Miles came into work forty-five minutes past his designated starting time. He was about to go to Steve’s office to explain his tardiness when it occurred to him that no one had even noticed. They hadn’t had any calls yet, and everyone else was busy with their own affairs. And while Steve was usually a fairly understanding and flexible kind of boss, he had been in something of a touchy mood over the past few days, so Miles decided not to risk it.
It was after 5:00 p.m. when the first job for the day finally came in.
Miles, Elliott, and another coworker, Felix, were dispatched to investigate at the outer suburban home. A concerned resident had reported some suspicious behaviour at their neighbouring property, and it didn’t take long for Miles to conclude that those suspicions were wholly justified. The lawns were overgrown, the garden had withered and died, and several weeks’ worth of junk mail spilled out from the letterbox. Either the people living here were zombies, or they had all been struck down with a case of spontaneous agoraphobia.
Miles conducted a quick preliminary investigation of the house to determine what exactly they were dealing with.
“Looks like we have four obits,” he told Elliott and Felix, peering in through the windows. “A father, a mother, and two daughters, aged about twelve and sixteen.”
“Obit” was an industry term, short for obituary, and referred to the number of undead beings at a given location.
The three cautiously entered the house and met the zombie family. Just by looking at them, Miles could tell they had been in here for some time. Their skin had a yellowish pigment and sagged like a deflated balloon. All were badly malnourished, their bones visibly jutting out from beneath their rotting flesh. The smell of death lingered in the air. By his estimation, they’d turned more than three weeks ago.
The industry term for this type of zombie was “rotter”. Due to the mess they could create, rotters had to be handled with care.
They went for the father first. Miles moved slowly towards the zombie, careful not to startle him with any sudden moves. He maneuvered his snare pole up towards the zombie’s neck.
A snare pole was a long, thin, tubular piece of aluminum, like something a dog catcher would use, with a two-pronged claw at one end. A lever at the other end controlled the claw, clamping it shut around the zombie’s neck.
Miles held the zombie firmly in place, and Elliott came in from behind and slid the grill around its head. The grill clicked shut and effectively muzzled the zombie. When this was in place the zombie was incapable of biting anyone, and so it no longer posed a threat.
The hard part was over. Elliott then held the zombie’s wrists together, Felix slipped on the cable ties, and they escorted him out of the house and into the back of the minibus.
The whole job took just over an hour. When they were done they packed their gear away and ensured the four zombies were strapped tightly in their seats.
Miles returned to the house for one final check to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.
The house appeared empty, but it was company policy to check inside each room and behind every door before leaving to be absolutely certain that every last zombie had been accounted for.
He found a door leading down to a basement. He opened it and and slowly descended the stairs.
He stopped momentarily when he was overcome with sudden feelings of vertigo, and the fear that he might lose his balance and tumble down into the black abyss below. He leaned against the wall for a moment until the sensation passed, and reminded himself that he was probably still a little light-headed after giving blood a few hours ago.
He took the stairs one at a time, slowly moving his hand along the wall until he came across a light switch.
The lights flickered on. He blinked a few times, and a small grin appeared on his face.
“Hey, guys,” he called out. “You have to come see this.”
Elliott and Felix came down the stairs a minute later. They found Miles standing in front of a shiny steel door.
“Look at this.” Miles tapped the red button next to the door. “These people had a panic room.”
The door slid open, revealing a compact enclosure equipped with food, bottled water and medical supplies.
“Didn’t do much for them now, did it?” Elliott said.
“They seldom do,” Felix said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
The popularity of panic rooms had soared ever since the outbreak, but they were nothing more than an illusion of safety. There was evidence to suggest that they actually did more harm than good. Families were known to barricade themselves inside one, only to discover that one of them had suffered a bite. The others then found themselves trapped in a confined space with a ravenous zombie.
There had been numerous instances of emergency service workers cutting into the doors of panic rooms and discovering entire families of zombies inside.
But this didn’t stop gullible people from falling prey to persuasive and manipulative salesmen who were able to guilt them into having panic rooms installed, telling them they couldn’t put a price on their family’s safety. Some people didn’t even need to hear any sales pitch, since they had already fallen hook, line and sinker for the rampant media hype. Sensationalist reporting reminded them on a daily basis that zombies were hiding behind every tree and lurking inside every bush waiting to pounce, and it was only a matter of time before they invaded your house in the middle of the night and devoured your children’s brains.
The sad truth was that the majority of people bitten by zombies were attacked by members of their own family, or someone else known to them.
