World War Z:

Rebel Yell

Disclaimer: The following is a fan fiction of the book, World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war. Written and copyrighted by Max Brooks as World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war, Crown publishing: New York, 2006. (P.150). I do not own said novel and asked no one's permission to write this. So PLEASE DON'T SUE ME!

Westbrook, Kansas,

[Westbrook Correctional Facility is as much a prison is it is a hospital, psych-ward, and government dumpsite for untrustables. Despite the fact that most of its inhabitants are in their 30's they look incredibly old. Only one group of people is accepted here, Katrina Catoya is one of them. She sits behind a bulletproof window as I interview her. Her blonde hair is ragged and has telltale bald spots from battle. She wears a white bandana over her forehead, most likely to hide scars, although there are many seeable scars on her face in plain view. Her left eye is blank white, empty and blind it stares at me for the interview.]

They can't kill us, we didn't do anything wrong, but I guess they have every right to lock us up here. We didn't break any rules. "We didn't leave America, America left us." I wish I knew who wrote that. They're a genius.

Any way I'm not here for sympathy; where do you want me to start?

Where ever you feel it began.

Well, I guess it began where it began for us all, the outbreak. I was this zit-faced employee at a McDonalds in a small town called Jaden Creek. One day a fat guy came in ordered a milkshake for his headache and turned cannibal on my boss. I knew then to get my ass out of there. I held out with my family for a while but in a couple of days there wasn't much left of the town. We drove to a town only a couple miles from here.

Black Hills?

Yes, exactly. I went into a gas station to get a candy bar, when I came back the family and the van were gone. I hope one day to find them, if they're still alive, but,

[Gestures to a surveillance camera behind her.]

I don't think I'll ever get out of here. Any way, I found this group of people; a couple of them had guns. That's where I met, Jason Shade. He had one of those S.W.A.T. team style shotguns. He was about 30 and he looked like a lumberjack. Then there was Coral; she was an accountant for some agency. She turned out to be a real marksman; I think she had the highest body count out of all of us.

What about your leader?

She wasn't our leader. Wolves don't have leaders.

[Pause]

We are all equal.

Kaeth was there. She was quiet stayed in the sidelines. I remember laughing at her name. I think she was from Africa, because she talked about it all the time. It was a little creepy how much the tribal warfare resembled the chaos of the Great Panic.

Anyway, Jason took us to this old factory. It was an old abandoned steel mill; was moldy and had more cobwebs than bricks. But at least the windows were all boarded up and it was next-door to a home depot. It wasn't with out its flaws; most of the stairs were crumbling, and the windows might have been boarded up but that doesn't mean the Zack couldn't get in. We pretty much solved that with some bricks from home depot—after all we only needed to reinforce the first floor to keep the Z's out. Then we got a couple trucks; huge Mack trucks and we filled them with water and locked them in the garage. The big cherry on the martini was a tie between when we hooked up a few solar panels and when raided Wal-mart for supplies.

I thought that was the best; Wal-mart has, had, everything. I remember going there with my parents, back before the war. No matter how much money I had, there was always something more expensive then I could afford. Then came that day and we took everything we could grab. I guess it was looting, I know it's 'wrong.'

[Makes air-quotes]

But that day I got that new Sony ultra-sound stereo I had been fruitlessly saving up for.

[She laughs]

We had it pretty good for a while. We had a lot of guns and ammo from government drop offs. We even got Internet, can you believe it—Armies of the dead waiting out doors starving and we could check our Myspace? We had food, music, movies, entertainment; we had it made. They talk about people dying in government 'refugee' camps, starving and whatnot. Compared to that, Black Hills was paradise.

Did you consider that stealing?

No, I mean for the most part most of what we "stole" we needed. Like we needed the food to eat, and the music for morale. We had a lot of stress you know. And it's not like we didn't share. We were always taking refugees.

We had to keep them in the basement, to figure out who was infected. I always hated that, but we didn't kill them right away, or just leave them in the streets like other people. We brought the infected to the roof and when they turned we shot them and threw the bodies over. I'm not insanely proud of that. We did what we had too, to survive. It's not like we were killing anyone; we knew they turned. We had a test; you pulled out some blood mixed it in with some chemicals.

[The Black Hills Wolf Pack is believed to be the first to develop the Bite Kit, from household chemicals.]

If it turned black, it's death. Ryan Scythe created it, he was a refugee once too.

[She smiles]

For a year we grew, added additions, and grew crops, even a few domesticated cows and sheep. We depended less and less on the old human world. We managed to build heavy steel walls around the town; it looked like a medieval castle. I guess that isolation made us the name.

Black Hills, The city of Wolves.

Wolves are one of the most adaptable animals you know. Studies have shown wolf packs actually increased during the outbreak. Want to know my theory?

[Sure]

Because wolves can take care of themselves—and so can we.

[Her good eye looks off.]

We really were on top of the world for a while. It was her idea, Kaeth, to wear these bandanas, to mark who we were. That was after Jason died, she was in power then. We weren't just civilians, or the screwed up grunts in the army. We were wolves.

[She laughs and lets out a wolf howl, stopping only when her cough overpowers her.]

