Long Creek, Oregon

[Natasha Zharkov's home is a modest one-story affair that is rather old fashioned both in appearance and decoration, with furniture that probably was made in the 1980's and appliances that look like they draw on little power and rely more upon more manual labor in case of a blackout. It's off the beaten path, even for this very small town, which I believe was chosen purposefully when this former member of Russian FSB defected to the United States with her family]

I'm not sure what I could tell you that hasn't already been recorded in your national archives for years now. The American Government was thorough in their questions for us the very moment we set foot on the continent, even repeating the same inquiries over and over again to make sure that my story didn't vary even slightly at any point.

What exactly did they want to know about?

What people will probably be debating for many years to come: how complicit the Russian Federation was in helping China cover up the early days of the crisis. After all, your average citizen believed that we were allies, and therefore we must have been working hand in hand with them to bring about the end of the world as we knew it. How could we not have known that the dead were walking and eating people, of course our great allies against the imperialist west told us everything about what was going on and we chose to help them in hushing up the truth. That's the story many survivors see as what happened. I suspect even some in the motherland believe it to be so. The truth is obviously far more complex than that. For those who care about truth rather than wanting to point fingers.

You must understand that Russia's erstwhile friendship with our southern neighbors was never anything more than an alliance of convenience for both sides. With NATO dominating Europe to our West and the United States the uncontested master of the Pacific backed with Japan and South Korea to our East, it was easy to feel as if we were surrounded, a perception that those in power used to great effect in their propaganda. If you bought into that narrative, then it was easy to see China as a natural ally, someone who would stand side by side with us against Western Imperialism that threatened to corrupt everything good in the world. Namely, all things Russian. Past that surface level story, however, the only thing we had in common with the CCP was our distrust for America and her Allies. That was really the only thing that was keeping the facade of friendly relations together, as we had innumerable reasons to hate one another whether it was due to geography, economics, or something as basic and foolish as the belief in the superiority in one's culture that both of us had. One need only look to our history of relations in the Cold War to see how quickly it all could go south. We were simply more valuable to each other as "friends" than rivals at that moment in time.

That was why we were as caught off guard by the Taiwan Straits Crisis as anyone else.

Was the Russian Government surprised by the outwardly aggressive stance the CCP took during the Crisis?

Not exactly. Saber rattling was one of the go-to tactics used by the Chinese in order to rally national support, especially in times where they needed to distract their people from internal problems. What was surprising to FSB was that the Chinese were treating us the same as they were NATO, completely locking us out of our usual intelligence channels and even closing what information sharing systems that had been set between agencies. At the very moment we all assumed they would turn to us for help, they had effectively slammed the door shut.

It didn't make any logical sense. We weren't opposing them in the standoff, even if we didn't want war to break out it seemed like an opportunity to embarrass the United States. Even more important was that if they were truly dealing with widespread internal dissent as the world believed, then it would behoove them to work with us to boost their stretched intelligence capabilities. Any queries we sent their way were met with responses that could basically be summed up as "Stay in your lane". With how hostile their language was, you'd have thought they were massing troops on our border.

That must have been some kind of clue to the FSB that something was wrong.

Maybe if FSB was different. Maybe if our government was different. But our priority as an agency wasn't just threat analysis, it was a game of survival to deliver good news regardless of reality. I don't mean physical death for the most part, executions and internal assassinations were not nearly as common as they had been in the KGB days. But our national leaders were stuck in Cold War mindsets that Russia was still a global superpower where everything went our way in the way of international operations, and if it didn't then there were easy ways to fix it. If anyone insisted otherwise, they were swiftly replaced, or worse, declared unpatriotic and a dissident. It turned the heads of our military and intelligence apparatus into sycophant Yes Men who were terrified of doing anything more than delivering the most optimistic outlooks on our problems. And that had effects all the way down the chain, where even Senior Agents like me couldn't help but feel a bit cowed in the face of these powerful delusions. It became a viscous cycle of leadership wanting to hear good news, with the military and FSB too afraid to step outside those desire we accommodated them, and it all left us without an easy way to break out.

In our reports, we suggested that this was due to the Chinese Paranoia that grew out of our Army's might, that they were terrified of a possible stab in the back that they knew they could not survive. Even if the situation itself wasn't advantageous, we could do our very best to put a positive spin on it. This way we were able to still make ourselves sound powerful without having to face how bad the situation was getting. No matter how detached from reality it was.

