Ask me how I came to be a corn farmer on one acre of land wedged between a mountain and the white sand beach, and I’ll laugh. How, indeed. I guess there isn’t much of a demand for sociologists on Koh Tao. Never has been, so why should that change after the outbreak? Look at the island. This whole thing used to be forest. It’s basically a tree-covered mountain that sticks out of the water.

The only dangers that this island ever knew were coral scrapes, drunken motorcycle accidents, and falling coconuts. Tourism was all Koh Tao had going for it. This is and will forever be a diver’s paradise. That’s why I came. It was supposed to be a two-month course to get my Dive Master certification. After all, Koh Tao is the cheapest place in the world to train. I didn’t know that I’d be here for this long. None of us did, at least in the beginning.

When I got off the boat, all anyone knew was that some people in some places were getting sick. After a few weeks, we realized that it was spreading. It was spreading fast as hell. Some people cut their trips early and bolted, especially when the YouTube videos began to pop up and people realized exactly what was happening. Most people thought it was a joke.

“Zombies? Are you shitting me?”

I swear I heard that in English, French, German, Spanish, Thai, Japanese, Korean, and almost any other language you can name. This place had tourists from all over the world.

So many of us had been on the island for weeks, without phones, televisions, or any way to constantly keep track of the situation. There was the internet. That’s what eventually caused the exodus. It was a good thing, though. The island had a native population of about fifteen-hundred people. That doesn’t include the three-thousand tourists that fill the bungalows and resorts that cover the tiny island. That’s almost five-thousand people on an island that measures about 29 square kilometers. And, most of that was uninhabitable forest. During the exodus, about half of the people left.

I think that the one thing that really helped save us was the fact that Tao doesn’t have an airport. When the outbreak made it to Thailand, Bangkok and Phuket were almost wiped out instantly. When the King disappeared, the rest of the country sort of fell into a panic. That’s also when the supply boats stopped coming.

Koh Tao was a completely tourism-based economy. The locals were keen on eating fish and coconut curries every day. Tourists, however, wanted other things. The island was supplied by daily boat deliveries. Everything from toilet paper to light bulbs to nails had to be delivered by boat.

As soon as the deliveries stopped, the ferries stopped as well. There were only about two-thousand of us foreigners left on the island once the boats stopped. It didn’t take long for us to realize that the cheap bungalows, the booze and the hamburgers were done. Even rice was in short supply. Here we were, secluded completely from the crazy shit that was consuming the mainland only to realize that we had no way of surviving or waiting it out. There were just too many of us for the resources we had to sustain us.

There were no big boats, but that didn’t matter after the gas ran out. Even the longboats were useless then. We had heard all of this talk about zombies in the streets of Bangkok, but not one person here had seen one firsthand. It was as if the entire world had gone to shit while we ate fish and played in the sun. No word from Koh Samui or Koh Pa’ngan, Surrat Thani or anywhere near us. We realized that we were on our own, possibly forever.

Most of the native Thais that lived on the island were business people. They were almost all exclusively in the tourism business. We had restaurateurs, hoteliers, tour guides, boatsmen, cooks, waitresses, tattoo artists, and repairmen. No farmers. Hell, there were only two policemen and four guns on the entire island. Food was running out, and the Thais were looking at the foreigners as enemies threatening their existence.

Tuffy saved us. No shit, the man’s name was Tuffy. It was probably more like Toffee, but we all called him what he was: one tough-as-fuck bastard. The man might have weighed a buck-thirty soaking wet. But, his actions! His actions were those of a great man.

In the third month of “Lost Contact,” he summoned everyone on the entire island to Sairee Beach. Everyone, Thai and foreign, stood on the beach and listened to him tell us, not ask us, what we were going to do. He separated the group into four parts. One group was going to be responsible for fishing. One group was going to be responsible for land clearing and farming. Another was going to be responsible for logistics and transportation. And, finally, one group was going to perform sanitation.

I remember thinking two things at that time. First, I thought, “What the hell do I know about farming?” Second, I thought “Thank God I’m not on sanitation duties.”

The roles were ironclad and non-negotiable. One of the fishermen, who was obviously some rich Eurotrash punk who had never worked a day in his life, said he wasn’t about to do any work and that he would pay for his stay just as he had been doing. Tuffy walked right up to him and punched him in the neck. That guy fell down and grabbed his throat, lurching and gagging. Then, Tuffy grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the water.

“If you don’t want to do your share, then get the hell off our island.” “Our island,” he said, in that crazy Thai accented English. Tuffy realized that, like it or not, we were all in this together, and we were all now citizens of Koh Tao. Where were we going? Was someone going to take a sea kayak the hundred miles to the mainland? Everyone was to do their share, and everyone was going to survive.

One of the farmers, Roseanne, figured out a way to use the cleared timber to power the desalinization plant. He also figured out a way to use the same fire to gather salt from the sea by boiling away the seawater. Electricity from Samui was gone. We had a few solar panels we took from one of the resorts, but those were reserved strictly for the shortwave radio that was our only source of contact to the rest of the world. The only way to keep and store meat was to pack it in salt. Salted fish. I ate so much salted fucking fish that I never want to taste it again. Still, that woman and her engineering degree might have saved us all.

