World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

The narrator is with Ajay Shah, standing on the beach looking out at rusting, abandoned ships in the water. Shah, who had been a white-collar worker, headed to a shipyard called Alang amidst the panic. Like many others, he decided to take his chances at sea. He didn’t realize the shipyard was essentially a graveyard where companies strip vessels from around the world for parts. He located the newly arrived ships, where he saw the Veronique Delnas attempting to pull another ship, the APL Tulip, out to sea. Shah watched as the Tulip was torn in half during the process, its roughly one thousand passengers sinking with the ship. The narrator wonders why people didn’t simply pull up the ladders on the ship to make it inaccessible. Shah emphasizes the sense of chaos that night as people scrambled to board the ships that were still moored just offshore; some of the people attempted to swim out to them. No one was thinking rationally.

Shah recounts the acts of both cruelty and kindness he witnessed. Those sailing the smaller ships that escorted refugees to the larger ships wouldn’t let certain individuals on board. They discriminated by gender, caste, and color. However, there were fisherman who kept coming back to shore for refugees despite the dangers. Shah explains that there were many “ghouls” in the water who infected those who drowned (72). Shah himself attempted to swim to one of the ships. However, he overestimated his strength and slipped underwater just as he reached his “intended salvation” (72). He thought a zombie had grabbed him and it was the end for him, but it was a crew member of the Sir Wilfred Grenfell, who pulled him on board, and they sailed away past the carnage on the other boats.

The narrator interviews Sharon, a beautiful woman with the mental capacity of a four-year-old girl. She is currently living at the Rothman Rehabilitation Home for Feral Children after being found in Wichita. It is not known where she originally came from. Sharon remembers being at church with her mother, surrounded by guns, food supplies, sleeping bags, and other church members. She recalls Pastor Dan trying to keep the mob calm and asking them to wait for the authorities to arrive. While telling her story to the narrator, Sharon often mimics voices and sounds instead of telling the narrator directly. Suddenly, the zombies were in the parking lot, and everyone scrambled to barricade the church door. Sharon mimics the moan of a zombie perfectly, which is disconcerting, and the narrator later learns that this skill is why Sharon’s room is soundproof. Sharon tells the narrator that as the pastor and other adults tried to hold the door, the zombies broke through the windows and the lights went out. Sharon’s mom held her and told her she wouldn’t let the zombies get Sharon. People were shooting, and Sharon’s mother’s words, as mimicked by Sharon during the interview, became louder and more desperate. Sharon mimics the sound fighting and begins to gasp for air as she puts her hands to her throat. She mimics a gunshot and says she tasted something wet and salty in her mouth. Then she says she felt hands grabbing her, picking her up, and taking her out to the parking lot. The zombies pulled the person’s arms away from Sharon as the person shouted at her to run.

The interview is with Maria Zhuganova in a room with just a table and chairs and a mirror on the wall the narrator is sure is one-way glass with someone watching them behind it. They are alone, as the narrator’s transcriber has been barred from entry for “security reasons” (76). Zhuganova begins by explaining she had been at an isolated camp in North Ossetia at the onset of the Great Panic, though they were unaware of what was happening. She was on a “peacekeeping” mission to quell ethnic strife, but about the time the news broke all the televisions, radios, and cell phones were removed from the camp. They were told the communication blackout was for “state security” (77).

Zhuganova says the work had been easy until that point. After the blackout, they had to go out every day in combat gear and question every person they come across. Zhuganova and her colleagues were unclear as to the purpose of the interrogations, which often included strip searches and asking people if they had been bitten by a rabid animal or person. Soldier morale dropped, and people became “tense, suspicious” (78). There was a civilian in plainclothes with them who was always observing, though they didn’t know who he was, and Zhuganova never found out. They called him “Rat Face” (77).