What about your own personal beliefs?

I didn't know what to make of it. It seemed so backwards from what one would have expected of them, so I could only assume that they were acting irrationally. Perhaps the internal uprising was far more powerful than they were letting on, or there could have been an attempted internal coup that wasn't known to the wider world that had put them on the razor's edge of distrust. If that was the case, then perhaps it was best that we distance ourselves from our erstwhile friends. After all, if they came crashing down, we want to go with them.

This was all before we had our first documented case, you understand. We didn't know it at the time, but the earliest outbreaks were deep within the rural heartland of China, far away from the borders and from any witnesses who could have clued us in to the truth.

There must have been refugees coming into Russia

Yes, but that was to be expected with everything going on, and most who came to our country in the early days were just as in the dark to the truth as the rest of us. I think too many people lay blame on those poor souls, crying how the world could have been better prepared if only these escapees had been louder in their warnings. As if they had all the answers, even those who saw the undead firsthand didn't always have a grasp on what they were. Even if they did, who would have listened? Strange foreign refugees are seldom the first ones that national populations give time for anything but scorn. Russia was no different.

But you shared a large border with China, the Government couldn't have been blind to the spread of infection for very long.

You're repeating a misconception about the War. That just because the countries to the south of China suffered from the initial outbreaks that Russia did as well, just because we were neighbors. It is simply not true. From the data we have available now, we know that the first "white zones" were far away from the northern borders and had a stronger PLA presence between us and them that could catch any small number of stragglers. We didn't start seeing undead within our nation until the situation in China began spiraling out of control, and the Taiwan Straits became the last thing on anyone's mind.

Even then though, the CCP denied that anything was happening and refused to share any details about the situation. It left us, as you would say, holding the bag. We almost didn't even notice it at first when several of the border villages started going dark without any communications going in or out.

It took that long for Russia to take notice?

It took even longer than that. Winter rolled in around the same time as the first infections, so we didn't have a massive pool of examples to work with. With everything else that was happening, this was given so low priority that it fell to the very bottom of my very long list of problems to tackle during that time. To be sure, it was strange. Reports of cannibal attacks and bizarre autopsies drew the eye, how couldn't they? But I began to grow more and more concerned as the examples mounted, along with the casualties. I remember one account that was sent to me about a small settlement that was south of Chita where a traumatized couple had given a nearly incomprehensible report to the Federal Police that strangers in tattered clothing had broken down their doors in the middle of the night and attacked everyone they could find. Subsequent searches of the village turned up only one corpse, everyone else was missing, as if they'd wandered out into the forests without any warm clothing. That was dramatic enough to seize my attention, but the breaking point finally came when I read the Warmbrunn-Knight Report, and finally realized just how massive the threat we were facing was.

Even most Western Agents had never seen Warmbrunn-Knight. How did you get your hands on it?

A copy was sent to me via a friendly contact I had within British MI6. I hadn't told her anything about what was happening in Siberia, but she was smart enough to realize the danger that all Asian countries were facing and had the sense to "gently suggest" it as required reading. That's how I knew things must have been serious.

You had communication with British Intelligence? Was that not considered treason?

Lines between friends and foes get blurry in the espionage business. On paper, yes. FSB was never to have any kind of positive relations with any NATO Agents and vice versa. In practice though, we shared more enemies than one might think, especially when facing groups that did not fall neatly within national lines. You simply need one another to be effective, whatever the heads of governments might desire. Extremists Jihadists didn't have any more love for Russia than they did Europe, and I had worked with a number of Western Agents and Special Forces units in the years leading up to the Taiwan Straits Crisis that helped us save many thousands of lines in all our nations. We kept those lines open afterwards, but they had to be done carefully as none of our superiors would have looked kindly upon such a relationship, as you implied. It's a shame, perhaps the Great Panic could have been averted if those lines had been more open.

Regardless, I read through the Warmbrunn-Knight Report three times the day after it was sent to me, and it shook me to my very soul. Corpses reanimating to devour their loved ones and turn them into the same mindless monsters seemed like the stuff of nightmares, but the evidence presented was compelling and lined up with all the reports I had from the incidents near the Chinese Border. This was the truth of what we were facing, and I might have been the only one in the entire Russian Government to see this.

