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

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 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, OLKHON ISLAND, LAKE BAIKAL, 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 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”?