One day, in a small village, Zhuganova watched as one of their sharpshooters, Petrenko, was ordered to gun down a little girl. When he refused, Rat Face went out into the field alone. They could hear the girl moaning. Rat Face pulled out his gun and shot her. After that, Petrenko was immediately removed from the unit and all their weapons were locked up. Zhuganova felt only fear and longing to go home to her family. She became sick with stress and spent the day in the infirmary, so she missed the next patrol.

When the soldiers returned, Arkady, a heavy machine gunner, told them he’s going to expose the lies and show everyone what’s really going on. He took the hood off of a woman in chains at his feet and repeatedly stabbed her. He said this is what they had been sent to find, and they could be everywhere. In a moment when he had been focused on his speech, the woman bit his hand, so Arkady killed her violently, and the soldiers began chanting to go home so they could protect their families. Suddenly, someone shot Arkady through the eye as a special unit arrived and began attacking the soldiers. The government had sent them to restore order through a program called “Decimation” (81). The program forced the soldiers to not only decide who gets killed but to then murder the chosen with heavy stones. Zhuganova understands what they were doing: They were binding them all together with guilt, which made them even more compliant than they would be if executions were simply carried out through standard procedures. Zhuganova says she gained a newfound freedom that day—the freedom to be resolved of personal responsibility.

The narrator is in one of the “Special Economic Zones” (83), which are fenced off areas, purposely removed from the “order and tranquility” of the rest of the Caribbean (83). They cater to rough individuals, one of whom is Texan and veteran T. Sean Collins. At the onset of the Great Panic, he worked as a private security guard for a wealthy man. Collins isn’t sure what the man did, but he hobnobbed with the rich and famous and hoped to cultivate an image as their savior during the war. He set up his house as a bunker, complete with a wall around it, and invited other wealthy people and their entourages to stay. He put webcams in every room and streamed them all day and night so the world could know what he was doing. The press also arrived to film the high-profile residents, at one point even filming their reactions to watching the news.

During the news viewing, the alarm sensors placed around the wall began going off. As Collins went to take his position, the lookout exclaimed that the zombies were running fast. Collins worried that if they can run, they can climb. However, he soon realized it was an enormous mob of people trying to get into the house. They had ladders and guns. Explosions began going off as the wealthy owner ordered everyone to fire. Pandemonium broke out, and some of the members of the house began turning on each other. Collins refused to fire on the people trying to get in simply looking for safety and shelter. He made it out of the house, found a surfboard, and began paddling toward the boats he could see on the horizon. He wonders why his boss and the other rich people didn’t go into hiding somewhere remote. He decides maybe they needed to stay in the public eye. It was like “a switch you just can’t turn off” (89).

The interview is with Ahmed Fazahnakian, former Major of the Iranian Revolution Guards Corps Air Force. He’s now lives in a 300 kilometer maze, a “hand-carved marvel of engineering” (89), that was once home to almost a quarter million people. Now only a small fraction remain, many of whom, like Fazahnakian, simply have nowhere else to go. He recalls that his country initially felt it was in a better position than most because it is small and easily isolated. The problem was the millions of refugees streaming in from the east, mostly from India. The hope was to join forces with Pakistan to contain the problem and stop the zombies, but Pakistan refused and declared that any foreign soldiers in their country would be considered “a declaration of war” (90).

Iran had to cut off the massive influx of refugees, many of whom were infected. They decided to take decisive action, and Fazahnakian flew the mission that blew the Ketch River Bridge, which cut off the majority of the traffic into Iran from Pakistan. Pakistan retaliated by shooting Iran’s border station at Qila Safed. Without any direct response from Pakistani leadership, the conflict quickly escalated, guided by “panicked rage” (91). In an unexpected and ironic twist, both sides began firing nuclear weapons on each other. The irony lies in the fact that Pakistan had initially helped Iran build up their nuclear program. Many cities are destroyed in a scenario no one predicted. Based on his experiences, Fazahnakian concludes that he no longer believes in a higher power.

