Zombie War: Interviews From The Frontline

by Lambdin, Susanne

  There are essentially two blocs in the Ukraine. You have the Eastern bloc which identifies much more with Russia, these people tend to have Russian heritage, watch Russian television, and want to be part of Russia again. Then you have the Western bloc, these are people who tend to speak more Ukrainian, they identify more with the European Union.

  We have one of the lowest birth rates in Europe. The average wage is very low -even a doctor only earns about two hundred dollars a month.

  Immediately before the War the Russians wanted Crimea back. There wasn’t much we could do to stop them taking it. On one hand a lot of people in that region had Russian heritage anyway and wanted to rejoin the motherland. However, many of our soldiers died trying to keep the Russian invaders out. There was a boy in my town, Nikita, who had never even had a girlfriend before. He was sent off as a soldier and died fighting the Russians. He was only twenty years old. Do you see now why I can’t forgive these people?

  Can you tell us what the Ukrainian people are like?

  The women here are beautiful, in a land of criminal shortages they somehow stitch together wonderful costumes and dresses, so that if you know a woman for two years you would never see her in the same outfit twice. When asked why she always wears something different a Ukrainian woman would answer, “Women are made to be beautiful. What’s wrong with reminding everybody of that?”

  They keep themselves in immaculate physical condition. For many years the demographics were that for every one man there were seven Ukrainian women. Therefore the women learned to be competitive in the sense they were always trying to look their very best.

  The men wear either khaki army greens or black. This is due to us being a country that is always expecting fighting. Many of the men are alcoholics.

  How would you define the Ukraine before the War?

  The yellow and blue symbols of the Ukraine showed up everywhere. We were a nation still proud of its heritage, as broken as it was. You could call the Ukraine a Frankenstein’s monster of a country, Russia’s third world charity, a point of hot debate and social contemplation, and yet the people are fiercely patriotic.

  As for the scenery, the fountains had stopped working. The pavements were cracked. Most of the streetlights didn’t work. You could walk home under huge trees beside crackling rivers, trying to use a distant light as a goal, but most people knew the routes by memory and instinct anyway.

  The economy was broken. There was so much corruption everywhere in every level of government. Even before the war a Michelin star restaurant still cost less than thirty American dollars for a meal for two.

  But we were proud to be Ukrainian. We stood by each other. A lot of that had to do with the Church -most of us are Christian.

  What was life like under Communism?

  We suffered under Communism. We were always told that the West was on the very brink of collapse, we would hear, “Any day now, Capitalism will fall under its own weight. A stupid system that can’t support its people.”

  All the while we were told to get by with less food, less supplies, less everything. It is important for a woman to have more than one set of sexy underwear, more than one set of alluring clothing. But under Communism we were told, “Only have two pieces of underwear, make these sacrifices for your country.”

  We were so poor that many women became prostitutes just to be able to feed their family. A woman could have a high education and be fluent in a number of languages but had to resort to selling her body just to get by.

  And the days when the delivery trucks arrived, protected by security guards - ohhh! The glory! To finally have a good day! To finally have something to make you feel alive! Even an animal which is near to starvation most of the time but one day a week has a rich food source must be dancing with joy on the day that food arrives!

  I’m too young to remember the millions of Ukrainians who were starved under Communism, or the thousands of people who were tortured and shot in the head by the secret police. A great many atrocities were inflicted upon us by the Communists. In those days the Communists put up propaganda posters stating, “It is morally wrong to eat your children.” But people had little choice except to resort to cannibalism in a lot of areas.

  Some of the older folks can tell you all about that.

  What’s your job now?

  I’m a schoolteacher. The education of our young has become an obsession among us, that and going to Church and training in the military. We are all determined to try and turn this problem around, to try and find that bright future which has somehow always been denied us.

  A schoolchild wrote a poem the other day and it really stayed with me. It summed up what we went through here in the Ukraine. Here you go, I’ll read it to you:

  A bleak and broken landscape.

  A country always on the verge of war.

  And then the zombies came.

  ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT

  Interviewer: Mick Franklin

  INTERVIEW 10:

  The roads here are in terrible condition with rubble strewn over them. Donkeys lead carts through the broken streets. A full fifty percent of the population is unemployed. The buildings have not been repaired in decades. I’m told the city didn’t look much better before the War.

  My host, Ahmed Ali Ahmed, is a prisoner.

  My father never forgave me for being a Jihadist. I thought I was going to save the world. I saw myself as being traditional but also morally courageous. I was going to liberate Western women, not in the sense they would understand it, but in the sense I would liberate them from their excess freedom and decadence and instead have them all clothed head to foot in the burka and obedient to sharia law. Yes, I would be hard on the Westerners, but it was for their own good. It was my duty to show them a better way to live.

