automatic rifles poised to fire. Behind me, the zed’s were already on the ascending staircase, some had strayed onto the descending escalator and were being thrown back, again and again, into the ones following.

As I passed the turnstile I saw a big guy in a tool belt smashing at the padlock with a wrench. Twice, the tool came down before the back of his head exploded with a sickening crack and the crowd went silent. They all turned to look at me, with eyes almost as dead as those fucks behind me. This is what it came down to. Damage limitation. We were just the poor bastards trying to get to work. How were we to know?

I swung around crazily looking for some way out, somewhere to hide, a weapon, anything to avoid the snarling wall of necrotic death closing in on me. There was a kiosk to my right, I remember the newspapers still in neat piles on the shelf at the front, the headlines pronouncing the soaring rate of knife crime and the fall in rabies cases. I limped into the narrow doorway and slammed the metal door closed behind me just as the first corpse got to the turnstiles. Several of them came directly for the kiosk, I could see them through the narrow window, sidling closer to my left, jaws drooping open, while on the right my fellows were backed up right against the railings. I was crying and yelling for the police to help us and frantically slamming home the shutters on the ancient kiosk, locking them as tight as I could. The last thing I saw was the Indian come screaming at the leading zombie with the big guy’s wrench in his hands. The last shutter fell into place and locked, cutting out all of the light, as I fell back and waited for them to burst in.

I sat in that dark space listening to the killing and crying, the muffled screams and horrible rending noises until the only sound was the rhythmic moaning of the zeds and the steady, terrifying thud of a hundred zombie fists on the outside of my shelter. What I hadn’t noticed as I was locking myself in there, was that the outer shell of the kiosk was built in to the station wall, solid concrete and tiles, and the door and shutters were all hinged outwards, meaning the more the undead pressed in at me the more secure they made me! If only the fuckers were smart enough to pull instead, they might just have got their dessert! I thank God for the paranoid arsehole who set up that fortress - no-one was getting in... So I sat there with my broken leg, covered in blood and bruises in the dark for two days – the kiosk was stocked with chocolate and peanuts as well as soft drinks, magazines and cigarettes. I would have been good there for a week! Then the gunfire started. The police, realising there could be no living human left in this disgusting killing pit had started to open fire on any moving creature. For half an hour I listened to the shots rain in, several of them punching holes in the metal shutters. I just lay still, praying they wouldn’t mistake me for a zombie and put one in my skull for good measure. I heard footsteps and radios crackling in the foyer outside and a bang on the door. I cleared my throat and said very calmly.

“No thanks, mate. I don’t need anything…”.

The laughter was the first vaguely human sound I’d heard in days and it brought me instantly to tears. I heard them talking amongst themselves, agreeing that I must be fine if I hadn’t turned already and they started talking to me asking was I okay and was anyone else with me. As the light poured in I half expected the bullet. Wincing and flinching as they half pulled and lifted me out of the kiosk. Once they broke me out I could see they had secured the whole station. Squad cars, ambulances and a fire engine were all flashing blues in a cordoned area of the street outside. Corpses in every shade from pink to green to black were lining the floor, all smattered with this black, oily shit. The cops were sliding around trying to clear the debris. Several of them tried to help carry me but I told them to fuck off, choking back tears at the memory of what they’d done.

The worst thing about that morning was seeing the Indian guy, that brave bastard, laid out on the floor, his nose and one cheek missing and a hole in his head the size of a coke can, clasping in his fist the half-eaten arm of a small child. I've never blamed the police for what happened, I just know I would have done it differently.

evie_ie

Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda

She insists on meeting me in the mountains as she refuses to leave her troop. It takes two days on foot, hiking through the forest to find her. She, like all of the wardens, carries a GPS locator but her movements are erratic, following as they do one of the small remaining groups of Volcanoes National Park’s mountain gorillas.

She sits waiting for us in a clearing. The great silverback, having observed our approach touches her head, and, some silent communication having passed between them, relaxes, and knuckles over to where one of his females nurses an infant. The woman nods her tangled, dirty head of hair, resigned to our interview, having been appointed as something of a spokesperson for the warden programme, but there is no warmth as she greets the first live humans she has seen for over a month. Her voice is hoarse, and a tic causes the left side of her face to twitch occasionally as she talks to us.

So you want to talk about the war.

Yes, is that alright?

Of course. I said I would. Its publicity like this that keeps me in ammo and rations. I just find it strange it’s all anyone wants to talk to me about after all the wonderful things I’ve seen.

She nods towards the infant in a female gorilla’s arms, scarcely three metres away. Another, older baby scrambles over to her and hides behind her, eyeing us warily. She stares down at it and grooms it idly as she begins, haltingly, to speak.

I was in my third year of medical school when the first trouble started. I worked hard, but I loved it. My college, Trinity, was right in the heart of Dublin. Had been there since 1592, surviving wars, famine and rebellions.

It was summertime when it happened. I was all but sleeping on campus, working as a research assistant on a somewhat unpopular project. We were doing independent testing on Phalanx.  

But this was…

Just before the Panic, I know. Most people still believed it worked. Wanted to believe it. But my supervisor didn’t, nor did many of the scientific and medical communities. There must have been 8 or 9 of us around the world. Small groups, at universities less dependent on corporate funding, less afraid of the lawyers and the paid researchers and the hysterical public.

What were your findings?

That it was useless, of course. We all know that now. Our study was never published, though I’m sure the notes are still there, somewhere in the library.

I inform her that all the study’s documents that could be found are kept at the memorial museum in the college, part of the wartime exhibit. A ghost of a smile drifts across her face.

Dr Morgan would be glad, I think, to know somebody has read them, after all that happened after.

The Dublin Outbreak.

Yes. That, and other things. She sighs.

They were all leaving but he wouldn’t. There were a series of cultures that needed to be checked hourly, and then notes that couldn’t wait and a hundred small jobs to keep the project going. There were only about twenty of us left on the entire campus when I first saw one of them walking down the street that passed outside the railings. It kind of woke me up, all the things I had been ignoring…

Like what?

You have to understand that I had been working with the virus for the last two months, but I had never really thought about it. I hadn’t watched the news. I hadn’t listened to my parents as they begged me to go west with them, to the country, to the islands. I hadn’t even noticed as the streets of Dublin, so often traffic choked, became deserted. But looking at that…man…

He was half naked. His small intestine hanging out over his stained trousers. But he looked…he looked at me…and it all came rushing in. Every news report, every evacuation recommendation, even that book I had read a couple of months ago…The Guide…

It was all real. And I had to do something about it.

What did you do then?

I called a meeting. Got everyone I could find together in one of the lecture theatres. No one argued with me. Looking back, I can’t see why not…maybe I scared them…an almost manic young woman in a white lab coat, spewing crap about creating a perimeter, consolidating supplies…all of that. Or maybe they were just scared enough already that they’d listen to anyone. We barely saw the Gardai [Irish police force] anymore. They had followed the rush out of Dublin, trying to keep order as everyone called in favours and family to get away from the port, from the airport. They had seen the footage from London, from Paris, from New York.

Surprisingly, for a country with as little military as we had our evacuation ran relatively smoothly. And for some reason it worked for the most part. More than for any other country. I mean, it would have been so easy for us to have ended up like Iceland…

Why do you think it didn’t?