We stored enough fish to easily last us eight months. That only took three weeks. The seas were plentiful and the fishing charter operators knew exactly where to catch the most fish within kayak distance. After a while, they started taking out longboats with teams of eight people to row. They were good at what they did.

So were we. We cleared out the land that was able to be farmed. Most of it was right on the beach, so we had to strip and move entire resorts. Luckily, the typical cabana consists of nothing more that four plywood walls and a tin roof. We planted everything we had. There was corn, some tomatoes, sunflowers, potatoes, and marijuana. Oh, the marijuana. Still, by using all of the leftover stores as seed, we basically left ourselves with nothing but fish and coconuts. Those next four months were terrible with regard to the food situation. Our saving grace was that we planted during the summer, which meant rain for an hour or two every day and strong, healthy crops at the end of the growing season.

We also had a few chickens and a couple of cows. We weren’t allowed to eat them in the beginning. We were only allowed to take milk and eggs. Once the population grew, we were able to glean the old ones and have the occasional beef stew.

Five months. That was how long we were out of contact before it happened. Most of us had nearly forgotten about the zombies and considered ourselves to be living in paradise. Everyone lived a carefree life aside from their community duties. That is, until that Thursday in September.

That was the day that the fish went away. The fishing teams went out and found nothing. One day there were more fish than you could catch. Suddenly, there was nothing at all. Most people lived on the mountain since the relocation. Still, word spread quickly that something bad had happened. By the time we got to the beach, Gregor was already turning. He had been out free diving with a small group looking for fish. Any fish at all.

Apparently, he saw a corpse at the bottom of the clear, blue water. When he approached, he realized that the woman was not dead. She had simply fallen into a crevasse between two large chunks of coral and had been unable to free herself. Personally, I would have thought it strange that a woman with no obvious breathing apparatus was stuck underwater for God knows how long and still moving.

When he extended his hand to her, she bit off his index and middle fingers. The team didn’t stick around to get a better look. They brought him back to shore and he fell into a coma almost the instant he hit the sand. The next day, his heart stopped. Most people thought that he had been bitten by a shark or a large barracuda and was just in shock when he told everyone the tale of what happened. When he reanimated and let out that fucking moan, we all knew exactly what was going on.

Tuffy had the foresight to at least lock the door to the examination room where Gregor died. So, when we began to hear that fucking moan coming from the clinic, we all went down to see the commotion.

There he was, in all of that slow, gray fury. Looking out at all of us and letting out that fucking moan. Pacing back and forth as he pressed his body against the glass in that stupid, clumsy way. Still, with that fucking moan. It was like we had our very own zombie aquarium, and Gregor was the fish. Suddenly, we all realized that the problems of the mainland had found their way to our little slice of heaven. It hit us like a ton of bricks.

There was panic. It was almost enough that it destroyed our fragile semblance of order in a few hours. Tuffy was the one, though. He was the man with the plan and what a plan it was. Gregor, or what was left of him, was stuck in the office of the medical clinic. Meanwhile, we were all down by the beach wondering what to do with Gregor and what to do about the fact that there might be ten thousand zombies about to march through the coral and onto our shores. Tuffy told us to go back to our homes and get a good nights sleep. He told us to meet on the beach at seven in the morning. Not many of us slept that night.

When we arrived on the beach that morning, there stood Tuffy. Beside him were two huge porcelain bathtubs he had taken from the scraps left after the relocation. I, along with everyone else, had no idea what was happening. Then, we heard that fucking moan.

Every last one of us turned to see Gregor. He was securely tied between four pieces of bamboo and was being carried by four guys. On his head was an old fashioned dive helmet. His legs and his arms were gone, chopped off by some sort of machete. He was just a torso and head, with some black goo oozing out of his wounds and dripping onto the white sand.

Still, with that fucking moan.

They took Gregor to one of the bathtubs and dropped him into it. He just laid there, letting out that fucking moan again and again. As this was our first contact with the living dead, we were unsure of what to feel. Some people cried. Some cheered at his demise. Some laughed. I said nothing.

“This is what will happen to every single one of us if we are not vigilant!” Tuffy shouted. His voice penetrated us. “I have been talking on the radio to others who know much more than us, and they say that this moan is what attracts them. This is their radio. Their cellphone. Their Facebook.”

“They do not need air. They do not need food. They do not need the sun or the rain to sustain them. They simply need to kill, and spread, and destroy. Everywhere they go, life leaves. Because they are close to us, under OUR waters, our fish have left and our sustenance is threatened. We cannot allow this. We must not allow this!”

Suddenly, the other four men grabbed the other bathtub and placed it on top of the bathtub containing Gregor. Then, Tuffy took a tube of epoxy and squirted it all around the space between the two tubs, sealing Gregor inside.

“We cannot sit idly and wait, and hope, and pray that these foul creatures pass us by. We must act. We must use the one thing we have, reason, to win this battle.”

The four men picked up the two tubs and carried them into the sea. Once the water was deep enough to cover the tubs, the dropped it and let it rest on the ocean floor.

