NEWPORT, ISLE OF WIGHT, UNITED KINGDOM
[Jane Tiller greets me at the front door of her house and offers me tea and biscuits, and dinner later if I want to stay. I accept both offers. She says the local police rang to say a "Yankee from the U.N." had just checked his handgun in and wanted to make sure he had the right address. Her husband Daniel takes their three children to the end of the garden, allowing us some peace on the patio. Due to my role as an official United Nations archivist, she has permission to speak freely.]
Understand one thing before I tell you about the Honolulu Conference. My mind and the mind of the British ambassador were both made up by the time the American ambassador finished his speech. Not the American president, the ambassador. We didn't know how we'd do it as neither of us had military minds but we knew the attack was necessary.
In respect to our culture, we're not that different from you. We were a major world power once. We had a fair amount of international influence and thought of our island as impregnable. After all, the last time Great Britain was invaded was in 1066 by William the Conqueror. We'd resisted invasion by Spain, France, Germany throughout history and were quite proud of the fact. And after nearly one thousand years of relative stability, Britain was reduced to the land above the Antonine Wall. It was humiliating, in much the same way the loss of the Vietnam War was for the United States, the Treaty of Versailles was for post-World War One Germany or the fall of Paris was for France during World War Two.
The conference had gone well so far. My presentation on fortified motorways had gone down a treat and we'd been talking to other European representatives there. After the particularly expressive speech from the American ambassador had finished, we compared the notes we'd all taken. Of course, the entire room was trying to make itself heard so not much comparing went on. My Irish counterpart – the aide to the Irish ambassador – was having a violent argument with someone on the other side of the room. We were friends, he and I. There wasn't a lot of sleeping space so we ended up sharing a tiny room together and having long discussions about the fate of British refugees who'd fled to Ireland. He died a few years later. Fluke drowning. It's a shame. That speech, the one made by the American President, was incredible. I still don't know how he suddenly commanded the room. I had a designated timeslot when I made my presentation and I had difficulty holding everyone's attention until they realised I was telling them something useful.
After we were all dismissed until the evening, my boss got the Prime Minister on a satellite phone and gave him the full report. The U.S. wanted to go on the offence until all the Zed-heads were gone. There would be a vote in a few hours. The ambassador wanted to know how he should cast ours. The big question was: did we have the means to retake our land? When I had left the coast of Scotland, the populace was prepared for defence rather than attack. The Antonine Wall was stable and all efforts were going into the production of food, medicine, arms and building materials. I found out later that the government had existing plans to move the front all the way south to Hadrian's Wall [across Northern England, south of the Scottish-English border], but on nothing like the timescale we eventually did it in. The previous plan was to wait three years, prepare heavily and advance in the knowledge that most Zed-heads wouldn't be able to put up much of a fight. I remember taking a lot of notes that hour while my boss and the P.M. talked, notes about the number of arms we had, the number of able citizens, the difficulties of defending a longer coast line as we advanced, the possibility of Irish assistance regarding the Irish sea between our two islands, all sorts. As I said, I have no military training so I really couldn't tell you about the logistics but I crunched a lot of numbers. I was just there as a secretary, personal assistant and occasional sounding board. Neither the ambassador or the Prime Minister asked for my opinion and I didn't give it. I was only twenty years old and I probably only got the honour of being there by being the Home Secretary's niece. After about an hour of numbers, I was sent to find a decent cup of tea, which is harder than it sounds on the U.S.S. Saratoga, and got back to find the discussion had moved on to selling the idea to the British public. We'd made our decision, formally and in a informed and rational manner.
The pair of us drank our tea out of paper cups in silence. He asked me at one point if we were doing the right thing and I said yes and we went back to silence. Then he decided we should talk logistics with our European neighbours. So twenty or so men and woman and their aides sat down together on a tiny piece of the deck as a mini European Union and waited for someone else to speak first and commit to a plan of action or inaction. I won't name names, but there were a lot of scared people at that little meeting. Everyone of us were from countries that had implemented versions of the Redeker Plan, which is how we had the resources to send U.N. representatives to Honolulu, but with varying degrees of casualties and morale. Now, before the Great Panic, mainland Europe had quite open borders. It was called the Schengen Area, allowed unrestricted passage across its internal borders and in times of peace was useful for trade and travel. I mention this because the shared borders all across mainland Europe meant that one country's success, if they chose to retake their land, would depend heavily on the action taken by that country's neighbours. I shouldn't have to tell you that the map of Europe has changed somewhat post-War. We were lucky to be an island. We declared our intentions to vote yes. As I found out later, there had been talks that I wasn't aware of and the Irish ambassador made clear his country's offer to help secure the borders along the Irish sea and retake Wales.