The narrator meets with former U.S. Army Infantryman Todd Wainio at the train station. They shake hands under the Victory mural, which depicts the now-famous image of a group of soldiers, their backs turned toward the viewer, watching the sunrise over Manhattan from New Jersey. Wainio looks much older than his young age as he takes the narrator back to the chaotic early days of the Great Panic. He explains that the country needed to boost morale and regain order, so after three months, the higher-ups orchestrated a counter-offensive. They decided to send troops, including Wainio, to Yonkers, New York, to take a stand against “Zack” (93)—which is the military’s term for the zombies.

Wainio complains of their position during the standoff, as they were placed right on the ground. He insists rooftops would have been better, allowing protection from an attack. Instead, they were put behind sandbags and provided a wide range of equipment, including tanks and armed Humvees. Wainio thinks ultimately it was all just for the press, who were also present in large numbers. They had the troops in bulky hazmat suits despite knowing full-well the virus isn’t airborne, which Wainio surmises because the higher-ups an the press weren’t wearing any protective clothing.

Zack finally arrived, at first slowly and in small numbers. Rockets were launched with bomblets, and Wainio initially found the carnage exciting. However, he should’ve been worried when only a small number were killed. The “steel rain” (96) was hitting their bodies rather than their heads. The next round of fire was a “direct fire from the heavy arms” (98), and Wainio was sure that “[n]othing can survive this” (98), but as the attack waned, thousands of zombies were still coming toward them.

With the main attack over, Wainio and his men, who are meant to be the last resort, are forced to begin firing. A new technology they were wearing, an eyepiece called Land Warrior, showed them the millions of zombies behind the thousands they were shooting. Men started panicking, and their earpieces picked up the chaos. Land Warrior captured fellow troops being attacked and eaten. Weapons were launched from Joint Strike Fighters, but zombies still emerged from the clouds of smoke left behind. Everyone began to panic, firing aimlessly, and Wainio found himself pulled into a fighting vehicle. He cynically concludes that Zack’s lack of fear is what triumphed that day. They couldn’t wear the enemy down with fear when the enemy didn’t possess any.

The interview with Xolelwa Azania is conducted at his writing desk, where he is currently penning volume three of Rainbow Fist: South Africa at War. Azania explains that the book is about Paul Redeker, whom Azania describes as a “dispassionate” (105) and one of the most “controversial figures” in history (105). Redeker believes that all human emotion is impractical and a waste of time. However, many believed his philosophies “to be ‘an invaluable source of liberated intellect’” (105). In the early 1980s, he was approached by the apartheid government amidst national unrest. Redeker was tasked with revising South Africa’s “Plan Orange” (106), a guide in place since 1948 to protect the minority Afrikaner population in the face of an uprising from the majority African population.

Redeker’s revisions, titled “Orange Eighty-Four” (107), sparked controversy because it called for certain segments of the Afrikaner population to be sacrificed to conserve resources. Redeker immediately earned the ire of the Afrikaners despite a plan that Azania considers brilliant. Amidst the Great Panic, a diverse group of armed agents from the National Intelligence Agency located Redeker at a remote cabin. He thought they were going to kill him in revenge, but instead they asked him what his solution was to the then-current situation. Redeker had, in fact, been working on a solution, which first involved consolidating the efforts of the strained armed forces and placing them in remote “safe zone” (108). There, they could eliminate any infestations in the immediate area. Redeker then proposed evacuating a “small fraction” of the civilian population (109) to eventually use as a viable labor force. Those left behind would be culled—herded into isolated zones and used as “human bait” (109) to prevent the undead from following those evacuated to the safe zones.