Did you reveal this to the rest of FSB? Or the Military?

How would I have done that? The report I was basing my conclusions on was primarily authored by Agents of the CIA and Mossad, given to me by a friend in MI6. At best, they would have believed it to be the results of a misinformation campaign that I had bought into. At worst, they would believe me to be a foreign asset and a traitor. I needed more proof before I could even consider bringing it to my superiors.

Fortunately, I was senior enough to have a little bit of leeway within my responsibilities, allowing me to take covert but direct action against the infections within our borders. I gathered together a trusted group of fellow FSB and Spetsnatz who I knew would keep their silence while still being effective on the missions they were given. Once I confirmed that an outbreak was likely occurring, all I had to do was find any pretense no matter how flimsy to deploy my assets to the region to quickly and quietly put an end to it.

You created your own version of the Alpha Teams.

That's being generous. Our efforts were never truly backed by the government and were limited by the equipment and intelligence that we could get our hands on within the purview of our day to day duties. We were aided in our efforts by the authoritarian style of Russian leadership that made hushing up these incidents easier, but the interservice paranoia added to our difficulties by ensuring we never had a full picture of events. I'm certain we missed more than a few infections, especially in the more remote regions where word traveled slower, but I also know that we were able to save many lives and likely slowed the outbreak in Russia. Even if in the end, it mattered little.

But why? If you were as active in combating the infected as you say, then it wouldn't have been long before you would have had plenty of evidence to bring to the higher ups.

You're right. But my own cowardice stayed my hand from action. For all my pretense of looking down upon my country's systems, I was still very much a part of it. I was afraid that if I moved too quickly, then I would be purged. There were constant excuses I made to myself, if I just waited a little longer, then they would be more open. If I just had a little more evidence, it would be enough to make them see. It was mental gymnastics that slowly but surely sapped away my sanity as the days passed and the deaths increased, and the crisis seemed to be growing ever larger in the shadows.

The closest I ever got was after Israel announced their voluntary self-quarantine, being foolish enough to see it as a lucky break that the news had come from someone else besides me. All I would have to do is use this pretense to bring up the evidence I had gathered, and everyone would finally have their eyes opened to what had been eating me up inside for so long. Instead, I found myself quelled after hearing the FSB Director viscously mocking the Israeli plan and joking that he would have shot anyone who came to him to take such stupid actions in response to make believe boogeymen. I was so terrified that someone would find out what I was really up to that I stayed away from the western parts of the country for a while. Out of sight, out of mind, yes? I thought it would help buy me the time I needed to make a definitive case that would even lead doubters like the Director to be convinced.

Instead, it led to me being too far away to give immediate assistance to the major outbreak in St. Petersburg, which quickly spread to Voronezh, then Moscow, and so on. The Great Panic tearing down society as we knew it in a matter of days. All of my time and effort went up in smoke, taking all hopes of early defensive plans for the Motherland with them.

Do you think that if you had taken the risk and told your superiors, Russia might have been better prepared for the Crisis?

I've asked myself that question every day since then, keeping me from sleep on countless nights as I ponder what might have been. Most likely it wouldn't have changed anything, my concerns and data dismissed or buried by grovelers who didn't want to be the ones to break the bad news to our rulers and oligarchs in case they chose to shoot the messenger. But…. I can't help but wonder if perhaps I'm just making excuses for myself. That I want to remember things being that bad so that I can convince myself that my cowardice didn't cost millions of lives.

What if the Director had his own suspicions that I could have built upon? Or if I had been able to force him to listen, even at personal risk that would have entailed? Had I gotten even marginal support for my efforts, then we could have prepared a multitude of different contingencies to face what would come. Take accurate inventories of our massive stockpiles of munitions, increase defenses at key industries and infrastructure, perhaps even create more open channels of communications with our NATO counterparts to coordinate plans and pool knowledge. What if we had been able to mobilize earlier, have large numbers of troops ready to face the undead hordes and protect refugees in organized evacuations of the major cities, using our strength in the winters to recover lost territories and prepare for offensives in the spring thaw. We could have emerged from the war stronger than ever before. What if… But that is likely a child's fantasy.

Russia had long ago made its bed, and forced all its citizens to sleep in it. We made for easy prey when the infected came to devour us.