“This is our time! We will draw those bastards to us. As they walk along the ocean floor, we will circle above them like hawks and strike them down!”

Tuffy reached down and picked up a snorkel and a pair of fins.

“These are our tools!”

He reached down again and picked up a long piece of bamboo with a sharpened piece of steel rebar securely fastened to the end. We would eventually call this weapon a “popper.”

“This, our weapon!”

Everyone stared at him silently.

“You knew this would eventually happen. We are citizens of a struggling world, a world that is in a life or death struggle with the undead. We have been secluded and protected from this burden for a long time. But, no longer. Now, we must fight to survive or wait to die. Which will you choose?”

“You are all divers by choice or trade. Every last one of you can swim and maneuver in the water as if is were second nature. Do you fear those lumbering fools who can only stumble along the ocean floor? Fear not, I say. We should take the fight to them in the sea. For in that sea, we have a distinct and exploitable advantage. We will strike them from above and puncture their skulls! We will scramble their brains as if they were soup in a bowl.’

I’ll remember that last line until I die.

“Citizens of Koh Tao, we must protect OUR home.”

That’s when it hit me. Until that day, every one of us consider ourselves to be stranded on an island away from our homes. It wasn’t until that day that we all came to realize that our home was not the United States, or Canada, or Russia, or any other distant land where we might have lived in the past. Koh Tao was our home now. It was where we were safe. It was then that we all knew what we had to do. We had to defend our home.

Tuffy’s plan was simple and brilliant. Four teams were to go out from the north, south, east, and west points of the island. They would snorkel around the island counter clockwise until the reached the next directional point. Each team consisted of six swimmers and two kayakers. Everyone did everything in pairs. Swimmers stuck together, and were instructed to be within two meters of each other at all times.

If they found a bottom-walker, they would punch his lights out. As a matter of procedure, the partners were to both hit the head ten times each. By the end of that, there was nothing left but a neck. We later learned that you could easily finish off a bottom walker with one good shot, but at the beginning we followed Tuffy’s rule: “No one has ever been too thorough.”

After a swimmer punched out a bottom-walker, another pair was to come inspect the kill and make sure the “beedub” was finished. The other team was then to attach a rope securely to the beedub with a dive buoy on the end to mark the kill. Every two days, or when there was poor visibility in the water, two teams of rowers in longboats would circle the island and collect all of the bodies. They would simply row up to the buoy, pull the rope, and dump the corpse into the boat they were pulling behind.

When they brought the bodies back to shore, Tuffy would inspect them all. He’d check everything. What did they have in their pockets? Did they have anything on them that might tell where they came from? He’d then use that information to make battle plans.

He started what he called “War Meetings” every night at seven. He’d come in with a map of the island and say things like “We pulled two beedubs who were wearing wristbands from the Koh Samui ferry. They either fell off or the boat sank. Just to be certain, we will add an extra patrol to the southeast quadrant for the next five days.” Sure enough, we’d see an increase in beedub activity. That man was a fucking genius.

We only had one beedub make it onto the island. Poor son-of-a-bitch was a crawler who apparently lost the lower half of his body trying to crawl across the razor sharp coral off Mango Bay. When he finally made it to where people were, he let out that fucking moan. People were scared shitless, but my buddy Christophe split his head in two with a banana knife before he finished that first fucking moan. We had double patrols and even beach watches for the next month.

Tuffy turned Koh Tao into a damned Roach Motel for beedubs. In that first year we popped and dropped over seven hundred of them. The next year, it was only two hundred. After that, maybe one a month. During year four, we didn’t see a single one. Tuffy guessed that there could only have been so many beedubs in the Gulf of Thailand. Most of them probably came from ferries anchored due to onboard outbreaks or some that might have capsized after running aground with no one at the helm.

On Christmas of that year, we pulled old Gregor out of the water. I almost felt bad for him when Tuffy popped his top. Within three days, the fish came back. We had all been eating chicken, vegetables, and fruit for so long that we were quite glad to have the fish back.

Now that things are fairly back to normal in the rest of the world, most of us feel no desire whatsoever to leave this place. My parents both died long before the outbreak, so I have no reason to go. I did take one trip to the mainland last winter to help with the procurement of supplies and to help distribute our excess corn meal, but I couldn’t wait to get back. Koh Tao is my home now, and it’s paradise.

Looking back, there were so many times that I felt like one person saved the entire island. Be it Tuffy, Roseanne, Christophe… Jiwon, who walked into the clinic and chopped Gregor’s legs out from under him. Hell, maybe I saved us all by being the best damned corn farmer on the island. My point is this: we all saved the island. We all saved our home.

I still never go swimming without my popper. Not one of us does. The brilliance of that weapon never ceases to amaze me. It is both a floatation device and a lethal beedub killer.

Tuffy died from cancer seven years to the day after he made his “Our Home” speech. We had a celebration barbecue right there on Sairee Beach, the same beach where Tuffy gave us a home and demanded we defend it. So many of us had already come to terms with great loss and uncertainty. We decided not to mourn him, but to celebrate the man that gave us our lives back.

That night, I ate a delicious tuna steak. Hold the salt.