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

Everyone: our officers, the Military Police, even a plain-clothed civilian who just seemed to appear
one day out of nowhere. He was a mean little bastard, with a thin, rat face. That’s what we called
him: “Rat Face.”
Did you ever try to find out who he was?
What, me personally? Never. Neither did anyone else. Oh, we griped; soldiers always gripe. But
there also wasn’t time for any serious complaints. Right after the blackout was put into effect, we
were placed on full combat alert. Up until then it had been easy duty—lazy, monotonous, and
broken only by the occasional mountain stroll. Now we were in those mountains for days at a time
with full battle dress and ammo. We were in every village, every house. We questioned every
peasant and traveler and…I don’t know…goat that crossed our path.
Questioned them? For what?
I didn’t know. “Is everyone in your family present?” “Has anyone gone missing?” “Has anyone
been attacked by a rabid animal or man?” That was the part that confused me the most. Rabid? I
understood the animal part, but man? There were a lot of physical inspections, too, stripping these
people to their bare skin while the medics searched every inch of their bodies for…something…we
weren’t told what.
It didn’t make sense, nothing did. We once found a whole cache of weapons, 74s, a few older 47s,
plenty of ammo, probably bought from some corrupt opportunist right in our battalion. We didn’t
know who the weapons belonged to; drug runners, or the local gangsters, maybe even those
supposed “Reprisal Squads” that were the reason for our deployment in the first place. And what
did we do? We left it all. That little civilian, “Rat Face,” he had a private meeting with some of the
village elders. I don’t know what was discussed, but I can tell you that they looked scared half to
death: crossing themselves, praying silently.
We didn’t understand. We were confused, angry. We didn’t understand what the hell we were
doing out there. We had this one old veteran in our platoon, Baburin. He’d fought in Afghanistan
and twice in Chechnya. It was rumored that during Yeltsin’s crackdown, his BMP 1 was the first to
fire on the Duma. We used to like to listen to his stories. He was always good-natured, always
drunk…when he thought he could get away with it. He changed after the incident with the
weapons. He stopped smiling, there were no more stories. I don’t think he ever touched a drop
after that, and when he spoke to you, which was rare, the only thing he ever said was, “This isn’t
good. Something’s going to happen.” Whenever I tried to ask him about it, he would just shrug and
walk away. Morale was pretty low after that. People were tense, suspicious. Rat Face was always
there, in the shadows, listening, watching, whispering into the ears of our officers.
He was with us the day we swept a little no-name town, this primitive hamlet at what looked like
the edge of the world. We’d executed our standard searches and interrogations. We were just
about to pack it in. Suddenly this child, this little girl came running down the only road in town. She
was crying, obviously terrified. She was chattering to her parents…I wish I could have taken the
time to learn their language…and pointing across the field. There was a tiny figure, another little
girl, staggering across the mud toward us. Lieutenant Tikhonov raised his binoculars and I watched
his face lose its color. Rat Face came up next to him, gave a look through his own glasses, then
whispered something in the lieutenant’s ear. Petrenko, platoon sharpshooter, was ordered to raise
his weapon and center the girl in his sights. He did. “Do you have her?” “I have her.” “Shoot.”