Despite more than three years passing since the initial zombie outbreak, there were still conflicting reports as to how these events occurred. At first, some believed it was a side-effect of genetically-modified food. Another of the more popular conspiracy theories at the time centred around a pharmaceutical company deliberately unleashing the infection, which was to be followed by the release of a vaccine a short time later. This scenario now seemed unlikely, since the most profitable time for a vaccine to be released would have been during the height of the panic.
Religious extremists like Ayman al-Zawahiri and Kirk Cameron predictably blamed the outbreak on the absence of faith and the acceptance of immorality in modern society. Meanwhile, numerous cult leaders and other assorted lunatics happily embraced the hysteria, and claimed the rising dead was a sure sign that the end of days was near and the second coming of Christ was imminent.
Some of the more credible scientific investigations traced the source of the outbreak to Dr. Hermann Volk, an unlicenced German surgeon. Dr. Volk was said to have been conducting experimental research on behalf of the national Olympic team by transplanting vital organs from racehorses, such as the heart and lungs, into human beings. It was believed that Dr. Volk’s goal was to provide athletes with an insurmountable competitive edge, enabling greater blood flow and superior lung capacity while evading detection for performance enhancing drugs. And while some of the test subjects were believed to have reacted well to their new organs, others did not. These subjects exhibited unexpected and unpredictable side-effects.
Once the infection was out, it spread faster than a celebrity sex tape. The first reports of a degenerative blood-borne virus sweeping through mainland Europe emerged on a Tuesday. By Thursday, it had travelled across to Asia. Before the weekend was over it had spread to almost every corner of the globe.
People the world over remained glued to their television sets (at one point, it was estimated that over ninety percent of the world’s population had watched at least one hour of television during a twenty-four hour period, much to the delight of the networks and their sponsors) where viewers were bombarded with statistic upon terrifying statistic. Up to five hundred million people were believed to be infected, a figure that could climb to an unimaginable three billion by year’s end, and the mantra that was repeated over and over: “We may be witnessing the end of humanity as we know
it”.
Only one thing spread faster than the infection, and that was panic. Grocery stores were stripped of food, looting was endemic, and sales of firearms soared to record levels. Amidst all the chaos, the government implored the public to remain calm, but few took any notice. Nobody believed them when they assured everyone the situation was all under control.
And then, less than three weeks after the first reported zombie attack, the situation was brought largely under control.
Thanks to swift and decisive action by the UN and the WHO, not to mention unprecedented cooperation between the world’s leaders, the majority of the undead were quickly rounded up and isolated from the healthy population. The revised number of infected humans worldwide was now estimated to be between twenty and thirty million – not an insignificant number by any means, but nowhere near the five hundred million initially reported. Several media organisations were forced to issue apologies for overstating the threat level and causing distress to their viewers.
In the end, the zombie apocalypse turned out to be more of a zombie aberration. While millions were affected, more people died in that calendar year from heart disease. A hamburger was statistically more dangerous than a zombie.
The occasional outbreak still occurred from time to time, usually in the more impoverished and overpopulated areas of the world, but these were now handled by the Paramilitary Undead Management Authority (PUMAs) and quickly contained. The PUMAs were a team of highly skilled operatives who could be dropped into an infected zone to contain any minor epidemics before they spread any further.
It later emerged that this was not the first time the recently deceased had risen. There had been numerous reported incidents over the past century, although these were typically on a much smaller scale and often covered up by governments of the day. However, all developed nations were acutely aware that a mass-scale zombie outbreak was not only a possibility, but something of an inevitability. Precautions and contingency plans had been in place for some time in preparation for such an event.
It was said that the many zombie films and television programs produced in recent times was a subtle way of educating the public about what to do in the event of a zombie outbreak and, more importantly, what not to do.
In fact, it didn’t take long for the general public to figure out that zombies posed no real threat to their personal safety. They could be held off using just a broomstick or an umbrella, they were easily repelled with a few squirts of water from a pressurised hose, and could be outrun by something as slow as an electric wheelchair. Most of the early victims were people who got too close when attempting to film the zombies on their phones instead of doing the logical thing and running away.
The fears everyone held of a society on the brink of collapse, of the world’s population being wiped out, of humanity turning on itself as the undead took over, proved to be totally unfounded.
For the record, the German Olympic Committee have repeatedly denied any involvement in or knowledge of Dr. Hermann Volk’s alleged activities, and maintain that he has never worked for them in any official capacity.
Chapter 5