[I walk past the Desert Road “Checkpoint Conrad” post, on the way to my next New Zealand appointment as a stringer for this collection of World War Z survivor stories. Dr Katie Mulcannon looks up from her laptop and welcomes me into her mobile assay lab.

Sit down. Okay, so where do I begin? I’m Dr Katherine Mulcannon, microbiologist and troubleshooter for the Republic of New Zealand National Unity Government, which means that I have strategic expertise in the area of zombie infection.

As you’re probably quite aware, some of the world went a little crazy in the early stages of World War Z. One such sideshow was the “zombie personhood movement.” While most mainline Christians- hell, even the majority of evangelicals and Pentecostals, and other reasonable people of faith believed that zombies had no sentience left, and that their cannibal dietary intake required control through deadly force, there were some isolated but deadly exceptions to that general rule. You know, like the old nutcase Fred Phelps from that Kansas church that had it in for gays, dead soldiers and assorted other countries.

I suppose you’ve come across Professor Hal Cantwich in your other interviews? […] Thought so. However, from what I’ve read of them, there hasn’t been much elaboration. Hal Cantwich was a fundamentalist Christian and attracted a lot of attention due to his work in theology and philosophy, but he had no professional background whatsoever in microbiology or medical research. Before the apocalypse descended on us, he was a respected, erudite but rather circumspect political activist. And then, all that changed.

When I first came across his work, I was aghast that someone was actually doing the zed’s work for them. And yes, that’s a copy of his notorious apologetic volume for the zed apocalypse, Person Zero: Why Zombie Personhood Requires Faith-Based Defence. How did I get a copy? Wartime censorship regs. I was a government witness when it was banned.

I should note that so were a couple of evangelical ministers who were just as horrified at the book’s content and testified in support of its prohibition. I have nothing against them, and I knew one had lost a son in the army in the same One Tree Hill battle that had killed my daughter, Erena, an army doctor. [She chokes up.]

Sorry, after all these years, it still hurts to talk about what happened to Erena. She was Jess’es daughter, but I fell in love with my special woman and helped bring the kid up. As fervent Kiwi peace-mongers and anti-nukers from way back, we had some words when she announced her intention to join up as an army doctor.

Anyway, back to Person Zero. I don’t know if you’ve read an underground copy of the book. However, to cut a long story sort, that book claims that zombies are “still” human beings. Using junk science, it argues that documented evidence of cessation of higher brain functions within zombies is ‘faulty’ and that zombies are ‘actually’ sentient. It ‘therefore’ follows that ‘properly’ religious people have a ‘moral obligation’ to shield these ‘threatened’ “human beings” from harm or the use of “homicidal” force through direct action and civil disobedience.

Yeah, right. Try telling that to Luke, the evangelical pastor that I told you about who’d lost his boy at One Tree Hill. He broke down during the government censorship hearing and whatever past differences we might have had, I crossed the courtroom and held him as he wept for his brave, noble son and I wept for my precious, loving and beautiful daughter. Both of them gone, thanks to what Cantwich and his fanatics enabled.

But hey, according to Cantwich, the zeds still had human genetic codes, so they “must” be humans. And it didn’t matter what they fed on, given that the zombie apocalypse was “divine retribution” for the sins of humanity, and the zeds had to feed to survive.

Even if other, ordinary decent Christians and other noble people of all faiths and none, like Luke’s son Gavin and his sisters and brothers in arms made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the rest of us. Even if my baby girl Erena stayed at her med evac post, helping patch up the wounded, until it was far too late and her position was overrun.

Jess and I saw it happen back in Wellington through the MOD satellite link. We were powerless to do anything to stop it.

Do you know how that feels? To watch your own flesh and blood being ripped apart by those mindless animated cadaverous pieces of shit. Our child. Our little girl. Who made the ultimate sacrifice to insure that wounded soldiers were choppered out of the chaos as the One Tree Hill battleline collapsed and held them off with her rifle until it was too late for her. She died in searing, brutal agony, because of betrayal, Max. She didn’t deserve to die that way.