  My father on the other hand was a truly kind man, if terribly naïve. He believed that all races could share the planet together, that “the world is not only for Muslims,” as he put it. I tried to argue with him many times, pointing to the holy texts of Islam as proof, that Allah himself wanted –no, demanded –that we fight to subjugate the unbelievers. My father wouldn’t be swayed although he would always listen to me. His arguments were always measured, reasoned, while I would simply quote passages from the Koran as proof of why we had to fight the infidel.

  We had been fighting the hated infidel for fourteen hundred years and we had never been stronger and more successful. With the rise of the Islamic State many Muslims took heart and strengthened their resolve. The idea of Muslims taking over the world was always a distant idea to Muslims, something that may or may not happen in hundreds of years. But with the brave fighters of IS we all were given an example to follow. Theirs was true Islam.

  I thought that Islam means peace?

  It does. Once we have conquered the world by the sword then there will be peace.

  I thought Muslims only attacked people in self-defence?

  We were slaughtering Buddhist monks in Bangladesh. Do you think those were evil, colonialist Buddhist monks? The Hindus we were slaughtering throughout India and Thailand, what had they ever done to us? The Christians we were butchering right across Africa and the Middle East, some one hundred and fifty thousand each year or more, were they crusaders?

  I was also told that it was poverty that caused terrorism.

  There were literally hundreds of millions of people in China and India far poorer than us who would never dream of going around killing people.

  But what about how our politicians always told us that terrorists only attacked us because you have grievances?

  If that were true then you would have been seeing terrorism in your own country from your own people every day. Each time a man was unfairly dismissed from work, or the bank decided to kick him out of his own home, or his wife left him, then he would strap bombs to himself, cry something like “Jesus is the greatest!” and kill a crowd of civilians. Did you ever see that happen, even once?

  Okay . . . go on.

&
nbsp; The most aggressive jihadists are recruited from Egypt. I was caught up in the excitement. I was given adoration by the people at the mosque and the imams made sure to indulge all my physical pleasures, whether that was for hashish, fine food or women. Like many young males in the Muslim world I was unemployed and good for little else other than quoting passages from the Koran. I had nothing to lose and literally everything to gain. Jihad was my cause.

  When I saw my brothers being bombed in other countries it filled me with rage. I would always go and visit my father after being at the mosque, which gave me the confidence I needed to speak to him with defiance. Then I would see my dad and point to examples of how fellow Muslims had been bombed by Obama’s drone strikes. Do you know that President Obama ordered over a hundred thousand drone strike missions? To put that into context it was like the equivalent of eleven years of “nine eleven.” You lost about three thousand people that day. That’s how many we were losing daily, on average, for eleven years, thanks to your President.

  I told my dad this, my imam’s words fresh in my ears, but my dad just told me that the actions of the Western leaders did not reflect the desire of the Western people.

  “What do you mean?” I cried, exasperated beyond all belief. Surely my dad could see we were in a civilizational war?

  He looked at me calmly and said, “I don’t believe in violence.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I told him again how the West was bombing our people throughout the Middle East and still he refused to condone violence.

  I asked him what we should do, then.

  He looked grave, as though he was going to suggest an idea that he really hated to share. He said, “I think we should immigrate to the West.”

  I cheered, a big grin on my face, saying, “Yeah! Let’s take the fighting to their doorstep! They can bomb us in the Middle East but they can’t bomb their own cities.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” said my dad, “I told you I don’t like violence. But I understand your pain at seeing our people being bombed every day. What I suggest instead is that we go to the West, not to cause violence, but to live off their generous welfare system. It is an effective, non-violent way to bankrupt the evil governments that are attacking our people.”

  I looked at him incredulously, “That’s your solution? They are killing our people every day and you think we should go live on benefits?”

  “It would work. There are already plenty of us in the West doing exactly that –not fighting the civilians, but instead gradually crippling the government.”

  My dad and me parted company then. He went off to live in Sweden, never doing a single day’s work there despite him being a talented accountant. As for me, I wanted to train as a Jihadist. Without my dad holding me back there was no stopping me.

  I went to Afghanistan to train with a group there. I thought things were bad in Egypt but I never saw such poverty as what I did in Afghanistan. In the villages most men of fighting age were gone, fighting the infidel or else killed. I remember seeing a little girl smile when I offered her some candy. As she smiled a stream of black insects ran out her nose. I recoiled and didn’t go near her again. Near the village were fields of poppies. Huge, unending fields of heroin.

  [Smiles with satisfaction.]

  When I heard the first stories, the stories of a plague that made the dead walk, I knew I had my answer. The shipments of heroin that went from Afghanistan out to the West, I infected them with ghoul blood. That created a slow burn, it meant that a heroin user who took the contaminated heroin wouldn’t turn right away, he would take his heroin with its extra dose of zombie blood in it and it might take days or weeks before he turned. But turn he would. [Smiles again.]

  That’s how so many ghoul outbreaks effected the West, despite Trump’s draconian border control.

  Were you involved in any other terrorist activity?

