World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

The narrator is talking once again with Todd Wainio in his kitchen after having dinner with Wainio and his family. Wainio explains that the new army was different from the one he fought with at Yonkers. They weren’t mechanized and only used wheeled vehicles to carry ammo. They traveled on foot in bite-proof blue coveralls, gloves, and a hood. They carried Lobos and a standard infantry rifle, or SIR. Wainio emphasizes that it never jammed and could be converted into a “long-range sniper, midrange rifle, or close-combat carbine” (275). Their ammo was comprised of pyrotechnically initiated explosives, or PIE, which shattered once they hit a zombie skull.

The new army was comprised of a random assortment of people from all walks of life. Wainio’s “battle buddy” was a 52-year-old nun (276). They began their first battle in Hope, New Mexico. As Zack approached, they stood on the firing line and waited. A reserve team stood on the line behind them. When Zack was at the first range marker, the front rank kneeled and the squad leaders commanded them to shoot. They had been trained to fire a shot every second. A Recharge Team supplied ammo once the clips were empty.

The battle continued into the night. The zombies were coming from everywhere and began to pile on top of each other as they fell. As the zombies close in, the army was commanded to form a square, still comprised of two ranks with their vehicles in the center. The army never ran out of ammo, and the combat psychiatrists were watching to make sure the soldiers took five-minute breaks when they showed signs of fatigue. Finally the number of zombies started to taper, and the battle ended before dawn. They were trapped inside a wall of zombies 20 feet high and a hundred feet deep. A Humvee had to plow through the corpses to make an escape path. The next day, Wainio woke up to the sound of people talking and laughing. He felt it was “finally the beginning of the end” (282).

The next interview is with Darnell Hackworth, who runs a retirement farm with his wife for the army’s K-9 Corps dog veterans. It is the only farm of its kind left. Hackworth emphasizes the crucial role dogs played in the Zombie War. Initially, dogs were kept in cages and used to sniff out the infected as people moved past the cages. They were kept in cages because their instinct was to fight, but the dogs born after the crisis needed to be better trained since they were born into a world that smelled like zombies. The dogs who cowered, whimpered, or howled when they were exposed to a zombie on the other side of a wire fence were not chosen for training. The ones that growled at Zack and displayed an ability to control themselves when exposed were enrolled in basic training and were used much more strategically. Some dogs, referred to as Ks, were fast and sent in to hunt and provoke Zack to lure them to the firing line. Others, Decoys, would act as decoys to control the speed and location of Zack’s arrival. Decoys were used as part of the “Lemming” tactic (284) during the Denver Push where a large group of refuges had reanimated in a tall building. One dog ran to the roof of an adjacent building and barked to draw the zombies onto the rooftop where they fell over the side trying to get to the other building.

Most commonly, dogs were used for scouting. They performed Sweep and Clear tactics to find any undetected zombies in the area and Long Range Patrols (LRPs), where a GPS tracker and video uplink was attached to the dog’s harness to gather real-time intel. LRPs always made Hackworth nervous for the safety of the dog. He explains that the most effective dogs were mixed breeds. They were tough, especially against packs of feral animals on the prowl for food. Eventually, the dogs conducting LRPs were given two escort dogs to chase feral packs. They were all trained not to bite infected zombies and how to defend themselves using other tactics. Handlers were also eventually given permission to try to rescue dogs that were stranded after an incident where a handler shot a man who stopped her from saving her dog. Hackworth ends the interview by marveling at the irony that he once hated dogs.

Father Sergei Ryzhkov lives in a shantytown comprised of huts with no running water or electricity. He recounts how his community became a “religious state” (293) that was begun with a man like him. Father Ryzhkov was a chaplain with the Thirty-second Motor Rifle division, a Category D unit, which meant they operated with outdated equipment and weapons. They were disorganized, wore old uniforms, carried old equipment, and lost a lot of people. Their first major offensive battle was Ufa, a tedious experiment in urban fighting that was never repeated. Because of the decimations, soldiers refused to kill comrades who were infected, so the leadership was given responsibility of this task, and as a result many officers began to die by suicide. One major simply vanished and was believed to have deserted even though official statements claimed he had been sent out on a “long-range recon mission” (295) and even recommended for a medal of honor. These lies were meant to preserve morale, but they didn’t really work. Finally, the task of extermination was left to the infected themselves.