I don’t know. It could have been the fact our borders were well maintained, despite everything. We had the Brits helping us, after we agreed to take as many as their refugees as could be brought safely. We had the airport and the ferries shutting down because of the weather just at the right time. Ironic, I mean the two things we bitched about more than anything, the Brits and the weather, and they’re two of the biggest factors in our salvation.

Most people say that the two Dublin ‘fortresses’ had a lot to do with it as well.

Hah! As if we knew what we were doing! The Redecker plan wasn’t even to be heard of for a few of years yet, not to mention enacted. It happened by accident. People from the suburbs who could still run, who had the resources, they got out. The police, the defence forces, they set up barricades to stop the Zees that followed.

The rest of Dublin holed up. First in their homes, then, as the Zees got more plentiful they came to us and to the castle.

The Castle?

Dublin Castle.
She laughs.
Hadn’t been a castle since the middle ages. But they fortified it, and it held. For a while anyway.

Her smile dies.

We held them. Our two little kingdoms. It was only a few months, but it kept enough of the swarm occupied to give the government time to get in order. You see, almost half the population, something like 40% of Irish people lived in or near Dublin. We drew the dead in, distracted them from the rest of the country, first by accident, then as the first teams flew in, by making more light, more noise than any of those dull little towns down the country that were in any way close enough to be within sight or sound of the Zees.

What was it like, to be told you had to stay? That there would be no mass evacuation of the campus?

We coped. We sent the children off of course. And they sent in food to us. We were not deserted. And we had a responsibility, you see. We all had family in the country. Ireland is a very small place that way.

There were some problems when the castle fell, of course. People demanding to be airlifted out, people panicking. It didn’t last. Seventeen thousand people, crowded into a 47 acre site and we held together. Seventeen thousand keeping the attention of almost a hundred thousand for those few long months. Attention that would otherwise have fallen on our families to the west.

Of course we stayed. What else could we do?

She asks it like a question, as if her own judgement can no longer be trusted.

But there were casualties.

Inevitable. Even without the Zee attacks there were going to be consequences of so many in so small a space. The sanitation, I mean after the water stopped…

The tic intensifies, her tone is one of disgust.

People started showing all the symptoms of cholera. Cholera! I had studied it but never expected to encounter it in Ireland. Maybe when I had gone on a third world elective or something…

I had no plan for this. We ran out of antibiotics. We ran out of water.

They lay in the halls of the old library, the smell of shit overpowering the dusty ancient books. We buried the bodies as they died, shrunken and wizened, first on the cricket green, then the rugby pitch, then in the squares themselves.

I didn’t get sick. I had gotten a vaccine, on the advice of Dr. Morgan, when I had gone as a medical volunteer to a mission in Rwanda the summer before. Unlike Phalanx, my cholera vaccine worked.

And when Dublin was retaken?

They found six thousand eight hundred and twenty nine survivors, most too weak to move, and hundreds and hundreds of corpses lying where they had fallen, unbitten, uninfected, unrisen. And a hysterical medical student running from one bed to another, alone on her feet in a hall full of the dying.

What did you do then?

I couldn’t rest. Couldn’t go back to the little bit of normality my country held together in a world of chaos. Every time anyone asked me anything I would hear the cries of my patients. They wanted water. They wanted comfort. All they wanted was so simple, basic human decencies... and I could give them nothing.

I left. Joined expeditionary forces. Was dropped into other fortresses here and there, doing what little I could do to help. And then…

The war was over.

Yes. And they still wanted me…everyone wanted me to do something…the Irish government…the UN…even your people. But I was sick of it. When I was just another student doctor it wasn’t so bad…but now because of what had happened in the war people expected things of me. They gave me my qualification, pushed me into one project after another. I could have taken the work, I needed the work, kept me from thinking…but the diplomacy, the dinners, the speeches, the questions …

I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t give them what they wanted…

 She looks at me, searchingly, almost as if she is asking for absolution.

How did you come here then?

A friend. Eugène Rutagarama. I had met him at a NGO dinner I had been lucky enough to attend in Rwanda all those years ago. He had heard of what had happened during the war and had written to me to ask for help. He needed people to come and defend the gorillas here in the Volcanoes [National Park].  He thought I had the contacts to get some attention on the project. You see, the few groups that had survived had done so by luck and the heroic efforts of a few brave wardens. Not only need they be defended from poachers, but also from the Zees that still wandered hidden in the mountains.

It was a full time job for them. A warden had to stay with a group, 24 hours a day, often without human support or contact for weeks, even months on end, whenever manpower could be spared to bring supplies out to them. The warden could defend the group from any threats that got through the park boundary, the occasional poacher, the odd solitary walker or even small groups of Zees, reanimated refugees to whom the mountains had been no shelter.

He asked you to do this?

No, of course not. He barely knew me then. He was at his wits end and was writing to anyone to try and get enough attention on the project to get funding and manpower. But when I came to visit…

It is so peaceful here. These animals…they have been through the war just as we have. And still…it took me six months to even get within 10 metres of this group. Another six before they would let the infants come near me. But they took me in. They let me live among them. And not once did they ever ask me for anything…she smiles, and the tic relaxes…they never ask for anything…

We leave her in the clearing, the young gorilla sleepy in her arms, the silverback watching us leave with a wary eye, the nine others of the group ranged about them. I return to Dublin on a research trip a month later and visit the memorial at Trinity College. As my eyes drift down the endless list of names on the marble I am glad that though the statue of Dr Alice O’ Reilly in her white coat may watch over the dead for all eternity, the woman herself has found some measure of escape from them in her lifetime. 

lamontie

Chapter section from WWZ: Around the World

Port of Fremantle, Perth, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

I arrive in the port-town after several days of seagoing on an Infinity Ship.  Historically, the nation of Australia was serviced by the British Empire as a penal colony far removed from civilization.  The city of Perth maintains it’s claim-to-fame as being the most isolated city in the world, a benefit for this part of Australia during the Great Panic.  This region, and the island-state of Tasmania became bastions of survival for the Australian people and panicked refugees during the Zombie War.  Whilst Tasmania served as the home for their Federal Government, the people of Perth were left to their own devices.  Gryphon Maclement, Commander of the locally formed ‘Zed-Head Hunters’, meets me at the passenger terminal by the docks.  His pure-white hair and leathery-tanned face prove the harshness of the natural environment his country knows all too well.  But it’s the at-times deadpan look from his dark eyes that suggest exposure to more than just the elements.

Disgust.  It’s as vital an emotion for survival as fear and anger.  The fight-flight response can have you running up and down like a mad cattle-dog, and in this war there was plenty of that going ‘round.  But how long can someone keep up that kind of pace before burning out?  You gotta stop and take stock of the situation sometime, and Perth being the way it is, we had that opportunity.

