Blood, Mud and Corpses (Royal Zombie Corps Book 1)
Page 8
'I don't know, why as yet, but those who are bitten seem to turn into zombies once they have died, but not those who survive the attack. Perhaps there is something in our immune system that prevents the bacteria from taking over while the victim is still alive. Perhaps even you have been infected with the same bacteria, allowing you to communicate with them. Let me write that idea down.' Hudson walked over to a desk and scribbled it down, 'Have you noticed how those civilians respond to your orders? You're speaking to them in English, a language which they probably do not understand, and some of the things you say are too complicated for them to have picked up by chance. It suggests that you are communicating on some other level that they understand; maybe some form of telepathy or undeveloped part of the brain. Again something I must look into, especially when we see if we can get anyone else here to command them.'
'Now getting back to my previous point on bacteria, we may be able to deliberately create new zombies and use them as weapons.'
'But sir.' Marsh objected, 'We can't do that. It would be criminal. You may get the odd volunteer, especially among the seriously wounded, but you couldn't deliberately infect people.'
'There you are wrong young man. It would be no more criminal than the use of poison gas. Some would argue no less criminal than deploying machine guns. Consider the fighter pilot? Should he survive flight school, he has minimal chance of surviving six weeks of combat before he falls from the sky in his blazing coffin; you know they don't even give them parachutes. There is another weapon being developed where men are encased in metal to cross the battlefield, while choking on the fumes of the engine that propels them. Even the Royal Navy is trying to blockade Germany into starvation. This is war, people make hard choices, take risks and die.'
'My goodness Sir, are you saying the ends justify the means? That it would be more correct for us to create more zombies if it shortens the war?'
'I'm not going argue Consequentialism with you man. You want to do that, go and find a chaplain. However, anything that shortens the war and reduces the burden will be an improvement on the current bloody stalemate. On the first three days of the Somme we lost over forty thousand men.' Hudson dropped the bombshell of the horrific British losses, losses that had been concealed, even from the enlisted men on the front line.
'It couldn't have been that many Sir?' Marsh dearly hoped the Colonel was exaggerating. The numbers were beyond belief, even for someone who had the experience of fighting in the trenches.
'What if, for a fraction of that cost, we could break the German lines just by turning a few thousand troops into zombies? Zombies under our control. The battle of the Somme won with a handful of animated corpses, tens of thousands of deaths averted.'
'What if the Germans are thinking the same way? What if they've got zombies to?' Marsh asked.
'All the more reason for us to rush ahead with our development of the zombie as a war winning weapon. They caught us out with poison gas, the U-Boat and the forward firing interrupter gun on aircraft. We can't have them catch us out on this. At the moment, you are possibly the most prized asset in our entire Empire. The only person that we know of that can control zombies.'
'You can't mean that Sir.'
'Well until we can find someone else who can control these zombies the way you can, then you are unique. We know how to create more zombies, and failing all else, we'll recruit them directly from the German front line. However, we don't know how to create another you.'
'How will we go about solving that Sir?'
'Much as I'd love to vivisect you, that would be killing the goose that laid the golden egg.' Hudson chuckled at the gulping noise that came from Marsh at the mention of vivisection, 'We need to establish methods of transmission. We will see if animals can receive the infection either through injection of the bacteria or directly from the zombies themselves. I will also see if I can find a few desperate volunteers in the casualty clearing stations, men who have no hope, but wish to strike a final blow against the enemy. However, I do not see how we can easily find more of you.'
'Sir, maybe the zombies can find others than can lead them? Perhaps if I took one zombie, crate it and locate it near large numbers of troops shouting instructions. We'd keep it secret but be able to observe any reaction to instructions. If it reacts, we have a new handler.' Marsh suggested.
'I like that idea. Now the easiest places to do this would be in the infantry depots on the coast.' Hudson was running with the idea, 'You'd have to watch out for spies and the like, so you'll need security, but this would give you the access you'd need to large numbers of soldiers. Perhaps I could arrange a letter from the General Staff to ease your way and they could issue a new training instruction on shouting orders as part of the training, maybe as a way to identify leadership potential.'
'Hmm, Marsh, I think we have a plan coming together.' Hudson scratched the stubble on his chin, 'Away with you then. Not a word to anyone else. I will think on this tonight and draft orders tomorrow.'
ABOUT THE BOOK
There are several different influences on this book. The initial idea occurred in March 2015 when I was playing with some dictation software. Having recently been reading some transcriptions of oral history interviews of World War One veterans, published in the BBC History Magazine, I wondered if I could dictate a few accounts in that style. Over the years, I have been fascinated by the accounts that oral history projects have collected on a variety of different historical periods. By the end of a half hour session in front of a microphone, I ended up with a thousand words and a slow burning idea of writing some counterfactual history story.
I did not start writing the story until late 2015. By this time, I was consciously influenced by 'The Third World War' by General Sir John Hackett, a classic piece of counterfactual historical writing. Without realising, I was also being influenced by Max Brooks 'World War Z', itself also influenced by Hackett's work. Other influences included the Harry Turtledove series 'The Great War' and 'American Empire', and 'The Bloody Red Barron', part of the 'Anno Dracula' series by Kim Newman.
As a teacher, I was also very aware of the centenary commemorations of the Great War. In November 2014, I visited Ypres and travelled around Flanders. Over the years, I have driven across the First World War battlefields, but this was the first occasion I had spent any real time visiting one, despite having as through an understanding as can be had by a person who was not a participant, eyewitness, or expert. However, in terms of this story, I had to make the decision to focus on the storytelling rather than on my interpretation of the conditions and experiences of the war.
Although not explicitly explained in the story, there is a deliberate substitution of the Spanish Flu with the zombie infection. This was drawn down from several pieces of research that suggest that the Spanish Flu was present in Europe for quite a while before the 1918 outbreak, and may have been circulating among the armies in the trenches.
Several of the locations in the story are based on real sites, although they are brought to life in a fictional sense, in some cases due to the lack of readily available source material that illustrates them. The Richborough site is a particular case and is of much interest to me as a major road skirts the site, yet the importance of the port, and later reincarnations in the 1930s and 1940s have been largely forgotten, even in local memory. Likewise, the troop staging camp at Étaples is also fictionally recreated, with the mutiny by Australian troops based on real events. Notably Étaples is also central in some interpretations of the origin of the Spanish Flu.
Many thanks are due to Helen for catching numerous errors. This book is written in British English. First and foremost, this is a fictional story. Therefore, any errors and deviations from the historical events are either deliberate or due to the failings of the author.
C.M. Harald, April 2016. Folkestone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C.M. Harald is an history teacher and writer living in an English coastal town within sight of France.
He has taught in a range of challenging schools, and is now returning to writing having spent many years concentrating on teaching.
COMING SOON
Tigers on the Western Front (RZC – part 2)
www.cmharald.net
Also available
The Butcher's Funeral
Also available as individual episodes
The Butcher's Funeral
Episode 1
The Butcher's Funeral
Episode 2 - Hocking
The Butcher's Funeral
Episode 3 – The Butcher's Wife
The Butcher's Funeral
Episode 4 – The Wise Woman
The Butcher's Funeral
Episode 5 – The Carniter
The Butcher's Funeral
Episode 6 – The Thief
The Butcher's Funeral
Episode 7 – The Trial
www.cmharald.net