  I participated in the explosion at the German Festival of Light. The bomb itself only killed about fifteen people and another one hundred and fifty or so were injured, receiving minor lacerations from the ball bearings in the bomb. What the police didn’t work out until later was that the ball bearings had been dipped in ghoul blood; everyone who survived that attack later turned. They’d been given a slow burn. That became our new favourite way of attacking the infidel.

  I was also there at the bombings in Madrid and Stockholm. I wasn’t involved in those ones, but I watched. I couldn’t stop smiling for a week, I was so happy.

  Other cells used more subtle means of contaminating the infidel such as adding ghoul blood to pre-made meals in factories which were then sent to supermarkets. I don’t know how many outbreaks that caused in apartment blocks and nursing homes.

  Any time boatloads of people were sent from Africa to Europe we made sure dozens of bite victims were mixed in with the refugees. They were easy to recruit, each person who had been bitten was terrified of becoming a zombie, and they wanted desperately to believe there was some way of escaping that fate, so we told them that the cure was waiting in the West. All they had to do was climb aboard a boat or a plane and salvation was just a short trip away. Of course, you know how that really turned out -the first major outbreak in the UK was due to a group of refugees turning and becoming zombies when they reached Heathrow airport.

  Spain virtually collapsed when they took in that boatload of refugees, televising everything, and then as the boat was brought into port an army of zombies stormed out. I still remember that reporter standing on the boat ramp having his face bitten off by the first zombie to step off the boat. The cameraman dropped the camera and ran away, but the camera still kept on recording, showing the hundreds of zombies stepping off the boat from Africa and beginning their long march through Europe. And what a long and bloody march that turned out to be.

  I served Allah right to the end. It was His will. I’m not ashamed of anything.

  The next day my host was executed for terrorism.

  NORMAN, OKLAHOMA

  Cleveland County Courthouse

  Interviewer: Susanne L. Lambdin

  INTERVIEW 11:

  For the last few days, I have watched a controversial custody case between two brothers, Vincent and Landrake Partridge. Vincent is a farmer, and while it is speculated he may be responsible for the death of his wife, he has refused to testify in court. His brother has kept the children Sally and Michael with him at a neighbour’s home for the last year and now wants to adopt them. The children are not present for the trial and I feel sorry for Vincent – it’s obvious he’s under a great deal of stress and wants to fight for his children but is somehow too ashamed to do so.

  The moment Judge Clemmons calls for a recess and the brothers are taken to separate rooms, I decide to try to get an interview. After the courtroom is cleared, I head to the water fountain and notice both attorneys trying to negotiate a deal in the hallway. I make the decision and enter the room where Vincent waits. My arrival catches him by surprise; he’s crying.

  Mr. Partridge, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if you’d talk to me.

  Who are you? What are you doing in here? Where is my attorney?

  I’m a journalist, Mr. Partridge, and for the last few months I’ve been touring portions of the United States that are no longer listed as ‘hot zones’. I tell people’s story about what they experienced during the outbreak. If you won’t talk in court, maybe you’ll just talk to me.

  I’d rather not. My attorney said not too, but he’s wrong. I am their father. I have a right to be heard.

  I totally agree. Just practise on me. Tell me what you want to say like it’s a rehearsal.

  Think it will make a difference? My attorney doesn’t, but I can’t just turn my back on my kids and let him . . . let that son-of-bitch walk away with them. They won’t even let me see my kids.

  I promise not to release anything until custody is decided and your name is cleared. Is that okay?

  I’d like to talk to someone impa
rtial. That judge is a real bitch, and my brother’s attorney isn’t much better.

  [He sighs and finally sits down and stares at me. After a minute, he spreads out his hands and indicates I can commence the interview – I need to make it fast before his attorney returns and I’m tossed out on the street.]

  Your brother’s attorney claims you closed the cellar door on your wife during a tornado, which resulted in her death, but the way I see it, you did what you had to in order to save your children and parents. Just tell me what happened and maybe it will help convince you to testify.

  [His shoulders slump and he starts talking; I’m in luck.]

  The tornado was already on us by the time I spotted the funnel about a half mile off ripping through the wheat field and headed straight for the house. Tessa knew we had gone to the cellar. She said she would be right behind us. I didn’t want to close the door, but the sky was raining zombies. They had already gotten inside the barn. The screams of the animals was unbearable. I waited for Tessa as long as I could, but Sally was crying. My mother couldn’t calm her down, and Michael was fighting his grandfather, trying to go back outside – my son wanted to help Tessa.

  Your attorney said your wife was delayed because she went back to the barn to save the horses.

  Yeah, Tessa loved animals and she just had to let the horses out, even though she knew it might be the last thing she ever did. Three horses managed to run down the road before the barn was flipped onto its side, along with the chicken coop, scattering birds across the yard. Tessa turned toward the house, I guess she thought about going there as it was closer than the cellar, but the shingles started to peel off the top of the house.