We used to joke that our state’s initials of “WA” stood for “Wait Awhile”.  We’re so far away here, as I’m sure you found out on the trip over.  We’re closer here to Singapore than Sydney and that says something about how ‘supported’ we felt by the Government, even before the war.  And don’t believe any bullshit those pollies in Canberra tell you about being unprepared, or being caught with their pants down!  They’d committed our soldiers to Afghanistan during the Brush Fire years, right up till the nuclear exchange between Iran and Pakistan.  You’re telling me our Diggers didn’t come across Zed slouching and moaning his way westward?  And what about China keeping the rest of the world entertained with pissing off Taiwan, so that we couldn’t see what was going down there?  We had a bloody huge mining boom thanks to our trade relations with the old PRC, and our Prime Minister at the time could speak fluent Mandarin!  There must have been at least one bureaucrat or entrepreneur who had an inkling of what was going on there.  Oh they bloody well knew alright, that’s why our border security got tighter than a duck’s bum after that outbreak in Jakarta during their elections.  Those bastards knew, and they bolted to Tassie to save their own skin.  Probably had their bags packed as soon as those Zed outbreaks started hitting the east coast and the tropics.  I reckon their bolt to Tassie did more to fuel our Great Panic than the massive outbreaks on the Gold Coast and Bondi Beach combined!

Gryphon scowls and pulls out a packet of Cuban cigarettes from his pocket.  His face and shoulders relax as he draws deeply on the cigarette.

            I’m sorry mate, I get so worked up over it – even to this day.  I’ve gotta keep telling myself “…she’ll be right, she’ll be right…”.  Feel free to rewind your recorder thingo there.

No, that’s fine…

            Yeah, she’ll be right mate (laughs).  Anyways, the Great Panic.  We panicked here as much as over east or up north, but as I was saying before, we had a lot of time and space.  All domestic flights were grounded, no international one’s were allowed to land, fuel shortages halted our road and rail systems – and unless you had sails, forget any sea-going trips.  We panicked for a bit, and once we either settled down or tired ourselves out all there was to show for it was one outbreak in the early stage.  Even that was dealt with by our elite SAS boys, who just happened to be based nearby.  All that going-off like a frog in a sock, and for what?  Guess it was just cathartic, because when our local government got their act together, we started digging ditches and building perimeter fencing.  I’ll spare you the details, but by the time Zed-Heads were coming east from Adelaide and north from Darwin-way, we were pretty much secure.  Scared shitless, but pretty much secure.

Pretty much?

            Well, we lucked out to some extent with time and space.  But we didn’t have a lot of time to work with, a fair amount of it being wasted during the Great Panic.  The first wave of refugees and those infected amongst them came soon enough.  And as for space?  We had grown too comfortable on our cars and trucks, and the suburban sprawl with long highways left us over-extended once the petrol ran out.  Throw in the lack of firearms amongst the general population, you Yanks don’t know how lucky you are with your Constitutional right to bear arms.  Imagine trying to secure and defend a spread-out city like LA with nothing but bats and crowbars?  Kinda brings the Zed War up-close and personal, wouldn’t you say.  Our bastion system of defence saved us from being overwhelmed so many times in those first couple of years.

Can you tell me more about how your bastion system worked?

            Sure can, mate.  Our government’s newly formed Department of Security and Infrastructure recognized that we all couldn’t just huddle together in the city.  What about the coal power stations?  What about the northern wheatbelt and southern farmlands?  What about our fresh-water dams?  Our ports?  Our coal-mines in Collie?  The DSI knew that these resources were vital for survival, even though they were all spread apart for hundreds of kilometres.  Your Rocky Mountain defensive-line was a blessing from Mother Nature and whoever came up with that strategy, Redeker aside.  But Australia is pretty much a flat plateau in the centre, and coastal plains along the southern coastline.  We have no natural geographic barriers to Zed-Head swarms coming east or north, with the exception of long distances.  And that’s where the DSI turned our supposed natural weakness into a man-made strength.  Like your blue-zones east of the Rockies, they came up with ‘traffic-light’ perimeter zones…

…Traffic-Light zones?

            Yeah, a set of three circles but inside each other and not so much like a traffic-light except for the colours.  Green for the outer circle, amber for the inner circle, and red for the bastion perimeter.  The DSI crew calculated the top speed that a Zed-Head would walk, or shamble I guess, then contrasted it to the average adult walking speed.  It was something like 2 to 1 or maybe 3 to 1 in our favour, anyway it meant that people could outpace Zed when it entered the green zone.  Amber zone entry meant anyone there better move their arse or kiss it goodbye.  And red zone entry meant the bastion’s fortifications had to be immediately locked-down, otherwise it would literally be a ‘red-zone’ for all the blood.

            Now the bastion was simply any structure, be it a house or shed or bunker or whatever, but it had to have three essential features.  First, it had to be completely surrounded by DSI-standard perimeter fencing.  The minimal standards were set for withstanding so-many Zed-Heads attacking at one time for no less than one week without risk of overwhelming.  The DSI engineers would be able to explain in better to you, that’s not my area of expertise.  I just know it had to withstand attack for at least a week for the next part.  Second, the bastion had to have supplies for that week for it’s maximum occupancy.  That meant potable water, dry-food, armaments, medical supplies, right down to bog rolls – sorry, toilet paper.  Have to watch the Aussie lingo.  But yeah, the people inside the bastion had to be prepped to sit it out for at least a week, giving us Hunters enough time to trek there and do what we do best.  The third feature was the watch-tower, and this was what made the traffic-light zone system work.  Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the watch-tower was manned by two people whose sole purpose was to scan the perimeter for Zed-Heads.  When spotted, the watchers would hand-crank the siren and radio us on the situation.  Once again the DSI engineers would survey the land, calculate the optimal green zone perimeter, and build the watch-towers for optimal height and line-of-sight.  They weren’t sky-scraper tall, but some weren’t the best place to be if you were acrophobic.  And with our wide-open spaces, they were the practical solution to securing and maintaining our resources – as long as they were manned. 

I actually lead the squad on the dispatch where the two watchers has piss-farted about and were the only survivors left.  Their libidos cost the lives of three hydro-engineers and four support workers who didn’t have a chance to retreat and secure the bastion – just picked off unawares.  They wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, both of them were tried and hanged.  Bloody idiots, we lost vital expertise that day.  But aside from that fuck-up, our bastion system and traffic-light zones maintained us and even allowed us to expand the Territory for the offensive campaign. 

That would be bloody right, wouldn’t it.  The feds in Tassie sign us up again for a hard slog after Honolulu, but only being able to see the offensive through thanks to our blood, toil, tears and sweat.  And the sheer fucking arrogance!  No apologies for abandoning us to the waves of Zed-Heads, no gratitude whatsoever for our strategic resources that made the campaign actually happen.  I remember our first meeting after Honolulu, when they sailed from Hobart to Fremantle with cap in hand.  That fuckwit Minister of Defence had the audacity to say we “owed it to our nation and government” to hand over our surplus materiel and manpower.  The state government could surrender all the materiel they liked, but I told him that “the Zed-Head Hunters and Zed-Corps would not surrender to any brain-dead entity, including the Ministry of Defence”.  As pissed off as he looked after that comment went down like a lead fart, he couldn’t do jack-shit about it.  He and his self-serving, power-tripping, grog-nosed, bad comb-overed pack of mongrels needed us to start the fight.  And if he thought I’d hand over the men and women of my Corps to his abandoning arse, he had a better chance of getting a blow-job from a Zed-Head with his dick intact!

