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

didn’t they use it; go to Antarctica or Greenland or just stay where they were but stay the hell
outta the public eye? But then again, maybe they couldn’t, like a switch you just can’t turn off.
Maybe it’s what made them who they were in the first place. But what the hell do I know?
[The waiter arrives with another shot and T. Sean flicks a silver rand coin to him.]
“If you got it, flaunt it.”
ICE CITY, GREENLAND
[From the surface, all that is visible are the funnels, the massive, carefully
sculpted wind catchers that continue to bring fresh, albeit cold, air to the threehundred-kilometer
maze below. Few of the quarter million people who once
inhabited this hand-carved marvel of engineering have remained. Some stay to
encourage the small but growing tourist trade. Some are here as custodians,
living on the pension that goes with UNESCO’s renewed World Heritage Program.
Some, like Ahmed Farahnakian, formerly Major Farahnakian of the Iranian
Revolution Guards Corps Air Force, have nowhere else to go.]
India and Pakistan. Like North and South Korea or NATO and the old Warsaw Pact. If two sides
were going to use nuclear weapons against each other, it had to be India and Pakistan. Everyone
knew it, everyone expected it, and that is exactly why it didn’t happen. Because the danger was so
omnipresent, all the machinery had been put in place over the years to avoid it. The hotline
between the two capitals was in place, ambassadors were on a first-name basis, and generals,
politicians, and everyone involved in the process was trained to make sure the day they all feared
never came. No one could have imagined—I certainly didn’t—that events would unfold as they did.
The infection hadn’t hit us as hard as some other countries. Our land was very mountainous.
Transportation was difficult. Our population was relatively small; given the size of our country and
when you consider that many of our cities could be easily isolated by a proportionately large
military, it is not difficult to see how optimistic our leadership was.
The problem was refugees, millions of them from the east, millions! Streaming across
Baluchistan, throwing our plans into disarray. So many areas were already infected, great swarms
slouching toward our cities. Our border guards were overwhelmed, entire outposts buried under
waves of ghouls. There was no way to close the border and at the same time deal with our own
outbreaks.
We demanded that the Pakistanis get control of their people. They assured us they were doing
all they could. We knew they were lying.