Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, California, United States of America  

[Before the Great Panic, this island was little more than a monument to an inescapable prison that had held some of the most notorious criminals this country has known. Today, it acts as a mental health clinic, treating the many survivors whose mental health was devastated during the war. (more…)

[Wellington is one of the Southern Hemisphere’s success stories. I traipse up the stairwell, showing my smartcard to the guards. Across the hall, Colonel Robert Maguire sits up in bed, ravaged by the rad dose that he received during enforcement of New Zealand’s controversial ‘triage’ policy]

I know that there are some people out there who hate me, mostly those who lost family within the Australian theatre of World War Z. Unlike other states that enforced a cordon sanitaire, such as South Africa and Israel/Palestine, we had a sea border to control and protect and a long coastline. (more…)

Hello?…is this thing on?….OK…. well I guess you want to know what I did in the war? They told me you was recording stuff about the war and wanted to know what I did. You ain’t gonna get a story about the shooters from me…I wasn’t one of those fancy-assed trigger pullers… I did my time in G,R&D. Graves, Registration, and Disposal. (more…)

-Undisclosed location

I meet the interviewee, ‘John’, in an interstate diner. John had tracked me down a week previous, after hearing about my report ‘from some friends’, and requested to be interviewed.

John’s a lean, rangy man and he’s wearing mirrored aviators. He drinks his coffee and explains his request for confidentiality. (more…)

I’m interviewing Malcolm Price, veteran of a US-Army-run concept military unit. There are less than fifty survivors of the original batch of three thousand, making him one of the rarest of interview subjects I have run across. Their designation, “Canaries”, hearkens back to the days of coal miners using small birds in cages as primitive poisonous gas detection systems; if the bird died, the mine was considered “unsafe”. (more…)

Mid-Hudson Valley, New York.

— Bryce H. is a Licensed Practical Nurse, 35 years old. We met at his home in (name withheld), NY for this interview, in a typical post-war living room, free from clutter. At the time, just before the mass infection took hold and society as was known collapsed, he had worked at the county nursing home for under two years. The facility he’d worked for housed 240 residents and employed 180 staff members. This account is of his last day at the nursing home, which was the same day as the well-known, live-televised massacre at Ardsley, which claimed approximately 2700 military personnel and caused a mass evacuation to the north. (more…)

[An easy, confident man waits on the other side of this stark glass barrier, waiting for me to start the interview. From what I have learnt from the tales of his exploits during the War, and from the security checks I had to go through to get access to him, I am thankful we are not any closer]

What you Yanks don’t understand is that Britain was one of the most densely populated places on earth. No wide open spaces. Nowhere to run to. We weren’t cowards, you see. We did what we had to do, had the damn bravery to do what had to be done! (more…)

Vass, North Carolina

[Aaron Worth stands in the middle of a field, tugging a hoe through the dirt of a large, walled in garden. Beyond him is a stilted house that is clearly a post-war build. A rifle is still slung on his back, despite the fortification. During the war, Worth served as a special attachment to Army Group South – he was the first of many “Whistleblowers” to aid in the relief of the larger cities of the eastern U.S.]

It wasn’t my idea. A lot of people ask me that. Nope. Some guy with thick glasses must have dreamt this up, because the idea at first seems ridiculous. I know I laughed in the Sergeants face when he proposed it to me. I mean, seriously, take a loud ass train deep into Zackland and hope to God you don’t get bogged down and eaten alive. Yea, sure, sounds like a plan. (more…)

Somewhere in the Middle of Kansas

[Before the Zombie War, mediums were considered con artists by the majority of society. Men and women who were the hosts of flashy Reality T.V. shows, playing up to an audience who tuned in for a quick thrill; sometimes the subject of television or film dramas, mediums have not earned much more than open skepticism and derision. I am speaking with a medium on a dirt patch somewhere in the heart of what used to be America’s bread basket in the state known as Kansas. In the days before the Panic, she was known as Tshilaba, a Romani name meaning “seeker of knowledge.” These days, she is known by something simpler: Mercy.] (more…)

Austin, Texas
November 2030

Clyde Doutree sits in his office and listens offhandedly to a police scanner. The dark room seems to be more of an armory than an office. As the leader of the newly formed Texas Rangers, Doutree has spent the last few years after the war reclaiming Austin. His white hair, well-worn cowboy hat, and handlebar mustache make this already big man seem that much larger. (more…)