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

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.
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 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 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