Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse by Richard McCrohan Read Free Book Online Page B

its former satellite countries were in dire straits. Between the rampant governmental corruption and the state of the military, things quickly went to hell in a hand basket. To make matters worse, the Kremlin’s iron-fist handling of its peoples led to various nationalistic,fundamentalist, and jihadist uprisings throughout the former Soviet Empire. Competing paramilitary and terrorist armies used the pandemic not only to kill any zombies they found, but also to settle old scores with both real and imagined enemies. The region slipped into complete bedlam.
    Africa was becoming a continent of armed camps. Various despots and warlords rounded up their personal armies and basically circled the wagons. Armed compounds formed around presidential palaces. Only soldiers, the politically connected, and dictators and their families remained safely inside. But even among themselves, anyone even remotely showing signs of infection was expediently eliminated and the body thrown over the walls. The people remaining outside were on their own. Between zombies, vengeance killings, and poor local sanitation and water sources, they didn’t fare well in this dangerous environment.
    Those within the walled camps eventually came to realize that although they had thought to make sure the leader’s hidden wealth was saved and the army had ammunition, stocking enough food and water was more of an afterthought than part of the hastily conceived original plan. Arguments ensued, and dictators were usurped, and when they finally ventured out to find something to eat or drink, the vast army of flesh-eating ghouls found something to eat instead.
    In the Americas, we had the fortune of being the last landmass to succumb to the virus. This gave us a brief but crucial heads up when it came to dealing with the mutated virus. The president, his cabinet, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff hurriedly met and hammered out a rushed agenda to try to contain this unimaginable, civilization-ending event. They decided to cull all the previous Pandora virus victims and gather them together. The activated National Guard was pressed into service, erecting camps of Quonset huts in designated areas to house the infected. The thinking was that if those infected did not die, they eventually would be returned home. If, instead, they died and reanimated as zombies, they would be executed and buried in mass graves already dug outside the gates of the quarantine camps. Perhaps because of the vast acceptance in popular culture of the word and idea of zombies, high officials knew (or hoped they knew) that most civilians were more ready to accept this as a valid concept. The civilian roundup was to start the following morning, and although considered humane (at least compared to what was happening in some other countries), the idea didn’t appeal to everyone. The president was hoping the plan wouldn’t be announced until the last minute, but as with all political secrets, this one was quickly leaked to the press. And with the press being the press, this enterprise was released to the unbelieving public in the morning in widely various manners, from the underground press screaming of Nazis in the government to Fox News declaring this was the only logical way to protect our great nation.
    The American people were polarized into two camps: those opposing having their loved ones taken away, never to be seen again, and those saying this was the only way we could assuredly contain this evil virus. The result was not pretty. This was the new world that Sean, Michael, Jack, and the rest of the human race woke up to.

7
    S ean woke up to a pounding at their front door. As he jumped from his bed, hearing someone else start down the stairs, he glanced at his alarm clock.
Six in the morning
, he thought grumpily.
Who the hell could that be?
He raced downstairs with Jack right behind him. Michael, already at the door, looked through the small glass window there before opening it.
    On the front