Neither did any of those soldiers that stood shoulder to shoulder with her, whoever they were. They had parents, husbands, wives, children who still carry the psychological and emotional wounds from the gaping hole torn in our lives.

[She looks haggard] I’m not a totally heartless bitch, you understand. I can see why such erroneous “reasoning” would be seductive to people wanting to deny that their loved ones had turned, were no longer the persons that they’d known, still carried some vestiges of humanity, and that it was somehow ‘wrong’ to end their existence. And in times of crisis, fringe religious and social movements do arise. I’m aware of the psychological, existential and social context of what happened.

But. But, at One Tree Hill, it is now documented that several Person Zero fanatics present sabotaged some of the weaponry and evacuation vehicles used to exit the battlefield. Why? In order to enable the zeds to feed on their fellow humans, because the zeds were ‘persons’ and needed ‘nutrition’. They betrayed our own species because of some abstract principle and people died. My own child died. Gavin Leeson died. And from what has been documented elsewhere, that happened at countless other Zombie War battlefields.

I understand that Cantwich was executed in the States four or five years ago? If you read the trial notes, you’ll see that I was one of the witnesses for the prosecution. To this day, I still remember him grinning, quoting bible verses to the rest of us, singing hymns quietly to himself, dismissing those who fought against the zeds as comparable to the Roman footsoldiers involved in Christ’s crucifixion.

He had blood on his own hands. He actually sabotaged more than fifteen zed combat zones and led to the deaths of over one hundred soldiers and civilians through his activities. Altogether, the Person Zero cult cost the lives of almost a million Zombie War casualties.

And I remember that group of African-American church ladies outside the court house, who had read about Jess and me, and what we’d been through. Like Gavin and like us, those decent, compassionate, loving souls had lost their own brave sons and daughters, husbands and parents, and whatever may have divided us in the past, that wasn’t the case with them now.

One of them gave us a deeply moving, melodic sung rendition of the sacrifice at One Tree Hill and particularly, the sacrifice our daughter had made, and her heroism. That lady, Lauralee, had lost her whole family to the zeds. Like us, it was due to a Person Zero sabotage of an evacuation vehicle and overrun military position.

Enough. The old bastard’s gone now. It may not mean that Erena can ever come back to me and Jessie, or Gavin can come back to Luke and Emily, or Randall, Allanah and Tyler can come back to Lauralee, but at least that insane fanatical bastard Cantwich and his cultist followers aren’t around to inflict their psychotic aberrant philosophy on anyone else.

[Dr Mulcannon was one of the World War Z War Crimes Tribunal members in the Hague after the cessation of hostilities in Western Europe. She testified at the trial of members of the International Person Zero Coalition, testifying about the faulty pseudo-science of their case for zombie ‘personhood’ and cataloguing the sabotage and atrocities against civilians and members of the armed forces that the pro-zedders had committed. There’s one last stop to make before I leave this remarkable woman for my other local interviews on this leg of my journey, though.]

This is the local SAS monument to One Tree Hill You can see Erena’s name, details and photograph here. I still visit her grave regularly, and so does Jess. So do Gavin and Emily, and all the other parents, family and partners of those who fell at that key battleground here.

Because neither of us are ready to stop being her mothers now, and I don’t think we ever will.

[She hands me a copy of the U2 track “One Tree Hill.” Back when U2 recorded it in the eighties, it was a major hit down here. It tells the story of a Kiwi friend of the band who died. It has become the anthem of those who paid the ultimate price, like Erena Mulcannon and all those others who were betrayed.

But the cause of their heroism and sacrifice, that insane cultist, is gone now, and they are at peace. Whenever I play the song, I am reminded of Katie, Jess and the price her family paid, as did so many others.

***

Craig Young is the Politics and Religion correspondent of Gaynz.Com, New Zealand’s largest LGBT -centred news and current affairs website. He is an ardent fan of zombie apocalypse fiction and film, Doctor Who and Torchwood.