6 Months later
'Ladies and gentlemen. We are the senior survivors of our respective countries. We are here, on this island safe from infection because we have a job to do. The past, if you'll forgive the bad wording, is in the past. Old hostilities must be laid aside. Alliances ignored. The survival of us as a species depends on our co-operation. You all know the seriousness of our predicament. We must not fail.'
The speaker took his place at the round table. The assembled 'leaders' of every major country were gathered on this island to discuss the future of the human race. Some countries had their elected presidents, heads of state and rulers. Britain had an undersecretary from Hanglington and Greece had a journalist. The President of the United States had survived, along with the leaders of France and Germany. Russia hadn't managed to attend. Well, that was some of the leader's opinions. America was firmly in the opinion that it were devoid of all life.
America was the main instigator of the arguing at the table. They refused point blank to release details of their secret weapons as it 'threatened national security'. Britain's Undersecretary was quick to point out that they barely had a national anything; the whole country was being ravaged by the plague. Nobody believed in 'zombies'. At least, not in the traditional sense. Yes, they showed all the signs of warping straight out of a horror movie, they were dead people that had re-animated, they ate people, the people they ate returned to 'life' and they were unstoppable except to massive head trauma.
The people on the ground and the underlings of the leaders of the world said 'zombies' all the time. There were other names but they were mainly a mix of crude insults revolving around their 'stench'. It was widely recognized now. Only the leaders tried to retain a sense of a world that was dead, where such things didn't exist.
Every continent was infected, nowhere was immune. Before the signs were recognized, when the virus spread slower, infected people boarded planes and boats in a mass exodus from America. Nowadays only lasted an hour, if you were lucky, after being bitten. Eastern Europe fared the worst, the Fallout commission declared it devoid of life within three weeks of infection.
The leaders of the world remained blind to the true nature of the Fallout commission. The underlings knew it was aimed at 'cleansing' countries America viewed as inferior. Russia wasn't far off from being downgraded from 'Surviving' to 'Barren'. The action to be taken was being discussed heatedly by the leaders, and despite the best efforts of many, they were arguing with no hope of a solution any time soon.
Andrew Mathews was a coffee maker in Britain's 'headquarters'. He hated it with a passion, being away from the action was not what he'd planned when he joined the government. Then again, a zombie plague wasn't on his list of foreseeable circumstances either. He and Julie had barely made it out of London after the infection reached England. It hadn't always been just the two of them. They started with a group of six. They lost Harry first; he'd gone out on watch one morning and disappeared. They never found any of him. Unlike Amy. They found her torso angrily trying to bite them when they went looking for her.
Eventually it was just the two of them and they ended up growing quite close. They were trying to keep it secret from the others in the office. Some people were jealous that they had managed to have something in a world that was falling apart, others just wanted something so badly that they would tear someone's world apart to get it. Andrew was busy making coffee when Julie came up behind him. He could tell what she wanted by the way she moved; although there was a lot of floor space she pressed herself against him as if they were on a crowed train or bus.
'When can you get away?' her breath was warm and soft against his ear.
Andrew turned to look around. They were alone. 'What about here?' he looked around again, 'We're alone'.
Julie smiled and walked away. Andrew would have followed her had it not been for the pimpled face of the 'Prime Minister' peering around the corner, asking for more coffee. Andrew grumbled 'yes sir' and turned back to his coffee maker. The Prime Minister's eyes flicked around the room, Andrew knew he was looking for Julie. If that man makes one more move on her I swear I'll make him Zombie chow he thought to himself. How much bleeding coffee does he want anyway?