Interstate 5, California
[Robert Lewis, middle-aged and rugged, insists that I drive with him from Los Angeles to Bakersfield in his rusty, beat-up pickup truck, and that our interview be conducted during the short drive. On the way, he chews some sort of leaf and spits it out the window periodically.]
The one thing that you will never hear about the Zombie War is all of the outbreaks that took place well after the defensive line at the Rocky Mountains had been set up. You'll hear about the zombies already contained within the, quote un quote, "safe zone," sure, and heck, I bet you've already interviewed one of the Neighborhood Security Team guys, the ones patrolling the streets all night long keeping an eye out for the undead. No, I'm talking about actual outbreaks, with a Patient Zero1 and the whole shebang. I've heard there were quite a few, but none as bad, or, ah, serious, as the one I experienced.
California, Bakersfield in particular, was a massive resource for the government during this time, for agricultural reasons. I had previous farming experience from my childhood, so I was deemed pretty valuable and loaded onto the first truck for good ol' Bakersfield as soon as the employment census went around. For a while things were pretty good, just farmin'. Boring, sure, but good. Whatever, who really cares, y'know? If you want the oh-so-fascinating day-to-day crap, ask someone else. Me? When I look back at my life, I think of what happened that was important, not of what I did every stinking morning.
Just talk about whatever you want to.
[Sarcastically.] Gee, thanks for telling me. I was really wanting to skip ahead, but was worried about saying something and hurting your feelings.
[He spits out of the window loudly before continuing.]
So. About six months had passed since I'd first arrived in Bakersfield, and I'd starting hearing rumors about spontaneous outbreaks from several of the newly-trained farmers from Washington, just teenagers, really. I didn't pay much attention.
But then something happened.
Y'know what, why don't I just let you make this whole thing up, since you seem to be enjoying talking so much. Or, stop interrupting me!
[I apologize profusely and, after shooting several dirty looks my way, Robert begins to speak once more.]
As I've said, I was shipped out here because I had farming experience, but I hadn't gone on to a career doing it. You're free to disbelieve me, but I had actually been working to become a doctor before zombies started to take over the world – maybe not a specialist that men and women would travel hundreds of miles to see, but someone who could help other people medically. I was pretty darn close before that dream was shattered, too, but today I can't even relocate an arm properly. Back then, though, before I forgot it all, I was pretty talented. Ten years is a long time.
So anyways, periodically, when someone came in hurt real bad, I'd be called to the hospital they were at, and do somethin' to patch 'em up. After about six months of farming for the government, I got a call, but the person on the other end of the line sounded scared – real, properly scared, and not shook-up, either. Something was very wrong. I drove over there as fast as I could, trying to put all those rumors of zombie outbreaks out of my head, but they just kept coming back, you know? [Laughs.] I'd hardly even gotten out of my car once I'd arrived before I heard the screams. Needless to say, I grabbed my twelve-gauge shotgun out of the back before going in.
I couldn't say for sure what had happened, but if I had to take a guess, I'd say that some of Patient Zero's "blood" had gotten into a cut or something that one of the people restraining it had had. A bite would have been noticed and the person contained, but whatever. Doesn't really matter, does it? Point is, by the time I got inside, there were at least thirty or forty Zs, and they were all loose and attacking with a vengeance.
I didn't know if the army had been called yet or not, so I started to do my best to get any survivors out. A lot of the patients, mostly just there because of dislocations, infections, and the occasional case of the flu, had already been bitten and were now attacking the staff. There are two types of zombies that you fight, really – the kind that are all adults and that you feel bad shooting, and the kind that are all teenagers or kids or the terminally ill, and just have this innocent, victim kind of vibe to them, and those ones you remember. There was this one guy in particular, a real scrawny kid that I recognized as one of the new farmers from Washington. I never really thought he'd last out here for very long, probably because of too hot of a climate or something, but he was going after one of the nurses, so I was forced to blow his brains out. Poor kid.
You never have very much time to clear innocents out of an infested building, because every person that gets killed climbs right back up to their feet and starts going after more, so ten minutes and several dozen shotgun shells after I first arrived, we had all cleared out. I had grabbed several chairs on the way, and did my best to bar the main doors, but I knew it wouldn't hold for long, so we high-tailed it outta there - right after lighting the building on fire, of course. I figured that the situation was pretty well handled, and likely someone else had alerted the authorities, so I slipped away and went right on back to bed.
I'm not sure why, but I remember that I slept really well that night, which is especially odd because I usually wake up to relative silence, but that morning . . . I immediately smelled smoke in the air. At first, I figured that one of the idiots I was forced to live with in that small apartment of mine had burned their breakfast pancakes, or something similar, and it wasn't until I heard the faintest trace of a scream and the report of a gun that I started to be suspicious – didn't take long to figure out that the city was on fire, and that zombies had begun to rampage out of control.
[By this time, we have reached the Bakersfield city limits. It has been largely rebuilt from the fire, but several of the poorer areas remain destroyed, all of which Robert drives past.]
Do you want to know what my first thought was? "There goes the stinkin' harvest!" Really, it was. My second thought was "well, I hated it anyways." What about things like: "hey, the city is on fire!" or "people are dying!" or "maybe I should get out of here!" Never even crossed my mind. Idiot. When I get called to go and help people, then I do all I can, but other than that . . .
[He is obviously angry with his past self, and spits once more, louder than usual.]
I guess it finally occurred to me to leave and save my own skin, because I'm still here today. In the years following this, ah, incident, I've learned that by the time the military arrived to stop the zombie outbreak, most of the population had been infected, not to mention the fact that the entire city was burned down. Can you imagine going to quell a zombie outbreak and being greeting by massive hordes of flaming undead? Sure, if you leave them burning for long enough their brain will be destroyed and they'll "die," but they couldn't be left alone, or else they'd spread.
It's actually quite miraculous that the government managed to keep the incident as quiet as they did, and then, when the battle to reclaim the rest of the United States was going well, create a memorial for it to "honor those who protected us" and get everyone feeling nice and patriotic. Turned out to be a positive, thing, really.
Didn't anyone mind that it had been hidden from the public for so long?
Pfft, no. Not the way they played it. "Hey, do you remember when Bakersfield was burned down?" "Umm, no." "Wow, really? Let me tell you about how patriotic they all were . . . " [Snorts.] It's actually quite clever, if you think about it.
[We have now arrived at the destination Robert has clearly had in mind this entire time, and he pulls the car over. We get out to look at the memorial for the outbreak he is talking about, built right in front of the hospital it started at, which has remained untouched to honor the incident. Nowadays, hardly anything more than the charred foundation for the building remains.]
I realized that politicians are some of the most powerful people you can have on your side in a conflict. The big problem with fighting zombies is that the more people you lose, the more Zs you have to fight. Well, the president found a way to make that work for us, too. Even in death, the poor souls lost to the Bakersfield Conflict fought for the U.S. cause.
1. Patient Zero is incorrectly used here as the first case in an outbreak, rather than correctly as the first recorded case of a disease.
Author's Note: I realize that this interview probably wasn't as good as it could have been, and that I didn't really do much to distinguish this outbreak from the others that the public supposedly heard about, those without a "Patient Zero," but I wrote it in less than 24 hours, so I'm okay with it. If you've got something to say, even if it's criticism, please review, but otherwise, happy reading!