Was that the point when the Northern Ireland agreement was made? Was the surrender of Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland your part of the deal? You give them land, they give you military aid?
I wasn't aware at the time of the nature of the agreement between our Prime Minister and their President.
But it was part of the deal made at the time of the Honolulu Conference?
[She sighs.] We couldn't hold the land. The Republic of Ireland had resisted the invasion far, far better than we had. They had... helped us greatly. They had offered refuge to hundreds of thousands of Britons, some of the Royal Family stayed there, they even sent us what food and equipment they could spare. We were heavily indebted and in need of further assistance. It was the sensible thing to do to enable our own government to secure Britain and liberate the hold-out areas.
It wasn't that easy for some of the other countries. Some representatives were saying that, as their besieged neighbours couldn't clear their own land, their own countries should absorb the land by clearing it all. The easiest example I can give you is Liechtenstein becoming part of Switzerland. Some countries, especially the densely populated ones with no sea borders from which an easy re-invasion could be made, planned to vote no. I heard some sensible comments there about taking it slowly, waiting for the Zed-heads to decompose naturally, working inwards from the coast and drawing the borders as we went. We had quite a lively discussion. It did get bitter at one point. If you know anything about European history, you'll know there have been a lot of wars over land. Tempers flared a little when representatives from countries who had decided they didn't have the resources to advance accused their neighbours of planning to seize land as the opportunity was there. We managed to calm that down pretty quickly. I don't blame some of them for voting no, or abstaining. They had to do what was best for their countries.
With an hour to go until the big vote and all the major decisions made, my boss told me to take an extended comfort break. I ended up meeting a very excited Australian man who'd heard rumours about there being wine available. Neither of us could find it though. I did however get an interesting account of the Australian astronaut who remained in orbit on the International Space Station. The Australian government in Tasmania had more important things to do than keep in contact with him, but they were all extremely proud. Every government and organisation on earth were grateful for satellite communication. I'm not sure we could have co-ordinated the retaking of land without those satellites being in working order.
Then there was the vote. Seventy-two delegates: twenty-four voted yes, seventeen voted no and thirty-one abstained. We had gone to war.
So I was put on a boat, given some more rifle training and dropped off above the Antonine to join the front line. [She indicates the rifle locked in the cabinet on the living room wall indoors.] I had my name engraved on it after hostilities ended and I passed the tests for a peace-time permit. I live on an small island; there's a lot of coast to defend. We still get the occasional Zed-head washing ashore and every able-bodied adult with a gun licence on the Isle of Wight is part of the Coast Guard. Some people here might tell you it's too easy now to get hold of a gun. It's not. A lot of people I met on the advance failed the psychiatric evaluation. If you have any hint of post-traumatic stress disorder, you don't get a licence. During and after zombie war, it became obvious that the ban on gun ownership [by several laws implemented between 1988 and 1997 in response to the Hungerford and Dunblane massacres] was null. One of the first laws passed by parliament after the first post-War election was to allow legal gun ownership but with very tight restrictions and very severe punishments for illegal ownership. Until this country is clear of the threat of zombies, it's probably a good idea.
Do you want to know something funny? They asked me to stand as the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight once I'd settled here and the next election was planned. Everyone knew me as "the lady from the Honolulu Conference" and thought I'd been the one to represent our country or at least had some role in the decision to vote yes. I refused of course: all I wanted to do was marry the charming man I'd met on the front lines and live quietly. But I'll always have a photo of me and the British ambassador standing in front of our flag on the U.S.S. Saratoga and I'll always be a footnote in the Honolulu Conference history books.
I've tried to make this as canonical and otherwise plausible as possible. Someone from Britain did a presentation on fortified motorways at the Honolulu Conference. Philip Adler, the German soldier, was interviewed in Armagh, Ireland, which indicates that the island was reunified as Armagh is part of Northern Ireland in real life. As both the Pope and a lot of the Royal Family stayed there during the zombie war, it is clear that Ireland resisted a lot of infection. A diplomatic deal would be plausible, especially given how weak Britain was at the time. The absorption of the tiny micro-state Liechtenstein, who have no standing army, into neighbouring Switzerland is not canon but struck me as possible. In interviews, countries with coast lines, such as Greece, Ireland and Finland are still called that, whereas David Allen Forbes, the Brit, is interviewed in the Province of Bohemia, part of the Czech Republic in central Europe in real life, which now belongs to the European Union, suggesting that the land was absorbed. Most other references should be recognizable. Mentions of a change in gun ownership laws in Britain are entirely my own invention.
The Honolulu Conference was my favourite part of World War Z and I want to write another piece from the point of view of a country who voted differently. Any suggestions? I was thinking Russia but now I'm leaning towards Czech Republic for "no", justified above, and Switzerland for "abstain" perhaps. Please leave a review.