World War Z_ An Oral History of the Zombie War ( PDFDrive )

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 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 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