The agents took Redeker to the underground base where he’d originally written Orange Eighty-Four, and Redeker read his latest report to the U.S. president and remaining members of his cabinet. Many of them responded in protest, including the president, who denied ever inviting Redeker there. An older, Black man stood up and claimed it is he who asked for Redeker. He is an elder statesman, considered the new “nation’s father” (110), and he insisted Redeker would save them all. He then gave Redeker, known as a “heartless monster” (111), a hug. Redeker was never seen again. Azania stepped in for Redeker since he “understood [Redeker’s] way of thinking better than anyone left alive in South Africa” (111), and they implemented the Redeker plan. After the interview, the narrator reveals that Azania is actually Paul Redeker, and he has been interviewing him at the Robben Island Psychiatric Institution.

The narrator meets Philip Adler by chance during a pilgrimage to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Adler’s first trip outside Germany since the war. He states Hamburg was “heavily infested” (112). There were also refugees trapped everywhere without food or clean water and waiting to be rescued. When the commanding officer was accidentally killed, Adler took over and set up a command post at a hotel. They got an order to retreat with unusual instructions not to move or inform civilians. At first, Adler thought it was a mistake, but General Lang, commander of the Northern Front confirmed the order.

Adler emphasizes that as a West German, he has learned to put his conscious first since the West Germans “bear the burden of our grandfather’s shame” from their involvement in World War II (113). He told Lang he could not obey the order, so Lang threatened to charge him and his men “with treason and prosecuted with ‘Russian efficiency’” (113), which suggested they would be executed. As they withdrew, the civilians shouted at them, calling them cowards and blaming them for their inevitable deaths. Adler locked eyes with and saluted a soldier who once saved his life in Sarajevo. The soldier was part of an expendable unit tasked with preventing too many zombies from following Adler and his men. With tears in his eyes, Adler resolved to kill General Lang when he got a chance. The opportunity never came, however, as General Lang took his own life just after receiving the news that Adler’s unit had successfully crossed the canal. Adler hates him even more for this. He now knows they were implementing their own version of the Redeker Plan­—known in German as the Prochnow Plan—but Lang was too much of a coward to see it through to the end. He refused to “shoulder the weight” of the difficult choices ahead (116), which the rest of them, including Adler, were forced to do.

The narrator talks with Bohdan Taras Kondratiuk, a war hero who sits in a dim, windowless room with other patients suffering from respiratory ailments. There are no doctors, only a limited staff of nurses and orderlies. Kondratiuk discusses how exhausted he and his men were after fighting “four brutal engagements” (116). Just as they arrived at the safety zone in Kiev, they were told to evacuate to the Crimea. Kiev was in complete disarray. Without any barricades to stop civilians, the escape route at Patona Bridge was in chaos. Any man in uniform was tasked with directing traffic. None of the equipment or resources they were promised were there. They had no way to adequately inspect the evacuees for infection, but they tried to do it anyway. Fights broke out and some of Kondratiuk’s men were beaten and killed.

Kondratiuk was not there for the fighting because he was on the radio trying to call for help. As Kiev burned and the evacuation route was in pandemonium, Kondratiuk heard the sounds of moaning. Suddenly, four jets approached and prepared to target the bridge with chemical reagents. Kondratiuk yelled to everyone to get off the bridge, and people started screaming and jumping off. Kondratiuk pulled some to safety, but then he saw the chemical bombs’ parachutes opening. He sealed himself into a tank with a few other men just as the chemical agent was released onto the bridge. Several of the dead, those who were concealing wounds, quickly reanimated. As some of them headed toward the tank, Kondratiuk ordered the gunner to start shooting. The other tanks followed suit. After 20 minutes they had destroyed the zombies, so Kondratiuk commanded his company to keep moving. He saw the jets heading toward other bridges and one toward the center of Kiev. As he and his men fled, the last thing he saw was the “spectacular” 60-foot statue of “Rodina Mat (Motherland)” (121), a testament to Kiev’s victory in World War II.