Gryphon grinds the cigarette butt into the pavement with his boot.  He lights another Cuban with some agitation, but again relaxes on his exhale.

            Sorry mate, I’ve got to get off my bloody soap-box again and stop having a whinge about it all.  You came all this way to research Zed-Corps and the Hunters, and here I am having a sook about all this irrelevant shit…

…That’s alright, go ahead.

            Cheers.  Anyway, you wanna know about Zed-Corps and the Zed-Head Hunters, no worries.  As you may know, there are two types of Zed-Corps soldiers.  The Zed-Troopers and the Zed-Head Hunters.  The Troopers were formed after the Honolulu Conference to swell the ranks of Zed-Corps to reclaim Australia.  These guys were no different to any enlisted soldier except that their purpose was simply ‘pest-control’.  No Armoured or Artillery divisions, no Para’s or Engineers, just a bloke with his SIR and melee weapon as part of our ‘Thin Zed Line’.  But us Hunters, we founded the Corps after our Great Panic.  Didn’t call ourselves Hunters till after the changes in battle doctrine post-Honolulu.

So why did you call yourselves Hunters?

            Coz that’s what we did.  We didn’t stay behind the perimeter fences, we went out looking for them.  And in the beginning, with so few firearms available, we had to do the best we could with the resources we had.  Kinda like your Marine Corps, y’know?  Improvise, adapt, overcome.  If you wanted to join the Zed-Head Hunters, there was only one selection criteria.  You had to bring back at least one ‘snapper’ – or one still reanimated Zed-Head, “jaws snapping”.  Not the whole thing of course, just the head.  When you presented the ‘snapper’ to us, you’d be asked to share the story about how you managed to do it without ending up a Zed yourself.  It didn’t matter how you did it, the story allowed us to work out what skills and strategy you’d have in a crisis situation like hunting Zed’s.  Then we could utilize you for your talents whenever a similar situation presented.  Some Hunters were great at making traps and snares, a few with archery skills, even some with cunning explosive devices.  I remember one guy who later on designed for us this ‘Bouncing Betty’ type landmine that would fly-up at a rough head-height and fire flechette-like shrapnel in a frontal arc.  It wasn’t much use as a standalone trap, but did serious damaged when laid in neat rows.  He’d nicknamed them “Bullies” in honour of the handmade grenades made out of bully-beef tins the ANZAC’s used at Gallipoli.  But most of us pretty much used hand-to-hand melee weapons.  Lemme show you mine…

Gryphon kneels down and opens a weathered canvas bag by his feet.  He pulls out a pair of what could be simply described as ‘bladed batons’.  Each police-styled baton has a double-edged bayonet blade at the short end, a curved spade-like blade at the long end, and a long curved blade that runs along the length of the baton.  Gryphon passes one to me and shows me how to hold it, with the bayonet blade pointing forward, the spade-like blade at the elbow, and the long blade running along the forearm.

            See how it works?  Bloody brilliant, hey!  You could stab or slash like you would punch, the forearm blade would sever any fingers going for a grab, and you could spin the grip for the spade-end.  These are my ‘Mark-IV’ one’s that were custom made for me by a mate in the Corps.  I custom made my first one’s years ago, after I took my first ‘snapper’.  That incident started off the Zed-Head Hunters.

How so?

            Well you remember what I was saying about disgust?  I’d come to realize how important that emotion was in the Zed War.  In my life before the war, I had come to learn that the way we respond to a crisis situation was pretty animalistic.  Aside from the ‘fight-flight’ response, others would add the term ‘freeze’.  I never understood that response till one morning when I was watching a group of Zeds moaning and shaking part of a perimeter fence I helped build at my assigned ‘blue-zone’ relocation.  The fence was strong, so I wasn’t afraid.  I’d gotten used to the noise, so I wasn’t frustrated.  I was just…indifferent.  I eventually walked right up to them and observed at close range.  I was at about arms length when suddenly vomited up last night’s rations.  That confused me.  I didn’t feel sick, like stomach bug-sick.  I couldn’t smell anything rotten, expect last night’s meal of course.  It had me stumped.  I got a bit closer and could feel my face scrunch up.  It was the disgust reflex.  Zed is ultimately a biohazard, and the primitive part of my brain was reacting to tell me this.  It surprised me how I reacted, and ended up making me want to do some more observations.  After a week, I found myself becoming numb to the sight and sound of them, but not like any sort of PTSD, thousand-yard stare, Zed-shock.  Just…indifferent.  Almost clinical.  Another week went by, and a couple of newfound mates came to see what I was doing in the mornings.  They were watching me watching Zed, which they must have thought was two-points shy of crazy.  They must have thought I was ready for sectioning when they saw me open the nearby gate and walk over to a nearby Zed.  I remember my first one like losing my virginity.  He was some young bloke with blonde dreads – the Zed, not who I lost my cherry to.  Anyway, he comes at me in the usual slow-moan Zed fashion.  I wait till he’s close enough and WHACK!  Took his head clean off with the machete I had in my hand.  The others were at the gate by now, having closed it behind me and looking nervous.  I picked up my first ‘snapper’ by his dreads and held it up to them at the gate.  I remember shrugging my shoulders and saying something like “…what are you afraid of?  This?”  That’s what they quote me saying, I can’t remember what I said, but I figure that sounds about right.  No fear, no anger, no disgust, just indifference.  The boys were hesitant in letting me in, but they hadn’t locked the gate – just closed it.  So I pushed it open with my ‘snapper’ and watched them take a few steps back.  I remember Thommo vomiting, which made me laugh as I remembered doing that a fortnight ago.  It was a minute or so before Gaz walked up to me and my Zed-Head, and there he was doing the same shit I had done.  Eyeing of my dreadied prize, I handed Gaz my machete and said to him “Get your own Zed-Head.  Go on, have a go…”.  Sure enough, the carry on had brought a couple more Zed’s by the gate.  And sure enough, Gaz took a ‘snapper’ of his own.  Then Mick, and eventually Thommo had a go.  There we stood in the morning light, the first four Hunters holding their first ever ‘snappers’.  The rest, as they say, is history.

You make it sound too easy…

            Shit, sorry.  I’m not saying it was always like that.  There were a lot of times I was shitscared, and a few times I went apeshit in my hunting.  The war was hellish for all involved.  I’m just telling you how Zed-Head Hunters came about.  Nothing fancy, nothing special, just ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstance.  Hell, weren’t we all.

flakmanfrog

I’m not yet ready to express my own experiences during the Plague Years on paper, so I will do what I feel is the next best thing, and relate the experiences of others. What follows is my first real interview.

Dave Henshaw looks tired. His appearance is that of someone overworked, a look that appears less and less in postwar Canada, as people rebuild their lives. His is a look that will stay with him until his death; it is a look of one who has seen or done things that cannot be forgotten. It is therefore a surprise that he is so forthcoming, with no coaxing from the author. I met him at his home in Cornwall, Ontario. He is in charge of repairing Cornwall’s roads. The havoc years of complete neglect wrought on the roads is surprising. The repair job is expected to take most of another decade. Here is his story, his words, unedited.

