An Homage to Brooks (Part II)
Part II of An Homage to Brooks continues the story started in part I. This short story exists as a combination of homage and fan fiction in the universe of Max Brook’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. In this story, we take a look at another survivors tale of getting out early, and surviving in spite of the odds.
Tradgety?
Yeah, he had his head up his ass and wasn’t paying attention, a G was behind him and just about to take a bite, Nick, one of the other guys with us, went to shove him outta the way and took the bite in the process. They’d been pretty tight- well we all were- and seeing the consequences of acting like a jackass really sobered him up.
I can imagine. So, tell me about the other people you were with.
Well, I mentioned Nick. He was sort of the handy man of the group. He was the one that really kept us going for the first year or so, he knew a lot about the sort of every day stuff that most people didn’t even think too much about not knowing. See, Nick was a bright guy, but he also had a tendency to get kinda restless. He ended up dropping out of school and working a bunch of odd jobs that ended up comming in really handy. Most importantly, he’d worked as a mechanic, a carpenter, and he’d worked in a munitions factory.
I can see how that would be useful
Yeah, of course the problem was that he was infected right about the time that things started getting really bad, and the rest of us had come to rely on him maybe a bit more than we should have.
So, who else was with you?
Kali, she had been dating Nick for about a year when the outbreak hit. Not too long after we bugged out there was a serious discussion between a couple of us about doing something about her. She was a real primodonna and I was afraid she might get us all killed. I think that we would have gotten rid of her if we hadn’t needed Nick around.
You would have killed her?
Not directly, although I suppose what we had talked about would have been as good as a death sentence in the end. Jack and Greg wanted to dump her off at a refugee camp- well you know how safe most of those turned out to be, and at the time we didn’t really expect them to be any safer than they turned out to be.
Of course, something like 80% of them were overrun with infected in the first 18 months
Yeah, but anyway, we knew that we couldn’t really do that- Nick wouldn’t stand for it, and like I said, we need him. After he was infected though, I think she saw what we were really up against. She was the one that put him down, it was the first G she’d ever taken out. They say killing changes you, and that isn’t any less true when you’re killing something that’s already dead. Once she got her head out of her ass and adopted a Soldier’s mentality she turned out to be a valuable addition to the group- saved our asses more than a couple of times.
…To be continued.