Father Ryzhkov describes himself as “a religious man in a country that had long since lost its faith” (296). His role as chaplain was to distribute vodka and collect the letters of those who had been infected. One day, however, when he told a row of infected boys on cots that he would pray for them, something snapped inside him. As the boys readied their guns to kill themselves, Father Ryzhkov shot the youngest of the boys instead. He felt that God had spoken to him to stop the sinning. Since suicide is a sin, Father Ryzhkov believes that people like him are in the best position to “bear the cross” of ending the lives of the infected, who would go to hell without this intervention (297). Word of his actions spread across the country and became known as the “act of ‘Final Purification’” (297). It was the first step of an unstoppable religious zeitgeist that seized the land. When the narrator asks Father Ryzhkov if this religious movement has been exploited for political gain, as the president has deemed himself head of the Church of God and accusations have surfaced of priests serving as “death squads” to kill people under the premise of “purifying infected victims” (297), Father Ryzhkov claims to not know what he’s talking about. The narrator asks again to verify that being assigned to a death squad is why Father Ryzkhov is out in the shantytown to start with, but a boy interrupts, looking fearful and pointing, and Father Ryzkhov promptly grabs his gun and his Bible and excuses himself.

The narrator is on the minisub Deep Glider 7 with Master Chief Petty Officer Michael Choi, an experienced diver with the U.S. Navy’s Deep Submergence Combat Corps, or DSCC. Choi is part of efforts to track the 20 to 30 million underwater zombies to better predict their movements. He wears an Atmosphere Diving Suit, or ADS, also known as a “submersible” (300), which is designed to withstand deep-water pressure by enclosing the body “in a bubble of surface pressure” (300). An ADS is encased in a cast-aluminum shell and has titanium or steel joints to prevent Zack from ripping off limbs—which is a common hazard with the more shallow-water mesh suits.

Choi explains that here are three models, but the Mark 1 Exosuit is his personal preference. It allows the wearer to operate other machinery and weapons, although the ADS has four-pronged pincers capable of squeezing Zack’s head. At first, their gun was the M-9, which was fixed to their arm and unable to fire in shallow water. They got an upgrade after a group that includes Choi was attacked by a swarm of zombies in the North Sea while repairing a Norwegian oil rig. DeStRes was initially hesitant to improve anything on the exosuit due to expense and the fact that they believed the tools and claws were plenty defense against Zack. However, the major flaw of the suits was that they left divers in a “complete tactile blackout” due to the hardness of the suit (304), so they couldn’t feel if there were zombies climbing or chewing on them. After the attack, the civilian rig divers refused to work until their military escorts had better weapons.

In the wake of the attack, DSCC also expanded its duties to include beachhead sanitation and harbor duties. Choi explains that beachhead sanitation is designed to keep the beach clear of Zack before a Marine ship comes ashore. Harbor duties prepare the harbors, whose waters are filled with debris and sunken ships, for deep-water shipping. Choi tells of clearing one sunken ship when the deck collapsed beneath him, exposing hundreds of zombies who began grabbing him. The narrator and Choi then reach the bottom in the minisub, and Choi begins shooting at a swarm of zombies with small, nonlethal darts. He doesn’t understand how they can survive the water pressure and the corrosive quality of salt water. He then explains that the plan is to phase out ADS divers for Remotely Operated Vehicles, or ROVs. He insists they aren’t yet better or more efficient than human divers, but one day they will be, and that’s the day Choi vows he’ll quit and “never look at an exosuit again” (308).

French national Andre Renard is the brother of the war hero Emil Renard. He is at a farmhouse with without a wall or lock on the door, and he has asked the narrator to keep his location a secret. He claims his experiences searching the tunnels beneath Paris during the war was the most terrifying of anyone’s. He explains that people started settling down there during the Great Panic, as rumors spread that it was a safe haven. Between the Roman tombs, Metro lines, telephone lines, gas mains, water pipes, and the catacombs, a quarter of a million refugees fled into the darkness beneath the ground.

As platoons searched the tunnels, they had only one pair of night vision goggles per squad and a limited supply of electric torches. The gas masks had retired filters and barely worked, and the radios were hardwired because they couldn’t receive airwave transmissions. It was easy to get lost in the darkness, especially when they were relying on prewar maps that didn’t include all the changes made by the refugees. The screams of a squad as they were attacked could be heard everywhere, and it was extremely difficult to pinpoint their location. Sometimes Renard and his squad ran to help only to find an empty chamber.

