Zombie War: Interviews From The Frontline

by Lambdin, Susanne

  When the War began we had almost no way of defending ourselves. Eventually, my friend Carlitos and I were able to steal a cache of firearms from some local criminals. That was extremely risky, we had to sneak in at night to the school they were using as a base, hiding in the shadows and searching for the guns. We found them Carlitos using a crowbar to get a steel cupboard open while I was lookout. Some gang member with an assault rifle was patrolling the floor above, or maybe just up for a cigarette, and he heard something and came looking. Carlitos and me hid in the cupboard when the guy came down searching for the source of the noise. If he had checked the cupboard I wouldn’t be here today to tell you this story, but fortunately he didn’t look and instead went back to whatever he was doing.

  We couldn’t believe we were still alive. We got as many guns and bullets as we could carry and got out of there. At that time the huge swarms of undead hadn’t reached our city yet so there were relatively few zombies out on the street. When we got home Carlitos was already making plans for how to deal with the local gangsters. Carlitos is what is known in my culture as a “Malandro,” this is a Portuguese word to describe a kind con artist from folklore, a likeable guy who is charismatic and always surrounded by women, dodgy but definitely someone that people like. That was my friend Carlitos to a tee.

  We did end up taking care of that gang, ambushing them one night when they were almost at their hideout. We had watched them for weeks before, learning that they would go and make a drug trade on Thursday nights and most of them would use some of the product on the way home. That is why they were caught totally unaware when a dozen of use rose up from behind some smashed cars and debris with firearms and began shooting. They never stood a chance. We shot them all down and didn’t lose a single man.

  After that we were able to make at least some preparations for facing the undead. We set up security patrols that were always armed and a kind of neighbourhood watch scheme where if anyone spotted the undead there was an immediate armed response to deal with it. The military would help us whenever they could, although by that time they had their hands full all over the country. These were stoic men, the type of guys that before the war you would send them in to raid a drug then –the police sure as hell wouldn’t do that, because most of them were being bribed by the criminals.

  Carlitos and me joined a group of soldiers passing through the city on their way to war. I turned over to a friend the rifle I had been using since that night at the school and was given an army assault rifle instead. There was a quick but tearful goodbye with my family. I didn’t expect to see them again but I was determined to fight in the War. These soldiers were doing something at least, helping to keep the huge armies of dead we had heard about on the radios away from our city. I had to play my part.

  We fought our way across Brazil, through the concrete cities and the steaming jungles. In each town and city we visited we tried to boost their defences, train them to use weapons, arm them if that was possible, and accept any new recruits who wanted to join us.

  I saw the remains of Carandiru Prison, whose human rights violations earned it the dubious honour of having a movie made after it. We stayed there for two days battling a horde thousands strong, having to radio in for a supply drop of ammunition because we were down to fighting off the zombies with spears and knives. That was where Carlitos was bitten on the arm. He had a look of shock on his face but he held it together as he told me I had to keep going, I had to find a way to save our country, because that is the Brazilian way. I promised him I would. Somehow we would win the War. He smiled and went off with a several other men who had been bitten. They embraced one last time. I didn’t watch when they shot themselves in the head. It became the standard ritual for those among us who were bitten and it broke my heart every time.

  One day we emerged from one side of a rainforest, stepping out under the open sky and seeing another army opposite us. There were about a hundred of them, the private army of the government, ready to protect the government at all costs. The government had used the rainforest as a natural barrier to defend themselves against the undead, and I’m guessing as well the civilian population. I really should have anticipated what would happen. The government had been oppressing the people for years, keeping us poor, keeping us disarmed. When the private army of the government opened fire on us we were completely unprepared. Two hundred of us were gunned down. Barely half a dozen of us escaped back in to the rainforest.

  When we got home again we made sure we told everyone what happened. The government was not our friend. They had killed us without even speaking to us. A pointless death for so many heroes.

  The Brazilian government has fallen, toppled by the people. Were you part of that revolution?

  Yes. I taught myself how to use a sniper rifle. I watched hundreds of hours of tuition on YouTube. I spent hours at a time on the shooting range, eventually reaching the point where I didn’t bother shooting targets that were any less than twelve hundred meters away. When we faced the government a second time it was totally different. We butchered the soldiers protecting them and we made sure each one of the government officials stood trial for treason. They all were publicly hanged.

  (Sighs deeply).

  We beat them and took back our country. We found a way to win. That is the Brazilian way.