That's how we communicated through howls, hiding in trees and attacking from the shadows. It scared the soldiers, and they had no idea what we were telling each other. It was great for battle; we couldn't have elaborate conversations like this, but we could say 'sneak behind them', 'traps over there', that kind of thing.

How did Jason Shade die?

[She looks down.]

They did that.

Who?

The soldiers, they showed up at our camp desperate for supplies, and we gave it to them, those bastards. Once we let them in they took all of our food, most of our ammo, and then they 'recruited' the men at the base for their army. They said they had a battle and needed soldiers. But we knew, they used them as decoys to feed the dead, so they could get their white prissy American middle class asses out of there. Jason tried to stop them. They were taking a little boy from his mother. They shot him, right there.

[Her breathing becomes fast and unsteady.]

I guess that's how America was founded. The pilgrims washed up on shore, and begged the Indians for food. Then the pilgrims slaughtered the Indians stole their food, and raped their wives. It's just the same stupid cycle, except with zombies running around. Jesus Christ, they were more our enemies then the zombies!

When did you decide to become a secessionist base?

After that day, when the soldiers left. Kaeth gathered everyone in the town square; it was like a mob in those old movies. She was crying. Everyone was crying. I know she really loved Jason. If she was there when he was shot I'm one hundred percent certain she'd have took that bullet for him.

It was mostly women left at the base, all of them angry. Kaeth got up and told everyone that this was the beginning of a new time for the wolves. I don't know her exact words but it was something like, "They've pillaged their last village, this is just like it was in Africa. America has abandoned us, lets abandon them." From then on we resented anything like America. We became the rebels, the resistance, the wolves. Kaeth wasn't in charge or anything; we all had the same voice, we just spoke through her. She whipped us back to work. So we rebuilt, grew new crops and stuff but we couldn't rebuild that emotional high. We sent out search parties to find survivors of the better time. We found the little boy Jason tried to save. He had turned by then, poor kid. I was the one to put him down.

When was the first battle of Black Hills?

About a year after Jason's death another army showed up at our door. We stood on the perimeter of the steel walls, some of us even on rooftops, all aiming at them. We were ready. They asked us to surrender our food and weapons. We responded politely. "Hell no!" The commander in charge blinked at us. He said something about using deadly force. He said something to a grunt and one of them picked up a gun. Coral shot him on site. One shot clean in to the head, easy and painless. Just like they did to Jason. That was the first time we ever killed anyone. I still feel a little bad, but we needed it to survive. They were no different then the zombies, they just have pulses. A couple weeks later another unit showed up. They had tanks; they didn't want to use them. They must have felt the same way about killing as we did. They threatened us with some type of chemical weapon. Kaeth knew when they showed up what they were planning; she had already made the escape plans. We gathered what we could from the base and hit the underground tunnels we built as an escape plan. They worked pretty well. When the soldiers invaded the base there was nothing left. We set the place on fire too; if we couldn't have it no one could. That's how I got the blind spot.

[She gestures to her left eye.]

Kaeth and I were setting the fires. I lost one eye when they sent in the first chemical bomb in. It was just a little one. It got Kaeth, blinded her, but she managed to save my one eye, she tied her bandana on it. I've never been more scared in my life. We were blind trying to find our way out of a burning fortress. I walked a couple of times right into the fire, but for the most part my senses never failed me. Luckily we knew the place well, we got out of the tunnel just as the explosives went off. That attracted the dead, Kaeth asked me to describe the scene to her while we were on the mountains above.

I told her that the zombies were heading to the burning base and the soldiers. She laughed and said. "Irony is the best decoy." We drove our trucks off from the scene of the slaughter.

Have you read about what happened to the soldiers that killed Jason?

Yeah, they were sent to trial for war crimes. They got off. "Irresponsible actions in the great panic." They called it. Tell that to Jason's dead carcass.

How did you survive with your handicap?

Actually, quite well. It makes me a better shot; I can squint better. We set up a new base in another town, Jayville or something.

Kaeth was blind as a bat, but we hadn't lost much of our population. We fought a few new battles. Won them too, zombies were the least of our worries. We were fighting two wars, Z-heads and jarheads. That's no way to fight. I guess that's why we eventually fell. Z-heads are unified, they are one big bulking mess out for flesh, and they fight to their last breath. They harm only the enemy. Mankind, that's different. Mankind isn't unified. They are cowardly, and they fight with their own people. They use they're own people as fuckin' bait.

Are you speaking of what the soldiers did to your people or what your people did to the soldiers?

I-I never thought of it that way.

[Her good eye looks off into the distance again.]

I guess we are the same, you know mankind; we're unified in inhumanity. Isn't it ironic, what happened to Kaeth?

What happened to her?

She was ambushed; a z-head jumped out and got her. We killed it before it bit her but it whammed her head against the ground. She's in a comma now, in the infirmary. They have her hooked up to some machine, feeding the life into her. It's ironic, how a woman spends all her life killing off undead zombies, and the one zombie she couldn't kill; is her self.

Inspiration Brooks, Max, World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war, Crown publishing: New York, 2006. (P.150).