They engaged in close combat with zombies using a carbon dioxide pellet gun because there was too much gas in the air for firearms. However, they never had enough of the guns, and if the pellet missed, hit a wall, and sparked whole tunnels ignited in flames. He shows the narrator his preferred weapon, which includes two steel spikes at right angles connected to a ball that would be held in the palm. They were heavily armored, which led to exhaustion, and wore marsh boots because the ground was often flooded. Sometimes they had to crawl through the water, where they could fall into unmarked holes while zombies attacked them from below. Renard laments that 15,000 men and women either died or went missing searching the tunnels at a time when the situation was clearly stabilizing. His brother died on a mission that unknowingly broke into a hospital used to house the infected. Renard thinks they could have been ordered to retreat, but his brother’s lone squad faced three hundred zombies. He feels it was all unnecessary and done simply to create heroes “to restore our pride” (314).

The narrator is again with Todd Wainio at a neighborhood picnic in Victory Park. Wainio tells the narrator how it took three years for the three main Army Groups, which include North, Center, and South, to reach the East Coast. Darkness and fog regularly slowed them down, as did urban combat, which required the group to surround the metropolitan area. However, the area often began in the surrounding suburbs, which had to be searched one block at a time.

Wainio was wrong to assume that being placed in the Army Group North would be easier. The winter still brought quislings and ferals—both human and animal. One of the biggest problems were F-lions, which Wainio describes as “part mountain lion, part ice age saberfuck” (318). Wainio was attacked by a pack of three inside a Starbucks and now sports a scar on his cheek. The body armor he wore, however, was mainly for protection against LaMOEs, or Last Man on Earths. LaMOEs were the individuals who managed to survive alone in a town and would do anything to defend their newfound kingdom. Wainio recalls the violent encounter with a gang in Chicago that led the army to mandate body armor year-round.

Although Zack was not a threat in winter, the weather brought other problems, such as frostbite. Liberating the isolated military zones was also a mixed bag. Some were surrounded by at least a million zombies, and it took three days to defeat them all while other zones had been living in relative comfort. However, the civilian isolated zones always brought celebration and cheering. The army was treated like rock stars when they arrived, though there were always a few angry people who felt the army abandoned them. They avoided the secessionist zones, where the Rebs greeted them with tanks and gunfire.

Wainio clarifies that the army’s report of low casualty rates in the United States does not include death from illness, from the large number of mines and booby traps set up to immobilize zombies, or by LaMOEs. They also lost people to accidents from structural damage in neglected buildings and to psychological breakdowns and suicide. Wainio eventually became squad leader and made it all the way back to Yonkers, though he was “the last of the old gang from Hope” (327).

The Whacko explains that victory was declared once the United States was secure despite the fact that the rest of the world still needed assistance. The UN multinational force was established and immediately received a large number of volunteers. The Whacko recalls that he got some resistance for pushing for a UN rather than “making it an all-American crusade” (329), but he feels that the Americans who fought should be given the chance to go home. However, he maintains that there’s still a lot of work to do, both at home and abroad. The zombie numbers are declining, but the war is still active. He believes the lesson everyone should take from the experience is that humanity is now united against a common enemy, and each person needs to help out as best they can. The Whacko tells the narrator that they are doing a good job in their work.

The narrator returns to his interview with Maria Zhuganova, who is four months pregnant with her eighth child. She regrets that she wasn’t still in the army during the “liberation” of Russia’s former republics, but she is tasked with bringing children into the world along with all the other fertile women available. She bears children in service to the motherland, echoing their leader’s sentiments that a woman’s womb is one of Russia’s best weapons against the zombies. She is indifferent to the fact that she may never know the identities of her children or their fathers. She tells the narrator she’s aware that her current situation does not jive with the new fundamentalist religious state, but it doesn’t matter because she doesn’t think anyone actually believes any of it—with the exception of Father Ryzhkov, who they exiled to the wilderness. The state needs her to bear children, so in the meantime they are unconcerned with what she thinks and says. She insists the narrator is there because the state wants him to hear everything so he can relate Russia’s mission to the world. Russia is now a strong, powerful state, and they are to be feared and respected.

The narrator again talks with T. Sean Collins, who drinks at a bar as the staff cleans up after a violent bar fight. A group of South Africans drunkenly sing Johnny Clegg’s “Asimbonaga,” a popular anti-apartheid anthem, in a corner (331). Collins admits he’s “addicted to murder” (31). Even though the zombies are already dead, he considers killing them to be murder, and he gets high off the experience. He tried to help in the efforts to repair the country, but all he could think about was killing people. When the new president, “the Whacko,” took office after the previous president died, Collins obsessively considered all the ways to kill him as he watched him speak at a rally. That is when he realized he needed to leave for both his own protection and the protection of those around him.