I like to think I bought some time for some people of the Greater Toronto Area. During the later stages of the Panic, about a week before the military began it’s move west, Toronto was falling apart. Ghouls were making larger and larger areas of the GTA impassable. When I say that, I mean that it was no longer possible for police or emergency crews to move in or through them because of the volume of ghouls. I’m talking more then 50% of the population shambling around, attacking everything that lived. A complete evacuation had been ordered, and people were walking. The highways were hopelessly clogged, all over the GTA. There was a terrible accident on the Gardiner Expressway, and a large number of vehicles were on fire. I remember it well because it was the first time a fire was just allowed to burn; no attempt was made to put it out. The Gardiner was the main escape route for maybe 100,000 people. Helicopters with loudspeakers were telling the people stranded on the downtown side of that mass of flames to head for the Don Valley Parkway, which would take them north. Coming through and around that fire stumbled the dead. It’s a cliché by now, but they really did look like a slow-moving river. There must have been 40,000 of them, slowly shambling after the crowd. People were walking in their thousands ahead of them. It was on the news, and while it was terrible to see so many people fleeing, it was a little heartening because of the orderly way in which it was conducted, with footage of people helping complete strangers. Elderly and sick people were being assisted around the abandoned vehicles that sat bumper to bumper by everyone around them. There was no panic, because now people knew that the ghouls were very slow. As long as the people kept to a brisk walk, there would be an ever-widening gap between them and the following dead. These people…..refugees, I suppose they now were, were joined by thousands more feeding into the DVP from the various streets that crossed it. Thousands were walking down on-ramps and joining the north-bound crowds. One large group was walking ahead of its own pursuing group of ghouls. This group walked off Eastern Avenue, and then they suddenly dried up. Not a single person was walking down that on-ramp. A news chopper showed what happened next. The people at the end of that group kept looking behind them. About 20 minutes after the last person walked down that ramp, the dead appeared. Just a few at first, they quickly swelled into thousands. They stumbled their way onto the DVP…..completely cutting off about 10,000 people. Every single one of those ghouls turned south after the smaller (relatively speaking; there were several hundred thousand fleeing north) group, who were now trapped between them and the other group of ghouls who had come through those flames. As far as I know, not a single person of that trapped group survived being cut off and trapped between the two groups of ghouls. Maybe some left the road when they saw what was happening, crossed the Don River and scaled the far valley wall. I hope so. The rest of that north-bound group panicked and ran for a short time before returning to their earlier pace; it’s a miracle hundreds were not trampled, especially when thousands of voices cried out from the south. The newsman was crying, saying there would be no footage of the massacre. The larger remaining group now had a larger gap between them and the ghouls. That was good, but now the ghouls were a true army; they packed the DVP in both lanes, from guardrail to guardrail. After the massacre, police and army units were being hastily posted at the tops of the on-ramps. It seemed a token gesture, but I think it made people feel better. An hour later, and the ghouls were on the move again. The north-bound crowd had swollen to around 300,000 people and had slowed to a crawl….or the pace of a ghoul. I was in my home on Chester Ave., which runs north off Danforth Ave. Danforth crosses the Don Valley, passing over the DVP, and what seemed like every neighbor I had came out to stand on the bridge and watch the procession north. I had not heard about the horror that had just occurred to the south, and soon went back home to continue packing. I had no idea where I was going, but going I was, the hell away from the city. It was there that my friend and co-worker Alan Wades found me. He told me about the massacre to the south, and we put the TV on. There was still footage of the refugees walking north, and of the army of dead stumbling after them. The threat was apparent at once. The dead were now actually moving faster than the refugees. A new horror was in the making. We just looked at each other. I was the one to finally break the silence. I said the only thing that came to mind at the time.

“We better get to work.”

His eyes widened, and he nodded. Work for us was pretty close at that time. We were working just north of our homes in Todmorden Mills Park. There had been some serious erosion, and the company we worked for, Don Valley Excavation was working to remove the soil in preparation for the construction of a large retaining wall to prevent further erosion. The work site was near the DVP, and near an on and off ramp.

“Guess we’ll need Gary and Davey right quick then!” he said, and it was my turn to nod.

Gary Porter and Dave Fauser were welders we worked with. They were either working on things in our shop or were making repairs to company equipment at work sites. There was no hope of Fauser making it there; he lived too far away, in York Mills, which may as well have been on Mars then. We both dove for the phone at the same time to call Porter, and we hit our heads pretty hard. It was funny, and we needed a laugh. We were able to reach him easily, and explained the situation to him, and that we thought, with his assistance, we could help. He agreed at once, having finished all his packing, and started out for the worksite. We wished him luck, and set out ourselves. He lived in nearby Greek Town, and would be there in around 20 minutes. Our short walk to the site was memorable. People were standing in the streets, and everyone was talking about the same thing, getting out of the city. And, almost to the last person, they had no idea where to go, where was safe.

“Dave, imagine how this situation is going to look in 3 weeks or so, if this continues,” Wades said.

We made the rest of the trip in silence.  When we reached the site it was thankfully untouched. Neighborhood patrols kept the area fairly safe, though that was a thin illusion. At any time, 500 ghouls could walk in the kill everyone there. I opened the gate that had been erected, and we jogged in. Now that we were there, things seemed more urgent because there, right beside the work site were the refugees making their slow way north. They didn’t speak much, and looked back often, though at this point they couldn’t see the end of the column, let alone the pursuing dead. We stood there in silence watching them, and Porter scared us out of about 5 years of our lives when he walked up behind us and shouted a greeting. After some ungentlemanly name calling, we got to work. We went to the office trailer, and retrieved our keys from it. The welding equipment was stored in a small intermodal container, the kind that can travel in large numbers on ships, or on rail cars or on trailers on the highway. We called them sea cans. It was always locked at night, as it held the second most valuable equipment on the work site. Another container beside it held tools and smaller equipment, and was only slightly less valuable then the one holding the welding equipment. Locks are for honest people, and if someone really wanted to get into them they could. So, our reasons for being there were parked in front of them, one in front of each. With those parked 15 cm from the doors, no one was going to steal anything from them, period. In front of the welder’s sea can sat a Cat D7, which Alan started. In front of the tool sea can sat a D9, which I started. Once they were running, we climbed down and joined Porter at the office trailer where he was making coffee. Even at this urgent time, we were not going to move the Cats one centimeter without warming them up properly. Upon reflection, caffeine was probably not the thing we needed at that time, but old habits were difficult to break. As we sat, we talked about what needed to be done to our Cats. It was agreed that metal plate would be welded over as much of the engine areas as possible to protect them from the prying hands of the dead. Also, there was no option but to weld us both into the cabs, and to cover all the windows with plate too. Once the plates were welded to the outsides of the cabs, the plates would also be welded from the insides for added strength, which was sure to be tested. Slim observation slits would be cut into the plates covering the front, sides and back of each. With this unsophisticated game plan, we went outside, and moved the Cats into an open area where we would have room to work on them. We got the things we would need from the sea cans, and then turned to Porter awaiting his instructions. He was the welder, we just ran the equipment. The work went quickly, since there was no need for them to look pretty. The only thing we took extra time on was making sure there were no hand holds on these plates, no purchase for dozens or even one undead hand. Porter would attach a plate, and we would all try to grab it in a way that would let us apply any amount of force to pry it free. As we worked, the refugees paid us little attention. The D7 was finished first, with only the plate that was to cover the door left unattached. Those would be the last things welded on. Before we started this, the Cats were shut off, and the batteries disconnected. We wanted no chance for there to be damage to the electrical systems from the welder or plasma cutter. Porter showed us how to use the latter to cut the observation slits, and the work went much faster with him welding and us doing that. It was agreed that the thinner these slits were the better. Even if only fingers could fit through them, 100 fingers all pulling would surely pull the plates off given enough time. It was while we were cutting these slits we heard the moan. We all froze at once, then turned towards the sound. It was a single ghoul, walking past the open gate to the work site. We shared a single look, and then jumped down from the Cats, and rushed it. It had been a woman, and had been through a fight. Her jaw looked like it had been dislocated, and her right arm looked broken. There were bloody hand prints on her shirt and pants. We beat her to death. Porter hit her with his knees, having launched himself into the air about 2 meters from her. Once she was on the ground, we just kicked and stomped her head until she stopped moving. To be sure, we got a rock and smashed the remains of her head a few times, then dragged her off the street.