The next interview is with Jesika Hendricks, who hails from Waukesha, Wisconsin, and now volunteers for the Wilderness Restoration Project in Canada. There is nothing but wreckage, including human bodies partially frozen in the subarctic ice, as far as the eye can see. Like many others, Hendricks had taken her chances coming north, hoping she can survive the cold temperatures. She disparages the government’s handling of the situation, believing they could have given those they left behind more information to help them survive.

Hendricks recalls that a couple of weeks after Yonkers and three days after the government began to retreat west her father decided it was time for her family to leave. He made the decision after seeing some zombies feeding on a homeless man in their neighborhood. She calls the news media “unprofessional” for their skewed coverage and for directing citizens to go north without specifying where to go or how survive once they’d arrived (122). They only emphasized that the zombies freeze if it’s cold enough, so everyone should “Go north. Go north. Go north” (122).

Although Hendricks’s mother argued with her father’s decision, he was “caught up in the Great Panic” (123) and insisted on going. They packed food and supplies and found the roads relatively easy to traverse, as they were in the first wave of travelers. They decided to go as far north as they could, though her mother forced her father to pick up one hitchhiker on the way. However, the hitchhiker (named Patty) had her hand wrapped in a bandage, and Hendricks woke up one night to find her gone. They only passed a few zombies on the way, and for a while they stopped at a campsite and enjoyed the camaraderie as well as the abundance of natural resources.

After a month, as food supplies started to deplete, people began to turn on one another. The campsite’s sense of community devolved into violence and lawlessness. Hendricks lost weight, and her parents started arguing. Then they fell ill. Winter hit, and everything got quiet. Estimates put the dead at 11 million in North America alone. Hendricks thought of all the people from other countries who also fled north to Greenland, Iceland, and Siberia. She shares that the new phenomenon of a “Gray Winter” is said to be filth in the air, some of which is the result of “ash from human remains” (129). At the end of the interview, she comes across a zombie half frozen in ice and “casually” destroys it with her crowbar (130).

The narrator interviews Sardar Khan, the project manager in charge of restoring a hotel that endured a cholera epidemic while swarmed with refugees. It was once the home of a maharaja and is slowly being restored to its former glory. Khan tells of watching monkeys, vehicles, and refugees trying to navigate a narrow pass in the Himalayas an the undead approached. Khan labels the pass that is essentially a goat track a “notorious death trap” (131) and describes how he witnessed several people and vehicles tumble over the side. Khan claims he actually ended up there by accident. He was a civil engineer working for the Border Roads Organization when another engineer, Sergeant Mukharjee, pulled him into a car and asked him if he could drive. He commanded Khan to drive to the pass to wait for the order to blow it up. They were shocked to find the pass still filled with refugees. When Mukharjee relayed that information on his radio, he was told to blow it up anyway.

Although Mukharjee planned to wait until the pass was clear of humans and contained only zombies, the well-respected General Raj-Singh, also known as the “Tiger of Delhi” (133), suddenly appeared. He told them they needed to blow the pass immediately. If they refused, a fighter bomber was going to launch thermonuclear weapons and take out the pass and half the mountain with it. However, this maneuver would also create a slope where the zombies could enter the safe zone. General Raj-Singh took the detonator from Mukharjee “to accept the burden of mass murder” (133), but when Raj-Singh pressed the button, nothing happened. He then headed into the crowd with Mukharjee and Khan right behind him.

In the chaos of the crowd, Khan couldn’t find the General, but he saw Mukharjee, who was fighting with someone over his rifle, tumble over the side of the pass. Suddenly, the zombies were right behind them. Khan was trampled as everyone tried to run. He pulled himself under a microbus just as an explosion knocked him out cold. He wake up and found himself alone. There was now a gap in the path between him and the zombies. Khan watched as they fell over the edge attempting to get him. General Raj-Singh had manually triggered the detonator, and a statue of him now stands over a mountain freeway. As Khan confirms that he was secure over his still-functioning radio, a monkey sitting on top of the bus peed in Khan’s face.