He left the country and joined the Impisi, which bears the same name as the South African Special Forces and is the Zulu word for hyena, to kill zombies. The outfit is privately funded, and members can choose their hours and weapons. Collins carries a “Pouwhenua,” (332), which is a Māori weapon. His is made of steel rather than wood, and he explains he gets more of a rush from killing by hand than with a gun. He wonders to the narrator what will happen when all the zombies are gone and tells of another member, Stanley MacDonald, who retired and joined a monastery in Greece. He ends the interview by concluding that a normal life might still be possible for him, but if not “the last skull [he’ll] crack’ll probably be [his] own” (333).

The narrator is once again with Jesika Hendricks, who is loading the last of 15 bodies onto a sled. She says she tries not to be angry and bitter about who survived and who didn’t, but it’s hard for her to make sense of the fact that a raunchy radio host survived, but her parents didn’t. 

Mary Jo Miller, the mayor of the “New Community” previously interviewed in Chapter 12, tells the narrator that she, along with everyone else in her generation, Generation Z, is to blame for what happened. They are all equal parts of the American “machine” (334), which clearly failed in some way. She explains that the baby boomers destroyed everything the previous generation built, but it’s her generation that allowed the zombies to “become a menace in the first place” (334). She adds that the one saving grace might be the fact that they are, at least, cleaning up the mess they made.

Kwang Jingshu wraps up his last daily house call, a boy whose feared tuberculosis turns out to be a chest cold. He explains that it’s refreshing to see children who are too young to have any knowledge of the war. Their lack of fear despite the new rules for existence is refreshing and “the only gift we can leave to them” (335). Kwang emphasizes that China has always rebuilt itself in the aftermath of turmoil, and he has full confidence that they will again. He imagines his old friend Gu laughing down at him when he asserts that “everything’s going to be all right” (335).

Joe Muhammed finishes another sculpture of a male zombie carrying a torn Baby Bjorn. He tells the narrator he believes the war brought everyone together. All over the world, people have this experience that they’ve all shared. He fears that, once the world goes back to normal, everyone will simply revert to the selfish and closed-minded behavior that prevailed before the war, but he also wonders if the world can ever fully rid itself of the events that just transpired. He hopes that it can’t.

Arthur Sinclair tells the narrator that he was happy to accept his old role as SEC chairman when the new president asks him. He’s confident that he only has the job because, like his role at DeStRes, its simply the job no one wants. He knows that getting people to trust the American dollar again will be tough, especially with the current dominance of the Cuban peso. Part of the problem is the high volume of bills in circulation since every person, bank, and vault was looted after the war. He says that the people hoarding houses and other essential items need to be stopped. Breckinridge Scott of Phalanx fame is of particular interest to the IRS, and its possible Russia may agree not to renew his lease. He says confidence is key, and every day he sees it increasing a bit more. His outlook is hopeful, and he feels everything is slowly getting better.

The Shield Society to which Tomonaga Ijiro and Kondo Tatsumi belong has just been accepted as a branch of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Their duty is to teach civilians around the world both armed and unarmed defense techniques against the zombies. Their international outlook and anti-firearm message has been embraced by nearly all UN nations. Tatsumi admits to the narrator that he doesn’t buy into Ijiro’s spiritual teachings, but he thinks his mission is important and will be a success. He vows to always follow Ijiro, along with the many other people who join them each day.

After finishing his drink, Philip Adler tells the narrator that they lost “a lot more than just people” (339) by abandoning them, and that’s all he has to say.

Jurgen Warmbrunn insists on paying for the narrator’s meal, explaining that he was one of the last of the Jewish children to get out of Germany and never saw his family again. Although people say no one really survived the Holocaust, even those who escaped, he likes to believe otherwise. If he’s wrong, “then no one on Earth survived this war” (340).

Michael Choi tells the narrator that it’s the whales who really lost World War Z. Between the zombies in the water and the conversion of navy ships around the world to fishing fleets, they were doomed. He particularly laments the loss of California grays and believes the death of such “[m]ajestic animals” (340) is a global tragedy. He’s heard of a few belugas and narwhals surviving in the Arctic, but he thinks that whales as a species are doomed. He knows people think the biggest losses from the war are things like innocence but dismisses their sentiments by saying “Whatever, bro. Tell it the whales” (341).

Todd Wainio escorts the narrator to the train while smoking one of the Cuban tobacco cigarettes the narrator has brought him. Wainio admits that sometimes he breaks down for an hour or so, but Dr. Chandra assures him its normal and healthy. Sometimes it only takes something small to set him off. He explains that his most vivid memory is the mural behind them at the train station. He remembers thinking they were going to be fighting for the rest of his life and the declaration of VA Day seemed surreal. He had accepted his life as a soldier as permanent, so the news that it was over still feels like a dream.