“Felt….kinda good, killing one of them,” Wades said as we walked back to the Cats and got back to work.

I don’t remember saying anything then, but I agreed with him completely.

“Just wait!” Porter said grimly. That shut us up for a while.

30 minutes later we were ready. We went back into the office trailer and turned on a radio there. The news was full of the unfolding drama in the Don Valley. They were advising people watching to avoid being seen by the advancing dead, that if one could just be unobserved one would be safe. They wanted them right where they were, advancing north, not into the surrounding neighborhoods, which were still populated. It was hard to get a fix on them, but we figured we’d get plenty of warning. Wades suddenly turned to me.

“Hey, the guard rail’s in the way!”

We all laughed and laughed.

“Guess we just wasted our time then. Oh, well,” I said.

It was not really that funny, but we laughed until the tears came. I guess we needed it.

“Are you guys really going to do this?” Porter asked.

“Damn right we are,” I said, and that was basically the end of it. I was afraid that if we talked too much about it, all the perfectly good reasons not to do this thing would become apparent, and we might not go through with it. We got to discussing our plan. We would need an open space, and that meant moving the cars and trucks out of the way, something I have to admit I was gleefully looking forward to.

“Shotgun on the Avalanche. It’s mine,” I said.

They snickered. My views on such things were well-known. It was a Chevrolet Avalanche, which had been lowered and had had huge wheels with spinners attached, as well as tons of other bling. I was not worried about legal repercussions of the impending automotive massacre. I was pretty sure it would be a while before the law would be interested in or even have the ability to investigate such things. Besides, we were trying to save a couple lives.

“Look!” Porter said, pointing to the refugees.

It was difficult to see at first, but as we watched for several minutes, the crowds seemed to slowly thin out. I turned to them both.

“Ok, it’s time.” There wasn’t really anything else to say for me. I embraced them both, my hands shaking a little.

“Give ‘em hell, boys. I hope I see you again,” Porter said.

We had talked it over, and decided that Porter would move to a place of safety where he could talk with us on the CB and warn us when the dead arrived. It was decided that this place should be out of sight because the refugees might decide that they needed his truck more than he did. He moved to the top of a rise near the worksite, from which he had a clear view of the northbound lanes.

“Good to go. Now lets go before I think about what we’re about to do,” Wades said.

That was all we needed, and we fairly flew into the cabs. We had put crude handles on the door plates so we could help hold them in place while Porter welded them. It was the weakest part of our improvised armour, since they would only be welded from the outside. There was no help for it. I was sealed in my cab first, and then Wades was. This went quickly as the plates had been fitted beforehand. It was a crude-looking job, but we did well for the amount of time available to us, a welder and his two amateur apprentices. Then, we were both ready, and Porter reconnected our batteries, and we started the engines. I was terrified. Scenarios were running through my head, like my starving to death as the ghouls surround my disabled Cat for days preventing my escape. Had we forgotten anything? I experienced a moment of panic when I realized we had not agreed on a channel to use on our radios. A couple quick words to Porter cleared that up though. He went over to Wades and told him channel 28. We all had both company radios, which used repeaters to boost their range, and shorter-range CB radios, which was what we were using now. We had made other preparations, and were as confident we could be. We had lots of water and as much food as we could find at the work site. We had raided the refrigerator, and cleared out the remaining lunches our co-workers had left. We then raised the blades and turned towards the Parkway.

“Mine!” Wades called over the radio. He lowered his blade to ground and took the hapless guardrail off with a crisp snapping sound. He then raised his blade and ran over the rail and supporting posts.

Without further ceremony we struck the northbound cars. I made sure I hit that Avalanche hard, and raised my blade to flip it. So sweet.

Now, I don’t want to suggest we just recklessly attacked things; there were still people heading north. They didn’t slow us down any though; it was easy enough for them to move around us. We talked as we worked and decided on a plan. We would try to completely block off the southbound lanes with cars, in the hopes it would force the dead into the northbound lanes, and it was here we encountered our first obstacle. Separating the north and southbound lanes was a concrete barrier, too thick for even our Cats to break apart. We soon learned it was best to work side by side as pushing the cars sideways into other cars until we were pushing 3 at once was very difficult. We would get in close to each other and push towards that concrete divider, both raising our blades at once to try to lift them onto the top of the barrier. Once they were there, we had no way to move them. The screeching metal and squealing tires were louder than our straining engines. There was debris everywhere, and the pavement was wrecked, our treads digging into it when we were pushing a heavy load. By the time we had an area 500 meters long cleared, there was only the occasional person moving north. We could see that most of them were wounded; probably bitten. There was nothing we could do about them, so we moved on to the next part of our plan. We needed access to the southbound lanes to create our barrier. So, we put our Cats into their walking gears and “raced” beneath a nearby overpass. The traffic was just as congested here as on the Parkway, so it took a little time. We didn’t bother using the blades; we raised them and ran over the cars as best we could. We ground and crunched our way past the southbound on-ramp, and just started pushing the cars up against the divider, making sure this barrier was even with where our northbound clear area began. We pushed some up onto the divider and more past the shoulder of the road as far as we could down an embankment. The dead could still get around that, but we were out of time. Porter called us on the CB.

“Heads up guys, I can see the first of the dead. They’re attacking the stragglers. And…..they look like they’ve all been painted red,” he said.

“Ok, man. Thanks. You should bail. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had already seen you, if you’ve seen them,” Wades replied.

“Yeah. Yes. Ok. I…I hope we all meet again. My prayers will be with you. I’ll tell any authority I meet where you are and what you’re doing. Maybe they will be able to send you some help. Until next time, lads!” Porter said, heading off. It was the last we would hear from him for 3 years.

Putting our Cats into their walking gears again, we went back to what Wades called “our chosen battlefield” on the northbound lanes. We took the same route we had taken before and by now the cars we had driven over looked flat. We positioned ourselves about halfway down this cleared area and waited.

“We’re really going to do this, aren’t we,” I asked the air.

