This is the second chapter.
Start at the beginning.
Copyright © 2014 by Christian Bergman, All rights reserved.
All people, places, and events are fictional … except when they aren’t.
The Nudist War – Day 42
They awoke from their slumber and they were very, very hungry.
~ St. Giorgio Romeo, Il Risveglio Morti, circa AD 978.
• • •
“They got it all wrong,” Jessica muttered to herself as she loaded the samples into the DNA sequencer. Safe within the Level 4 Biohazard lab on Galveston Island, Jessica Munroe pushed on for a third sleepless day. They got it all wrong.
• • •
The they in this case was the media, the entertainment industry, the press, anyone and everyone writing about the Zombie Apocalypse. The facts about Zombies had been pretty well established by decades of books, movies, graphic novels, and TV shows. Everyone knew them:
- They went by many names: zombies, the undead, walkers, biters, etc.
- They could not be killed by normal means – only a direct hit to the head would work, either severing the head entirely or at least destroying it.
- Without the de rigueur head shot, a zombie would live forever, regardless of the amount of otherwise traumatic injury it had sustained. A zombie with half its body gone was still a threat.
- Zombies were immune to circumstances that would kill the living, such as drowning. Zombies could wander the bottoms of lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water indefinitely, posing an ongoing threat.
- Zombies, although chronically hungry, did not eat each other (perhaps out of professional courtesy). Only the warm fresh flesh of the living would suffice.
- Zombies were slow and mindless. They shuffle along, stumbling after their victims.
Wrong, wrong WRONG!
Contrafactual 