  “Whoever is tired of Moscow is tired of life.” – Pre-War tourist advertisement

  MOSCOW, RUSSIA

  Interviewer: Mick Franklin

  INTERVIEW 18:

  The Kremlin dominates the skyline. I see many Russian people nod to it respectfully as they walk by. I meet my host, Agent Anton Karishnov, and he leads me down to a metro system. Moving through the guarded gates we find ourselves in a metro station converted into a shelter. It seems that not an inch is wasted –every spare space is devoted to storage of spare weapons or food or supplies or else someone is sleeping in it. We sit down in a makeshift restaurant in a subway train, lit by weak electric lights. On the menu is German beer, Chinese and Japanese food, Brazilian skewers, and some traditional Russian dishes. This is similar menu items seen all across Russia before the War, which are now much more expensive but still available. Waiters bring over the Arabic “shisha” for smoking. A large television screen has a faded and cracked screen and yet everyone in the restaurant is watching it.

  Before the War we had a lot of crazy television. Our version of your show Big Brother was called Dom 2, or House 2 in English. It had the same contestants on it for over seven years! They were making good money, so why not remain on the show? We had a lot of our own versions of popular shows from other countries, mostly America and Britain. These shows included Happy Together, which was our take on Married With Children, and Our Russia, which was similar to the UK programme Little Britain.

  Our sports shows included mixed martial arts competitions with two teams of two men opposing each other. Once one man had been thrown out the ring there would just be one man opposing a team of two people, far from a fair fight but very entertaining.

  It was not only our television shows which were wild and over the top. We also had theme events where people could go and do cos-play for things like Lord of the Rings, and act as a High Elf or a Hobbit or whatever. That might not sound so crazy, but people would commonly stay in these places for three or four months! They would conduct weddings and hold wars, all while still in character.

  What is Moscow like now that the War is over?

  Entertaining! Before the War Moscow never slept, I’m sure you saw the old slogan on the billboard “If you’re tired of Moscow you’re tired of life.” We took our love of extravagant television and games and mixed it with this new world. Now, the zombies form part of our culture.

  Russian highways used to kill over thirty thousand people a year before the War. Now we have death races across those same highways. The death toll is probably much less now due to our greatly reduced population but the road fatalities are now televised. Some television programmes sh
ow people racing across the highways, trying to avoid the zombies and the potholes, and just trying to reach their destination alive. Other programmes show armoured vehicles competing directly, even shooting at each other and trying to run each other off the road, all while they run over zombies that still infest our highways.

  Other events include armoured contestants having to fight their way through city streets that have been specifically barricaded off for these events. To be honest, the body armour the contestants are given is good quality. Rarely is a person caught and killed by zombies, but I have heard rumours that occasionally the show’s producers make sure a contestant is equipped with faulty armour with no protection so the contestant is killed, and interest in the game is revived. It’s serious business for many people in Moscow, who like to bet on the outcomes of the contestants such as who will make it through the obstacle course the quickest.

  There’s other events like that which feature people who are really good at free running, or parkour, and have to navigate past zombies, even jumping over the heads of zombies. They actually get more points for not killing the zombies and also for allowing zombies to get as close as possible before moving away. That game has the potential to end badly because the contestants have almost no armour, in order to be able to move freely.

  If someone doesn’t like to merely watch the games then we have a number of “farmers” who, for a small price, let you smash the head in of a zombie who has frozen in the river. The best time to do this is when the zombie’s head and shoulders have thawed but the rest of their body is trapped beneath the ice. Great fun for the whole family!

  How did Russians cope with the War?

  We are a people who are used to extremes. In the summer many parts of Russia reach the high thirties, in the winter some places reach minus eighty degrees Centigrade. We are used to surviving on very little and somehow always coping, whether it is by seeking help from a friend or neighbours or finding some other way around the problem. Russians have always been this way. We had to.

  The harsh weather here has always historically protected us from invaders. Everyone from Napoleon to Hitler made the mistake of attacking us during the winter. When the undead reached us many of us retreated to the North where it was much colder, and the zombies froze when they tried to pursue us. This made destroying them much, much easier. Of course, it was a different story trying to take back the cities. Then, we had a high casualty rate. Imagine us scouring the metro system in Moscow, full of dark tunnels where poor citizens had fled to try and escape the zombie menace, only to have the power fail and find themselves left in the utter darkness with the zombies.

  Don’t get me wrong, some people were able to seal off some of the Moscow metro stations and maintain them as functioning shelters, often using train carriages for accommodation, and even managing to conduct trade among other stations that had also managed to defend themselves. It was amazing the variety of people who had been caught down in the metro by the War. Accountants, film makers, soldiers, Russian Mafia, engineers, tourists, students, tradesmen, housewives, children, school teachers, they all worked alongside each other now, forming giant communities.

  What were you doing during the War?

  I was a KGB agent protecting President Putin. He directed the retaking of our country from the Kremlin. We were never really in any danger there, not with its high walls and snipers. Nevertheless, Putin took a lot of precautions. He maintained irregular sleeping hours, he could appear suddenly, anywhere, accompanied by his four most trusted bodyguards. He did this so no one in the Kremlin would ever try to betray him. Remember, for an assassination to succeed a guard did not have to kill the President himself, all he had to do was fail to act, fail to stop someone else from killing him. That was something that was always on his mind, that somehow his enemies had managed to bribe his guards.