“Are we really going to this?” Wades asked over the radio. I told him that was what I had just asked and we laughed, each triggering the CB microphone so the other could hear the laughter. I think it must have sounded crazy.

“Ok. Lets do it just like the cars, blade to blade and push them back. Best turn on the radio to drown out the…..the sounds,” I said.

“All right,” he replied, and we waited.

I think my heart had never beaten so fast. It was terrible, waiting for the dead to appear, so we could just get this over with. I closed my eyes and concentrated on controlling my breathing. When I opened them, I saw the first of them coming around and over the cars at the end of cleared area. There were just a few of them at first.

“Let’s split up and take them individually. When they come in greater numbers we’ll come together again,” I said, sounding more confident than I was.

“Fag,” Wades said. We laughed as we started towards the vanguard of the dead.

Henshaw concluded his tale here. He told me in no uncertain terms he did not want to discuss what followed. I was able to piece together what happened next by interviewing neighborhood resident Tim Franklin. What followed was a slaughter of the walking dead. The two Cats went back and forth, pressing the dead horde back against itself. After only 15 minutes had passed, there was a black sludge ten centimeters deep, extending 20 meters from the beginning of the cleared area. An hour later, the sludge was 25 centimeters deep, and extended 100 meters into the cleared zone. Henshaw and Wades backed their Cats up again and again, and hit the horde, whose advance had been slowed. As the dead ones entered the cleared zone, they would be struck by the blades and knocked off their feet. They would then be pushed back into the ones behind them, and partially crushed. Following the first hit, their brains were rarely destroyed, but with hit after hit, they were eventually destroyed, all their bones pulped. When the Cats treads started to slip and spin in the gore, they would back out of it, and press their blades into the pavement and advance, pushing the thick liquid forward and giving them an area of traction for a while. Franklin was on the eastern crest of the valley and had an excellent view. After approximately 3 hours had passed, a group of five locals joined him, armed with hunting rifles. They started cheering before Franklin had to remind them of their position; safe but only just so. When the dead started climbing onto the cabs of the Cats, they fired their rifles to clear them. Franklin described their aim as wanting. Sparks danced off the cab and armour plates, and both Cats jerked to a stop. They then agreed to pick a corpse and all try for his or her head at once. That cleared them off within minutes, leaving the armour unbreached. Franklin chuckled, saying a finger extended from the front observation slits on each Cat. He had a reasonable guess at which fingers they were looking at. The shooters sheepishly decided to adopt their concentrated fire tactic from then on. For 4 hours more the Cats pushed and crushed, aided by the occasional careful volley from the shooters. Franklin was unsure when it happened, but he suddenly noticed the Cats were hanging back for longer periods of time, the dead appearing in smaller and smaller numbers. Around the same time, a troop of 42 soldiers trotted from the north, shooting and bludgeoning those few dead who had gotten past the Cats. To a man, they appeared shocked by the sea of gore, and mostly-black Cats doing the work. Several ran beside the Cats, and got the attention of the Wades and Henshaw, and it was over. After conversing with them for a time, a detail of soldiers went with them over the ditch to the construction site, and proceeded to cut them from their filthy machines. The rest of the soldiers then pressed the shooters and Franklin into service, handing them C7A1 rifles, explaining that their previous owners no longer had any use for them. They formed a skirmish line as best they could, careful to avoid the sludge, and began walking south at a leisurely pace, firing as they went, checking between and beneath the cars.

I only had the pleasure of talking to Franklin twice before he succumbed to Dellson’s disease, the rare but deadly pneumonia that arose during the war from the squalid conditions and unburied corpses littering the world. A few details are missing, such as the names of the armed locals, and what happened to them when they left with the troop, so I hope the readers can bear with me.

This concludes the story of Henshaw and his friends. I hope readers will be inspired to put their own experiences to paper for future generations (or at least allow people like myself to do so for them). My travels will next take me west, where I will speak with the only known survivor of the fall of the Prince Albert safe zone. Thank you for reading.

Darcy MacLeod

ironbrig4

I already posted this on IMDB, but I'm sure more people will read it here.

Paris, France

Commandant Raoul Guynemer and I are taking lunch at his favorite restaurant, the Cafe Procope. The oldest restaurant in Paris is a popular spot for both locals and tourists alike. In pre-war years, we would have been required to make reservations several months in advance. Ever since the war's end, however, finding a table has never been a problem. Raoul is proud to wear his Chasseur Alpin dress uniform for this interview.

My company was conducting climbing exercises in the Alps around our base town of Bourg-Saint-Maurice. As a reward for setting a new battalion record, our colonel let us spend the weekend at a ski lodge. Understand that although it was summer, that beautiful town had so many wonderful hiking trails. There were always tourists of some sort enjoying the sights. Unfortunately for us, our training had caused us to miss most of the Tour de France. We were dining in the lodge's restaurant when we saw Paris start to fall.

We thought they were protesters at first. Growing up in Paris, I had lived only a few kilometers away from one of the Maghreb neighborhoods. Before the war, the North African immigrants had lived in squalid conditions. Most of the buildings they made their homes in should have been condemned years before. It was quite sad, really. Many of them had lived in France for generations, and spoke the language better than even some native Frenchmen. However, they were still not considered to be genuine French citizens, and were still treated as "wogs." One of our machine gunners was a third generation Algerian immigrant. Looking back, it's quite funny to think of an Algerian fighting in the snow. His grandfather had fought against the Nazis during the Second World War, and was rewarded with a frozen pension after Algeria gained its independence.

Pardon me, I tend to ramble when I talk about these things. Where was I? Oh yes. The tourists were so sure that a mob of protesters was pouring out of the tenements. I heard one fat tourist exclaim, "If the wogs aren't happy, then they should get a job! If they don't want to work, then they should just go back to Wog Land!" We later learned that the first reported bite victims were Moroccans and Senegalese who worked in the Hotel de Crillon.

Tear gas didn't have any affect on most of the mob. We saw some of the first ones to arrive, those that had not succumbed to their wounds yet, run to the riot police. They must have been begging for help. Even from the news helicopter's camera you could see these bloody, brown marks on their skin and clothes. Riot cannons stopped the shuffling mob, but the ghouls simply picked themselves up and kept pressing forward. It was as if they didn't care about being knocked over time and again. Eventually, the ghouls made their way to the cordon of riot police and brawls broke out. As the hours went by, the police would retreat block by block, street by street. There were other outbreaks as well. The re-animated patients at La Croix Saint-Simon and other hospitals began to spill out into the streets. The zomibes were in the Champs-Élysées and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Such was the situation throughout France. It was a simple matter for any EU citizen to take a train into the heart of the country. Who knows how many infected arrived before we closed our borders. Even then, it was easy to smuggle oneself across the Mediterranean.

