It goes by many names: "The Crisis," "The Dark Years," "The Walking Plague,"
as well as newer and more "hip" Titles such as "World War Z" or "Z War One." I
personally dislike this last moniker as it implies an inevitable "Z War Two." For
me, it will always be "The Zombie War," and while many may protest the
scientific accuracy of the word sombre, they will be hard-pressed to discover a
more globally accepted term for the creatures that almost caused our extinction.
Zombie remains a devastating word, unrivaled in its power to conjure up so many
memories or emotions, and it is these memories, and emotions, that are the subject
of this book.
This record of the greatest conflict in human history owes its genesis to a
much smaller, much more personal conflict between me and the chairperson of the
United Nation's Postwar Commission Report. My initial work for the Commission
could be described as nothing short of a labor of love. My travel stipend, my
security access, my battery of translators, both human and electronic, as well as
my small, but nearly priceless voice-activated transcription "pal" (the greatest gift
the world's slowest typist could ask for), all spoke to the respect and value my
work was afforded on this project. So, needless to say, it came as a shock when I
found almost half of that work deleted from the report's final edition.
"It was all too intimate," the chairperson said during one of our many "animated"
discussions. "Too many opinions, too many feelings. That's not what this report is
about. We need clear facts and figures, unclouded by the human factor." Of
course, she was right. The official report was a collection of cold, hard data, an
objective "after-action report" that would allow future generations to study the
events of that apocalyptic decade without
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being influenced by "the human factor." But isn't the human factor what connects
us so deeply to our past' Will future generations care as much for chronologies and
casualty statistics as they would for the personal accounts of individuals not so
different from themselves? By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the
kind of personal detachment from a history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one
day to repeat it' And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference
between us and the enemy we now refer to as "the living dead"? I presented this
argument, perhaps less professionally than was appropriate, to my "boss," who
after my final exclamation of "we can't let these stories die" responded
immediately with, "Then don't. Write a book. You've still got all your notes, and
the legal
freedom to use them. Who's stopping you from keeping these stories alive in the
pages of your own (expletive deleted) book?"
Some critics will, no doubt, take issue with the concept of a personal history book
so soon after the end of worldwide hostilities. After all, it has been only twelve
years since VA Day was declared in the continental United States, and barely a
decade since the last major world power celebrated its deliverance on "Victory in
China Day." Given that most people consider VC Day to be the official end, then
how can we have real perspective when, in the words of a UN colleague, "We've
been at peace about as long as we were at war." This is a valid argument, and one
that begs a response. In the case of this generation, those who have fought and
suffered to win us this decade of peace, time is as much an enemy as it is an ally.
Yes, the coming years will provide hindsight, adding greater wisdom to memories
seen through the light of a matured, postwar world. But many of those memories
may no longer exist, trapped in bodies and spirits too damaged or infirm to see the
fruits of their victory harvested. It is no great secret that global lite expectancy is a
mere shadow of its former prewar figure. Malnutrition, pollution, the rise of
previously eradicated ailments, even in the United States, with its resurgent
economy and universal health care are the present reality; there simply are not
enough resources to care for all the physical and psychological casualties. It is
because of this enemy, the enemy of time, that I have forsaken the luxury of
hindsight and published these survivors' accounts. Perhaps decades from now,
someone
will cake up the Task o{ recording the recollections of the much older, much wiser
survivors. Perhaps I might even be one of them.
Although this is primarily a book of memories, it includes many of the details,
technological, social, economic, and so on, found in the original Commission
Report, as they are related to the stories of those voices fea-tured in these pages.
This is their book, not mine, and I have tried to main-tain as invisible a presence as
possible. Those questions included in the text are only there to illustrate those that
might have been posed by readers. I have attempted to reserve judgment, or
commentary of any kind, and if there is a human factor that should be removed, let
it be my own.