  Was there ever an attempt on his life?

  I will say that my job was to protect the President and I never failed in that job. I would prefer to die than to let that happen.

  I managed to interview several state officials in Moscow, all of them told me that Putin profited greatly from the War. That he was manipulating many events behind the scenes. That includes the Iranian Revolution, the refugee crisis, the fall of a number of states in the Middle East, countless assassinations and covert acts of aggression. Care to comment on this?

  [Grins] There is a saying, “Americans play checkers, Russians play chess.” We’ve been ahead on the world stage for many years. Being patient. Playing the long game. There were a lot of things that happened over the last one hundred years because we wanted them to.

  Like what?

  The Allies fought World War II for us. You thought you were fighting the National Socialists to stop them invading your country, in reality you were fighting them to stop them invading our country. We had our man Harry Hopkins in the White House, second only to the President of the United States himself. Harry Hopkins was the closest advisor to the President. Often if Winston Churchill called it was Harry Hopkins who took the call directly. Hopkins was a Communist through and through. Everything he told the President was to further the course of Mother Russia. And your President Roosevelt was only too willing to help. The American policy at that time was Russia First, always making sure that Russian troops were well equipped, usually at the expense of Allied troops. While there was a butter shortage in America Russian people were well fed on American butter.

  World War II was a great victory for Russia -we gained Eastern Europe, as well as a foothold in Korea and Vietnam. The Allies were runners up in World War II.

  After that, we drip-fed Communism to your politicians and academia. No one in the West was interested in a class war, but if we gave you Communism a little at a time you would accept it.

  What events did the Russian state orchestrate during the Zombie War?

  [Grins coldly] It would not be worth me telling you, even if I wanted to -what my own leader would do to me would be more terrible than the revenge of anyone that we wronged during the War. Let me just say, as a helpful guideline, that if any events in the War seem strange to you, like someone might have intervened to cause things to happen in the way that they did, then it is very likely that the Russians were involved.

  CARACAS, VENEZUELA, the most murderous city in the world

  Interviewer: Mick Franklin

  INTERVIEW 19:

  Katya was a journalist before the War.

  We could have been the richest nation on earth. What could possibly go wrong? Everything. Every. Damned. Thing.

  You remember those days just before the Zombie War when inflation in Venezuela was 8,000 % and people were killing each other just for a can of expired beans? Remember the thousands of riots and protests that happened in just the first few months of 2018?

  From 1999 to 2014 we had the charismatic Nicolas Maduro as our president. He removed all private enterprise and replaced it with complete socialism instead. Our country was ripped apart by riots and a soaring crime rate, this despite us having greater oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.

  President Maduro had used his time in office to relentlessly purge the media of opposing voices, you know, honest journalists. This process was known as the “democratising” of the media. He brought in laws that allowed him to censor any speech or reporting that “offended” the government, as well as the ability to shutdown at will any news channel, website or radio station at any time. It was illegal to say anything that might cause “anxiety” to the public.

  By 2013 President Maduro was strongly suspected of election fraud. He used his mouth piece, the media, to outright lie to the people. The parties who opposed him were ruthlessly silenced. This became a common theme, from the top down, where para-military groups acted to silence protesters but generally didn’t interfere with any real violence that was going on, such as the widespread looting and murder.

  The state was the main employer due to nationalisation, so when ordinary citizens took to
the streets to protest the food shortages President Maduro ordered everyone who worked for the state to participate in counter protests. Meanwhile his heavy handed goons attacked his political enemies wherever they could find them.

  The government hijacked the legal system too, which should have been a bottle neck to stop the government grabbing power but now acted as a punitive arm of a corrupt state. The government placed its own agents in the Supreme Court. Now the Venezuelan people did not even have their basic human rights protected. People could be liquidated if they were seen as an enemy of the state, with no legal process to protect them.

  Almost all of our industry was seized by the state, a Gramsci, neo-Communist dream. The government now had control over our agriculture, cattle and by far our biggest export, oil. The private sector was dead and we were left with corruption and poverty.

  In 2010 we had almost 297 billion barrels of oil while Saudi Arabia had just 265 billion barrels. We should have been one of the richest nations on the planet, but instead we were two trillion dollars in debt. Socialism had crippled our nation in less than ten years.

  By 2012 the public debt had risen to 49% of our GDP. Again, I want to stress, we had more oil reserves than any other nation.

  The state needed money badly so began taxing the richest members of society mercilessly. These people, our entrepreneurs and most educated, naturally decided to leave the country. This was regarded as a “victory” by the government, who somehow regarded these rich people as “exploiting” the public. In reality we lost a lot when our brightest people left. Next it was the working class’s turn. These people didn’t have enough money to escape so they were forced to endure back breaking taxes instead. Now the whole system was beginning to come down.