As the situation escalated, our colonel ordered us back to base. There was the possibility of us getting sent to Paris or Marseilles. Instead, we had to contend with an infestation in our home of Bourg-Saint-Maurice. The pre-war population was less than seven thousand, but some refugees read in a survival guide that ghouls aren't good climbers; there were now at least three times that number in and around Bourg, with more coming every hour. The Gendarmerie Nationale was overwhelmed, and it was up to us to shoulder the burden with them. We handled the majority of incidences outside of the town, while the gendarmes policed the streets. I saw my first zombies about a week after returning to base. They were an Italian family, as we learned from the two surviving members. Judging by their nearby car and designer clothes, they must have been well-off. Now they were surrounding a cabin somewhere on the outskirts of town, pounding the door and howling. Sergeant Rothier ordered us to bring them down. I fired a burst from my FAMAS and saw the rounds impact on the zombie's back. After shuddering from the burst, it turned around to face me. It was a young woman, and may have been comely when it was still alive. It was difficult to say then, because the left cheek had been torn off. I fired another burst, and this time I took it down. The rest of the group was finished within seconds.

That was the first such encounter. We were always on alert, and were called more and more often. Every time, the party of zombies was slightly bigger. There was no respite, as the zombies followed every group of refugees to Bourg. We lost some men to the ghouls, including my friend Corporal Boulanger. The poor fool was caring for an infected 9-year-old girl. We knew that the child was done for, but poor Serge wanted to comfort her. We should have known trouble would be coming once she stopped breathing, but we were all too exhausted to notice. We didn't realize she was dead until she, it, bit Boulanger on the wrist. From that point on, we decapitated the infected immediately after they stopped drawing breath.

After the South Africans introduced their plan, Bourg was designated as a "safe zone." With dwindling supplies, we had to support tens of thousands of non-infected refugees. The snows came early that winter, and the first cases of pneumonia soon began to appear. I've lost count of how many graves I helped to dig. At least I was fortunate enough to have hot meals and a dry place to sleep. We needed to stay in top form, because we were one of the few relatively intact units. Most of the military had been bled white in urban combat. We bided our time that winter, consolidated our position, and did what we could to procure more supplies. We knew that the zombies would not stay frozen forever, but we smashed into them whenever we could. One less zombie would make the journey just slightly less daunting when we decided to reclaim la belle France.

The motto of the Chasseurs Alpins is "Jamais etre pris vivant!" Never to be taken alive, eh? Well, what about my fallen comrades? They weren't exactly alive, but they fought against us all the same after they reanimated.

antant1986

New Reuter’s news agency, 09/09/21

February 9th, 2021-the liberation of London is announced

Three years after victory was declared, the final sterilisation of London has been completed. Although random outbreaks may well occur for years to come, it has been deemed possible to consider London officially sterilised. The announcement was made at 12.00 noon today by The Prime Minister, Jacob Michaels, and leader of the war time coalition which has been in effect for a little over 11 years.           The announcement occurred at the same time that the British government announced the suspension of the state of emergency as defined by the “Emergency powers Act, 2008” With the suspension of the state of Emergency, the Emergency powers act gives 60 days for the war time coalition to be disbanded, and elections called  

Speaking from the secure, but, like many things in post war Britain, remarkably empty floor of House of Lords, to a join session of Parliament: including those members of the House of Commons and Lords who could make it reach London in time(baring in mind the extent to which fuel availability; heavily rationed and prioritised particularly for the arduous job of resettling some 46 million Britons to the now sterilised south of the islands, as well as the preference given to fuel supplies for the agricultural industry-as well as the determination to reduce the impact upon an already crippled ecosystem, had made the use of cars for non emergency services rare, and long neglected tracks making rail travel difficult), as well as in the presence of his Majesty King `Harold` the IX-crowned after the brief reign of his Father Charles, who ascended the British throne in 2016 and died of exertion after only 3 years, and in place of his older brother, who disappeared when his army regiment was ambushed in Iraq in 2008, before WWZ began. With the king was the Prime Minister who made the following announcement the following:

" A little over 100 years ago, in the aftermath of what was then thought to be the war to end all wars: a war in which man killed man in unprecedented millions, we declared to our returning soldiers, and too the post war generations, that we would built a land fit for heroes. We did not. Within a generation, mankind was once again fighting amongst itself-the result being 60 million people, equal to this nation’s entire pre infection population. We stand here today, not to make such promises of a glorious future, but simply to affirm our commitment to ensure nothing more extravagant than the survival of our species-to ensure that we have ANY kind of future. Whereas in past centuries, wars were fought for glory, land and God, we here can testify to the fact that the only war now worthy of that name is the war for human survival. We have faced the living dead, and yet still live. Let us, remembering the fallen, commit ourselves to eternal vigilance, and global unity in the face of this constant threat.

I pay tribute to the people-for whom and with whom, this war was fought and won:  honour those who worked the land this last decade, unsure that their work would ever be for anything but a permanent imprisonment in the Northern barrens of our island. I honour the soldiers who daily looked death, quite literally, in the face and did not yield, even when it meant their death.

I honour the memory of our warrior queen, who spent her final years, not resting and reflecting upon a lifetime of commitment and change, but fighting with her people in the Castle of Windsor-that ancient fortress which stood for all that we as a nation are-a continual line of centuries of unbroken achievement. We are the Britons-born of millennia of struggle, struggle for survival and struggle for identity. Now we know more fully than ever, what we are-we are the generation which gave Britain its reason to be. That reason being the maintenance of the line of history dating back 1000 years and more. 80 years ago, Winston Churchill said that the victory of the RAF against the Luftwaffe in the skies of Britain was our finest hour. He said that "if the British Empire and its commonwealth would last for 1000 years, men would still say that this was our finest hour". For a while he was right, for although empires melted away, the sacrifice of the British in war were rightly immortalised. And then we the generation written off as purposeless, directionless and lacking the moral fibre to survive hardship, won the ultimate battle against death.

Therefore I say rejoice for this brief moment, today, and tomorrow: for after that, the great work of survival and renewal resumes. I request that this parliament accompany me to the newly liberated of Abbey of Westminster, so recently a long embattled fortress and sign of hope amidst the despairing sea of the death that engulfed our ancient capital, so that we may rejoice at what we have reclaimed-our humanity, and the right to live without fearing the night, and fearing the dawn"

This speech may well go down in history, along with its authors leadership as one of the defining moments in an epic battle for survival. Whilst Britain began its war to reclaim its home long before France, America or any other major nation, the battle to reclaim London endured long after the war was declared over. It was often over looked-whilst Paris is held as the bench mark for how not to reclaim a city, the British battle for London has often been forgotten-partly because of the quiet, slow and methodical methods by which the capital has been reclaimed-the British spent a year and a half building walls around the outskirts of the capital (no mean task for Europe’s biggest most sprawling city) to prevent a zombie outbreak in the event of failure to sterilise the capital-but also by the success of the British in helping the UN international forces-particularly the sterilisation of Brittany and Denmark . The British then spent a year reinforcing and arming the reinforced fortress buildings within the capital-the affore mentioned Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, the tower of London, the Palace of Westminster-even the British museum. In total in London there were 3 million people ensconced in football arenas, skyscrapers, cathedrals, abbeys and palace, as well as the fortunate few streets which managed to fortify and protect themselves for nearly 11 years.


The national service of celebration-to be broadcast via BBC TV and radio-now possible after the liberation of the powerful BBC transmitters in London, shall be followed by the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III-delayed for 4 years, tomorrow. For those who don’t have access, or permission to use energy for Televisions, and there are millions of those nowadays, the proceedings shall be filmed and broadcast in cinemas next Monday

London, UK