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

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
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.
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,
the Veronique Delmas, was trying to pull one of her beached sisters out to sea. Ropes and chains
were haphazardly lashed to the stern of the APL Tulip, a Singapore container ship that had already
been partially gutted. I arrived just as the Delmas 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.